Author's Note: This is really more the end of an episode with a little thrown in.
Influence
"Christmas is saved!" Earth's triumphant little hero proclaimed. As it so often was, though, his victory was short-lived.
"Hey!" cried out a man from the crowd. "That kid just threw Santa into the cold void of space!"
"Cwistmas is wuined fohwevoh," a small child concluded.
No. No—they had to see.
"Would the real Santa have mutated into a giant blob?" Dib reasoned with the crowd. To his enthrallment, a spark of thoughtfulness came to the people. His heart began to pound. Maybe he finally had them! "And would the real Santa have enslaved the human race?" The spark had not gone. With a flame rising inside of him, Dib continued.
"You were so desperate for a real Santa, you believed a guy in a costume. That's not Christmas." The people—his people—now seemed to have their eyes opened for the first time. But, with a world of realization now opened to them, they seemed to be looking to him for guidance.
"Go home," Dib encouraged gently. "Forget about this." He clasped his hands together. "And spend time with your families—or whatever."
The same man from before spoke up again. "The giant metal boy is right!" he exclaimed, mistaking the giant robot mech for Dib's actual body.
"What fools we've been!" a woman added, clapping a hand to her face.
Dib beamed—in an even bigger triumph. He was always saving the world from its unseen menace, but now…he had finally broken through to his people. Dib glanced heavenward with a smile. He could not have asked for a better Christmas present.
"Wait!" a familiar shriek shattered the yuletide tranquility. The crowd's attention was directed behind them, to the root cause of their would-be demise.
"Will you listen to the boy who threw Santa into space?" Zim called out. "Or will you listen to…the Easter Platypus?" He reached into a basket and began to toss out shrimp. "Easter shrimp for all if you tackle the boy who destroyed Santa!"
The crowd once again took on those blank looks of ignorance. "Easter Platypus, we love you!"
And so, blindly following another idolized figure, the people turned to Dib, who was just getting down from the battle mech.
"Wait—no!" the young boy cried out. But this did not deter the masses, nor did the fact that he was only a child while most of those many hundreds were adults. The first few tackled him to the ground, and more and more piled on until there was a gigantic mass of people on top of him, uninhibited by his screams of pain and terror as a great many blows were struck.
Zim's cry of "Merry Platypus!" went largely unheard as Dib's agonized cries reached the cold winter sky.
On that Christmas Eve, Dib had once again saved the world.
On that Christmas Eve, for one glorious moment, Dib had opened the eyes of his fellow humans.
On that Christmas Eve, by thousands of the people he had just saved, Dib was beaten to death.