A/N: Woohoo, chapter 10. And on Sunday, chapter 11. Yay! I hope you enjoy, and please remember to review!

By the way, does anyone know of any particularly active Livejournal communities I might be able to post this fic on? I'd like to put this on LJ, but there don't seem to be many living Zim communities anymore... sigh. Actually any other places in general that might like this would be nice. Thanks!

Disclaimer: Because I haven't done one in a while and probably should. Along with all things Zim, I also do not own Macintosh, Napoleon Bonaparte and his quotes, Mein Kampf, Thanksgiving, the opus that has to do with penguins, Slark (but I don't think anyone else does either), democracy, football, Doritos, or Agent Gourdy and Agent Toadstool. If anyone can figure out where Gourdy and Toadstool are from, kudos to you.

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In Short Supply

Fake Porno

xxx

Transcript from an audio file recording of a report by Agent Gourdy and Agent Toadstool to the Swollen Eyeball, Sun. Dec. 14, 9:53 PM:

Darkbooty (DB): Gourdy, Toadstool. A pleasant surprise. We haven't been in contact with you all week.

Gourdy (G): Yeah, well, I reckon there's a good reason for that, ain't there? This is the only time we can check in, it bein' Sunday and all...

Toadstool (TS): The vampires we've been tracking are only inactive on Sunday nights.

DB: Understandable. However, we don't understand why you haven't been able to call us during the daytime, when the vampires are sleeping.

(3 seconds silence.)

G: Well, shoot my dog! I didn't know ya could put a call through to the Eyeball during day hours. Thought we was a nighttime organization.

DB: (sighs) Fine, fine. Keep that in mind for future use. You as well, Agent Toadstool.

TS: Yes, sir.

DB: Now then. Those vampires...?

G: Right! Last Monday and Tuesday, they were acting perfectly normal. Well, normal as the little bloodsuckers ever get. Ain't that right, Toady?

TS: Indeed. We kept tabs on them and made sure they only took their blood from authorized Swollen Eyeball blood donation banks. No live victims.

DB: Good, good. You do have a way with the vampires, Toadstool. We could use more like you.

TS: Ah, well, thank you, but they're basically a bunch of hundred-year-old adolescents with fangs, anyway. All it takes to get them in line is an authoritative voice.

G: And a duffel bag of garlic?

TS: Just a precaution.

G: (snorts) I can still smell you, and we're videoconferencing from five miles apart.

DB: Please, both of you. Just get on with your report.

TS: Yes, sir. On Wednesday, the vampires started displaying markedly predatory behavior. However, we couldn't identify their target, and they reassured us they're not hunting a "human." It wasn't until Frid—

G: They're hunting aliens!

DB: Excuse me?

(2 seconds silence.)

TS: Fine, fine! Ruin our great surprise, why don't you? You know how much I've been looking forward to saying that.

G: Well excuse me fer jumpin' to the point, Mr. I'm -a-misunderstood-and-touchy-little-paranormal-investigator-slash-undervalued-elementary-school-teacher-with-a-ruler-stuck-so-far-up-my-ass-that—

TS: Language, young lady!

G: Ya see what I mean?!

DB: Oh, just go on about the aliens!

TS: The vampires say they're hunting two aliens. They see them as a... a "delicacy." Like an exotic, imported food.

DB: Fascinating... We've never had such insight into vampiric feeding preferences before. Tell me, did they give you the identities of the aliens? Perhaps one of them is "the Spider" that Agent Mothman is tracking?

TS: I don't think so. The vampires say they saw a ship on Monday, which is how they learned of the alien presence, and furthermore claim there are two aliens. Mothman would know if the Spider had recently gained a new ally. He would not miss such an important development, almost a week after the alien's appearance.

G: Aw, you just say that 'cause you've got a soft spot for that Mothman kid.

TS: I do not, Mothman is simply a reliable source. He is a fine, upstanding young man.

G: And almost as crazy as you. Speaking of which, found any of the wee folk yet, Toady?

TS: Excuse me! Agent Darkbooty, did you hear that?! A member of the Eyeball throwing about disparaging remarks about a fellow member's preference in paranormal pursuits? I demand you review Gourdy's membership!

G: Oh, quit yer yappin'! If you weren't hunting down fairies I'd be sure you were one!

TS: Did you hear her? Huh? This is an outrage!

G: Shut up, ya queer!

TS: After you, hillbilly!

G: You wanna say that again?!

TS: Hick!

DB: (groans) I think this report is over. Darkbooty out.

xxx

Hoping to every benevolent planet in the Firmament that he and Zim hadn't been followed by the police, Purple slammed shut the ancient door and sprinted to the far wall, leaning against it and panting, being sure to stay out of sight of the single window on the wall. He'd just run up ten flights of stairs and only remembered halfway that he had Pak-legs.

He'd said he wanted to do something interesting over the ten-day wait they had until Nail showed up. That didn't mean he wanted to be pursued by the Earthen authorities on just his second full day on the planet.

"This is... all your fault!" Purple panted, glaring at Zim. "You and your stupid car jacking."

"Eh?" Zim turned away from the dingy window to look at Purple. He apparently hadn't heard. What was he, half deaf?

"It's your fault," Purple repeated, finally catching his breath, "that we are trapped here, in an empty, nasty Earthen building, hiding from the human police!"

Zim scowled, and glanced out the window again. "If you hadn't kicked the tire, the car alarm wouldn't have gone off!"

"I don't even know what a tire is!" Purple moved behind Zim to look outside as well. The glass panes were so scummy and filthy that he couldn't see much, but the blurry red-and-blue lights in the street below seemed to be moving past them. Good. "If you'd actually looked at the car you'd have known we were stealing a police car."

"If you hadn't crashed my Voot in the lake we wouldn't have needed a getaway car."

"If you hadn't blown up half my Spittle trying to look at the engine yesterday, we wouldn't have needed the Voot!"

"It's your fault we got caught trying to shoplift in the first place!"

"It's your fault we didn't have any monies and needed to shoplift!"

The last of the lights had faded away. Zim turned around to glare up at Purple. It was then Purple realized just how close he was standing to Zim—practically leaning over him—and very quickly backed away, avoiding Zim's gaze.

That had been a very close call with the police. When Purple had found this building to enter, he and Zim had been running like crazy from no less than eight human police vehicles. With guns. Apparently humans made guns that somehow spat out tiny little solid chunks instead of lasers; it sounded like a silly concept, but when Purple saw what happened to the things the guns shot at, he wasn't so sure. If he and Zim had been just a little bit slower to find a hiding place, they would have been arrested, discovered, dissected, and killed. They had risked their lives for this stupid idea of Zim's.

After a long moment, Zim said, "That was fun. We should do it again."

Purple gave him what he hoped was a disbelieving stare, though he was probably still in too much shock to do it convincingly. "You can go by yourself. I'll watch."

Gingerly, he sat down and leaned against one of the walls. He was too tall to be running around like this; he'd probably strained something...

Zim found a low box to sit on. Of course, he'd want to be a little bit higher than normal, wouldn't he? "Are you injured, my Tallest?" he asked, eyeing Purple critically.

"I'm fine. No thanks to you." Though he might be feeling it tomorrow. "Is all our stuff safe?"

"I thank you for asking, though your concern is wasted!" Zim said. "As you can see, I brilliantly managed to avoid sustaining any injuries—"

"Idiot, I wasn't asking about you," Purple cut in. "The snacks, Zim. Do you still have them?"

"Of course I do!" Zim held up a paper sack, inconspicuously labeled "NOT SHOPLIFTED" on one side. "As if I could lose such an essential prize."

"Good job," Purple said idly—it was his default statement whenever someone shorter than him did something that didn't displease him—grabbed the bag, and dug in. What kind of stuff did they have?

Zim saluted, beaming at the empty compliment. "An honor to serve my Tallest!"

"Mhmm." Purple took out a bag of chips, looked at the label (Doritos, Cool Ranch? What was a ranch and what did temperature have to do with it?), and handed the bag to Zim. "Poison check."

"Yes, my Tallest." Zim opened the bag and, with a nervous hesitation, ate one.

Yesterday, at Purple's insistence that he try the local cuisine, they had made an amazing discovery. Despite the fact that humans were mostly carnivores, their snacks were good.

Not exactly tasty-good; most of their snacks were pretty bland. But they were healthy-good. Loaded with transfats, sugar and sodium, high cholesterol and high calories, caffeinated and carbonated, laboratory-mixed and factory-processed to maximize on additives and preservatives. Probably the healthiest food Purple had ever eaten before, the kind where you just feel all-over good once it gets into your system. To think that Zim had landed on a planet with snacks like this by accident.

A strange look crossed Zim's face, and Purple was glad he'd made Zim his official food-tester for the duration of his stay on Earth. Zim had already proven his usefulness in the position once, when he'd discovered that jerky was made of meat. Ugh.

The strange look left Zim's face, and his eyes went wide. He dug into the Dorito-chips for another handful. "It's awful! Really terrible aftertaste!" Zim said, and half-emptied the bag into his mouth. "I shoul' take care o' thi' for 'ou, my 'Alles'."

"Yeah, right. Gimme." Purple snatched the bag out of Zim's grip. As if he'd be shoveling them in like that if they were so awful. He tried some of the chips himself. They really were good, in a weird, alien way. "Hey, these aren't so..."

He gagged. Zim was right about the aftertaste. He grabbed another few chips to cover up the taste of the first. In retrospect, that probably wasn't the brightest idea.

The bag was emptied quickly, and both Purple and Zim grabbed sodas from their Paks (Irken sodas, of course) to wash out the taste. Now that was a weird snack. Tasted fantastic for a moment, and then went horrible. Purple would have to give some to Red without warning him first. That'd be fun.

"I told you there was a bad aftertaste," Zim said.

"Shut up. They were good." Purple opened their bag of stolen snacks to look for something else, and found a heavy sack. It felt like it was full of dirt. "What's this?"

Zim looked at the label. "Pure sugar, my Tallest."

"Pure?! I thought you said humans didn't have the technology to manufacture this much sugar!"

"It grows naturally on Earth."

Purple stared at Zim. Slowly, he said, "And why didn't you include THAT in any of your reports, Zim?"

Zim shrugged. "I thought Earth sugar would be nasty compared to Irken-made sugar."

"Naturally grown sugar is always better, Zim! Why do you think Sintillate candy is so good?" Which was why Sintillia was officially under the protection of the Irken Empire, even though they could never conquer the world. Stupid Sintillates with their stupid expensive exports, holding their sugar hostage... Purple eagerly started to open the sack of Earth sugar, when something disturbed the air in the room, rustling the stuffy atmosphere like a whisper.

Purple's antennae stiffened, and he looked up. "What was that?"

Zim gave him a confused look. "Eh?"

What, was he really deaf? "To your right. What was—"

His question was answered. From all sides, dark forms swept into the room, nearly blending with the shadows as they formed a circle around Purple and Zim. Purple leaped to his feet and Zim lifted up on his Pak-legs. "Hey," Zim shouted, "who are you?"

There was no response.

"Who are you?!"

The figures stood perfectly still. They could very well have been stunted trees with cloaks dropped over them.

"Answer Zim! Who are—"

"SILENCE!" one of the forms bellowed; Purple and Zim both turned to face it. It was silhouetted in the dingy, yellowish window. "Ignorant ignoramuses who have stumbled upon our lair! You know not what you have done with your loose tongues!"

Purple didn't consider an abandoned building to be much of a lair. "Okay... what have we done?"

"You have spoiled our morbidly dramatic entrance!" the figure whined. "Now we cannot maintain a proper atmosphere of mystique as we execute our nefarious pl—"

"Who are you?!" Zim demanded again. "What do you want with two perfectly normal humans like us?"

"Er, yeah!" Purple said quickly. "We are human."

"And normal!"

"Yeah, really normal."

"Yep."

Slowly, the cloaked figures started laughing. "Oh, we're sure you're just as human as us," the first one said ominously. "Or, rather, just as in-human."

"Yes, yes we are!" Zim said. Idiot.

Purple frowned. "Inhuman? What are you talking about?"

"You do not have the scent of human about you," the silhouetted figure said mysteriously. It stepped forward. Mysteriously. "You have the scent of insect—of the moth, the black widow, the hornet, the roach. And yet, you still smell of blood. Of alien blood."

"We smell like what?!" Purple said. Was something wrong with their disguises? What had Zim messed up this time? Somehow, this had to be Zim's fault.

Zim bristled. "Oh, you," he hissed. "Vampires!"

"Vawhats?"

"Dwellers of the night!" the mysterious speaker said, mysteriously. "Patrons of the dark, the dank, the unloved and the unlovable. Those with no life of their own, those who steal their unlife willingly from the unwilling living, who drink the sweet, sorrowful scarlet nectar of the ignorant day-dwelling masses. They can't possibly understand us! We're too deep, complex, and depressed for their conformist minds to comprehend!"

"Hey, watch what you say in front of a Tallest," Purple snapped automatically. Depression was a minor taboo, but taboo it still was—he'd already learned that Earthens freely talked about some of the most revolting topics. "What's all that supposed to mean, anyway?"

"Vampires are carnivores that can't handle solid food," Zim said. "So they have to drink blood."

Purple grimaced. Wonderful. Meat-eaters.

"Ah, yes," the speaker said, leaning towards Zim. "And you, O Ambassador From Space, I have heard of you. I believe you ran into some of our clan last year in Transylvania, did you not?"

"It was Pennsylvania."

"What-ev-er," the vampire said, then cleared its throat and readopted its spooky voice. "It is a pleasure for us to meet your personally, O Alien Invader Zim. I am sure our encounter shall be... delicious."

Purple was less bothered by the threat than he was by the preceding remark. "'Alien Invader'?! I thought you said no one knew you were here, Zim!"

"No I didn't, I said the Dib knows!" Zim said. "And the vampires don't count! They don't communicate with the other humans and they sunburn too easily to go out in the day, so it doesn't matter! Besides, we can't hide our identity from them anyway. They have weird mind-read-y powers!"

"Actually, we just smelled your..." The vampire stopped. "I mean yes! Yes, the secrets of your minds are ours!"

"Ha!" Zim clamped both hands over his head, flattening his antennae. "You may know I'm an Invader, but you'll never get your filthy brain-flesh on my secretness!" Zim lifted one of his four Pak-legs and drew it back to stab at the vampire.

"Calm down!" Purple parried Zim's Pak-leg with one of his own, grabbed Zim by his collar to keep him from running, and then turned to the vampire. "Look, I'm sure we can just talk this out," he said, reminding himself that the Control Brains had originally encoded his Pak as a Diplomat. Yeah, so he had transferred out of Diplomat training to be a Soldier with Red... "Just what exactly do you want from us?"

"Merely your exquisite alien blood. And, perhaps, your allegiance to our glorious undead clan."

"What? Are you crazy?"

"We give free eyeliner to new clan members."

"No way!"

The vampires chuckled superiorly. (Purple made a mental note to remember that chuckle. He could use it next week when he and Red went to hear the Screw-head Labor Union's requests.) "We shall see. But, please, before you are forcibly inducted into our ranks, allow me to introduce myself." The silhouetted vampire flung off its hood, to reveal a freakishly pale male human with two enormous spikes hanging from his mouth. They had to go down to his chin at least. Purple stared. No wonder vampires couldn't handle solid food; how would they fit it in their mouth?

The vampire smirked around his spike-fangs. Sorta. "And I," he said dramatically, "go by the name of Count Gwaednerth. It means... blood strength."

"Okay..." Now that Purple could get a good look at this Gwaednerth, he didn't look all that threatening. Pretty scrawny. Maybe he and Zim could get past him. "I'm the Almighty Tallest Purple. It means... purple."

One of the cloaked vampires snorted. Gwaednerth glared at it. "Sorry, boss," it said.

"That's sire to you, Trystram!" Gwaednerth said indignantly.

"Actually, I'm Tristin, b... er, sire. Trystram is home sick."

"No, I'm not," another one said. "Tristem is the sick one."

"You guys sure? I thought it was Trysta..."

"Holy shit, you losers!" Gwaednerth's voice cracked and went up two octaves. He quickly recovered his mysterious voice. "Why do you all have the same name?!"

A pause, then another said, "Because it means torment." After a pause, it added, "And I'm Trysta."

"Oh. I see." Gwaednerth cleared his throat. "Well, more torment is better. As long as I am the only Gwaednerth in this clan."

The other vampires nodded assent.

Gwaednerth glanced around. "Hey, where did the aliens go?"

When the vampires had appeared, they'd formed a solid circle around Purple and Zim; however, when Gwaednerth had stepped forward, he'd created an opening that led straight to the window. Apparently, the heavy cloaks didn't let them see much. Purple had slid right past them, hand clamped over Zim's mouth to keep him from saying something stupid, and quietly sliced out the window pane with the laser-tip of a Pak-leg (he didn't see where it had fallen, but luckily it hadn't made much noise), and climbed out. He was now clinging to the side of the building, still covering Zim's mouth.

"Our prey have evaded us!" Gwaednerth shouted furiously. "Go, dark minions of hell! Hunt down our extraterrestrial escapees and seize them, before they traverse too far from our grasp!" Purple wondered why he couldn't just say, "They escaped! After them!" Earthens, go figure...

Zim pried Purple's fingers off his mouth. "We can't stay here, they can still read our minds," he hissed. "Come on. We need to find garlic."

xxx

Garlic, as Purple found out, was a very nasty-smelling plant. But apparently Zim was right when he said that it would be an effective weapon. The vampires reacted quite badly to the garlic; all Zim had to do was chuck one at them and they went running.

"And that's not their only weakness, my Tallest," Zim told Purple the next morning, once all the vampires had gone. "They react badly to sunlight, too. And they don't like these thingies." He held up what looked like a metal X with one extra-long leg. "But their only true weak spot is on their chest, a little off-center. The vampires are extremely vulnerable if stabbed there. I haven't determined why they're so weak there..."

"Because that's where their hearts are?" Purple suggested.

Zim stared at him. "Uh... no! Don't be silly. Vampire hearts are located... in their liver! Yes!"

"Okay..."

As much as Purple hated to admit it, Zim actually was right about all the things he said about vampires, no matter how dumb they sounded. (Except maybe the heart thing.) The second night they had to deal with the vampires, Purple was prepared. The messed-up Xs proved especially effective; every time Purple held one up, the vampires ran off, screaming "A cross! A cross!" Purple asked Zim what they were going across and Zim said to ignore it, it was a Jewish thing.

Purple was surprised at how much Zim knew about Earth creatures. Sure, he'd been here a fifth of a year and wasn't dead yet, but Purple had always thought that Zim was completely oblivious to everything that happened on that distant dirt-ball he was exiled to. But now that the dirt-ball wasn't so distant, Purple could see that Zim actually had been analyzing the natives. Perhaps he wouldn't have been a complete failure of an Invader after all.

During the daytime, they continued to explore the city, Zim explaining whatever they saw and Purple accepting the explanations, since he didn't know anything about humans. He'd been on Earth several days when he finally saw his first "moovy," called AVP: Alien Versus Preadolescents. The aliens won. Purple thought it was great until they left the moovy theater (which was a brilliant concept, Purple thought; huge explosions in dark rooms were fantastic) and Zim told him it wasn't a documentary. Moovys were fictional.

"Fictional?! Humans bother with fiction? That's stupid," Purple said indignantly. And here he'd thought huge slobbering monsters had really ripped a bunch of meatbabies into gory chunks. "Doesn't that confuse them?"

"From what I can tell, a majority of humans are born with an instinct to tell whether they're watching fiction or nonfiction," Zim said. "Yet you can still lie to them. Humans are stupid that way."

"Weird." Purple glanced in a store window to see ten or so teevy screens, each one with the same scene. It looked like two humans were wrestling without their clothes on. "So is that fiction or nonfiction?"

"It's..." Zim glanced at the teevys, and his eyes widened. "Don't watch that, my Tallest!" He grabbed Purple's hand to drag him from the store.

"Hey! Why not?" Purple leaned back to keep Zim from tugging him away, and looked inside again.

"That's how humans dance."

"What?" Purple immediately stopped resisting and let Zim take them out of sight of the teevys. He laughed incredulously. "That was dancing? They looked like they were having seizures!"

"Isn't it stupid?" Zim said, grinning. "And they show it on teevy, too! The humans have whole stations devoted to watching each other dance!"

"They're a pornographic species?" Purple almost couldn't believe it. As far as he was concerned—he and the rest of the Irken Empire—watching someone else dancing was like watching someone else snacking. There was absolutely no pleasure in it unless you were doing it yourself. "Do they make moovys about it, too?"

"All the time!"

Purple laughed loud enough that some humans turned to stare. "That's insane! Fictional pornography! That's gotta be the dumbest idea in the entire universe!"

"Isn't it?!"

By this time, they were being quite loud, and most of the passing humans were glaring at them, looking slightly disgusted. Oh, what right did they have to be disgusted? Purple figured that if they were the ones producing the fake porno, they deserved to be ridiculed on their own planet.

"And, my Tallest, you simply won't believe this," Zim said in a low voice, eyes shining with glee. "Even though humans officially meet the standards for a copulation-crazed race, ninety percent of their population is heterosexual."

That was all Purple could take. He started laughing so hard he almost couldn't breathe. How was it even possible for an official copulation-crazed race to be heterosexual?

Of course, no normal human would understand why Purple, or the rest of the Irken race, would find heterosexuality humorous. Then again, a human's sexuality—heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual, or otherwise—was hard-wired into them from birth, whereas modern Irken sexuality, without reproduction or even a physical gender in the way, basically boiled down to pansexuality: if it isn't annoying and if it isn't unwilling, then it can be danced with. The Irkens have wondered for eras how some species could limit themselves to only dancing with certain genders. It cuts down on a great many options for dance partners.

It wasn't often Purple was this amused. In fact, the last time he'd found anything this funny had been... well, the last time he'd been on Earth, when Zim had insisted he was the universe's greatest dance partner or something like that.

Then, his excuse had been that he'd recently danced; that was why he was in such a good mood. This time, it certainly had to be because of all the Earth snacks he'd been eating, packed with so many sugars.

Or maybe, a voice suggested, it was because Purple was actually starting to enjoy Zim's company. Purple quickly pushed down the suggestion like the stupid idea it was.

"It's almost sundown," Zim said suddenly. "We should use the time to prepare for tomorrow. The vampires won't bother us tonight."

"Why not?" Purple asked.

"Today is a Sunday, my Tallest. Vampires don't act on Sundays."

"Oh, of course. Yeah." Purple thought every day so far had been a sun day; there hadn't been enough smog to block out the sun. Did Earth have moon days or something? But it was true that the vampires didn't come out when it was sunny...

"Tonight we may freely plan our counterattack!" Zim declared. "The filthy vampire fiends shall soon taste the wrath of Irk!"

"Oh yes. Yes, they will." Purple grinned evilly at the thought of a victory over the vampires. Nobody challenged the Irken race unless they wanted to be annihilated.

"And then," Zim said, his smile just barely twitching into a more sly look, "we shall move on to plotting the destruction of the entire human race."

"All right!" Any destruction was good destruction. Perhaps, Purple conceded to the little voice in his head, at times, Zim could be entertaining company.

Purple was in such a good mood, he didn't even notice what he had just semi-promised to the ex-Invader Zim.

He also didn't notice that as he walked, Zim was, triumphantly, still holding his hand.

xxxxx