The 401,278th Intergalactic Supremacy Pie Competition of Doom

Chapter 6: Something Really Bad Happens

Zim's eyes shot open. Quickly darting from right to left his eyes surveyed the broken hull of the Pie in the Sky. Loose wires, undone by the force of the ship's impact upon the surface of Judgementia, sparked and moved about wildly. A red emergency light cast a headache-inducing chiaroscuro about the ship's markedly small interior, which smelled of motor oil and ham. But Zim didn't care about any of that. Had his cloak activated? And where was his stick?

Slowly moving his hand in front of his face, Zim realized he could see right through it. He also noticed that it was carrying a disembodied, floating stick. With a heavy sigh, he dropped it, not wanting to alert anyone of his presence. Speaking of which, he clambered, with figurative lead in his Invader-grade combat boots, to the ship's cockpit window.

This was easier said than done, given the ship had landed at an angle at which the cockpit landed face-up. Zim was forced to seize the back of what was not fifteen minutes ago his seat, and pulled himself up. Resting here, his memory of basic Irken anatomy, most notably his PAK, sprang belatedly into his mind, and he tried to activate his mechanical spider legs. No use; his beadlyspooch, the voluntary muscle that controls Irken PAK functions, must've shaken loose, as organs were prone to do in squishy Irken bodies. Sighing, he jumped nimbly onto the upturned back of the driver's seat. He stood on his tiptoes to reach the window and survey the scene outside.

Before him knelt the weeping Tallest Red. Zim couldn't hear him due to the soundproofed window. Zim was confused. He remembered being conditioned to despise sadness as weakness when he was a smeet: how else should he react seeing his Tallest indulging in it? Turning from the disgusting sight out of- well, disgust- Zim watched seven other figures turn from him. Odd, gray, squarish beings accompanied these seven into a large covered structure- the Feast Tent. Zim saw Purple turn in the same direction, and eventually Red picked himself up. The Competition Grounds were cleared, and Zim's task lie ahead of him.

Zim jumped down where his stick was, deciding that he could indeed use it, before kicking open the loose, sideways hatch in the Pie in the Sky's side.

The heat of the planet struck him first and foremost, causing a violent reaction from his un-acclimated body. After retching briefly and silently inside the ship (so it could not be traced to him), he shut the hatch and stole across the Grounds, stick triumphantly in hand.

Meanwhile, inside the Feast Tent, the food was unveiled, filling the cramped quarters with the scent of Lyrrsh hams and Qqaly wines, both mass produced in horrifying, planet-wide factories. Crekar sat down at the tiny table meant to accustom all the emperors; it had started as an insult to the worst emperor before Figgins made the mistake of sitting down at to personally insult Ack-Geh, the (at the time) current ruler of the all-but extinguished Err-Tal Empire. Seen as a power grab or possibly a sign of dominance by the ever-paranoid Irkens and Feronians, they sat down at the table too, followed by the other emperors, not wanting to be left out.

So now the universe's eight greatest leaders all sat at the Feast's equivalent of the kid's table one might have at Christmastime when they once again find themselves hosting all your in-laws and their goddamn kids in your two-room, one story duplex they share with a racist old coot who keeps stealing their wi-fi.

Red and Purple, the Once Great Tallests of the Once Great Irken Empire, walked in, disgraced but still invited to their Final Feast, as is custom when an Empire retires or bows to another's power.

"Cheer up, Red. Irk is still larger than all of the Crowak Empire," Purple said disconsolately. He too was worried. The two sat down, and began to feel the pressure of the Valusian and Feronian empires bear down on them, and not in the metaphorical sense that the two empires would probably divide the new planets made available to them, but because they were sitting on either side of the two, and that table was pretty damned small.

Perfect-pie was, from an objective point of view, the best pie at the competition, making the Irkens' plight all the more ironic. Of course, the now ex-ex-Invader Zim (the second ex added due to his Empire's dissolution) did not know this, and began his incredibly complicated pie-smashing mission with it in tow. Zim scurried to the Irkens' booth and placed Perfect-pie down before taking his stick across the row of booths and sending Valus Prime Figgins' pie, and henceforth the entire Valusian Empire, out of existence. He continued to pulverize the pie into the dust of the planet's surface, so as to leave no trace of it.

This was done, by no fault of Zim's, with particular restraint. He was carrying out the orders of a coward, after all. The greatness that was Zim never shed any tears! He was a proud, bold, strikingly handsome conqueror, for Tall-y's sake!

Zim tried to push these rebellious thoughts out of his mind. Obey Your Tallests, he repeated to himself over and over again as he beat Teri's pie to death. He no longer felt in control of his actions, as he jerked around, struggling with these two subconscious, instinctive, and currently contradictory Irken ideals. Zim's innate lack of cynicism had made him unable to look upon the Tallests as buffoons, but as the Galvonon Empire bit the dust at the hands of his stick, his mind re-analyzed Red's actions as one of a fool's, and Zim couldn't help but be reminded of Red's mistakes, particularly his wrongdoings against Zim.

Obey Your Tallests. Obey Purple.

Yes, Purple did nothing wrong, Zart-beings. Your pie may be surprisingly durable and oddly shaped, but you deserve to suffer at the hands of him, the true Tallest, and the new Irken Empire he was born to lead.

Red is a coward.

He had been the one to tell him, all those years ago, that he was a danger to his race. Had he not been sarcastically enslaving Zim in that awful pit known to Foodcourtia as Shloogorgh's? Might he truly not recognize Zim's greatness?

Purple is a coward. He let Red do all of those things to you. He stood there, cowering beneath another coward.

But then... if their height did not make them Zim's superior...? There were now two pies left: Perfect-pie, and Crekar's pie.

Crekar, who was being insulted as usual by his fellow emperors.

"You might as well just kill yourself!" Figgins joked, sending a raucous cry of laughter throughout the Feast Tent.

"Yeah, the only thing smaller than your Empire is your filustube (Crowak genitalia)!" Teri quipped.

"You are an immaculate example of a male specimen," Pietron added mechanically.

Unfortunately, Crekar's temper snapped just, then, and bitterly he cried "Yeah, well, this statement is a lie!"

"Logic anomaly. Shutting down!" a voice unlike Pietron's emerged from the robotic husk as its AI imploded.

"Hey! You're not allowed to kill other emperors at diplomatic assemblies! Go wait outside, the feast is over for you, mister!" Fourier wagged his wing at Crekar disapprovingly.

Zim raised his stick. Crekar exited the tent.

"Hey... hey!" Crekar exclaimed as he caught sight of the stick. Zim froze in fear.

"Shut up!" somebody called from inside the tent.

Crekar surveyed the ground. It was getting dark out, but he noted the absence of pies. Upon witnessing the Perfect-pie, he turned to the floating stick.

"Are you Irken?" he asked the stick, hoisting it, and with it Zim's invisible body into the air.

"Nuh-uh!" Zim replied indignantly. He was bad at bluffing.

"Ha! The Tallests tried to rig a competition they're not even part of!"

"What do you mean? Of course they are. Otherwise, why would I be here? I mean... I'M A STICK!"

"You idiot!" Crekar told the self-proclaimed stick. "The Tallests were disqualified less than an hour ago for crashing their ship into Fourier's! The whole Irken Empire is finished...you've no use here."

"But, I am Zim! There can be no Zim without the Empire!" Zim cried. "I mean, uh, I'm made of wood! Neat, huh? Cuz I'm a stick!"

"What did you say?"

"I'm a stick?"

"Before that."

"I am Zim? I mean-"

"You're Zim? The Tallests sent the scourge of their empire to sabotage the competition?"

"Scourge? Zim is no scourge... that's what the, eh, other sticks told me! He is the greatest invader of all time: he was top of his class in the academy, he-"

"Killed Tallest Miyuki and shut down power on Irk twice, and was later sent into exile on Foodcourtia for disrupting Impending Doom I," Crekar excitedly made practical use of his obsessive knowledge of the other empires.

"I... Zim... great... Zim... but... exile...cheese?" Zim's mind was all but malfunctioning at this point. His Tallests had lied.

"Your Tallests have lied," Crekar spat. "But, if you destroy their pie, and not mine, I'll make it worth your while."

"You're going to have sex with me? ….I am a stick, you know."

"No you idiot. But I will make you my second-in-command when I rule the universe."

Zim's eyes shone. Of course Crekar didn't mean what he said, but then again he was a politician. Crekar dropped the stick, and Zim promptly ran to the Tallests' booth and picked up the Perfect-pie. He walked back to Crekar's and slowly looked each pie up and down. In spite of everything, Zim was still caught between his loyalty to an empire that no longer existed and his newfound disgust with his leaders.

At that moment, however, the Proctors began to leave the tent, followed by the Judges and other Emperors. Zim ducked underneath the booth, pie in hand and stick dropped on the ground.

The Competition Grounds went to hell in the minutes that followed. From underneath Crekar's booth, Zim could hear other booths being uprooted, tents being pulled out of the ground, and Emperors screaming at each other and, soon enough, at Crekar. Zim covered his pie in his body cloak as best he could, which was to say not at all, and ducked behind the Crowak as the Proctors called for order.

"Well, I am disappointed!" Fourier exclaimed. "Not a single one of you could resist eating your pie, except for Crekar!"

"Does this mean he wins?" Herat whispered.

"I don't know!" to the emperors, he cried, "We need some time to reassess the situation, um... we've still got tic-tac-toe?" his voice petered out feebly.

Angry, but at least complacent that Crekar wouldn't win and the whole Competition could potentially be invalidated this year, the other emperors grumbled and returned to their booths.

"Wait!" a voice cried from seemingly nowhere. The emperors each turned their heads in the direction of the noise. After adjusting to the sight, each one slowly, and barely, accepted that a floating pie was now speaking.

"Zim!" Red hissed. Wasn't he dead?

"Zim," Crekar thought quietly aloud. Why hadn't he destroyed Perfect-pie?

"I have a pie to submit!" Zim cried, walking down the long row of booths. Aurior, one of Judgementia's suns, had begun to rise, casting an elongated shadow of the pie across the dusty field. The scene looked very much like one ripped from a western film, with the hero slowly crossing the desert.

Except that hero was a pie being carried by an invisible Irken who was about to commit the most audacious coup in the history of the Pie Competition, and possibly even the universe.

"It is not... God-pie?" Fourier stammered to himself as the pie floated towards the Proctors' podium.

"What? No! ...I am the mighty Zim, of the Ir-" the pie stopped in mid air, and the voice subsided. Zim cast a look at his leaders, both looking anxiously at him. His blood curdled. Then he looked over at Crekar, and realized he didn't not want somebody ordering him around any longer.

"That is, Zim of the... Invis..in..oid Empire! Yes!"

"The Invisinoids?" Fourier exclaimed.

"Yeah, we started about a week ago, let's go with that," Zim spoke quickly. "I just, um, got here. And I baked a pie!" he held up the pie.

"Where's your ship?"

"It's invisible!" Zim proclaimed. He really did think himself quite clever. The Proctors nodded in agreement.

"Because he's invisible too." Fourier whispered.

"He must be telling the truth." Herat replied.

"I've never seen an Invisinoid before!" the third Proctor whispered excitedly.

"Wait!" Crekar exclaimed. "That's not an Invisinoid! That's the Irken Zim!"

"Filthy Crowak dirt-lies! Surely you know how untrustworthy the Crowak people are?" Zim gushed, flustered. The other emperors nodded in agreement.

"Crowaks do lie,"

"I'm not recalling any Irken Zims,"

"That's not even what an Irken looks like, anyway!"

Purple was about to agree with Crekar, but his sense of pride and a disapproving look from Red stopped him in his tracks.

"If Zim pulls this off," Red whispered, "We can use him to resurrect our Empire!"

"Very well!" Fourier exclaimed. "For Intergalactic Supremacy, we will now taste the pies of the two great empires of the universe: the Invisinoid and the Crowak empires!"

Both pies were placed before the judges. Crekar sulked angrily after his protestations were shut down yet again, and then the pies were tasted.

Crekar looked downcast.

The Tallests huddled together, hopeful.

Figgins stewed, ready to kill if any of this was validated.

Teri, for once, agreed with him.

Quart leaned on his booth, adjusting his shades. Nothing phased him.

Farus gloomily decided someone was going to die by the time the Competition ended.

Pietron was already dead, if you'll remember.

James picked his nose.

And two minutes later, "The Pie Competition is over! Zim and his Invisinoid Empire are now entitled to the wealth, territory, and prominence once held by the Extinguished Valusian Empire!"