A/N: This is, like, my least favorite chapter but I don't know why. If I knew why I could fix it. Anyone know what's wrong with it?

ho-stile
adj.
1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of an enemy.
2. Feeling or showing enemy or ill will; antagonistic.
3. Unfavorable to health or well-being; inhospitable or adverse.
n.
1. An antagonistic person or thing.
2. An enemy in warfare.

Loathing
Unadulterated loathing
For your face, your voice, your clothing
Let's just say
I loathe it all!
~Wicked the Musical, 'What Is This Feeling'

10/19/02

7:13 AM

Dib padded into the bathroom, yawning. He brushed his teeth, used the toilet, washed his hands, and took the bandage off his arm. He studied the healing bite between his wrist and elbow. Then he screamed.

Within seconds Gaz was pounding on the door, yelling "What's the deal, Dib?"

"Nothing!" Dib said, breathing faster. "Go eat your cereal!"

He leaned over the bite mark on his arm. It was turning green. Infection? It didn't hurt. It wasn't hot. He didn't have a fever. It did itch...

But there was something else about the green patch of skin that bothered him... something looked horribly familiar about it, and Dib raised his arm to about an inch away from his eyes, peering at the patch of skin.

The patch was not just green, it had a strange... familiar knobbly texture to it, it almost looked like scales.

Dib's stomach dropped and his pupils shrank to pinpoints. It wasn't possible. But what if...

Zim had scales.

Zim had scales this color.

Exactly this color.

"NOOOOOOOO!!!" Dib cried.

7:24 AM

Zim hopped out of his Voot, whistling. Things had not seemed this good since he was first assigned to Earth.

He rubbed his hands together, the rubber gloves making little squeaky noises as they slid against each other. His findings about the surroundings of this planet had been most wonderful indeed. At first he hadn't been able to believe his good luck, then he'd remembered he was just lucky that way, cuz... he was Zim.

Right?

Yeah, whatever. The Tallest would be so happy when he told them. When Zim had gone out scouting, he'd discovered Earth was on the edge of a foreign legion of planets called the Galactic Federation, which the Irken Empire knew very little about and had wanted more information on for years. Now, Zim was in a prime position to deliver this information. He'd be so loved after this... the Tallest might even build him a statue... invite him to their Ifssseekar parties... set him up with a female... or two...

"Hey, Dib's here," the computer announced, jolting Zim out of his reverie.

"What?" he cried.

"Yeah, he's been banging on the door for about ten minutes. He says you did something to his arm."

"Did something to his arm," Zim grumbled, donning his disguise and heading for one of the platforms leading downstairs. Might as well get it over with. "Big fat filthy deal! Where do you think this toxin came from, huh? I'll give him something to yell about..."

Upstairs, Dib was immediately audible yelling "Come on, Zim! Come on! I know you're in there!"

Zim scowled and marched toward the front door. He hoped the dumb kid wound up dying of gangrene.

"Yes, yes!" he called, opening the door with a glower. "What the slime do you want from me?"

"You already know what I want, Zim!" the meat boy snapped in his obnoxious voice.

"No I don't!" Zim said, putting his hands on his hips. "Why are you bothering me? Shouldn't you be watching rapid successions of drawings set to audio?"

Dib blinked.

"You know, on the TV," Zim said, rolling his eyes.

"Oh. I don't have time to watch cartoons, Zim!"

"And why not?" Zim asked, leaning back and folding his arms over his chest, frowning.

"It's Friday..." Oh, right, skool. He bared his teeth. "Anyway, I need a spit sample from you," Dib said, pointing. "Your bite did something weird to my arm! I'm on to you, Zim!"

Zim leaned forward, raising his eyebrows. Was this true? It would be pretty gratifying if Dib's arm fell off or something equally horrible. Seeing as how Zim was, y'know, dying by inches because of that stupid bite. It was Dib's fault he'd gotten bit anyway. Self-defense.

What he said was- "A spit sample, you say?"

"Yeah! I think there's some kinda mutagen in your saliva!" Dib said, nodding emphatically.

Irkens did not posess mutagens, but whatever. "Well, heck, okay," Zim said with a shrug.

Dib blinked. "Really? You're just gonna give me a sample?"

"Yeah, sure, why not?"

"Really?"

"Yeah, okay. Stay right there." Zim cocked his head to the side, studying his enemy. The dumb kid was just standing there waiting like he'd been told.

Zim spat at him and burst out laughing.

"Oh, come on! You walked right into that one!" he cawed.

Dib's lip curled to expose clenched teeth. A gob of bluish alien spit was sliding down his forehead.

"Yeah. That's real nice."

"But come on!" Zim said, holding his palms out. "Come on! Huh? Huh? You wanted a spit sample, huh? And I gave you one, right? Right? Geddit? I mean, come on!"

"Yeah, I get it, Zim," Dib grumbled, wiping the saliva off his face and holding as much of it as he could cupped in his hand.

"VICTORY!" Zim yelled, throwing his fists in the air. He took up a battle crouch. "Now get away from my house!"

"Okay, fine, why not?" Dib said, narrowing his eyes. "I got what I came for, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, sure, have fun with my spit," Zim said, rolling his eyes.

Dib turned and stalked off.

"And don't come back!" Zim called, slamming the door. "HA! I sure showed him!"

He marched towards the toilet. "What on this stupid mud ball did Dib want that for, anyway? What can he do with my spit?" He began to hear himself speak without putting conscious thought into it. "Besides make an evil Zim clone that serves the humans!" He stopped dead. "Wait, what? AAH!"

He bent over, clutching at his face, his eyes widening. "No, he can't do that, can he? The Dib can't have technology that advanced! Then why did he want Irken saliva?"

7:47 AM

No mutagen found, said the little pop-up box.

Dib clicked 'OK' and the box disappeared. He waited. No more boxes showed up.

He started clicking around. Nothing.

Dib stood up and began pacing again.

"Okay," he mused. "So I know Zim doesn't have anything bad in his saliva- or at least, nothing the computer can detect. There could be a difference. Now what?"

"Dib!" a loud voice hollered from outside the room. "The skool bus is here!"

"Okay!" Dib called, standing up with a sigh. Darn skool. Of course learning flawed things from idiot teachers and being taunted by mobs of unintelligent children was more important than SAVING THE DANG WORLD.

8:21 AM

Mr. Valdez was a big, beefy man in combat fatigues. Instead of really teaching the class, he stood there and shouted about how people's heads looked when they exploded.

Dib didn't really want to hear about how people's heads looked when they exploded. At all. Still, this wasn't any worse than last year's teacher and her 'DOOM's. Dib had a feeling he'd never forget Miss Bitters. He wasn't sure she'd even been human.

Anyway, he was doodling notes to himself in his notepad instead of listening. Dib liked to talk things out to himself when he was thinking over a problem, and he couldn't do that during skool so he wrote instead.

At the moment his notes read-

My arms growing scales at an alarming rate. I've cheked them on my computer and its real irken DNA! But it's not Zims DNA, thank goodness. It has seven alleels in common, though. Man, I can't believ Irken genes even have alleels.
Even if I'm not becoming a clone of Zim, which would be realy, realy fnasty, I realy dont want Irken DNA on my arm. So Im going to have to get it off. Maybe it can be surgicaly removed. Would it grow ba

He stopped there because the door suddenly banged open. He looked up to see Zim standing there with his shoulders thrown back and his lips pressed together. His scales were flushed dark green.

Dib found that interesting no matter how many times he saw it. Over the past year of observing Zim, he'd found that his skin cycled through different shades of green according to mood. It made it even easier to tell when he was lying.

"You're late, maggot!" Mr. Valdez barked. "Siddown!"

Zim did so, every movement controlled. Glaring straight ahead at nothing in particular, he began to flex his claws on the top of the desk, making a nasty scraping sound.

It seemed to Dib that he was sharpening them in preparation for using them as weapons and he shuddered and continued to write.

Whats up with him? Oh well.
About the scales on my arm... are the changes strictly dermatalogical? Or am I realy turning into an irken? Hmm. Ill need to press Zim for more information.
I think Ill do that right now. Ha.

He turned the page and wrote Hey, Zim! Does your speecies's bite have any mutagenic properties to it that you know about?
Then he tore the page out and threw it to Zim. (Mr. Valdez was talking about hand grenades, he wouldn't notice.)

A few minutes later, the reply came back-

NO CARRiER

What? Ugh... stupid-alien humor, probably.

Dib sighed and wrote out another note. I hate you too, but I need information, Zim. Come on! You hav to know something about your own biology! Are you venimous?

NO CARRiER

Anser the qwestion, Zim! For Pete's sake!

A few minutes later, Dib recieved a crude drawing of a stick figure labeled 'DiB' hanging from the gallows. Nice. Real mature.

He fired back a drawing of Zim being eaten by a Velocioraptor. (Come to think of it, Zim sort of looked like a Velocioraptor.)

Zim returned something too gory to be described to discerning readers, and this went on for quite a while until Mr. Valdez finally caught on, at which point he praised the boys for being so violent and tacked their drawings up on the wall.

Dib spent the time until the lunch bell fervently praying for a new teacher.

12:12 PM

Dib was quietly eating his mayonnaise and... something unidentifiable, when a tray of food crashed down on his head.

He leapt to his feet and socked Zim in the gut. He reeled back, wheezing.

"What was that for?" Dib demanded.

Zim gasped, then glared at him. "You hit me!"

"You dumped a cafeteria tray on my head!" Even Zim didn't do crap like that for no reason! It could be a completely insane reason, but he still needed a reason!

"You're ugly!" Zim snapped.

His fists clenched. "I am not!"

"Are too!"

"You're ugly!"

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"I am not UGLY!"

"Shut up!" Dib snapped, and stormed off to the bathroom. He went to the sink and began to scrub the cafeteria food out of his hair.
He was about halfway through when

"MY MOUTH STILL TASTES LIKE FEET!"

Dib jumped. Zim was standing beside him, glaring.

"Okay?" Dib demanded.

Zim cast a quick, furtive glance around the room, ensuring it was empty, then whipped off his wig and stared cleaning his antennae with his claws, kind of like a squirrel. Dib had seen him do this when he was nervous. Hmm.

Zim replaced his wig and said in a low tone "And Irkens aren't mutagenic, you fool. If they were you'd know by now." His tone darkened. "Trust me. You'd know."

Dib cast his own furtive glance around the room, then pulled up his sleeve. "Oh, yeah? Look at this!" he hissed.

Zim looked away, scowling. "I didn't do that. You probably did it yourself, stupid. You're stupid. Yeah. That's you."

"It's where you bit me!"

"So? I don't know what's wrong with you! Leave me alone!"

"How would I put scales on my arm, Zim?"

Zim sighed, the kind of 'my life is so unfair' sigh rarely heard from anyone over the age of 17, and grabbed Dib's arm. He once more looked around the room, then pushed up Dib's sleeve and gave the scales on his arm a bored glance.

"Yes, puberty. Wonderful. Now you can enjoy watching everyone grow taller than you. I really hope you enjoy it, Dib. Now shut up!"

Some things Zim said could simply not be replied to. "But how'd they get here?"

"You don't know? Now who doesn't know their own biology?" Zim snapped.

"I do know my own biology! And humans don't grow scales, Zim!" he cried. "Now, if only everyone around me could figure that out!"

"If only, if only," Zim said, tossing his head.

"Shut up! Why would I be growing scales if my species doesn't normally have the ability to produce them, huh? Huh?!"

Zim turned away, clutching the counter and staring at himself in the mirror. "I already told you I don't know! What do you want from Zim? You already made me sick!"

"I never did that!"

"Yes you did!"

"I did not! When were you even sick?"

Zim didn't take his gaze away from the mirror. "I meant you make me sick! With your stupid ugly FACE! And your smeelll! I'm not weak."

"What are you afraid of?" Dib demanded. (Zim's skin was more yellow than green, which Dib knew meant fear. He knew fear and anger pretty well.) "Because if it's me, that's fine, and if there are FBI agents closing in on you, that's fine too, and really I guess anything scaring you is fine by me- but not if there are other, bigger aliens trying to take over Earth, or-"

"I'm not afraid of you."

"You are too."

"I'm not, Dib." As he got even more yellowy.

Dib frowned, studying him closely. Zim's face was slightly puffy and his scales were all sticking up in odd angles. "Wait a minute..." Suddenly it was there, just within reach, he knew he knew what was going on here but he just couldn't think of it.

Zim pulled back from his gaze, scowling and impatiently flattening down his scales with the heel of his hand. A few came loose. "What? What? I have a skin condition." Dib pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's this stupid wet air." Wait, he was serious. "I hate it! And I'm out of paste, so- wait, why am I telling you this?!" He frowned. "MY MOUTH STILL TASTES LIKE FEET!"

Dib blinked, then decided not to answer. "You really don't know what's wrong with my arm?"

"No I don't! I don't care either!"

"Okay then," Dib muttered. "Then I guess the fact that it happened right after you bit me doesn't-"

"I don't freaking know! I don't go around biting humans and studying their reactions! For good reason, too. It's a health hazard." And he clutched at his stomach, scowling. "And even if I did know, I wouldn't tell you!"

"All right, fine," Dib grumbled.

"I'm not sick!"

"I didn't ask if you were, Zim."

"Well, I'm not. So you can't exploit it!" He grappled in the air with his claws. "You couldn't do that anyway, because you are LAAAME!"

"I am not!"

"You are too!"

Dib threw his hands into the air. "Okay, forget it! Look, I'm going back to lunch."

"Fine," Zim grumbled. "Shoo."

Dib shoo'd. Zim didn't follow, and he never did come back to class.

7:32 PM

The inside of Zim's base was considerably messier than usual. GIR had been allowed to do whatever he wanted all day as long as he didn't pester Zim while he was wokring on the antidote, and 'whatever GIR wanted' usually didn't involve being tidy. Usually, of course, Zim cleaned the house, but he'd been busy working.

At the moment, however, he wasn't working- he was sitting on the couch next to a big pile of something unidentifiable that smelled REALLY nasty, hugging one knee and pressing his antennae to his head.

"Computer, contact the Tallest," he said in a carefully neutral tone.

The computer sighed and static fuzzed across the screen. Once the white noise dissipated, Zim perked up considerably at the sight of Tallest Red and Purple.

They looked nervous, their antennae drooping and their skins pale and yellowy. Their eyes were wide and fearful. Aw, they worked so hard running the Empire. Zim was happy to be the bright spot in their day.

"Sirs!" he said, saluting. His skin (which had been a pasty yellow) began to mottle with a slightly bluish green color.

"Yes, Zim, what do you want?" Red said curtly.

Zim hopped to his feet and folded his arms behind his back, his small chest inflating. His troubles already seemed much less important.

"Just reporting in, sirs. The mission is going fine." Except for his being, well, poisoned. "There's been a- mild snag," he revised. "Nothing I can't handle." His squeedly spooch cramped up and he fought himself not to shudder. No, no, he could get through one simple conversation. These were the Tallest.

"That's nice, Zim," Purple said in an utterly lackluster tone. He must be very tired from dealing with all the Irken rabble that wasn't as smart as Zim.

"Also," he said, his eyes lighting up. "I got your announcement."

Red frowned. "What announcement?"

"The one about exploring the space around the planet!"

Purple's eyebrows furrowed. "You got that announcement? How'd you get that?"

"You sent it to me!"

"No we-"

"I acted on it right away. I discovered this morning that this putrid planet is right on the edge of the Galactic Federation."

Now they looked interested. "That weird place where everyone thinks they can get along without a dictator?" Red said.

"The very same," Zim nodded. "I've taken the liberty of organizing a little foray into the Federation. Just me and GIR." If GIR deigned to show up. The stupid idiot. "I'm sure the information we bring back will be most useful."

The Tallest traded dubious looks. "Well," Purple said. "You know you... don't have to do that, Zim."

"We... need you on Earth," Red added.

"I can do both," Zim said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "The mission on Earth is under control, my Tallest. I can leave it for a day."

"Oh... kay... give us a minute, Zim," Red said, and an ad for Shloogorgh's appeared on the screen.

The two Tallest began to converse rapidly in Irken, which at that time was kind of like a secret language. A while ago, Irken Paks had been converted to speak Vortian as a universal trade language, as most of the species they conquered were incapable of pronouncing the Irken tongue's wide range of clicking, hissing and shrieking sounds. Now few Irkens bothered to speak their native language. If they wanted to know it they had to memorize it with their meat-brains.

Zim had always prided himself on speaking fluent Irken (in fact, he often unconsciously spoke English and Vortian in the strange patterns of emphasis and shrieking used by said language- also he used it to cuss in). He could understand what Red and Purple were saying now.
Red was saying: "Should we let him go? I don't want those people alerted to the whole of the Irken Empire. We want them unsuspecting in case we want to Invade them later."

"Yeah, but what if they take care of him for-"

He replied in a chirp- "I would be quite stealthy, my Tallest! No one would even know I was there."

There was a pause, then the fast-food ad disappeared.

"You speak Irken?" Purple said, blinking.

He nodded. "Quite well, my Tallest!" He preferred it to the Vortian trade language, actually...

Their skins darkened briefly. Eh... they were probably thinking of all the idiots who couldn't speak Irken.

"The thing is, Zim," Purple said. "We don't want the Federation knowing we're here."

"Let alone the Alliance and their... 'rangers'," Red added.

"I wouldn't go near the Alliance, my Tallest!" he said brightly. "As for the rangers, even if I did see one, they can't possibly be a match for us Irkens!"

"True," Red admitted. Everyone knew Irkens were the best species around, with the best technology and the best combat skills and the best... best stuff.

"Look, Zim," Purple said. "You're really supposed to be staying on Earth."

Zim clenched his hands into fists, his skin going grayish. "But sirs! I could bring the Empire so much glory-"

"No, Zim," Red said firmly. "We have other scouts to send to the Federation. You stay where you are."

"But-"

"No buts! Good-bye, Zim."

And they cut the transmission.

Zim folded his arms over his chest, his skin darkening with anger. Scouts. Zim could do a better job with his eyes closed. He was going to the Federation and the Tallest would be glad when he brought back a wealth of information! They'd be proud!

In the meantime, though, he was still poisoned. He went back downstairs. Stupid Earth kid.

A/N: Oh, btw, if you're wondering what scaly!color-changing!fanon!Irkens look like- it's pretty close to canon. There's links in my profile to pics on my dA account, if you have a lot of free time.