Chapter 1: Things Get Strange

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Zim could care less about the occult, the weird, and the supernatural.

Not only because it was what his mortal enemy was extremely interested in, but because it just... didn't make sense.

Vampires, for instance. Things that were dead were suddenly NOT dead, and had a lust for human blood. Well, any kind of blood. Then zombies - zombies were like vampires, only they craved brains. And werewolves... humans that became animals? Hardly. And for some reason this hideous transformation had something to do with the phases of Earth's puny little moon.

He just wasn't interested in it. However, it appeared that the occult, the weird, and the supernatural had quite the interest in him.

Unknowing of this interest, the Irken was walking home from some stupid venture, some time at night. He was alone, as victims often are. GIR had been commanded to stand guard over the base, and he could only imagine what damage that little freak had done to it. If he was lucky, which he probably wasn't, the defective SIR was probably just watching TV, as usual. Perhaps the TV would be the only thing standing when he came back. For some reason, the thought didn't phase him much, being that he was already rather.. oh, what would be the best term… pissy?

Simmering in his pissyness, he almost didn't notice the strange doglike creature by the lamppost.

It was just sitting there. Watching him. He stopped, staring back at it with the darkest look he could muster at the moment after such a night's failure. It fixed him with an even darker look, and only then did he notice it was foaming at the mouth. That was probably bad anyway, but then it charged, letting out a strangely humanish cry as it leapt into the air, obviously aiming those filthy foamy fangs for his neck. He was pissy, not stupid, and as its leap neared its end (rather close to his face, actually) he shot at it with a laser from his PAK. He didn't hit anything vital, but it did singe its shoulder, sending it sprawled to the ground as its balace was ruined out of shock. Rather than try again it glared back at him, then took off half-limping, yelping in pain with every bound.

"That was stupid," He remarked sourly to the cool night air, watching the thing's backside disappear from view.

He continued walking like none of it had ever happened, though unwillingly he was playing it back in his head. That was a weird looking dog. There was something wrong about its proportions, hind legs slightly longer than the front... and those eyes! They were nearly human, albeit an extremely crazy human. Its fur was a wrong color too, although that might just be because he hadn't seen that many dogs.

Well, weird or not, it hadn't ripped his throat out with its fangs, and that's pretty much the part he cared about. If it had bitten him, at the very least he'd have probably caught that disease humans called "rabies", and gone about foaming at the mouth and trying to bite humans if they got too close. He shuddered at the thought. He couldn't touch one, let alone bite one. Ah, well. If he'd caught that rabies thing he'd probably be too crazy to care anyway.

It was still a sick idea.

During the mulling over of the event he was coming upon his house, of which he noticed there still was a house, which meant GIR probably was just watching TV. Or destroying the base from the inside. He frowned and kicked open the door, walking past GIR (who was on the couch with a tub of Ben and Jerry's, watching the tube in a very familiar couch potato pose) and toward the toilet.

The defective SIR finally realized his master had come home with a loud squeal and even louder exclamation of: "Full moon, masta! Wolfies're out!"

Zim paused long enough to verify that yes, it was the full moon, but at the notion of werewolves he just snorted and continued walking.

He'd leave that discussion for the next day.

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In every great tale, the strange becomes stranger.

The first thing Zim had noticed when he'd come to skool was that Dib was acting... odd. For starters, he didn't attack him when he stepped across the threshold of the classroom. He just sat there at his desk, looking a little like he hadn't slept in weeks, and from what he could hear over the noise of the room and Ms. Bitter's monotone, he was actually growling. At what, he didn't know. But that right there... either Dib had snapped again or the boy just wanted to freak him out.

Unfortunately, of the second, he was doing a pretty good job.

Then, there was lunch.

Lunch was always a strange debacle, but today was stranger. Dib once again left him alone. And the boy had devoured the meat product lying on his tray like it was the last food he would get for a long time. He probably hadn't even known what it was before he'd eaten it. Curiosity peaked, Zim couldn't sit at his own table with his own food for much longer, and so he got up and wandered closer to the human.

What happened after that... the Irken didn't have a very good memory of it.

Some dumb argument, okay. Normal everyday tongue-lashing.

Then he had said something and without warning Dib had pounced on him, sinking his teeth into Zim's arm, hard enough to make it bleed. Of course, he screamed, and kicked the other off, who dislodged his teeth seconds before the kick and stood two feet off, features contorted into an animalistic snarl.

Zim gawked at him.

"You.. you bit me!" He said, still in shock.

Dib just snorted and wandered back to his table.

Then the Irken extended his wounded arm to some random bystander - a small group of them had formed when the boy had attacked.

"Does this look infected to you?"

The kid shrugged, not making Zim feel any better about it. He put a hand over it to stop the bleeding, staring at Dib while the human went back to gorging himself on... stuff. That had never happened before in the history of their "relationship". Dib was steam, threats, failure. Dib was not snarl, growl, chomp. Something seriously wrong was going on here.

As the humans around him dispersed, his PAK offered him a small scanner, which he waved over the wound.

"Unknown saliva sample detected," It told him. "Species..."

It would have just told him human. It was supposed to have told him human.

"Canis lupus."

"He's a wolf?"

Oh yes. Something was very, very wrong.

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OH DEAR GOD. WHY DO I WRITE SHORT THINGS?!

-coughs- Taking a very, very small break from Avarice and Plinth with yet another riveting werewolf tale.

Not really.

But it eases my brain to know this chapter was finished, even though it was short.

It'll get longer, better, as it goes on. The chapters, at least. I think this is going to be a pretty short fic, compared to Avarice.

Review, please. My sleep-deprived eyes demand it.