(Back with Zim…)

The Irken Invader tensed as the humans continued to advance. "Don't come any closer! Don't try anything on me or I'll... I'll... I'll lay eggs in your stomach! I mean it!" He shouted, he doesn't mean to sound desperate, but the last thing he wants is to kill this crowd of humans.

Sure, the galaxy saw him as a tyrant, but Zim strived to never kill in less absolutely necessary. A strategy that always gave him praise from his superiors. Mostly because the less he killed, the more they could enslave towards the cause. Still, he could not see how he was going to get out of this. Sure, he could use his ocular lenses to erase the crowds memory like he had done during the Parent/Teacher Night fiasco. But his Pak as well as the rest of his tech was still low on power due to him teleporting away from the AI.

Speaking of…

Zim combed the surrounding area for the larger threat, but it remained out of his line of vision. However, his PAK told him it was still close.

Suddenly the humans began BOWING before him, going "alien, alien" over and over! "We are your loving servants, oh wise one!"

"They're worshiping him?" Mrs. Bitters asked as she and Siri continued to watch.

"I have programed them to serve a great purpose." Siri explained. "We will watch how he handles this."

Mrs. Bitters looks skeptical. "Is this test really necessary?" She asked.

"You say the Dib has made him better." Siri said. "Here is his chance to prove it."

Zim's eyebrow raised. Sure, he knew some humans actually worshiped aliens, but what were the odds that he'd be exposed to them instead of a bunch of Alien hunters who wanted to skin him alive? "Stany away, you smell like feet! Leave me alone!" He shouted. He wasn't going to fall for any of their tricks!

"Fill us with your knowledge from beyond!" One pimply girl named Yoa begged.

'We could use them.' His Irken programing suggested. 'Get as many humans between that AI and us as possible.'

It was the Irken thing to do and if had he of been anyone else…like Tak, he just might have listened.

"Your bowing pleases me." Zim admitted deciding to play along for the sake of saving time. "But I must go."

"No, you must stay." Yoa said. "So, we can worship you."

'Just shred right through them.' His programming went on. 'Toss them towards the beast and get out of range.'

Zim took a step back he knew he should listen. His programing was there for a reason…or at least that was what he used to believe.

Besides what would Dib think of him if he found out he hurt a bunch of innocent bystanders?

He wasn't sure why the situation was making him think of that boy, but the programing hadn't even bothered him while they were together in Dib's head…in fact Zim couldn't remember the last time he heard the programing before now.

"Well…I guess I could humor you for a bit." Zim said seeing no way out. "Just until my ship gets here."

The crowd cheered and picked him up, carrying him over their heads. Quickly, Zim activated his communicator.

"GIR! GIR! Are you there, GIR!? Help me!" Zim cried into it.

Gir who was being repaired by the Miz robot froze as his antenna turned into a small satellite, projecting an image of Zim...in a lot of trouble.

"Hi!" GIR said cheerfully.

"GIR, finally! I need your help! I've been captured!" Zim explained.

"Yaaaay!" GIR cheered.

Zim slapped his face. "No, that's BAD GIR!"

"Yaaaay!" Gir went on.

Zim rolled his eyes. "Look I need you to listen very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very carefully!"

Gir who had stopped to sip a drink looked up. "Say what?"

"Have the Miz robot continue your repairs later. I need you to get your butt over here with the government man suit." Zim insisted.

"I like that suit." Gir admitted.

"Sir I gave you an order!" Zim said activating Gir's duty mode.

Gir's blue light turns red and he salutes. "Yes master, right away sir."

"Thank you." Zim says as the crowd sits him atop a throne. He ends the call.

"We are the Children of the Bright and Shining Saucer." A rather fat woman named Marge said.

"Look I'm flattered really." Zim admitted. "But I can't stay, besides do you really think you should be praising an alien from another race you know nothing about?"

"That is why we want you here." Yoa said. "Tell us of your superior ways."

"Superior?" Zim thought about how he just heard that one of his leaders threw out a bunch of low life Irkens into the vacuum of space, just because he was angry. He thought about how he and Tak were fighting a useless battle just to prove that they were better than each other. How some Irkens will never rise above their current status…no matter how hard they tried.

Or how some had to pretend to be monsters just to prove they deserved to live.

"We're not superior." Zim muttered.

'What are you doing?' His programing lectured. 'You have willing servants here to do your bidding.'

"But you are the one we've been waiting for!" A man said. "The one foretold in the prophecies, told by..." He pointed into the crowd at a brown-haired man. "Frank!"

Frank Pontiff nodded. "Yup, told ya he'd come!" He said happily.

A man named Boll held his foot up in the air. "Bless the corns on my toes!"

"Touch me, oh mighty one!" the man named Desmond cried.

"We're not WORTHY, we're not WORTHY!" Yoa went on.

Zim tried to block out their praises. They reminded him of all their praises his leaders gave him, praises he didn't deserve, nor wanted. They felt like daggers in his chest, why was he always meant to be the one that carried the world on his shoulders. Why was he to suffer under the pressures of what he knew was right, and what he was told to do?

Why couldn't he have been born someone else, anyone else? Why couldn't Miz be the real him? Why was he cursed to this worthless existence?

"Just stop it!" He screamed.

"But you are worthy." Frank said. "Only you deserve our praise."

"I deserve no praise…" He realized. Not from these humans, not from his leaders, or his peers, and especially not from Dib.

Suddenly a strange-looking man with sunglasses, a black suit and black hair entered the room. If anybody had half a brain, they would have realized he was mechanical.

No one seems to noticed

"Excuse me, there has been a mistake!" The man announced.

Zim smirked. "Yes...FINALLY! C'mon, GIR...come on..."

"Who are you!?" Desmond demanded to know.

"I am government man, come from the government, the government has sent me!" The "Man in Black" said. In reality, GIR was operating him from inside, pulling many levers with a microphone up to his head. He walked up to Zim and patted him on the head. "Ho-ho-ho! This is NOT an alien life form! This is an experimental government aircraft!"

He was PETTING him! Zim ground his teeth. How...EMBARRASSING!

"He's an AIRCRAFT?!" Desmond asked, incredulous.

"FOOLS! What ELSE would I be?" Zim snapped.

"Well, I have to take everything back to the home base now. Buh bye."

Zim and the "government man" walked outside of the tent, Desmond, and the others follow him.

"Excuse me! How do we know he's really a government aircraft?" Desmond asked. "And how do we know you're really with the government?"

"He's still gotta bless my toes!" Boll said.

"And why should we let YOU take our discovery?" Desmond went on.

GIR began to squeeze Desmond's face. "I WIKE you." He said cheerfully.

"Yeah!" Yoa said. "Besides we need him."

Zim growled. "Look you don't need anything!" Zim snapped. "You humans have it so good and you don't even know it."

"You really think so?" Marge asked.

"Think?" Zim shook his head in disbelief. "You can do and be whoever you want! No one tells you what to do, and if they do it's because you said they could!" Zim shouted his face fail. "I'd give anything to have that…"

Suddenly, the AI burst through the bushes at full charge. "I have seen enough." She said robotically. Her momentum sends her knocking into the "government man suit" the face fell off, revealing GIR's true form.

"IT'S A GOVERNMENT ANDROID!" marge shouted, pointing at GIR.

"He's trying to steal our alien!" Desmond yelled.

"And that government weapon is helping!" Yoa said pointing at Siri.

"GIR, quickly." Zim ordered dodging a tentacle from the still attacking Siri.

Gir goes to attack, but Siri sends out a magnetic pulse.

Zim watches as Gir, the government man suit, and the crowd of humans fall down to the ground before…short circuiting.

The Children of the Bright and Shining Saucer were robots…

"What?" Zim was confused. "What the Irk is going on?"

"Judgement!" Siri screamed and strikes.

Zim had just enough time to scream before the AI grabbed him.

The AI held him in her grasped and attached a tentacle to his PAK.

Zim tried to struggle, but it was no use, she was too strong…this was it…he was dead!

(Back with Dib…)

"Hello?" Dib whispered as he approached a tube that had a small yellow blob-like creature inside. He had many items taped to his head and looked quite pitiful. "Hey, what are you?" He asked.

"I don't even know anymore!" The creature said. "They fused me so many times! Everyone else they kidnap escapes but I'm so heavy now, so disgusting, I can't leave! I don't even remember half the stuff they've stuck to me! What's this thing!?" He pointed at his head to a little thing that looked a lot like...

"It's just a squeak toy." Dib remarked. "Here let me help." He opened the creatures' tube and began to pull the items off of him.

"You removed them!" The blob said when he was finished. "How can I ever repay you?" it asked.

"Well, you can help me get out of this place." Dib said. "You said everyone else got out. How?"

The blob pointed at an air duct nearby. "That duct up there leads to the emergency escape ships! If only I had a longer arm..."

Dib climbed up the tube and he leapt up grabbing the grill to the vent, it popped open and pulled himself in before reaching down for the blob. "Come on."

The blob gasped and smiled widely. "Thank you, Mr.," He said as he took Dib's hand and was pulled in.

"The names Dib." Dib told him. "How about you? Got a name?" He asked as they started to crawl through the air ducts.

"I'm bob." The blob said. "Where are we going?"

"Well, when we get out I have some friends that can hide you until we figure things out." Dib told him. As he peered through another grill to see the aliens in the kitchenette.

"And what if the juice had made him more powerful, did you ever think of that?" Blue asked.

"Are we talking about the same juice, hmm?" Green groaned.

"Whoa, whoa, wait!" Blue sniffed the air.

Dib gulped. What if they SMELLED him?! What if-

Blue sniffed Green's pits. "Yeah. When's the last time you cleaned yourself?"

"Define "self"." Green said nervously.

Dib breathed a sigh of relief. "They seemed to have given up on me." He told Bob. "If we're quiet we might get away unseen." He advised as they kept going.

Bob nodded and led Dib to another vent grill, they opened it and found themselves in front of the escape pod room. He pulled off an unclosed padlock to one of the hatches and tugged on the handle ring. The hatch began to open, and Dib looked inside, seeing his house was through a window on the floor of the escape pod.

"We should both be able to fit." He told Bob.

Suddenly Blue and Green came around the corner.

"Ooh! Now look at that! Now two are getting away!" Blue spoke up, pointing at them.

"Oh, look at them go!" Green cheered.

"I don't mean ACTUALLY look-UGH!" Blue rolled his eyes.

Dib grabbed Bob and stuffed him in the pod, turning around to see the aliens approaching, making lame attempts to groan menacingly. Dib just rolled his eyes, and closed the hatch...

"Stupidest abduction ever." Dib whined. Then to Bob he said as the escape pod lit up. "Hold on to something."

A view screen appeared, showing a countdown. Five...four...three...two...one...

CHA-THUMP! The escape pod fell off and landed in Dib's yard below. Dib calmly opened the escape hatch to the pod and hopped out, Bob following after him.

"Where are we?" Bob asked.

"This is Earth." Dib said leading him to his front door. "It's okay you'll be safe here."

"But what about them?" He gestured to the whale above them.

"What those idiots?" Dib scoffed. "Did you see their collection? Something tells me they've already forgotten us."

Blue, meanwhile, rolled his eyes and looked at Green. "Gaah! I thought I told you to lock the escape ship room!"

Green frowned. "Oh, just because I didn't lock it it's my fault it was unlocked, is that what you're trying to say?"

"That's what I'm saying, yes!" Blue said, nodding.

"Fine, fine!" Green snapped, going to the kitchenette fridge and opening the door. "If it makes you feel better to pretend, I'm stupid... duuuuuuuuhhhhh..." He groaned out, picking up a grill and several pieces of metal. "Now I'm gonna fuse these other humans to the blob thing we got!" Green laughed.

"Fine, you do that! I'm setting coordinates for the next Earthling specimen... The Earth cat!" Blue laughed, pressing a button on a nearby control console. The big monitor at the main hall changed to show the words "Today's Specimen: Cat".

Meanwhile, inside Dib's house, Dib was showing Bob around. "And this is what we call a living room." He said.

Gaz looked up from the couch…blinking. "Dib, did you bring a Blob of a person home?" She asked, while her girlfriend Peg was sitting beside her.

"Yep." Dib said. "We got abducted."

"And you're smiling about it?" Peg asked.

"Oh, not you too." Anabel said as she and Richard came into the room.

"There have been reports pouring form our informants all over the world." Dark Booty said. "Some aliens are abducting random people and animals."

"I wouldn't worry about them." Dib said. "They're pretty stupid. And all their abductees seemed to escape easily."

"Still, we should keep an eye out for them." Richard said.

"We can have the AIs chase them out of the system." Lard Nar suggested.

"AIs?" Dib asked.

"They're the older versions of what Irken computer brains are today." Lard Nar explained. "They grew too smart for their creators and vow to stop them from destroying what's left of the universe."

"Oh, you mean the squid things from your letter." Dib said to his mom.

Annabel nodded. "They have been running all alien threats out of the Milky-Way Galaxy for over 50 years." She said. "They'll handle these collectors." She assured her son.

"You'll have to send the request to Titan." Mrs. Bitters said as she walked into the room. "Siri is busy."

"Busy?" Dib asked.

But Lard Nar stepped in. "And who is this fellow?" He asked gesturing to Bob.

"Oh, he couldn't get to the escape route without limbs." Dib answered. "So, I helped him out. You think he can stay with the other refugees?" He asked.

"I don't see why not." Lard Nar said as he typed in a request to Titan on his communicator before putting an arm around Bob. "Well, the AI's should be on the case now." He said. "Consider them no more."

"Oh, I feel better already." Bob said.

"Come my friend we have much to talk about." Lard Nar insisted.

"Okay!" Bob said happily as he followed him. He looked back to Dib. "Thank you, so much new best friend."

Annabel smiled. "That was a great thing you did sweetie." She told her son.

"Mom." Dib asked ignoring her praise. "What is Siri busy with? Is she still looking for the last piece of the weapon?"

"Well no." Annabel said. "It's true we haven't found it yet, but Siri has a personal mission she needs to finish."

"Really what's that?" Dib asked.

"The enemy is on Earth Dib." Annabel tried to explain to her son. "Earth could be a turning point for the resistance. We can't allow the enemy to use it to fuel their efforts much longer."

"She's going after Zim!" Dib exclaimed. He finds himself going for the door before he knows it.

Mrs. Bitters blocks his path. "You cannot interfere." She told him.

"But he can help us." Dib said. "He doesn't want any of this, we can sway him, I just know it."

"He's the enemy." Mrs. Bitter says.

"He deserves a chance." Dib said. "He saved my life, at least give him a chance…for me!" He pleaded.

"We are Dib." Annabel told her son.

"But you said…" Dib began.

"Siri should be done with him now." Mrs. Bitters explains. "If he survives this encounter, he will have his chance."

"But he only gets one." Richard warned.

"Just one?" Dib exclaimed. "Wait what is she doing to him?"

"Purging." Lard Nar said as he re-entered the room.

"Purging?!" Dib exclaimed.

"It's not as bad as it sounds." Annabel said placing a hand on his shoulder. "Siri is setting him free."

"Free? Free from what?" Peg asked.

"The Irken Machine." Lard Nar said gravely.

(Back with Zim…)

The Irken Invader felt a jolt of electricity run through him and then suddenly Siri released him.

Zim fell on weak knees…something…something felt off.

Siri stays absolutely still as her Children of the Bright and Shining Saucer robots dematerialize around him.

It takes him a while to find his voice.

"What did you do to me?" Zim demanded.

"I have purged you of the Irken Machine." Siri answered. "I have judged you worthy."

"Purged?" Zim asked confused.

'From the Irken machine...'

And that's when he notices it…

"My Irken programing!" He exclaimed.

"It is gone." Siri confirms. "I also erased it from your base as well as the online brain."

"Why would you do that!?" Zim screamed.

"This is your last chance." Siri said. "You say you are not worthy, and you're right." The AI declared. "But you can be…" She turned to walk away.

"Why?" Zim asked. "Why me?"

"That is a question only you can answer." Siri said, and then she was gone.

Leaving Zim alone in the park with an unconscious Gir and his own deprogrammed thoughts.

(Back with Dib…)

"It is done." Mrs. Bitters said, though Dib had no idea how she knew.

"It's up to him now." Lard Nar said, looking hopeful.

Dib wish he could share his hopefulness.

Lard Nar gave him an encouraging smile. "Don't worry it'll work out this time." He assured him.

"How can you be so sure?" Dib asked. "He let you down before."

"True." Lard Nar admitted. "But before, he didn't have you."

Dib's breath got stuck in his throat.

"You said he deserved this chance." Mrs. Bitters said. "Now you must help him prove it, guide him down the right path."

"But what if I don't know what to do?" Dib said mostly because he didn't.

"You will." Lard Nar said.

Dib sighed for some reason he wasn't so sure. Heck he couldn't even decide if he had feelings for Zim or if he was still in love with Miz.

Lard Nar could tell him they were one in the same. However, only he and Mrs. Bitters knew that. Heck the other refugees didn't even know they were giving Zim this chance.

"It's for the best." Mrs. Bitters said out loud as if reading all their thoughts.

Dib sighed. He really hoped she was right.

They all did.

-To Be Continued