Even after dark, this city was never quiet. It was something Dib disliked about it. How could a young action hero like himself ever have a dramatic moment on a cold, quiet night, when the streets never emptied, and people were always shouting the weirdest things at the wrong time?

Dib checked his watch. 7:40 pm on the dot, and still no sign of him. Where could he be? Was he at the right place? Dib moved his head and looked upwards at the street sign. Corner of Monkey Street and Manatee Drive. Nope. This was where he was supposed to be.

Finally a black sedan made its appearance, slowing down as it approached. Dib made certain to pop his collar up in hopes to hide his face a little. You could never be too careful.

It came to a stop in front of him, and the reflective window lowered, revealing a man in his early twenties wearing a classy tan trench coat sitting professionally behind the wheel. He studied Dib for a moment and then smiled, the light bouncing off his glasses effectively hiding his eyes. "Hey kid. You seen any funny looking moths lately?" he asked. Dib couldn't help but let a big goofy grin grow on his face. He loved speaking in code.

"Nope," he responded. "Only unnaturally large fish."

The man laughed and opened the door, letting Dib slide into the passenger seat. He quickly buckled in and shut the door. "Mothman," Greeted Agent Nessie. Dib grinned at him and lay back in the seat.

"Hey, Nessie," He said "It's about time you got here."

"What? I said I wouldn't be a minute early- I didn't say anything about being late!" Both agents laughed at that and looked diligently at the road in front of them as the car began to move again. "So... you run into that alien again?"

Dib shrugged and slumped a little in his seat. Agent Nessie was one of the few people who believed about Zim ever since Darkbootie had seen the little Irken on the monitors at N.A.S.A.

"Yeah. He stole my computer, and when I tried to get it back, he just...! Agh. He got me good." Said Dib with an annoyed huff.

"I can see that," said Nessie rolling his eyes. Suddenly the bandage on Dib's face felt heavier, and the cuts stung.

"Is it that obvious?" asked Dib.

"Painfully," sad Nessie, with a sympathetic snort.

Dib groaned and turned from the older man, toward the window. The sun's light just barely shone over the horizon like a big streak of red that had been painted quite carelessly. He could see nothing but the black silhouettes of people and things by the road. The sedan was at the very edge of town and driving outwards so there were plenty of trees to see, and not enough lights to blind someone like they did in the city. Very soon all he could see was trees, standing guard at the edge of the highway.

For several minutes they continued like this, both agents gazing out the windows in companionable silence. But then Agent Nessie sighed and leaned back in his seat. "Did you hear about Agent Disembodied-head?" he asked with a grin. Dib's ears perked with interest. He hadn't heard any news about Disembodied-head for a long time.

"No. What? What happened?"asked Dib, curious.

Nessie chuckled, "He quit."

"HE WHAT?" gasped Dib, his eyes wide.

"Yep. Just like that. Wanted to get a job in the military or something. I dunno. Point is: he's gone and he's not coming back," said Agent Nessie, shrugging his shoulders as he drove.

Dib turned his body forward and slouched, processing the new information. He'd never liked Disembodied-head. Even after Darkbootie had vouched for him, the man had never taken Dib seriously. He'd gotten enough cuffs over the head from the man to know that he'd never have the his respect. Still, Agent Disembodied-head had always seemed fiercely loyal to the Swollen Eyeball Network. It didn't seem like him to simply put it aside.

Then another thing occurred to Dib. Three people were supposed to be in charge or the Swollen Eyeball Network: the president and the two commanders. Disembodied-head had been the first commander for as long as Dib could remember, and if he was gone, what was going to happen now?

But it seemed Nessie could tell what he was thinking. "Bootie's gonna move me up the ladder;" He laughed smugly. Apparently he hadn't liked Disembodied-head either. "I'll be first commander."

"But who will be second?" Dib actually startled himself by how relaxed and indifferent he sounded. Nessie was giggling behind his tall collar.

"Well that's the interesting thing, isn't it? You."

The word hit him like a bullet and sent him reeling, staring at Nessie with eyes the size of dinner plates and a mouth wide enough for the Titanic to float right inside. Nessie laughed loudly, pounding on the dashboard with his fist, but fortunately he kept his eye on the road and managed to swerve around a drifting car without collision.

"HEY!" He shouted at the other driver, pounding on his horn. "WAKE UP!"

It woke Dib from of his stupor too, and he snapped his jaws closed. "Me? Why me? I'm the youngest person in the whole network!"

"True," said Agent Nessie. His eyes were more focused on the road now after that scare. "But you signed up when the network was just starting, and you're one of the only guys who stuck with it this long. Besides, Bootie thought we owed it to you for not taking you seriously about the alien... You're not actually supposed to know about the promotion thing until the meeting so could you, um, just pretend to be surprised?"

"I'm not pretending," said Dib shaking his head, still processing the information.

"I know you're not."

Dib turned back to the window, the conversation dropped, the silence restored and continuing.

After several more minutes of blankly staring at passing trees, the black sedan pulled up into a parking garage, snapping Dib out of his trance. Nessie lowered his window and paid the parking fee before he stopped the car and got out, Dib following suit.

"Thanks for the ride, Nessie," said Dib earnestly as he straitened his collar. He couldn't tell whether the older agent was smiling or smirking in the shadows, but either way he seemed pleased.

"Eh, I was gonna pass by there anyway," he said. "So... any theories why they would build a parking garage in the forest next to the highway?"

Dib's face broke into a smile, and he let Nessie lead the way. "Pfft, beats me. I'm only thirteen, and I'm missing the good old days when people made sense."

"Tell me about it."

The agents walked quietly into an inconspicuous stair case and began to descend. The stairs were made from ancient concrete, and the walls were unfinished, so they could see rusty pipes and wires crawling up the sides of the stairwell. The concrete seemed to be emitting cold air, and Dib pulled his trench coat tighter around his front.

"I think it's pretty stupid that we have to disguise the head quarters even though we have our own website. Everyone who wants to know about us already does, so why worry about staying hidden?"

Nessie took a ring of keys from his pocket and began fiddling with the lock on a steel door. He must have been having trouble, because he was putting a lot of his weight into it. "Well there's a difference between people knowing about us and people knowing where we are. What if someone wanted to exterminate all the believers?"

Dib cocked his head. "Why would they...?"

"Because some people are crazy. If they saw our website, but didn't know who we were or where to find us, they wouldn't be able to do anything bad." Nessie seemed to lose patience with the lock, and pulled the key back out. Then he laughed at his own stupidity. He'd been using the wrong one.

"Oh. That's why they wouldn't tell me where to go on the website," said Dib.

"Uh huh."

Door finally opened, Dib and Agent Nessie walked inside, shutting and locking it again behind them. The room had been disguised as some odd type of lobby, and sitting at a desk was an annoyed looking man, probably in his thirties, who was wearing a classy pinstripe suit. "What do you want?" He asked grumpily.

"Eye drops," smirked Nessie. "Our eyes seem a bit swollen." He waited for the man to make the code signal for recognition (To scratch the left side of his chin with his right hand) and then he and Dib made their way to the desk to show him their ID cards.

"Agents Nessie and Mothman." The man finally greeted after he had looked over the cards. "Go ahead through, then."

"Thanks, Agent Badger-hound" Chirped Dib as he led the way to the hallway on the other side of the room. The man scowled and turned away, and Dib could practically feel Nessie raising an eyebrow at him.

"You know that guy?" He asked. "I don't think I've seen him around before."

"He's been in the SE for about a year now." said Dib with an smirk. Nessie returned it. "I was his mentor for the first month, and he hated every minute of it because I was so much younger and more awesome than him. Now he just likes to pretend he doesn't know me."

"Understandable," reasoned Nessie. Not sure whether to except that as a compliment or not, Dib glared over his shoulder at him, and Nessie raised his hands defensively. "Hey! I said I understood, but I never said anything about agreeing!"

Satisfied, Dib turned his head back to the toward the enormous auditorium he was walking into. Agents from all over the state had already gathered there, and were exchanging stories and smalltalk. They all looked perfectly shady, wearing trench coats and reflective glasses like himself, but he knew many of them personally and he knew he could trust them. This was one of the only places he fit in nowadays.

On the stage where presentations and announcements were given, he could see the SE's president, Agent Darkbootie sitting in a little plastic chair talking to a much younger agent. Dib frowned. The younger agent was yelling loud enough to be heard all the way from where he was standing.

"It's real!" He shouted. "It's real, and it was possessing that kid!"

Darkbootie held his ground, looking up sternly. "We'll see if you can prove that in your presentation tonight, Pine."

"I saw it! I saw it! Quit ignoring me, old man, I know what I saw!" Pine pointed his finger accusingly at Darkbootie. "If we don't act now, that ghost could posses more people! It could get someone in the agency!"

"Pine, when you have proof, I will be more than happy to send a team to investigate. But as you do not, I can't barge into an orphanage and detain a child just because their neighbor thinks they're possessed. For all we know, you could be a drunken lunatic!"

"But... I don't drink," said Pine.

"Regardless! You're dismissed, Agent Pine. Have a nice day,"

Well this certainly did seem familiar.

Seething, the agent stepped down from the stage and brushed past Dib, issuing a "Humph" as he did so. Dib glared at him until he had disappeared into the crowds, and then he went up the stairs to join Darkbootie.

"What was that about?" He asked. "Is that guy trouble?" Darkbootie jumped, having not heard Dib's approach, and raised an inquisitive eyebrow at the bandage on his face. At least he didn't say anything about it.

"Not at all. There are many agents who strongly believe in a paranormal phenomenon but fail to prove it. You were just as adamant about the Irken."

Dib frowned and looked down at his shoes. He knew he was probably very annoying when he was trying to convince people that Zim was an alien, but did it make him a jerk too?

Darkbootie stood from his chair and stretched a little, cutting of the awkward moment short. "It's a good thing you came up here, Mothman, or I would have had to go looking for you." Dib raised his eyebrows at the subject change and his held hands respectfully behind his back as he waited for the older man to continue. "Disembodied-head quit last week. He is no longer a member of the Swollen Eyeball."

Rocking back and forth on his feet, Dib did his best not to turn around and look at Nessie. That would give him away. Well technically he hadn't promised to act surprised but... you know.

Darkbootie reached down to pick up a stack of manilla folders from the floor and began to leaf through them. "Naturally, Agent Nessie will take his place as first commander, but that leaves his spot as second commander open."

Dib couldn't help it. He peeked over his shoulder, and was quick to find Nessie, who had attracted a small crowd with a vampire hunting story. His eye betrayed him however, because Darkbootie was very good at reading body language.

"He told you, didn't he?"

Dib smiled impishly and nodded. The old man put the folders on his chair and rolled his eyes.

"Oh alright. I don't care. Just go join the rest of the agents. I'm going to start the announcements soon."

"Kay," mumbled Dib obediently as he scurried off the stage to where his friends were. Several agents he passed turned his way for a moment before returning back to what they were doing, but Dib paid them no mind as he settled himself comfortably between to familiar agents and stopped to listen to Nessie's story.

"And it grabbed me, and I swear he was gonna munch me right then and there like a potato chip. But then Agent Dog-breath shows up, and he's all..." Nessie waved his arms in seemingly random ways, making them look like deformed noodles. His brow was knotted as if he was honestly trying to imitate something, and it only added to the effect. "Geeze, I don't even know how to describe it. He looked like a rubber ninja! But it distracted the vampire long enough for me get away."

"You didn't stab it through the heart with your wooden stake?" Asked one of the agents, who was smiling from Nessie's psychotic arm performance. Nessie shrugged and dropped his hands.

"Well if you were about to be eaten by a vampire, would you be thinking of ending its life, or preserving your own?" He asked. It was a rhetorical question, and nobody answered. "Exactly. Okay, so the vampire's outnumbered now, and we had him backed against the wall, but then-"

"Attention!" Darkbootie's voice said from the podium. The auditorium grew quiet. "I believe most everyone is here now, so I'll begin making announcements! We'll also be happy to receive presentations from-" he paused to check his index cards, and squinted hard on purpose to get a few laughs. "Agents Mad-fish and Pine. But before then, I have a very important object of business to address."

With a quick good-bye, Nessie,scurried up to the stage where he was expected stand in the first commander's spot on the right side of Darkbootie. Dib smiled a little at the agent's familiar forgetfulness before he realized that he should go up too and hastefully followed him.

"Our first commander, Agent Disembodied-head has quit the Swollen Eyeball," announced Darkbootie.

Several murmurs and whispers were exchanged among the network. They only grew louder when Nessie settled on Darkbootie's right instead of his left as he usually did.

"Naturally as second commander, Agent Nessie will take his place, but that leaves the second commander position open."

As if Darkbootie has flicked a switch, the auditorium fell completely silent, and anticipation buzzed in the air like a static charge.

"I have selected Agent Mothman to fill the position. Come up here, Mothman!"

Dib grinned as he jogged up the few stairs to join Darkbootie and Nessie. He'd only ever been on the stage addressing the Network once several months ago when he was supposed to give a presentation. He'd embarrassed himself terribly by leaving his briefcase at his father's lab. At least this time he didn't have anything like that to worry about.

While a good number of the agents who had been in the network for a long time were very well acquainted Dib, but most of them hadn't known he existed, and they all began to talk at once when they saw him step on the stage.

"Who's that?"

"What happened to his face?"

"Him as second commander?"

"Is his head supposed to be that size?"

"How'd he get his hair like that?"

"He's too young! He's twelve, darn it!"

"Am not!" Dib shouted arrogantly at the last statement."I'm thirteen! My birthday was in November so HA!" But agent Darkbootie gave him a warning glance, and Dib fell silent, looking down at his hands.

"I understand that many of you don't take kindly to a boy being chosen as a commander of our agency, but this young man has been part of the Swollen Eyeball network from its foundation, and since then, he has proven himself intelligent and resourceful. He's encountered more ghosts than most of you can claim and," Darkbootie paused for dramatic effect, and those agents that were still paying attention took the bait and leaned in. "He's on the verge of exposing aliens once and for all."

There were several different reactions to that. Some agents stuffed their hands in their pockets and became disinterested, while others scoffed in disbelief. Dib's favorite reaction was probably the impressed chorus of "Oooh" that fed his ego.

"I believe that selecting Mothman is for the better of the agency," finished Darkbootie. "Nessie what do you think?"

All eyes went on Nessie, who smiled.

"I think the next couple of years are gonna be awesome!" he said, and several agents giggled. Darkbootie cleared his throat and took another glance at his cards.

"Yes, well now that we've got that settled, there are some other important announcements..."

It just went on from there. Darkbootie went through a list of investigations the agency had completed, and he described the story behind each one. A list of supernatural creatures captured, a few photos, some interviews of ghost witnesses. Dib pretty much zoned out for the whole thing.

When he had finished with that, the elderly man took up the manilla folders from the plastic chair and began to talk about missions he was assigning to agents, and gave a few details on each one before he had each person come up to the stage to take the folder from him. Dib snapped to attention when Darkbootie had finally run out of folders.

"Alright, now that we're through with that, we'll move on to Mad-fish and Pine's presentation. Agents, the stage is yours."

Darkbootie turned and began to walk down the stairs on the side of the stage, followed by Nessie and Dib, who had no clue what else they should be doing. A slightly overweight man in a business suit, probably in his forties came up to the stage followed closely by Pine. Dib crossed his arms and glared at him as the presentation started.

"Boo!" Shouted someone from the back. "This presentation stinks!"

Mad-fish frowned. "But... we haven't even started yet..."

"Boo!"

The agent on the stage sent a dead-panned look towards the back of the room, but then ignored the curmudgeon.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we will not waste your time with jumbled pictures and pointless words," he addressed the crowd. "My apprentice and I have every reason to believe that we have found a haunted house."

There were some mutters among the audience and another "Boo!" but Mad-fish did not acknowledge it. Pine shuffled over to the podium, and his mentor backed off, allowing him to speak.

"It all started when a four-year-old girl in my neighborhood, Prairie Ross, began acting strangely," Agent Pine began. "She would scream and cry and hit things, and she was completely uncontrollable, but I didn't suspect anything. After all, as far as I'm concerned, that's normal behavior for children."

This produced a few chuckles from the crowd, but not too many. Most of the agents seemed to catch on to the seriousness, and they were leaning in attentively, not even smiling.

"But it got worse. Very soon, all her speech was reduced to incoherent babble, and she would grab things, anything she could get a grip on, from door knobs to fence posts to fingers, and she would yank and yank until they came off."

Dib cringed.

"Her destructive behavior only increased, and that's when I began to suspect something. I decided to drop by and have a conversation with her parents about her." Pine looked expectantly at Mad-fish, and the older man took a large draw-string bag from their briefcase. Pine took it from him silently.

"No one answered the door when I rang the doorbell, though their car was in the driveway so I knew they were home. I stood there for ten minutes, and then called Mad-fish over. He met up with me on Panda Avenue, and we went visited the Ross' home again together. Still, Prairie's parents didn't answer."

"We ended up breaking through the front door," said Mad-fish. "Probably not the smartest thing in the world, but it was effective."

"Yeah, and when we found them in the kitchen, they were dead."

The room was silent.

The draw-string bag slid open under Pine's long fingers, and from it he pulled a large kitchen knife, it's sharp edge stained with blood. "It was not accident," He said "This knife was found on the floor as if it had been dropped, and Prairie was nowhere to be seen. I believe she used it to slit their throats." He held it up for a moment for everyone to see, and put it down on the podium.

"We've already run DNA tests, and the results were positive," said Mad-fish. "This blade has traces of both Mr. and Mrs. Ross' blood."

Pine nodded and replaced the knife back into the bag. "And when we searched the house for Prairie, we couldn't find her. We figured she must have run off. The police searched all over town, but she still didn't turn up."

"Although there were rumors that someone saw her entering an old abandoned house in the woods. It backed up our hunch." Mad-fish took Pine's place at the the podium and folded his hands neatly on top of it. "She turned up two days later in my neighborhood, yanking sheets off my neighbor's clothes line. I wanted to call Pine, but I knew he wouldn't be able to show up in time, so I encountered her myself."

Alarmed mutters were passed from agent to agent, and Dib swore he could hear someone say something about Pokemon cards. Well apparently someone wasn't paying attention.

"Prairie reacted the moment she saw me, screaming and charging at me. I restrained her by the arms and tried to keep her in place, but she kept shouting and squirming, and I actually heard her say something I could make out."

Cries of "What was it?" erupted from the auditorium, and Mad-fish and Pine looked a little over whelmed.

"Thomas." Mad-fish finally said. "When she said it she spit in out like she really hated it. I ended up calling for help with the girl, and a couple of my neighbors came out. I wanted to bring her to the swollen Eyeball, but my neighbors beat me to it, and she was taken to an orphanage."

Mutters were passed, head-shakes were exchanged, and Pokemon cards were traded. In the end, every face was upturned, watching Mad-fish expectantly.

"Agent Mad-fish," said Nessie. "What does this have to do with a haunted house?"

"I'm getting to that. See, we're certain that Prairie Ross is possessed, and that whoever Thomas is has something to do with it."

"So we looked him up," said Pine as he took Mad-fish's place at the podium. "All the Thomases that lived in the area for the last several centuries, and asked around about the house that Prairie had been hanging out in." He shifted through folders, pulling up the information they had collected. "The house was built back in 1720 and owned by a man named Leonard Cogswell. He died thirty years after the house was built, presumably from disease, but since no one lived with him, no one knew about it until his nephew, Thomas Cogswell, went to visit him three weeks later."

"Apparently Thomas decided to take advantage of the situation, and dig around a bit for Leonard's will so he could create a fake, and make it so he inherited the house himself. He copied the handwriting almost exactly, and the only part he changed was who would get the house, so everyone was fooled."

Mad-fish nodded his agreement. "Long story short, Leonard haunted the house, and Thomas was scared to insanity and admitted to the crime. He was put in jail, and the house was passed from person to person. No body really wanted to live in it because of Leonard's ghost."

"Hang on." Nessie leaned forward in his chair, bracing himself on his elbows. "So you know all about this house -when it was built, who lives there, the story behind it- but can you tell us where the house is?"

Mad-fish hesitated, glancing at Pine and furrowing his eyebrows into a frown. "We...We don't know."

A murmur swept across the crowd, and Dib found himself on the edge of his seat scratching his head. How could you know so much about a house and not know where it was? It didn't make sense.

"What do you mean you don't know?" Asked Darkbootie. If Dib looked closely, he would see the tiniest smirk on the old man's face. He didn't have to look closely to see the furious snarl on Pine's, though.

Mad-fish put a calming hand on his apprentice's shoulder. "No one remembers. We asked around for all the rumors about the house we could get, but no one -not even the people who witnessed Prairie there- remembered where it was!"

"How can that be?" Dib found himself asking. "If you'd seen the house before, and you remembered what you'd seen there, you should be able to remember where you were."

Pine pulled away from Mad-fish and glared daggers and Dib, gray eyes narrowed into slits. "We don't know, okay?" he spat. "We have no leads. Is that what you want to hear? If you're as experienced with ghosts as you claim you are, then maybe you can explain why the location would be erased from the memories of witnesses!"

"So that's your theory, then,"said Dib, folding his hands neatly in his lap. Darkbootie's smile was encouraging, letting him know he was acting like a second commander should. "That the memory of the location is being erased."

Pine's face went blank as he realized what he had just said. "Yeah," he agreed slowly. "I guess it is."

Dib snickered.

"I see," Said Darkbootie when the agents looked at him expectantly. Mad-fish was hopeful, but Pine's eyes were still narrowed in a glare as if daring Darkbootie to deny their evidence. "So this ghost wants its presence known... but it doesn't want to be found."

"That's what we've been able to dig up, yes," said Mad-fish.

"Can you explain why Leonard would have chosen Prairie Ross to posses?"

Pine's answer was quick and simple, demonstrating much intelligent research. "She was the youngest blood relative of Thomas Cogswell."

Darkbootie leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. "It seems you two have put a lot of thought into this. It is very likely that there may actually be a ghost in the house." He leaned forward again, bracing his elbows on his knees. "It might be worth looking into."

"Yeah," agreed Nessie. "I wanna catch a ghost!" A few soft chuckles when around the room, but after that, all was silent. Dib sat awkwardly in his chair, looking around the room. Several eyes were fixed on him expectantly.

Darkbootie elbowed him in the ribs.

"Oh!" Dib exclaimed, and a louder wave of laughter went around. He was the second commander now, and he was expected to comment on the presentation. Darn. "That, uh, sounds... really spooky! Someone should... totally look into that."

Darkbootie sent him an understanding smile and stood from his chair. "Thank you gentlemen, that was a very well put together presentation," he said. "You may return to your seats."

Mad-fish gave a curt nod and grabbed his apprentice's arm, pulling him off the stage despite his protests. Taking the stage once more, Darkbootie concluded the meeting and wished everyone a safe trips home. Dib wasn't really listening, too focused on what Nessie was telling him.

"Cute, Mothman," he said with a sly smirk. "Real cute."

"Shut up," whined Dib defensively. His face was burning already and it didn't help that the first commander was laughing at him. He had to admit, though, he had sounded pretty stupid just then.

"No, I'm serious. You just got a whole bunch of points with the younger women."

Dib hid his face in his hands and slouched. Nessie, ever the friendly guy, decided it was time to change the subject. "You could have said worse though. Remember that time when that one guy did a presentation about a invisible forty ton rubber chicken hanging from the top of the Empire State Building?"

That got Dib out of his little turtle shell. "I remember that! Dude, that was so weird!"

"Yeah," agreed Nessie. "I don't even remember his name, they kicked him out so fast. Poor guy."

When Darkbootie had finally dismissed the agents, he went back to the base of the stage where Dib and Nessie were sitting. He gave them both nods, but his eyes were fixed on Dib "Mothman, you'll have a lot of new responsibilities now that you're a commander," he reminded him. Dib looked up at him with owlish eyes. "Agents will report findings to you, and you'll need to make time for them, and you'll be expected to help make decisions."

"I know," said Dib. He flashed Darkbootie a smile and straitened his glasses. "I think I can keep up with it, as long as no one tries to contact me during skool."

The elderly agent nodded. "I'll see what I can do about that. Have a good night, you two. I'll be expecting you at the next conference."

Pluck went the sling shot.

Zoot went the little rock.

Thunk went the bird and it fell to the ground.

Zim sighed contently, relaxing in the cool grass of his back yard. The Earth sun had sunk past the horizon. It was practically pitch black outside and way too dark for any human to shoot rocks so accurately, but Zim's large, reflective eyes allowed him to see quite well.

He'd been cleaning the lab all day since the tallests had called, but apparently the invader they had sent was running late. Now that he had finished with his chores and he had nothing better to do, he had resorted to playing his own version of the Earth game "Space Invaders," protecting Gir's pies, which sat cooling in the window. He'd actually shot down an impressive amount of animals that he hadn't bothered to pick up yet, and they lay on the ground by the window sill. Maybe he'd let Gir make soup out of them later. His cooking skills were improving.

A squirrel wandered a little too close to the window, and Zim loaded his slingshot taking aim. Just a little closer...

"Master!" called the computer from within the house. Zim jumped and dropped the rock into the grass. The sound made the squirrel pause, but then it leaped at one of the pies and began to nibble greedily on the edge.

"What?" Zim demanded impatiently as he ran to collect the little dead animals and scare the squirrel away. Then he scurried back into the house. "What's so important that you have to interrupt the mighty Zim's hunting?"

"Hunting...? Never mind. I don't care. Look, I'm detecting a foreign voot cruiser's signal within Earth's atmosphere. I think the invader the tallest sent is arriving."

"What? Why didn't you tell me?" cried Zim.

"I... just did."

Zim growled and stormed into the living room, where Gir was watching TV. "Here," he said as he shoved the collection of furry bodies into Gir's arms. "Make something with these." The robot gave him a cheerful affirmative and then skipped away, hugging his new little prizes against his body. Zim dismissed him with a twitch of an antenna and then scurried to the window, pressing his face to the warm glass and peeking out with big eyes.

He was almost expecting the unwelcome female Irken to come walking right up the steps and ringing the door bell right that very second. What would he do when she got there? How would he get her to leave? He knew from experience that females wouldn't go away if you simply asked. You had to make them go away.

But whoever this invader was, she was sent by the almighty tallests. Granted, the tallests didn't seem to comprehend the incredible amazingness of Zim, but they were still his leaders, and even if they might be wrong, they were right. That's where the "almighty" bit came from.

Zim groaned and dug his claws slightly into the wood of the window sill. It wasn't right for an Invader to be caught between his own pride and the will of his tallests. Loyalty to the empire always came first. The only way he could satisfy his pride and uphold his honor at the same time was to prove that he didn't need a helper; that he could conquer this planet just fine on his own. Until he could do that, he'd have to grit his teeth and deal with her.

And thus Zim opted to sit vigil by the window, eyes narrow and alert for the invader coming to steal his planet from him.