2. The Pig Dissection

Ms. Bitters returned to her desk and leaned over it, making sure Laura got the message loud and clear. "That's not an introduction! You must include weaknesses so I know how to contain you like these hopeless abominations before me. Continue!"

"Damn. Alright." Laura scanned over the class again, just a tiny bit taken aback.

Under the beanie and behind the glasses, her eyes widened, expressing incredulity. But after a moment of silence, they narrowed in defiance.

"I suppose one major weakness is that I'm the new kid. I don't know how things work around here yet. But if anyone messes with me, doesn't matter who they are, or who they think they are..." she made eye contact with Ms. Bitters at this point, then returned her glare to the general class. "I'm no pushover, or idiot. I happen to excel in grappling, which is a form of wrestling. And I have powerful unearthly connections that would be very happy to repay me for favors they've left undone."

Dib's ears caught that last part especially well. He seriously wasn't sure what she meant by that. It looked like nobody else did either.

She looked like she was on the verge of saying something else, but forgot, so Laura looked at Ms. Bitters again. "Where do I sit?"

Ms. Bitters seemed to be chewing on some very nasty choice words. For another moment, it was really tense. Then she just pointed a gnarly finger at the seat that used to be Tak's. The girl half-sauntered to the desk, crossed her arms, and didn't bother to take off her humongous black backpack.

Bitters said a few words on the pig dissection, and how the company's people would send the pig carcasses soon.

Laura's hand shot up. "Ms. Bitters, will I be allowed to work on this dissection thing with everyone else?"

"No. You never got the notes. Instead, what you will do is create some based on your observations of others' teams. I expect to have a packet of these observations on my table at the end of the day, but I'm not going to be grading them, so they're for your personal disuse. Got it?" She hissed.

"Of course I've got it. As a student who's threatened you with defending herself already, I'd have to get it," she retorted. "I can tell you're not used to tasting your own medicine."

A guy in the back called out, interrupting their back-and-forth. "Um... Ms. Bitters? We don't have our teams yet!"

"Then make some!" she screeched.

Instantly, a number of kids got up and moved about the room. They felt nothing for the new one's exclusion when they saw how well she took it.

As always, Zim and Dib were rejected by everyone else. Ms. Bitters made them a team even as they both protested.

"Now you can supervise your insane superstitions," she said to Dib. He forced himself to admit that she had a point, but when she left the room to go and haunt some other classroom, he went back to his default state of being.

The pigs, freshly dead, were delivered to the skool within the hour. The two stood together but apart, looking down at an enormous mass of graying pink. They had only been given a scalpel and a bag of strange looking tacks; apparently gloves had run out after two classrooms.

Laura scanned the classroom. Nobody was going about it correctly at all. She wasn't sure she wanted to do this anymore. But then a scythe-shaped lock of hair and pea-green skin caught her eye. That team hadn't even started.

She approached the group from the front slowly, cautiously, hoping halfheartedly they wouldn't look up. But they did. The short green boy didn't look very welcoming. The tall one in the trench coat, surprisingly did.

"Are you ready to prove your incompetence yet?" Laura asked sarcastically of them, mocking Bitters' tone. The green one didn't seem to get it, but the tall boy spoke.

"We don't have gloves. I know this would be weird any other time, but... might you have any on you?"

"Uh... I'll check my backpack..." She rummaged through all three pockets of her backpack, and then pulled a box out. "I do have some. What do you know? They must have been from the dentist's office..."

"Why do you carry this stuff with you?"

She took out two pairs, eyeing Dib with curiosity.

"Why is your friend here green?" she countered.

"We're not friends!" cried Dib, at the same time that Zim bellowed, "He is not ZIM'S friend!"

"Zim has no friends because he's an alien. I swear." Dib added.

"Really? You didn't even give me your name yet and you're giving me this instead." Laura giggled breathily to herself. "By the way, I'm really bad at remembering new people, but..."

"I'm Dib Membrane."

"Okay. Dib, and Zim." Laura raised an eyebrow at the shorter boy. "That's a cool name. Why are you green? Are you a Martian?" She giggled under her breath again.

"Irken, actually-! ...I mean, it's just a skin condition." Zim's face contorted in annoyance, becoming uncomfortable and twiddling his thumbs.

"Liar. You've gotten away with that explanation for a while, haven't you? Well, I'm not sure how unless everyone else here's really that blind. There's no human skin condition capable of making your skin that green without killing you, man. Nothing - not a disease or a parasite on this earth!" Laura declared this loudly, projecting her voice so that people turned their heads.

But people weren't the only things that reacted to her voice. A tiny Noize-Activated security camera began recording in her direction, its little red light pulsing on and off, on and off...

Down at desk level, of course, nobody noticed.

"I think I'll stick around here with you guys. You seem like you know what you're not doing."

"The thing is... uh... I'm not a fan of cutting dead pigs up." Dib stalled. Looking at the lump of meat before him tied his stomach into knots, to be honest with himself. He was starting to feel a bit sick from the smell, since nothing was preserved with formaldehyde.

"Ah well. Why don't you take over instead, Zim?"

Zim stared. He was confused by her word choice, and very much on guard now. "...No..."

Laura shot him a look under her beanie that didn't need to be interpreted. He cringed.

"I really would like to help your team, Dib." She quietly spoke. "Note-taking isn't fun at all."

Dib, relieved he wouldn't have to touch the carcass, put on the gloves anyway. "Hopefully the camera's not on," he tried to assure her.

But oh, how their hopes would be dashed.