"I have loved justice, and hated iniquity, and therefore die in exile."
-Pope Gregory VII
"We appreciate you giving us this."
Lard Nar took hold of the keys being offered to him, the other members of the intergalactic community gathered around an enormous circular table within the Tallest's palace. Upon the walls were beautiful curtains detailing every single ruler of Irk, but without a doubt, the Tallest were given priority over the previous rulers, what few there had been. Instead of silver-laced backgrounds the Tallest had gold, and whilst the more average, less tall rulers looked pretty decent, the Tallest's images were meant to be larger than life.
Tallest Grapa was pointing dramatically over an enormous field of Irkens who were all bowing in reverence, his eyes blazing as brightly as the sky behind him, illuminated by the sun. Tallest Genek, even in his old age, looked cunning and keen, he was pouring over gigantic maps and star charts that he held aloft for others to see, people looking on it in awe. Tallest Rankor was in the middle of wrestling a Meekrobian Dragon Hornet to the ground, strangling it with his bare hands, blood flowing freely as his claws dug into it, the enormous beast twice as large as he was as he killed the apex predator of Meekrob before the Meekrobians own eyes. Tallest Miyuki sat in a chair, holding aloft Planet Irk in one hand, smiling delightedly at the enormous assembled crowd of aliens that were all bowing before her, her other hand holding aloft a finely-crafted goblet of vortian firewhisky, and Tallest Spork was standing atop the Massive, pointing dramatically as he aimed forth at the stars, a comet streaking by him, fists pumped into the air by the crowd below.
Red and Purple's tapestry had been HEAVILY vandalized. There'd been so many dicks drawn on it that it was nigh-impossible to really tell what the original tapestry looked like.
"Being...grateful to an Irken is an experience we have no really felt since the days of Rankor." said the Meekrobian leader Sarong, who's slightly spiky head flickered about, his glowing, luminescent body hovering in the air along with his compatriots that hovered by him. "After centuries, our planets will finally be free of all Irken facilities...and all Irkens. It is a solemn day in-" He stopped, taking notice of one of his fellow Meekrobians. "EZRAIM!"
"And THIS one's gonna be kinda droopy!" murmured a Meekrobian with a large black marker who was making his own addition to Tallest Red and Purple's tapestry. An angry growl rose up from the end of the room as the Meekrobian blushed and dropped the marker, zipping back to his friends.
At the other end of the room were Senior and the staff of the Massive, save for a small platoon to remain upon the ship, and the platoon that remained with Peech and Feyr, who had stayed behind on Earth. Senior had finished giving the assembled other aliens the keys to the Irken facilities on all of the formerly conquered planets, and had just signed several documents that they needed to sign as well. "This will be more than enough to cover the expenses of full rebuilding, ESPECIALLY for demolition of those stupid package-shipping facilities on your planet." Senior offered warmly to the Screw-Heads leader as his jet black eyes gazed at the paper below.
The man signed...then chuckled. "Honestly, we intend to keep them."
"You do?" Dite asked, sounding a bit stunned. "Gotta be honest, Screw Head, got no idea WHY, I mean...wouldn't they be a reminder of all the shit we did to you?"
"It can be. Or we can actually make use of them and ship packages for our OWN profit." The Screw Head leader proclaimed. "We will make proper use of them to ship packages all over the galaxy...and we'll do it without being electrocuted for taking too long a coffee break."
"And we're keeping the Galaxy's Comfiest Couch." Lard Nar confessed as the other aliens around him all nodded in agreement, an alien made entirely of crystal rubbing her hands together eagerly. "But we're gonna start charging people to lie on it."
"How much?" The crystal alien inquired.
"100 a pop."
"...awwww." She pouted at this, then dug into her chest compartment pockets and handed Lard Nar a hundred credits on the spot. "Here. I'll get in early!" She said, other aliens diving into their own pockets as Lard Nar chuckled a bit.
"I'll be happy to take your orders, really. I'll have you know that before I was in the Resisty and before I became Vort's new ruling executive officer, I worked in fast food. So I'm used to pushy customers."
"WE WISH TO BE DONE WITH THIS."
Senior sighed, glancing back. In a set of enormous tanks were the remaining Control Brains that Zim HADN'T driven insane. There honestly weren't many...only five, and Senior was pretty sure "Control Brain Tau" was fast asleep and was just pretending to be awake. The faint bubble stream coming from the floating "brain in a jar" was very distinguishable.
"We'll have everyone sign the papers and then we can move on to the real issue. Tak will be here, on Irk, within an hour, and she's bringing all her forces. So I urge everyone to hurry up and leave. And not to stick around, either, and bust out the popcorn, because I know SOME of you would love to do that." Senior admitted as the aliens variously looked at each other, some looking offended, others guilty, some trying to surpress laughter. "Everything we've done here is a good step towards fixing the wrongs of the past. We're not even close to being even, but...I hope its a sign to all of you of my intentions and my willingness to right what went wrong."
"Words are but wind." Sarong intoned. "Still, with all of your race no longer on our planets, and your influence soon to be completely scrubbed from them with these papers and the keys you've given, it is indeed strong action. More will be needed in the future if you truly do want to wash away the sins of the past."
"I don't really believe in "washing away". None of us do." Senior said, gesturing at the crew around him, Xeil nodding.
"Red and Purple behaved outrageously but we need to be honest. They were symptomatic of a much bigger problem, and that was the fact that the Irken Empire was dying, and frankly, with leaders like them? It deserves to."
"Our society's in really deep denial." Jayd confessed, the black-eyed medic deeply sighing. "We're a culture that insists on our superiority and on needing nobody, being war machines devoted to the cause and nothing else, giving our all to the Empire, and being brilliant tacticians and warriors...well, we don't really do that, do we?"
"Because when we're not stuffin' our faces with snacks or stealing OTHER PEOPLE'S work and passing it off as our own, we're watching our "glorious leaders" lounge about the bridge and stuffing their own faces with nachoes. Red and Purple were gluttons, slobs, lazy jerks who couldn't really do anything on their own and insisted on holding us to a standard they wouldn't hold themselves to!" Dite grumbled angrily.
"Corruption at the highest levels of our government has always been an issue. I mean...except for Miyuki, there's not been one Tallest I've genuinely respected." Senior confessed. "And how many times have we been asked to cover up the crimes of our leaders just because we were told it was for the good of the Empire?" He went on.
"IS THERE SOMETHING YOU ARE NOT TELLING US?"
The Control Brain at the head inquired, Control Brain Mu sounding confused.
"YOU HAD INFORMED US THAT RED AND PURPLE HAD SHIRKED THEIR DUTY AND HAD PRESENTED QUITE A CASE AS TO WHY YOU DESERVED TO BE IN CHARGE, AND WE AGREED WITH YOU FOR WE DID FIND THOSE TWO TO BE SEVERELY LACKING. YET I HAVE THE FEELING THEY DID SOMETHING YOU ARE NOT TELLING US ABOUT."
"..." Senior bit his lip. "...and here it is. I consider myself a nice guy...and what does it say about me that I'm willing to cover up what Red and Purple did?" He mumbled. "...the truth is, Control Brains, Red and Purple...um..." He sighed again. "I caught them in bed together. They've been having a homosexual relationship for decades, evidently. We just never really had anything beyond rumors and scuttlebutt and gossip. And they were faking their tallness. They were actually really short. Their bodies weren't their real bodies."
"WHAT?!"
The Control Brains's eyes flashed, blazing darkly. They sounded furious, baleful, the other aliens in the room nervously withdrawing, stepping away from the dark table, inching back over the dark blue carpet below.
"THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! WHY DID YOU NOT INFORM US OF THIS?"
"Because if I did, you would have ordered them executed." Senior commented. "If I just presented a case of them being lazy gluttonous slobs and pigs who kept screwing stuff up and not doing any of the real work, you'd just let me replace them and demote them, and that meant I could get them out of the way without killing them. Of course, you probably want them dead now. So I had them shipped off to Irk and they're currently in the Sugar mines below the capital. Luckily, they've responded great to therapy, they stopped trying to poison my sodas. Now they just settle for licking all the cans. Every single soda has "licked by Red or Purple" written on them on the Massive."
"I keep forgetting how immature your species is." Lard Nar mumbled...though he was trying very hard not to laugh as the Control Brains began turning red as a beet, shaking furiously, their eyes bulging balefully. Clearly, immaturity was not limited to the people who chose leaders based on height...and who had their laws interpreted by gigantic brains with eyeballs embedded in them who were probably swimming in their own toilet.
"THAT IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT. WE WILL BE HAVING WOOOORDS WITH YOU ONCE THIS IS ALL OVER AND TAK IS DEALT WITH. BUT FIRST, ALL OF YOU OTHERS, OUT, OUT, OUT! THIS IS NOW AN IRKEN MATTER! FIRST WE SHALL DEAL WITH TAK AND HER TRAITORS, AND THEN YOU, SENIOR, WILL PERSONALLY BRING US RED AND PURPLE SO WE CAN WATCH YOU SHOOT THEM! AND IF YOU ARE LUCKY, WE WON'T HAVE YOU TOSSED OUT AN AIRLOCK!"
"I'll be sure to remember that, Control Brain Beta." Senior said solemnly, giving a nod to the other assembled aliens. "Goodbye. Especially you, Lard. Take care of May."
The others left, Lard quietly nodding back, his eyes behind his goggles solemn and sad as he slowly turned around, and exited the Tallest's palace as Senior turned on his communicator. "We need to begin. It's time. Execute code A113."
...
...
...
... "It's good to see you finally finished." Feyr said to Professor Membrane and Faith as people gathered out in the town square, eyes wide as they beheld the many missiles that laid atop the enormous stage. Behind it was a great red curtain that the professor, Faith and the many scientists and assistants at the laboratory stood in front of as Peech nonchalantly sat nearby on a chair, munching away on, of all things, a peach. "You no doubt have a speech prepared?" He inquired.
"Oh, without a doubt!" Professor Membrane insisted as he nodded enthusiastically behind the large white overcoat he wore that rose up so high it covered most of his face. It was a good thing too, because he didn't want Feyr to see the complicated expression that now lingered upon it. Faith, meanwhile, was looking over the missiles, back turned to Feyr and Peech and hoping the psychic would respect her mind's privacy, praying they wouldn't peek inside her head...or anyone else's on stage. "But you needn't have come here. Does the hospital not still need you?"
"I just helped with another difficult delivery. My last one!" Feyr insisted, shaking his head, his slightly frilly-esque antennae bouncing about, pink eyes a-glitter. "This is more important. Today's the day you leave behind a cleaner, better future for your children and your children's children. I wanted to be there to see it."
"Yeah, you guys have done real damn good work. Gotta admit, I didn't think you could do it at first." Peech said as she nodded at the platoon of Irken soldiers stationed as guards around the stage, and they lowered their weaponry and sat down on some chairs of their own, popping what looked like some tic-tacs into their mouth as Peech finished eating up her peach. "But you humans sure like to surprise us! Also, WOW, these are good." She added, holding up the peach, Faith turning around, getting a good look.
Odd. There were some very faint remnants of...some kind of medication littered around the munch marks on the peach. Had the orange-eyed Irken been eating the fruit to get some kind of allergy medicine down? "You take any drugs?" Faith asked aloud as she finished her inspection of the pollution-dissolving missiles and walked over to Peech. "I know that must be a personal question but-"
"Not until today." Peech laughed, Faith looking at her in confusion as Feyr shook Professor Membrane's hand.
"You're going to be remembered forever for this, Membrane. You and your crew have done amazing work. Just be sure to remember to be there for your family more now that you've done all this." Feyr added, heading over to a chair of his own and sitting down, popping a pill into his own mouth from a pocket as Membrane gestured dramatically at the missiles, clearing his throat.
"The pollution of this planet has been an issue for decades and decades. In our advance towards a brighter future, we darkened the sky without realizing the true issues that faced us! But now we can begin to reverse the damage and make life better for all who call Earth home! Today...we create a brighter, better future! An end to the dark fog that descended over our world! We return the world to its proper place!"
"And people." Feyr quietly chuckled, Membrane not hearing it as he pulled out a remote control, the immense throng of humans cheering, whooping and hollering as Membrane pressed the "fire" button. SCHWOOOOOOOOOM! The missiles launched up into the air, high, high, into the sky, one after the other as Faith stared at Peech, mouth slightly agape, as if trying to comprehend something that was just on the tip of her tongue.
Meanwhile, on Irk, the enormous flagship that was the Massive faced down the "Dreadnut", a moniker compromise between "Doughnut" and "Dreadnought" given to the second-largest ship in the Irken fleet. Irk's moon was obscured by the huge waves of ships that now surrounded the planet, a house divided against itself for all to see. Dib and Gaz were observing everything from the planet, Zim stuck in his capsule but looking quite delighted as he watched on with everyone else.
As the divided Irken fleet faced off in the skies above Irk and in the outer ring of the planet, Tak, Wiyn and Darth faced down Xeil, Senior and Dite, all of them standing with their many platoons of fighters, rifles ready and loaded, some holding bazookas or heavy duty grenade launchers. Various mech suits shifted and grumbled, their pilots taking aim as Senior stood at the front of the battlefield, just outside the capital of Irk.
"We noticed quite a lot of Irken shuttle ships leaving not too long after those filthy goaty heads and THEIR ships left." Tak intoned loudly as Dib and Gaz watched from the Tallest's palace with Jayd, Zim and, lastly, the Control Brains themselves, who had erected cameras around their "glorious visage" and were now hovering high in the air behind them, taking everything in, and broadcasting it all across the Empire...all across the galaxy. They wanted everyone to see this. To see how the Control Brains rewarded those who defied them.
And above all, to show that the Irken race hadn't exactly gone 'soft'.
"So! All smeets are no doubt off the planet?" Tak inquired.
"We insisted the future of Irk not get caught in the crossfire. Skoodge and some others have taken them somewhere you'll never find them." Senior yelled back.
"Oh, we'll get the location out of you. We'll beat it out of you if we have to." Tak intoned, pacing back and forth inf ront of Senior. "So let's make this clear. I'm a better tactitian than you are, Senior. You haven't got a prayer."
Wiyn was sharpening her knives upon themselves as they gleamed in the light of Irk's sun. Faint CLANG-CLANG-CLANG noises echoed across the dirty field as wind fluttered around them all, Darth glancing from Senior to Tak, then to Wiyn.
"Dib...Gaz?" Jayd inquired of the two as they peered down from the roof of the Tallest's palace along with the Control Brains. "Are you sure you want to watch all this?"
Unbeknownst to him, the two had been preparing. Just like Professor Membrane, they'd been getting everything ready on their end. It would soon be time to put their plan into motion, and Gaz took out her smartphone, typing away into it. "Just gonna make sure I can record all this on Social Media." She lied, Dib getting out his own phone. But he wasn't typing to his followers, oh no. He was readying the launch code for his own missiles, and Gaz was getting ready to hit the fleet with the virus they'd crafted.
"We wanna record this for posterity." Dib added convincingly. "I wanna be able to tell my kids what I was doing, where I was when all this went down."
"Oh, I don't doubt that." Jayd remarked softly.
"I've tried to show you that the ends don't justify the means. That we need to be better than what came before." Senior insisted. "...and I'm very, VERY sorry that despite having a chance to see how the grass is greener on this side, you'd rather be "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"." Senior said in return.
"Oh, I AGREE with you that we need to be better. But your idea of "better" and mine aren't the same." Tak said with a shrug. "Red and Purple were incompetent and stupid. You're competent, yes...but in a way, you're just as stupid as they are. You really think the rest of the galaxy won't turn on us at all? That if we just say we're sorry and give them some nice gifts and show our belly, they'll just smile and clap us on the back and say "Hey, all water under the bridge"?" She wanted to know.
"Of course they won't forgive us easily. That doesn't mean you don't try." Senior responded. "You can't throw morality in the garbage just because life's tough!"
"Ahh, that old morality argument." Tak laughed. "That has NOTHING to do with that. That's not the way things work. We're an empire now. When we act, we make our own reality. And everyone will just be left to study what we do. It doesn't matter if you're right or wrong, Senior! Those concepts have no meaning! It's time we do what has to be done. Once we've beaten you, we'll deal with those disgusting skaatel, one planet after the other!"
"You're not doing this, Tak. We're not letting you."
"How disappointing." Tak sighed. "I honestly thought you'd take the smart option and just run for it...oh, who am I kidding?" She chuckled. "You're too NOBLE to ever do that! You really think if you just beat me up, the rest of my men will fall into line?"
"Something like that."
"I have trained snipers on you, Senior, all I need do is say the word and it's over!" Tak snorted, shaking her head. "You really think I care about fighting fair?"
SCHLUCK!
Dib and Gaz stared, mouth agape. Tak's eyes bulged. Senior quietly looked on, Wiyn whipping her head, shocked and stunned at what they all beheld.
Darth had stabbed her clean through her PAK, right out through her chest, his bare, clawed hand clenched into a fist, a powerful surge of psychic, telekinetic energy formed into an immense spiked blade that now held the PAK slightly up in the air through her ribcage. Dark blood oozed out, her superorgan in tatters, Tak's mouth letting out a faint, gurgling gasp, a horrific, high-pitched whine as she slowly turned her head to look into Darth's white eyes.
"Wh...why...?" She began to say. "You...YOU?"
"Morals cloud judgment." Darth whispered back at her. "Morals taint conclusions! Morals define unwanted prejudices! They're not welcome here! So why shouldn't I just STAB YOU IN THE CHEST? After all. Morals. Don't. Matter."
And with that, he withdrew his arm, Tak flopping onto the ground, the air so thick you could have cut into it with a knife. It was as if a kind of electricity was surging through it, everyone was paralyzed, holding their breath, stunned by what happened as Darth crushed the PAK in his hands.
"See...this is why we stood by Senior. Because he actually cared about us. And you? Well...you've only ever really cared about yourself. I thought, maybe if you had the right influence, you'd learn to care more about others. But I suppose that Earth phrase is true. You can lead a horse to water...but you cannot make them drink." The blind Irken intoned, the pieces of Tak's PAK falling down to the ground around him. "I want you to think about that for the few agonizing minutes you have left in your life."
"WHAT ARE YOU ALL WAITING FOR?!" Wiyn screeched out as she finally whipped around at the rest of Tak's forces. "SHOOT THEM, SHOOT THEM, SHOOT THEM!"
It was raw chaos. The air was filled with the KRAKKA-KRAKKA-KOW of heavy duty plasma fire. Darth ducked, racing towards Senior, erecting a psychic shield to stop the KA-KRAK of sniper shots that were halted in midair from his dear friend. Senior, in turn, looked mournfully down at Tak's gurgling frame as he covered his face with one gloved hand, and shook it back and forth.
Mech suits took aim, and let loose payloads that whizzed across the battlefield. The rockets red glare...the bombs bursting in air! High above in the skies, the Massive and the Dreadnut were unloading everything they had upon each other as bright, reddish/orange beams of laser light cascaded over everyone's heads. Dite and Xeil held hands, briefly smiling at each other, leaning in for the tiniest peck on their lips before placing their respective masks over the lower parts of their faces and barreling forth with loud war cries.
Senior whipped out his own pistols, shooting across the dusty ground, his eyes turned to dark green slits as he aimed and fired at the snipers who were caught off guard by his charge, Darth flying alongside him, suspended by his psychic might. The loud, booming sounds of rocket fire kept echoing through the air as the first casualty of the fleets fell down, down, down! KRUKCHA-THROOOOM! It crashed into the ground, people being sent flying from the shuddering quake as chunks of the capitol went up in flames.
Zim gazed on in amazement, his eyes wide. "Look at all this." He murmured. "They're tearing each other apart! It's...I've never seen anything like it!"
"Are you getting OFF on this?!" Gaz asked, sounding rather disgusted. "Seriously?"
"It's too beautiful for Zim's words! And that's saying quite a lot." Zim murmured, wiping a tear from his eye. "Just think about it, Gaz! The clash of the greatest ideologies the Irken empire's ever had! Not even Tak's death will stop this! And when its all over...ZIM will reign over Irk!" He proclaimed, pointing dramatically up into the air. "You will let me out of this capsule when its all over, right?"
"...you seriously think, after everything you did to me over the years, all your crappy, ugly behavior, your stupidity, your arrogance..." Dib said, his eyes glowering. "That I'm gonna let you out and let you try your hand at taking over Irk just cuz you think everyone else who might fit the bill will die here?"
"Better the devil you know than the one you don't!" Zim reasoned, putting a hand on his chest and winking at Dib. "Those therapy sessions have had me realize a lot about myself! I never really needed Earth! I just needed respect. And with Irk in tatters, well...this time, why NOT go for me as leader? I can't possibly do any more damage to it than they've done!" He remarked, jabbing his thumb at the battlefield before Gaz and Dib ducked, avoiding a rocket that barely missed their heads.
"YOU'VE SOME NERVE." Said Control Brain Tau with a snarl. "HAD WE STILL MOUTHS WE'D EAT YOU OURSELVES WITH A NICE BOLOGNESE SAUCE!"
Dib and Gaz looked briefly at each other. Their hands hovered over their smartphones. They could give the command right now.
"...do we really want to do this?" Dib murmured softly.
"We've come too far to back out now." Gaz insisted. "We can't let something like this happen again. We can't let another Tak happen."
"...you're right." Dib mumbled, as his finger pressed the button, and he bit into his lip. For a moment he felt the ugly, foul coldness of self-disgust dig into his very soul, like his heart was being gripped by a slimy hand. Gaz momentarily flinched a bit as she glanced upward, Dib looking up as well, seeing the missiles fly from behind him, from their special locations he'd set up in secret in the city.
Everyone had just been so busy evacuating the children of Irk they'd never seen him and Gaz do what needed to be done as they placed their rockets at strategic locations...rockets loaded with the chemicals needed to alter Irk's atmosphere and induce rain. Tak's rebellion had thrown a monkey wrench in the plan to ask Vort and other races for help but...in the end, Dib was happier this way. He hadn't wanted to endanger their lives, not if he could help it.
And there it was.
"What in the...?"
"Holy..."
"How the?!"
The ships high above were being devastated, not merely by laser and plasma fire, and missiles ripping them apart, but many were being shut down, Gaz's virus doing exactly what it'd been programmed to do. The ships were being absolutely crippled, and many were transforming from the immense, gigantic robot mechs that had been meant to be the fleet's best weapons...into gigantic, huge penises. A final mocking insult before they exploded in a fiery cataclysmic burst.
Chunks of the ships were sailing down, down onto the planet below, people running for their lives as the Control Brains stared on in amazement, stunned by what was happening as Zim's mouth gaped open even wider before he turned to Gaz. "...you did this." He realized. "You did all this, didn't you?"
"Me and Dib. The "transforming ship" thing was my idea."
"Of course. It's always you." Zim murmured as he saw the clouds now gathering above the battlefield, clouds he knew very well, clouds he had so dearly hated upon Earth, for it meant rain, and being forced to bathe in glue. And he knew nobody on the planet today had thought to bathe in glue. "...you've...killed us. You planned all this. I...I've not seen anything so devious and diablocal and twisted. Why...Zim thinks he may actually be prouder of you than he's ever been." He remarked at Dib and Gaz, nodding a bit. "You really would make good Irkens."
Dib grunted darkly, folding his arms over his chest as the Control Brains gasped in surprise, feeling the first remnants of the rain falling, as Gaz smiled and tapped on her synthetic eye, turning back to them. "I imagine you'd like to do a lot to us right now. But see, unlike this puppy? Designed for Earth weather LIKE rain? I'm guessing...you guys don't rust-proof any of your stuff on Irk."
Indeed...they didn't. Before their eyes, weapons, buildings, ship parts and even the PAKs and Control Brains were being rusted over by the burst of rain that was plowing down upon the battlefield, Wiyn screaming, howling in agony as she writhed on the ground. "AAGGHHH! I'm melting!" She shrieked, looking at her gloved hands. "MEEELLTTIIIIIING!"
Indeed, many, many Irkens were melting away, flesh being burned off their frames, their howling screams echoing through the air as Dib and Gaz watched the Control Brains's frames being completely rusted through, their screaming, furious roars silenced as the Dib and Gaz and Zim turned back to the battlefield and noticed something.
...yes, many Irkens were dying. But others were just calmly walking past their fellow dissolving brethren and over to Senior. All of them belonging to the Massive's crew, as Senior smiled softly back up at Dib and Gaz and Zim, who stared in confusion, not sure what to make of all this before Darth finally approached the Tallest's palace.
"Would you like me to help you down?" He inquired.
The two kids looked at each other, then nodded, Darth holding a hand up, hovering the brother and sister down so they could stand upon the ground, and see the remaining Irkens taking off their rusted-over PAKs.
"We've got ten minutes." Senior said quietly, Jayd going over to one of the cameras that had not been rusted over by the rain that poured down around them all, drenching them thoroughly, providing a drumbeat of white noise that filled the air. "Let's make it count."
"What's going on?" Dib asked, looking around at them all as Jayd rapped the sides of the camera, then nodded.
"The plastic casing held on this one. So the others on the Tallest's palace that caught the battle should be good as well." The medic remarked, saluting Senior as Senior smiled back at Dib.
"Dib...I wanted you and your family and friends to do this." He told the black-haired young lad, Dib's eyes widening behind the glasses. "I've learned that people unite easily when they're against a common enemy. I decided...I'd make myself that enemy for your people. And give you all the resources you'd need to find out a way to kick us off not only your world...but even our own."
"Well, not just you." Jayd confessed. "Faith and your father and others. We had them brought together, the best minds for the job. Peech and Feyr are probably explaining it all to them even now."
"So we let you have access to all the technology we had to offer." Peech informed Professor Membrane, holding the rusted-over wreck that was her PAK in her lap as Feyr sat calmly in a meditative pose, the rays of the sun slowly burning at his skin as he kept his head bowed. "We gave you everything you'd want to hurt us."
"We figured what you were up to when you asked for those atmospheric readings of Irk. We kinda kept a camera in your room. We saw you'd hidden the readouts of Earth and Irk's atmosphere in that vitamin jar." Xeil admitted. "Or rather, Peech did. She'd been following you around for a while, keeping an eye on you when you were working with the other humans."
"And we let Gaz make the adjustments to the fleet because we had a damn good idea of what she wanted to do. We checked the diagrams and readouts of the ships after the upgrades to be sure, of course and, sure enough! You'd deliberately sabotaged the fleet...AND the Massive. Real nice work!" Dite added. "But we didn't tell Tak about it. We were going to, but...well, she decided that she wasn't a team player."
"I'd been trying to keep an eye on her. I thought the more time I spent with her, getting her to open up, trying to show her how there'd be a better way would work." Darth intoned softly, hanging his head. "...it didn't. Maybe it's better this way."
"You...wanted us to kill you?" Dib finally managed to say, clutching at his head. Suddenly it all made sense. Why Senior let Dib and Gaz and all those humans have so much power and free reign. The way he'd talked about how different he was from other Irken leaders. Placing the lives of humans over his own race time and time again.
"We might not be good enough to be the change the Irken race needs." Senior confessed. "Because so much of the old is still stuck in us, infecting us. But for a lot of other people, including our children, it isn't too late. They've got what it takes. So I talked it over with all my compatriots on the Massive and we...we decided to be the common enemy the galaxy and your race needed. If there were going to be sacrifices to make things better, they had to be our own. We couldn't force them on anyone else."
"Our smeets won't grow up in a world that will hate them for wanting to hold hands in public when they're the same gender." Xeil insisted.
"Our next generation won't be pressured or forced into killing things in training exercises the very month they're born." Dite added.
"And they'll be raised lightyears and lightyears away on colonies we didn't tell anybody about, and without PAKs that will force them to think what some Empire wants. With time, people will hopefully forgive all the monstrous things our race did. They'll see we've been punished. But it will take time. A lot of time." Jayd confessed.
"Skoodge'll be a great nanny." Darth laughed. "He's got the Santa Claus laugh down pat and everything. And he and all the others we picked will teach the Irkens that remain to be better than we ever were. Free of any other influence. The way it ought to be."
"Lard Nar knows, doesn't he? And...so does your wife? Your family?" Dib asked, Senior nodding in agreement. "They were okay with this? Really?"
"Not at first, but...eventually, they agreed. I...I'm gonna miss them so much." Senior whispered, taking in a deep breath. "I...ohh, my head is all swimmy. We've only got a few minutes..."
Indeed, the Irkens were all looking more and more sickly, many of them lying down on the ground, struggling to breathe. Their faces were pale, breaking out into a sweat as Senior coughed heavily, trying to stand up. "We're...the enemy humanity needed to stand against...and...the enemy the galaxy needed too. You...have everything you need now...to do amazing things. We've left you and the other races all the best parts our race had to offer. Do something better with it than...than we did. And I know you will. You're still a good person. I wish I could have been better. But if I WAS a better person...I wouldn't be here now...would I?"
Senior coughed madly, hacking and spluttering, as one by one, the other Irkens closed their eyes, their bodies shutting down, the shells of their frame entering the embrace of death as Senior fell to his knees, his head bowed, his spiky antennae flopping in the wind. "No matter...wh-what...happens...don't b-be too...hard on yourself. After everything you did, you can still g-go home. Gonna...miss our lunches together. Miss...Earth. It could be so PRETTY. And you..." He confessed. "You've been such a good friend."
Dib knelt down, squeezing his gloved hand, holding on tight. "I'm sorry." He whispered out. "I'm so, so sorry."
"...you have nothing...to apologize for." Senior whispered back, his eyes slowly drooping closed.
And with that, his eyes went dull, and he moved no more.