-1Disclaimer: All Invader Zim characters belong to Jhonen Vasquez and no money is being made off their use. All original characters belong to me, and it would be rude to use them with crediting me.

Glass Dominos

By

Lisa-chu

Chapter One

Weakling

"It says here her name is Merit." Zim stated quietly, not wanting to awaken the hostile young Irken. It was obvious by her reaction that she hadn't meant to crash land on Earth (considering people generally didn't mean to crash land, period.)

"Does it say anything else?" Dib asked from his place next to the couch in the Membrane house, where Merit was resting with Luna clutched to her chest. They had been waiting for hours for her to come to, but with little progress. Merely a stir here or there. But, fortunately, they had managed to find some form of identification, thanks to Zim's handy skill of hacking into her Pak.

"Not much. Just her age. She doesn't even have a rank, yet."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning I was right and she's still a smeet. She hasn't even graduated from the Academy yet." The Irken placed a claw to his chin. The whole situation seemed to grow stranger by the second. Why would a mere child be given a Voot Runner and sent to Earth? Dib was even more confused. Even after all he years of studying Zim, he had never thought to look into where he had come from or how the beings there acted, and it was obvious that Earth wasn't the 'hot spot' for Irken invasion. For the first time in his life, Dib was at loss.

"So….do we send her back, or…" he trailed off.

"You can't…" A small voice intervened, startling the two. Dib smiled down at her, trying not to throw her into another freak out.

""You're okay! How do you feel?" Merit pulled the blanket up over her mouth, intimidated by the strange creature. It wasn't Irken, so, as far as she was concerned, it was friendly. "C'mon, now. You're among friends. We want to help you." He cooed gently, placing a hand on top of her head. Zim, on the other hand, wasn't feeling up for comforting.

"Out of the way, Dib-beast. You! Smeetling! Sit up straight." He commanded. He was going to get answers, and he was going to get them soon. Alarmed, Merit couldn't help but comply. She shot up on the couch, knocking the blanket onto the floor, and stared up at Zim with large pale pink eyes. Zim sat down on the coffee table in front of her and glared at her. "Now, you're going to tell Zim why you came to Earth. Do the Tallest know you stole a Voot Runner? Why aren't you ranked?"

"Zim, you're scaring her!" Dib cried, placing a hand on her shoulder. The Irken Invader calmed down, but not much. He still sat, glaring daggers at the two, waiting for an answer. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn't come out. "All we want to do is help you get back home."

"But I can't go back! Don't you understand? I can't go back!" She broke down, throwing her arms around Dib and crying into his chest. The human simply patted her back and let her cry.

"What do you mean you can't go back?" Zim demanded to know. Merit sniffled and wiped at her eyes. "Tell us the truth, from the beginning."

"Okay, okay. I didn't steal the Voot Runner, and I'm here because the Tallest sent me here."

"To take over my mission! Well, I'll have them know that I-"

"No! No, that's not it. They didn't send me here, they sent me away. I was banished from Irk." The two young men stared down at them, mouths slack. Dib couldn't fathom how rulers could just send someone away, and so young. "And I don't have a rank because I…I never finished my training." Zim leaned in closer to her. He couldn't quite decipher if she was telling the truth, but then again, why would one lie about being banished.

"What did you do?" he wondered aloud. Merit let out shuttering breath and placed Luna in her lap.

"It isn't what I did. It's what I wouldn't do." She sighed again. "On Irk, we're preparing for battle. They wouldn't tell us where, or why, but I think they're planning on expanding Irken territory. Anyway, they began breeding more smeets to train into soldiers.

"I was doing okay on the rules of war and the basics of combat, but when it came time to actually start the hard part, real-life sparring, I…I just couldn't do it. The thought of killing someone, anyone, just…made my stomach turn." She had to choke back the tears just to continue. "The Tallest decided that if I couldn't do my part in the upcoming conquest, then I wouldn't be considered an Irken Invader. They gave me a Voot Runner and sent me on my way." She wiped her eyes. "I had been wandering the universe, before my computer discovered this planet, Earth. It told it to mark a course, but I guess the gravitational pull was a bit too much, and I crashed."

"So they just threw you out because you wouldn't fight? That's horrible!" Dib cried, rising from his seat with his fist clenched. To ship off some maniac like Zim was one thing, but to leave a defenseless little girl to die, because she didn't want to hurt others? "What kind of backwards planet do you come from?"

Zim scoffed. "Stupid worm baby, of course she was banished. Invaders are bred to be just that, invaders. Fighters. Refusing to fight is going against our breeding, and sometimes even considered treason." He glared down at her, and couldn't help but be slightly disgusted that she wouldn't stop that damned crying. "You should consider yourself lucky you didn't get worse, smeet."

Merit's eyes widened at the mention of 'something worse'. Treason? Was he implying that she could have been killed? The information, all of it, swam in her head much too fast, and she had to put a clawed hand to her forehead to keep from getting dizzy all over again.

"They would have killed her?" Dib wondered out loud. Zim merely nodded sagely.

"If she refused to fight in actual combat, then yes." He didn't feel the least bit bad about saying either. It was simply the way things were on Irk, and, as far as he was concerned, they way they should stay.

There was a heavy silence as the three contemplated on what to do next. They couldn't really send her away, but she couldn't exactly stay at Dib's either. And what about school and work? She wouldn't know how to support yourself. Dib sighed and took Zim by the arm, pulling him out of the living room and into the hall. They had to figure out something, and he'd be damned if he did it on his own.

"So, what do we do now, Luna?" Merit whispered to the doll in her lap, as the two young men exited the room. Luna always had an answer for everything.

We stay… That was it. No explanation as to why, and no plan of action, but she supposed it was better that nothing.

-

"So, what do we do with her?" Dib asked, releasing his hold on the aliens arm. Zim merely shrugged.

"I don't know. I've never had to deal with a smeetling before-"

"Why do you keep calling her that?" Dib was starting to get frustrated with the whole situation. Forty-five minutes ago, he was happily wasting his life away at Bloaty's, harassing 'the green kid', and that's where he should be now, not baby-sitting yet another alien who could possibly be using her big pink eyes and Alligator Tears as a ruse to trick them into helping her destroy the planet. "What does that even mean?"

"A smeet is what you humans would call a baby or a child. Your considered a smeet until you graduate from the Academy." Zim took in the human's blank stare and let out an irritated sigh. "Do you know anything? The Academy is where they train smeets so they can become useful members of Irken society."

"Well, what if she just wasn't cut out to be a soldier? Couldn't they have found another job for her to do?"

"It depends. If it were peacetime, then they would have assigned her to something else. But since Irk is preparing for battle, most are brought up to be combatants, and not much else." Zim couldn't help but wonder what this new plan of galactic conquest could be, but he could really afford to face one issue at a time right now. "But that's not what's important right now. We need to figure out what to do with her."

"I think she should stay with you." Was Dib's quick response.

"Excuse me!"

"Think about it. I have to stay here and every room in the house is taken except for the living room, and I doubt she wants to sleep on that raggedy old couch while she's here. You, on the other hand, have that huge base, with no one except you and Gir. And besides, maybe she'd be more comfortable with one of her own." That damn human had him dead to rights, he supposed. If anyone could help her make a new life for herself, it was him. But then again, he didn't really have this whole 'being human' thing completely understood.

"Fine. But you're going to do every thing else!"

"Everything else?" Dib looked slightly puzzled.

"Clothes, food, getting her into school-" Zim counted the chores off on his claws, and though the list wasn't long, it was definitely difficult, and, even more so, unreasonable . Feeding her every day and night, finding clothes that actually fit? Dib peered around the corner at Merit, who was still seated on the couch with her little stuffed alien. He put a finger to his chin and thought. Maybe there was a solution.

"Come with me." He commanded quietly before striding back into the living room. Merit looked up at him with bright, now dry, eyes. "Merit, we've decided to keep you. You're going to stay with Zim at his base, but I'll be taking care of you."

"So you'll be my new parents?" she asked, excitement apparent on her round little face. That was the last thing the two wanted to considered themselves, but there was really nothing else to call it. They were going to have to become her…parents.

"Yeah. Your parents." The words sounded so awkward coming of his Zim tongue, but at the same time, it made his little alien heart beat faster. Imagine him, the great and mighty Zim, a father.

"Anyway, first thing's first. We need to get you some clothes. I think my sister may have some tucked away in her closet."

-

Pink was the last thing Zim expected to see within a five mile radius of Dib's devil-sister, Gaz. In fact, he didn't really expect to find any color except black and purple, but, lo and behold, tucked away in the deepest reaches of her closet were boxes stuffed with bright colored polo shirts, t-shirts, and stylish designer blue jeans.

"Gifts from distant relatives. They don't come to visit much, so they just mail us what all the 'other kids' are wearing." Dib tossed one particularly large cardboard box onto his sister's bed before reaching back into the closet to fish out another. Merit, nearly bouncing with anticipation, began nervously sifting through the bundles of clothes. The 'smeet' pulled out a baby pink polo shirt that was soft to the touch, made of some strange, thin material, and she shifted it around in her hands until she found the tag on the inside collar.

"Dib? What does…Aeropostale mean?" The human sighed.

"It's means the for price of that shirt, you could buy dinner for three days." He joked, of course, as he thought back to one of the few nice conversations he had ever had with Gaz, when the two went online to actually price one of the so-called quality pieces.

"Really?" Zim was suddenly intrigued. He may have temporarily given up hope on his mission, but he still wanted to know as much as possible about these humans. Just in case he decided to end his hiatus and destroy them.

"No, Zim. Not really." Dib scoffed. How could someone be so naïve. "Actually, I don't think it means anything. It's sounds nice, and it look nice, so why not use it?" He pulled out another box and plopped it down next to the first. "That should be the last of it." He sighed. "At least I hope so. Those things are heavy."

Merit pushed the second box, filled mostly with jeans, so that the content spilled onto the mattress.

"They all look the same…"she mumbled to herself. Without warning, she rose to her feet, unfastened the black pants issued to her, and shoved down past her ankles. Blushing, Dib grabbed Zim by the arm, as he was getting accustomed to doing, and dragged him out of the room.

"We'll just give you some privacy." he chuckled as he closed the door behind them. As soon as the door was shut, Zim snatched his arm away before holding his head high and marching back to the living room. He wasn't about to be dragged around by some pitiful Earth-worm. Sighing miserably, Dib followed behind him and let himself drop, unceremoniously, onto the couch.

"She needs a disguise." The alien stated as he perched himself on the arm of the couch, leaving plenty of space between himself and the human.

"I'll leave that up to you." The alien scoffed.

"Yeah, like you have a choice."

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Sorry, but I had to stop it. This is probably the longest chapter I've ever written (4 pages) . It doesn't help that my brain just flopped out. Blah. Please read and review.