The Fallen Invader

Chapter 16: An Old Friend

Dad promised to keep Zim's secret. All that was publicly known was that a supposed alien escaped from Membrane Labs, but no evidence tied him to the strange green boy down the street.

We also told him about Mip as well, though he already had his suspicions.

Gaz was hesitant to tell him that she's not the one who built GIR, since she was worried it would hurt him too much to know that she lied, but I assured her it would be fine, since I'd been lying to him too.

Of course, Dad still had plenty of questions, even if he couldn't share his findings. He had to know everything about Irk, as well as other inhabited planets unknown to most of humanity. Every time Zim came over, he'd have at least ten new questions to ask.

With the secret finally out, things were even more casual around the house. No disguises necessary, just a bunch of weirdos hanging out, completely in their element.

Although, it did start to become a problem.

Mip may not have been up to Irken standards immediately after coming into existence, but she progressed very quickly. As soon as she started talking, it was hard to get her to shut up. (My name was the second one she learned, by the way.)

Not only was she talking, she was growing rapidly. By the time summer was over, she was almost as tall as Zim.

Now, neither of those things were a problem. It was great to see how far along she had come. But it reached a point where she couldn't pass for a family pet anymore. She was a child. A child that wanted to go to skool.

As I've stated before, Mip loves TV. Zim and I would schedule play dates for her and GIR, and they'd almost always spend a good portion of their time together watching cartoons. For GIR, it was just mindless entertainment, but Mip's intelligence was constantly expanding, and she began to notice a common theme in the commercials: skool.

Since the channel they watched was geared towards kids, pretty much all the commercials were related to skool, and since advertisers have a way of making even the most disgusting things look appealing, Mip wanted to go. Really badly.

Every day that August, she'd follow me around the house, reciting the back-to-skool commercials that aired 50 times a day, asking when she'd get to go.

I didn't want to send her, for a number of reasons, the first being it was simply unnecessary. Dad's a genius, he could teach her everything she'd ever need to know, and probably do a better job than the corrupt corporate skool system. Then, of course, there's the inevitability of bullies.

Every time I looked at her innocent little face, and tried to picture her going through what I went through as a kid, added on to the fact that she'd have her secret alien identity to worry about... No, I couldn't do it.

But Mip was stubborn, and every time I told her "no," she would only continue asking.

Dad suggested that I should at least let her try it, and if worst came to worst, we could pull her out of skool. He even built a hologram chip that attached to her PAK and made her appear human, similar to Tak's disguise.

Of course, Zim offered to make a human disguise for her, and while I'm certain most of her classmates wouldn't have noticed, you can't underestimate everyone.

Mip wasn't too happy about having to wear a disguise to skool, but to make up for it, we let her design her human appearance.

The first time I saw her with her hologram disguise, I almost didn't recognize her. She had pink hair, ears, a nose, and human skin and eyes. Even her PAK was replaced with a normal-looking purple backpack.