Invader Zim ZADR: How did we get here?

Chapter 1: Give me a minute

Forget everything for a moment! HOW did I not know about this show! It's great! It's one of the most fun shows that I have watched, and you're telling me I never watched it as a kid! How!!! Wait, when did it come out? 2001...Oh...oh I wasn't even born yet. That explains it...*cough*...Sorry about that. Right, to the explanation. This is the second time I've learned about both a show and a ship by just watching one video. And then liking what I saw. Technically I did already know about the show and watched the Netflix movie, but beyond that, I never gave it that much thought. Oh yeah, this is a shipping story, with some slow burn thrown in there. While I know some people might have problems with particularly ship, and to those people, I respect your opinion, and therefore you have been warned. I'm not trying to trick you into reading this. Okay? Are we good? Good. Well, that's enough dillydallying. Onward to the story!

P.S: So, I should also explain that the characters are of course not going to be completely faithful, as there need to be some changes for this ship to even work. Just try not to think too much about it.

"You will never defeat me, Dib-stink!" A peculiar voice screamed out into the darkness, in the middle of a powerplant, conveniently devoid of any human life. A common occurrence, as the eyes of humanity all seem to look away whenever Zim does anything even remotely evil. Well, all except one. One brave, and slightly unhinged, human has kept his diligent eye solely on Zim for years now. Years upon years of years and even more years. Well, actually it was only six, but at this point, it might as well have been a lifetime.

"And I will never let you win, Zim!" Another voice screamed into the dark, this one much more human by comparison. The owner of the voice stalked around the empty powerplant, hiding in the shadows. He was holding his breath between taunts while looking out for four metal legs, and two red magenta eyes, searching around the dark. Dib had spent years hiding, and spying on this particular alien, so he wasn't going to get caught so easily.

Each moment of dampening silence was followed by Zim's shrieking voice, slinging insult at his arch-enemy, who returned the favor. Both of them used it as an opportunity to learn the location of the other, but they also thought the other was too stupid to notice. It was like a game of cat and mouse. They just always believed the other to be the mouse.

"You can't hide forever! You hear me earth-worm?! You can't hide from ZIM!!!" The alien screamed into the sky, as dramatically as possible. Dib was by chance close at that moment and decided to use the opportunity that Zim had been so gracious to grant him, and snuck out from his hiding place. With long but light steps, he moved to pounce on Zim from behind. If he could just move quick enough then he could reach him.

But unfortunately, Zim had been alarmed by the silence that followed his declaration of superiority and knew something was wrong. Just as Dib jumped into the air to grab onto his

back, Zim's antennas had made a small twitch, and he turned around with inhuman speed, swinging a metal leg at the human boy. Dib could only manage the beginning of a shocked gasp before he was hit in the right side by the robot leg, making him fly directly into an electrical control box, which had been left open.

The switches were broken to bits, and all the buttons were smashed stuck. After making an impact, Dib was stuck to the box for a short moment, before sliding down to the ground. He took a deep breath, as the air in his lungs had just been violently forced out. He blinked a few times, trying to regain his focus. He placed a worried hand on his side and winced at the pain.

Yep, I'm definitely going to feel that tomorrow. And I'm definitely going to give Zim a black eye for this.

With a defiant grin, he looked up at the figure being held in the air a few meters in front of him and tried standing up. But just as he started to move, the sound of electricity shot out from all around them. Either by bad engineering or just pure convenience, it seemed that Dib hitting the box had turned back on the power, and therefore the lights. For a moment everything was pure white. Then the light started to fade and revealed the Irken invader in all his glory, standing on his PAK legs, and Dib still sitting on the ground. In the middle of the powerplant, an alien machine also stood, towering over the conduits. It was filled with purple cables that stretched throughout the plant, seemingly sucking up all the power it could.