#icfos

“Our new Tallest is a strange one, isn’t he?” The Irken conversed beside himself.

“Eh? What makes you say that all of a sudden?” Asked the other as he divided his attention between two tasks.

“I mean, look at him!” He gesticulated with his head, his antennae bobbing gently behind himself. He kept his gaze forward.

“This is supposed to be a celebration! Operation Impending Doom II is done and dusted, and the glorious Irken Empire has emerged victorious as always! But Our Tallest is just…sitting there. All by himself, with that idiot SIR of his. He’s not even eating anything. An Irken who doesn’t want to chow after a flawless victory…” The Irken paused and turned his attention to the side. “What even is that?”

“Hmm…” The other Irken lifted his gaze forward, and paused for a moment before he nodded downwards once more. “He does seem to be a bit down. Maybe you ought to ask him to dance.”

“Me?! Ask the Tallest to dance?! N-no way! Besides, he’s just…weird to me. I don’t get good vibes from him. I think I’d rather not associate myself with him on a… personal level.”

“You’re right about that.” The other remarked. “He doesn’t fit in at all. Never did. You think the rumor’s true? The one about him being severely Defective?”

“I don’t know. But I have my suspicions…maybe I ought to report him to the Control Brains…”

The Irken looked up from his work as his antennae quivered nervously. He turned to the side, to ensure that he was the only one who heard the phrase. He turned back to the Irken and spoke in a hushed voice. “You shouldn’t talk about our Tallest Zim like that!”

“So…you’ve known about Zim’s condition all along, have you?”

Skoodge dropped his gaze, not wanting to meet the accusing eyes of his leader. “…I…I suspected,” he admitted after a tense moment of silence. “We all do, you know. I’m not the only one. They knew, too.”

Massive magenta eyes, sparkling like jewels, narrowed into minuscule slits. “…I see.” The voice that spoke was soft, calm, and sedated. The tone alone had alarms blaring within Skoodge’s skulls. Zim was never this calm or quiet unless he was about to explode with anger…or he was having one of his bad days. Those were more frequent now than they were before. The Irken sat stark within his seat.

“And?” The Irken asked, expecting more from the rotund Irken. Skoodge couldn’t help feeling like a cornered prey animal.

“What do you intend to do now that your suspicions have been confirmed?” The Tallest inquired, raising his head to view the Irken.

Skoodge bowed his head, making an effort to display not even a trace of tension. “Nothing.”

Zim paused. “Nothing?”

“Nothing,” Skoodge echoed, finally lifting his eyes.

“We’ve known each other for a long time.” Skoodge continued. “I always looked up to you, even though I knew something was off from the moment we met. And I…I despise Red and Purple.” One of Zim’s eyelids twitched with fury at the mere mention of those forbidden names. “You never judged me for my height,” the smaller Irken continued, shuffling his boots against the metal paneled floor. “Just for my skill. And…well, I appreciate that. So…I’m gonna take that secret with me to the grave. Okay?”

Zim scoffed and turned away, but Skoodge swore he caught a glimpse of his leader’s lips curling upward in a smirk.

“…I have an insane idea, Skoodge.” The Irken spoke, after quite some time of still silence.

“Well, that’s nice to hear.” Skoodge made little effort to conceal the surprise in his voice as he took a seat across from the seemingly disinterested Tallest. “It’s a nice change from the doom and gloom you’ve been spreading around all week,” he continued carefully, offering Zim a brightly-wrapped sweet. Zim’s owlish eyes darted up to fix on the treat before he snatched it out of Skoodge’s hand, tearing idly at the paper.

“…So?”

“So what?” Asked the former Invader.

Skoodge snorted. “What’s this insane idea you’ve got cooking? You seem a lot peppier than you were yesterday.”

Zim rolled some food around on his tray, eyes half-lidded and antennae bouncing a bit. “Zim is going to divert the Armada starting tomorrow.”

“Divert the Armada?” Skoodge squinted suspiciously. “For what?”

Zim made a popping sound with his lips. “…Things.”

“What kind of things?”

“…Personal things.”

“Zim!”

“Whaaat?!”

Skoodge took a deep breath. He had to remember that he was dealing with a severely Defective Irken with a fragile psyche. “You know I can’t help you unless you tell me what you plan on doing,” he reminded the other in a stern tone. Zim blew a raspberry and rolled his eyes, but complied anyway.

“We’re taking a bit of a detour. A long detour.”

“Now?” Skoodge frowned. “We’ve got an Invasion Operation to watch over! How long is this going to take?”

“Ehh…” Zim shrugged his shoulders. “Six months?”

“Six months?!” Skoodge repeated, looking flabbergasted. He was about to protest more, but a venomous glare from his leader convinced him to restrain himself. Instead, he asked, “Okay. Why are we taking this detour, now?”

Zim popped the sweet Skoodge gave him earlier straight into his mouth. “Zim wants to drop in on an old friend,” he muttered with his mouth full. “That is all.”

An old friend…? Skoodge was instantly curious, but he knew better than to pry. “I didn’t know you had any friends, besides me and your little robots.”

Zim shrugged his shoulders, avoiding eye contact. “Where are we headed, then?” Skoodge pressed, hoping the conversation wouldn’t die–this was the liveliest Zim had been in days.

Something flashed in Zim’s magenta orbs.

Dib Membrane was going to catch him in the act.

What act? Well, the act of... being. The act of living, surviving, breathing. The act of being entirely fact, and nothing of fiction. The Paranormal Investigator had poured his blood, sweat, and tears into this newest creation, and it was going to succeed even if it was going to kill him. The young occultist propelled himself from the workbench to his computer and booted the system up. He typed erratically on the loud keyboard, and pressed enter with a satisfying 'click'.

The young man waited anxiously as he watched the screen turn dark, and soon, turn into a warming blue color. An eyeball winked at him from the monitor, and Dib waited to get into contact with the one person who would give him a chance: Agent Darkbootie. The screen flickered slowly, and a pair of red eyes opened in the darkness.

"Agent Mothm--"

"Oh man, I am so glad you answered. Last week, I had to wait like, an entire hour before someone hung up on me. I thought for sure I'd have to call 98 times, like last time."

“What is the meaning of this call, Agent Mothman? Do you have information for me?" The man behind the camera sneered in the gentlest of ways. Dib cleared his voice and spoke.

"Right-- no, yes, information-- I actually... don't have any information. I mean, I have something, it's just not really information, per se. I'm not wasting your time, I swear, this is important. This is--"

"About that alien?"

Agent Mothman rolled his eyes. In lamens terms, yes. "Yes? Yeah, it's about that alien," The human admitted begrudgingly, crossing his arms in front of himself. "but it's so much more than that I can finally-- wait for it... Get proof! Well, I always had proof, but now I can actually prove it to other people, better than I have before. And who else to start with by the WHOLE AGENCY? I'm going to do it live! For the WHOLE Network!!"

Darkbootie was silent for a while as Dib stewed in his own excitement. "Remember how well that went last time?"

Dib groaned. He had been expecting that answer to come, but he hadn't been expecting it so soon."Yes," Dib exasperated. He mocked Agent Darkbootie's tone, using two fingers on each hand as air-quotes. "I know how well that went last time." The young man dropped his hands and continued to speak. "But this isn't going to be like last time!! Because this plan is entirely, 100% fool proof! I guarantee it-- I mean, I did make this thing myself, y'know."

"What exactly is this thing?"

"This THING that you call it, is my life's work... Well, my past two-weeks of my life’s work, but you will not believe the detail I put in it-- let me show you!" Dib scooted his chair over to his workbench, and from the table grabbed a smooth, round, compact disk that resembled something very similar to a vinyl, or a thin blade to a circular saw. The thing that set it apart from those two items was the fact that it was entirely circular, with no hole in the middle. Dib scrambled back to his computer and held up his invention for his entire audience of one to see.

He held it to the monitor and smiled. After a moment passed, he looked to his invention, back to the monitor, and back again.

"... You called me, so you could show me a plate?"

Dib gasped. "This isn't a PLATE! This is a work of art!" Dib stood up and began pacing about the room as he held his plate like a fat child would hold a Snicker's bar. "This is the thing that's going to end Zim once and for all! This thing, as you call it, is the most amazing thing I've ever created! This... is,” He paused, giving Darkbootie ample time to brace himself for what he was going to hear. “REMI!"

"...You named your plate Remi?"

"Would you shut up? I did not name my plate, I gave my plate-- Er, I gave REMI a sophisticated acronym!” Dib protested. He spoke once again, running his hands over the smooth finish of the robot. He held up his fingers one at a time as he listed off the meaning of the acronym. “Remove, Entangle, Mortify and In-Nihilate."

"...In-Nihilate?"

"In-Nihilate, yes."

"Newsflash, kid. Annihilate starts with an A, not an I."

Dib paused for a moment, surprised by this new boast of information. He soon reacted as any inventor would have, and that was defensively. The young human began his pacing once more. "Whatever! That doesn't matter! What matters is, I will be sending this discrete robot through that window," Dib pointed to the open window near one side of his room, and felt the awful draft breeze in. "And it will then use global positioning and travel its way into Zim's yard-- I have the coordinates memorized-- so I can monitor everything from my own house, right here! It will burrow deep underground, like a robot groundhog or something, attacking the base from below-- hollowing it out from the outside! It will collect data, samples of stuff, audio recording, video recording, and it has a battery life of four months! And lucky you, you get to see me test it LIVE!!"

Dib stopped his pacing and held REMI triumphantly. Again, there was a silence. Dib looked from his humbled invention, back to the shadow that was Darkbootie. Dib raised his eyebrows, and lowered them promptly, asking him inverbally, 'whaddya think of that?'.

Darkbootie had to admit, it was something.

Dib pulled his latest creation close to himself. "I'm gonna position it now!" He smiled, and did just that. The young man placed REMI on the ledge of the window, and made it back to his command station in record time, as Darkbootie watched curiously and credulously from behind his happy monitor.