Murderer Zim's ship nearly crashed when he landed at the base. "Tak? Tak?" he called frantically, running through the hallways with his antennae held high. Several of the ordinary workers jumped a bit when the little green man ran past them, screaming at the top of his lungs. Then they shrugged, figured it was a costume stunt to sell meat, and returned to their everyday lives.
Murderer Zim tore through the emptied living quarters, shrieking as he overturned the couch. "Tak? Midori? TAK!"
Running into the dinning room, his eyes focused immediately on the crimson stain spreading in front of Midori's empty high chair. A broken bottle of smeet snackies lay spilled across the carpet.
There was a slow moment when nothing seemed to exist in his mind, as he slowly collapsed onto his knees. "Tak… Midori…" his voice came out in the chokes. "Oh, baby, I'm sorry that I judged you for your missing leg… come back to me… please come back to me…"
Tears, a sensation that he hadn't felt since Spork had found him sniveling and ready to end his life, rose up into his face as a knot formed in his throat. They were gone, leaving behind only stains on the carpet. His beautiful, beautiful baby girl resting in her mother's arms… they'd departed from the world, and he'd never see them again.
His grief was so great that the armada became forgotten, and he lay within the sticky halo that he thought was all that remained of his family.
Back at Zim's base, Violet watched Tak's chest heave. The girl was barely hanging on, but definitely fighting for her life. No matter how much pain her body must have been in, she wasn't ready to give up.
Midori sniffled and whimpered, burying her hungry face in Violet's chest. Violet hadn't thought to bring any smeet food when she'd carried Tak's lifeless form back to the base, and the smeet was hungry. Violet patted her sadly on the back. "I'm sorry, baby, I don't have any smeet food. Maybe I can grind up some apples for you… apples seem to be an Earth food that doesn't hurt us too badly."
Violet carried the smeet into the kitchen and looked heavenward. "Skoodge… I hope you're doing better than I am."
Meanwhile, Skoodge was sitting on top of a satellite that had been captured by his ship. The gloves of his space suit were a bit too thick for his tastes, but what else could be done? He was trying to modify the satellite to give out a "quarantine space" signal, hoping that the Armada wouldn't enter a quarantine space even to blow it up.
"And after all this," Skoodge muttered, "I'll save the Earth so Zim can continue to try destroying it, and he'll STILL say I never do anything to help out around the house." Skoodge's thoughts drifted for just a moment. He wished he could return to Violet's dimension. He wished he could be with her…
Shaking foolish thoughts out of his head, he returned to working.
Meanwhile, trouble had brewed on Invader Zim's base. "What is SHE doing here?" Zim screamed, pointing at the sleeping and stitched up Tak lying on his couch.
"I accidentally shot her. Your computer did what it could to fix her, but she's still not con-"
"You used MY computer to fix MY worst enemy? Without asking ME?" Invader Zim screamed.
"Yes, I DID." Violet screamed back, stomping over to Zim until her overly tall, lanky body loomed like a demonic shadow over Zim. "And right now, Skoodge is-" Violet froze. The armada coming to Earth was just what Invader Zim wanted. Of course that wasn't news that would make him happy.
"Skoodge is whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?" Zim asked, cocking an eye suspiciously.
"Nothing."
"Oh, I think there is something."
"No, no there isn't."
"Yes, yes there is!"
"Isn't!"
"Is!"
"Isn't!"
Midori let out the high pitched wail of an angry smeet, causing Invader Zim to jump backwards and cover his antennae. "Sonic attack! Unfair! Sonic attack!"
"That's just Midori," Violet scoffed. "Tak's smeet."
Invader Zim looked like he'd been struck. "You brought not only my worst enemy, but her disgustingly one-legged disgusting smeety thing?"
"She's cute, not disgusting," Violet snapped, hugging the smeet defensively.
"And Skoodge…"
"He's cute too, but in a different way."
"I meant, where IS he?" Invader Zim snarled, getting agitated. Violet looked nervously away. "Look, it's that Scary Monkey show!"
"ZIM is not so easily distracted!" he cried, and then promptly looked over at the screen and shivered. "That monkey."
Violet took the opportunity of the moment his attention was divided to disappear into the kitchen, prematurely ending the argument.
Up in space, Skoodge's ship gave off a shrill alarm. He peered up, and then dove inside just in time to avoid Murderer Zim's ship as it whizzed past, smashing the satellite into pieces.
Murderer Zim's eyes flashed fire, and his zipper teeth seemed to have mutated into fangs. His eyes were a more brilliant red than the terrified Skoodge had ever seen before. "Without them, there's no reason for me to live! And I'm taking this miserable death trap of a planet with me!" he shrieked.
Skoodge shot off with Murderer Zim still hot on his trail, and the Armada growing ever closer. In the back of Skoodge's mind, a plan began to form. He quickly banked his ship to the left, drawing Murderer Zim after him. A burst of laser fire tore through the back of his ship, letting cold air in. Quickly Skoodge activated the repair mechanism, before a dangerous vacuum could form and puff him up like a marshmallow. Reaching the Armada before Murderer Zim got him was the all-important key, the moment of salvation…
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Tak's heavy eyelids began to flutter. Her upper body ached like she'd just been sentenced to a long torture session in the prisons of the Massive, a sensation she'd had to endure after being punished for her first and failed attempt at escaping from the planet Dirt.
Her arms felt empty. "Mi-Mi-Mi," she choked out, calling not for her forgotten robot but her precious, missing smeet. Violet, being chased by an angered Invader Zim through the kitchen, didn't hear her whimpered cries. Tak tried to lift her arms, only to find that either they were bound of had been damaged to the point where they no longer obeyed her.
She fell back down onto the operating table, her eyes too dry to weep. "You shouldn't move. You'll rip your stitches out."
Her body froze. That wasn't the voice of her computer, yet it was the voice of an Irken computer… Gods, no… no… she couldn't be in Zim's base! She couldn't! She… she didn't know where in the hell she would be if not in Zim's base.
With a feeling of dread growing like a knot in the pit of her stomach, she sank down back onto the coldness of the table. She was his prisoner… and Gods only know what he'd do to poor, innocent, baby Midori.
Violet had escaped from Invader Zim long enough to realize the hungry Midori was giving off a rather… foul scent. Gagging, Violet changed her diaper. "I wonder if my son will be this bad… he hatched, and I haven't even got to hold him…" Violet dried her eyes. "I wonder if I should return to my home dimension now. This Earth is all but doomed… but if Murderer Zim isn't killed here or captured and brought back, my dimension will be doomed too… DAMN HIM!" she screamed into empty air.
"Da he?" baby Midori asked, wiggling her bare smeet butt and sucking on her toes.
"Yes… I mean, no! That's not something I want you saying for your first words," she said, tickling the smeet's feet and making her giggle.
"Peh!" said Midori, shaking her rattle. The few bits of apple Violet had given her before she'd doodied her diaper seemed to have done a world of good for the infant's mood.
"You like apple, don't you?" Violet picked her up and finished diapering her. "Where I come from, we have all kinds of apples. Apples year round. The red tallest, he loves apples. He loves them so much I just know you two would get along." Violet blew on the smeet's antennae, causing the smeet to flatten them against her head and wrinkle up her face. "You're so beautiful. I can't believe your father was a bastard like Murderer Zim."
"Oh, you bastard," Skoodge sighed to himself when one of Murderer Zim's lasers hit his back rocket thruster, sending his ship spiraling through space.
"We can't take many more hits like that!" the onboard computer cried, fearing for it's own mechanical life.
"I understand that, but I have to get to the Armada!"
"Why? They'll blow you up as likely as they'll blow him up!"
"At least then I'd save Violet, and my life wouldn't have been worth something," Skoodge snapped back, silencing his computer. Taking a deep breath, he pushed down on the controls and forced the ship to dive downward, plunging straight for the first line of defensive of the Armada.
"What's that?" Tallest Purple asked, pointing to a distant light at the edge of the first line of fire for the Armada.
"I don't know… get out the zoom scope!" Red ordered, unnecessarily kicking a poor servant in the side. The servant scuttled off.
The zoom scope lowered. Red peered into it, with Purple bouncing at his side and crying, "I want to see too! I want to see too! Why do YOU always get to hog the scope? Lemme seeeeeeee!"
"It's Skoodge. He probably came out to greet our mighty fleet and- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Red shot backwards. "ZIM IS IN THE SECOND SHIP!"
Purple climbed up and hid behind the throne. "Kill it kill it kill it!"
The engineers rushed to their positions. Murderer Zim was closing in on the Skoodge. Skoodge shut his eyes. "Been nice knowing you, computer," he commented.
"You too, master."
Right as they expected the final impact, the ship behind them exploded. The burst of energy sent Skoodge's ship hurtling through space, where it nearly crashed into an asteroid. At the last possible second gravity from another large Irken ship caught the gravity of Skoodge's small ship and caused just enough of a correction that only the left booster rocket was torn off the ship and sent hurtling into the blackness of space.
Skoodge, his heart thudding against his chest hard enough to threaten leaping out of it, managed to right his ship using the remaining engines. The armada hovered there in space, as if uncertain of what to do.
"Wow," said tallest Purple.
"Wow," seconded Red.
"So…"
"So…"
"Zim is dead."
"Myep."
"What now?"
"Ummm… go home and have a party?"
"With nachos?"
"With nachos."
With that simple conversation, the Armada turned tail and began disappearing slowly back off into space. The people of Earth would never know how close they had come to extinction… on that particular day, that is.
Skoodge turned his ship around and headed slowly back down to Earth.
And what of Dib, you may be asking. Well, you see, the funny thing about Dib is… he's not always around when he really should be. At that particular moment, Dib was knocking on Tak and Murderer Zim's door. "Hello? Hello? That's funny. No one seems to be home. And I had more videos to show them, too," he shrugged as he pulled up his coat against the chilly air and walked back home.
"So, when they thought Zim was dead, they left?" Violet asked, cradling Midori.
"Uh-huh, and I'm going to do my best to keep Zim from contacting them for as long as possible. I want the Armada to be pretty far away before I try to explain the fact that there were two Zims to the tallests… I don't want to give them any more neurosis than they probably already have right now. And you?"
"Tak has been fading in and out of consciousness… and you and Zim are in no spot to take care of a smeet. I'm taking Midori back to my home dimension with me, to raise with my son. I'll bring her back when she's older… and Skoodge, you'll take care of Tak as best you can for me, won't you?"
Skoodge nodded as Violet pulled out a small device and punched an interdimensional portal hole. "You know, in my world, you and her are lovers." And with that, Violet was gone, leaving Skoodge with his mouth hanging open.
Skoodge sighed and sat down on the floor next to Tak's limp body. "Leave it to a woman like that to make an exit like that," he said into the empty air.
The End
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Or perhaps not. Mere seconds before the laser impact would have destroyed Murderer Zim, he jettisoned his fuel tanks and pressed a button he'd specially built to allow himself to return to his home world. But the button had failed, leaving Murderer Zim floating alone in a black limbo with no fuel. However, he had tons of snacks, and he had tools… he was going to fix that interdimensional portal or die trying…