Author's Note: R&R. Is there anything more to say than that?
I left my plan tree at home, so I'm praying I don't have to end up rewriting all this…
Log 6: The IRS Agent from Beyond the Stars
Zerk had been working very hard on figuring out what the whole project file meant - so much so, she hadn't even bothered to don her holographic human self and go to school that Monday. Therefore, Az was left alone during this next, crucial step for their plan. The human race might die, it was true… but that wasn't the most important thing. No, the most important thing now was allowing Zerk to do what she did best, and for Az to continue manipulating Zim and Dib together. She just hoped she had the wiles to keep both sides trusting her for now.
Ms. Bitters was in a foul mood. Little Billy up front had taken a visit to the "underground classrooms" after asking if he could take a trip to the bathroom. Another girl had been shoved into a closet because she had coughed once. Zerk's - or her human name, Erkz - seat was empty that day. No one besides Az seemed to have noticed. Dib thought Erkz was an annoyingly silent European who whispered in the back of the classroom. Zim thought she smelled like pork.
The recess bell rang, and the classroom children fled silently into the bright sunlight, where their teacher could not follow them. Az fumbled with a small receiver and whispered a few chosen words into it, and glanced at a tiny pocket television with the weight of a feather. From a high shelf, the moose toy/secret camera in Dib's room whirred to life. There was nothing there, which meant KIR had not be hen finished yet. Perhaps Zerk was still too caught up in the project essays.
Az walked over to Dib - who was sitting atop a crumbling stone wall, eating his sandwich halfheartedly but watching Zim with intent, narrowed eyes. She climbed up beside him and stole his moldy potato chips. He didn't notice.
"Have you ever felt powerful before?" asked Az offhandedly. Dib - quite surprised as he was jerked from his moment of intense spying and concentration - almost fell from the wall. He realized his sandwich - clutched tightly in his hand - was now not only oozing peanut butter over his hand, but flies seemed to have eaten half of it while he hadn't been looking. He retched and tossed his lunch onto the dying grass below. The sandwich seemed quite pleased to be on the ground - at least the flies were, and the ants that were swarming it. Dib wiped the peanut butter off his hand and added the napkin to the garbage heap below.
"What do you mean?" he asked. "No, though, not unless you count the lasers in Tak's old ship. That's pretty nice and empowering."
"Never mind," said Az, eyeing the potato chips before consuming them. "It was just a question."
Zim, however, seemed to notice that the human he knew as Secret Agent Moose was eating lunch with his mortal enemy, and idiot pig-human that he had been conspiring against. Zim was filled with rage and distrust, and he ran over to the wall and pointed a threatening, accusatory finger. His eyes were bulging so wide his human-eye contacts might have fallen out.
"MOOSE-HUMAN!" he shrieked, still waving a gloved Irken finger in ultimate anger. "HOW COULD YOU ALLY YOURSELF WITH SUCH STINKING FILTH! I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING TO DESTROY THE DIB-HUMAN! You LIED!"
Dib's gaze snapped from Zim to Az, turning from an evil glare of ultimate loathing into an evil glare of ultimate distrust. "What!" he shouted. He stared at Zim again. "You idiot, she was plotting against you the whole time! We BOTH were! We spied on your base-"
"What is this LYING!" Zim shrieked, waving his arms angrily. "Dib-human, we have your destruction all figured out! We have cameras in your home, hacking into your database-"
Indeed, both were right. Az had given Zim her best ideas on how to destroy Dib in the most painful and horrifying way possible, while she had advised Dib on the best way to reveal Zim's innards to the government's secret police force. She flushed a bright red.
Both stared at her, and both Zim and Dib shouted in unison: "HOW COULD YOU!"
She was saved the trouble of answering, however, by a new visitor on the playground. He was far taller than anyone else any of the others at the school had ever seen - he made the Tallest, Zim suddenly realized, seem as short as he was. The stranger made Dib feel, if possible, even shorter than he was already. Az's stomach plummeted.
He was wearing a black trench coat, and the shadow from his hood obscured his features so that no one could tell what his face looked like. He seemed hunched over - like someone who had spent too much time planting and harvesting a garden - and had a bright white, gnarled hand protruding from the overlong sleeve of his outfit, clutching a short walking stick. He was breathing in rasps, his chest heaving with each gulp of air, as if the air were far too thin for him.
"Excuse me," he said in a raspy, professional voice, "I'm from the IRS." He handed a small business card to a curious child with a jump rope. The card simply said "IRS" in big bold red letters.
"I'm looking for a young girl who goes by the same of Erkz, possibly European," he said, taking a quick glance around the playground. "You see, she recently overpaid us, and now we're having to track her down as to give her back all the money we owe her. You might know her - she's quite good with… with computers."
The child was silent, still staring at the business card, quite certain that he had never seen an IRS worker before, and thinking he was, possibly, the first to have done so. Most workers for the IRS simply took the taxes out of your paycheck, or - if you were in the hospital, say - took a few pints of blood instead and counted you even.
The IRS worker began to walk towards the stone wall, making scraping noises across the grass as if his feet were dragging beneath the long hems of his black trench coat. He seemed to lean far too heavily on his walking stick, as if the small thing could combust under his sheer weight. Zim stared at him, and the IRS worker seemed to stare back - that was the direction the hood was pointing, anyway.
"Zim of Irk, under exile from home planet, coded as fast food worker on Foodcourtia but under delusions of being an Invader. Threat: Absolutely none," said the IRS worker automatically.
Zim's eye twitched. "Absolutely not," he dismissed, pretending to look shocked at how the IRS man had identified him - which was easy, because he honestly was, although the reason being truth instead of gibberish - and he pretended to yawn. "What you say is madness, complete madness - WHO TOLD YOU!"
He leapt up and clutched the IRS man's hood and pulled, but it didn't come off. "WHY DO YOU SAY SUCH THINGS!" he shrieked. "… Of course, you'll entirely wrong, entirely wrong. I am no Irken, I am normal. I am a normal pig-smelling humanoid." Zim loosened his grip on the IRS man's hood and jumped down, but not without another quick glance at him.
"You know Zim's an alien?" asked Dib, staring up at this stranger in complete awe and confusion. "But how? Who are you really?"
The IRS man didn't answer, but stared at Dib for a while.
"Subject: Unknown, genetic scan - human?" he said, somewhat unsure at his information. He eyed Dib up and down. "Affirmative - human at base level. The rest of the genetics seem to be skewed - a stupid mutation?"
"HEY!" argued Dib, quite offended, "who are you calling dumb…" He turned around and looked where Az had been sitting a moment ago. She was gone. He looked back at the IRS man questioningly once more, and opened his mouth to ask him once again.
"How do you know Zim's an alien?" he repeated, suddenly growing excited. "Did you know there's another one? Her name is Zerk - she wants to turn Earth into a zoo!" he said, quite proud. He was sure this was no IRS man - he was probably a government worker from Area 51. Dib felt quite intelligent at that moment.
"You know about Zerk?" asked Zim, rounding his questions on Dib this time. "I suppose Agent Moose told you that as well? … WHERE IS HER BASE? We're both intent on destroying her, then?" Zim seemed rather negligent at this idea of having to fight - albeit apart, yet on the same side - along with Dib. Yet if it meant securing his destruction of the human race… Zim was quite certain that Dib would agree that total annihilation was better than being thrown in a universal reservation park.
Dib didn't answer, and neither did the IRS man. He turned around and began to drag himself to wherever it was he came from - Dib hadn't seen a car, that was true, but he doubted secret agent Area 51 militant men would travel about in avehicle for everyone to see. All Dib knew, however, was that Az had been playing both sides.
Or no side, come to that.