A/N: Hey, did something happen? I got just a little over half of the usual amount of reviews last chapter. I'm not the kind of writer that threatens to hold a fic hostage if I don't get so-and-so many reviews, but I'd kinda like to know what went wrong. Did half of you lose interest in the middle of the chapter and leave? Was it extremely boring or something? Really, guys—the review button doesn't bite, and if I wrote something that sucked I'd like to know so that I can try to improve it in the future. And if it didn't suck, well, it'd be nice to know that, too.

But, anyway. It's not like I'm here simply for reviews (if I was, I'd probably doing a ZADR fic. Or a Naruto fic...), so on with the chapter! I hope you enjoy it, and please remember to review and let me know what you think.

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In Short Supply

Smarter Tallest

xxx

From a message sent out to all Paks with Rank Steel 1 security clearance, or the top-ranked High Commanders and Taller Advisors: Emergency message from the Massive. TOP PRIORITY:

This is Almighty Tallest Red speaking. No, Purple's not part of this. That's the problem.

I made this message Rank Steel for a reason, so I'd better not see this on the news unless you want to be hauled to the Massive so I can personally toss you out the airlock. Keep that in mind.

Almighty Tallest Purple is missing, and has been missing for over ten days. He was last seen on the Massive, claiming that he was going to get some snacks. He hasn't been seen since.

Shortly before his disappearance, the Massive received a highly disturbing transmission. It was from Zim, if that tells you anything. Purple then made several severely "taboo" statements before simply vanishing. You know what I'm talking about.

Do not, I repeat, do not assume the worst. In all the time I've known Purple, he's never expressed any similar thoughts at all, and while Zim's transmission was very unsettling, it wasn't enough to actually induce that kind of action. You are to believe that while in a slightly upset state of mind, his guard was down enough that alien enemies or Irken traitors were able to abduct him. Or he got lost. You know how he is.

He vanished nearest to planet Vort. Search for any information that can be obtained there, and then spread out to neighboring planets. If anyone finds anything suspicious, contact the Massive directly with information.

And be quick about it. Purple could be anywhere, and the Firmament is a big place.

xxx

In the time since Zim had stopped showing up at school, Dib had discovered the primary function of homeroom.

For a while, he'd spent the twenty minutes each day with his head on his desk, arms crossed, watching the door out of the corner of his eye, waiting endlessly for Zim to show up. But on the third day of Zim's absence, he'd almost gotten whiplash jerking his head up as the door opened to admit a student aide with a doctor's pass for Zita, and he'd finally concluded that he needed to find something else to do with his time. Better than having a mini heart attack every time the door opened.

So he'd started to do homework during homeroom. He could usually get most of his math done, and then during lunch finish it, or at least get enough done for a decent grade. But as the days wore by and Dib realized that he was getting less and less math done during homeroom each day, the true function of homeroom finally dawned on him.

It was to make up for starting school at 7:20 in the morning. If you didn't have your homework done before school started, you were fooling yourself to think you could get it done during the school day before it was due.

The true purpose of homeroom was to sleep.

So Dib slept.

The announcements usually kept him from doing more than dozing lightly for the first few minutes of class, but once the announcements had ended and Dib had stumbled to his feet long enough to mumble a pledge at the faded flag over the blackboard, he could put his head down and really fall asleep. Sure, sometimes he slept through the bell, but his next class was P.E. anyway, and they didn't care if you were a few minutes late. You just slapped on your ankle bracelet whenever you showed up and had the rest of class to run thirty miles. Dib had figured out how to hack his ankle bracelet so it registered five miles for every two he ran, so he didn't have much to worry about.

After the announcements' reminder of the optional Kill Santa Rally tomorrow, Saturday, at the memorial downtown (student council members and cheerleaders were required to attend), Dib got up, mumbled his pledge, and then dropped down again, nearly asleep before he'd even gotten his glasses off. He really needed to get more sleep, he thought. There was no excuse for him to get so little rest. It wasn't like he had a social life, and now there wasn't even Zim to prevent him from going to bed at a reasonable hour. Oh, well. Today was a Friday, so maybe he could sleep in tonight, as long as he got up early enough to get to the Kill Santa Rally...

Dib's sleep was rudely interrupted by someone who'd decided to show up halfway through class.

He flinched when the classroom door was slammed open, banging into the wall. He groaned, ignored it, and set his head down without opening his eyes. Probably some idiot who'd spent second period in the janitor's closet with his girlfriend and only just realized he was late for homeroom. Or maybe Zita, she'd had a lot of doctor's appointments lately.

He stopped ignoring it when the door slammer spoke.

"Fear no longer for my well-being, my fellow wormbaby classmates! I, Zim, triumphantly return!"

"What?!" Dib sat up so fast he almost fell out of his chair. He snatched up his glasses and attempted to put them on as he stood. "Zim! What are you doing here?"

Zim cackled derisively—it really was Zim, that laugh was unmistakable. "Foolish Dib-stink! Did you already forget that we share this class?"

"That's not what I meant! Where were you all this—" Dib finally succeeded in getting his glasses on. His jaw dropped. This was not Zim as Dib remembered him.

Whatever had been making Zim so fat a few weeks ago had apparently entirely transformed itself into height. Two weeks ago, Zim had barely come up to Dib's nose; now, Dib barely came to where Zim's nose should have been. He'd grown probably a foot and a half.

Zim apparently knew what Dib was thinking. He tilted his head back, and somehow managed to smirk down at Dib from all the way across the room. "Isn't it obvious, little Dib?" he said. "I was sick."

"Sick with what? Where's your doctor's note?" Ms. Airy snapped, barely peering sideways at Zim from where she was curled up on her swivel chair with a copy of The Prince.

"Er..." Zim stood straight, as if he were addressing a superior officer. "I forgot to bring my doctor's note with me, ma'am. I shall be sure to bring it to school tomorrow."

"Monday," she said.

"Yes, of course! Monday."

Zim's clothes didn't quite fit him anymore. His pink dress thing now looked almost like a normal, if slightly baggy, t-shirt, and there was a sliver of green skin exposed between his sleeves and gloves and between his pants and boots when he bent his elbows or knees.

"Fine. What were you sick with?"

Zim's eyes widened slightly. Obviously, he hadn't thought out this part of his excuse. "I was sick with... eh... it was... AIDS! Yes! I have been very ill with AIDS for the past two weeks. But I made a full recovery last night." Zim beamed.

"Oh, come on!" Dib turned to the rest of the class to appeal, as futilely as always, to their sense of reason. Maybe some of them had stayed awake during health last year. "Please tell me you don't believe him! Would any normal human say something as completely ridiculous as that?"

Before the other students had time to mull that over, Ms. Airy sat up straight and glared sharply at Dib. "Are you calling AIDS ridiculous, Dib? Are you making light of the world's most horrible sexually transmitted disease?" Several students tittered at the word "sexually." Dib noticed Ms. Airy didn't jump on any of them for making light of AIDS.

"No, Ms. Airy, of course not! I just meant that Zim—"

"Half my family died from AIDS, Dib," Ms. Airy snarled, before leaning back in her chair with The Prince and muttering, "Good riddance."

In the back of the class, Alex raised her hand. "Ms. Airy, I thought you said half your family died from heat stroke while hitchhiking across the Atacama Desert?"

Ms. Airy grunted without looking up. "That was the other half."

Scowling, Dib sat down again, shooting a glance at Zim as he did. Zim had sat as well. He was slouching so that the top of the chair just barely reached the base of his neck, and then craning his head forward without un-slouching. Dib thought he was trying to find out if he could see his feet on the other side of the desk, now that he was taller. What a narcissist.

Dib pulled out a piece of notebook paper, and, very careful to make sure he didn't have any misspellings, wrote, "Where were you really for the past two weeks, Zim??" Fold, throw, wait for reply; it was as if Zim had never been gone. Nothing had changed but the subject of their arguments.

Zim snatched the plane out of the air, read it, and scribbled a short reply. Dib could guess what it was before he even got the paper plane: "AIDS."

"Fat chance Zim! What about that freaky molt you went through?"

Zim puzzled over the question a bit longer than Dib thought necessary, before writing a careful reply and sending it back. "I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. REALLY, I DON'T. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?"

Dib shot Zim a baffled look, to find that Zim was giving him an equally baffled one in response. Did he really have to explain? "Stop using caps!! It looks stupid! I'm talking about that thingy that made you swell up like a freakin beach ball two weeks ago. If that's not a molt I don't know what is. You leave school looking freaky, you come back looking taller. That's what I'm talking about."

Zim actually laughed out loud when he read Dib's response. The students around him gave him worried looks (a laughing Zim often meant imminent pain for those surrounding him), and Ms. Airy growled menacingly. Dib wondered what was so funny.

Zim's response was almost has short as his first, and just as obviously false. "i punched puberty."

"The phrase is hit puberty, you moron. And no you didn't."

"of course i did. puberty is what happens when a filthy little meatbaby becomes not so little, is it not? this is what happened to zim, as i am obviously one of you meatbabies."

"I don't believe that and you know it."

"you don't have to. not as long as everyone else does. XP"

Dib glared at the paper. Zim was right, of course. And everyone would believe Zim. "You're such a"

The bell rang before he had time to write more. Dib crumpled the paper and stood up, prepared to just walk up to Zim and tell him what he was. But by the time he got across the room, Zim was gone.

Out in the hall, Dib could hear Zim's shouts, echoing from some other hallway; it sounded like he'd run into Keef and was feeling like being nice to him again.

Dib sighed irritably. Fine. Maybe he could bother Zim at lunch. If not, Dib could probably catch him before math and bother him about where he'd been the past two weeks, if Mr. Mudd didn't intervene.

That, unfortunately, would all be later. In the meantime, Dib trudged off to his second least favorite class (behind math), still imagining he heard Zim's laughs in the distance.

xxx

The Massive was the most beautiful sight Purple had seen in days.

He'd been gone... what, eleven, twelve days total? That was the longest he'd ever left the Massive at one time since becoming Tallest.

Dropping Fataz off on Irk had been no trouble at all. He'd just had to get past a few security gates to reach the underground training facilities, follow the signs until he found the nearest Historical training academy, located a line of new recruits getting registered, and stuck Fataz in at the back.

"Remember, you're asking to be transferred into Military training as soon as possible," Purple had reminded him.

Distracted by his surroundings, looking at everything as if attempting to memorize the place, Fataz had said, "Uh-huh. Yessir."

Purple had watched until Fataz reached the front of the line, a tentacle plugged into his Pak and registered him, and he entered the academy. Mission accomplished.

And now, at last, Purple could get back to doing what he was best at: hanging out with Red and bothering everyone they didn't like. Snickering as his Spittle Runner approached the Massive and the Irken Armada, he wondered if Pon was still sitting out in the Irken winter, waiting for the Massive to answer him. Purple had just been to Irk; it was still cold enough to freeze your antennae deaf.

He put on his uniform, contacted the Massive, and waited for an answer. When it came, he grinned. "Hey, Red. Can I—"

"Purple?! Where are you?"

Purple immediately stopped smiling. "What do you mean?"

Red looked frantic. His back was perfectly straight, his antennae stiff, his arms crossed. "Are you okay?! What happened? I've been combing the whole Firmament for you!"

Something cold settled in Purple's gut. His eyes widened. Oh. He'd never told Red where he was going. He'd never told Red anything at all. "I'm fine! Really, I'm okay. I'm outside the Massive in my Spittle Runner."

Red nodded quickly, nervously. "Okay, good. Great. I'll meet you at the hangar. All right?" He ended the transmission.

Oh, hells and voids, what was Purple going to tell Red? That he'd had to take an emergency twelve-day trip away from the Massive and sorry, he couldn't tell Red anything? Purple tried to remember what the last thing he'd said to Red had been before simply leaving. His Pak whirred softly as he called up the memory...

He winced. He'd threatened to... to kill himself, hadn't he? Great. Great. Red had probably spent all this time wondering whether or not Purple had thrown himself out the airlock. Wasn't that perfect! Purple had better have a damn good excuse for where he'd been, if he wanted to make up for all that worrying he'd put Red through...

There. Practically the last thing he'd said: "I'm gonna go get some curly fries. I'll be back later." That was something. He could run with that.

Okay. He could do this.

xxx

Red was waiting outside the entrance to the hangar, his hover-belt off so he could pace and a small swarm of guards waiting up the hallway, when the entrance opened. The moment he saw Purple, Red reactivated his belt and rushed up to him. "Purple! You're okay?" He wrapped his fingers around Purple's upper arms, holding onto him as if he could vanish again at any moment. It was an incredibly intimate gesture, bare skin on skin, but hells, Purple was Red's best friend and he'd been scared for him.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I said I was fine, didn't I?" Purple said. He looked uncomfortable, glancing up and sideways to avoid meeting Red's gaze directly.

Red didn't care, as long as Purple was all right. All this time, he'd thought that Purple had been assassinated by the Resisty or kidnapped by the Screw-head Labor Union or that he'd... done something to... himself.

But that obviously wasn't the case. "Good!" He pulled Purple into a quick, tight hug, just to assure himself that his friend really was okay, and then let go of him and stepped back. The time for relief was over. Red had celebrated the return of his friend Purple enough, now the Almighty Tallest had to get down to the business of finding out where his co-ruler Tallest had been. "Where were you? Did something happen?"

"Nuh-uh, no way! I mean, how many things could happen to a Tallest?" Purple asked, backing a little away from Red and slouching over.

"Want a list?" Red said testily. He hooked his fingers in his hover-belt, the closest he could get in gauntlets and armor to planting fists on hips. "Seriously, Purple. Where were you?"

Still not meeting Red's eyes, Purple said, "Well, you remember when I said that I was gonna get some fries?"

"When you left? Of course I remember."

Purple nodded. "Yeah. I was doing that."

Red stared at Purple in disbelief. "You were... getting fries? For over a week?"

"Yes?" Purple smiled weakly.

This was insane. "And you needed your Spittle Runner to do that?"

Purple laughed nervously. "Didn't you hear me say that I was going to get them on Foodcourtia?"

Red was stunned. "Wait wait wait. Let me get this straight. You're trying to tell me that you ran off, without telling anybody, twelve days ago, because you wanted to get curly fries from Foodcourtia? THAT'S what you're telling me?!"

Red thought he saw Purple gulp. He nodded.

For a moment, Red could only gape at him in shock. Then, he burst out in disbelieving laughter. "That has got to be the stupidest thing you've ever done!"

Purple winced. "Yeah, probably," he mumbled.

Red was still laughing. "That's just... I mean, I know you're a bit of a ditz, Pur, but... oh, Irk. That's... wow!" It wasn't funny, not at all, but Red had to laugh anyway. If he didn't, he might just strangle Purple for sending him and every Irken on the Massive through an utter hell for the past twelve days. "You've done some dumb things, but that... wow. You've really outdone yourself."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I'm the stupid one." Purple pushed past Red, heading towards the bridge.

"No no, that's not what I—Okay, yeah, that is true," Red said. Purple had always done worse in all their Military training, after all, so it wasn't exactly a secret that Red was the smarter Tallest. "But... seriously, Purple. Sometimes I wonder how you can be Tallest and still pull stunts like that." The statement was meant as an unspoken plea: "You're a Tallest, Pur, please please don't scare me by pulling stunts like that." But, of course, he could never say something like that.

Purple apparently didn't get that message. He whirled angrily on Red. "Do you, Red?! You know, sometimes I wonder how I'm a Tallest, too! Why don't you tell me, Mister Tenth Law-Writer?"

"Wha?!" Red would never have thought Purple would react this way. "Hey—Pur! Wait!"

Purple had turned around and hovered off in a huff. Red hurried to catch up. "Look, you don't mean that, do you? I made that law for you, you know." No, that sounded all wrong, as if Red had done it as a favor and thought Purple owed him. True, Purple probably owed Red a lot of things, but not this. Red had made that law for himself. "I mean... I'm not as good a Tallest alone as both of us are together. Right?"

Purple didn't slow down, didn't look any less annoyed, but he did glance sideways at Red, as if considering his statement. "We don't do that much," he muttered. "You could handle it yourself."

"Yeah, well, I'd be pretty bored the rest of the time, wouldn't I? See, that's why there have to be two of us," Red said, forcing a grin.

Purple grinned as well, and it was just as forced. He still wasn't looking directly at Red. "So... that's it? That's what the law's for?"

Red had a sense that the conversation was very quickly going downhill. "Pur—"

Purple suddenly whirled to face him. "Sometimes you can be such a—such a—" He made strangling gestures in the air. "A really—thingy! That's what you are!" He turned away grumpily. "You've got no idea what kind of crazy stuff I've been doing for the empire."

Red gave him an uncomfortable look. "Okay, I give up," he said. "What kind of stuff have you been doing?"

"The... crazy kind." Now Purple looked less angry and more secretive.

Red nodded, reluctantly accepting this. "The kind that maybe I'll hear about someday?"

"Maybe."

"I see." The heated fight was over, extinguished prematurely by Purple's sudden cold secrecy. Usually Red felt it was best to just let a fight run its course until it changed form into something more pleasant, but he felt this was a fight less likely to end in laughter and more likely to just burn them both out, especially if Purple wasn't even talking about half of whatever they were fighting over.

Purple looked burned out to begin with. There was a dimness, a tired hunger in his eyes that Red couldn't quite bring himself to look at. Red probably didn't look much better; twelve days of worrying about Purple hadn't done anything for his health. They both needed to recover.

Red hesitantly put a hand on Purple's shoulder—on his armor, not exposed skin this time—and said, "Hey, Purple? It's, uh... it's been a long few days, huh?" Well, it probably hadn't been for Purple, who had been hanging out on Slark-forsaken Irk-blessed Foodcourtia, of all places, but still. "The Techs can handle the bridge for a few degrees. Wanna go dance? Just a quick one, I think the Screw-head Labor Union's gonna call us sometime today."

"I dunno, Red. I—" Purple fell silent. A strange, horrified look crossed his face. "I... c-can't."

"You what?"

"I mean. Bad idea. If the Screw-heads call. R-right? Let's just get some... snacks, or something. Yeah. How 'bout cupcakes. You like cupcakes? I want cupcakes." He set off down the hall, towards the nearest lift that would take them to the tier with the Massive's food court. (It was directly over the engine and insanely hot. Red had decided that if he ever ran into the idiot Vortian Engineer that had put the food court over the engine, they'd become part of the engine's fuel.)

Red hurried to catch up to Purple. "What's wrong? Pur, are you okay?"

Purple looked stunned, horrified, almost traumatized, like he'd just been told he had diabetes and could never eat snacks again. "Fine. Just fine. I'm just... I'm fine. I'll be fine."

"Um..." He wasn't going to talk. Red sighed. "If you say so."

He followed Purple silently to the food court, wondering why on Irk he wouldn't want to dance. He wondered—tried not to, but still wondered—whether or not there had been any validity to Purple's taboo threat, the day that he disappeared. He wondered whether or not he should be worried.

xxx

Purple wanted to blame this all on Zim. He needed to blame this on someone, and he wanted it to be Zim. It was so easy to blame things on him, and Purple's current predicament was, to some extent, tied to Zim.

However, it wasn't really Zim's fault. It wasn't the fault of anyone that Purple was willing to accuse. It was the fault of this stupid mission, it was the fault of his duties as Tallest. It was Purple's fault.

If he wanted to keep the mission a secret, he couldn't dance with Red. If he wanted to retain his dignity, he couldn't dance with Red or anyone else. He'd been too busy for the past few weeks to think about it, to even notice, but now that he stopped to think...

Anyone he danced with would immediately see what he'd done to his body. They would know about the surgery, and, at best, some random Irken would think Purple had a weird, creepy fetish. At worst, they would tell someone else—the entire Massive would hear the rumor—the whole empire would hear—and then Red would confront him, ask what was going on, and Purple would have to tell.

And the entire Irken Empire would know that the Almighty Tallest Purple had been dancing with Exile Zim, that he had created an offspring with Zim, and would they understand if he tried to explain that it had been for the good of the empire, that it had been to save the empire?

The Empire before the Irken, always. Too bad not everyone had listened to Tallest Miyuki's philosophies and believed them like Purple did. Maybe she would have understood and supported him if she'd ever learned about the sacrifices he was making for his empire. But no Irken alive would understand.

That was why the empire could never learn about what he was doing. That was why not even Red could hear a thing. Purple couldn't do anything, anything at all, to endanger the secrecy of this mission.

That meant Purple would never be able to dance again.

No, he amended himself quickly. Not quite. There was still one Irken he could dance with and keep the modifications he'd done to his body secret. One Irken who already knew.

Exile Zim.

That was almost worse than not being able to dance at all.

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