TIME FOR AN UPDATE KIDDIES. This chapter is very Dib-heavy and we finally get to see a little bit more of what Dib did when Zim just didn't bother showing up in his childhood. How did that really effect him?

Turns out, not very well. But than again, can anyone say that Dib is really sane in the show? I can't.

Enjoy reading comrades!

Dib's apartment wasn't anything really special. It had one large fish tank, a couch, a big TV and other essentials that any bachelor living in the city would need. He was lucky he had the Membrane name attached to him, otherwise he may well have never got it.

And yet, even though he had long thrown away the idea that aliens could possibly exist, there was still evidence of that old belief still there. A map of the solar system on one wall, an extensive collection of sci-fi DVD's, a vintage 'The Truth is Out There' poster in his bedroom.

Now however it seemed that it was all he could think about.

Aliens were real, Zim was real, that whole experience was real. And yet it seemed so fantastic and dreamlike in some ways, to have all your childhood fantasies come to life and rush at you was something that shocked him to his core.

He paced around his apartment, his hair messy, his eyes wide and his skin pale. He hadn't eaten or drank since he had gotten home. He had just wrote down everything he had seen and heard and now was waiting for the next step.

But what was this next step? Was he to phone the police? Phone the school? What? It was so deflating and sobering to realise that he really had no idea what to do. He had dreamt of this since his childhood and now that it had happened he had no next step to take.

He likened it to meeting one's heroes... meet one's nightmares face to face and they are rendered so real as to be utterly powerless. Aliens were real and they were tiny angry little things who had insane robots.

Dib fell onto his couch, all this thinking was giving him a headache and considering he was a genius that was an awful lot of thinking.

Again he cursed Zim for his irritating habit of finding SOME way to keep on his mind and bug the hell out of him without even trying that hard. Now it was just his existence that annoyed Dib, and yet, he still couldn't fully believe that Zim was really the vicious little thing he acted like. That scene still played in his head, the one where Zim was so close to saying something about himself, something true... then he broke and walked away.

He wanted so much to expose Zim to the world, to tell them all that he was never crazy, he was right and that aliens did exist... but he still wanted to know why? Why here? Why now? And even more puzzling, why had he yet to rule earth?

Again, this was giving him a headache and thus he got up to go to his medicine cabinet. He would have to decide on this later, whether to pretend this never happened and move on, or, get some of his dad's equipment and capture the little alien.

For now, he needed to at least begin to prepare his home against any invasion. He could feel an old sense of paranoia returning and for a moment, he remembered that time in his life when he was so terrified of possible invasion from the alien menace that he boarded up his room and his father had to break through the door to get him out.

He knew that was really the point when his belief began slipping, some time in a mental institution for paranoia and obsessive behaviour towards his perceived supernatural enemies had broken him down.

And in many ways he did not regret it. It had been self destructive to be chasing down people and tackling them in belief they were fish-men or vampires. It had made his entire high school life hell, orchestrated him from all other around him.

Keeping him under watch and care of therapists had broken him down and finally made him realise just what he was doing to himself, as well as give him real time to sit and think about what he was going to do with his life.

By seeing his doctor every day, he had slowly but surely come to realise that the paranormal was beyond his reach and his obsessive behaviour towards it had caused him to become lonely and given him a life long battle with insomnia. His paranoia had broken his family from him and added only to his delusional belief that something was going to get him and kill him and the people he cared about.

When he'd finally admitted he might be wrong about the supernatural, it'd been like a weight lifting of his shoulders. Towards the end of his four month stay in that place, he was no longer asking about if the cafeteria worker was a yeti, but asking the doctors just how they got their degrees and the work involved with it.

He wanted to help people but he would do it by the practical methods of sitting down and just listening and talking to those like himself, the lonely and troubled ones, not by killing werewolves or giving autopsies on aliens.

Yes he still held a knowledge that most people were stupid and ignorant, but that was something all people came to deal with in their own way. He knew that his father and sister weren't perfect, Gaz was cold and emotionless and spent way too much time on her work... much like his father, who's workaholic tendencies made him forget his own children's birthdays.

But he also knew Gaz was dedicated to their family, it was always her to drag Dib and their father together at birthdays, Christmas and thanksgivings and his dad had always given them everything they needed, money for university and good placements, even getting them cars and helping them afford the initial payments on their homes.

Yes it wasn't the kind of huggy, kissy lovey family that most people probably had... but each cared for each other in their own, awkward way.

Dib found himself shoving a chair against the main door, wondering if he was going a little too far here. No, this was a real threat, for the first time ever this was a real, deadly threat that had only tried to cut his brain out only a little time ago.

Just as long as he didn't start putting boards over his windows he wouldn't have to phone any of his old doctors up. Besides, he was smart, he was a therapist himself. This was justifiable! This was not crazy!

He looked back at his work, knowing that the next morning he was going to have to go back to work and put himself in direct confrontation with Zim... which wouldn't be very pleasant.

Sighing however, he decided that he might as well prep his work and get ready for tomorrow, feeling secure enough with a huge chair in front of his door. Zim was a tiny guy, and he doubted that the alien would ever be able to move an object on his own... unless he had some kind of horrible strength that Dib didn't know about.

He paused on this. Other than Zim being an alien, he didn't really know much about him. It was obvious that everything he'd been told about Zim's skin condition and other physical elements was a complete lie.

Here he was, with proof of alien existence just a quick drive down the road and he was hiding from it!

Dib felt suddenly torn, he could leave the nice warm confines of his home to go out hunting for some information on Zim, or he could stay here and hope that tonight the alien didn't blow down his door and start ruining his lovely pad.

Well, he supposed that if he spied on Zim just a little bit, then at least he'd know what he was going up against. Right? Besides, surely any extra knowledge about Zim was worth it, anything to better understand the mind of the troubled little alien.

Dib pushed the chair back away from his door and strode out, knowing just where to go. It took him an hour and thirty minutes but he arrived at his dad's lab with a giddy and childish sense of glee about him.

It took another hour to get in, he had to convince the guards that he was related to the professor before finally a passing lab assistant recognised him and let him in. Seriously, people were so dumb nowadays, it was pretty obvious by the glasses, hair and eyes that he and the Professor were related.

Soon however he was walking out with a bunch of advanced spying equipment, binoculars, recorders etc. He loved that his dad had military contracts to fill as he got all the spare prototype stuff.

However, driving through town, he felt like something was... missing somehow. He couldn't just stalk about outside Zim's home with a bunch of camera in a white shirt, could he? No, he needed something to cover himself with and not to mention keep warm.

What about... a coat? It'd need to be a long coat, he had to cover his legs as well.

He stopped at a traffic light and turned his head casually, simply looking out the window for looking sake. There he saw it... that long black trench coat sitting in the window of some goth shop. He had to have it, it was perfect. Large pockets, lots of storage room, jet black and warm.

He pulled into the car parking lot and again, in no time at all he was in the shop's changing room, the coat in his hands. He had a flashback to his childhood, the throwing away of his old trench coat...

Dib bought it and put it on, something telling him how... right this felt. This was something he was supposed to do, he was born to do. He marched out of the shop, now looking considerably more... matrix-esk than before.

The sun was going down, something that with all his preparing he'd forgotten to even notice. Dammit, he would have to avoid spying on the irken tonight, he still had work to prepare for his various mini-jobs in the skool... but tomorrow night?

He smiled to himself as he climbed back into his car, feeling his inner child finally and utterly unleashed.

I noticed when reading back through this that I make a LOT of mistakes in typing stuff up here and the continuality of this story is bloody awful.

STILL, I actually liked this chapter for a change, amazing huh?

Read, review, tell me what you think. I looove da feedback dawgs.

Till next time, PEACE!