The day had started like any other. Dib had woken up, checked his SETI computer connection to make certain it was still scanning and transmitting, checked his email, which had been spam harking nude women and mega-million dollar scams, as well as a notification of his pending doom. He was used to that, and merely pushed the delete key. Then there was Gaz to cautiously wake up, by means of pelting her sleeping form with socks until she growled that she was awake, and finally a lukewarm shower and his usual outfit to wear. Nothing out of the ordinary, Dib thought, watching his Lumpy-O's slowly sink in his cereal bowl. He poked at them with a spoon. One of the Lumpy-O's grew a mouth and tried to bite back. He momentarily pondered the possibility of recording that and sending it into Mysterious Mysteries, but dismissed it. Food tended to do weird things, especially in this town. Footsteps, booted and clunky, sounded in the hall above him. Dib look at the ceiling, eyes following the sound. Gaz trumpted down the stairs a moment later, poured herself a cup of black coffee, and the two sat in silence. Life...was boring, Dib had to admit as he plonked his spoon against another of the Lumpy-O's. It scuttled away, climbing on top of one of the others. Nothing out of the ordinary. It was calm, in a sense. Certainly there was still skool, and there was still the onerous task of avoiding both the skool bullies and the fanboys who thought Dib was the next Fox Mulder who had sprouted up somewhere between seventh and eighth grades. They kept waiting for Gaz to be kidnapped, probably by Zim, and watched with baited breath to catch the entire thing on film. But all in all, it was boring. His classes were ridiculously easy, and it was no longer any serious task to keep Gaz together and functioning . Dib didn't even have the once daily opporunity to save Earth from an alien invasion, now that Zim had, technically, won. Dib scowled remembering the incident, and his Lumpy-O's received a more serious poke. It had been two years ago when Zim had finally given up on his usual labyrinthian stratagies and had instead taken his craft to the UN, replaced all of their flags with Irkin ones, ponced into the meeting room, declared himself to be the ruler of Earth, and had left again. It had been broadcast on worldwide television, and the assembled nations had watched, puzzled, and then went on with their normal activities. None of them had bothered to refute the statement, and none of them had remembered to take down the Irkin flags. It made him wonder just why he'd felt the need to protect these human morons for so many years. Zim replaced them periodically with new ones, but otherwise didn't seem to care about his "emperor" status. Dib had a sneaking suspicion that Zim had changed his skool records to show his last name as "Tallest" instead of "Invader", but the system had proven beyond his admittingly impressive ability to hack. He'd actually mellowed out a great deal following the incident, and with no new plots or schemes for Dib to stand in the way of, life had taken on an almost dreary sort of monotony. "Bye," Gaz muttered, putting her mug back on the table with an autable clank. She stood and turned without looking at him. Dib shrugged, glanced back at his Lumpy-O's, and decided that it wasn't worth the risk. He pushed the bowl away, milk sloshing over the rim of it and onto the tablecloth. Ignoring this, Dib followed his sister out of the house, locking the door behind him. Skool, much loathed and loved, was next. Maybe something would happen today, he thought, hands tucked in his traditional black leather duster. God, I hope something happens today. The walk to school was exactly 14 blocks, each at 30 feet long, which meant that, given his one and a half foot stride per second and adding in an average thirty second pause at the two streets he had to cross, he should be able to make it within 340 seconds, or slightly over five and a half minutes. It wasn't a long walk, all things considered. At least, it shouldn't have been. Something went wrong, of course. Something *always* went wrong. Dib was on his two hundred and thirty-ninth step when the sky flashed golden. He yelped, thrusting his hands over his burning eyes. The ground shook for a moment, and he stumbled, tripping backwards as the hem of his coat caught between his calves, landing on the ground with knee bruising force. He squinted his eyes open through his fingers, watching as a firey ball fell through the sky, landing with an ear shattering crash somewhere to his left and slightly behind. The rumbling continued for a moment, and then stopped. The sky likewise blinked back to blue, looking entirely as though it had never changed color. He twisted on the groud, spying a thin plume of smoke coming from the south. A woman was walking her dog on the other side of the road, Dib noticed, scrambling to his feet. She looked quite unperturbed, though the dog looked shaken. Then again, it might always look like that. For a brief moment he wanted to scream at her "Did you see that? Did you even *notice*?" but he knew from past, painful, experiance that she would just regard him blankly before drawing out a cell, patting him on the head, and calling the mental hospital. Thoughts of school gone, Dib turned and ran.