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Sublime Awakenings	By : Kailean Category: Comics > Squee! Views: 1478 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Squee!, JTHM, or Invader Zim, nor any of the characters from these works. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 42
- 43
- 44
Sublime Awakenings: Chapter 43

Pepito sighed to himself as he made his way down the stairs, fresh from the shower and, for the moment, in a loose fitting, cotton ensemble that brushed softly against his skin. He made a quick detour to the kitchen, fishing around in the bread cabinet for a bag of Firey Nachos and grabbing a glass bottle of Poop Cola from the fridge. In Mexico he had acquired a taste for the local variety, which was made with real sugar instead of the high fructose corn syrup that everything in the States now seemed to contain as a staple. He had suggested to his father that the family's chain of restaurants, Casta Diablo, carry it, so that now he had a near constant supply in the home.

Flopping down onto the couch in the living room, he propped his socked feet up on the coffee table as he popped the top and took a deep drink of the icy and refreshing beverage before leaning down so it could join his feet. He signed again. He only had a few more hours. Then his mother would be home, around five thirty or six, followed in another hour or so by his father, and he would have to leave before then. For two weeks he had been avoiding his father, avoiding his inevitable punishment.

So far his father had said nothing about his lending the key to Todd, but when he had first received it, on his thirteenth birthday, it had come with a rather stern warning about such things. And there was no conceivable way that the King of the Underworld had missed the shiny amulet that had glistened against the boy's bare chest on the elementary skool lawn. The amulet which he still hadn't reacquired.

While he had been spending as much time as possible away from home, at skool, which Todd had yet to return to, and then at the homes of people whom he might loosely call friends or causal lovers, he had still managed to call the other almost daily. But Todd had never been available, or more likely willing, to talk to him, and none of those calls had been returned. The few times that he had actually attempted to visit, he had been told that Todd didn't want to see anyone. It seemed that the boy was trying to avoid him, just as he was trying to avoid his father, and under the circumstances Pepito couldn't really blame him.

It had all been too much, too fast: all those revelations about himself, the kissing, the bit where he had practically begged Todd for his soul.... He knew that the nightmare version of himself, the one that had offered, and then insisted rather forcefully when refused, to take away all of Todd's guilt, regrets and fear had to have been based on something, some impression that he had made upon the other boy. And perhaps it had struck a little too close to home, for Todd and even himself.

Groaning at his own stupidity, the Antichrist pulled open the bag of chips, raising some spicy goodness to his lips as his other hand gripped the remote to turn on the TV. Lazily, he munched his dinner, surfing the many channels, some of which where still including Todd, that Leon kid and the explosion in their news bulletins. Finally, he settled on a rerun of something acceptable on the Scifi channel.

It was half way over when Woofles came trotting in and decided to lunge onto the couch, landing in a satisfied heap in Pepito's lap.

“Ouff! Oh, Woofles, you're getting heavy...and fat!” The demonic teen pushed the large half-wolf off of him and onto the seat to his right. Ignoring her growl at his observation, he brought the last chip toward his mouth, only to have it snatched away before he had time to so much as blink. “Hey! You don't even like Firey Nachos!”

The hell-doggie chomped down on her revenge happily before curling up next to her favorite person.

Pepito huffed in indignation before caving to the dog's affection with a half smile. “Whatever.” He downed the rest of his cola before reaching for his book bag on the floor, rummaging for a pack of Cancer Lites. When he finally found it, he pulled out a stick of wrapped toxins, lighting it via a small flame from one finger. Pyrokinesis was one of his favorite powers, though he hardly ever got to use it.

Woofles' ears stood on end and she tilted her head at Pepito's actions.

“What? I'm nervous, okay? The smoke will clear long before Mother and Father return.”

“I wouldn't count on that, Son.”

The teenager froze mid-drag at the sound of his father's voice.

“Pepito Adrian Diablo, you put that cigarette out this instant! And get your feet off the coffee table!”

His eyes widened further when his mother's distinctive pitch was added to the mix, and the cigarette fell from his lips, nearly burning a hole in his sleeping pants. Quickly scooping it up, he enclosed it between two damp fingers before turning around to see both parents standing just behind the couch. Neither looked too pleased. “Father! Mother, I-”

“What have we told you about smoking, Pepito? Especially in our home?” Rosemary's hand made its way easily to her hip as she fell into a familiar stance.

“Uh, that it is forbidden, at least until I am old enough to move out, but...how long have you been there?”

Señor Diablo shrugged. “A while. I put us both under an invisibility spell.”

“But-”

“And my car. Your mother's is in the garage. We both took off early today in hopes of catching your illusive presence at home.”

“...oh...” Pepito cringed. “Why did you do that?”

“Because, young man, you've hardly spent a good, solid night at home since that incident with the skool!” His mother crossed her arms over her chest, voice exasperated. “I know that we've been more lenient with you since...,” she paused, unwilling to acknowledge the induction of her only child into the Satanic religion, “since you became a teenager, but you're still not a grown up yet. We expect you to respect our rules until you are. You know good and well that your curfew is one o'clock and that you have to tell us when you're not coming home.”

When his son said nothing, Señor Diablo spoke up again in an authoritative tone. “Well, what have you to say for yourself, Pepito?”

“I'm sorry?” the half-demon offered feebly. It was strange how the Devil and his good Christian wife could work so well together at blindsiding him. But there had to be more to this. His father's job wasn't the kind that one “took off early” from. Pepito figured that he was probably enjoying watching him squirm, avoiding the true issue until the opportune moment, until Pepito believed that he was in the clear.

“That is nice, Son, but I'm afraid that 'sorry' just isn't going to cut it this time.” Señor Diablo followed his wife, both of them making their way around the couch to stand in front of their offspring.

The TV clicked itself off, and Pepito gulped as the tension seemed to mount. “Yes, sir.”

His father continued his reprimand with dramatic flourish. “For showing your mother and I such disrespect, you are grounded for one week. There will be no leaving of the house unless one of us approves it. There will be no video games, no unsupervised phone calls and no cigarettes!” A long-fingered hand was held out, palm up, to receive the last item immediately.

Pepito handed the smokes over with a sour look, but dared not defy either parent. “Yes, Father.”

Smiling broadly at the teenager's defeated and still uneasy demeanor, the Tsar of Hell exchanged a meaningful look with his wife. “I am willing to reconsider this punishment on one condition, aside from the cigarettes, of course. You must help me in the basement tonight, after dinner.” He eyed the empty junk food remains critically, knowing that the likes of it was probably what his son had been subsisting on of late.

Biting his lower lip in thought, the Antichrist weighted his options carefully. While he hated working with most of the damned, that punishment would be over in a matter of hours instead of dragging out all week long. “I'll take the basement, I suppose.”

“Very well, Son, but if this happens again, you will be grounded for two weeks, during which you will spend all of your free time in the basement. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Father. I understand. It won't happen again.”

“Good. See that it doesn't. Tomorrow is the funeral of Todd's parents, and if I have to track you down and drag you to it, I will be highly displeased.”

“The funeral is tomorrow?” Pepito felt a little sick in the pit of his stomach, wondering if Todd was upset, wondering why his father would care about such a thing.

“Todd's counselor called a few days ago, darling, but we haven't been able to speak with you since then.” Rosemary frowned, taking a seat to the left of her son as her voice instantly became softer. “You still haven't talked to him?”

The boy shook his head, even letting it lull forward for a few seconds before meeting the blue-gray eyes that matched his mother's dress suite. “I don't really think Todd wants to see me right now.”

“I'm sure it's not what you think, honey.” She reached out a reassuring hand that landed delicately on his shoulder. “He's probably just upset about his parents. Everyone deals with loss in their own way. What's important now is that you be there for him as much as you can, while respecting that. Okay?”

“Yeah, Mom.” He gave her a half-hearted smile.

“Son,” Señor Diablo sighed, “while I share your mother's hopes in regards to this situation, you must be prepared for a negative reaction. You were well aware of the risks before telling him about us, and Todd has always been a flighty one. I'm sure that you realize how serious, and how dangerous, this could become.”

Pepito sat up straight, his body tensing at the implications of what his sire was saying, at the implications of why his father was accompanying him to the funeral. “Father, let me handle this, please! There is no need for drastic action! I know Todd, and even if he no longer wishes to be my friend, I am certain that he won't be a threat. He wouldn't tell anyone. And, if this is about the key, I will get it back tomorrow, I promise.”

“Juan, you can't be serious!” Rosemary's hand left Pepito's shoulder to find his hand as her eyes filled with worry. “Todd isn't dangerous! Even if he did tell, no one would believe him; he's been in a mental institution for years, for God's sake. And I'm sure that, if he is having second thoughts about being friends with Pepito, given enough time, our son will find a way to change his mind. You know how fond of him Pepito is!”

Señor Diablo's hands rose before his face, palms out to his family. “Enough! You both misunderstand me! This situation is quite serious, not because Todd's is a threat to you, Son, but because you need him now. You can not afford to let that friendship dissolve. And there is no reason to collect the key. The key is with its rightful owner.”

“What?” Pepito stared forward as relief seemed to soak in through his every pore, too bewildered to even decide which part of what his father was saying was most confusing. But at least it sounded like it meant that Todd was safe after all.

“When you gave it to him, it became his. It belongs to him; he belongs to it. Even if he gave it back to you, it would still be his.”

“But I thought-”

“That you were supposed to keep it safe, to keep it to yourself? Yes, I had to tell you that. You had to understand how important it was and what it could do, so that it would take someone deserving of your care and trust to bare it. You see, Son, the key was always looking for its next holder. Your Revolution will only be throughly realized with the help of the Prophet, the poetic vision behind your political force.

“The current system is hardly perfect. Human beings weigh themselves down with useless dogma, excreting the spiritual equivalent of shit into the ether. This negativity must be drained constantly just to maintain the level of stupidity and pettiness that this world contains by people like Johnny C. And when people die, most of them are still so trapped in the mindset that produces the negativity that they must be stockpiled in the lower levels of Hell in a mostly vain attempt to teach them the errors of that point of view, that mental and spiritual failing.”

Staring at him blankly, Pepito tried to process that his father had been lying to him about the key since he was seven, tried to get a firm grasp on what all of this meant for Todd. Everything about the many flaws in the system was already highly familiar at this point, as it was pretty much his father's version of complaining about work.

“Well, obviously, this system needs an overhaul.” Señor Diablo quickly summed up the point of what he realized must have been an old lesson for the Antichrist before diving into the newer information. “That is what your Revolution is. The lock and the key, in this case, yourself and Todd, must work together to bring it about. You must change human society, make more people see the truth that this world is perfect just the way it is. You must stop the endless loop of ignorance and scared, clouded minds. Only then will the Gates of Hell be opened for most of those pitiful fools, both living and dead. Only then will they be able to leave the negativity behind and walk between the worlds, to choose their own reality, to find their true selves.

“In the past, the Prophet was chosen ahead of time by the Administration. Unfortunately, that method didn't seem to be working very well. After the last time it failed horribly, long before you were born, I was able to convince them to allow you to make that choice yourself in hopes that you and they might be more compatible.”

“Wait,” Pepito raised a hand to pause his father's explanation. “so there have been other Antichrists? Other people with my job? And now Todd is just as marked by destiny as me, just because I.... Father, that doesn't seem right. What if he doesn't want to be the Prophet? He...he's always been pretty freaked out by, well, me and my purpose.”

“I am afraid so, Pepito. But none have had the advantages that you've been provided with. None of them have had your upbringing. And none of them have been able to choose their Prophet. Your chances of success are much higher; however, they do hinge largely upon your friend's willingness to accept the key and upon both of your willingness to work together. It will only bond with one person in a lifetime.”

The Antichrist sunk back into the cushions of the couch, shoulders drooping under the weight of what he had unwittingly done. “How...how am I going to tell him about this?”

“You're not. Not yet. He still has a imperative decision to make regarding your bid for his soul.”

------------------POV SHIFT!: The Next Morning----------------------

Morning sunlight pored in through open blinds, illuminating dust particles that drifted across the bedroom. Lying on his stomach on a double bed decked out in rainbow colors, Todd looked up from his notebook to send some of those specks swirling in almost random harmony with a hefty puff of air. He watched them for a few seconds before scribbling on the pages once again.

Since he had left the hospital, the teenager had been writing down as much as he could remember of his experiences in the dreamscape, from the horror of killing his parents to the oneness of oblivion. He thought that he had gotten most of it on paper, even the meager bits and pieces of whatever had happened after Zim's computer went blank. That part was still extremely fuzzy, but he had made some small amount of process over the last few weeks.

The bed was surrounded by piles of books related to the sublime, most of them on the topic of Romantic literature. Shmee had mentioned the word enough that it must be important, and, as it turned out, the sublime was a very good concept for what he had experienced when he had stepped through the arch. More than that, it was also his biggest clue to the man that had walked in front of the sun. That man had talked about the sublime as well, and Todd had eventually read some poems by William Blake that had actually given him flashes of memory in which some of the same words were spoken with little alteration. In those memories, his visitor also resembled the one photo that his old lap top had managed to turn up under a search for the poet.

Still, something was missing, something important, because he had no idea why the dead, Victorian man would choose to call on him from the boundless void that lay beyond all realities. Yes, they had both experienced the sublime, they both wrote and they were both considered schizophrenic by a good portion of modern psychology. But none of that gave him a clue as to the reason, if there even was one. Of course, it could all have been an elaborate construct produced by his subconscious. It wouldn't be the first time.

“Squee, open up! You better not have papered the walls with Bible pages in there!”

The boy looked up from his notebook once again as the sound of Letta's muffled voice drove him from his thoughts.

The door knob jiggled as metal tapped against metal before the blond girl burst into the room with a straightened paper clip in hand. She smirked at Squee's surprised look. “You thought I couldn't get into my own room?”

“I thought you might take the locked door as a hint. And just for the record, I would never rip apart a book for wallpaper...even though this color does get kind of sickening after a while.” He stuck his tongue out at the bubblegum pink wallpaper that was an obvious remnant of the young woman's childhood. Normally, when he spent the night there, it was in the guest room, which Leon currently occupied.

“Well, maybe that wouldn't be a problem if you ever took a break from looking at it. You know, if you maybe left the room for more than an hour a day of required therapy. Or, I don't know, what if you left the house; wouldn't that be wild?”

“I'm not going out there. Not yet.” Ever since his run in with the sublime, Todd had felt more open, more exposed than usual. It was as if his ego had never recovered completely from being stripped from his soul. And now that soul was out in the open, visible to himself and anyone else perceptive enough to look. Though Todd Castil was gradually reemerging, the thought of social interaction seemed like going into battle without any armor.

Letta sighed at the expected response, the one she had been arguing against variations of for two weeks now. “Todd, you have to. The funeral is today, remember?”

“Today? It's Monday already?” Though he had still managed to do it, lying, dishonesty of any kind really, had become more of a task than before. Then, it had been barely any effort at all, but after the sublime, it was like mental exercise that he kept having to remind himself the point of. And it currently did have a very compelling point. Still, it would have eventually become apparent that his parents were not going to be found. Leon had told Brian about rooms containing possibly hundreds of people, and last week Todd had collaborated, claiming that his memories of the event were just then resurfacing. He had described as many people as he could remember seeing, along with revealing that his own parents had perished in the skool as well.

“Yeah, it's Monday. Isn't it funny how time flies when you're locked in a room with your own warped delusions and eighteenth century poetry?” She rolled her eyes when his notebook slipped to the carpet so that he could bury his head in the pillow that he had been using to support it at the foot of her bed. “If you don't get up, the next time the press calls, I'll tell them about the 'true' nature of your relationship with those books.”

The pillow left Todd's head, giving him a strange feeling when none of the longer hair that he had gotten cut was ruffled, so that he could give her a equally strange look, an eyebrow raising at that last remark.

“What do you call people who get off on books?”

“Maybe if you had more interest, you'd know.” He smiled at her playfully narrowed eyes. “Besides, bibliophilia just means 'love of books and, or reading'. It doesn't have to be sexual.”

“Maybe so, but the media always plays up the sensational stuff.”

“Really? All those crazy guesses they've been spouting about what really happened with Bitters had given me no clue. But I don't care. Let them think that it all started with an underground book-love cult that finally took their obsession over the edge. Maybe all those people died of paper cuts!”

What started as a laugh degraded into a snort as Letta struggled to maintain a stern composure. “Look, Todd, you really have to go.”

“Letta, funerals are for the living, to help people get through losing someone they loved. I don't really think that I need one. And it's not even like there are bodies to bury or anything.” Todd hadn't wanted a funeral for his parents himself, but Brian had insisted that it would help in the “healing process”, which he was obviously going through.

“Its not just that. You need to get out of the house. You can't just lie around reading old books and eating milk and cookies for the rest of you life.” She almost cringed at the half eaten bag of chocolate chips and empty glass perched on top of one pile of books. It was his comfort food, but there were so many calories! Still, Todd was thin enough that the worst it could really do him would probably be an improvement.

“I know, but-”

“No buts. You're going. Your parents are the main focus of this. People are gonna notice if you're not there. Plus, Dad wants you to meet the Priests from our new church. They're a lot better than Fred and Jasper. They're nicer, less fundamentalist and they speak with an Irish accent.” She attempted a persuasive smile. “Everything sounds better with an Irish accent.”

Todd hid his head under the pillows again, attempting to sidestep the guilt trip that was being thrown out in front of him. After his last visit to their old church, Father Fred had asked them not to return. Of course, Letta had insisted that if they stayed she was going to tie Deacon Jasper to a chair and pull all of the hairs from his head, one by one, in revenge for the bleached holy water that had made her have to dye her own hair back to its original dark honey. Still, the domino of events had started with his math homework.

“Alright, Squee, you leave me no choice.” Letta ripped the pillow from his grip, tossing it into a corner and turning to yell in the direction of the door, where her last recourse lay in wait. “You can come in now! I need backup!”

When, not Brian or even Leon stepped through the door, but Gaz, Todd's eyes widened considerably. He sat up, scooting back further onto the bed, tempted to hide himself within its protective blankets.

“Hi, Squee.” The purple-haired girl came to a halt directly in front of the bed, stopping the slight rustling of her lacy, black dress for the moment as she tucked her Game Slave into a matching purse.

“Umm...hi, Gaz. What are you-”

“Oh, I just came over to check on you. How are your burns? Have you been using the cream like I told you to?”

Shooting Letta a glare for letting anyone in, Todd quickly turned his gaze back to Dib's scary little sister. The girl's voice was overly pleasant, something which usually meant that whomever heard it was pretty doomed. “They're okay...much better. I, uh, have been using the cream.” It was the same cream that Dib had given him for his arm. Pepito had brought it to him in the hospital, but Gaz had warned him not to use it until he was released.

“That's very good.” Gaz smiled. “So, you're all better now, physically?”

“...pretty much...”

Her smiled transformed into a smirk. “Good.”

Todd drove back, further on the bed, toward the wall, but he was too late. Gaz had caught his right foot and she was pulling. He reached desperately for the headboard, moist fingers barely grazing it before his entire body was jerked backwards, and it was no longer in reach. “Gaz, stop! Let's talk about this, huh?” He slid across the bed on his belly, dragging comforter and sheets with him until he hit the floor. He pulled the blankets from his upper body just in time to be met with a slash of icy cold water. “Ack! Oh, God, that's freezing!”

“And there's more where that came from, you whiny little bitch!” Gaz handed the glass back to Letta triumphantly. “I hope you realize, Squee, that this is me going very, very easy on you. But if you don't stop wallowing in angst and get the hell up, I'm going to show you what its like to be Dib on a bad day!”

“Gaz, you don't understand! I don't need-”

“What I understand, Squee, is that my cleated boots can do a great deal of damage to your face if you continue to invoke my wrath!” She threw her hands up in frustration. “Do you even realize what a greedy, selfish jackass you've been for the last two weeks? People make efforts to contact you, to help you in the best way they know how, like this funeral, and you just throw it back in our faces! Well, that's not acceptable! If I'm willing to put my game slave on silent and sit through some bullshit religious service for you, then you're going. Oh, you are so going!”

Todd's hands gripped and released, gripped and released the sheets he was wrapped in as he watched Gaz's ball into fists. He felt like his heart had jumped into his throat when one of those fists made a B-line for him. Luckily, instead of hitting him, she simply clutched the collar of his shirt, jerking him to his feet.

Even though Squee was roughly four inches taller than her, Gaz stepped up to him with an intimidating scowl. “So, what's it gonna be? Are you going or do you want me to rearrange your face?”

Five minutes later, Todd found himself in the shower, on his way to getting dressed for the funeral. He gave the silver key around his neck another futile tug. His hands ran around the smooth chain to make sure that he hadn't just missed the clasp that didn't exist all of those times before. All of his efforts to remove the thing over the past couple weeks had failed, and now he was going to a Catholic funeral...in a Catholic Church...where there was going to be Mass. He suddenly regretted not taking any of Pepito's calls.

--------------------POV SHIFT-------------------

“Come on, Zim! Just try the bacon!” Dib thrust the strip of meat toward the other's plate via a pair of tongs, only to have both items smacked back toward his face by a, now five-fingered, hand covered in a long, yellow rubber glove.

“ZIM wants no meats!” He pulled the plate of maple covered waffles closer to the disgusting hymun body that he was currently being forced to borrow.

“But it's organic! And you're human now, Zim. You need more than just waffles. You need some protein, some vitamins, water!” The paranormalist sighed, knowing that he had already lost this fight yet again. He took a seat in front of is own plate, which was much more diverse than the Invader's...or whatever Zim was now.

“ZIM will be the judge of that, Dib-stink! I need none of your filthy Earthen animal innards to fill my pitiful and inefficient human belly! These waffles will have to suffice until my new and amazingly improved Zim-body is ready for activation!”

“Wait. What do you mean 'improved'?” The teen sent the 'woman' across from him a paranoid half-glare. “I thought you said that your pak had a sample of your own genetic code, that the new body was just going to be a clone of your old one.”

Stuffing the human mouth with as much waffle as it could chew at once, a feeble amount when compared with its Irken counterpart, Zim nodded emphatically before swallowing it down. He had to admit that the Dib's waffles were far superior to GIRS. It could be that the human taste buds were different than what he was used to, but was more likely the distinct lack of soap as an ingredient. “So I did, and it is! But I have made some minor modifications so that the new body will be highly superior!”

“You're talking about height, aren't you?” The boy's tone was flat, much less than impressed.

“Yes! But not just height. It will also be more resistant to your pathetic Earth-water and all that that implies. Because of the small amounts of Earth-based substances that we have been using in the growing process, the body has become somewhat adapted to the vast amounts of pollution that entrench this wretched ecosystem.”

“Oh, well that's good, I guess. For you anyway. That way it won't hurt as much when-” He stopped mid-sentence, realizing that, if he didn't want to be like the image of himself from Squee's nightmare, it was probably a bad idea to threaten Zim with experimentation at every possible turn. “never mind.”

Zim raised a brown eyebrow instead of a green brow ridge at the Dib-thing's response. Since he had nearly died two Earth weeks ago, both he and the boy had been almost nice to each other, almost friendly. Even in this human body, it still made his stomach burn with a sickly heat. Friendship was a thing that Invaders were not supposed to need. It was a thing that Zim had never really had or, for the most part, wanted.

But for years now his mission, the Earth, had instantly brought to mind the human boy. Any thought of abandoning it was a thought of abandoning Dib, of never seeing him again, of letting his short, human life fizzle out on this small and mostly harmless planet without ever even having ventured past the solar system, without even having the honor of dying in a grand battle. And Dib deserved more than that. Despite emerging from a planet of morons, Dib was his equal, or as close to an equal as an Elite such as the Mighty Zim was ever likely to find. Dib was worth coming back for, wroth fighting, worth keeping if Bitters' plan had been carried out. His pink, humany eyelid twitched at the mere thought of Ms. Bitters.

“So,” Dib spoke up again when they were both between bites, “how much longer do you think it'll be before the body is ready?”

“Eh, Zim has never had the displeasure of regrowing his body before, but not too much longer. Perhaps...around a week in Earth time.”

“Wow, that's really fast!”

“Yes! Marvel at the glory of Irken technology, for it is truly a, eh, marvel to behold!” Zim chuckled to himself at the Dib's child-like awe at such basic technologies, drawing his hand back in from a dramatic pointing to shovel more food into his mouth.

“Zim...you just said that something is a marvel because it's a marvel. You know that, right?”

“LIES! ZIM would never say such as thing!”

“I'm pretty sure that you did.”

“NO! Your head is full of filthy, filthy human logic! And bacon! So flawed!”

The door to the basement slid open, and Professor Membrane walked by the table, heading for the refrigerator, eyes tired behind his goggles after a long night working on a new invention. “Hello, Son. Hello,...uh,” He stopped with his hand on the refrigerator door. “Son, aren't you going to introduce me to your...your...whoever this person is?”

“Oh! Yeah. Dad, this is...this is my, uh, my-”

“His partner!” Zim interrupted. “I am the Dib's lab partner! From skool! I am here so that we may work on a project! It's, eh, for SCIENCE!”

“I do love Science.” The Professor's goggles glowed a electric blue as he looked the woman over more closely. She looked more around the age for a teacher than a hi skool student, but not old enough to have Old Kid's Disease. She was probably in her thirties or early forties, but she wore no makeup, no jewelry, and her clothes consisted of rubber cleaning gloves, a loose Mysterious Mysteries T-shirt, black jeans that were too long and too big flip-flops. His hand fell limply from the refrigerator handle before regaining enough direction to shoot up, pulling his goggles down to reveal widened hazel eyes. “Dib! Why is this woman wearing your clothes!”

“Dad, I can explain! I-”

“No! No, no, no! This is highly inappropriate! Ma'am, I don't know who you really are, but my son is a minor.”

Dib leaped to his feet. “Dad, it's not like that!”

“Son, you just stay right there. I'm going to make a quick call!” Membrane reached for the communicator attached to his goggles, but was obstructed when his son dashed to his side, grabbing his wrist.

“No! Dad, really, this...this is Zim! You know, my 'little foreign friend'? See the pak on her back? That's Zim's personality storage! Remember the time that it tried to take over my pitiful human mind? Well, it's doing the same to that woman until we can clone him a new body! He's staying here because I can't trust him to not take over the world if I give him his moon base back!”

Zim smiled widely at the shocked man. “Greetings, Dib-parental unit!”

“Son...you...you've really lost it this time, haven't you? You've convinced this crazy, homeless woman that she is your poor little friend!” Membrane attempted to shake his hand free to no avail.

“No, Dad! It really is Zim! Everything that I've been saying about aliens all these years has all been true!” Still holding the hand, Dib turned back toward the 'woman' at the table. “Zim, back me up!”

“Eh, it is true that I am the Mighty Zim, temporarily trapped in this inferior meat-body, but Zim is no alien! I am normal! So very normal!”

The paranormalist turned back to his father. “See?”

“Now, Son, you know that Zim is dead. I realize that it's hard for you, losing such a close friend, but you're going to have to let him go. There's not a hobo on this planet that will ever be able to replace him, no matter how much you pay or hypnotize them. And for the last time, like always, there are no aliens, none capable of traveling the vast distance to reach the Earth anyway!”

Sighing in resignation, Dib looked to the floor, his grip loosening on his dad's hand now that the man no longer believed Zim to be a middle-aged, female pedophile at least. Hypnotized hobo was better, right?

“So, I'm sorry, Dib, but you can't keep her. We'll have to call a local shelter and- BOOOM!” His hand was freed when his son let go at the elated cry of the word that he had come to use over the years, especially in the advanced kollege mathematics classes that he taught, to signify an error in the logical thought process. That woman! He knew who she was! He had seen her photograph on the late night news as he worked in his basement lab. “Son! Did you find this woman when you were helping the rescue workers and bring her back here? She should have been taken to a hospital! What time is it?”

Zim swallowed the remainder of his breakfast. “It's ten forty-five AM. And Zim was not found. I came here myself!”

“Ten forty-five! Son, we have to go NOW!”

“Where?”

“To her funeral! In the name of SCIENCE, we've got to stop it!”

Notes:

XxPatzieTheHomicidalManiacxX: Thanks so very much for the kind review!

Letta's comment about Todd papering her room with Bible pages is an Omen reference.

The reference to Zim's pak taking over Dib's “pitiful, human mind” comes from the script for 10 Minutes to Doom: Dib steals Zim's pak, and Zim's brain is slowly drained of intelligence and Zimminess (after 10 minutes he would've died). The pak takes Dib as a host, like it is now taking Todd's mom as one, except that his body did die here.

My high school math teacher, now a college engineering professor (at my college! Yes, things like that do happen) used to do the “BOOOM!” thing whenever he solved a problem on the board or whenever any of the class did so. In the audio for Moopiness of Doom, Professor Membrane does the same thing, expect he does it when an answer or step in a problem is wrong (when Dib messed up on an equation because his life had no meaning without Zim).
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Sublime Awakenings