A/n: Officially my first IZ fanfic! Well, thats a lie lol, I have a few more currently in progress. This is going to be ZADF/ZADR. No flames please. Be sure to R&R! :D
And now, on with the story!

I don't own Invader Zim or any of the characters associated with it. The marvelous Jhonen Vasquez does.

Chapter 1

Dib's P.O.V

Five years.

That's how long it had been since that faithful day he'd stepped into our seventh grade classroom. Black hair, green skin, not to mention no ears or a nose. I knew almost instantly he wasn't human, I mean, really, it wasn't that hard to see. Or so I thought. Apparently the rest of my classmates thought the opposite. A 'skin condition' he'd claimed to have and they lapped it up like a dog sucking pitifully up to its master for a bone. Gullible and naiveté. That was all our society was. And that was all it would ever be.

Of course, they thought nothing more of me than the 'crazy' kid, so in a way I wasn't surprised when they'd turned on me and my opinions. It wasn't like they mattered. Who listens to the insane kid that's obsessed with the paranormal and seeing ghosts and aliens?

First they ignore you, then laugh at you and hate you. Then they fight you, then you win.

The line replayed itself in my head as I sat listening to my MP3. I couldn't begin to describe to myself how much I could relate to it. Only I hadn't won yet, but someday I would, even if it meant another five years of hatred, insults, mocking and stupid arguments which would lead to one of us getting hurt in the end.

He was like that. Zim.

He had such a high ego that even if he looked like the fool, he'd have to find someway around it. He was narcissistic. And though I hated to admit it, cunning. He'd outright fooled me a number of times. More than I could count, actually. Our brooding desires to outwit each other had dragged out for five long years and in that time he STILL hadn't managed to conquer Earth. For that I was thankful, but couldn't help but wonder what the hell was taking him so long. He had all this powerful alien technology, yet he hadn't managed to wipe out even one building yet.

I knew that something was holding him back, only I didn't know what. And I'd wondered that very same question for the past three years.

Turning to look across to him, I adjusted my glasses slightly to peer over the head of Zita and towards that dark mop of fake hair. He still wore the same disguise, though his wig had become somewhat shaggier. That same pink tunic I'd seen him arrive in, he also still donned, only now it had lengthened to fit his slender, somewhat anorexic frame. The back hem hung loose a little below his hips, like even that itself had been too big for him. Same boots, same gloves, same contacts. The only real difference to him was his height. Despite he was still much shorter than the average student, he now stood at 5'3". I myself was 6'1". It was something to be proud of. Well, for me at least. It certainly made him scowl whenever I towered over him. Man did I feel good when I saw his features scrunched up like that. Stupid alien.

I hated him. I hated him so much, yet for five straight years I could not stop obsessing over him. Stalking him even, as some of the other students had put it to me. I had documented his every move, every turn, every twitch. To me he was just a science project waiting to be dissected. An autopsy table was where he belonged, not here in this stink of a classroom. It was only then would they see. See that I wasn't the crazy kid with the black trench coat and odd shaped glasses, but the sane one all along. Boy could I imagine the looks on their stupid faces when I proved them all wrong! But like many other things, that was only a dream and it was going to be a long time before that became a reality.

'It's time to stop living in this fantasy-land of yours, son! Follow my footsteps and discover real science!'

I scoffed at the thought of my father. Some father. I can't even remember the last time I saw him. He was always busy with his work, down in his lab discovering some radical new cure to save the world. I couldn't say I hated him, he was my father after all, but some part of me had stopped feeling the love I once felt for him long ago. Then there was my sister. Man.

I laughed out loud a little to myself at the thought of Gaz, causing a few of my classmates to snigger. She was my baby sister, but she controlled me. Quite a few times I'd hear the death threat from her. She hated my clothes, she hated my enormous head, she hated the fact I even existed. What a family. In some ways Zim was lucky.

He had nobody. Well, there was that robot dog thing he had, but family wise, no. Unless those 'parents' he had counted, but I had learned long ago they were only robot decoys.

I often wondered what life would be like without a family. I had almost started to believe it would be better, but I honestly couldn't imagine my life without Gaz or my uncaring father. It was my life after all and not anybody else's. Despite I hated it, I couldn't say that I would want to change it. After all, imagine viewing Zim for what he was through another's eyes. Ha, I couldn't even imagine being like one of those blind idiots I had for classmates.

I snapped out of my thoughts when I felt something hit the side of my head. Looking down, I saw a paper ball on the floor and reached down to pick it up. One guess who that had come from. I opened it and sighed at the almost unrecognizable scrawl before me. You'd think that after five years Zim's hand writing would have improved. Then I remembered he had three fingers.

Dib-stink is looking rather brain-dead today.

I scowled and grabbed my pen, scribbling back.

What the hell would you know, Space-boy?

Scowling, I threw the note as hard as I could back at his obnoxious green head. It hit him directly below where his 'ears' would have been and he nearly fell out of his chair in shock. I stifled a laugh, but was cut short as our teacher strode into the classroom. She was no Bitters, but her glare almost caused the same amount of fear to spark within me as she turned her icy gaze towards me.

She was the Bitters cousin. That, or her sister. Niece. Whatever.

"Dib, do I sense the need to fail you for the rest of the semester?"

I shook my head. Zim snorted, but as usual, she didn't notice. Damn I hated him.

"One more sound from you, I will be tempted to."

"Yes Miss Sowourz."

Seemingly satisfied, she started to unpack her bag for the lesson ahead. I could sense Zim's eyes boring into my head and looked towards him. He was grinning and holding another note and before I could open my mouth to silently protest, he threw it at me, hitting me square in the eye. I almost yelped, but caught myself just in time. I didn't need another after school detention. Scowling again, I picked up the note, which had thankfully managed to land on my desk this time and not the floor. Despite his stupidity, Zim had good aim.

I unraveled it to see what was written this time.

Five hundred more lifetimes worth of knowledge than yoo could ever know, hyooman worm-baby. I AM ZIM!

Man! Even though it was his writing I could almost hear that voice ringing in my ears! Zim just grinned at me from his seat and pointed to his head. I did the same, except I made the 'you're crazy!' gesture and twirled my finger around. He rolled his eyes, and looked back towards the teacher.

My gaze lingered on him for a little longer, before I turned back to the teacher, who was now starting the class. I found that I just couldn't pay attention to her today for some reason, and it wasn't because our first lesson was a sex-ed lesson. My attention was drawn back to Zim and I wondered what he was doing. Sneaking a glance, I saw him fidgeting with some sort of green metallic object. What the heck was that? It looked like a cross between a pair of tweezers and a spork.

I sighed and put my head into my hands. Miss Sowourz walked around the classroom handing us out sheets of paper to fill out, each piled with information and questions about the human anatomy. I had to smirk at that, wondering just how Zim would go filling out such a thing. I snuck another glance across to him, and just as I had expected, he was staring at the sheet as though it was some kind of monster about to eat him. He looked up at me to see my reaction at that moment and saw me laughing at him, a deep scowl crossing his features.

'Have fun!' I mouthed silently to him before Sowourz returned to the front of the classroom. He gave me a gesture which somewhat resembled him sticking up his 'middle' finger at me, but as he only had three fingers, it could have been him just waving a finger at me in protest.

He had been here for five years. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd learned a few rude human gestures in that time.

Smirking, I turned back to my questionnaire and sighed. It was going to be a long morning.