Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was a quiet night in the countryside outside of the city, no sounds on the backwoods roads except for the occasional chirping of animals in the trees or a car passing along one of the dark roads that wound through the area. It was overall quite peaceful and quiet, and that was just the way that the people who lived in these parts liked it. In particular, the residents of the Goaway Trailer Park enjoyed being out in the middle of nowhere, where no outsiders would bother them, and they could pass their days and nights in peace.

However, tonight wouldn't be quite normal for the trailer park residents.

FWOOSH

As shown by the fact that a beam of light suddenly flashed down from the sky onto one of the trailers. It burned through the roof of the mobile home, creating a large hole, out of which the trailer's resident started floating upwards, along with the bed he was lying in.

"Huh? What the-?!" the half-asleep man exclaimed, looking around in confusion. Glancing up, he barely had a chance to register a shape behind the light above him, before the light cut off without warning. With it gone, gravity reasserted itself, and he fell with a scream, his bed smashing back through the roof of his trailer.

"I'm okay!" he called out after a few moments, albeit with a pained undertone to his voice.

"Hmm," Zim mused, tapping a pen against his chin as he observed this from the cockpit of the Voot, which was the source of the tractor beam that had just picked up and dropped the unfortunate trailer park resident. Clicking the pen, he started writing on a notepad, "Human beds are durable enough to be used as artillery against their pitiful homes."

"Are you even actually studying anything, or are you just bored?" Tenn asked in annoyance, leaning in a slump against her chair, her chin resting in one hand. She knew that she should have just stayed home and binged Lady Prison Show with Minimoose, but no, this moron had to go and convince her that he had a "mission of utmost importance" to carry out that he needed her help with. So, here she was, watching him screw around with his tractor beam.

"For your information, Zim is too studying!" Zim snapped, "It is important to know how effective all the tools at our disposal are at being used against the humans, in every way possible! Watch this!"

With that, Zim flew the ship over to the next nearest trailer and activated the tractor beam again. This time, it was wide enough to pick up the entire trailer, which Zim then started shaking around in the air, much to the surprised yells of its inhabitants.

"Mwahahahaha! That's right, pitiful humans! Scream in terror at the unknown attack on you by a superior lifeform!" Zim cackled as he shook the trailer around, before finally tossing it aside, causing it to slam into another one, leaving both in a crumpled mass on the ground.

"See? Now we know that we can use the humans' domiciles as weapons against each other!" he smugly stated to Tenn.

"And that's better than using our actual weapons, how exactly?" she asked flatly.

"Uh, well… because it is!" Zim snapped back defensively, not wanting to admit that that was a good point, "Now, watch and see how many humans Zim can snatch up at once!"

Tenn groaned and rolled her eyes as Zim flew them over to where a crowd had gathered as people rushed out of their homes to see what was making all the commotion. Some were armed with shotguns and hunting rifles and seemed ready for a fight, but most were just looking around in confusion. At least until the Voot flew over them, most of the group being caught in the passing tractor beam and flying up into the air with screams.

"Ha! See! Zim can abduct dozens of humans at once! Now we can, I dunno, experiment on them or something," Zim crowed, which only got a flat look from Tenn.

"Very impressive," she said dryly, "Are we done with this nonsense yet?"

Zim scowled at her, upset that she wasn't praising his genius. Not that he cared what she thought about him, she was just an ally barely above minion status, but that was beside the point! He was Zim! Not admitting that he was brilliant was an insult!

"Grr, how about this?!" Zim exclaimed, rapid typing commands into the console in front of him. In response, the tractor beam compressed, slamming all the abducted humans together into a ball of tangled limbs, and then the beam shifted rapidly before shutting off. This had the same effect as throwing a bowling ball, and the screaming mass of trailer park residents rolled across the ground before slamming into another mobile home hard enough to knock it over.

"There, see?! Zim can make the humans themselves into weapons to destroy their world with!" he stated firmly, with a slight tone of desperation in his voice.

"Zim, I honestly don't care. Why are you trying so hard to impress me?" Tenn asked in exasperation.

"Zim isn't trying to impress you, or anyone else!" he protested, cheeks noticeably flushing. Tenn arched an antenna at that, but before she could comment on it, GIR spoke up from where he was sitting in the back of the ship.

"Master, are you and Pretty Lady getting a divorce?" the insane robot asked.

"What?!" Zim and Tenn yelled in shared shock and disbelief, turning around to glare at GIR, both of them now flushed.

"What nonsense are you blathering now, GIR?" Zim demanded, "Divorce is a human concept, if Irkens want to stop being mates, they just stop! And we're not mates to begin with!"

"As if I'd even want to be mates with you!" Tenn added quickly, feeling a strong need to get that point across.

"Well, Zim wouldn't want to be mates with you, either!" Zim snapped back defensively.

"Good!" Tenn growled, "Now, enough of this ridiculous waste of my time! Stop messing with these humans, and take us back to base!"

"Fine! See if Zim ever invites you on another experiment mission again!" Zim spat, turning back to the controls and moving the ship to start flying back towards the city.

"Oh no, how will I ever live with myself?" Tenn snarked as she slumped back into her seat. Zim shot her glare, but didn't comment, just huffing petulantly and focusing on flying as an uncomfortable silence fell inside the Voot.

This was, unfortunately, not the first time that something like this had happened. Ever since that disastrous attempt to rob the Duke of Smook, something had changed between the two Irkens. Neither of them could explain it, but there was now a strange awkwardness between the two of them, a feeling of wanting to impress/be impressed by the other, which was so foreign to them that both were trying to compensate with pride and aloofness. But that just kept leading to these utterly pointless and petty arguments as those attitudes just had them ticking each other off on a regular basis.

Needless to say, this was putting a serious strain on their already tenuous partnership. A good, honest conversation to try and address the matter would probably clear the air and fix things, but both of them were too stubborn to admit that there was even a problem in the first place. So, things were probably going to get worse before they got better…

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

Suddenly, an alarm started loudly blaring, snapping both Irkens out of their self-reflections.

"Oh, what now?" Tenn demanded, she and Zim looking to the console, where a light was flashing in time with the alarm. When Zim saw it, his eyes widened in shock.

"Low fuel?! Impossible!" he shrieked, pounding on the console as if that would change what it was showing him.

"Oh, you have to be kidding m-AH!" Tenn started to complain, only to be cut off with a scream as the Voot's engines suddenly shut off, causing the ship to drop out of the sky like a rock.

"AAAAAHHHHHH!" the Irkens screamed, while GIR laughed hysterically. This lasted for several long moments, only to be brought to an abrupt end as the Voot slammed hard into the ground, skidding to halt after several yards.

There was silence for a few minutes as the ship lay there at the end of the trench it had carved into the ground upon impact, all the dust and dirt that had been kicked up settling around it. Then the cockpit popped open, and Zim and Tenn stumbled out to collapse on the ground, GIR hopping out after them.

"Let's go again!" he cheered.

"Let's not," Tenn groaned as she got back to her feet, before glaring at Zim, "And how the flirk could you leave the base without full fuel reserves?"

"Zim did no such thing!" Zim snapped in reply, before stomping over to the nearest engine, yanking it open to prove his point, only to blink at what come pouring out when he did so.

"GIR…" he said slowly, with a dangerously calm tone that quickly slipped away with each syllable of the following sentence, "Why are the fuel tanks filled with GRAVY?!"

"For the turkey," GIR replied with a tone that suggested his answer should be obvious. Walking over to the large pool of gravy leaking out of the opened engine, he pulled a large drumstick out of his head and dipped it in, before taking a big bite out of it.

Zim growled in incoherent anger, while Tenn facepalmed and heaved a deep sigh.

"Wonderful, this is just perfect," she grumbled. Looking around, she frowned as she saw nothing but wilderness everywhere she looked, the Voot having landed in an empty field, with nothing in sight but trees.

"Well, on the bright side, at least the odds of any humans stumbling on us like this are remote," she muttered, before turning to Zim and asking, "I don't suppose you can summon a retrieval craft from the base?"

The question snapped Zim out of his anger, and he blinked as he processed it before managing to compose an answer.

"No, sadly. Zim's Voot Carrier was damaged beyond repair the last time I had to do something like this because of the interference of those human cult worms, and I haven't had a chance to replace it since then," he explained, which just made Tenn even more confused.

"What cult…? You know what, never mind, I don't want to know," she said, reaching into her PAK and pulling out her disguise to quickly pull it on, "Come on, let's get walking back to base to retrieve some fuel for the ship, and then bring it back here. Ugh, this is going to take all night…"

"Then Zim will simply find a replacement fuel to save us the trip!" Zim declared, even as he pulled out his own disguise and tossed GIR his.

"And how do you plan to do that?" Tenn asked flatly.

"Simple," Zim scoffed, pulling a scanner out of his PAK, "We find something compatible enough to convert into proper fuel, and use the emergency converters on the Voot to do just that."

"You seriously expect there to be anything human-made that would be compatible to our fuel? Much less that we'd find it out here?" Tenn asked, her skepticism quite clear.

"Would you rather walk all the way back to base, and then back here, when there might be something that'll save us the trip within the vicinity?" Zim countered.

"…I hate the rare occasions when you make logical sense," Tenn grumbled, before shaking her head with a sigh, "Fine, whatever. We can spend some time looking for a fuel alternative, but if we find nothing after an hour, you agree to call it quits and head back to base, got it?"

"Agreed, but unnecessary. Just watch and be amazed as Zim's brilliance saves the day once more!" Zim declared, before holding up the scanner and walking off in a random direction. Rolling her eyes, Tenn followed after him, after diverting to grab GIR and drag him away from where he was slurping up the gravy.

XXXXXXX

Nearly an hour later, spent entirely wandering around the woods surrounding the clearing, following the vague "directions" beeping from Zim's scanner, Tenn was utterly unsurprised to find that their search had proved utterly fruitless so far.

"So, are you done wasting our time yet?" she grumbled.

"Zim wastes nothing! Can't you see we're getting closer!" Zim said, shoving the scanner into Tenn's face. Scowling, she shoved him back, and was about to snap something when she paused and actually looked at the scanner's screen. To her surprise, the data shown indicated that it was picking upsomething, though she was hesitant to say that it was actually working right.

"Ugh, fine. But you have ten more minutes, and then I'm heading back to base with or without you," she huffed.

"More than sufficient," Zim scoffed, resuming the march, Tenn right behind him and counting the seconds on her deadline. A few minutes later, just as Tenn's patience was about to hit its final straw, the Irkens and the robot trailing behind them emerged out of the trees and found themselves alongside a paved road.

"Well, I'll take that as a good sign, at least," she commented, only for a loud beep to suddenly sound out from Zim's scanner.

"Aha! We have a match!" he crowed.

"Wait, really?" Tenn asked, looking to him in disbelief.

"Yes, this way," Zim stated, showing her the scanner's screen again, where a flashing arrow icon was pointing in one direction down the road, "Come, let us go claim our prize!"

Admittedly slightly more optimistic, but keeping her hopes in check (in case this turned out to be a false lead because Zim had his settings wrong or something), Tenn allowed Zim to lead her down the road. Soon enough, the trees dwindled until they were walking through an open field, still following the road as the beeping from the scanner grew faster and louder, until it was eventually almost deafening.

"Aha! It's here! …Eh?" Zim declared excitedly, only to blink as he looked up and saw the apparent cause of the scanner's reaction. It was a fairly rundown-looking gas station and convenience store, a flickering neon sign atop the roof proclaiming it to be called "Plastimart".

"What is a 'Plastimart'?" Zim asked, squinting his eyes at the sign.

"Looks like some kind of resupply depot for human vehicles, and not a very sophisticated one at that," Tenn noted with a frown, "This can't be right, no human fuel could possibly be compatible with Irken machinery. Your scanner must be broken."

"Nonsense! The scanner was built by Zim, and therefore is perfectly functional!" Zim declared defensively, clutching the scanner to his chest almost protectively. Tenn rolled her eyes at that, feeling any hope for actual progress slipping away at this development.

"Fine, check for yourself, but I'll be you anything that this is a wild Snarl Beast chase," she scoffed. Zim shot her a glare and stomped over to the gas pumps, running the scanner over them, only for his scowl to deepen as the scanner gave a negative-sounding beep.

"See?" she said smugly.

"This proves nothing! Something here is registering on the scanner, and if it's not the human fuel, it must be something inside this disgusting place!" Zim said, turning and walking into the Plastimart before Tenn could get a word in, making her give a disgruntled sigh as she watched him enter with GIR right behind him.

"I suppose there's no reason at this point to not just let this stupidity run its course and then come up with a real solution afterwards," she muttered, following Zim inside.

Stepping inside, Tenn winced as her senses were immediately assaulted – the store's fluorescent lights were too harsh on her eyes, the whole place smelled absolutely disgusting, and worst of all, the speaker system was playing horribly out of tune country music that made her antennae curl underneath her wig.

Yeah, she already hated this place, she decided.

"Can I help y'all?" a rough voice drawled from the side, dragging Tenn's attention to where a counter was set up with a beat-up looking cash register on it. Seated behind it was a heavyset and very hairy middle-aged human male wearing a flannel shirt and denim overalls with a nametag on them. As the man sat there chewing on a large wad of something, his beady eyes narrowed slightly as he looked her over.

"No thank you, we're just browsing, Mr., uh…" Tenn started to brush him off as politely as possible, only to trail off and squint at the man's nametag, "Stereotype?"

"No, it's Terry O'type, can't ya read?" the apparent store clerk snapped, pointing to the barely-legible scrawl on the tag, "I'm half-Irish on mah daddy's side."

"I swear there's an S at the beginning there," Tenn pointed out.

"Mah first name's Sean, I shorten it to just tha' initial to be all fancy," Terry explained, before spitting some of the chewing tobacco in his mouth out and into a nearby can on the floor.

"…Right," Tenn said, grimacing in disgust, "I'm just going to go grab my friend and get out of here, alright?"

"Y'all touch anything, y'all buy it," Terry said flatly, eyeing Tenn suspiciously as she scurried after Zim.

She soon found him midway down one of the aisles, holding the scanner in front of a row of cans of cooking oil, staring at the screen intently and oblivious to the fact that GIR had grabbed a box of cookies from another shelf and was scarfing them down. Grimacing at the fact that they'd probably be expected to pay for that, Tenn moved past the robot and up to Zim just as the scanner made a negative sound again.

"Dookie! Zim still can't find the substance matching what the scanner detected!" he yelled, smacking the scanner to try and fix it, before turning and jabbing a finger at Tenn, "And don't say it! There's nothing wrong with the scanner!"

"I didn't say anything… I'm just thinking it," she replied, muttering the last part to herself. Zim glared at her, clearly having heard that, but didn't bother commenting on it, instead just huffing and continuing down the aisle in his search for a fuel substitute. For lack of better options, Tenn followed after him, dragging GIR behind her by his dog collar.

For a few more minutes, Tenn allowed Zim to lead them all over the store, up and down aisles, examining virtually everything on display and getting no results. And all the while, Tenn could feel Terry the clerk's suspicious gaze on them, which frankly made her skin crawl; something about that human was even more filthy than usual, and it made her very uncomfortable.

"Are we just about done here? This place is starting to disturb me," Tenn finally said after watching Zim practically climbing inside a freezer in order to root around stacks of packaged pre-cooked food of questionable quality.

"No! The solution is close, Zim can feel it in his 'spooch!" Zim replied, pressing the scanner against a plastic box of old sushi (or maybe some sort of fungal spore sample; it was hard to tell).

"Well, my 'spooch is telling me that we're either going to catch some kind of infection in this filthy place, or that human up front is going to chase us out of here," Tenn commented, "So can you please, for once, just be reasonable and let us leave?"

Zim scowled and opened his mouth to say something, probably defiant of her opinion on pure instinct, when the scanner beeped, dragging both Irkens' attention to it. And to their surprise, they saw it was now flashing a green positive symbol.

"Hmm…? Aha! See, what did Zim tell you?!" Zim exclaimed happily, looking to see what the scanner had picked up, and blinked as he found himself looking at a soda fountain. Specifically, one dominated by a slushy machine proudly displaying the words "Slush Bucket".

"What is a 'Slush Bucket'?" Tenn asked in confusion.

"Hmm, it appears to be some sort of semi-solidified carbonated sugar water," Zim mused, holding his scanner up to the soda fountain to examine the Slush Bucket machine more closely, "But regardless, that just means we're in luck! The extremely high sugar content makes it perfect for a fuel conversion substitute, since Irken fuel uses sugar as a major component!"

"…I know that. Why are you explaining it like I don't?" Tenn asked, not sure if she should be offended by the implied ignorance on her part, or just confused by him feeling she needed the exposition.

Zim, of course, ignored her question completely, instead turning to GIR, who had crawled into the freezer and was stuffing whole boxes into his mouth.

"GIR! Get over here!" he snapped, causing the robot to immediately jump over to join him and salute, mouth bulging from the food containers filling it, "Load up on as much of these buckets of slush as you can, so we can transport it back to the Voot and convert it to fuel!"

GIR made a happy noise in response, following by retching as he gagged on and then spat out all his pilfered food. While Zim and Tenn grimaced in disgust at this, GIR ran up to the soda fountain and latched his mouth onto the Slush Bucket faucet, before turning it on. As the Irkens watched, the machine rumbled to life, and soon GIR's body started swelling up like a balloon as the slush began filling him up.

"Well done, GIR, that should be enough," Zim said, only to frown when GIR ignored him and kept going, "GIR, I said enough!"

"I don't think he's planning on stopping," Tenn said flatly, watching GIR continue to inflate, soon growing to a size larger than either Irken.

"GIR, do as your master commands!" Zim snapped, stomping over and grabbing ahold of GIR by the legs. With a grunt, he started pulling and tugging on the robot, trying to yank him free. After a few moments he succeeded, GIR coming loose with a pop, but so suddenly that the momentum knocked Zim off his feet to hit the floor with a crash. And in the process, the surprisingly high-pressure jet of slushy spurted out of the freed faucet and arced through the air to land right into Zim's mouth where he lay.

Tenn couldn't help but laugh as Zim gagged and retched for a few minutes before the stream finally died down, the idiot apparently never for a moment even trying to get out of the way.

"Enjoying your refueling?" she snickered as Zim violently coughed to clear his airway before stumbling to his feet.

"Ack, gah, that was not… not…" Zim sputtered, before trailing off as his squeedlyspooch gave a strange rumbling in reaction to the slush now filling it. He started swaying on his feet, skin prickling all over and the pupils on his contacts somehow dilating disproportionately wide.

"Uh… are you alright?" Tenn asked in confusion, seeing how unusually he was acting (even for him).

"You ever notice how wiggly our hands are?" Zim asked in response with a noticeable slur to his words, making Tenn blink.

"What?"

"Our hands! They're so… wiggly!" Zim repeated insistently, holding up a hand and waving it around haphazardly, "Why are they like that? They should be all firm and, and, handy! Not wiggly!"

Tenn could only stare at him incredulously as he looked intently at his hands while he wiggled his fingers, before blurting out, "What is wrong with you?"

"Nothing! Zim is just fine! You're the one who's duplicating!" Zim declared, pointing dramatically at a point in the air next to Tenn, who was even more confused now, "Why are there three of you now?!"

"…What the flirk did that stuff do to you?" Tenn asked, coming to the only conclusion that made sense. Clearly, being exposed to that slushy had had a negative effect of some kind on Zim's biology that was impairing his mental faculties (even more than they normally were). So, as he stared into the distance and giggled at nothing, Tenn turned back to the Slush Bucket machine and examined it closely, eyes narrowing as she spotted an ingredient list on the side.

"I'm pretty sure half of these are toxic industrial chemicals," she muttered, "Great, so now I have to figure out how to detox him on top of everything else. How am I supposed to-?"

"Tenn!" Zim suddenly yelled right next to her, causing her to yelp and jump in surprise. Turning to glare at him, she instead found herself grabbed by the shoulders as he started shaking her excitedly.

"I've realized the meaning of life! The universe is a shoebox!" he declared with dramatic certainty, while Tenn just stared flatly at him.

"Considering how intoxicated you are, I'm not even going to try arguing with this nonsense you're spewing," she said evenly, "Now, let go of me, so I can figure out how to fix you."

"Never! Don't you see? The future is in the past!" Zim shouted, letting go of her to run over to where the bloated GIR was lying motionlessly on the floor, jumping up and landing on GIR's swollen stomach, "Onwards, giant green whale!"

"Yay! I'm gonna throw up!" GIR cheered as Zim's feet sank into his stomach, making it gurgle loudly. Hearing this, Tenn's eyes widened in horror.

"BLEEEEAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!"

With a disgusting yell, the vast amount of slushy that GIR had swallowed came flying out of him, hard enough to send him and Zim flying across the room. And poor Tenn, standing directly across from them, was hit dead on with enough force to knock her over, and fast enough that she didn't have a chance to close her mouth. As such, her mouth was filled with slushy, and she ended up swallowing it on instinct.

The effect was instantaneous, Tenn's eyes bulging out as her senses exploded. She could see sound and hear colors, the very atoms of the universe brushing against her skin like feathers from an exploded pillow. Her consciousness burst out of her mind and traversed the width of creation in a heartbeat, zooming past planets and stars, punching through the walls of reality and flying past the Room With a Moose and a cosmos made of sentient ab muscles before beholding the Star Donkey having a tea party with a disembodied brain wearing a red hoodie, both of which waved cheerfully at her before she came crashing back into her body after an eternity that lasted exactly 2.5 seconds.

"I AM THE SUM TOTAL OF ALL THINGS!" Tenn shouted as she burst out of the slushy pile pinning her to the floor, with a manic look on her face, "Infinity passes through me and is me!"

"Right on, sister!" Zim yelled happily, lying upside down against the shelf he and GIR had ended up colliding with.

"I don't know what's happening!" GIR added, just as cheerful and excited.

"Come, let us tear everything down so it may be reborn in glory!" Tenn declared, before grabbing the soda fountain and tearing it free from its setting, and then tossing it across the aisle to smash into and shatter the glass door of the freezer.

"Whoo! Yeah! Destruction is the natural state of all things that are created!" Zim shouted, before deploying his PAK legs to start firing plasma in random directions, vaporizing everything they hit. Tenn, meanwhile, started running up and down the aisles, picking up and throwing whatever items caught her eye.

"Down with the establishment! Up with freedom! Sideways with umbrellas!" she declared as she flung a bunch of bags of chips into the air and sliced them with her PAK legs, making the chips rain like confetti.

"Viva la revolution!" GIR yelled in a French accent, following the Irkens' example of seemingly-random chaos by smashing open a freezer and pulling out several pickle jars. Opening them, he inhaled the pickles themselves before launching the jars like missiles across the store.

SMASH

SMASH

SMASH

SMASH

"Whoo!" The Irkens and GIR cheered in unison as they continued to wreck the place, which naturally quickly got the store clerk's attention.

"Hey! What do you freaks think you're doing?!" Terry demanded, walking over with a broom in hand, held up like a club.

"We're liberating the true free nature of reality from the false constructs of materialism!" Tenn declared, pointing a finger dramatically at Terry. For his part, Terry stared at the finger for a moment, before looking past it to the clearly intoxicated looks on Tenn and Zim's faces.

"…Right, time for you lot to get out of here," he said flatly, making a shooing gesture with the broom.

"Never! Zim refutes your convenience tyranny!" Zim declared hotly, grabbing a container of eggs and launching the whole thing at Terry, splattering yolk across his face as it impacted before he could dodge it.

"Ugh! Hey, knock that off!" Terry sputtered as he wiped the yolk off his face.

"Power to the people!" Tenn yelled, grabbing a can of whipped cream and spraying it up into Terry's face. This left him sputtering in surprise and confusion as he stumbled back, blinded by the cream, before he finally tripped over a can of beans and fell backwards into a shelf, which then collapsed on top of him.

"Take that, you jerky… jerk… face!" Tenn said, stammering over the attempted insult.

"Hahaha! Jerk-face! That's funny!" Zim slurred through a laugh, looking at Tenn happily, "You're so funny, Tenn! And smart! And pretty!"

"Really?" Tenn asked, too out of it to react to that in any way other than to blush at the compliment.

"Yep! Zim's always thought so, Zim just didn't want to say so because Zim doesn't like feelings. They make Zim feel icky," Zim admitted, blushing, also so intoxicated that his normal barriers had all been dropped, "That's why Zim always acts so defensively around you, so that Zim doesn't have to admit how much he likes you."

"Oh, um, well… I like you too," Tenn said, face burning, any instinctive denial of what she was feeling burned away by her altered state of mind, "I don't say it, because I don't like admitting that I need anyone, but I do."

"Of course you do, Zim is Zim!" Zim replied self-assuredly, making Tenn giggle uncontrollably for a few moments. When it finally died down, she and Zim were left staring at each other in a semi-comfortable silence for several moments, before they slowly started leaning towards each other, closing the distance between their faces…

CLONK

And then they both collapsed to the floor as the sugar rush finally ended and they crashed, passing out next to each other on the linoleum.

"Aww…" GIR said from nearby, pouting at how his master and the pretty lady hadn't made kissy face, before happily chirping, "Nap time!"

He then ran around the two in a circle several times, before flopping down next to them and going to sleep as well, apparently deciding that now was a good time for this.

After a few moments of silence, Terry stood up from the messy pile that he'd collapsed into. Wiping his face clean, he glared down at the passed-out Irkens for a moment before pulling out his cellphone and hitting one of the numbers on his contact list.

"Fred? It's Terry. I've got some troublemaking city folk here in the store. Get over here," he said with a scowl before hanging up, continuing to glare at the group that had just wrecked his store.

Oh yeah, he was going to enjoy making these two freaks and their pet pay…

XXXXXXX

"Ugh, my head…" Tenn moaned as she slowly regained consciousness, her head pounding. She hadn't felt a hangover like this since her class's graduation from the Academy, when they'd been allowed to overindulge themselves in rare hyper-sugar snacks from the deepest vaults of Foodcourtia to celebrate. She was pretty sure she'd lost two whole days during that sugar rush, and she'd woken up with several other newly minted Invaders in a pit in Devastis' outer badlands, all of them covered in mud and feathers from some unidentified avian creature.

It was a very unpleasant memory, but the sight that greeted her as she blinked her vision clear and looked around, she got the feeling that it would have been preferably to her current circumstances. Because at the moment, she found that she was tied to a chair in dark dingy room, lit only by a single bare bulb above her head that left the whole room in darkness except for her and Zim, whom she belatedly realized was seated next to her on another chair in a similar condition to her.

"Zim! Wake up!" she snapped at him.

"No taxation without representation!" Zim slurred in reply as his eyes fluttered open, earning a flat look from Tenn.

"Well, I see you're still uselessly intoxicated," she muttered, feeling her migraine spike… though oddly, not as annoyed at him as she was before? That was weird; what had happened while she was blackout-level sugar-high?

Before Tenn could try to parse through her fuzzy memories to try and figure out what could have possibly happened to change her instinctive reaction to Zim's stupidity, a bright light suddenly filled the room as a door opened.

"Gah! Irk dammit!" Tenn cursed as she flinched from the sudden change of light, shutting her eyes and looking away from the door.

"Oh good, y'all are awake," Terry drawled as he walked into the room, flipping a switch on the wall next to the doorway that turned on more lights, revealing that the room was a large storage closet. As Tenn watched, the store clerk walked in, followed by an equally bulky man, albeit more muscle than fat, who was wearing a dirty brown sheriff's uniform.

"So, these here are the city folk who messed up your store, eh Terry?" the apparent lawman asked, spitting some chewed tobacco onto the filthy floor. Tenn grimaced in disgust at that, while also wincing as she vaguely recalled her and Zim's rampage in the store's aisles, and realized why the humans might be upset with them.

"Ah, I'm really sorry about that, Officer… Redneck?" she started to say, only to trail off with a squint at the officer's nametag badge.

"It's Fred Nock, can't you read?" the officer demanded with a scowl, jabbing his badge with a finger.

"…Everyone around here has horribly handwriting," Tenn muttered, before shaking her head and saying more clearly, "Look, I'm sorry about the mess, but I'm sure we can work something out-"

"Uh-uh, you ain't talking your way out of this with your big city fancy speak!" Fred snapped, cutting her off with a glare, "I'm sick of y'all coming to our parts and doing whatever you want, thinking y'all are better than us with your fancy educations, and indoor plumbing, and marriages to people who ain't your cousins!"

"…What?" Tenn asked, blinking at him dumbfounded.

"It's time we make an example out of y'all, to teach all other city folk that they can't do whatever they want!" Fred declared.

"Yeah, y'all are gonna pay for what ya did to my store, you and your little dog too!" Terry stated, holding up a pet carrier (with a price tag still attached to it) that GIR was stuffed inside of.

"Attica!" GIR shouted, slapping his hand against the bars of the carrier's door.

Tenn grimaced at that, and the implication of impending violence, but before she could say anything, Zim's slurred voice spoke up first.

"Zim regrets nothing, you stinky pig-stinky stink… stinkies!" he spat, eyes barely focusing on the two humans, "Zim will smash this filthy place into a filthy pile of smashed filth and make you two clean it while dressed like French maids, and then charge people to come watch while pointing and laughing at you!"

The sad part was, this was only slightly less coherent than Zim's threats usually were, Tenn thought with a deep sigh as the two humans glared at Zim.

"Oh, I'm gonna enjoy this," Terry sneered, tossing GIR's carrier aside to clatter on the floor.

"Me too," Fred said with a sneer, though it quickly turned into a smirk as something occurred to him, "Say, Terry, you still got that expired nacho cheese on hand?"

"Huh? Yeah, sure, you know I only throw that stuff out once a month. Why?" Terry replied in confusion.

"Let's go get it. If these freeloaders want to eat up all your merchandise, then let's give them all they could ever want!" Fred laughed, Terry joining in as he caught on. The two men then left, most likely to retrieve the aforementioned cheese, shutting the door behind them.

"Great, it sounds like I'm about to be force-fed a disgusting dairy product by two hicks… I hate this planet," Tenn grumbled, before turning to face Zim, "I don't suppose you have any ideas for how to get out of here?"

"Out of what?" Zim asked, looking to her with unfocused eyes, making her sigh in resignation.

"Yeah, that's what I figured. Now I need to work out how to get us out of here by myself!" she muttered in annoyance.

"I'll help!" GIR yelled from next to her, making her jerk in surprise hard enough to make the chair she was tied to jump slightly in the air with her.

"Don't do that!" she snapped, before blinking in confusion, "Wait, weren't you just locked up in a box?"

GIR just gave a happy squeak and pointed to the pet carrier, which now had a large hole torn through one side. Apparently, he'd gotten bored with playing prisoner and busted his way out of the container, which was clearly not intended for holding a robot.

"Huh, probably should have realized that sooner," Tenn muttered, before shaking her head, "Ugh, never mind, not important. GIR, help get me and Zim free before those crazy humans get back!"

"Okay, I'll go get help!" GIR replied excitedly.

"Good, hurry… wait, what?" Tenn started to say, before doing a double-take as she processed what the crazy robot had just said, "No, you little idiot, I meant break us free yourself!"

But GIR either didn't hear her or wasn't listening. Instead, he ran across the room and leapt up to a small window near the top of the wall, smashing clear through it and vanishing into the night outside.

"…Irk dammit, I hate that robot," Tenn muttered, sagging into her chair as she was left there to try and figure out an escape on her own after all.

Unfortunately, she hadn't come up with one by the time the door slammed open again, and Terry and Fred came in, dragging along a large metal barrel marked with a label which read "Caution: High Grade Nacho Cheese".

"So, who's hungry?" Terry asked with a laugh.

"Zim could eat," Zim muttered, not really seeming to register the question.

"Going before your lady, how gentlemanly of you," Fred sneered, walking over to grab Zim's chair, dragging it over to the barrel before knocking it over, leaving Zim lying on the floor on his back.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Tenn snapped, watching as Terry took out a funnel and a rubber hose from somewhere, "I don't like him either, but this is too much! You've made your point, so just let us go!"

"Nah, I don't think we will," Fred sneered as he took the hose from Terry and hooked it up to a latch on top of the barrel, while Terry stuffed the funnel into Zim's mouth, ignoring his gagging, "I took an oath to punish criminals, after all."

"Really? Your oath said you're allowed to do this?" Tenn demanded incredulously.

"I dunno, I wasn't really paying attention to it, I just wanted the job," Fred replied with a shrug as he stuffed the other end of the hose into the funnel in Zim's mouth, before grabbing the barrel and lifting it up to tip it over. This caused the melted cheese inside the barrel to exit through the hose and down into the funnel, and thus into Zim's mouth.

"This is cruel and unusual punishment!" Tenn protested as Zim's eyes widened, and he started thrashing as the disgusting semi-liquid dairy product forced its way down his throat.

"That's the point! It'll teach y'all to mess with my store!" Terry cackled, holding Zim's head to keep it in place and prevent him from possibly dislodging the funnel. This went on for a few more minutes, Zim nearly suffocating on the cheese, before the two hicks apparently decided that it was enough, yanking the funnel and hose out of Zim's mouth and righting the barrel back up.

"Enjoying yer complimentary snack, sir?" Terry asked with a sneer down at Zim.

"Ugh…" Zim moaned, abdomen swollen with cheese as more bubbled out of his mouth.

"Okay, now the girl's turn," Frank stated, turning to look at Tenn, whose eyes widened in panic.

"Umm… I don't suppose we can just call it even?" she asked nervously.

"Nope," Terry and Frank said in unison, laughing nervously as they approached her.

However, just before they could reach her, a growling sound filled the air. The men paused and blinked at that, looking around in confusion before their gazes fell on Zim, whose whole torso was swelling and rumbling in a very unnatural looking way.

"That ain't right," Fred said with a disturbed look.

"Aw heck, he ain't allergic, is he? We just wanted to mess y'all up, not kill ya!" Terry exclaimed.

Before Tenn could respond, whatever was happening with Zim's body hit an apparent breaking point. His swollen abdomen gave one last rumble before suddenly contracting, and then he gave the loudest belch that Tenn had ever heard in her life. And to her and the humans' shock, it was accompanied by a noxious yellow cloud of gas, which quickly filled the room. Luckily for Tenn, it rose up rapidly so that it was above her head by the time it reached her, but that left it slamming right into Terry and Fred, hitting them with an almost physical force. And the results were instantaneous – their skin started busting out in boils, their eyes shriveled as all the moisture fled them-

FWOOSH

-and most dramatically, all the hair on their heads suddenly combusted into flame.

"AAAHHHH!" both men yelled in pain and surprise, before running around in a blind panic for several moments, before they finally ended up slamming right into each other. This collision immediately knocked them both out, and they collapsed to the floor, unconscious; luckily for them, in the process Terry fell on a conveniently placed mop bucket, causing the water to spill out and spread over both men, extinguishing the flames and likely saving their lives.

"…Well, that happened," Tenn said with a slow blink after a moment of silence as she processed what had just occurred. Brow furrowed in thought, she looked to Zim's groaning form and thought it over, "Hmm, I guess his squeedlyspooch couldn't properly process all that cheese on top of all the toxic chemicals from the Slush Bucket, and it reacted by creating that gas, which it then exuded…"

"Ugh, stop expositing, Zim's head is killing him," Zim called out with a moan, sounding more like his normal self, "Why do I feel like a rhino just tap-danced between my head and my squeedlyspooch?"

"We got a blackout-level sugar rush from those Slush Buckets and wrecked the store, so the clerk and his cop friend tried to torture us by force-feeding us expired nacho cheese, except when they did it with you, it caused a chemical reaction that had you belching out a toxic cloud that knocked them both out," Tenn quickly summarized, "Though on the bright side, it seems to have cleared out your system enough to finally sober you up."

"…Eh, Zim's had weirder experiences," Zim muttered, while extending his PAK legs to cut him free. Seeing this, Tenn had a sudden urge to facepalm.

"Oh my Irk, why didn't I do that sooner?" she groaned, copying the action, "Ugh, this migraine must be messing with me more than I thought…"

"Never mind that, where are the pig-smellies who did this to our superior Irken selves?!" Zim demanded as he jumped to his feet, pausing as he saw Terry and Fred's unconscious forms, "Oh, there they are. Hmm, what should Zim do with you humans now?"

"Forget about them," Tenn snapped, also getting to her feet, "We have spent far too much time in this Control Brain-forsaken dump, and I just want to forget that this whole night ever happened. So, let's just grab the Slush Bucket goo, get it to the ship to refuel, and then head home!"

Zim frowned at being given orders by someone he saw as a subordinate, but as a migraine flared in his head, he just scoffed instead of arguing.

"Fine, whatever. Zim's not in the mood to argue either," he muttered, turning on his heel to march out of the room. Tenn eagerly followed him, barely bothering to acknowledge the two unconscious humans as she did show, shutting the door behind her.

Making their way through the wrecked Plastimart, the two Irkens quickly reached the damaged slushie machine. It was at this point that Zim finally realized something.

"Where did GIR go?" he demanded, looking around in annoyance.

"He ran off to get help. You know, instead of helping us himself," Tenn said flatly, making Zim sigh deeply.

"Of course he did," he muttered, shaking his head, "Fine, we'll just gather up the slush by ourselves and get the Voot operational, and then we can track him down on the way back to base."

With that, the Irkens set about scooping up as much of the spilled slush as they could with tools from their PAKs, being careful not to let any get anywhere close to their mouths. Within a few minutes, they had enough secured, a realization that Tenn blinked at as she registered it.

"Huh, we actually managed to do something without arguing nonstop," she noted, "That hasn't been happening much lately."

"Hmm? Eh, yeah, you're right," Zim said, scratching his head, "Hmm, did something happen while we were intoxicated that could have resolved our tensions?"

The two Irkens paused as they considered that, trying to remember what had happened in their sugar craze that could have fixed the unspoken issues that had been causing them problems lately. However, their memories were both too hazy from the Slush Buckets' effects to clearly remember what they'd said to each other during that period, only vaguely recalling a feeling of contention.

After a moment considering that, the two shrugged.

"Whatever, it doesn't matter," Tenn decided, "Let's just get out of here."

"Agreed. If we're working better now, let us not waste time questioning it," Zim waved off.

The two then shrugged and turned to leave, only to jump in surprise as the door to the Plastimart suddenly slammed open.

"I brought help!" GIR declared happily. The Irkens stared at him, and then their eyes widened as a large crowd of people emerged behind him.

"Look! The talking green dog was telling the truth!" yelled one man, whom Tenn recognized with a double-take as the guy whom Zim had levitated out of his home back at the trailer park, "There really are two green alien people here!"

"Uh… no, we're normal!" Zim declared in a panic, cursing his robot's stupidity.

"No you're not, normal people ain't green!" another trailer park resident shouted from the crowd.

"Ugh, of course that would be the cherry on top of this night, actually finding humans other than Dib who can see through these disguises," Tenn grumbled, facepalming, "Now we'll have to waste time fighting them to get out of here…"

"Fight? We don't want to fight you, we want to join you!" one of the crowd members shouted.

"Eh?" Zim blinked, he and Tenn now looking at the crowd in confusion.

"Yes, we understand that your attack on our home was just a test to see if we were worthy of ascending to the stars with you, and we are ready to accept your great gift!" the apparent leader of the crowd declared, making the Irkens slowly blink as they tried to process this sudden turn of events.

"Come again?" Tenn asked flatly.

"Yes, we've all been waiting for this day ever since we left that stupid Bright and Shining Saucer group to found our own private community," the leader continued with a derisive snort, "That moron Desmond Flapp thought that we could really be granted the divine truth of aliens by living among normal society, when obviously we needed to be isolated and alone so that we could receive the wisdom that the rest of the world isn't deserving of! And now, your presence proves we were right!"

"We're going to space!" someone else yelled in the crowd, who all started cheering wildly.

"…I can't tell if this insanity is good or bad for us," Tenn muttered to herself, before looking to Zim, whose eye was twitching, "What's with you?"

Zim didn't respond, too busy focusing on the words "Bright and Shining Saucer" that the leader of the group had used, and the memories that triggered of that filthy group of UFO worshippers. Oohing and awing at him like he was a museum exhibit, putting his precious Irken technology on display, asking him to bless their toe-corns!

"NO! Zim refuses to go through this again!" he yelled in outrage and disgust.

"Again?" Tenn repeated, utterly lost at this point. But Zim continued to ignore her, focusing on waving a finger dramatically at the crowd.

"Zim is not here to be some object of worship for you filthy worm-babies!" he declared, "Leave us be and go home to wallow in your pitiful loneliness!"

However, the words didn't have the desired effect on the crowd, who just smiled widely.

"Behold! The aliens display their wisdom in letting us find our own way instead of blindly following, like our own misguided Earth leaders do!" the group leader stated profoundly, which just made his group cheer even louder than before.

"Okay, I'm hitting my limit here. Want to just start blasting them?" Tenn stated flatly, asking the last bit to Zim. He opened his mouth to reply, the look on his face making it clear that he was leaning towards agreement with that sentiment, when the door to the storage room banged open.

"Now what?" both Irkens groaned in unison, turning to face the open doorway just as the badly burned Terry and Fred stumbled out.

"Ugh, what hit me…?" Fred muttered with a pained groan, before he and Terry paused, blinking at the sight of the large crowd that had gathered in the store.

"What the hell is this?" Terry asked, looking around his store in confusion.

As she took this development in, an idea sparked in Tenn's head, as she suddenly realized how to solve two problems at once.

"Hey! You want us to take you to space?" she asked the trailer park residents, who all perked up, "Well, then here's your final test – go deal with those two men over there; they're our enemies, who tried to harm us!"

"What?!" the trailer park leader exclaimed, while his group burst into loud angry yells, "Blasphemy! Come on everyone, let's teach these heretics a lesson!"

"Wait, what?" Fred asked, only for him and Terry to scream as the crowd charged them, carrying them back into the storeroom in a rush of fists and kicks.

"Come on, let's go while they're all busy!" Tenn yelled at Zim.

"You don't have to tell Zim twice!" Zim declared, grabbing GIR and bolting out the front door, Tenn right behind him. They ran down the road and didn't slow down until they got back to the woods, and even then, they kept up a steady pace as they rushed through the underbrush, not allowing themselves to slow down at all until they finally reached the Voot's crash site. They then quickly set about activating the fuel converters, pouring the retrieved slush into them and transforming it into enough engine fuel to get them back to base.

"Finally," Tenn sighed as she got back into the ship, "I want to go home and just lie on the couch watching bad TV all day to erase this entire ridiculous night from my memories."

"Agreed," Zim said, tossing GIR into the Voot before climbing back in himself, closing the cockpit and reactivating the engines to take off. Soon, the ship was making its way rapidly across the sky, quickly leaving the woods behind and passing over the Plastimart, which the Irkens noted with mild interest had somehow caught fire since they'd left it, the crowd from the trailer park now dancing around it like a huge bonfire.

"Should we blow them up?" Tenn asked, watching the scene passing them by on the ground below.

"Meh, Zim says leave the dirt-monkeys to rot, I couldn't care less," Zim grunted.

"Fair enough," Tenn replied.

With that, a silence fell inside the ship as it flew on its way back home. But this time, it was a much more comfortable one than before, the tension between them having been wiped away by the conversation that they didn't remember having.

As for the underlying issue that had been addressed during that conversation… well, that was something for another time. For now, it was just enough to know that they were able to work together again once more.