Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Spring was in the air, but it was far from a beautiful day. 

Skool was still in, allergies were swelling up for many people, and the stench of stale meat and poop wafted through the Skool hallways.

Not that Gretchen Impossible, or anyone else for that matter, noticed any of this.

Everyone here was adjusted to the poor conditions of this building. Sometimes, whenever she could get away with using her imagination here, Gretchen would imagine that the Skool had originally been some haunted, radioactive cesspool-slaughter-house-slash-funeral home, and that it had been abandoned for top secret reasons, only to be put up for lease a year or two later. That could at least explain why the Skool was a stinky place, or why there were so many misshapen bugs crawling around the ceiling pipes, or why so many of the adults had clammy complexions, or even why the lunch lady kept glaring at Pigboy threateningly every time she served him.

As Gretchen snuck into her seat in the back corner of the classroom, just one minute shy of being late, Ms. Bitters made an unusual announcement.

“Now students,” she began. “It is to my dismay to tell you all that the End of the Skool Year Talent Show will be coming up this May, where you all must participate and show off what little skills you can muster.”

Most of the students groaned in despair. Nothing could be more humiliating than getting up on stage to do something you thought to be amazing, only to have the grown-ups verbally shoot you down for ever existing. One of the students, the lilac-haired teacher’s pet, Zita, raised her hand.

“What will we get out of this if we win, Ms. Bitters?” she asked. The other students listened for Ms. Bitters’ response. A few of them hoped in vain that the prize would be the trending video game, Ketchupocalypse 3 . Others were prepared to hear something else out of the ordinary.

“If it were up to me, it would’ve been an empty present box, to prepare you all for the scams of life you’ll face in your pathetic futures,” hissed Ms. Bitters. “But because I have no power over what the Skool plans, the prize will be a $100 coupon to Bloaty's Pizza Hog.”

At that, every child became a feral animal and prepared to shed blood for that coupon. 

Except for Zim and Dib, of course.

With the last bit of humanity not overpowered by savageness at the moment, Gretchen noticed that Zim and Dib were eyeing each other, as if each of them was playing a game of chess and calculating his opponent’s each and every move, methodically preparing three steps ahead with a plan up his sleeve.

And she was just about right.

Zim had a plan, and it would indeed involve the Talent Show: he would invent a cloning machine and trick everyone into thinking it would be a magic trick. BUT FOOLISH HUMANS! He would be cloning an army of himself that would overrule the audience, and eventually DOOOOOOOM WILL RAIN UPON ALL OF EARTH! He had no interest in some low, meaningless coupon. He lived and worked on the planet Foodcourtia long enough to have any real appetite for take-out food, anyway.

But what Zim hadn’t realized was that he was thinking his plan out loud, loud enough for the entire classroom to hear. Dib pointed a finger at Zim. 

“See? Zim just said he would ‘rain doom over Earth’ by cloning himself. CLONING HIMSELF. You think a normal kid would clone himself? NO! That sounds like something only an—”

“Dib. Just stop it with the alien thing,” Zita scolded from the opposite side of the classroom. “It’s obvious that Zim’s just acting. And he’s pretty good at it!” The other kids had enough humanity to pause their savage behavior and agree with her.

And so the usual happened that day: there would be arguments about Zim, which almost always ended with Dib begging the classroom to at least believe him a little bit, and they would make fun of him until Miss Bitters silenced the class back into order.

Gretchen did believe him a little bit, but only in secret. She didn’t want to agree with Dib aloud, less she wanted to be thought of as obsessive like he was. Still, Gretchen wouldn’t deny his claims of Zim being an alien either, considering she herself believed that Mars was the original Earth that humans moved off of after the government used up all of its resources on hot dogs, but she wouldn’t tell anyone that.

On the other hand, Dib had unintentionally broken her heart over Valentine’s Day, so of course she would just laugh along with everyone else.

In the end, most of the students ignored Dib for the rest of the day, but he didn’t despair. He had his own plan that would defeat Zim. This too, would involve the talent show. His tactic was a little different, as it would expose Zim as his true identity as an alien before he (Zim) could follow through with his plan. Dib would “borrow” some of his father’s notes and blueprints for an upcoming science invention. This invention, he was told, would read into the subject’s psyche, learning everything there is to know about the natural human desire. Only then, would Dib be able to use science to prove his greatest paranormal investigation of a lifetime!

Zim and Dib concocted their plans aloud while Gretchen made every effort to think of something she could do. Their blabbering annoyed her so much, when class was dismissed, she was the first to slam her textbook shut, sweep her graded math quiz (a D+, her personal best) into her backpack, swing said-backpack on, and dash out of the class before anyone sitting in front of her could. Anything to get away from those two’s obnoxious voices.

Yet she still couldn’t escape their overzealous presence. Zim and Dib were already planning ahead on their ideas while they walked along the Skool hallways. They were already drafting the blueprints for their strange machines, or mapping out some kind of heist that would happen. Gretchen could do nothing except roll her eyes at this.

Nerds, she thought. The Talent Show isn’t for another month!

It did, however, worry her a bit. She didn’t want to do the show, but if everyone had to do it, she might as well find something that was at least a little bit better than anyone else’s idea. She considered doing that magic card trick she learned last week, or even the famous monologue from that one dead guy’s play. But, it seemed like everyone else was doing either a magic card trick or a theater monologue, so those ideas were out of the question.

After a week passed by, Gretchen was still trying to find her talent. She had to think of something soon, or else… consequences. As she walked home from Skool one afternoon, a little green dog—whom she immediately recognized to be Zim’s, since he was the only one with this particular green dog—skipped the opposite direction, humming random tunes while pulling a wagon with what looked like bunches of things hidden under a dust cover. Gretchen thought nothing of it. 

Later that early evening, however, while Gretchen struggled with her homework, the slightest little neuron in her below-average sapient brain wired itself with another little neuron, having her say what would change the course of this entire story.

“I wonder what’s under that dust cover?” And she headed out, just like that.

Chapter Text

She knew where to find Zim’s house because it was the strangest house—with lawn gnomes that were somehow always staring at you and metal, tentacle-like tubes that latched themselves onto neighboring houses—on the cul-de-sac a mile away from her own house.

Also, Zim and Dib were having some sort of battle around there, so it was pretty obvious. 

Gretchen watched them for a moment. She could’ve sworn Zim had double-pink eye and lost most of his hair, but it was hard to tell with Dib’s mastodonic head eclipsing her view. 

Oh well, sucks to be either of them. The door to Zim’s house was left ajar, so Gretchen just walked in without either of them noticing. 

The inside smelled of cleaning chemicals and pizza grease, but at least Zim had a pleasing taste in interior design. The green dog she had passed by earlier was nowhere to be seen, but she did spot a robot about the same size as the dog, sitting on the living room couch, watching TV, and eating pizza out of a grease-stained box. The show that was playing had a monkey staring at the audience and nothing more. Gretchen recognized this as one of her favorite shows and grinned a toothy, saliva-and-braces-induced grin to herself. The robot noticed her and, happy to socialize, pointed excitedly at the TV.

“It’s a MONKEEEEY!”

“I love this show too!” she replied. But she did not have time to sit down with the little robot and watch the monkey show. She had to find out what was underneath that cloth and what it did. But first, she had to find out where it was, so she asked the robot on the couch for help.

“Excuse me, um, Mr. Robot, could you tell me where I could find a very big thing that’s covered up with a bedsheet?” she asked the robot. The robot, insane she noted, said something gibberish and high-pitched (almost like Melvin, one of the other school rejects she sat with at lunch but never really spoke to, going into hysterics and making those screechy noises).

“WWEEEEEEEEEHEHEHEHEHEHASAS!" Then he snapped into a deep, neutral monotone and pointed down the hallway. "Down the toilet on your right.”

“Uhhhh…” Gretchen wasn’t sure how she should respond to that. It was probably better not ask what exactly the robot meant by those directions. But she continued down the hall. 

“Thank you, I guess!” she called to him, although he didn’t respond back. His eyes were superglued to the TV.

Except for the sound of the TV humming and the robot bursting out into laughter every now and then, the house was cryptically quiet.

The toilet was right in front of her, in the kitchen of all places. But from the corner of her eye, she spotted Zim's RoboParents lurking in the hall perpendicular to her. Gretchen remembered them from Parent-Teacher Night. Boy, were those two a wacky pair of something. She almost expected them to jump out, like in some of those horror movies she would sneak a peek some late night, and greet her in their mechanical-but-jolly manner.

But, they only stood still in that dark hall. Inanimate. Their blank, dead eyes staring off into space. Gooseflesh ran across Gretchen’s body, so she averted her eyes from the two mechanical bodies in the hallway. She had to be careful not to get caught by them, so she snuck past them in the most obvious way possible. 

And I mean, the most obvious way possible.

She stared at the toilet. So… what exactly was she supposed to do from here? It didn’t look like the machine was here, unless it was really small, or if the toilet was the machine in disguise. Then she remembered the robot watching TV and how he had said it was down the toilet. 

GROSS.

Not to mention, how was she supposed to fit down there anyway? It wasn’t like she was a cartoon character that could just break all the laws of physics whenever she wanted to. Even she was smart enough to know that.

Just as she considered turning around, to forget about what was underneath that dust cover and just head straight home, the sound of gears ululating to life blared from behind her. She spun around just in time to see Zim's RoboParents wheeling over to the part of the house that split the living room and kitchen apart, their jagged movements jerked them to life, and electric sparks popped from their eye sockets.

“HELLO, HONEY. WELCOME HOME!” They lunged after Gretchen.

“ACK!” She dodged away from them. They chased her around the kitchen, the three of them knocking over a knick-knack or two as she ducked under the table and jumped on counters, anything she could do to not get snatched by them. They were suggesting bizarre things to her as they tried to catch her.

“WANNA PLAY FAVORITE OUTSIDE?”

“I HAVE YOUR BALL IN THE OVEN!”

“No way!” Gretchen retorted back. “You guys are even weirder than I remember!”

By then, she was cornered, perched on top of one of the cabinets.

There was only one way to escape them.

I can’t believe I’m actually doing this, she thought to herself, feeling squeamish. She jumped off the cabinet, over the RoboParents, into the toilet, and flushed herself down.

Instead of going down a pipe full of sewage, however, Gretchen found herself going down a rather clean (and surprisingly spacious) tunnel that eventually looped and swooped into some sort of room with giant, metal doors. Not bothering to question this part (by this point, she was pretty much weirded out), she pushed a shiny red button, and the doors automatically opened.

There beyond that was a secret laboratory. 

Like upstairs, it stank of cleaning chemicals. Unlike upstairs, however, there wasn’t a whiff of pizza grease alongside it as far as she could tell. It was dark, but dim lights of red, pink, and purple flared up in some corners of the place. Electric wires entangled with one another like vines in a Grimm fairytale. There were tens of TVs all around, some on, most off—probably to save energy. Strange, purple liquid bubbled from cylinder cases; a few of them even contained small animals like squids and squirrels.

“Wow…” she breathed as she wandered around and took in her new surroundings, “Who would’ve thought?” She was so awestruck by this place that she didn’t watch where she was going, and then bumped into a door that read “Danger” on it. She opened the door and took a peek inside.

And lo and behold, standing right in front of her, was some invention hiding underneath a cloth. Gretchen pulled off the cloth, which revealed the wackiest, most awe-striking machine one could set eyes on. 

“Cool,” she mused. Would it be a good idea to test it out? Probably not. Did that rational part of her mind really have any authority over her curiosity?

Also probably not.

She stepped right in and pressed the big shiny red button that read “Facsimile”, whatever that meant. Suddenly the machine came to life. It zapped her and she stood there, unfazed. She walked out, and from the other side of the smoking machine, walked out what she saw as the most amazing thing ever... 

Her.

Another copy of her, more accurately.

“Whoa!” Gretchen took a step back in surprise. “Are you me?”

Gretchen’s clone studied her arms. 

“I think I’m you?” she said quizzically.

Suddenly, Gretchen had an idea.

She walked back into the machine and pressed the shiny red button a second time. After being zapped again, she tilted her head outside and saw a second clone walk out the other side of the machine. The two clones greeted each other as she slipped back into the machine. She pressed the button a third time. Then a fourth time, making a total of five Gretchens in the laboratory.

When they sat down and discussed how to dodge the RoboParents upstairs and get out of Zim’s house, the Original Gretchen remembered that she still had Mr. Bricky, her inanimate brick “baby” from that dumb baby assignment months ago, stuffed into her backpack. When she had cloned herself, her clones also had copies of Mr. Bricky. One of her clones suggested they don’t do anything violent with their Mr. Brickies when they inevitably confronted the RoboParents, but the other Gretchens ignored her. When they reached the ground floor again, they used their Mr. Brickies, each happy to lighten her backpack of those stupid “babies,” as door stoppers the RoboParents would eventually trip on. 

The RoboParents did. They were stunned from the fall at first, then they were soon back on their wheels, but they also mushroomed into hysterics because from the fall, RoboDad lost his squeezing arm… AGAIN! 

By that time they had settled down, the Gretchens had already left the house, completely forgotten.

People did notice the five identical, plum-haired, buck-toothed girls walking down the streets, but no one found it especially jarring. Nobody thinks much about their surroundings on Earth. 

Zim and Dib were still too busy fighting their “epic battle” to notice either.

-

The first thing Gretchen and her clones did was get together in her bedroom and determine what they could do for the End of the Skool Year Talent Show. Her parents were working late-night shifts and would not be back for another hour or so, which made it easier for Gretchen because she still didn’t know how to explain her clones to them. 

After some debate, the five girls settled on forming a band (that’s a trend among groups of kids doing talent shows, isn’t it?). The Original Gretchen, being the original and therefore the leader, would be lead vox.

“Let’s see,” she said as she studied each of her clones. “How about this? Gretchen 2.0 can be the first guitar…” Gretchen 2.0 made bull horns to show her approval.

“Gretchen 3.0 can be on bass…”

“Aww, but I hate baseball!” Gretchen 3.0 complained. Gretchen ignored this clone and continued assigning roles.

“Gretchen 4.0 can be on drums…”

“Can I be called ‘The Grev?” requested Gretchen 4.0. Gretchen just gave her a puzzled look.

“...No,” she responded, much to Gretchen 4.0’s disappointment. Gretchen went back and concluded with one more assigned role.

“And Gretchen 5.0 can be on the second guitar!” Gretchen 5.0 didn’t hear this at first. She had been distracted by the butterfly that had flown through an open window and landed on her nose. When she noticed the other four glaring at her, she shooed the butterfly out the window and nodded her approval of her role.

They headed downtown to the music shop and, using her mom’s credit card, bought their respectable instruments brand new ( $9,800 for instruments? the Original Gretchen thought when she saw the receipt. The Perks of Being Left-Handed ).

Gretchen 5.0 removed the bottom part of a tom drum Gretchen 4.0 was carrying and tossed the drum over Gretchen 4.0’s head.

“Yep, these look like dust mites,” she said as she examined the drum’s bottom piece. Gretchen 3.0 saw this, and a lightbulb went off above her head.

“Hey, that gives me an idea!” she said. “We should smash these at the end of the talent show to show how awesome we are!”

“That’s a great idea!” agreed Gretchen 2.0. The Original Gretchen took a golf pencil from her dress pocket and jotted that down on the back of the receipt.

“So, what are we waiting for?” she asked her clones. “Let’s rock!”

There was only one last problem: they had to practice somewhere, but Gretchen couldn’t let her parents see her four clones—that would just make things confusing when Mom or Dad would have to call for one of them for favors. As for Skool, that place didn’t believe in fine arts classes, so there were no practice rooms available there.

Then what would be the next best place?

They all stopped and thought about it for a bit. The next best place would have to be secluded from the rest of society, somewhere quiet, somewhere where they could practice and not have to worry about catching anyone’s attention, thus distracting them from their main goal: that Bloaty's Pizza Hog coupon. Then they all knew exactly where they should practice, and they said it at the same time:

“The Library!”

“The practice rooms in the music shop!” Gretchen 4.0 said a half-second too late. The other Four Gretchens looked at her like she was an idiot, so Gretchen 4.0 said no more. Then they reserved the Library’s only meeting room when they got home right before midnight, and they went over the next day when it opened. 

Chapter Text

Before the Gretchens’ arrival, Dib and Gaz headed over to the Library with their own plans. Dib had with him his notes and blueprints, much to Gaz’s annoyance.

“So how does this sound, Gaz?” he asked her, looking at some of his notes for reference. “Before the Talent Show even begins, I’ll sneak into Zim’s house, find his lair, take note of every detail of what his stupid cloning machine looks like, and then I’ll use that to make my mind-reading machine look exactly like his, switch his machine out for mine, then when he thinks he’s about to clone himself on stage, the whole Skool will only hear his true intentions and discover what kind of a monster he really is! Can you imagine the look on his face he’ll make, Gaz? Or the look on anyone's face? Oh, boy, this is going to be so…EEREGRHEGEGH!” He nearly crumpled to the ground in pure excitement because, really, there was no word to describe just how excited he was feeling.

“Whatever,” Gaz grumbled.

“‘WHATEVER?’” Dib exclaimed. “Gaz! This is not something that you can just say ‘whatever’ to, or whatever. Zim is going to multiply himself, and we have to stop him before it’s too late!”

“I don’t care what that idiot is up to!” snapped Gaz. “Right now, Dad wants us to start renting things from the Library so he can have more room and more money for his stupid science experiments at home.” 

“What does that have to do with—” Dib began, but Gaz cut him off by swiping at his black jacket and yanking him over towards her. The anger in her voice hid behind no curtains.

“Do you know how many games I had to miss out on because I had to wait for my reservations? Do you know how many months ago I reserved Ketchupocalypse 3 ? That’s how long I had to wait, Dib. You would never understand the pain…” She let go of his jacket and her voice lowered, becoming more guttural. Dib knew that tone well enough to take a step back.  

“The misery…” She paused to emphasize her point, her fingers curled into white claws, and her breathing became more ragged as she yelled up at the sky. 

“The fury I’ve gone through. And I refuse to do anything else other than finally checking out my reserved game today!” Dib said nothing more to her, but he still mumbled to himself on how to get Gaz to understand the severity of the situation. 

They were just approaching the entrance of the building when they came across Zim, who was—for once—not looking for any trouble at the moment as he pushed an overflowing cart of Library DVDs (no doubt the ones GIR had been rewatching for the past eight weeks before Zim's RoboParents scratched them beyond cleaning during their strange hysteria episode last night, and therefore must be deleted from the Library’s system—good riddance, Zim would say, mindless human entertainment). 

That didn’t stop Dib from making a scene and stabbing a finger in the direction of Zim, who was today disguised as a shabby old man.

“ZIM! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” he shouted at Zim.

Zim could’ve ignored Dib and let him sound like a madman to the rest of the pedestrians, but what fun would that be? This would be another perfect opportunity to troll with that no-good-bighead Dib on the street.

“ZIM?” he shouted back. “I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THAT IS! I AM JUST A COMMON HUMAN CITIZEN PARTICIPATING IN THE HUMAN COMMUNITY.”

And so began their usual quarreling. For less than five seconds, Gaz just stood and stared at them, frustrated.

“Whatever,” Gaz grumbled once more. Then she continued through the automatic sliding doors to the Library without her neurotic brother. Getting her reserved game was her top priority right now.

Several smashed DVDs used as ammo later, Zim and Dib were finally in the Library. They shouted at each other as they sped-walked on opposite sides of the building.

“I WON’T LET YOU GET AWAY WITH IT!”

“TRY TO STOP ME, DIB! YOU’LL BE NO MATCH FOR ME THIS TIME!”

“SAYS YOU! I’VE GOT—”

Just then, the young librarian from the front desk approached them with a sunny grin painted on her face. She had her hands hooked together in a manner that suggested a proposal.

“Now, boys, you’ll have to keep quiet in the library,” she said in her bright, sing-song voice. “Or else I’ll have to extirpate your vocal cords and have you stand in a corner. You don’t wanna end up like this gentleman, do you?” 

She held her hands out as if presenting her latest art installment. They followed the direction of her hands to see a man imprisoned within a cylinder of red light. He was screaming and grasping at his throat, waving his free arm toward the boys while pleading— begging —to be rescued from this endless nightmare. But no sound would ever come out of his mouth. 

Even Zim was unsettled into brief silence by this scenario, so he and Dib continued to bicker in stage whispers as they sat at two different tables kitty-corner from each other in the library’s study area. They each hid behind an oversized book and pretended to be reading as they whispered at each other.

“I’ve got something that will stop you, Zim!” Dib whispered fiercely.

“Can it stop an army of a schmoobizillion Zims?” Zim whispered back.

“Schmoobizillion? That’s not even a real number!”

“ You’re not even a real number, Headboy!”

To the back wall around the study area was a door that led downstairs to the meeting room. Since no one was paying too much attention, Gretchen and her clones each took turns carrying their equipment down the meeting room (Gaz, who finally got to check out Ketchupocalypse 3 , which she had reserved months ago, had her back turned the entire time and was too invested to notice Gretchen or her clones). Each Gretchen would pass Zim and Dib while the two of them ping-ponged cheap insults and threats of world domination towards each other, nigh oblivious of the girls walking past them carrying guitars and drums. And stuff.

Dib decided to abandon the whole “replicate Zim’s invention and trick him into using my own” plan. The more he thought about it, the more ridiculous it sounded. By the time Gretchen’s clones had all of their equipment set up downstairs, however, the Original Gretchen was walking by, holding a microphone and a microphone stand, when Dib (finally) noticed something off about her.

“Wait… didn’t you just have a whole drum set with you?” he asked her, which nearly startled her.

“DO NOT—” Zim began, until he remembered the librarian’s casual threat. “Do not turn your attention away from me, Dib!” he started again in the stage whisper. Neither Dib nor Gretchen paid attention to him.

Gretchen stood nascent, not sure what to say next. This may have been the first time Dib acknowledged her outside of Skool. But she wasn’t going to stop and make friendly small talk with him now. It would be a long time before she would get over his brushing her off that day, even if that new girl he was more interested in, Tad or whatshername, somehow disappeared from the face of the Earth (though maybe not literally , Gretchen supposed). 

Still, it wasn’t like he was ignoring her now, so maybe she could at least answer his question.

“Yeah, I did,” Gretchen half-lied. “Maybe if you paid attention more, you’d notice…” Oh, wait. He can’t know about her clones, nor can Zim’s grandpa over there. She finished with the following lie: “…I’ve worked on theater sets before, so you’re expected to be fast at moving props and equipment.”

Dib didn’t push for details. Perhaps she really was just fast, although he wasn’t certain if he noticed her going back and forth or just forth. In the end, he let her go with that answer, and she walked down towards the downstairs meeting room. 

But what she said to him lingered in his mind for a moment. Could he possibly match her speed at moving things, such as his invention, on the stage? His mind pondered at what he could do with that idea while Zim continued to gloat about how unstoppable he was and whatnot.

Meanwhile, the other patrons either had to adjust to or wonder what that rumbling sound coming from downstairs was, which for some reason the librarian at the front desk waved aside as normal.

“Oh, you know how fan club meet-ups are!” she would happily tell anyone who asked.

-

The Five Gretchens spent the entire time at the library practicing and rehearsing. However, each time they started, they would stop within twenty-nine bars and start all over. It was beginning to become a chore.

“What are we doing wrong?” the Original Gretchen asked aloud. “This sounds awful…”

“Maybe it’s because we’re tone-deaf…?” Gretchen 5.0 shrugged.

“Or maybe we’re just off tempo,” suggested Gretchen 4.0. “I notice some of us are playing at allegretto or andante, but I think this song is supposed to be at marcia moderato! Maybe we should just get a metronome and practice at one specific tempo the entire time we’re rehearsing.”

“You’re the drummer, you’re not supposed to be smart,” said Gretchen 3.0, so Gretchen 4.0 said no more. 

That’s when they noticed Gretchen 2.0 in the corner of the room, writing obsessively on a pink, daisy-print notepad like whatever she was writing was a final essay last-minute from the due date. Paper by paper, she was flipping through her notes at a rapid pace, her golf pencil dulled into a round tip. 

Maybe that's why they didn’t sound so great? Because one of their band members was busy thinking up original lyrics they could sing?

“What lyrics are you writing?” asked Gretchen 5.0.

“Actually, I’m writing a list of things I could say in my campaign speech,” said Gretchen 2.0. The other Gretchens stared at her in confusion, so Gretchen 2.0 explained:

“I don’t think I wanna be a lead guitarist, really. I wanna be the President of the United States, just like Abraham Lincoln!” The Original Gretchen was appalled. The talent show was only a mere few weeks away, and one of her clones was now suddenly changing her role? It was too late to change the goal now!

“Hey! Hold on now!” She took the golf pencil from Gretchen 2.0’s hand. “You can save this whole President thing for next year. Right now, we don’t have much time for that!”

“Besides,” Gretchen 5.0 chimed in. “Don’t you need to be old and crusty like a dead spider and know a lot about politics and act like a worm in order to run for President?” The other Gretchens agreed with her, although they could make do without the gross bug metaphors.

“Of course not!” Gretchen 2.0 scoffed. “All you really need is a snappy tagline!” She snapped her fingers to emphasize the last two words. Gretchen 4.0 perked up.

“Oh, that’s an idea!” she was beginning to suggest. “Maybe we could use a tagline to introduce our band during the show! That would be fun!”

“You’re the drummer. You’re not supposed to be smart,” said Gretchen 5.0, so Gretchen 4.0 said no more. 

But now the idea that they could write their own songs took root. Deciding to take a short break from practicing, the five of them brainstormed ideas and threw them around the room.

“We could write about how Skool stinks!”

“Or society!”

“Or stink bugs!”

“Or maybe we could write a love song!” suggested Gretchen 3.0.

“That would be cute,” the Original Gretchen agreed. “But who would it even be written for?” Gretchen 3.0 lowered her head in shame. The Original Gretchen knew right away who her clone was thinking of and cringed.

“Ew, absolutely not,” she spat. “Dib Membrane is a self-entitled jerk who never lets go of what he can’t prove, and he only ever shows interest in anyone else but himself when they have traces of paranormal interest or are actually paranormal or just have something to do with the paranormal that boost his ego about paranormal things and stuff.”

Her clones said nothing for a minute.

“Gee,” said Gretchen 4.0. “That was pretty descriptive for a hate speech. Are you sure you don’t actually like him?”

Gretchen only hesitated for a half second before she bluntly stated, “Yes.”

Deep down, though, they were right, but she would never let them know that. She wasn’t going to let her clones—of all people—mess with her pride, too. Sometimes, it was easier not to explain to those who probably wouldn’t understand in the first place.

They eventually decided on a topic for their original song (which was not a love song), and they all began to practice again. They still didn’t sound good, so they sent Gretchen 4.0 out to buy a metronome from an antique store. In the meantime, they didn’t need a drummer to keep the rhythm, did they?

Once she came back, the five of them continued to work it out. They kept at it for the next few weeks, at the same meeting room downstairs. Nobody upstairs complained too much about them being noisy because, after a while,  the Gretchens became only a background noise for them.

Eventually, the Gretchens got back on track and were starting to sound pretty good, even if communication between them wasn't improving as well as their music.

Chapter Text

When the last day of Skool rolled in, the talent show was about to begin. Every student was feeling jittery and anxious. Some were prepared to be humiliated and get it over with, some more optimistic about showing off their talents, but all of them were determined to win one thing and one thing only: that $100 Coupon to Bloaty’s Pizza Hog.

An hour before the show officially began, Gaz sat backstage, mainly because Dib wanted her to keep an eye out for anything suspicious while he set up his invention backstage for his “Big Ultimate Plan or Something.” She was also participating in the Skool Talent Show, not because she wanted to show off or anything, but because she—like everyone else—just wanted that $100 Bloaty’s coupon. 

However, unlike everyone else, she didn’t exactly want the coupon. She NEEDED the coupon. And in order to solidify the fact that she will get that coupon, she needed to work harder than anyone else in the Skool. Which was easy because she could tell that everyone else’s act sucked. 

Almost finished with playing Ketchupocalyse 3 , Gaz planned to walk up on stage, raise her Game Slave where everyone could see, show them all that she won the game on “Experts Will Cry” mode without shedding a single tear, then simply walk off stage. No explanation would need to be given—even the adults were familiar with the game and would therefore understand the meaning of her simple gesture.

Most of the time, however, she just sat back and played on her Game Slave when Gretchen walked past her towards a big, heavy door, with a lot of black clothes in one hand and a bass guitar in the other.

“Break a leg, Gaz!” said Gretchen.

“Whatever,” said Gaz, not once looking up.

A few minutes later, Gretchen walked back there, pushing a cart full of drums, cymbals, a seat, sticks, gloves, and more black clothes.

“Break a leg, Gaz!” said Gretchen.

“Can it be yours?” Gaz grumbled to herself. Another few minutes later, Gretchen walked back there, wearing a funky hat and carrying a snazzy-looking electric guitar on her back.

“Break a leg, Gaz!” said Gretchen. But this time, Gaz didn’t respond. She was becoming too irritated to say anything, desperate to break more than just a leg—and would not be her own. She just wanted to finish her game in skull-crushing peace.

And yet, another minute later, Gretchen was walking past her once more, a less snazzy, but equally impressive, electric guitar strapped in front of her torso.

“Break a leg, Gaz!” said Gretchen.

Gaz’s face broiled with fury, her right eye twitching and her teeth becoming metal grinding wheels smashed together. Any more of this and she was certain there would be no Skool left, let alone a talent show. The only thing she wanted to do right now, while waiting to get on stage, was to defeat the final boss on the ultimate final level of Ketchupocalypse 3 . No one was allowed to disturb her then, and if Gretchen kept up with this, she was going to face some serious consequences.

Just as Gaz was having more violent imaginations than usual, Gretchen walked into the back door, this time dressed in black and carrying a microphone and a microphone stand. 

That’s when Gaz snapped around and pointed her finger threateningly at Gretchen.

“DON’T. EVEN. SAY IT . If I have to hear you tell me one more time to—”

“Sheesh, Gaz, I just got here,” Gretchen cut in, annoyed. Suddenly, they both heard a “Psst” sound behind them and turned to the sound’s direction. Gretchen grinned when she saw four other Gretchens peeking from behind a heavy door towards backstage, and she scampered over to meet up with them.

Gaz stared in awe. She was about to decide she wouldn’t care (compared to her father’s other science experiments, Gretchen having clones of herself didn’t seem so impressive) and go back to playing her Game Slave, when it suddenly dawned on her: What if winning this talent show was not going to be as easy as she thought?

Whatever Zim or Dib had in store didn’t matter considering their ideas always flopped in the end. But something about there being more than one single Gretchen—and that most of them were already in costume with props—told Gaz that something like that was going to get everyone’s attention, and it was possible Gretchen would win. She had to do something with Gretchen and Gretchen’s clones.

Without saving, Gaz paused her game just as her playable character was about to defeat the final boss and snuck around the stage for something to fight with.

“I don’t care if this taints my record even more…” she mumbled to herself. “I WILL get that coupon!”

-

Most of the performances were mediocre at best. For example, one group did a scene from that one dead guy’s play, but since nobody remembered their lines, they just improvised the whole scene until it was only that scene in-name. In another bit, Melvin did that magic card trick Gretchen originally considered doing. Only by the fifty-second card did he find his subject’s card within the deck. 

Some of the adults, Ms. Bitters among them, sat at a rectangular table and judged each of these performances. While the other adults gave the kids point cards numbered between 5 and 8, Ms. Bitters would give most of them something between –2 and “Too Low of a Number to Write Down.”

She did Zita a 4, however.

After three more soul-draining hours, the remaining students to be on stage were Gretchen, Gaz, Dib, and Zim, in that order. Zim specifically demanded that the Skool should save the best act—his—for last. Dib, meanwhile, specifically asked for his act to be right before Zim’s. He took Gretchen’s words for inspiration when he realtered his invention.

Although Gaz had seen a girly bubbliness in each of the Gretchens that would suggest perfect camaraderie between them, the same could not be said behind the stage.

First off, they were at each other’s throats over how they would perform. Gretchen 3.0 and the Original Gretchen argued over whether they should perform that love song the former wrote, a surreal song the latter wrote, or some generic cover. Gretchen 2.0 insisted she at least read her speech in front of the school before they began their performance. Gretchen 5.0 complained that she would rather be home researching bugs and spent most of the time examining some dead flies in the opposite corner of the backstage. No one listened to Gretchen 4.0’s suggestions because she was the drummer, and drummers weren’t supposed to be smart.

Unsure what else to do, the Original Gretchen pulled away from her clones and peeked outside the stage curtain—anything to keep her distracted from the problem in front of her. She saw how many kids at Skool were in the audience, including some of the popular kids that would make fun of her at lunch or in the halls, and who were sitting in some of the front rows after already showing off their talents (or whatever passed as such).

This did not help matters for her, so she drew back from the curtain and contended with her clones again.

“Look, all I’m saying is that we need to make up our minds right now!” she told them with assertiveness. “We’ve already wasted the whole morning trying to decide what to do!”

“What you want to do!” Gretchen 2.0 barked in response. “So far, you haven’t really agreed with anything we’ve suggested!”

“I’ve agreed with a few things!”

“Not the urgent things, though!”

This was getting ridiculous. If her clones would just listen to her and not go about their own off-topic ideas, things would be a lot easier. But since none of them were doing so, she decided to just ignore them for now and get ready to be called up. Her clones glared at her back while she set up her microphone stand.

“Fine!” Gretchen 2.0 shouted at her. “If you won’t listen to me, I’m going on strike!”

That got Gretchen's attention.

“Wait, you mean right now!?!” she cried as she spun around.

“When else?!” Gretchen 2.0 retorted back. She threw off her funky hat.

“You know what?” Gretchen 4.0 threw down her drumsticks. “Me too!”

“Me three!” said Gretchen 5.0. “We should just watch Them! at home instead.”

“Not me.”

The other four turned to Gretchen 3.0. She was standing defiantly before them, as if about to make a speech that would bring them all together, friend or foe.

“Well, why aren’t you going on strike?” asked Gretchen 2.0. She always thought it would’ve been her who would be making the speeches, but she was curious what one of the other clones had to say. Gretchen 3.0 stared at each and every one of them as she made her statement:

“Like I said before: I hate baseball.”

The other four just stared at Gretchen 3.0 in disappointment.

“I knew we should’ve gone to the Music Shop,” Gretchen 4.0 muttered to herself.

And that was it.

That was all it took.

Gretchen slammed down on the floor to her knees, clawing at her side pigtails, and screamed down at the floor.

“I HATE HAVING TO BE SO RESPONSIBLE WITH ALL OF YOU!” she shouted at them.

Gretchen’s four clones stood where they were and stared at her, hurt by her words. Then Gretchen 5.0 spoke up first, as quietly and politely as she could muster.

“Then why did you clone so many of us?” she asked.

“BECAUSE…” Gretchen began. How would she put it? She realized that her reasons were too visually abstract in her mind to translate into words. She knew why, of course, she did. Sure, part of it was so she could have a group to help her with the Talent Show, but deep down, that wasn’t the main reason.

Her clones waited for an answer, but to her frustration, nothing would spill out of her mouth, not even a nonsensical answer. Instead, Gretchen hung her head in shame. She realized she cloned herself for selfish reasons, and now she was beginning to doubt this whole thing she had planned. It wasn’t really the band aspect she had wanted—although she may have believed so at first—but instead, it was something that not even $100 worth of free pizza could satisfy.

Think of it like this: when you go to a public school, you are assigned somewhere on a made-up hierarchy whether you want to be or not. And if you were one of the weird kids, like Gretchen was, then a weird kid is what you would always be labeled as, no matter what. It was just one of those things that not even her own parents could understand, despite their best efforts to protect their only daughter and tell her she was enough as she was.

She liked Dib because she figured he would understand what that was like, considering he was also one of the weird kids. But when he didn’t acknowledge her, she took it as a personal attack, like he was implying he was better than her, which must've been why she decided to be outwardly mean to him.

The band aspect was just to get everyone, especially Dib, to realize that she is so much better than they could ever anticipate. She wasn’t, however, prepared for any disagreements within this little group of hers because it suggested to her that she was still not good enough, and will never be good enough, and that even her clones would hate her because she wasn’t good enough for them.

Her clones must’ve realized this, too. 

Gretchen 4.0 answered for all of them.

“No one understands a Gretchen better than another Gretchen,” she said. “Is that it?” None of the other Gretchens bothered to verbally shoot her down when she asked that. This time, they all knew she was right. The Original Gretchen nodded in response. As her clone had said it best, she didn’t need to go into the details about how she felt. They all nodded in understanding, but then each of them told her something she didn’t expect:

“You know, even if this doesn’t turn out amazing, it’s still cool that you got a lot of this together,” said Gretchen 4.0.

“Yeah,” agreed Gretchen 5.0. “For someone who hates being responsible, you’re actually pretty good at it.”

“I’ve had more fun with you guys than I did with anyone else,” said Gretchen 3.0. No one told her that they were the only ones she ever spent time with.

Finally, Gretchen 2.0 picked up her hat, approached the Original Gretchen, and took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry about what I had said, about going on strike,” she said. “It’s just that I thought you would understand me too, where I was coming from with all that.”

Gretchen thought about it. “You know, in a way, I kinda do. I’m sorry, me.” That got a smile out of Gretchen 2.0.

“Now what?” the other clones asked the Original Gretchen. She thought about it for a moment. So what if Ms. Bitters or some other nasty adult or even one of those “popular” kids judged them on stage? Could it be any worse than their judgments from the rest of the Skool year? And so what if she was probably secretly trying to impress Dib? Why should that affect the way she and her clones were having fun performing? He’d probably ignore her as always anyway.

“Well, why don't we do all of it?” she finally suggested to her clones. “It might be a little messy, but at least we’ll have a chance to have fun in the limelight.”

“That’s good enough for us,” they all agreed.

And with that, the Five Gretchens huddled together for a group hug, but then repelled back before any of them touched because none of them was a fan of hugs. Awkwardly, they all agreed to put their left hands together into a circle instead. And on three, they all threw their hands in the air and shouted, 

“BLOATY’S!”

At that moment, her name was called up, and the Original Gretchen looked to her clones like the leader they had hoped her to be.

“Okay, girls,” she told them. “Let's do this.”

Then the five of them marched onto the stage. Gretchen Impossible had confidence in herself and all of her clones again. She knew they were going to beat everyone else at the End of the Skool Year Talent Show. 

And during this whole time, Dib was up on the catwalk above them after dragging his invention up the stairs. At first, he didn’t think much about what was going on below him, but when he paused his dragging to catch his breath for a moment, he began to overhear his classmate, Gretchen, talking to herself. When he spotted where her voice had been coming from, he watched terror-stricken as five copies of Gretchen went from arguing, to making up, to walking confidently onto the stage.

“Wait. Five Gretchens?” he thought aloud to himself. “How did she manage to—”

Suddenly he stopped. He knew how. Oh, boy, did he know how. 

That's when Dib realized he might have a few more problems other than stopping an evil alien from taking over Earth with an army of clones...

Chapter Text

The cloning machine was at the side of the stage, it had a dust-cover over it. Zim had no idea what was going on when it came from the Gretchens, so he was thrown completely off guard when they showed up on the stage.

The stage lights lit up the darkened auditorium. The Five Gretchens stood on the stage. Dressed in black, with endless accessories of chains, leather, and even a funky hat on one of them, they looked about as ridiculous as you could imagine them to be. Glazed eyes surrounded them. Only Dib was aware of what was going on, and he was ready to pounce on the situation before it got any weirder.

“Guys! Look! ” he shouted. Everyone in the audience gave him funny looks, but Dib went on anyway.

“How are none of you seeing this?” he asked around. “ Five Gretchens?!?!”

“It’s just an illusion, Dib, get over it!” Zita called out from one side of the audience. The other Skoolchildren agreed with Zita, but Zim immediately knew what Dib was talking about. 

Suddenly, he was livid like never before.

“WHAT!?! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!?!” he screeched. Everyone in the audience stared at Zim. During an awkward pause, he repressed his fury and rephrased his sentence. 

“I mean, YES! THIS IS PERFECTLY NORMAL TO SEE FIVE GRETCHENS. NOTHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY!”

Dib was just about to accuse Zim of starting this situation, but something in Zim’s tone made him realize that Zim really didn’t know about Gretchen meddling with his machine until now.

 Nevertheless, they charged into each other onto the stage. The Gretchens waited boredly but patiently as Zim and Dib wrestled onto the stage. Fortunately, some of the kids in the audience weren’t as patient, and they dragged Zim and Dib from the stage. The two of them protested as they were duct-taped together and thrown outside.

“Uh, anyway…” Gretchen began, suddenly breaking a cold sweat when she saw the audience staring at her. “Hi! I’m Gretchen, and I’ll be singing for you tonight.” She started to introduce her clones. “That’s Gretchen on Guitar, that’s Gretchen on the other Guitar, that’s Gretchen on Bass, and that’s Gretchen, also known as ‘The Grev,’ on Drums.” Gretchen 4.0 smiled to herself. She got to be referred to as her desired stage name after all.

“And we’re… um…” She realized they never agreed on a band name. Whoops.

“We’re a band, and we play music!” Gretchen 2.0 cheered from behind her. 

Nice save, the Original Gretchen thought to herself. She decided to step aside and let her first clone take the stage for the introduction.

“Tonight, we have a song for you,” Gretchen 2.0 went on. “A song about Skool, about society, about love, and sometimes about the occasional mutated stink bugs you sometimes see in the Skool hallways.” That got a laugh out of someone in the audience. A good sign Gretchen thought. The Gretchens got into their respectable positions.

The auditorium was dead quiet once more.

Just then, Gretchen 4.0 slowly dinged the ride cymbal.

About four bars in, Gretchen 2.0 introduced the beginning of the song, her pointy fingers plucking away at the guitar not unlike the way Gaz pressed buttons on her video games. 

Then Gretchen 4.0 sped up her drumming, and Gretchen 3.0 entered in with her bass. Gretchen 5.0 struck a riff, which was deeper and darker than Gretchen 2.0’s guitar. The Original Gretchen came in last, her vocals were lower and gruffer than her normal speaking voice.

 The girls set up their own pyrotechnics at some point before their act, so fire shot out from both sides of the stage.

The children in the audience were either dumbfounded or too dumb to react.

From the stage, even though the five of them had only rehearsed for less than a month, Gretchen thought about how far she and her clones had come, and became proud of all of them as they played their respectable roles. She could just taste the pizza the five of them would buy with that Bloaty’s coupon they would win: its thick, garlicky crust steaming from a soft inside as it was torn open; rich, ruby red sauce mixed with freshly grown basil and thyme, giving it the taste that not even delivery could replicate; and topped with so many extra olives they may as well have replaced the cheese entirely.

Meanwhile, outside the auditorium and in the hallway, Zim and Dib were struggling to get the duct tape off of them, arguing as usual.

“What do you mean you had no idea Gretchen would do this?” Dib exclaimed at one point. “How else could she have cloned herself?”

“NO POSSIBLE WAY THAT GIRL COULD’VE CLONED HERSELF WITH MY MACHINE!” Zim shot back. “I HAD MY TRUSTY MINION, GIR, KEEP GUARD WHILE I WAS FIGHTING YOU!”

Suddenly, Zim recognized the flaw in his statement.

“Well, now we know how Gretchy-Girl cloned herself—BUT HOW DID SHE EVEN GET INTO MY BASE!?”

“You left your front door open.”

“D’AGH! I’LL GET THAT FILTHY LITTLE HUMAN FOR THIS!” Zim shouted towards the ceiling. Dib almost pointed out to Zim that although Gretchen shouldn’t have messed with his things behind his back (at least, not in the way Dib wouldn’t’ve preferred her doing), she wasn’t exactly at fault Zim had left his front door open. He decided to let that slide for now and focus on their current situation instead.

“Look, Zim, it’s your cloning machine, right?” Dib asked. “Isn’t there a way you could, I dunno, unclone Gretchen?” Zim thought about it.

“Not that I know of—I’ve never tested it out on myself,” he replied.

Makes sense, Dib thought, rolling his eyes to himself.

“Well I guess we’ll just have to find out,” he said. 

They both finally made a “truce” with each other and dealt with the duct tape that bonded them together. Zim was able to squirm one arm free and, using Dib’s stuck-out strand of hair (of course it hurt Dib, that was the fun part), cut them both free of the tape.

Once they got all of the tape off of themselves, they discussed what they would do next.

“First, we need to get into the auditorium without getting caught,” said Dib. “I just don’t know how we’ll be able to do that yet…”

“Why don’t we take the long way around the stage?” suggested Zim. “No one would ever suspect us inside of the ceiling.”

“The ceiling?” Dib did not want to agree with this. Anyway, why was Zim suddenly being helpful?

“I guess that makes sense,” he managed to say. “We gotta be quick about it though—like someone working on theater sets!

They snuck into the ceiling and walked over towards where the stage was, over to the top of the catwalk, where they would go to the other side of the stage to get the cloning machine and see if they could unclone Gretchen. They made a little small chat that may or may not have been suspicious.

“So, tell me, Dib: What’s this invention of yours supposed to do?”

The next thing Dib said was not his brightest decision.

“Well, it’s kind of like this…”

…

“... you turn on this button, then you flip on that switch,” Gaz was reading an instructions paper on the other side of the Skool. She had originally thought about doing something physical to Gretchen and her clones, like smashing all of Gretchen’s instruments or pushing this stupid box of metal onto the stage while they were on, but she had decided that such moves would be too easy. She continued reading the description on the instructions paper.

“Anyone who is within 50 feet of this psyche machine, even if it’s under or over, would have their deepest thoughts read aloud.”

Gaz had a more subtle plan that would humiliate Gretchen. She would use Dib’s invention right here to expose some of Gretchen’s own deepest thoughts, like maybe how she felt about certain people, or even how she had hints of guilt for cheating?

Whatever those thoughts were, Gretchen would be so embarrassed, she and her clones would all have to stop performing.

Perfect.

Gaz flipped on the switch.

Nothing happened.

Then Gaz remembered she had to plug it into an outlet. Just as she unplugged one of the spotlights and plugged in the psyche machine, she heard a sharp cry of distress.

She turned around and saw— oh you gotta be kidding —her idiot paranoid brother and his idiot delusional rival. They had snuck onto the backstage area through the ceiling, on the opposite side of the catwalk where Gaz was standing. Apparently, Zim had tricked Dib into getting this far, and was now trying to push him off of the catwalk, where he would fall to his doom. Zim and Dib spotted Gaz.

“GAZ! HELP ME!” Dib pleaded. 

“NO! Don’t do that!” Zim shouted, holding a hand up in protest. “Don’t you have a game you need to finish first? Your brother told me all about it!”

Gaz stared at both of them. She felt for her Game Slave in her pocket, Ketchupocalypse 3 safely secured inside the back of the game console.

“You’re right, Zim, I do..” Gaz grumbled. “This better be quick though—I already got a coupon and a final boss on my worry-list!” She ran over towards them. She forgot to turn off Dib’s psyche-machine.

By this point, the Gretchens were finishing the second chorus and were now on the bridge part of their song. The five of them felt something, as if they could all suddenly read each other’s minds. 

What each of them heard, however, were proud words of encouragement, which made them play even better than they already were.

During a drum solo she thought up last second, one of Gretchen 4.0’s drumsticks slipped from her hand, but she kept drumming with her fingers, ignoring the pain she would embrace from this improvisation. The drumstick, on the other hand, flew up through the holes of the catwalk where Zim, Dib, and Gaz were.

The drumstick surprised all of them. Just as Zim was about to push Dib off the catwalk to his doom, the drumstick struck him on the butt, shocking him and making him stumble right into Dib and Gaz. The three of them fell forward and got tangled between Dib’s invention, and some of the curtain ropes. The wild tangling was enough for Gaz’s Game Slave to fly out of her pocket, and from a blunt impact as it bounced onto the catwalk, Ketchupocalypse 3 popped out of the Game Slave and slid into and down a wall vent. 

Gaz never got to save her progress in the game.

She never got to defeat the final boss.

However, she didn’t throw her head into the air and scream “NOOOOO!” like other cartoons would. Because Gaz was not like other cartoons.

Because this… was Gaz Membrane we’re talking about.

She hung limp as she stared at the vent, her posture relaxed. Her anime eyes were mellow and at ease as she turned away from Zim and Dib. Down below them, the Gretchens were reaching the climax of their song’s bridge.

“You made me drop my game,” said Gaz, like she was telling them she had orange juice with her breakfast. Dib couldn’t see her face, but he could already sense the hate and murder in her words.

“G-Gaz… I…” Dib knew it was moot. Zim, not as much.

“What’s the matter, Dib? Why the sudden switch to DESPAIR?” Dib didn’t say anything. He simply pointed, and Zim realized too late…ish… sort of. He got the point. No pun intended.

Gaz’s head turned to them by the vertebrae. One could hear the sound of each one cracking as she turned, even from fifty feet below and with the Five Gretchens blaring their music. Her veins pulsed from under the skin of her temples as she began to huff, her eyes never losing their gentle expression.

“If I can’t… have that coupon… to Bloaty's Pizza Hog… NO ONE CAN!” And with fingers suddenly as sharp as knives, Gaz sliced through the ropes. All three of them tumbled down with the invention.

Dib screamed in horror. Zim screamed in confusion. Gaz screamed in rage. GIR screamed out of nowhere simply because he could.

And everyone in the audience saw it.

Everyone watched Dib’s greatest invention, his key to exposing Zim and saving Earth from his wrath once and for all, about to fall onto the stage where the Gretchens were still playing. Everything went in slow motion those next few brief seconds. The sound of angels singing tried its best to be heard, but their singing was drowned out by all the screams and the Gretchens’ music. 

The other two adults screamed and pointed from their judging table at the falling machine, too stupid to do anything else. Ms. Bitters only stared at the scenario and said flatly to herself, 

“As I had predicted… the annual disaster.”

Kids within the audience panicked for the Gretchens—they made their way onto the stage in an attempt to pull them out of the way of the giant, heavy metal thing. Meanwhile, the Gretchens watched them while they played, mistaking their panicked fans attempting to rescue them for fans getting really, really, really excited. They were yanked out of the way just as Dib’s invention had landed right behind the Original Gretchen, barely missing her.

There was a giant explosion.

Children were thrown across from the explosion’s impact. Amongst the disaster, the last thing Gretchen saw before she was knocked unconscious was Melvin flying straight into Zim’s cloning machine, slamming his back into the shiny red button that read “Facsimile” on it and smashing the machine to smithereens… but not before it cloned him several times as well.

-

Skool days passed well into summer, and Zim, Dib, Gaz, GIR, Gretchen, and Gretchen’s clones were visiting the City, where a schmoobizillion advertisements lit up the warm evening. No one at Skool ever got the $100 coupon to Bloaty's Pizza Hog, considering it had been incinerated during the explosion, but at least Gretchen and Dib were now on hand-holding terms. 

Still, Gretchen couldn’t help but wonder aloud about the events that led up to now.

“I don’t get it, were we supposed to learn something from this?” she asked no one in particular. In the meantime, our cast stood together and watched all the LED billboards advertising what can be argued as the greatest band of all time: 

MELVINS.