The New Adventures of Invader Zim: Season 2

by Zim'sMostLoyalServant

Norlock might be gone, but the adventures continue. New action, new laughs, new allies and enemies, and more! Newest: A threat from the past comes back to haunt everyone.

13. Night Terrors

A/N: Hey there, everyone, and welcome on back to the show. I know I've said this before a bunch of times, but this is a chapter I've been looking forward to a lot, for several reasons, and I hope you're all going to enjoy it. Oh, and special thanks to nightmaster000 for the suggestion that inspired this chapter's plot; it was simply too good not to use. I had hoped to get it done in time for Halloween, which would have been thematically appropriate as you'll see momentarily, but that unfortunately didn't work out. Still, hope you all get the spooky feels regardless.

On a more somber note, I'd like to dedicate this chapter to my cat Sweetie (2007-2023), who was recently put down due to her body shutting down from old age.

I think that's everything that needs to be said right now, so please, read on!

Last time, on The New Adventures of Invader Zim: Zim's latest plan of the week ended up going wrong due to interference by Team Save Earth, leading to all of them (as well as Tak and Tenn) being transported into the world of television and film. Forced to travel through various shows and movies in search of a way out, the three teams eventually came face-to-face with none other than the Scary Monkey, revealed to actually be an intelligence-eating eldritch abomination. Working together, the teams managed to defeat it and make it back to the real world, at which point they all went their separate ways.

But even as that adventure is placed behind them, another threat is about to come creeping up on them…

Disclaimer: In my happiest dreams, I own Invader Zim. But that is most definitely not the case in real life, where I just own this fanfic and the OCs.

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The New Adventures of Invader Zim

Season 2

Episode 13: Night Terrors

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It was a normal day in Doomsville. Which, naturally, meant that many things were happening across the city that would be considered bizarre in most other places. One might expect by now that these were all somehow connected to the Irkens and their constant schemes for world domination, but despite what they (especially Zim) would say to the contrary, the world did not revolve around them. Earth was fully capable of throwing out plenty of strangeness all on its own.

Case in point, a housecat the size of a city bus was currently lazily strolling down a street, casually crushing parked cars underfoot.

"What does it say about our lives that this isn't even the strangest thing we've seen this week?" Steve asked, as Team Save Earth stood on the sidewalk, watching as the cat suddenly stopped and dropped onto its rear to start licking itself, said rear smashing a crater into the street as it did so.

"Probably that we all need serious therapy, but I kinda doubt any psychiatrist would listen for more than five minutes before tossing us in the Crazy House," Viera commented, while Dib was flipping through a large tome titled The Big Book of Obscure Cryptids.

"Yeah, I'll pass on going through that again," he said dryly, "In any case, I found out what we're dealing with. Apparently, it's called a Catastrophe."

"A Cat-astrophe? Who decided to give this thing a pun for a name?" Steve said flatly.

"Don't look at me, I'm just reading what's written here," Dib replied with a shrug, gesturing to the book, "Anyway, according to this, Catastrophes are fae creatures representing the collective unconscious idea of cats, which occasionally wander out of their realm into ours and indirectly cause mass destruction in their path before they make their way home."

As if to illustrate Dib's point, the Catastrophe suddenly started coughing, and spat out a hairball that flew through the air and smashed through the large windows of a hardware store. The hairball then burst into flames for no apparent reason, setting the whole building on fire.

"Right, so we need to get this thing out of the city before it accidentally levels half of it," Viera noted, as the giant cat sat back up and started meandering down the street again.

"Or before Zim decides to try and control it," Dib said. Seeing the looks the twins gave him, he quickly added, "It could happen! He once mutated a class hamster into a kaiju to try and weaponize its cuteness, I wouldn't put it past him to try something like that here."

"I dunno, I know we've seen him do stupider things, but that somehow seems beneath him," Steve said with a shrug. Before Dib could refute that, sirens filled the air as a cop car pulled up in front of the Catastrophe, and two officers got out.

"I don't see why we have to handle an animal control call," one of them grumbled.

"Because actual Animal Control got its budget cut down to nothing, that's why," his partner explained, equally annoyed, "Now come on, let's take care of- D'aaawwww, look how cute it is!"

Almost immediately after laying eyes on the giant cat, both cops were educed to mindlessly gushing over it. For its part, the Catastrophe stared down at them in total disinterest, before raising one paw and then slamming it down on the cops like they were mice.

"Ahhhh! The pain!"

"It's both adorable and excruciating!"

"…This is just sad," Viera said, watching the Catastrophe grind the cops into the ground, "Can we just get this over with before it starts using the public park as a litter box?"

"I don't suppose we can just blow it up?" Steve asked.

"Like I said, it's a fae creature, that wouldn't work," Dib replied, "Fortunately, all we need to do is lure it away from civilization, and it should make its way back where it came from. I just don't know how."

"Actually, I've got an idea, I just need you to distract it," Viera said with a smirk, earning confused looks from the boys.

"Okay? I can do that," Dib said after a moment, brow furrowing in thought before an idea finally sparked, and he pulled a laser pointer out of his pocket.

"You just carry one of those around with you?" Steve asked.

"Never know when it might come in handy," Dib replied with a shrug, aiming the pointer near the Catastrophe, which was now eyeing the battered cops in apparent consideration of eating them. Before it could, though, it spotted the dot being projected by the laser pointer, and its eyes widened. With a bellowing "meow", it slammed a paw down on the dot, cracking the pavement, an act that repeated several more times as Dib moved the pointer around, leaving the giant cat running in circles.

Viera, meanwhile, had her hands clasped in front of her amulet, chanting arcane words. After a few minutes of this, there was a reaction, as flames burst out of the amulet, not in their typical way but flowing around each other until they took the vague form of a winged figure. With a final word from the young sorceress, it flew off to place itself in full view of the Catastrophe, quickly taking its attention away from the laser dot. The cat took a swing at the flame figure, which easily dodged it and flew off, the cat chasing after it in the direction of the forests beyond the city limits.

"…Since when can you do that?" Steve asked his sister in impressed disbelief.

"Been working on improving my skills so I can do more than just throw fire around," she replied with a smug smile and a slight giggle, "God, I love magic."

"Nice job," Dib said, exchanging a fist bump with her. Steve, meanwhile, couldn't help but feel a little disgruntled.

"Kinda feel like I'm a third wheel whenever magic stuff happens," he muttered.

"Eh, you'll find a way to help next time," Dib replied offhandedly, before glancing at where the sun was starting to set, "Anyway, it's getting late, so we should probably all be getting home. See you guys tomorrow."

The twins made sounds of agreement, and after adding their own goodbyes, walked off to head towards their house while Dib peeled off towards his. As they went, Viera humming happily to herself about what she'd pulled off, Steve found the feeling of having failed to contribute wasn't fading, but he forced it down.

Nothing worth dwelling on, right?

Deelishus Weenie Building, Same Time

Tak and Tenn stood before the main console of their base's central control room. Currently, the screen was displaying a diagram of the Earth, with a trio of large red dots marked with the Irken insignia quickly making their way up through orbit towards the North Pole. Watching those dots travel, Tak smirked in anticipation.

"There we go, the heat ray cannons are almost in position," she said with a laugh, "Once they are, it will only take a matter of hours for them to completely melt the polar caps and flood enough of Earth's landmass to completely collapse the humans' civilization."

"You know, for someone who despises Zim, you seem to have picked up his annoying habit of monologuing about your plans to people who already know them in detail," Tenn said dryly, earning a dirty look from her partner. However, before any further barbs could be traded between the pair, an alarm suddenly sounded. Their eyes darted back to the screen, and they watched in shock as, one by one, each of the heat ray cannons blinked and then flashed out of existence.

"What?! What just happened?!" Tak demanded, rapidly typing commands into the console. In response, several smaller screens popped up, displaying camera footage from the cannons. Tak and Tenn watched the footage play out carefully, but the cause of the disruption ultimately turned out to be not that hard to spot – a satellite twice the size of the cannons, painted bright white and with the Membrane Labs logo plastered on its side, emerged from behind the planet's curve just as the cannons came within view of the North Pole. As the cannons approached, its dishes and antennae suddenly lit up with energy, which burst forward so quickly that the cannon furthest back barely had time to view the other two being blown up before it too was destroyed, reducing the screens to static.

"Since when does Dib's father have orbital weapons?" Tak asked incredulously, "Quick, hack into his company's databases and see if there's anything-"

"Actually, it's on their public information page. Apparently, they made a big announcement about launching it while we were off planet for the tournament, which is why we didn't know about it," Tenn replied, already looking at the relevant information on a pad in her hands, "According to this, it's an… 'Anti-Santa Defense Platform, dedicated to shooting down the jolly menace if he ever attempts to return to his base of operations from his exile in space'? Huh, guess it targets anything that approaches the pole from orbit."

"…" Tak said nothing, just glaring off into the distance as she tried to wrap her head around the notion of her plan being undone before it could even start due to something utterly ridiculous, and Zim's standard insanity wasn't even involved for once. This went on long enough that Tenn was considering poking her with something to see if she'd even react, when suddenly there was a blur and MIMI was in her face, eyes blue and tugging on Tenn's cheeks while emitting beeps that might have been an attempt at singing.

"AH!" Tenn yelled, smacking MIMI off of her to clatter to the floor, the noise snapping Tak out of her daze even as the robot shook her head and her eyes flashed back to red, "Irk dammit, I thought she wasn't having those episodes anymore!"

"We're not that lucky, they're just very rare now. So, show some professionalism and pull yourself together," Tak scoffed, earning a glare from Tenn.

"Hey, when you have PTSD over something, you can handle it your way, I'll handle mine on my own," Tenn snapped,

"Oh, boo-hoo, so you got attacked by rampaging SIRs," Tak said flatly, "Big deal. Try having to clean up literal mountains of garbage for 50 years, then talk to me about trauma. You don't hear me whining about it."

Tenn scowled at Tak, then turned on her heel and left the room without another word. Tak watched her go, then collapsed into a chair to reflect on this plan's failure – not sulk, she'd never so something so childish, obviously. No, she was just going to sit here and reflect on how she kept failing at conquering this planet, which kept making her look worse and worse at being an Invader.

Yep, definitely not sulking.

Zim's Base, Same Time

Skoodge, Nyx, and Ying sat in the back of the main communications chamber, out of sight of the cameras focused on Zim, watching as he recorded his latest Miz speech.

"-and that is why, my fellow Irkens, while the military shall always be our Empire's backbone and leadership, we must never forget the importance of our Service Drones, without whom our society would not function. In the new world we shall build together, we must, and shall, see to it that all Irken voices are heard, so that we may grow stronger together. That is all for now, brothers and sisters; until next time, do think on my words. Long live the New Order!"

"Gotta say, I think it's nice that you're reaching out to the Service Drones," Skoodge commented as Zim ended the recording and removed his disguise, "Everyone gets pushed around by the Tallest, but those guys have it the worst, they really need the boost."

"Bah, Zim doesn't care about their self-esteem," Zim sneered, "I simply know from my own time forced to be one on Foodcourtia that such positions come with a lot of anger and resentment."

"I can confirm that!" Nyx added cheerfully.

"So, I'm just trying to stir that all up to make them all more likely to rebel," Zim continued, as if Nyx hadn't spoken.

"Okay, that's fair," Skoodge admitted, "But it doesn't hurt to try and win over public support genuinely, right?"

"I don't care why they support me, so long as they do," Zim scoffed, "Honestly, Skoodge, how did you ever conquer Blorch with such a feeble attitude towards things?"

Skoodge twitched and shuddered at that, as he usually did whenever Blorch and all the horrible memories associated with it came up. Fortunately, he was spared from further dwelling on it as a convenient distraction suddenly emerged, from its usual source.

"Whoosh, whoosh, zoom, zoom!" GIR called out as he ran into the room, holding a large object over his head and moving it around while making sound effects. Zim's eye twitched in annoyance, and he grabbed the object out of GIR's hands as he ran past.

"GIR, I've told you to stop bringing your nonsense into the main parts of the base! And what is this thing, anyway?" Zim snapped, before looking in curiosity at what he was now holding. It was a large cylindrical urn of some sort, made of a pitch-black stone, and it was topped off with a large, round dark purple stone cap that had strange runes carved in a circle around its edge and a triangular piece in its middle pointing at one of the runes. To Zim, it looked like a primitive clock, or maybe even a bizarre egg timer.

"I found it in Mr. Vampire's room!" GIR stated cheerfully, which caused Zim to immediately stiffen.

"What?" he demanded with a scowl.

"Oh yeah, we never did get rid of all of Norlock's stuff, did we?" Skoodge said, scratching the side of his head in thought.

"Nope, and there's surprisingly a lot of it," the Computer stated, a screen switching to life to reveal the room that had stored Norlock's coffin, which now had numerous hidden panels popped open and a variety of items scattered around it, "He managed to keep an impressive amount of stuff jammed into that thing."

"Zim doesn't care how much there is, I want it gone! I want no reminders of that traitor!" Zim yelled, throwing the urn at the nearest wall to smash it out of spite… only for it to instead bounce off and smack back into his face, knocking him off his feet.

"Wow, that thing is sturdy," Nyx commented, while Zim scrambled back up. Growling incoherently, he picked up the urn and this time shoved it into a nearby tube, causing it to be sucked up and shot out of the base. He then turned to Nyx, who immediately straightened up under his gaze.

"Nyx! Go put your impressive destructive skills to use and dispose of all of that treacherous corpse's belongings!" he commanded.

"Okay!" she replied cheerfully with a salute, "Come on Ying, let's go organize everything by order of how much fun they'll be to watch burn."

"Yes, Madame," Ying replied, dutifully following her out of the room. Skoodge watched them go, followed by Zim stomping off in a different direction to no doubt find a way to blow off his frustration, and GIR having already disappeared to find something else to play with. Shrugging, he headed towards the elevator to head upstairs and watch some TV before turning in for the night.

Meanwhile, as they went about their separate activities, the urn had landed on Zim's lawn, lying amongst the spilled garbage from the cans it had knocked over. And unseen by anyone, the arrow inset in its cover suddenly shifted on its own, moving counterclockwise until it was pointing at the rune behind the one it had previously been aimed at. In response to this, all the runes started glowing bright purple, and the cap started rotating on its own, until it popped loose and rolled away from the urn, revealing the dark interior of the container. And in that darkness, five red eyes snapped open, a hissing filling the air as dark tendrils started wriggling out of the urn, grasping about in the air and at the ground.

It was awake, and it was hungry…

XXXXXXX

"ZIM!" a voice roared into Zim's antennae, jolting him awake.

"Huh, who, what?!" Zim spluttered as he flailed about, falling out of the chair he'd been slumped in and landing in a heap on the floor. Looking to the source of the voice, his eyes widened as he saw Sizz-Lorr looming over him.

"What have I told you about falling asleep in the middle of your shift?" the Fry Lord demanded with a glare.

"My… shift?" Zim repeated slowly, head feeling hazy. Looking down at himself, he saw that he was wearing his horrible Shloogorgh's Flavor Monster uniform, and was hit with an overwhelming sense of wrongness. Which made sense, of course, he was a highly-trained Invader, not a Food Drone, he shouldn't be here. But he couldn't shake the feeling that not only was he not supposed to be here, he was supposed to be somewhere else specifically. Images swam through his vision, names right on the tip of his tongue, but they just wouldn't come to him…

"Pay attention!" Sizz-Lorr snapped, making Zim jump, "We have a packed restaurant, now get out there!"

"But, Zim isn't supposed to be here!" Zim protested, knowing that was a fact, even if he couldn't remember where he was supposed to be.

"Yeah, yeah, I've heard that all before," Sizz-Lorr, grabbing Zim by the PAK with one hand and dragging him out to the front counter, dropping him in front of the cash register, "Now, get to work and handle all these customers!"

Looking ahead, Zim felt his squeedlyspooch seize with terror. The crowd of customers lined up in front of the counter stretched on forever, all screeching out food orders at him, their voices all overlapping so much that he couldn't make out anything that they were saying. And with such gibberish, he could only stare frantically at the register, as if willing it to handle the taking of these indecipherable orders for him, even as the customers' yelling seemed to get louder as he failed to respond to their demands.

"Don't just stand there, take those orders!" Sizz-Lorr demanded from behind Zim.

"No, this isn't right, I'm an Invader!" Zim protested, trying to run from the register, only to find Sizz-Lorr's bulk blocking him from behind, leaving him trapped in place between the angry fry cook and the screeching crowd.

"No you're not! You're not an Invader, you're nobody! You belong here, and you're never leaving!" Sizz-Lorr declared, his words hitting Zim like hammers. His head snapped around in desperate search of an escape, but found nothing; he was stuck, feeling like he was being slowly crushed by Sizz-Lorr's presence and the bellowing customers.

"No, no, NOOOO!"

XXXXXXX

Skoodge ran as fast as his legs could move him, despite how they burned with aches. He ignored that pain, and how the air sacks of his squeedlyspooch heaved as they worked to pump enough air to keep up his pace, and how his PAK strained to boost all his energy reserves so he could keep going. He ignored all this, because if he acknowledged these problems then he'd have to stop, and he had to keep going.

The cliffs of this canyon deep in the mountains of Blorch's main continent loomed over him like jagged teeth, which was not a metaphor he particularly needed right now. He'd been running through the canyon's twists and turns for… well, he didn't even know how long, he didn't remember when he started, and it was hardly important right now. What was important was that he had to keep going, he had to find a way out and get to safety, before it was too late, before they found him…

HISS

Skoodge instinctively froze at that horrible sound, legs locking up and causing him to stumble and fall to the ground. Scrambling back to his feet, his wide eyes frantically darting about to see where the predatory hiss had come from, but seeing nothing. Maybe his fear-clouded mind had imagined it?

Then something dripped onto his shoulder.

Gulping, Skoodge slowly turned his head to look up and over his shoulder, and was greeted by the sight of a fully-grown adult Slaughtering Rat Person perched on a stone ledge above him. Its hackles were raised, lips peeled back from its slathering jaws as its red eyes glared down at him.

"Meat," it growled at him.

"AAAHHHH!" Skoodge screamed, bolting in the other direction, not noticing or caring if it was back the way he had come from, he just needed to escape while he still could. And his fear only spiked as more hisses and cries filled the air from all around him.

"Meat!"

"Meat!"

"Meat!"

"No, no, no, no, no!" Skoodge yelled desperately, running blindly through the darkness-

WHAM

-and then something heavy slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. Instinctively, he deployed his PAK legs to defend himself. Unfortunately, that accomplished nothing, as a set of powerful jaws closed around the PAK legs, crushing them into uselessness and leaving Skoodge impotently dangling from them as he was lifted into the air, unable to do anything but watch as a large crowd of Rat People emerged from the darkness to surround him and the rat holding him.

"We caught the meat! Let's eat, plenty to go around!" one of the rats screeched excitedly.

"No, let's take it back to the warren!" another declared, "Give the meat as a gift to the Alpha! She'll reward us with matings!"

That earned a cheer from all the rats, and they scampered off, taking the panicking Skoodge with them as he struggled uselessly against the grip of the one holding him.

"Wait, no, no, no! Someone help me! HEEEELLLLPPP!"

XXXXXXX

A screeching alarm began ringing, making Tak jolt up from where she was laying down. Looking around in confusion, she found herself lying on a dirty cot in a cramped room, a beaten-up clock flashing on the ground next to the cot being the source of the alarm. Taking this all in for a moment, recognition suddenly hit her – these were her quarters on Dirt.

"How did I get back here?" she asked aloud, only for her brow to furrow at her own words. Back from where? She'd been stuck on this planet for decades, and she'd never left. Right?

Deciding she couldn't think straight with the alarm still blaring, Tak kicked it against the wall, shutting it off. She then stood up and stretched out the many aches and pains caused by the highly uncomfortable cot as best she could, while looking around for… what, exactly? She felt like there should be someone there with her, the image of a SIR Unit flashing through her mind, but that didn't make sense. Only Invaders and other high military ranks got those robots, and she was just a Janitorial Drone; she would never get her hands on one until she'd finally had her chance to pass her exams. So why did it feel like she was supposed to have one now?

"Janitorial Unit SW-6079!" a voice suddenly snapped over a speaker in the corner of the ceiling, making Tak jump, "You are now 15 seconds late to report for your shift! Do so immediately, or face full disciplinary action!"

Cursing, Tak shook off the strange feelings she was experiencing and grabbed her bucket and mop from where they were sitting in the corner. She then ran out of the room and down the dark corridors outside, not pausing until she emerged outside the housing complex, skidding to a halt in front of the tall figure of the Sergeant who acted as the overseer for her janitorial squad… speaking of whom, where was everybody?

"Glad you could tear yourself away from your beauty sleep and join us, drone," the Sergeant sneered. Tak bristled, but knew better than to rise to the bait, and merely straightened up.

"Apologies, sir, I make no excuses," she said, "But may I ask where the rest of the squad is?"

"Well, by some strange coincidence, everyone except you has come down with Nebulon Flu," the Sergeant replied with a sadistic smile, "So congratulations, you get to do everyone's cleaning duties instead of just yours!"

"Wait, what?" Tak sputtered, "You expect me to handle an entire sector by myself?"

"Oh, it won't be that bad. You just have to take care of all of this!" the Sergeant said condescendingly, before pulling out a remote and pressing a button. In response, there was a flash of light as Tak was teleported, and suddenly she found herself in what seemed to be an endless canyon of rusted ships, mechs and garbage pods, the latter of which were all burst open and spilling their contents onto everything in sight.

"Well, get to work," the Sergeant said, while pulling a folding chair out of nowhere and settling in it, a fruity drink of some kind suddenly in hand.

"I can't do this by myself!" Tak protested, "Do you expect me to spend the rest of my life here?!"

"Well, where else are you going to go?" the Sergeant replied, "This is what you are, what you've always been, and what you'll always be."

"Wha- no it's not! I'm going to be an Invader!"

"No you're not, you're always going to be a janitor. You're going to rot here. Now, like I said, get to work!" the Sergeant roared, kicking out a leg and striking Tak in the chest hard enough to send her flying. She slammed into one of the piles of garbage, destabilizing it, and before she could rise from the heap she'd fallen into, the whole thing collapsed on top of her, burying her underneath it.

"No, no, no! Let me out! This isn't right!" Tak screamed from within the filthy darkness now surrounding her, the weight of which started to crush her, while the Sergeant's mocking laughter somehow still cut through to fill her hearing.

"Let me out!"

XXXXXXX

Tenn was sitting in total darkness, pinned against a hard surface by something wrapped around her major joints, rendering her mostly immobile, while something else was clamped onto her PAK, keeping her from accessing any of its tools or weapons. Her mind moved sluggishly, trying to remember where she was and how she had gotten here. Before she could do so however, part of the dark void moved, revealing a bright light that quickly filled whatever space she was in.

Wincing, Tenn shut her eyes to allow her ocular implants to adjust to the sudden change in lighting. Once they had, she opened them again and looked around to take proper stock of her surroundings – she was in a small chamber, the sterile white walls, floor and ceiling devoid of any adornments or light fixtures, and she herself was being held against one of those walls by crystal bands periodically placed from wrist to shoulder and ankle to hip, while a dome of the same crystal was covering her PAK. As for the light, that was the result of one wall sliding open, letting in light from a hallway outside and revealing a pair of Meekrob.

Oh, right. The Meekrob had descended on her after her base had been destroyed by those rampaging SIR Units, catching her before she could get away and zapping her unconscious. They must have hit her pretty hard if she was so scrambled she hadn't remembered that right away.

"Irken, you will come with us. Do not resist, and we will not be forced to harm you. Understood?" one of the Meekrob stated. Tenn silently glared at both of them, which they evidently took as agreement. They glowed, and the bands holding her to the wall did likewise, disappearing and letting her drop to the floor, though the cap on her PAK remained intact.

"Move down the corridor to your right," the other Meekrob commanded, as the pair moved out of the doorway to let her pass. Continuing to glare at her captors, Tenn nevertheless did as she was told. She marched stoically down the hallway, until she was led to a large pair of doors, which opened as she approached. She passed through them, and found herself in a room roughly the size of the bridge of the Massive, at the head of which was a platform, over which floated several more Meekrob, who glared down at her as she entered the room. She barely had a chance to register this before she found herself being forced down into a shallow depression in the floor, leaving her unable to do anything but look upwards at the Meekrob, who now seemed to tower over her.

"Irken Invader Tenn, you have been apprehended for the crime of attempting to weaken our planet for conquest by your people. What do you have to say in your defense?" the Meekrob positioned in the center of the platform stated.

"I don't answer to you oversized jellyfish," Tenn sneered defiantly, "I serve the Almighty Tallest, and I have done my duty faithfully."

"Such inspiring loyalty," one of the other Meekrob on the platform said dryly, "What a shame the Tallest don't return it. Remind me, what did they say when we contacted them to tell them we had captured her?"

"I believe their exact words were 'do whatever you want with her, we don't need losers'," another Meekrob on the platform replied.

"Wait, what?" Tenn sputtered, feeling like she'd just been stabbed in the squeedlyspooch.

"Yes, it would seem that despite all your hard work and loyalty, they've cast you aside like so much garbage, and left you at our mercy," the lead Meekrob stated, "And as your fate is now at our discretion, and you show no remorse for plotting against us, we hereby sentence you to termination, in a fitting fashion."

"What does that mean?" Tenn demanded, fearful but forcing herself to not show it in front of them.

"Look down," the lead Meekrob said. Arching an antenna, Tenn complied, and her eyes widened in shock as the crystal floor beneath her feet turned transparent, revealing a deep pit… and filling it almost to the brim were the insane SIRs that had destroyed her base and put her in this situation, all still flailing about in a chaotic rampage despite not being able to go anywhere.

"This is our sentencing, Invader. You shall meet your end at the hands of the same machines you intended to use against us," the lead Meekrob declared, as the floor of the hole Tenn was stuck in started to open, exposing the SIR pit. Calm façade dissolving, Tenn screamed in panic and tried to climb out of the hole, but its smooth walls proved impossible to get a grip on, leaving her scrambling fruitlessly until the floor beneath her completely disappeared, and she fell with a high-pitched shriek. All too soon, she found herself landing amidst the robots, who began grabbing ahold of her and pulling her in every direction at once, laughing maniacally.

"No, no, no! Let me go!" she screamed, unable to break free as the laughing SIRs dragged her down into the darkness of the pit, everything else except their glowing eyes soon vanishing from sight.

XXXXXXX

Dib jerked awake with a strangled yelp, and looked around in confusion. As his vision cleared, he looked around to try and orient himself, finding that he was lying on the floor of a hardware store. Or at least, he was pretty sure that's what it was – the place was in ruins, everything wrecked and covered in dust, looking like it had been abandoned for some time. And oddly enough, he was in the middle of some sort of makeshift campsite composed of a sleeping bag and a space heater, as if he'd been spending a significant amount of time here.

"What the…? Where am I?" he muttered, trying to remember how he'd gotten here. However, he must have hit his head, because it was pounding, and nothing was coming to him. Something was very wrong about that, but he couldn't tell what.

Deciding that he wasn't going to figure anything out just sitting here, he got to his feet and made his way towards the front of the store, where a makeshift barricade of broken furniture and shelving had been set up to block the shattered glass door. Hesitantly, Dib pulled this barricade apart, and squeezed his way outside – and then he froze in shock.

He recognized this part of downtown Doomsville, but barely. And that was because it was all in such a state of ruin that the hardware store's sorry state seemed pristine by comparison. Every building was either collapsed into rubble, a burned out wreck, or both, and it looked like whatever had happened, it wasn't recent; this was long-term damage.

Dib could only gape at the destruction surrounding him, mind breaking as he tried to process what he was seeing. But before he could, the sound of roaring engines caught his attention, and he looked up to be met by the even more shocking sight of several Irken ships, which swept down and landed on the street in front of him. These ships rapidly disgorged dozens of Irken soldiers, who quickly surrounded Dib before he could react, leaving him unable to do anything but hold up his hands defensively against the various weapons now aimed at him.

"Human! Why are you outside the detention camps?" one of the Irkens demanded.

"I, uh, wha?" Dib sputtered, unable to form a coherent response to that question.

"Wait a minute, I know this worm-baby!" one of the other Irkens declared, "That's the Dib-Human that Supreme Emperor Zim made a priority capture! I recognize him from the size of his head!"

"My head's not big!" Dib snapped instinctively, annoyance momentarily overwhelming his fear and confusion, though the Irkens ignored this.

"Well, this is our lucky day, isn't it?" the apparent lead Irken said with a smirk, "Zim's been looking for this human ever since we conquered this planet all those months ago."

"Hang on, months?!" Dib exclaimed, "That's impossible!"

"This look impossible to you, human?" one of the Irkens sneered, gesturing to the ruined city around them, "Zim won, you lost, and then you ran away and hid while we happily destroyed everything you cared about."

"That's… no, I wouldn't, he couldn't," Dib sputtered in fear and disbelief.

"Enough talking, grab him! We'll be rewarded for taking him to Zim!" the lead Irken shouted. And before Dib could even process hearing that, he was suddenly swarmed by the soldiers, and swiftly found himself restrained with high-tech manacles and hosted into the air by iron grips on his limbs.

"Hey, let me go!" he demanded, struggling to break free with no luck as he was carried towards one of the ships, being tossed inside before it rose into the air and flew away, Dib's protests fading into the distance…

XXXXXXX

Viera paused mid-step in the skool hallway, frowning and looking around in confusion. She'd just had a strange sense of unease, but she couldn't tell why. After all, it had been a perfectly normal morning so far, hadn't it? Although, now that she thought about it, the morning up to this moment was kind of a blur…

The young Goth's train of thought was suddenly derailed as a crowd of students emerged from nowhere, filling the hall. Caught off guard by this, Viera was swept up by the crowd, and finding herself unable to resist being dragged along by them, decided to just go with the flow. And as she did, she tried to figure out what was going on by listening into the chatter by all the loud voices now surrounding her.

"I can't believe they're actually here!"

"We're so lucky to be in the same building as people so awesome!"

"I'm gonna get them to autograph my forehead!"

Now Viera was deeply confused. Was the skool getting some kind of celebrity visitors? It certainly sounded like it, but she hadn't heard anything about something like that happening. Well, whatever it was, she figured she'd at least go along with the crowd just to see what was going on, then she could leave; at the very least, it would be easier to move once the crowd had settled down.

Before she knew it, Viera found herself in the gym, which was filled to the brim with what looked like the entire student body. Peering over the heads of the students surrounding her to try and see what the big deal was, her eyes widened in shock – Dib and Steve were on a stage that had been set up at the end of the room, waving to the cheering crowd and standing underneath a banner which read "Earth's Greatest Heroes".

"What the hell is this?" Viera asked in disbelief.

"What rock have you been living under?" one of the boys standing next to Viera asked incredulously, "Those two are like the smartest and bravest people ever! They fight monsters and aliens and have saved the world like a million times!"

"Well, yeah, but since when does anyone acknowledge that? And what about me? I'm part of the team too, you know," Viera demanded, which just got the guy staring at her like she'd grown a second head.

"Who are you kidding?" a girl on Viera's other side scoffed harshly, "I know you, you're that weirdo who still believes in magic, and follows Dib and Steve around so you can play pretend at being a hero too."

"Excuse me?" Viera said, "You all just said that you praise them as heroes for fighting monsters and aliens, but I'm somehow a weirdo for believing in magic?"

"Sure, because that's all stuff they've proven existed. When have you actually seen any of your magic crap in real life?" the girl sneered. Scowling, Viera opened her mouth to respond… and froze, as absolutely nothing came to mind.

No, that couldn't be right. She knew she'd encountered plenty of magical things alongside Dib and Steve, hadn't she? It felt like names and images were dancing right on the edge of her memory, but she couldn't visualize or vocalize a single one, leaving her standing there looking like an idiot.

"Yeah, that's what I thought, loser," the girl said, while the guy Viera had previously been talking to started laughing at the Goth's expense.

"I, no, that's," Viera stuttered, confidence collapsing as she desperately tried to think of a legitimate magical experience in her life of any kind. There was no way the boys had found proof of what they believed in and she'd been left out to dry. It was a defining part of who she was, she couldn't have just dreamt it all up!

"Hey everyone, this freak actually thinks magic is real!" the laughing boy shouted. And before she knew what was happening, it seemed to Viera that the entire crowd was surrounding and looming over her, faces twisted in mocking leers as they rained insults down on her.

"Loser!"

"Freak!"

"Weirdo!"

"Wannabe!"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Viera yelled, hands clasping over her ears to try and drown out the taunts, to no avail. And as they kept coming, she found herself falling to her knees and curling up, self-esteem slowly dissolving under the endless verbal barrage, left feeling like the ground was starting to swallow her whole…

XXXXXXX

Steve found himself in the middle of some sort of blasted wasteland, the remains of what appeared to be various monsters strewn about all over the place. He blinked, looking around in confusion and trying to remember where he was and how he'd gotten here, while an ache pounded in his head; was he concussed?

Before he could properly determine what was going on, he jumped in surprise as the body of some sort of demonic dragon suddenly dropped out of the sky a few yards away from him, shaking the ground. As he was reorienting himself, he looked towards the draconic corpse, and was surprised to see Dib and Viera sliding down from atop the beast.

"Wow, I can't believe we managed to defeat the entire Legion of the Lower Hells by ourselves," Dib commented, "Honestly, it was almost too easy."

"Meh, I don't think it was too big a deal for us. We're that good," Viera replied, high-fiving him.

"Uh, guys? This is great and all, but can you tell me what's going on? I think I hit my head," Steve called out. To his further confusion, neither of them reacted as if they heard him, continuing to chat excitedly to each other as they started to walk away.

"Wha- hey, don't ignore me!" he said as he ran after them, "Seriously, what's with the cold shoulder all of a sudden? You'd think I wasn't here or some…"

Steve trailed off as he raised a hand to grab Dib's shoulder, and his brain practically screeched to a halt as it processed a sudden glaring impossibility. Namely, the fact that while he could feel his hand as he brought it up, he couldn't see it. Eyes bugging out, he looked down at himself, and was only greeted by the sight of the ground beneath it – he was completely invisible!

"What the hell?!" he screamed, "How did this happen?! Guys, what's going on?!"

Unfortunately, as if Steve's situation couldn't get any worse, it didn't seem like Dib or Viera could hear him anymore than they could see him, as they didn't react to his shouts at all. However, he felt a brief moment of hope as they suddenly stopped in their tracks.

"Hey, are we forgetting anything?" Viera asked, "I get this feeling like there's something that's supposed to be here but isn't."

"Really? I can't think of anything. You're here, I'm here, that's all we need," Dib replied.

"Yeah, you're right. Whatever it is must be completely unimportant."

Steve felt like he'd been punched in the gut. Never mind how he'd ended up like this, how could his sister and best friend not notice his absence, or apparently even remember him?

He must have been standing there in shock for longer than he realized, because the next thing he knew, Dib and Viera were no longer in sight. Frantically looking around for them and seeing nothing, he found himself running in the last direction he'd seen them walking… and suddenly found himself in the middle of a crowded street.

"Wha?" Steve sputtered, trying to comprehend what had just happened, only for someone to suddenly bump into him, nearly knocking him over.

"Huh? Weird, thought I hit something," the guy muttered, before shrugging and walking off.

"That's just great, can nobody see or hear me?!" Steve asked in a mild panic.

As if in response, someone else bumped into Steve, this time actually managing to knock him to his knees. And then someone else bumped against him before he could get up, knocking him flat. Which left him completely vulnerable as more people started literally walking all over him, not one of them able to see or hear what they were doing to him.

"No, oof, wait, gah, ack, stop!" Steve cried out in desperation, as he felt himself being pounded into the ground, feeling like he was sinking into it…

XXXXXXX

The door to the room that had contained Norlock's belongings opened, allowing a thick plume of smoke to billow out into the corridor. Nyx emerged from the smoke, covered in soot but with a wide grin on her face as she casually handed off a flamethrower to Ying where he stood slightly behind her.

"Ooh, that was fun," she said, slightly giddy as she stretched and cracked her neck, "It's been too long since we had a good smash-and-burn."

"Very well done, Madame, I believe that there won't be a trace of these items left after the flames die down," Ying commented, glancing at the impromptu bonfire that had been constructed out of the smashed remains of the room's contents, even as he handed Nyx a cloth to wipe the soot off with.

"Great, that's what I was going for," Nyx replied as she started walking down the hall, wiping her face as she went, "Now come on, I wanna grab a late-night snack before hooking up for recharge, and I think there's still some pudding left that GIR hasn't tried to wear as a hat- OOF!"

Nyx was cut off as she suddenly fell over, having tripped on something. Ying quickly moved to catch her before she could hit the floor and helped her stand back up, allowing her to steady herself before looking down to see what had tripped her up. To her surprise, it was a large, fleshy, purple-black tendril of some sort, which appeared to have burst out of an air vent next to the elevator and stretched off down the hall.

"Uh, has this always been here?" Nyx asked, eye narrowed in confusion.

"I do not believe so, Madame," Ying said, lights from his optics running up and down the tendril, "And my scanners cannot identify the material it is made of."

"Hmm, weird. Let's see where it goes," Nyx said, following the tendril down the hall, Ying right behind her. A few minutes later, this brought them to one of the side labs that Zim used as a scheming nook, where to their surprise they found the rogue Invader in question seated in front of a console, a recharge cable plugged into his PAK… and the end of the tendril, which had split open like a lamprey's mouth, latched onto the back of his head. As for Zim himself, his eyes were wide open but glazed over and unseeing, and darting about rapidly while he made low moaning noises.

"Uh, Zim? You alright?" Nyx asked hesitantly. When no response came, she frowned and stepped up to stand next to him; when this also elicited no reaction, she poked him firmly on the cheek and snapped her fingers next to his antennae, but still nothing happened.

"Okay, now I'm starting to get a little worried," she muttered, "Right then, desperate measures. Ying, zap him!"

A sparking electrode popped out of Ying's head and discharged in Zim's direction, causing his body and the tendril attached to it to convulse. But afterwards, aside from the small amount of smoke now rising from Zim's smoldering clothes, everything was unchanged.

"Okay, seriously? What is going on here?!" Nyx yelled, frustration mounting, "Computer!"

"What is it? …Huh, that's new," the Computer protested, tone shifting as it actually registered what its cameras were showing it.

"What is this thing, and what's it doing to Zim?" Nyx demanded.

"Scanning… scanning… scanning… scan inconclusive, no matches found in my databases," the Computer declared, "Also, it appears to have affected Skoodge as well."

"Wait, what?"

In response, a screen on the console switched to a video view of the living room, where Skoodge was splayed out on the couch, his PAK plugged into a recharge cable emerging from the wall and another tendril latched onto his head, his eyes in the same disturbing state as Zim's. Both this tendril and another, presumably the one that had made its way downstairs to Zim's room judging by how it had made its way into a vent near the floor, snaked across the living room and out of sight of the camera, going in the direction of the front door.

Frowning at the sight of this, Nyx turned and quickly walked towards the elevator, Ying right behind her. Ascending to the surface, they emerged into the kitchen, where GIR was messily stirring batter in a bowl on the counter, while Minimoose was resting on the table.

"Nyah!"

"No, everything's not alright!" Nyx snapped as she ran past the robots into the living room. Sparing only a moment to glance at Skoodge, she followed the tendrils towards their source, finding them having come into the house through an open window. Yanking the front door open, she looked outside and was greeted by a surprising and somewhat disturbing sight – a fleshy cocoon the size of the Voot was looming over the front yard, the tendrils emerging from its surface as it visibly shifted, as if breathing.

"What the flirk is this thing?" Nyx asked in complete confusion, walking over to inspect the cocoon more closely while still maintaining a safe distance.

"I have no idea, Madame, but that looks rather familiar," Ying said, drawing his mistress' attention towards the bottom of the cocoon, where Norlock's urn could be seen sticking out of the dark fleshy material.

"Hmm, so whatever this is was locked in that thing? Well, never mind, if this is the source of what's happening to Zim and Skoodge, I'm not letting it continue what it's doing," Nyx decided. Pulling out her minigun, she unleashed a hail of plasma bolts on the cocoon, expecting to blow it to bits. Instead, to her shock, the plasma seemed to simply dissipate on contact with the cocoon's surface, doing no visible damage.

"Oh, come on! What is this thing made of?!" Nyx demanded of no one in particular.

"Not to interrupt you when you're upset, Madame, but I think the problem might be more widespread than we realize," Ying stated, gesturing to the other side of the cocoon. Nyx blinked and looked to where he was pointing, seeing several more tendrils like the ones that had attacked Zim and Skoodge, disappearing off into the darkness as they went elsewhere away from the cul-de-sac. Frowning at this, Nyx scratched her chin in thought before retreating back into the house.

"Computer, get me an orbital scan of the city. I want to see where else this thing is attacking," she commanded, "I don't really care about anyone else on this planet, but if I can figure out a pattern or something, maybe I can find a way to get it off of the others… ugh, I hate being all strategic like this, it's so organized."

"Processing… processing… results found," the Computer announced. The monkey painting behind the couch moved aside to let the screen behind it light up. An overhead shot of the cul-de-sac appeared, with the cocoon and its tendrils highlight in red, before pulling back to show a wider view of much of Doomsville. More red lines indicated where the other tendrils had gone, with three heading off towards other residential neighborhoods – one on its own, while the other two headed towards another location together – while two others headed towards the commercial district of the city. Zooming in on these locations for more detail, Nyx's eyes widened slightly in recognition.

"Wait a minute, that's Tak's base, and the Membranes' house," she noted, "Don't recognize that last place, though."

"Given the circumstances and what little information is at hand, Madame, it would not surprise me if that were the home of the twin humans," Ying commented, "It would appear that whatever this unknown entity or object is, it is targeting every faction of our little conflict."

"Then how come it didn't go after me?" Nyx asked, "I mean, not affecting the robots probably because they're not organic, sure, that makes sense. But why spare me?"

"It's probably magic," the Computer stated, "Trust me, we've been on this planet long enough to see plenty of weird stuff, and if there's no logical explanation, then it's something supernatural."

"That would make sense, given this thing's apparent origin in an item belonging to that vampire," Ying noted, while Nyx groaned.

"Great, and I have no idea how this stuff works," she muttered, before an idea came to her, "Ooh, but Gaz might! She lives with Dib, I'm sure she's picked up some know-how from him. Come on, let's go ask her. GIR, Minimoose, you guys stay here and watch the others!"

"I'm making a cake!" GIR declared happily.

"…Right, Minimoose, you're in charge while we're gone," Nyx said, barely waiting to get an affirmative squeak before once again rushing out of the house.

A short time later, Nyx and Ying stood outside the Membranes' house, one of the tendrils having climbed up the side of the house and forced its way through the window of Dib's bedroom. However, at the moment Nyx ignored it, focusing on Gaz's window instead and tossing rocks at it to try and get her attention.

"Madame, I must state that I question the wisdom of this particular course of action," Ying stated even as he handed Nyx more rocks to throw. She paused in mid-toss to consider this, then nodded in thought.

"You're right, she's probably too heavy a sleeper for this to work. I'll have to make more noise," she said, dropping the rocks and using her PAK legs to scramble up the side of the house toward the window.

"That is not quite what I meant," Ying said as he followed after her, watching as she started pounding on the window with both fists, "Given Miss Membrane's… temperament, I daresay she may not appreciate being woken at such a late hour."

"Eh, she'll understand," Nyx replied, grinning as the window was suddenly yanked open, "See? What did I-GACK!"

Nyx was cut off as a hand suddenly wrapped around her throat in an iron vice grip, and she found herself staring into Gaz's eyes, bloodshot from suddenly being forced awake and narrowed with rage.

"It is 2 o'clock in the morning," the young Goth growled, "Friend or no friend, give me a very good excuse for this, or I'll feed you to my dolls."

The darkness behind Gaz was suddenly lit up by the glowing red eyes of her security toys, causing Ying to tense up defensively, but Nyx merely gestured towards the tendril climbing up into Dib's window and managed to gasp out, "Emergency. Need help."

Frowning, Gaz leaned out the window to see what Nyx was pointing at, and arched an eyebrow at the sight. Grunting in annoyance, she dragged Nyx inside and dropped her to the floor, while Ying followed them in and helped his mistress to her feet.

"Explain. And make it fast so I can get back to sleep," Gaz snapped.

"Okay, okay, sorry about waking you like this, but I didn't know where else to go for help," Nyx replied awkwardly as Ying dusted her off; feeling the need to try and diffuse the tension, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind, "Er, I like your pajamas?"

Gaz blushed as she was reminded that she was in fact still wearing her winged footsie pajamas, the cuteness of which was only slightly detracted from by her spiked collar and usual scowl.

"Tell anyone I wear these and I'll rip your tongue out," she grumbled, crossing her arms angrily, "And get to the point already!"

Not wanting to push her luck with her friend's temper, Nyx quickly summarized what she'd seen so far. Frown deepening, Gaz marched out of her room and into Dib's, kicking the door open to reveal her brother lying in bed in the same state as Nyx had described for Zim and Skoodge. Walking over to him, she pulled him up and smacked him harshly several times across the face, to no reaction.

"Hmph, guess whatever this is, it's pretty strong," she muttered as she casually dropped Dib back onto the bed, "You said it grew out of something that used to belong to Norlock, right? Well, that's definitely magic – he always seemed to be able to pull some new spell or mystical thing out of his ass whenever the situation called for it."

"Great, that's why I came here, you've got more experience with this stuff than I do," Nyx said, "Plus, while I don't want to actually help anyone not on my own team, I figure you at least want to be able to save Dib, right?"

"Ugh, I guess. Dad'll probably cancel family night if Dib's in a coma or something," Gaz grunted, "Fine, start looking through all his books on magic junk, there's gotta be something here to explain this mess… gah, it's too late for this crap, or early, whatever."

Dividing up Dib's piles of magic tomes and spell drives between the three of them, the group started flipping through pages, looking for anything that remotely resembled the current situation. After nearly forty minutes, during which Gaz's sleep-deprived frustration came very close to boiling over, Ying suddenly spoke up from where he was reading The Big Book of Obscure Cryptids.

"I believe I may have found our culprit," he declared, turning around the book to reveal a page titled "Nightmare Weaver". Underneath it, and before all the descriptive text, was a highly-detailed drawing of what looked like the cocoon that Nyx and Ying had seen. In the middle of the drawing, in a section faded out to indicate that was an interior shot, was a depiction of a creature that looked like a large spider, except with crab-like claws on the ends of its foremost pair of legs and octopus-like tentacles surrounding its mandibles, while five red bulbous eyes sat clustered in a loose X pattern in the center of its forehead.

"Huh, cool," Gaz commented, taking the book from Ying and reading the text aloud, "'The Nightmare Weaver is a demonic parasite of the subconscious, which feeds on the fears of mortals. When hungering, it places itself in a protective cocoon before reaching out to find slumbering victims and ensnaring them in its tendrils. Once this connection is made, the victim is trapped within a nightmare formed from their deepest fears and insecurities, which they are subjected to in a never-ending loop until their will and mind are completely broken, at which point they are consumed by the Weaver, leaving their bodies brain dead.'"

There was a moment of silence as Gaz finished reading and everyone processed what they had just heard, before Ying broke.

"Well, that explains much, but I feel as though there are still many unanswered questions," he stated.

"Yeah, like why it was in that urn, or why it only went after Zim and the others specifically," Nyx muttered, eyes narrowed in thought before asking, "Does it have anything in there about saving victims?"

"Hang on, let me check," Gaz said, looking further down the page, "Okay, it says 'In order to free a victim from the Weaver's grasp, they must be made lucid enough to realize they are dreaming, and allow them to fight back against their fears'. Well great, how are we supposed to do that?"

"Ooh, I know! I saw something in one of these things!" Nyx exclaimed, grabbing one of the discarded spell drives and scrolling through its contents before finding what she was looking for and thrusting it in Gaz's face with a triumphant cry. Groaning at her friend's exuberance at such an ungodly hour, Gaz grabbed the spell drive and held it at a proper distance so she could actually read it.

"Hmm, the Dream Walker spell, lets the user enter the dreams of sleeping people," she summarized as she looked it over, "Yeah, that could work. We just go in, snap Dib out of whatever nightmare he's in, and that should wake him up. Then he can help you with this mess and I can go back to bed."

"It's a plan! Now fire that thing up," Nyx said anxiously. Gaz grunted in response and hit the spell drive's activation button, triggering the spell, while grabbing ahold of Nyx to make sure it would affect her too. A moment of disorientation later, the two found themselves floating in astral form in the air over their slumped bodies, Ying already moving them into more comfortable positions.

"Wow, this is weird… hey, how come you didn't bring Ying in too?" Nyx asked.

"I didn't want to waste time seeing if this thing would even work on robots," Gaz explained, before floating over towards Dib, causing his Dream Door to form above him in a swirl of mist, though with glowing dark strings wrapped around it and connecting it to the tendril attached to his head. The girls paused at the sight of this, sharing looks of unease at the unnatural image, before shaking it off and moving to open and enter the door, revealing a blinding light laced with more of the tendril's darkness, which they passed into to enter the dream.

When their vision cleared from the light, the two found themselves standing on a street, surrounded by the burned-out hulks of destroyed buildings and cars.

"Huh, not bad. I could probably do this better, though," Nyx mused, taking in the devastation. Gaz, meanwhile, frowned as she looked down at herself, feeling self-conscious about being in her pajamas in the middle of a street, even knowing that it was just a dream. As that thought crossed her mind, an idea sparked, and her face furrowed in concentration; after a few moments of this, her body shimmered, and she was suddenly wearing her normal clothes.

"Much better," she said, "So I guess that means lucid dreaming works."

"If you don't like those pajamas so much, how come you even bother wearing them?" Nyx asked, confused.

"It's a guilty pleasure and they're comfy, okay?" Gaz snapped, "Doesn't mean I want people seeing me in them. My reputation took enough of a hit when that whole Pigmouth mess made me a laughingstock, I'm not doing anything like that again. Anyway, let's just find Dib and get this over with."

"Okay, but how are we supposed to… never mind, there he is," Nyx started to say, only to suddenly spot several screens displaying Dib's terrified-looking face and the words "PENDING EXECUTION" hovering over a large arena-looking building that was a bit out of place in the ruined cityscape. Gaz arched an eyebrow at the sight of this, but reminding herself that it was a nightmare and was therefore bound to be over the top, she simply shrugged and started walking towards the arena…

…and suddenly they both found themselves in the stands of the arena, surrounded by a crowd of Irkens.

"What the?" Gaz asked, looking around in confusion.

"Dream logic, I guess?" Nyx replied with a shrug.

Before Gaz could question that, something caused the dream Irkens to start loudly cheering. The reason for this was that a large screen floating over the arena suddenly switched to life, displaying Zim's leering face, evidently pressed against whatever camera was on his end.

"That's right, cheer for Zim in his moment of ultimate triumph!" the dream Zim shouted to the cheering crowd, "Behold, as I prepare to complete my final victory with the execution of my only worthy foe, the one human wise enough to have seen my truly evil might for what it was, the Dib!"

"I'd say Dib has a big ego for having his subconscious think that Zim thinks that way about him, except I've actually heard Zim say things like that, just in more insulting, backhanded ways," Nyx commented. Gaz didn't bother responding to that, just eying the arena carefully, waiting to see what was going to happen, figuring it was going to be important.

And she was right, as a few moments later, Dib was dragged kicking and screaming into the center of the arena by guards, where his manacled hands were lopped onto a hook dangling from a chain suspended over the arena, which left Dib hanging in mid-air.

"Behold, Dib-Stink! Despite all your incredible heroics, you have failed!" Dream Zim crowed, "And now you shall suffer the same fate as countless others of your pathetic species! Release the beast!"

In response to the command, the floor of the arena split open, revealing a dark pit, out of which a multitude of tentacles emerged to start flailing about threateningly around Dib's dangling form. In the shadows beneath the tentacles, Gaz could just make out a gaping maw of razor-sharp teeth and glowing red eyes – specifically, five of them, in an X pattern, just like the Nightmare Weaver's depiction in the book.

"Well, that's our cue," Gaz said, bolting towards her brother, Nyx right behind her. The two shoved their way through the crowd of Irkens in the stands, none of whom reacted to their presence, instead just cheering for Dib's death. Reaching the edge of the stands, the girls leapt down onto the arena floor and made their way towards Dib, expertly dodging the randomly waving tentacles. Watching as several of those tentacles started to wrap around Dib and drag him down, Gaz scowled.

"Snap out of it, you moron! None of this is real!" she yelled, only to receive no reaction, "What the…?"

"I think he's too caught up in the dream to notice us. We have to grab his attention," Nyx mused, before suddenly dashing forward and leaping up into the air towards Dib. Just as she body-tackled him, her PAK legs shot out to cut cleanly through his manacles, freeing him and allowing the force of their collision to carry them both free of the grasping tentacles and crash into a safe spot on the floor.

"Huh, who, what?" Dib sputtered, disoriented and with a look of panic still etched on his face. Seeing this and grunting in annoyance, Gaz grabbed him by the collar with one hand and yanked him up to be level with her, so she could more easily start slapping him harshly.

"I said, snap out of it, you moron!" she growled, punctuating each sentence fragment with another slap.

"Wha- Gaz?! What are you doing here?!" Dib exclaimed as full awareness came back to him. Seeing this, she let go and scowled at him as he collected himself.

"You got attacked by a Nightmare Weaver, and we're trying to get you free," she explained.

"A Nightmare Weaver?" Dib repeated, eyes widening, "So, none of this is real? Zim didn't really take over the world?"

"You really think that moron could pull this off? And even if he did, you think Nyx would be helping save you?" Gaz asked, gesturing to Nyx, who shot her a mild glare at her first comment but nodded at the second one. Dib's brow furrowed as he processed that, mind clearing from the haze that had been impressed on it by the Weaver, allowing him to see the absurdity of the situation and realize that it wasn't real.

"SKREEEE!"

And just as that thought registered, the entire crowd of dream Irkens screeched, pointing at the three real people while their jaws opened impossibly wide. As the trio watched, the crowd's faces all twisted to present the Nightmare Weaver's trademark X pattern of eyes, and their bodies shifted into amorphous blobs of tentacles, like the creature in the pit, which itself was flailing about even more intensely. And then the crowd surged forward, flowing out of the stands and towards the three.

"Now would be a good time to wake up, nitwit!" Gaz snapped, barely avoiding a tentacle strike from the pit beast and warily watching the smaller ones closing in from all sides.

"Okay, okay, think, I need to break the Weaver's hold on me completely, and I'm lucid now, which means I can control the dream, so… Aha!" Dib thought out loud rapidly, before screwing his face up in concentration, which caused his plasma gauntlets to pop into existence on his hands. He then punched them forward, unleashing a wave of plasma a thousand times more powerful than anything he could do in the real world. It washed over the crowd of beasts, vaporizing them with more high-pitched shrieks, and cutting through several of the pit monster's tentacles, causing the whole thing to collapse back into the darkness. Seemingly in response to this, the screen depicting Zim screeched and warped into another five-eyed blob and rushed towards Dib, who in turn jumped up and punched the blob as hard as he could.

That seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back, as with a flash of light the dream world shattered, leaving the humans and Nyx floating in a void. There was a moment of silence as the three processed what had just happened, and then Gaz spoke.

"Wow, that was almost cool of you," she said dryly, before looking around with an annoyed frown and adding, "But why haven't we all woken up now that the dream's over? That was what the stupid book said would happen."

"If this is really the work of a Nightmare Weaver, the only reason we'd still be in a dreamscape is if it had ensnared other people too, and we're all caught up in its psychic web," Dib mused, face creased in worry, "Do you know if this happened to anyone else?"

"Definitely Zim and Skoodge, and I'm pretty sure your friends and Tak and Tenn too," Nyx stated, causing Dib to grimace in worry.

"Oh, that's not good," he said, "If we're going to beat this thing, we have to wake everyone up before their minds are consumed, and I have no idea how much time we have to do it."

"Well, good luck with all that, I've done my part," Gaz said, looking around for the Dream Door, only to see nothing, "Hey, what gives? Where's the exit?"

"Er, yeah, about that?" Dib said nervously, "By entering the Weaver's trap, you kinda stuck yourself in it, so you can't out as long as it-GACK!"

"Are you saying I can't get out of this mess unless I waste my time saving all those other idiots?!" Gaz shrieked in Dib's face as she shook him around by the throat. Dib tried to gargle out a response, but before he could, the void suddenly seemed to shift, followed by the sensation of falling and a flash of light. And when it cleared, the three suddenly found themselves in a restaurant surrounded by a huge crowd of aliens all yelling at what seemed to be the top of their lungs.

"What the Hell?!" Gaz exclaimed, having to yell just to be able to hear herself over the shouting.

"We must have shifted into someone else's dream!" Dib shouted back.

"What?! I can't hear you!" Nyx yelled.

Scowling in annoyance at the situation, Gaz frowned in thought and then in concentration, and a headset with noise-canceling headphones and a microphone, much like the ones she used for online gaming, appeared on her head. As she sighed in relief, Dib and Nyx took note and followed suit in willing audio protection into existence, though Nyx's was naturally designed differently to fit on her antennae.

"Much better," Dib sighed, microphone carrying his voice to the other two, "Now, any idea whose dream this is?"

"It's gotta be Zim's!" Nyx stated, "I recognize this place, it's that restaurant on Foodcourtia that the Tallest forced him to work at!"

"Well, that explains this," Gaz commented, having hopped atop a table so she could see over the crowd's heads, pointing towards the far end of the restaurant. The others quickly joined her and looked where she was pointing, being greeted by the sight of Zim at the counter, the crowd and the massive cook behind him looming up as he seemed to sink into the floor beneath him… no, scratch that, he was sinking into the floor, which had turned pitch black and bubbling with tendrils. Not that Zim seemed to notice, his eyes shut and hands pressing his antennae flat against the verbal barrage he was suffering.

"…Normally, seeing Zim facing his doom would make me very happy," Dib commented with a sigh, "But if any of us die, the Nightmare Weaver will just feed on us and go stronger, which will make escape even harder. So as much as it makes me sick to say this, we're going to have to save him."

"Way ahead of you!" Nyx shouted, darting forward, jumping from the head of one alien customer to the next and making a beeline for Zim, Gaz following at a more sedate pace. Watching them go, Dib gave another sigh of discontent and likewise followed.

"Zim! Wake up!" Nyx yelled as she landed on the counter next to him, only to get no response.

"Remember what happened in Dib's dream? We'll have to snap him out of it by force," Gaz stated as she and Dib also reached the counter.

"Oh please, allow me," Dib said, grinning as he raised one of his conjured gauntlets and then slammed it down on Zim's head as hard as he could.

"GAH!" Zim yelped as he was knocked free of the dark patch he'd been sinking into, and glared at Dib as he reoriented himself, "Dib-Stink! How dare you… wait, Dib-Stink? Gaz-Beast? Nyx? What are you doing here? For that matter, what is Zim doing here? I'm supposed to be on Earth!"

"We've all been attacked by a nightmare demon, we came in here to wake everyone up to save you!" Nyx explained rapid fire, leaving Zim blinking n confusion.

"Eh?" he asked, causing Dib and Gaz to facepalm. But before they could explain, the crowd around them suddenly reacted the same way that they had back in Dib's own nightmare, all the aliens pointing at the interlopers and screeching with their mouths hanging open.

"SKREEE!" they screamed as their bodies warped into shapeless blobs and started surging towards the counter. At the same time, the nightmare version of Sizz-Lorr also warped and tried to slam onto the group gathered in front of him, who scattered as the blobs all hit the counter, shattering it.

"What is this? Since when can Sizz-Lorr do that?!" Zim demanded.

"We just told you, this isn't real, you moron!" Gaz snapped, dodging a tentacle strike from one of the blobs, "It's your dream, you have to end it so we can get out of here!"

"And how is Zim supposed to do that? …I mean, obviously I know how, but I want to make sure that you-"

"Oh, for Bigfoot's sake, we don't have time for your ego!" Dib yelled as he kicked several blobs away from the table he'd scrambled on top of, "Just imagine you're holding a big gun and start blowing stuff up, you're good at that!"

For a moment, Zim considered not doing so just to spite Dib for daring to tell him what to do. But then the Sizz-Lorr blob nearly managed to bite his head off, and he did as he was told, screwing his face up in concentration and causing a giant cannon with a disproportionately small handle that he somehow managed to keep perfectly balanced as he aimed it at the blob that used to be Sizz-Lorr.

BLAM

And with a single massive blast, the blob was obliterated. Seeing this, Zim grinned maniacally and started firing randomly in every direction, barely avoiding hitting Nyx and the humans as he vaporized all the rest of the blobs, and reduced the dream restaurant to smoking ruins. Eventually ceasing the attack, he looked around at what was left of the dreamscape, taking a moment to bask in the catharsis of destroying this horrible place, at which point the dream shattered, leaving him and the others in a void.

"What is this?!" he demanded, only to yelp as Gaz floated by and smacked him upside the head.

"For the millionth time, all that was a dream, and you just broke it by fighting back," she growled, "And we're going to have to explain this to all the other idiots whose dreams we're going to have to go into before we can wake up, and I do not want to have to keep explaining it to you over and over again on top of that, so get it through your thick head already!"

Zim instinctively flinched back from Gaz's rage, but before he could compose himself, the void shifted, and with a falling sensation and a flash of light, the group found themselves standing in a rocky tunnel of some kind.

"Before you ask, we just moved into someone else's dream," Dib interjected before Zim could question it. Zim shot him a dirty look for clearly questioning his intelligence, but for once chose to not say anything. Instead, he and the others turned their attention to their new surroundings, moving through the tunnel and emerging out of a nearby opening to find themselves on a ledge overlooking a large cavern, which was swarming with giant rats.

"Ugh, what is this?" Gaz gagged in disgust at the sight.

"Slaughtering Rat People of Blorch, the planet that Skoodge conquered," Nyx explained with a thoughtful look, "Which means that this must be his nightmare."

"Bah, of course Skoodge would be so spineless as to be traumatized by something so simplistic," Zim sneered.

"Considering you were having a nightmare of working in fast food, you don't get to judge," Dib said dryly.

"You know nothing of Zim's suffering, Dib-Monkey!"

"Shut up, both of you!" Gaz snarled, smacking the boys' heads together to cut off the argument before it could even start, "Now pay attention so we can find the fat guy… oh, there he is."

The others turned and saw that indeed, a flailing and screaming Skoodge was being dragged into the cavern by another rat at the head of a group of them, and carried over to a huge pit in the middle of the cavern floor. As they watched, from that pit emerged a rat head that was easily twice the size of any of the other rats, who all screeched happily in reaction to its presence.

"Alpha! We present the Irken meat as a gift meal to you!" one of Skoodge's captors declared, "Does this please you?"

The Alpha Rat responded with a deafening shriek, before opening its mouth to reveal a dark gaping maw, a tongue emerging to aggressively lick Skoodge as a taste test, causing him to become even more of a gibbering mess.

"Okay, we need to get down there and get him lucid before he gets eaten," Dib said, "So quick, look for a part of this cliff that's not too steep so we can-"

"Skoodge, snap out of it!" Zim yelled, hefting a large rock he'd grabbed from somewhere and throwing it through the air towards Skoodge, hitting the fat Irken square in the head.

"GAH! Who, what, huh?!" Skoodge sputtered, looking around in confusion but no longer in a blind panic, though he did scream again when his attention refocused on the Alpha Rat in front of him.

"Skoodge! Execute emergency protocol U-863-Zeta!" Zim yelled in as firm and commanding a tone as he possibly could. In response, Skoodge immediately composed himself and instinctively saluted.

"Yes sir!" he said, not even seeming to register who he was talking to. His PAK legs flexed and tore through the jaws of the rat holding it, causing it to briefly turn into a nightmare blob before dissolving. Not even noticing this, Skoodge extended his PAK legs out to maximum length, along with a truly ludicrous amount of other weapons of all kinds, pointing in every possible direction. And then they all fired at once, unleashing a torrent of plasma across the cavern.

"…What am I seeing right now?" Dib asked, watching in disbelief as the usually laid back Irken systematically tore apart his nightmare, most of the rats being destroyed before they could even shift to nightmare blobs, and even the ones who did failed to provide much of a threat before being obliterated.

"Zim has merely invoked a standard Irken Elite protocol, which Skoodge has memorized despite being a far inferior soldier than myself – in cases of extreme duress, blow up everything in sight first and ask questions later," Zim explained smugly.

"Isn't that your default way of doing things anyway?" Gaz asked dryly.

"Silence!" Zim snapped, just before the dreamscape finally hit its breaking point and burst, dumping them all in another void, Skoodge floating near the group and breathing heavily in exertion for a moment before he finally noticed them.

"Uh, what just happened?" he asked, clearly confused.

"Demon parasite, we're all trapped in nightmares, we all have to fight our way out of them to wake up," Nyx quickly summarized, "Nice moves, by the way."

"Er, thanks, I guess. But can we back up to the bit about the demon-Ah!" Skoodge started to say, only for the void to suddenly shift again, depositing the group in another dream.

"This is getting old fast," Gaz growled.

"Zim agrees. And why is this place so filthy?" Zim said in disgust, taking in the sight of the huge junkyard they were all now standing in. The group looked around, trying to orient themselves and figure out whose dream this was, and their gazes fell on the sight of a tall Irken in armor was standing atop a pile of debris, hopping up and down on it as if trying to force it further into the ground.

"That's right, Tak, you're never going to be an Invader! You're as worthless as all this garbage! Just accept how utterly meaningless you are!" the Irken ranted, voice distorting into an animalistic growl.

"Ugh, this is Tak's dream?" Zim sneered, "Must we actually save her?"

"All of us have to wake up, or none of us do. Otherwise, I wouldn't have saved you," Dib commented. Zim glared at him, but before he could say anything, Skoodge spoke up.

"Um, is that supposed to be happening?" he asked, pointing to where the ground under the garbage pile had turned into a dark pit, which the garbage started sinking into.

"Crap, it's starting to consume her! We need to save her, now!" Dib exclaimed, rushing forward and conjuring his gauntlets again. Thrusting them forward, he unleashed a wave of plasma that hit the Sergeant, sending him flying away from the garbage pile to splat against a nearby rusted wreck of a ship, shifting into a nightmare blob.

"SKREEE!" the blob shrieked, as several more emerged out of various pieces of garbage, quickly surrounding the group.

"I am getting really sick of this," Gaz grumbled, summoning a baseball bat and smacking away the nearest blob, while the Irkens deployed their PAK legs and opened fire.

"Zim has only done this a couple of times now, but must agree with the Gaz-Beast," Zim said in similar levels of annoyance, "So let's just wake the wretched wannabe up already!"

"Got it!" Nyx said, summoning her minigun and sweeping it across the pile of garbage, vaporizing most of it and leaving the rest to fall apart and dissolve, exposing Tak. Unfortunately, she appeared to still be in the grip of the nightmare, as her face was frozen in a look of panic, eyes glazed and not seeming to actually take in anything around her.

"Uh, I think we still need to actually snap her out of it," Skoodge commented as he fended off several blobs, which caused Zim to grin nastily.

"Allow me," he said with a laugh, quickly scuttling over to his rival. Grabbing her by the collar and lifting her up, he prepared to hit her in the face… only for her eyes to fall on him and immediately snap into focus.

SMACK

Followed by her own fist slamming into Zim's face, breaking his grip on her and sending him flying, hitting a blob hard enough to burst it like a balloon, which immediately got everyone's attention.

"Don't touch me, you… what?" Tak started to rant, only to trail off as she finally registered what was going on around her, "What is all this?"

"We're all trapped in a nightmare by a demon parasite, you have to fight your way out for us all to get out, yadda-yadda," Nyx said quickly, cocking her head in thought, "Man, Gaz and Zim are right, having to keep explaining this over and over again is exhausting."

Tak narrowed an eye in mild confusion as she took in what she had just heard, but before she could say anything, the blob that used to be the Sergeant surged towards her, morphing into a deformed facsimile of its previous form. Seeing this, Tak immediately went into a defensive pose, bracing herself with her PAK legs. When the blob was just about to hit her, she grabbed its tentacles and pivoted rapidly, throwing it into the air; before it could fall far from the apex of the toss, she pulled her PAK legs out of the ground and opened fire, vaporizing the blob before it could hit the ground.

And that blob must have been the keystone of Tak's nightmare, because with a flash of light, the group found themselves once again in a void.

"Dare I ask?" Tak said, crossing her arms with a scowl.

"We still need to wake up everyone else the Nightmare Weaver trapped if we want to get out of this dreamscape," Dib explained, rubbing the side of his head to wade off a headache, "And yeah, I'm starting to think we need flashcards or something, this is getting pretty irritating to keep wasting time having to repeatedly explain this stuff. Speaking of which, brace yourself."

"For wh-Ah!" Tak started to say, only for the void to shift and drop them into another dream, leaving them to fall onto a hard crystal floor.

"Should I expect that for the remainder of this mess?" Tak grumbled as the group got to their feet.

"Pretty much," Dib said, taking in their new surroundings and blinking at the sight of the crowd of aliens nearby, "Hey, those are Meekrob, aren't they?"

"Yeah, so this must be Tenn's nightmare," Skoodge said, as the group quickly made their way over the assembled Meekrob, silently agreeing that that was probably where the Irken in question would be.

Pushing past the crowd, they stopped short as they found themselves standing at the edge of a pit. Looking down into it, they were greeted by a deep dark hole, full of a massive pile of SIR Units that were screeching at the top of their metal lungs as they swarmed over each other. And there, just barely visible at the bottom of the pile through the countless flailing limbs, was Tenn, sinking into the darkness.

"…Hmm, maybe I should start being less critical of her phobia," Tak mused nonchalantly.

"Bah, this is nothing. Zim has seen worse whenever GIR gets a sugar rush," Zim scoffed.

"How can a robot get a…? No, never mind, I don't want to know, and we don't have time for it," Dib said, shaking his head and focusing on the matter at hand, "We need to get her out of there!"

"Ooh, let me, I like the idea of the drone being annoyed by knowing she owes me one," Nyx said with a grin, before her face screwed up in concentration, lucid-summoning a giant sledgehammer into her hands and a cartoonish jetpack onto her back before she leapt forward into the pit.

"Outta my way, nightmares!" Nyx declared, swinging the sledgehammer around wildly as she fell into the screaming mass of SIRs, bashing them aside and clearing a path towards Tenn. Upon reaching the Invader, Nyx dropped the hammer and grabbed her, and before the panicked Tenn could process that she was being held by someone other than an insane SIR, Nyx's jetpack ignited, sending them both rocketing upwards towards the top of the pit, flying past it to crash into the crystal floor a few yards away.

"Wha? Who? Huh?" Tenn sputtered in a daze as she and Nyx disentangled. She shook her head and looked around in confusion, only to find herself looking at a set of flashcards that Dib was holding up in front of her face, detailing everything regarding the Nightmare Weaver and the current situation.

"You actually dreamt up flashcards to explain all this?" Gaz asked, arching an eyebrow at her brother.

"Figured it would help speed things along," Dib replied with a shrug as Tenn examined the cards, "Judging by how things have been going, we probably don't have a lot of time before-"

"SKREEE!" the dream-Meekrob shrieked as they warped into nightmare blobs, while the pile of SIRs in the pit dissolved into each other, forming a single massive blob that burst out of the pit to tower over the group.

"-that happens," Dib said with a sigh, the group taking defensive poses and Tenn standing up and straightening herself out.

"Okay, so if I read everything correctly, I have to destroy most if not all of these things to break us out of this illusion?" she asked.

"That about sums it up," Tak said, gesturing to the mass of blobs, "By all means, go and get some catharsis."

"Gladly," Tenn said, glaring at the blobs. With a moment of concentration, she summoned a suit of battle armor onto herself, bristling with weapons, and dashed forward to meet the blobs as they converged on the group.

Almost faster than anyone could blink, the smaller blobs had been obliterated, Tenn cutting through them like a scythe through wheat, leaving only the giant blob still writhing in the pit. It lashed out at her, but only managed to crack the floor as Tenn dodged it, leaping high into the air. And before the blob beast could react, Tenn's armor disappeared, instead being replaced by a massive bomb in her hands, which she tossed towards the blob. It sank into the nightmare creature's warped flesh, and the blob only had a second to react before the bomb detonated, vaporizing it with a deafening boom and a flash of light that upon clearing found everyone back in the void.

"…Zim could have done that better," Zim pouted after a moment of silence.

"Oh, shut up, no one's in the mood for your ego right now. Or ever," Tak said, rolling her eyes.

"So, er, how many more of these do we need to do, again?" Skoodge asked quickly, hoping to head off any arguments before they could start.

"There's still Dib's dumb friends to deal with before we're finally done with this whole stupid thing," Gaz grumbled.

"Do we really need to rescue the Not-Dibs? That seems like a waste of time," Zim scoffed, causing Dib to glare at him. But before he could speak up in defense of his friends, however, the void shifted once more, yet again dropping the group into another dream. By this point, most of them were experienced enough with the situation to brace themselves, allowing them to quickly take in their new surroundings.

They were standing in a facsimile of a Skool hallway, a large crowd of students filling it. No one being willing to blindly push through the crowd without knowing what was on the other side, the Irkens all rose up on their PAK legs, while Dib conjured a table for him and Gaz to hop atop of, giving them all a high enough view to look over the crowd – and more importantly, it gave them a view of Viera on her knees in the middle of the crowd, hands pressed hard against her ears as everyone around her yelled insults at her.

"Magic's not real, you idiot!"

"You're just a freak!"

"There's nothing special about you!"

"So the Girl Not-Dib's worst fear is being yelled at?" Zim asked obliviously.

"Pretty sure it's more about them poking at her insecurities and making her feel unimportant," Tenn replied dryly.

"I know that feeling," Skoodge said, nodding sagely.

"Think we can take a few minutes to enjoy this?" Gaz asked, snickering at seeing her rival suffer emotionally.

"No!" Dib snapped at her, Gaz cracking open an eye to glare at her brother for actually daring to take that tone with her. But shockingly, for once he wasn't intimidated, his focus instead immediately going back to Viera, where to his horror he saw that the floor underneath her was warping into a pit that she was starting to sink into.

Cursing, and not even thinking about it, Dib conjured his gauntlets again and charged forward into the crowd. Swinging wildly with plasma-coated fists, he bashed aside every dream person in his way, clearing a path to Viera. And upon reaching her, once again not pausing to think about his actions, he tackled her, breaking her free of the pit's tentacles and sending them both rolling across the floor.

"Huh, what, Dib?" Viera sputtered in a daze after the two had come to a stop.

"This isn't real, we've been attacked by a Nightmare Weaver, you need to snap out of it and wake up!" Dib said quickly, the words cutting through the Weaver-induced block on Viera's memories, bringing her back to lucidity as she suddenly remembered the real world.

"Gah, of course! I knew none of this made sense!" she exclaimed with restored confidence, the nightmare immediately reacting and the crowd dissolving into blobs.

"SKREEE!" they screeched as they started to close in on the pair. Dib raised his gauntlets again, but Viera gently pushed him aside and stepped forward.

"Allow me," she said. Summoning her amulet with a moment of concentration, it then burst into vibrant flames, which immediately shot out in all directions, not touching her or Dib but washing over the blobs and vaporizing them. With a final flash, the flames dispersed and took the dreamscape with it, leaving the group once more in a void, the others all staring at Dib and Viera in varying levels of surprise.

"…That was somewhat impressive," Tak commented with mild respect.

"Since when are you some kind of badass?" Gaz asked her brother incredulously.

"Heh, I have my moments, I guess," he replied sheepishly, suddenly feeling awkward for some reason.

"Well, whatever the reason, I'm just glad it worked," Viera said, taking in the void and the group floating around her, "And it looks like the only one still trapped is Steve?"

"Yes, so let's hurry up and rescue the other Not-Dib so that Zim can wake up already," Zim said, just before the void once more shifted, dropping the group into what had to be Steve's nightmare. They were standing on a very busy city street, with large crowds of people swarming around them, but no sign of Steve anywhere. Not even at the spot where, oddly enough, most of the crowd seemed to be converging, going out of their way so that they all passed over the same apparently empty spot of pavement. And all making bizarrely specific statements as they did so.

"Nothing here."

"Don't see anything."

"Can't be important if I didn't notice it."

"The hell is this? And where's Steve?" Viera asked somewhat frantically.

"I'm guessing right there," Tenn said, pointing towards the spot the crowd was marching over, where a dark pit was starting to form, "And judging by those comments that the dream people are all making, I'm guessing that his nightmare is about being unseen and unnoticed."

"All your friends have awful self-esteem," Gaz dryly commented to Dib.

"We can all have therapy later, right now we need to snap Steve out of it," Dib said, starting to panic as he watched the ground bubble and darken underneath where his unseen friend presumably was.

"But how are supposed to do that when we can't even see him to grab him?" Nyx asked, earning a scoff from Zim.

"As usual, Zim's brilliance must resolve all problems," he said. Ignoring the eye rolls that statement got from everyone who wasn't his minion, he conjured up a giant bag of flour. As everyone blinked at the odd choice, Zim threw the bag into the air, and fired at it from his PAK legs just as it passed over the spot where they all assumed Steve was. The bag burst apart, dusting flour all over everyone in the area – and thereby revealing Steve on the ground, curled up in a ball as the crowd literally walked all over him.

"Behold, Zim's genius has solved the problem!" Zim crowed.

"Hey, didn't we see something like that in that haunted house movie GIR made us watch the other day?" Skoodge asked, earning a dope slap from Zim.

"Do not belittle Zim's ingenuity!" he snapped.

Ignoring the Irkens' byplay, Dib and Viera dashed towards Steve, gauntleted punches and fireballs clearing them a path through the crowd. Reaching him, Dib quickly forced back the crowd, while Viera knelt down to grab her barely-visible brother by the flour-covered shoulders, hauling him to his feet so she could start shaking him.

"Steve! Snap out of it!" she yelled in his face, causing him to blink away the look of fear, pain, and confusion in his eyes.

"Viera? You can see me?" he asked, slightly slurred as the nightmare continued to fog his thoughts.

"Yes, because this is a nightmare that a demon trapped us in," she explained quickly, "Now you need to concentrate and fight back so that we can all get out of here. And do it fast, before-"

"SKREE!" the crowd shrieked as they all shifted to blobs. Thankfully, the sound broke through the lingering haze in Steve's head, and he jumped to feet, fully aware.

"Okay, this is a dream and I'm lucid so… aha!" he stated, as larger versions of his blasters appeared in his hands. Taking aim at the converging army of blobs, he opened fire indiscriminately, avoiding hitting Dib or Viera while managing to mow the nightmare creatures down. Within moments it was done, and the dream shattered, leaving everyone floating in the void again; as an added bonus, while the flour was gone too, Steve was fully visible again.

"That felt strangely good. Now can someone give me some more details of what's going on, and why they're all here too?" he asked, gesturing towards Gaz and the Irkens.

"We'll explain once we wake up, which now that we're all out of our nightmares should be-AHHHH!" Dib started to say, only for gravity to suddenly reassert itself, leaving him and the others all falling down into the depths of the void.

The group fell through darkness for what felt like an eternity, then came to a sudden stop with a series of thuds as they landed on something hard. Looking around, they saw nothing but another dark void, occasionally lit up by flashes of purple light.

"What happened? Where are we?" Skoodge asked as everyone scrambled to their feet.

"Dib-Stink! I thought you said that once we were all free of our nightmares, we'd wake up!" Zim shouted, glaring at Dib for his perceived mistake.

"We should have! With us all lucid enough to reject the Nightmare Weaver's illusions, we should have broken its grip on us!" Dib replied defensively.

"Dib's right," Viera added, "There's no way a Weaver could be strong enough to keep us in the dream world at this point on its own. Something must have given it some kind of boost. I have no idea what could, though."

"Uh… maybe we can ask it ourselves?" Tenn said, looking nervously behind the group. The others followed her gaze, and they all paled as they found themselves looking up at the unmistakable form of the Nightmare Weaver, towering over them, at least 30 feet tall. It looked just like it had in its picture, save for the fact that it had numerous tendrils rising from its back and disappearing into the void around them. Also, a rune was carved into its forehead above its eyes, glowing with a violet light.

"Oh man, it must have brought us into its own dreamscape," Dib said meekly, sweating under the predatory gaze of the beast looming above him.

"If anyone has any ideas on how to fight this thing, now would be the time to speak," Tak said tersely.

Before anyone could respond, however, the rune on the Nightmare Weaver's head started glowing even brighter, before bursting out like a spotlight. This beam of illumination hit a spot in front of the group, and to their surprise, a figure materialized within it. A very familiar figure, most of them realized with a start, as the black and red suit, pale corpse-like face, and black eyes with red sclera came into transparent clarity.

"Norlock?!" Everyone exclaimed in shock, except for Gaz, who just arched an eyebrow, and Nyx, who blinked in confusion.

"So that's him? He's taller than I thought," she mused, though no one in the stunned group seemed to hear her.

"Testing, testing… okay, I think this thing is working," the image of Norlock muttered, before grinning and speaking louder, "Greetings! If you're watching this message, then congratulations, because that means you've managed to do the nearly impossible and kill me. Unfortunately for you, that means you're now being subjected to this Nightmare Weaver, which I kept sealed within an urn with a time lock only I could periodically reset, and which I empowered and compelled to go after everyone who was in my vicinity when I died. My own personal dead man's switch, if you would."

"Oh, that's clever," Steve said, "I'd be impressed if I wasn't so terrified."

"Furthermore," Norlock's recording continued, "If you've reached the point of actually seeing this recording, that means you've broken free of the initial nightmares, which probably means that you're expecting to go free… well, tough luck. When I say I empowered the Weaver, I mean it's strong enough to keep you contained even when you're lucid. So, sorry to say, but it's still going to devour you, it's just that now, your minds won't have been destroyed first, so you'll be completely aware of it. Have fun being devoured, whoever you are, and see you in Hell!"

With that, the recording ended, the light retracting into the Nightmare Weaver's head before the beast reared back and shrieked.

"Zim hates that vampire," Zim muttered.

"Ditto," everyone else echoed, raising conjured weapons in preparation to fend the Weaver off. However, rather than striking down at them with any appendages, it instead opened its mouth wide and unleashed a beam of light that ran over most of the group, only Gaz and Nyx managing to leap out of the way in time to avoid it.

When the light faded, it immediately became clear that the Weaver had simply modified its previous MO, as each of the group who had been hit was now surrounded and being attacked by twisted manifestations of their previous nightmares – Zim was being swung around by a monstrous version of Sizz-Lorr, similarly deformed Irkens were swarming Dib, Slaughtering Rat People were pouncing on Skoodge, Tak was fending off a version of the Sergeant who had merged with a pile of scrapyard parts while Tenn defended herself against a seemingly endless number of crazy SIRs, Viera was trying to avoid being dragged to the ground by a crowd of deformed skoolchildren screaming her insecurities at her, and Steve had vanished from sight.

"Ugh, great, now we have to save these losers from their nightmares again?" Gaz groaned in annoyance.

"Nah, let's just cut to the chase," Nyx said, hefting her conjured minigun at the Weaver, "Eat hot plasma, you-!"

"SKREEE!" the Weaver shrieked, unleashing another beam of light which hit Nyx before she could dodge it this time. When it cleared, not only was Nyx's gun gone, but her clothes had changed into the bland uniform of an Irken Technician Drone.

"Huh?!" she exclaimed, then yelped as a cable suddenly dropped from above and jammed into her PAK, dragging her up into the air to face a Control Brain that had appeared from nowhere.

"Technician Drone Nyx, you have been declared Defective," the Control Brain intoned, "We shall now begin the slow, painful process of erasing your personality and making you a proper drone once more."

"NOOOO! Let me go, let me go, let me go!" Nyx screamed, swinging wildly around in the air as she tried in vain to break free and electricity danced around her PAK.

"Oh, for- fine, I'll do this myself!" Gaz yelled, glaring up at the Weaver as its mouth started to glow in preparation for another attack, "Go ahead, hit me with your best shot, you overgrown cockroach! I'm not afraid of anything!"

The Weaver complied, firing another blast that hit Gaz head on as she glared defiantly up at it. The light washed over her, and she smirked as it dispersed to seemingly no effect… and then a pair of huge muscular arms grabbed ahold of her, lifting her into the air and pinning her arms in place.

"What the-?!" she yelled incredulously. Craning her head around to see who was restraining her, her eyes widened at the sight of a large man in a Membrane Labs security guard uniform, while an identical thug stood nearby holding an horrifically familiar pink bodysuit.

"Stop struggling, Pig Girl, time to get back to your cage," the guard holding her said, as his partner approached and opened the suit, the interior now filled with writhing tentacles.

"No, no, no, keep that thing away from me!" Gaz screamed, kicking frantically in a desperate attempt to break free, memories of crowds pointing and laughing at her overwhelming her ability to think of anything else to do.

As all this happened, the Weaver reared back and shrieked again, this time triumphantly as it watched its victims were still slowly overwhelmed by their fears despite their best efforts… all except for Steve, that is. Because while he'd once again been rendered invisible and inaudible, he was not being crushingly overwhelmed by the feelings of being unimportant and overlooked this time; he could only assume that with all its victims in one place and fighting back, the Weaver was only hitting them with the most basic parts of their fears in an attempt to beat them with essentially brute force.

But whatever the reason, Steve knew that he was currently the only person present who wasn't too incapacitated to fight back against the Weaver. And as he ran up close to it, he realized with an incredulous grin as it failed to react to his presence that he was in prime position to do so – evidently, the nightmare invisibility it'd given him was so effective even it couldn't see him right now either!

Quick to take advantage of this, Steve conjured up the biggest bazooka he could imagine, and upon regaining his balance after it nearly knocked him over, he took a knee and aimed it at the Weaver's head. For a moment, he considered saying a cool line like "This is your wakeup call" or something, but considering no one could currently hear him, decided that it would be a wasted effort. So instead, he steadied his aim and pulled the trigger, firing a rocket bigger than he was through the air to smash directly into Norlock's rune carved into the Weaver's forehead. For its part, the Weaver blinked all five eyes with a look of stunned confusion on its face for a moment-

BOOM

-and then with a massive flash of light, the Weaver's head exploded, unleashing a wave of energy that vaporized its body, followed by all the summoned nightmares as the wave washed over the dreamscape, which itself soon filled with light and burst apart.

XXXXXXX

Across the city, the Nightmare Weaver's victims all snapped awake at the same moment, Gaz and Nyx doing likewise as the Dream Walker spell was suddenly cancelled out and their astral forms were snapped back into their bodies. Seeing this, the onlooking Ying was about to say something, when a high-pitched shriek suddenly emitted from the mouth of the tendril still attached to Dib's head, before the whole thing started flailing about, taking him with it as he yelped in panic. And before any of the others in the room could react, the tentacle's erratic movements swept them up in it, leaving them clinging to it for dear life, before it suddenly retracted out the window, taking all four of them with it.

This action was repeated with all the other victims, dragging the twins out of their house, Tak and Tenn out of their base, and Zim and Skoodge out of theirs. And soon enough, everyone was dangling in the air over Zim's front yard, the tendrils swinging around wildly, even as glowing cracks spread up them from the Weaver's cocoon, which was falling apart as more cracks consumed it. This went on for several minutes as everyone tried desperately to break free of the tendrils' hold on them, until with a massive popping sound, the cocoon burst apart, causing the tendrils to dissolve and dropping the entire group to the ground.

"Ugh, this has been a long night," Nyx groaned as everyone stumbled to their feet, and turned to face the cocoon's location, which had been reduced to a pile of demonic sludge, which dissolved into the air even as they watched. And just as the last of the sludge started to vanish, it burst apart all at once, revealing the Nightmare Weaver in its physical form, which reared up on its hind legs and shrieked at the group in a way that was clearly meant to be intimidating. And probably would have been, except for one detail.

"…Is it supposed to be tiny?" Zim asked incredulously, as everyone stared down at the six-inch-tall Nightmare Weaver, whose roars were reduced to barely audible squeaks by its size.

"You have got to be kidding me," Gaz groaned, facepalming as she echoed everyone's shared thoughts at this revelation.

"There's probably a metaphor in here somewhere about fears seeming worse than they actually are," Dib mused, watching the Weaver skitter about on the sidewalk, either trying to escape or scare them off, "So, er, anyone have a bag or something we can put it-"

SMASH

Everyone jumped as Tak suddenly stomped down on the Weaver, immediately crushing it under her boot. She then twisted her foot a few times for good measure, only stepping away once she was sure it had been completely reduced to mush.

"Or we could just do that, I guess," Dib said after a moment.

"Right then," Tak said, after she was finished scraping the remnants of the Weaver off her sole, "Now that we've dealt with Norlock's petty little effort to gain posthumous revenge, I suggest we add this to the list of events that we never speak of again and all pretend never happened. Agreed?"

Everyone else gave tired sounds of agreement, all of them feeling exhaustion settling in and warding off any thoughts of argument of any kind. As they started to sag, though, Zim rallied himself enough to stand up straight and glare at everyone except his minions.

"In that case, if all this nonsense is finally done, GET OFF OF ZIM'S LAWN!" he screamed, before spinning on his heel and marching back inside his base. Everyone else watched him go, Skoodge giving the others a nervous smile before he followed after. Tak and Tenn, meanwhile, rolled their eyes and walked off in the direction of their base; once she was sure they were out of sight and not coming back, Nyx let herself relax a little and waved a quick goodbye to Gaz before heading inside as well, Ying going with her and leaving the humans by themselves.

"…So, anyone wanna discuss our issues that those nightmares brought up?" Viera asked after a moment of awkward silence.

"No," came the unanimous reply.

"Good, me neither. Let's all just go home and see if any of us can get real sleep after that horror show," Viera continued, before pausing and arching an eyebrow at Gaz, "Also, footsie pajamas, really?"

"Bite me," Gaz growled, turning and walking down the street without bothering to see if Dib was following her. He did though, taking only a moment to exchange goodbyes with the twins before doing so. They in turn watched the Membranes go before turning and heading the direction of their own house, all of them happy to leave this nightmare to fade from memory as all such things always did.

XxxxxxxxxxxxxxX

End Episode 13

XxxxxxxxxxxxxxX

A/N: Whoo boy, this chapter was a beast to put together. Specifically, the entire sequence where they're going through each other's nightmares to wake each other up; no matter what I did, it just felt so damn repetitive that it drained my creativity and willingness to even try writing. But I hope that despite that, the overall chapter was enjoyable to you all.

As said at the top of the chapter, special thanks to nightmaster000 for the idea that inspired this chapter; he suggested the concept of Norlock having had a contingency plan that allowed for a post-mortem revenge scheme, and things snowballed from there. Further thanks to Eduard Kassel for suggesting the nightmares for Zim (whom I'd initially had being caught by humans and about to be dissected) and Viera (for whom I couldn't think of anything).

For anyone curious, the twist with the Weaver's physical form being tiny comes from a similar gag done in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the whole thing with the nightmare creatures pointing and screeching comes from the 70s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (aka the Donald Sutherland version).

And I know I was a little heavy-handed with the foreshadowing of what their nightmares would be, but I'll just point to most other of these kinds of scenarios in various series, which tend to bring their characters' fears out of nowhere with little-to-no prior acknowledgement.

Anyway, that's all for now. Again, hope you enjoyed the read, and that you're all staying safe out there.

Next time: Dib and his friends face a revenge plot by… wait, who is this guy?

Until then, please review!