As DemonSurfer once said, the only real disclaimer you need is the fact that it's on a fanfiction site.

Mmyep.

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Chapter One: Straight to the Brain!

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"Let's see here... I know water burns him, meat fuses to his flesh, human food makes him sick, and he has a serious problem with filth. But what else could I try? What other weaknesses haven't I found? Hmm..."

It was nights like this that Dib wondered if he ought to get a social life. Locked in his room, hunched over his computer, the only light being in said room the cold blue glow of the monitor on his face. Pedophiles are oft described like this, or computer geeks, or thirty five-year old otakus that live only for writing disgusting stories about their favorite characters. He'd actually perused some of those, but that's beside the point.

"Fire? No, too risky, too much evidence, and arson is illegal... I don't know what the laws are on burning aliens, though... is it like burning people?"

He absently scrolled down the page - which was a search page, actually, on UFO sightings and the suchlike - and a popup ad on the right side of the screen caught his eye. A stupidly drawn mosquito was flying around in stupid circles, and the text above it said "Zap the mosquito and win an iPod!" It also made an annoying buzzing sound, making him wish he'd turned his speakers off. Somewhat curious as to what they meant by "zap", he clicked on the mosquito. The cursor became a little can of something-or-other that sent a bolt of electricity into the stupidly drawn bug, killing it and sending him to some stupid site.

But he wasn't paying attention to that.

"Electricity. Of course! I haven't tried that yet, and Dad even has a taser in his lab! BRILLIANT!"

A moment passed.

"But why exactly does Dad have a taser in his lab?"

Not letting himself think too hard on that, he got up and stole out of his room, straight into the Professor's lab. The taser was actually sitting in plain sight for once, as he'd thought he'd have to go digging for it. Or it'd be booby-trapped or something stupid like that. Ignoring the rather suspicious latex items lying beside it (and the fact that one looked like a thong), he picked it up and flew out of the lab like a big-headed bat out of hell.

A digital clock in the window of a clock shop said it was two AM. Kind of a bad time to be out, unorthodox, maybe, but this was about mankind, not prowling killers or whatever unwritten law stated that all children have to be in bed way before now. But obviously, the same law can't be applied to aliens, as Dib had already spotted his target, in his lame disguise, dragging GIR by a doggy ear behind him with a bag of something in the crook of one arm.

Given the circumstances, that something could always be somebody's severed head. But that's also beside the point.

"Umm... can I walk now?" GIR asked as they came closer.

"Not after that incident. You're prohibited from walking from now on, GIR."

"But, Masterrrrr... I needs to walk! The TV says it's good for my thighs!"

"... may I remind you that you don't even have thighs?"

"I has thighs! In mah belleh!"

"You can't walk on chicken thighs, idiot."

"Chickens walk on chicken thighs."

"That.. that actually made sense." A pause. "You know, I think you're starting to malfunction again."

"WOOOO!! Hey! Lookit! That Dib kid's watchin' you again! I think he likes you."

Damn. Spotted. Although he's not going to wonder why GIR thought he liked Zim. Or why he didn't think they'd spot him while he was standing out in plain sight, in the middle of the road. Logic is lost to the obsessed, you remember.

Around then Zim had also spotted the taser...

And what do you do when you see a taser?

Yes, that's right, children - you run like fuck.

"Dammit! Come back!" Dib yelled, running after them. Rather, him, as Zim was still holding GIR's doggy ear in a deathgrip, so the disguised SIR flapped in the wind behind him, obviously enjoying it.

The chase ended up, as it almost always did, at Zim's house. Still running, the little Irken leapt up and drop-kicked the door open, and thusly kicked Robo-Dad's fool robot head off his fool robot shoulders, where it rolled away about ten feet and smacked into the wall. While that would have been enjoyable in any other circumstance, it distracted Zim, and Dib then charged in and pounced on him from behind. The two, wrestling and kicking, rolled across the floor and hit the couch, ending up with Zim on top.

"Ha!"

Dib calmly pulled out the taser. "Aha."

"Oh...shit."

After which about 775,000 volts of electricity entered Zim's little Irken body through his face. The screaming was a little irritating, but his seizures were kind of funny. Then he fell back, fried, with his tongue sticking out of his mouth, lightly smoking. Dib sat up and poked him, putting the Stun Master back in his pocket.

"Did I kill him?" He wondered aloud, out of curiosity.

GIR came back from wherever he'd gone in that moment. He glanced toward Zim, tilted his head, then giggled.

"Smells like beans!!" He crowed, and promptly bit the other's fried head.

Whether it was the bite or just him getting over it, Zim leapt to his feet, all smuglike. He was still smoking, and GIR was still attached to his head, but he still looked smug. Sorta. In a toasty way.

"Ha! Pathetic Earth-beast! You tried to kill me, and you failed! Straight to the brain, and Zim still lives!" He then launched into the classic fit of maniacal laughter. Dib had half a mind to zap him again.

"Well, actually, I wasn't.." Still laughing. "...whatever. I'm goin' home."

With Zim still laughing, Dib sighed and trudged off, walking on the door and outside the house. Several feet from the house, the laughter stopped. It just.. cut off. He glanced back, hesitating. It was silent, back there. No GIR sounds or anything.

Then realized he probably didn't care and kept walking, mulling over how the night probably could have gone better.

The clock in the clock shop then said 2:30 AM.

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Whatever one might have summed up that little taser venture as, the next skool day was two times its nameless adjective. Which, in most cases, would have to be the word "weird". It could be "odd", "freaky", "bizarre", or "disturbing", but "weird" just sat the best on it.

Zim was quiet.

And he wasn't incapacitated or dead.

The entire class felt the same way: it was unnatural, this quietness. It almost verged on silence, which would make it even more disturbing. No yelling, no screaming, no insults, just Zim, sitting there, twiddling his thumbs and staying so very, very quiet. What made it stranger was that Zim himself seemed to find it disturbing that his own voice wasn't coming out of his mouth at a dangerously high decibel level. He didn't trust himself to speak, for fear of finding his voice meek and quiet, quite unZimlike. And because of that, the rest of the class was beginning to think he was mute.

Eventually, one child spoke up. "It's the apocalypse."

The rest of the kids gasped and stared at not the doomsayer, but Zim. He was still quiet, making the statement horribly plausible.

"The apocalypse!" The kid reiterated in a high-pitched, panicked shriek. "It's beginning! Next thing you know, Dib won't be crazy! Zim will not only be quiet, but NICE! Ms Bitters will wear PINK! The skool will be CLEAN! Lunch will be EDIBLE! THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT IS DOOOOMED!!!"

Ms Bitters raised an eyebrow and said to nothing in particular, "Remove the child. There won't be any panicked shrieking in my classroom."

The wall to the kids' left opened up by some unholy mechanism, and out leapt five guys in tight leather recon suits with infrared goggles eclipsing their eyes. They made the normal secret agent motions: weapons drawn, looking around shiftily, expecting anything. Then one of them grabbed the kid and disappeared within the circle of the remaining four, and another threw a smoke bomb at the ground. When it cleared, they were still there, but they jumped back into the wall, which soon sealed itself up.

Regardless of that, the kids were still seriously considering the other kid's warning of the apocalypse.

And Zim was still quiet.

After a while, it turned out that he was just as distracting to Ms Bitters quiet as yelling his fool head off. At least if he was yelling, she could coolly burninate him with some smart remark. See? It was so distracting she wasn't even thinking in sensible terms.

"Zim," She growled. "Your silence is disturbing. Go to the nurse immediately."

Still disturbingly silent, Zim went. For a moment, he looked as though he was going to break that silence, getting the kids' hopes up about everything being normal again... but he just got down and walked out. The room remained silent, suffocatingly so. They were waiting for him to come back and be fixed and yelling again. Not because they liked his yelling, but because it was "normal". They like normal.

Meanwhile, Dib was observing all of this, equally disturbed.

So, like he sometimes did in times of crisis or serious mind-fuck, he started a mental conversation with himself.

Although, unbeknownst to him, only half was in his head.

"This probably has something to do with last night... doesn't it?"

It might.

"And if it does, it would be all my fault if it gets worse, wouldn't it?"

Holy crap - it would.

"But how exactly could Zim being quiet get any worse than it already is?"

How the hell should I know?

"Perhaps he'll go permanently mute."

Maybe.

"Perhaps he'll get nice, like that kid said."

But it's not the apocalypse. Zim's just being stupid. He'll get over it.

"What if he doesn't? What if something horrible happens because of this?"

Define "horrible".

"Well... Zim's head explodes and takes out a nuclear plant. Or he snaps and starts taking out his rage at not being able to speak properly on hapless humans, garroting them with their own insides and taking their skulls home for trophies."

Hmmm... horribler?

"The apocalypse. Niceness and eatableness and SANITY."

I'm not insane! I'm having a perfectly normal conversation with my conscience. Now tell me that's not sane.

A moment passed, in which he observed pretty much the whole class staring at him. Again.

Shit. That wasn't sane at all. Or smart.

"I... said that out loud, didn't I?"

The kids nodded.

"Sooo... about where did you guys start listening?"

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Blech. I hate my head.

AND YET AGAIN! ANOTHER FIC THAT IS NOT AVARICE OR PLINTH! IT'S LIKE THEY'RE TRYING TO KILL THEM! WOE!

-coughs-

The 'straight to the brain thing' was stolen shamelessly from Nny. Because he's cool like that.

Ahem.

You know what to do.