oh my gOODNESS IM SO SORRY THIS IS SO LATE THERES NO EXCUSE IM SUPER DOOPER POOPER SORRY oh my goodness, i hope my motivation for this will be better now bUT JUST

WOW IM SUPER SORRY I HOPE YOU FIND IT IN YOUR SQUEEDLY SPOOCH TO FORGIVE ME!

Dib and I met at the intersection just as Zim hopped out of his seat. I tightened my hands around my backpack straps instinctively. Dib was looking at me, an almost friendly look on his face, though it seemed kind of disappointed.

I was probably a let down if he thought I was an alien. Or even a human. A stupid human and a lame-oid alien. If I was an alien, I'd probably be a shapeless blob that survived on algae.

I managed a half smile, however, trying to stay positive. I was then, to my surprise, grabbed by the collar and spun around, coming nose to, well, no-nose, with Zim, in a most decisively not positive way.

He kinda smelled like lady bugs, actually. I hadn't been too far off in my assumption. Huh. Gross.

His lip curled in disgust. "I see the Dib has been throwing you... Secret-secrety notes! Well, new rat-child, whatever he is telling you is a LIE, those were notes of LIES! I am a perfectly normal child, nothing is wrong with me, nothing!" He shook his fist angrily, thus shaking me. I vibrated so much my glasses almost fell off,

I blinked. One foot was twisted awkwardly while the other leg was bent at the knee to keep myself from falling, and to accommodate the weight shift of course. Maybe I was about to re-break both legs. "Uhh..." I wrinkled my nose to keep my glasses on. My legs felt about to twist off.

Dib grabbed the back of my collar, jerking me away from Zim and effectively choking me, rubber covered alien knuckles pressing into my wind pipe. I 'hrked' and stuck out my tongue, frowning.

My leg snapped. Or my neck. My glasses were barely hanging on. 'Help meeeeeee...' they cried. To no one. Who would help my glasses? No one. Glasses did not have helping hands. Or arms. Or legs.

Lack of oxygen had its affect on me I suppose.

"Shut it, Zim!She doesn't believe you anyway." Dib jerked me back more and I saw him smirk out of the corner of my eye as I quietly choked. His eyes narrowed as he grinned. "She believes me."

My glasses seemed about to commit suicide. The suspense was too much for them, they couldn't handle it. Couldn't handle not knowing if they were going to live, they needed control of their own life. The suspense was literally killing them.

Zim jerked me back towards him and I frowned, eyes squinting. My glasses were no longer in front of my face and everything had gone out of focus."NONSENSE! Obviously she would believe me, rather than the crazy worm-child who has been throwing strange paper aircraft at her all cla-"

I twisted my shoulders and threw my hands up, smacking them both in the face. Or rather, I smacked Dib's nose and smacked Zim's chin, making his jaw click. "Stop it!" My glasses fell off with a clack and I bent to pick them up, blushing in embarrassment. Stupid handsy cartoon characters. Stupid now dead and weeping glasses. Stupid amazing air now in my lungs.

Dib reeled back, putting his hand over his nose."Ow! What was that for!?" He demanded as Zim went cross-eyed in front of me. He squinted like he was attempting to glare my germs off of his face. What a baby for a hundred something year old alien. I should buy him adult diapers.

My face flushed so red in embarrassment that I sniffed to make sure I could still breath without making a wheezing embarrassing noise. Sadly, I did, but turned to him as I stood, putting my glasses back on before crossing my arms. My shirt collar was stretched out, and I could only hope a wash would fix it. "Well for one; I was choking!"

"Oh."

"Stupid humans and their air holes." I glanced over my shoulder as Zim muttered, glaring at me. I was surprised that Dib hadn't jumped on that statement. Though air holes were probably something Zim had anyway, he was just a disgusted jerk. "You dare to smack the me? Zim!? With your filthy dirt hands!? Getting your dirty, rat-child, horrible filth all over-!?"

I glared at him, eye-glasses squishing with my eyes. Yay cartoons. "Yes. I'm sorry but I like breathing. A-And this shirt." I looked down at it, frowning at the damage. My only shirt that I liked too. Ugh. Probably the only one I had that was nice.

"You're sorry!? He's an alien menace!" Dib gestured at Zim wildly.

Why were the three of us were even allowed to be in here without adult supervision. Not that adult supervision would do much, of course. But still, it was nice to think at least SOMEONE would try to keep things from exploding. At least Sasha wasn't here. She'd have exploded everything by now.

Oh.

Oh well that hadn't helped my mood.

I held up my hands as Zim scowled at Dib. "Look..." I started, my stomach sinking. I was no longer in the mood to practice damage control. That was not my chosen career. Too messy.

That was when Zim's teeth grit together, and he decided to grab the paper off of his desk, crumple it, and in a childish fit; throw it at Dib's face. It hit Dib in the eye with a smack and he cried out; "MY EYE!"

I didn't quite see how that could work, seeing as he wore glasses, but I took advantage of it and ran out of the room as Dib ran at Zim, grabbing paper off of Aki's desk. Or was it Brian's? Didn't really matter. Damage was damage, and I wanted no part of it.

Also I did not want to see if cartoon logic would make my eye hurt if it got something stuck in it, glasses or no glasses.

I rushed into the hall as they started screaming at each other; as close as they could get to profanities on a Nick-toons or whatever show. (Doody head, cURSE yoOUUU! etc.)

I only slowed down when I caught up with the stragglers heading to the cafeteria. They made a convenient path for me to follow so I wasn't lost and I could learn where things were, not that I wouldn't forget it immediately. I sighed, stopping outside the lunch room doors to catch my breath and let myself be sad.

Zim reacted with disgust towards me and Dib reacted with distrust. Double D's that were not the kind I enjoyed.

I could hardly stomach either in a normal situation but this was Zim. This was Dib. This was an insane alien man-child bent on world destruction, able to tear everything down and build it anew. Erase humanity's stupidity. Not any time soon, of course. Zim could get his butt kicked by the third graders here.

Dib was just... Dib was just lonely. A lonely kid. Everyone else avoided him, bullied him, shoved him into trash cans probably, but he was able to reprogram an Irken ship – not yet of course – he was brilliant. And a little kid, all alone, and I couldn't help but feel for both of them. Dumb sixteen year old mom that I was. Cartoon mom. I never actually wanted kids.

Dib was obviously the more approachable, but, well, Zim would definitely be more... Fun. Dangerous. Life threatening. But fun. And challenging. But I was lazy. I probably wouldn't be able to keep up with him. Also I liked my organs in place.

And I wanted to change him, I knew it. I knew it wouldn't happen either, and that it was incredibly selfish of me. Who knew if I was even changing him for the better, anyway?

Not like he'd want anything to do with me, anyway. Darn. Dib hadn't gotten his answer yet either, so, guess it was Dib I'd be hanging out with – or at least attempting to – for the time being. At least for as long as his interest remained with me. If I was crafty – aka a liar – it would stick around for a while. Dib was lonely anyway, he needed someone. Underhanded of me but I had good intentions at least. I needed a friend right now too.

It might be a bit before Dib showed up, however, depending on how long he and Zim fought, and how much damage they were causing. Sighing, I pushed my way through the door, looking around.

Ah yes, the smelly-smell of decaying animals. Go sch-skool lunches! Yay for murder!

Scowling, and snorting to push the smell away; I glanced to the lunch line. Pretty small by this time. Still, nothing looked appetizing. At all. Nope. Certainly not the meatloaf with eyes. Not today, had too much last night, sorry, save it for me tomorrow? No, please don't. Please.

Remembering Dark Harvest, I glanced to my right. A small board that seemed taped to the wall proclaimed; "recycled meatloaf and corn day!" with a hungry and happy looking smiley face.

The smiley face was a liar. A dirty, dirty liar. It's squinted shut eyes screamed pain. It was probably a portrait of the 'recycled' part of the meat loaf. I saw no corn either. Probably it was in the meatloaf. Gross.

My stomach gurgled in sympathy for everyone eating, and also hunger. I started to wander around the lunch room, glancing around for a table. Most were filled up. I saw the empty one in the corner by the window that Zim usually sat in. There was an empty one next to it, but it was quickly filling up with background characters, or rather, people I didn't know and didn't want to know. They looked diseased.

Gnawing on my lip, I nervously glanced to where I estimated Dib's table was. A purple haired girl was currently sitting down at it, dropping her tray. It sloshed with meatloaf, but she didn't seem to notice, eyes turned towards a Game-Slave in her other hand; called Game-Slave for obvious reasons of course. Some of the bits of broccoli that had fallen off the tray started to crawl away. Maybe they were lizards. Who knew at this point, any crazy thought of mine might as well be a new law of reality. As bent and twisted as reality was here.

I shifted nervously, trying to estimate the odds of Dib being suspicious of finding the new girl sitting at his table and waiting for him. Guessing that it was better than the odds of Zim slapping me out of 'his' seat - possibly causing me brain damage - I wandered over to her table, pausing as I reached it. I didn't liked being slapped anyway. Making new friends was almost as painful, however.

Gaz didn't look up, and I swallowed, excitement from before with the fight in the classroom gone. All that was left was gaping nervousness. I sat down, crawling onto the bench and setting my backpack between my legs. I pulled out a bit of food from it; a half melted mint, and started quietly sucking on it, looking around but occasionally glancing to Gaz. She didn't seem to react to me, playing her game with one hand, fork in the other.

Her meatloaf had started to crawl off her plate and she stabbed it angrily with her fork. It squealed, writhing, and she shoved it into her mouth, crunching it. Did meatloaf crunch? Probably not. It didn't usually have eyes though. Today was a day of new things.

Finally, the meatloaf seeming to wake her up, she glanced to me, one eye squinting open. She looked me over, and I awkwardly waved. Snorting, she returned to her game.

Awesome. That was better than I'd ever imagined, seeing as I had imagined myself as screaming meatloaf by the end of this.

Sighing, I reached down and pulled my note book out of my backpack, starting to scribble skeleton-kittens, though I wasn't very good at drawing skeletons. They also shot lasers. I was pretty far on Ms. Bitter's assignment anyway, so who really cared. She'd probably appreciate the deadly kittens. I made sure to make a few ugly, just in case. She had high expectations for the rat girl, of course, and I aimed to please those who could maim and destroy.

Eyes on my paper made me look up. Mostly because it made me feel like my paper would burst into flames if I didn't give my attention immediately. Gaz, eyes squinted, was looking at my paper, straw in her mouth as she sucked on a juice box. A juice box with grease stains at the bottom. Eugh.

She tipped her head, looking at me now. "Don't you eat?"

I blinked, startled that she'd spoken. I shrugged a tiny bit. "Nothing, uh, looked good." I mumbled, crunching the mint with my teeth. I considered saying I ate my homework but that was silly.

"Huh." She raised an eyebrow before going back to her game, playing it one handed as she angrily sucked on her juice. I smiled a little before going back to drawing. Gaz was neat. And she didn't seem to have an opinion on me yet, so yay. Sometimes no opinion was the best opinion. And least likely to result in a broken arm. Or face. I pushed my beanie up subconsciously. Broken faces were not good.

Only a little while later I felt a disturbing presence behind me, and I blinked, turning around. Dib stood, paper stuck in the scythe on top of his head. He loomed over me, or at least tried to as he stood on tippy-toes. His arms were crossed defensively and I blinked. Very disturbing. Such fear was inspired in me, I was left speechless.

"'Ay." I said.

Dib frowned. "How'd you know where I sit?" He spat it out as one word.

"There was a scary girl here. Seemed like the best place to, uhm, sit. And, partake in..." (The foodening) "Lunch... Yeah." I shrugged again, blinking up at him. I gave him my best grin, which was as always; pathetic.

"Yeah, okay, so say I buy that."

"You've got a real bargain on it, I can tell you that." I mumbled, poking at my paper as Dib moved around the table to sit next to his sister. She scooted away from him slightly and he frowned at me. "Hi." I said with sufficient awkwardness, wondering if I could try and stomach the food here or if I'd have to pack my own lunch.

Dib raised an eyebrow at me. "So."

"So?"

Exasperated by my stupidity, Dib let out a heaving sigh. His lungs seemed to be throwing up rocks. "So do you believe me or not!?"

"Oh."

I hesitated, I had to. I was acting. Of course I believed him, but would the new-girl, weird, shy, somewhat normal new-girl believe him? (Normal save for the rats.)

Well who was I kidding? I'd seen enough fanfiction to see where this was going.

"Well, yeah... I guess it's possible? He is green?" I needed to stop with the question marks at the end of things and work towards being more confident. Which wasn't happening any time soon. (correction. 'Soon?').

"I knew you wouldn't believe me! You're all the same! Too stupid to see whats right in front of you-!"

"She said 'yes', stupid." Gaz snapped, glaring up at him. He fell silent instantly. Gaz snapped her head back around to stare at her game, and it took Dib a second to process everything.

"Wait, what?"

I shrugged. "Yeah, I mean, he totally could be? He's green. I know there are some, uhm, diseases that can make you, you know, green... But it's always possible?" Awkwardly I chewed on my lip, smiling. I could appear just an awkward girl trying to get a friend by believing the crazy boy, but that was better than nothing. Even as I spoke I could see Dib thinking, gears grinding.

"So, you really believe me?" His voice was cautious and his eyes were squinted.

I nodded, my stomach fluttering. "Well, yeah. He said some weird stuff anyway... He could be a foreigner, but... Green. No ears... Yells." I held my hands up helplessly, shrugging. My knee bumped up and down with nerves and I made myself look at Dib.

Dib stared at me blankly before suddenly smiling, mouth stretched wide and, if I was honest, he looked creepy as heck. Gaz glanced at him, and, never happy with 'happy', scowled. I was reminded suddenly of the pilot for the show. Dib had been especially creepy in that.

Then, Dib did what any Dib, in any universe, in any situation would do; he began to rant, and tell me everything he knew about Zim.

He sure could make nothing last forever.

In other words, he kept repeating everything. Over and over again. Even at recess.

"-I haven't gotten any skin samples yet, but I'm sure he's slimy – maybe scaly! Imagine that! Scales! How disgusting!"

We exited the lunchroom and into sunshine. Recess varied from day to day – according to that stack of crap I had to read – and, this being a cartoon world, I had no idea how long it would last.

Sunshine hit my face and I sighed, smiling. Gaz went off to sit on the steps and play her game, and Dib trailed off as we both awkwardly stood in the doorway.

"So..." I crossed my arms, looking around. A child was licking the pavement. Amazing. I looked over at Dib, who seemed awkward enough as well. "What do you, uh, usually do during recess?"

"Well we get recess pretty randomly, but I usually watch Zim."

"Andddd do you know where Zim is?"

"Yeah he's usually over- waitaminute."

Dib twitched around to where his hand had automatically gestured, and he made a low noise. "He's not there!"

"Where's there?"

'There', as Dib was pointing out; was a picnic table. I had my back to the fence that surrounded the small playground – large sometimes, small other times – and I kept my arms crossed. Despite my sweatshirt, I shuddered. Fingers seemed to run up my back. I turned, looking over my shoulders and narrowing my eyes.

Nothing. Empty sidewalk. Muddy footprints.

Wait.

Muddy footprints?

"This is all your FAULT!" Dib makes a fist. "I bet this was your plan! You wanted to distract me so Zim could go prepare his evil plan! I knew you were in cahoots with him!"

"Cahoots."

That is the most bewildering part of that sentence.

"CAHOOTS!" His voice cracks, and I notice we're gaining the attention of a few children. Which, really, didn't matter, honestly. If I wanted to be friends with any of these people, it would be the weird ones.

I held up my hands anyway. "Shh, dude. Dude. I don't, own any cahoots." I knew what a cahoot was – what cahoots meant, sorry, but rat-girl didn't. Dib twitched, pointing a finger at me. I sighed. "Dib, I just listened to your whole," not rant, rant was mean, "... sh-peal, and, well, I believe you okay? Sorta? I mean, Aliens are so cool! Almost as cool as rats!" I tried to look dreamy, but probably failed. Who knows, I don't even know my own love for rats. "And, well you're acting like its important. So, it is."

Dib stared at me a moment, face blank. "Well..."

I gave him a pleading look. I think my face squeaked from it.

Dib relented. "Yeah, alright. I'll trust you, for now."

I smiled and made a bit of an 'ee' noise as the bell rang.

…

The day dragged on after that. Dib said he needed to 'plan', and so didn't throw any notes at me. Zim glared between the two of us, and Miss Bitters collected our papers. I had a good feeling about mine, of course. I managed to mention a hefty amount of 'rat related' (ratlated, haha) tortures.

There was a surreal feeling of 'time skipping', like when you've been staring out a window on a car ride and then suddenly found you were home or at the store. Final bell rang – I suspected daily 'schedule' changed with plot. The other kids seemed to just accept what happened. I guess I could too.

I collected my bag, pencils, 'rats'. Not really, I pretended to, however.

The sky remained orange and polluted as ever as I stepped outside. Dib – rudely – had not said goodbye. I supposed I could accept it. I wasn't a 'bff' yet. Probably never would be. Dib was a boy, a pre-teen jerk, really. I was older than him too. Age difference, gender difference, etc.

I breathed in polluted air, trying to remember where my house was, and then choked.

Sasha, covered in mud and causing the sea of children leaving the school to part, stood in front of me, lantern in hand. Her teeth were covered in mud, and a suck munky was stuck in her hair – somehow – and her backpack was at her feet. A backpack full of Gir, who was also full of mud.

I gaped, shoulders slacking. Sasha waved a hand, sending mud flying. Some landed at my feet.

"Hey, HEY! CASEY! Cas! Hey! Got any food!?"

"FOOD!" Gir screamed.

I hesitated only a moment.

"Sasha you grEAT BIG SACK OF SH-T!"

Ayy , okay here it is, Sasha the Psyco is here and hopefully here to stay! Review if you can, i really hope someones still around to care! weeps

but, anyway, my humor might get a more raunchy so the rating may change (notice the censored swear WHOOPS) buT, anyway, suggestions, comments, reviews are all appreciated! I'm so sorry for the delay!