A/N: "This just in: recently the species sus scrofa, a kind of feral pig, was found, through a series of mutations, to have developed elaborate wings throughout the course of the past few years. Experts speculated that short flights may be possible for the species..."

I finally updated. I can only hope I've set some sort of record.

...except I haven't, because authors who haven't updated in months or years suddenly adding chapters seems to be the norm in this section, especially recently. Again, I am sorry.

You probably know the drill: life, busy, blah blah blah. I'll add to that that I have more or less lost interest in this series, as have a lot of people, temporarily or permantly. Considering that it was a wacky cartoon that only lasted a seaon and a half, and ended some time ago, that's not really very surprising.

Still, people continue to write (more rarely now, but it happens a fair amount) awesome stuff that continues to draw me back here. I would like to thank all of my reviewers, because again, it is mostly because of you and my readers in general that I am going to try to finish this, no matter how long it may take (and just in case a few of you haven't moved on completely from the show yet). Thanks also to all of the other great authors in the section for your inspiration.

Um. This chapter is lighter in tone and more exposition-heavy than I'd like, but I felt I kind of had to deal with it. Not really a fun chapter to write for me, but oh, well. If I manage to finish this, it does get darker and more serious/interesting later. I hope you enjoy this anyway, and I would like to dedicate this chapter to Larry and Bill, the two remaining "Invader Zim" fans out there. I love you guys!

"It is known that there is an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the universe can be said to be zero.

From this it follows that the population of the universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the product of a deranged imagination." --- The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Trigonometry, algebra, physics, quantum mechanics. Each field has a language and a heritage of its own. Richness, depth, color, poetry. Even an antipodean sense of the sacred. Fermi-Dirac, Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein. Bosons, photons, partition function. Energy state i. F equals m X a, v2 equals u2+2as, F equals -(Gm1m2)/r2. T equals 2π√(R3/GM).

For so very long, these may as well have been an alien language. A cacophony of frustration and confusion. But within the past few days, the jumbled squiggles and doodles had shifted into focus. The blurred lines were now crystal clear.

When she was young, she had been prescribed contact lenses for farsightedness. This was very much like the first hours wearing them had been. While there was always a sense of something being…wrong, something fluttering beyond her reach…it was nothing compared to the utter blindness of her former "vision" in retrospect.

Suddenly, she looked at the words, and effortlessly, beautifully…she understood them.

For the first time in her life, Zita could see.

The schism was simply less pronounced this time. The contrast less marked.

Considering the zeal she'd shown when she arrived at the door that Wednesday; the hyper, unbridled enthusiasm...she may as well have been dragging a horribly disguised green puppy along behind her.

On the bright side, this made it considerably easier for him to zap her mind into oblivion while he restrained her and lodged a parasitic alien backpack into her brain.

She seemed so excited that he could almost pretend she was looking forward to it. Heck, the Pak…is looked almost…natural on her now.

...well, okay, not really. It was still horribly tacky and cheap-looking, with its inane little pink polka dots. And, well, it still housed an ancient alien consciousness that could summon horrible, insecticide limbs from its shell at the merest whim. Yeah, pretty hard to reconcile that with Zita's typical wardrobe.

Still, although an Irken Pak wasn't the best compliment to lime-colored, glow-in-the-dark sunglasses and a sky blue "Hello Chinchilla!" sundress, Dib could almost imagine for a moment that it...was. That it really belonged, and his actions were a simple obligation to return something to its proper place. This temporary comfort didn't make Dib feel any better in the long run. Actually, the fact that it had occurred at all made him feel a heck of a lot worse. As if it was possible to feel more terrible about what he was doing to Zita.

What did make Dib feel better, frankly, were the security measures he'd established to assure that his prisoner...subject...whatever...remained under his control this time. To this end, long, robotic arms twisted and undulated like snakes behind….her (no, him, Dib corrected himself; the straight antennae on Zim's discarded body-shell demonstrate that indeed he is a male Irken, as much as that even matters to his kind…which seems to be hardly at all). They glinted silently, following his every moment, prepared to extract their former master from his distasteful new meat-husk at a moment's notice.

Zim scowled up at the ceiling as he tested them, leaning and hopping comically, taking steps to each side as they moved in accordance with his movements, possibly trying to determine some sort of weakness in their tracking system.

And…obviously not finding one.

"Traitor!" Zim shook his fist at the ceiling, finally frustrated beyond the ability to control himself and, for the time, out of escape ideas. "Verminous, filthy machine! Abandoning your master at the earliest fortuity! You make Zim sick, you hear me? Sick! Augh! I could wretch right here in the lab! All because of your idiotic treacherous…ness… ness!"

The computer answered him with silence, although Dib somehow imagined that he could hear it grumbling under its mechanical breath. Shaking his head, he continued tapping away at a console towards the middle of the room. Now where was that file...

"Your insidious circuitry isn't worthy of being torn apart and, er, distributed at the bottom of a...a box of P'nortian Nacho Puffs!" Zim stopped, amazingly, for a breath here; perhaps Zita's "pitiful" human lungs just weren't capable of the sustained volume and levels of obnoxiousness that his superior Irken squeedlyspooch could produce.

...ah, there it was.

"I..." The computer didn't get a chance to finish.

"Chocolate Tabasco Squid Nacho Puffs, at that! And boy, they had to give those things away!" Zim breathed out, and coughed a little.

"I'm ignoring you, you know."

"Eh?"

"I mean...what do you think you're going to do, get me to feel bad? It's not as though I have any choice. He reprogrammed me. For crying out loud, Zim. I'm a computer."

Although, Dib thought dully, only vaguely listening to them, isn't Zim, too? Albeit, the most advanced AI I could ever possibly have imagined, that I'll probably ever see…well, in some ways, anyway.

"No excuses!" Zim trembled and squinted before slumping forward, looking tired. Zita apparently hadn't eaten her Whammo Munchies that morning.

Dib just rolled his eyes. "Will you two be quiet! I'm trying to pull up some information."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Dib. Are we annoying you? Hey, you know what's annoying?"

Oh, boy. Here we go.

"Being, I don't know, ripped out of your perfectly suitable Irken body-shell and installed into a squirmy...little...dainty…pretty piece of Earth refuse, which is stupid and smelly and slimy and inferior and," Zim looked down at his side, "and carrying some kind of stupid little pouch which has a picture of a little yellow flower on it. Little yellow flower, Dib. Little. Yellow. Flower."

"It's called a purse, Zim." Dib opened a file, not even bothering to look over his shoulder. "Girls carry them all the time. And, well...I guess a few guys probably do, too."

"It would be one thing if she had something useful in the moronic containment unit, like, oh, a kellzonian scanner, or at least a small, sharp instrument." Zim turned the purse inside out and emptied some of its contents onto the floor, while picking through the rest, including a few items in wrappers that were just as flowery and pink as everything else Zita carried with her. "It's not as though I could kill you with...say, what are these wrapped, tube-like thingies, anyway?"

"Zim..." Dib glanced back, flushed slightly, and rushed over to him. "Zim...stop messing with Zita's stuff!"

"Wait...no," Zim screamed, and dropped one as suddenly as if it had been made of water. His head tilted to the side, and he made one of the most hideous faces Dib could imagine. "Putrid earth-spore memories! Ugh! That's...that's disgusting! You...you and your slimy, inefficient, Earth monkey body-shells!" Zim rubbed at his eyes, and glared down at Dib, who was trying frantically to gather Zita's belongings and stuff them into her purse.

"Miserable earth child," he reached down towards Dib, "And with any luck, you've already disposed of my original one…"

Dib shrank back for a moment as the purple-haired girl/murderous Irken loomed over him, and sighed with relief when one of the robo-arms administered a painful electric jolt to its charge. Zim shook and recoiled, temporarily stunned, and predictably, more angry then ever.

"You know," Dib sighed, "we're down to forty-five minutes, already. How much more of our time do you want to waste?"

"Not...not a second more," Zim cringed, shock off the shock and the pain, and hugged himself. "Not a second more, even contemplating helping you with your ridiculous little apocalyptic concerns. What nonsense. It's gone, I'm sure. You've dealt with it already. I don't care who deals with all of you or how, provided it's as painfully as possible."

"I have your 'body-shell,' Zim. And I'll give it back to you, if you help me with my 'little' concerns. That's a promise." If I don't lose my patience with you, and turn that Pak of yours into scrap metal first, that is.

"Hah! Because it's not like you would ever...I don't know...perform a stabbing action while Zim is facing the other way! Leave him to, you know, rot. No, that's never happened before, no way. Nnuh-mnn."

Dib grimaced. "Fine. I get it. Fair enough. I'll show it to you, to prove I'm not lying. Computer!"

"What now?"

"Show Zim his dumb old body, already."

The computer groaned. "Well, this should be interesting, anyway."

One of the room's walls slid apart like a puzzle cube. A glass tube slid out, filled with a faintly glowing, preservative pink liquid. And something less pleasant.

Inside the tube, a hunched, limp figure was just barely visible. Floating peacefully.

Obviously dead.

Zim's eyes widened. Forgetting the arms completely, he dashed towards the tube. The computer let him go, with a light shrug of its coils.

Zim slowed as he approached the glass. He stared at the floor for a few minutes before slowly looking up, either tightly controlling his emotions or…possibly not experiencing any as he did.

He examined the tube for a moment, and began muttering something about Dib's incompetent storage methods under his breath, before inching towards it.

Finally, he reached towards the glass, pressing the tips of his five fingers gingerly against it.

The Irken stared through its surface, his free fist clenched in annoyance and rage. Through the transparent face of the bewildered thirteen-year-old school student in a blue sundress that looked back at him.

And into the dead, dull, blood red eyes that gazed out. Staring through the girl's eyes. Both sets just...staring. Dead. Nothing in them.

"Amazing..."

Dib's palms began to sweat again, and the cold lump that had surfaced on several occasions throughout these past two years returned to his stomach. Again, he realized at the back of his mind that he was, and had been, letting precious seconds slip away. But something...scientific interest?...compelled him to move closer to Zim. Something else made his throat dry, his voice soft, and his vision blurry.

"Zim...?"

Zim pushed away from the tube, snorting and folding his arms. "Amazing. To think that this...husk...continued to function for a full ten minutes before finally collapsing into its natural state. Fading into nothingness. Desperately believing that it was Irken Invader Zim. A brilliant, efficient thing, to be sure...but can you imagine it, thinking it was me?" He chuckled softy.

Dib blinked. "Er. Not sure I follow you there."

"Empty shells...that's all the host bodies are." Zim frowned, focusing intently on it. "None of the irritating, interfering consciousness that a human shell has on its own. Empty of…you humans might call it a 'soul,' but only because you are pathetic, ignorant creatures. However, there is an...echo, of sorts, that remains within our bodies, coursing through their meatbrains, for about ten minutes before their inevitable dissolution. In case of maintenance or emergencies."

"An echo?" Dib stammered. "But...your body...it could create new memories. It figured out what had happened."

Zim sighed. "Of course it could create new memories, earthstink. For as long as the imprint lingers, the secondary brain will continue to function and grow, collecting vital information neccessary for its eventual re-conection with the Pak. And all that knowledge from the meatbrain would have been intergrated into me, if it hadn't been for some large-headed, moronic, pointy-haired..."

"I get it, I get it!"

"Well. Anyway, it's too late for that now. Although I do admire its courage, sticking it out until the very end, as it did. Truly worthy of the emergency-or-maintenence back-up meatbrain personality echo of ZIM!"

"Yeah, that's great, Zim. Look, I showed you your body. Can we please get on with, you know, saving the earth?" Something tickled at the edge of Dib's brain, urging him to think about the echo. Could something similiar stay inside a human brain? But frankly, the inner workings of the Pak, and the subtleties of its interaction with a human host, fascinating though they were, paled in importance compared to the end of all life as Dib knew it.

Especially considering that, according to his best guess, neither of them would be alive to discuss the matter if they didn't do something soon.

Zim, still staring at his own corpse, gave Dib a slight nod.

Dib walked back to the console, and hit a button.

"It all started a little less than a year ago, when I monitored an alien craft headed towards the Earth. Naturally, I assumed that it was an Irken vessel at first, but the NASA place feeds showed something I had never seen before. I tried to idenitify it, but I was still having some trouble gaining full access to your computer, which is...some of the files are...well. I don't know how to say this, Zim, but parts of your system are...kind of, " he coughed, "not good."

Zim shot Dib a very dirty look at this suggestion, which was Dib's cue to babble on as quickly as possible.

"...Anyway, I didn't think much of it at first. I mean, you know how it is, Zim. How many loser aliens stop by Earth to stock up on wombats for study, steal cable from us, or pick up a school counselor or two? But the same ship...it kept coming back. And that's when I started to get worried. And then, two months ago, something happened. I picked up some strange readings a few blocks from here, and…well, you'll see. Computer," he addressed the ceiling sharply, "run video file Dib: #6574897."

Within seconds, a short, scratchy clip played in the very air before them; shot from an aerial view of the city, evidently using one of the base's cameras.

At first, everything was calm. But after a few moments, in a flash of green light, a few of the houses were simply...gone. No screams. No wreckage. No sign of an attack. Nothing but empty lots.

"Eh?"

"Yeah, weird, huh? The entire block just disspeared. Of course, nobody really noticed...according to the news, everybody who lived there decided to suddenly go 'on vacation'," Dub muttered bitterly. "And I can't tell if that incident was definitely related to the ships, but a few hours later, I detected several in our solar system. And lately...more and more of them have come. More frequent visits. More headed towards us. I even asked a...friend...of yours about it, but he just started screaming incoherently every time I mentioned what I'd seen. Saying that they would kill us all. Although he also screamed about that when I asked him what he had eaten for dinner that evening, or what the weather was like where he was, so I'm not sure how reliable he is anymore.

"But basically, I still have no idea who they are, or what they want with us. But I'm pretty sure it's something bad...really bad. End-of-the-word bad, from what little I've picked up. All those people..."

Zim squinted an eye, appearing confused as to whether he should be amused by the possible loss of human life, or simply...confused. After a moment, he frowned and looked at the ceiling. "Computer, run footage through digital filter #9813."

Of course, there was no response.

Zim growled. "Computer! Run footage through digital filter..."

"La la la, not listening!"

"Computer!"

Dib sighed. "Computer, go ahead."

"All right, all right." The video looped back, and played again.

Again, the same ship, the same city block. The image now was vaguely blue, obviously having been run through some sort of Irken detection process. And this time, the houses looked...wrong. There was something there, an odd shape. This time, it was obvious that the block was surrounded by a...a...

A shimmering something. Almost imperceptible. And that's when Dib realized what it was.

It was a screen. A highly advanced projection device, of some kind. The houses at the beginning of the clip...

They weren't even real.

After a few moments, the screen dissolved. Something lightening fast, something already invisible and now almost impossible to see because of its velocity, darted up from the empty blocks and into the atmosphere.

"Um. What the heck?" Dib was still just as lost as before…but Zim, for a change, didn't seem to be.

Zim put a hand to his moth, obviously trying very hard to control his laughter. " I wouldn't worry about it. They weren't destroying anything, Dib-filth. Not in the video, anyway. They were just here to collect what they'd left. Probably their base."

"Their base?"

"Yes. It's rare that they bother to come to a planet's surface, but when they do, they sometimes demolish a few blocks here and there and take on the identities of the people who used to live there while they gather information. Those buildings were long gone, and the people who lived in them most likely long dead, before you even realized that anything unusual was going on." He rubbed his chin. "I wonder how long they'd been here? Or what they're bothering with? Or how they found out that I'd tricked them? Oh, well, who cares." Zim shrugged, and went back to pulling strands of his offending hair out.

Dib lunged forward suddenly, grabbing Zim's frail shoulders.

"What...hey!"

"Who are they, ZIM?"

"Hands off, Dibworm!" Zim struggled weakly, but to no avail. He flailed, succeeding only at smacking Dib in the face and getting himself shocked viciously a few times for his efforts.

"Tell me! Tell me, or I swear I'll..." Dib breathed out sharply. "I knew it. I knew you'd know. The computer's system is faulty, old. It's missing the files it needed, now. They've degraded beyond repair. All it could remember was that it had seen those ships somewhere before. That the Irkens had dealt with them before. That the aliens we were dealing with had attacked Earth before. And," he continued, his dark eyes narrowing to slits, "that you had saved us from them."

Zim grinned, eyes widening maniacally. "Yes, yes! I had nearly forgotten! That little matter where all of your worthless meat bodies would have sizzled like...like grilled sasuaged-dog meat...on the surface of an alien sun long ago if I hadn't helped you! Not to mention the nasty business of hauling you all back to your own stinking solar system. Heh, heh...funny, isn't it?"

Dib let Zim go as he shoved him away. "Yeah. Funny how you only saved us so that you could slaughter us all by yourself."

"Well, true." Zim brushed himself off.

Dib rubbed his forehead. "How insensitive of me, not to thank you."

"Yes. Yes it was."

"Zim..."

"The Vreedzaam, by the way."

"The what?"

"The race that attacked you. The Vreedzaam. Nasty, stupid, filthy race. Much like yours, actually. Although that's just what they call themselves. Ever since their sun started to die, the almighty Irken Empire has referred to them as the Planet Jackers."

"Okay," Dib nodded, running his fingers through his hair. "Um, I think I can take a wild guess at their M.O. So why do they steal planets?"

Zim straightened his sundress, and struck a haughty pose. "Do you know what will happen, Dib, to your puny sun in about five billion of your Earth-years? How your pathetic species of crawling larval crawlies will eventually choke, sputter, and die, no matter what any of you insignificant dirt-pigs do?"

Dib rolled his eyes. "Duh, Zim. It'll start to die. I know about all that 'life-and-death-of-stars' stuff already. Minus the 'crawling earth-pigs choking and dying on their own spit' part. Because of course," he added dryly, "we don't plan to be here when it happens."

"Oh, believe me, Dib, I'm comfortably certain that you won't be. Anyway, you've probably never seen it happen," he continued. "The sun will exhaust its core supply of hydrogen, blah blah blah, helium converts to carbon, blah blah, boom! space nebula, blah blah blah, everbody dies a fiery, toasty delicious death."

"Of course," Dib said skeptically, "that takes billions of years, so you couldn't have seen it happen..."

"Stop-motion photography. But that's your sun. Smaller stars...I think you humans call them Crimson Midgets or something...don't have the luxury of burning DOOM and searing annihilation. Eventually, they just sort of...wink out." He clenched one of his hands into a fist, and then opened it. "Poof!"

"So the Planet Jackers live around a Red Dwarf...wow!" Dib grinned. "No one was sure whether that was possible or not. But what's the problem? There's no way their planet could be dying...they last for...uh…a really long time!"

"The universe is far older than you seem to think it is."

Hey, it was Zim who turned out to be so boring, after all...granted, his lecture seemed appropriate coming from the evil me-bot, at the time. "Great. So why do they steal planets?"

"Oh, yeah," Zim mused, rocking back on his feet. "Well, they were throwing them into their dying sun. Yep."

"Why?"

"To keep it alive."

"...that doesn't make any sense."

"Eh? No, it doesn't," Zim said, chuckling to himself again. "But they sure bought it when Tallest Spork told them it would work! Stupid, stupid Planet Jackers!"

Dib's eyebrows furrowed. "So your entire race lied to them."

"Yeah, pretty much."

Another sigh. "O-kay." Dib paced back and forth. "Let me guess. They figured out that the Earth was never thrown into their sun in the first place, and they came back to get it...wait, no. There wouldn't be that many ships, then. Hmm. So they...want us for something else? Conquest? Human slaves?" He snapped his fingers. "Ah-hah! They're going to enslave us, right? And make us toil endlessly on their interstellar slushy machines, or something?"

"No..." Zim looked down at his own clenched hands. "The Jackers aren't interested in slaves. They don't even believe in taking workers or captives. They only care about the planet itself. Usually for burning, but sometimes for expansion. Not that I'd care, if this wasn't my mission, but either way..."

"Guys, your hour is almost up, by the way. Brain...melting, maybe, and...whatever," the computer chimed in.

"Either way," Zim finished. "They will kill you. They will kill every last one of you."