Chapter Five:

In Which Sleep Is For the Weak, and Dib Does a Little Dance

For a moment upon waking, Tallest Red had no idea where he was, and, as he would later reflect, that moment was the happiest moment he was going to have for a very long time.

Unfortunately though, the truth of his situation came flooding back to him. Planet gone. Massive gone. Ugly kid. Zim's base. Zim. Sleep.

Groaning, he pulled the blanket up over his head and decided that maybe he would just stay for a while. A long while. Until-all-of-this-is-over-and-I-don't-have-to-deal-with-it while.

Did sleep usually take away all context like that? Ugh. He gave his head a good shake to clear it. That had to be a tactical disadvantage. It was no wonder the superiority that was the IRKEN race had done away with it. Still though, there was something oddly pleasant about it. Something peaceful. Aside from a few flashes of colour, he couldn't remember much.

Yawning, Red stretched out, removed the scratchy blanket and rolled out of bed, his back making an unpleasant crack as he did so. Note to self: Have house make bed that did not feel like a rock. Ew. And get better blankets, too; this one reeked of human. It just wasn't enough that they were ugly, apparently. Why did they all have to smell so bad too?

He saw no trace of Purple as he headed down the stairs, taking care to be extra quiet as he passed Zim's new sleeping quarters located at the end of the hall. His companion must have gotten up earlier and he hadn't noticed, which seemed strange. If he was going to peg any one of them for a long sleeper, it would have to be Purple for… obvious reasons.

Red hovered towards the kitchen and immediately smacked his head on the doorframe. Ow! He grit his teeth, and, upon spotting the human larva sitting at the kitchen table looking grumpy and sporting enormous black bags under his eyes, resisted the overwhelming urge to repeat the unfortunate sound that Purple had made just yesterday.

"Gah!" He growled, hand to his head, "Why in the heck are these things so short?"

"Short?" The kid turned to him, looking perplexed. "They've got to be at least seven feet high."

"Short," Red snarled, and frantically massaged his aching forehead. This was yet another way in which humans made no sense. Instead of creating everything to accommodate the tallest of their species, they instead seemed to think that it would be better to create everything around what they assumed to be the average member of society. How very disrespectful.

It was then that Purple finally appeared, apparently having been in the living room. He hovered forward slowly, his eyes wide and unblinking in a perfect thousand-yard stare.

Slowly, and with all of the deliberation of someone about to try disarming a bomb, Purple pulled out a chair and sat down. What was wrong with him?

"HELLO!" Screamed a tinny voice, and out of nowhere, Gir appeared, jumping up and down with all the force of a jackhammer. "MORNIN', PURPLE-MAMA!"

Purple jumped nearly three feet in the air, letting out a rather undignified squawk, picked up Gir and flung him at the wall so hard that it left a tiny, Gir-shaped hole. Alright, that was weird even for Purple. Red knew full well that Purple loved to throw things, usually at other people, but it had been a long, long time since he had seen Purple react like that, purely on instinct.

"What's wrong with you?" Red asked, raising an antenna.

Purple turned towards him, eyes wide and popping, the bags under them almost as dark as the ones the kid was sporting.

"Horrible visions… of DOOM." He curled in on himself, teeth chattering. "Also, nachos. So many nachos."

"So that's why I heard someone yelling about nachos all night," said the Dib-child, "I barely slept because of it, by the way, in case anyone's interested."

Of course it went without saying that no one was interested. Red was pretty sure the kid must have imagined it, anyway. Red himself had been in closest proximity to Purple the whole night, and he hadn't heard a thing.

Gir pulled himself out of the wall in a tiny cloud of plaster and shrieked, "Purple-Momma dun' throwed me good!"

It was then than Zim and Skoodge finally made their appearances, making their way down the steps with uncharacteristic caution, both wearing the same shell-shocked expression as Purple.

"Visions of doom," said Zim, and Skoodge nodded in agreement.

"We just went through this," the Dib-child said bitterly. "Look, I don't know what you're so upset about, you just had a nightmare."

What?

"A bad dream," Dib elaborated. "Come on, you've got to know what it is, I've heard Zim use the word like, a thousand times."

"I had always wondered about the origin of the term," said Purple slowly, turning towards them. "But I didn't know that it had anything to do with sleeping. Wait a minute, why 'mare'?"

"I don't know," said the Dib-child, his voice muffled as he pulled his blanket up over his face.

So overdramatic thought Red, it's no wonder that you're Zim's archenemy.

Red looked first from the Dib-child, to the shuddering Zim and Skoodge, and then to his still shell-shocked partner.

"… You're all nuts," said Red. "I slept the same as any of you and I didn't have any 'nightmares'." He crossed his arms and gave his companions a look of utter contempt. He was very good at that look, having used it so many times over the years. When you were better than everybody else, it just came with the territory.

Purple looked up at him, eyes hard.

"I am never sleeping again."

"That's impossible at this point, you know that. Without IRK the PAKs are all funky."

"Then I'm putting it off for as long as possible."

Typical Purple. Once he got an idea in his head, there was no changing it. Just ask all of the deceased drones from the time Purple had gotten the idea for Super-Charged, Explosion Bowling. They were still cleaning the guts off of the walls from that one.

"Can you even do that?" Red asked. Sure, he knew that he was beyond changing Purple's mind at this point, but sometimes it was fun to wind him up.

"Of course I can! I can do anything!" Purple crossed his arms with 'clang'. "Sheer force of will."

Sheer force of will, indeed. Red was torn on this one. On the one hand, Purple's stubbornness was legendary. On the other hand, this was the same IRKEN who'd had to be banned from all organized sports in their youth because he kept getting bored waiting for the ball and just tackled people.

… And punched them.

… And bitten them.

Red had unfortunately been on the business end of that last one a few times, despite the fact that they had been on the same team. Red was pretty sure that he still had some scars in places where no decent IRKEN should be looking. Stupid Purple.

"You could try coffee," said Dib, finally pulling his head out from the protection of his musty, yellow blanket (Which likely had not started life as yellow). "I don't have any here, but Gaz left when the security system went down at about six in the morning, so the front door should be open by now. I think I know how to make it."

"What is 'coffee'?" Purple asked, slowly and carefully.

"It's a drink," Dib said, lifting his glasses so that he could rub at one eye with a closed fist, "Adults drink it to keep them awake. Apparently it works wonders."

Purple cocked a suspicious antenna, and agreed to give this "coffee" a try. Skoodge announced that if one of his Tallest wasn't sleeping, then neither was he, and Zim had quickly followed suit, not because he was scared of course, but because sleep was so inefficient and cut into his valuable Zim-time (As opposed to normal time? What did that even mean?). Of course.

Given that Purple proved unwilling to share any of this 'coffee', Zim had decided that if he simply kept moving non-stop that he wouldn't risk falling asleep again (Although Red would be hard-pressed to explain to you how this was any different than normal) and Skoodge's solution was to simply grab a roll of duct tape and literally tape his eyelids open. Brilliant.

The Dib-child shrugged the blanket off of his shoulders, wrinkling his nose with a mild look of disgust. "I'll be back soon!" He announced as he made for the front door.

Red simply leaned back in his chair to observe. If nothing else, the ensuing chaos should prove very entertaining.

Dib was not back soon. In fact, he came back nearly an hour later, as once he had gotten home he had realized that Gaz had locked the front door and refused to open it as she was still mad at him for making them miss curfew.

Dib had been forced to do a little dance, announce to the entire world that he was indeed a 'giant dweeb', and create a polka in honour of Gaz's favourite game, accordion solo and all, before she finally agreed to open the door and let him in.

He fumbled with the knob on Zim's front door, trying desperately not to spill the roughly three dozen mugs of very hot coffee he was carrying in a flimsy cardboard box, complete with cream and sugar packets in the bottom. If he was certain of anything in this universe, it was that an IRKEN's appetite was limitless, so he had planned ahead.

Once inside, he leaned his head through the archway into the kitchen, just to take a quick peek, and found Tallest Red in the corner, mucking around on Purple's IRKpod and muttering to himself, Skoodge seated on one if the kitchen chairs, eyelids firmly taped open and staring at nothing, and Zim marching in place while Gir sat on his shoulders and yelled, "Giddyup, Horsie!" Just your typical morning with IRKENs. Someone should make a sitcom out of this.

Dib backed away from the kitchen and made his way slowly by steadily to Tallest Purple, who was sitting on the living room couch and pouting determinedly.

"Here it is!" said Dib, with much more enthusiasm than necessary.

"Bout' time," replied Purple, his pout, if anything, intensifying. "Did you know that I've been sitting here on the couch pouting for ten minutes straight, and no one even noticed? Even Red doesn't care! It's just not right!" He then sank deep into the couch, and did what Dib considered to be an Oscar-worthy impression of an angry six-year-old.

Fighting the urge to roll his eyes, Dib set the box of coffee paraphernalia on the ground before the childish, sulking insect.

"Well… maybe the coffee will make you feel better?" Dib tried. Smile and endure, Dib, smile and endure.

"Fine," Said Tallest Purple, pulling himself out of his slump to glare at Dib. "I'll try your disgusting Earth beverage. Gimme!"

Dib selected a mug- the clear one, with the glow-in-the-dark picture of his father's face stamped on either side- and handed it to the Tallest.

"This is the plain stuff, black," he explained, "of course, most people prefer to put cream and sug-"

But it was too late, Tallest Purple snatched the mug out of Dib hands and brought it to his mouth.

Purple took a gulp, and then, with a look of pure and utter disgust, spit hot coffee all over Dib.

Once Dib had finished rolling around on the floor and clawing at his burning eyes, he turned to Purple, expression dark.

"What in the heck was that for!" He asked.

"It tastes terrible!" Said Purple, looking down at Dib like he was a piece of something disgusting he had just found stuck to the bottom of his shoe. "How dare you subject me to something so unpleasant?"

Dib took a moment to breathe heavily and count to ten. The hypocrisy was absolutely amazing, just amazing! "Well, sorry about that, but that's the way it tastes, unless you want to-"

"Seriously?" Purple snarled at them. Then all of the fight seemed to go out of him and he leaned back sulkily into the couch. "Fine, then," he said, stuck out his tongue and dropped it into the drink.

Dib stared.

Not only because Purple's segmented tongue was stuck out at least two to three feet, but because he could actually see the dark liquid disappearing from the glass.

"What-" Dib closed his mouth and tried again. "Your tongue… What is that?!"

Purple sucked the segmented tube back into his mouth, "It's a proboscis, stupid." He said to him, as though it were the most obvious thing ever. "What, humans don't have them? Oh, right, mammals. Hah! See? Inferior phylum."

"But I've seen you eat solid food," Dib protested

"Obviously we can. It works on solid things, too. Watch."

With that he plucked a donut off of the arm of the couch and somehow, Dib did not want to know how, no, not at all, sucked it up his tongue. The donut moved slowly, a giant bulge moving through a cylinder far too small for it, the peristaltic motion pulling the food through it in short, wet, squelchy movements, convulsing and bulging the way Dib imagined that something would move through an internal organ. An internal organ that humanity had never been intended to see. Purple hacked, coughed and drooled as thing thing moved, up into his mouth and then down his throat, where he gave an enormous gulp and then turned back to Dib.

"See?" He said, while one of Dib's lower eyelids twitched. "You don't really taste it that way, though, which is why we usually chew. Which reminds me, you had better appreciate that demonstration! I basically just wasted a donut showing it to you."

Dib stared, horrified.

"That was absolutely disgusting, and I never want to see anything like it ever again."

"You see what I mean? You humans have such weak constitutions." Purple crossed his arms and looked at Dib smugly. "Inferior phylum."

Trying to get the horrifying image out of his head, and yet somehow knowing that now, for the rest of his life, he would be doomed to remember it in the recesses of his dreams and every time he sat down to dinner to eat, Dib picked up another mug- this one for some reason had Zim's face on it, he didn't even want to know why- plucked several packets of sugar from the box, and emptied them into the mug. He then picked up the little carton of cream he had brought with him, and stirred in a more than generous amount.

"Here," he said, handing it to Purple, "this is the way most people drink it, with cream and sugar." He didn't bother to mention that most people didn't add so much sugar that it accounted for nearly half of the drink, or poured in so much cream that it turned white.

Tallest Purple took it suspiciously, his eyes on Dib, paused for a moment and then took a sip.

Then he took another sip.

And another.

His eyes grew wide, and he took a big gulp.

"It's like a donut and a cookie had babies and I plucked them away from their parents still writhing and screaming and devoured them whole." He said.

"So, you like it?" Dib asked cautiously.

"What do you think, stupid?" Tallest Purple chucked the empty mug somewhere to the left, where there was an enormous crash and the distinctive sound of breaking china.

"Come on, kid. Gimme more, more!"

Dib obliged and handed the entire box to Purple, who quickly set about mixing up more coffee and immediately tossing the entire mugful down his throat when he was finished, not even bothering to complain that no one else was doing the mixing for him.

Dib backed away slowly and headed for the kitchen.

"Buff Hardback!" A voice shouted.

Dib turned to look at Tallest Red, who was waving the Irkpad triumphantly above his head.

"What?" Dib asked, not even registering what the IRKEN had said.

"Buff Hardback," Tallest Red repeated. "Zim, get over here!" Zim obliged, tossing Gir from his shoulders and marching over to Red and Dib, where he continued marching in place. Somehow, even that was annoying.

"Buff Hardback?" Dib asked, "Wait," recognition dawned in him, "you mean Buff Hardback the billionaire?"

"Probably," said Tallest Red with a shrug, "truthfully, I don't really care about what you humans do with yourselves, all I know is this guy has an alien artifact in the basement of one of his buildings that could help his rebuild Zim's devoured-" here, he shot a nasty look at Invader Skoodge, still sitting at the table, who seemed completely oblivious- "GDO".

"An alien artifact?" Now that had gotten Dib's attention, "What kind of alien artifact? Wait, how do you know this?"

"The IrkPad has just enough power to scan for alien technology within an a radius of about three of your puny Earth cities, not a lot, but enough for now. I found the location and the hacked into your human internet to figure out more about where it was being kept, which, by the way, I hope I never have to look at again!" He growled at Dib, as though the entire internet was his fault. Dib didn't even want to know what Tallest Red might have seen.

"Intriguing," said Zim, actually scratching his chin, "So, all we have to do is find this 'Buff Hardback', find out where he's keeping the device, and steal it back from him. Then, VICTORY SHALL BE MINE!" Both Dib and Red back and winced at the sudden increase in volume.

"It might not be that easy," said Dib, massaging one ear in the hopes that Zim hadn't managed to permanently damage it. "I don't pay much attention to him, but I know enough about Buff Hardback to know that he's a billionaire. Made his money off of hotels and casinos. He's bound to have a ridiculous amount of security. There's no way we're getting past it easily."

A series of wet gurgling sounds came from the other room, and Dib wondered if Tallest Purple was going to be okay. Was it possible to drown drinking too much coffee?

"Hm," Red paused for a minute, fiddled on the IrkPad and brought up a picture of a very gaudy multistory building, decked out in dark blue and gold.

"It looks like our artifact is located here, in the Buff Hardback Personal and Super-Elite More Royaltyer Than Any Other Hotel, deep underground." Red looked pained at just saying the name. He paused. He seemed to be waiting for something.

"Stupid name!" Purple called from the living room. He hadn't drowned after all.

"Thank you!" Red called back.

"Well then, this should be easy!" said Zim, his little feet still pounding the tile floor. "All I have to do is check in as a guest and sneak into the underground holding facility. Piece of cake!" He waved a dismissive hand.

"Not so cakey," said Dib, "that's not really a hotel, that's his house. His own personal mansion. You can't even get in unless you're staff, and the screening progress is so rigorous that-" He stopped, suddenly. "Wait a minute, what do you mean all you have to do is sneak in?"

Sure, at the moment he was helping the IRKENs. But any step closer to getting them off of his planet was a good thing. He was the world-saver, after all, and this was all a part of saving the world. Besides, he didn't trust Zim for one second not to screw the whole thing up.

"Once again, Dib-creature, you prove the inferiority of your tiny human brain, with your inability to put together even the simplest thing. I, Zim, will sneak in and retrieve the item. You can just stay here and do… whatever it is you do whenever I'm not around. Truth be told, I don't really know what that is, and I don't really care."

"Why you?" Dib narrowed his eyes at Zim. "I could do it. I'm the human. I know humans better than you ever will. Besides, you'll probably just break it."

"Lies!" Zim gasped, "Lies and slander!"

"I could do it-!" Skoodge added from somewhere in the corner of the kitchen, but no one paid him any attention.

"Come on," Dib snarled at Zim, "do you really think you could do it? With your track record? You can't even program a microwave without it exploding! Even your mission is-!"

Tallest Red's head whirled around to face Dib, eyes narrowed and teeth bared.

Dib actually gulped and looked away. Maybe it was a left-over from human instincts a million years old, but a giant bug growling at you was actually kind of terrifying. Score one for the IRKENs, he guessed, or at least the ones big enough to stand over you. But humans are more than just their primitive instincts! The rational mind of a human being has a power stronger than even they know! Logic will prevail and humans will be victorious!

"… What is he doing?" Tallest Red asked Zim in a low voice, snapping Dib out of his reverie.

"I… don't know," Zim replied, equally confused. Both of them were looking at him like he's just turned into an elephant.

It was then that Dib realized that during his determined thoughts he had accidentally struck a heroic pose, feet planted firmly on the ground and fist in the air.

Whoops, that was embarrassing, Usually when that happened no one by Gaz was around to see it, and she didn't really care. Dib rearranged himself back into a normal position.

Red and Zim looked at each other for a moment, clearly decided that they probably didn't want to know, shrugged, and looked back at Dib.

"How's this?" said Tallest Red in that obviously fake, overly-friendly tone he usually used just before he blew someone up, "You can both go! Do your sneaky thing, get me the artifact, and whoever gets it first gets a prize. How does that sound?"

"What kind of a prize?" Dib asked suspiciously. He doubted that the Tallest would keep his word, and even if he did, he suspected that anything an IRKEN considered a prize was probably not something he would want.

"The kind that keeps you as far away from me as possible," Red replied.

Dib sighed. Whatever. All he wanted at the moment was the prove that he could beat Zim, and that was better than any prize.

"I'm in if you're in," he turned the Zim and held out his hand. Zim- still marching in place, Dib had to compliment him on his tenacity, there- grasped it in his and the two shook solemnly.

The moment, of course, was then ruined by Purple leaning his head into the kitchen and shrieking, "Hey, kid! Where do I get more of that coffee?"

Author's Notes:

Sorry for the long wait! Life kept me super busy so I didn't have time to write. Also, sorry that not much happened in this chapter. Originally, it was also supposed to include Zim and Dib's mission at Buff's hotel, but it got way too long, so I divided it into two.

I know that I promised more Gir antics in this chapter, but that was before the split. Rest assured though, Gir will go wild(er) in the next one!

At least one person was wondering why I print "IRKEN" in all capitals. According to Jhonen Vasquez (He himself does it, too), that is what IRKENs in canon do, in order to be more annoying and I want my readers to have the full, incredibly irritating Invader Zim experience as they read.

I am a ridiculous bio nerd, especially when it comes to animals, so thinking up weird things that the IRKEN body can/should do is a lot of fun for me. I tend to base IKRENs off of the idea that they're basically insects that have somehow also managed to become vertebrates at the same time, mixed in, of course, with a bunch of nonsensical alien weirdness.

(I am not joking about how much of a nerd I am, I literally came up with an entire evolutionary history for IRKENs, it is beyond embarrassing.)

I have no idea what Purple, Zim, and Skoodge dreamed about. Running out of donuts? The collapse of the universe? BEES? This is cheesy, but I would love it if people would include what they think they might have dreamed about in the comments!

Until next time,

- Mags