deercountry | The Building Blocks and other assorted tales!

"No one else wanted to do anything about it."

However, Zib preens a fair bit at the compliment as he ends up adding further.

"But even if they did, I don't think they would have been as smart as I am. So it's only natural that I would be the best person to be the defender of Earth, especially since I did end up eventually succeeding in the end."

"Huh. That must be pretty infuriating."

Luz knew she would have been frustrated that no one lent her a hand or had any kind of help.

"Glad you don't need your own hype man," Luz joked, both amused and a little put off by Dib's boast, if only because Luz was not a girl about talking up herself, especially being keenly aware what came about when pride took center stage.

"Succeeding. You mean when you, um, killed him."

"No."

The word comes out immediate, a protest on his lips--I didn't kill him, I defeated him, there's a difference--but he holds his tongue and forces himself to move on to work at a different spot on the wall rather than continuing to scrub at the same spot over and over again that he had been doing for the last few minutes now.

"Even with his defeat, the Earth still wasn't really saved. After all, the Armada he served still existed. His leaders wouldn't have taken too kindly to finding out that a human had bested one of their own once they found out. So it was necessary to make sure that they wouldn't invade Earth, so I did everything I could think of to keep fighting for the fate of my world, even once Zim was gone."

"No?"

That wasn't specific, so she wanted to know exactly what he was referring to.

"What exactly did you do then? I figure if an Armada was going to come for Earth, that'd be a pretty hard thing to avoid."

"Well... even if Zim was gone, I still had his PAK that was left behind. All of his knowledge of the Irken Empire and their Armada was stored within it, and I realized that I needed it in order to find their weaknesses."

The PAK cable finishes cleaning the next spot, dropping down back to eye level with Zib as he checks his work here.

"So... I fused with Zim's PAK once I was certain I could recode it to fit my needs how I desired. It gave me all the information I needed to reverse-engineer all the tech in his lab, and learn how to create powerful electromagnetic pulse weapons that could disable and destroy anything that came in contact with them."

After a moment, Zib's mouth quirks into a slight smile as if remembering a funny joke.

"I suppose the easiest way to explain the end result is that I ended up building the world's largest bug zapper, so to speak. It fired a beam from Earth strong enough to hit the Irken Empire and wipe them out entirely so that they could never destroy or invade another planet again, let alone Earth."

This gave Luz pause. She remembered from her history books about Hiroshima and Nagasaki: how Japan at the time was at war with the Allied powers, and to ensure a victory, an atomic bomb was dropped on the two Japanese cities to pressure them to end theire involvement. It was meant to be seen as a necessary evil, and in the right eyes, maybe it was.

But Luz didn't see it that way. As someone who had killed to make sure certain evil people did not get to do the things they liked, Luz had at least been subjected to their kind of torture. It was cruel and traumatic, but she knew, even as she regretted killing them at all, that it was done to stop them from doing it to others.

"I get it. You used their technology against them. So you were sure they were going to go after Earth? They were there, ready to unleash their armada and everything?"

"Yes. Zim's PAK had also given me access to some of their communication networks, and I was able to find out when the Irken Aramada would be traveling in the direction of Earth during their march across the galaxy to destroy or conquer any and all planets they come across."

Although... Earth (or "Urth" as Zim had taken to calling it) didn't seem to show up at all on their radar during Irk's current plans... but Zib had not wanted to take any chances on them suddenly noticing the little planet that happened to be just off to the side of their conquest map when passing through. Besides, it had been easy to convince himself at the time that it was better to strike first before they could even think of striking back.

"Hmm."

Luz was going to have to think about this a bit. She definitely didn't think that killing off a bunch of aliens, despite what menace they might or might not have had for Earth, seemed like it should be talked about so casually. Of course, he had disposed of Zim, so maybe he just figured that a whole armada of aliens like Zim would have been far too troublesome.

"So you saved countless planets. That's pretty good, then."

It certainly wasn't something Luz thought she could have accomplish on her own. The question being, of course, if she could have brought herself to do it.

"Was there no way to cloak planets then?"

"Not really. Besides, it wouldn't have helped the planets they had already rudely taken over and forced to work for the Irken's own needs, like Foodcourtia: the Armada invaded and converted that entire planet into, well, their own personal food court."

Although, from what he has been told, some of the food they had there was actually pretty good, even if it wasn't healthy for you.

"A food court. Zib, has anyone told you that your reality is super weird?"

Like everyone's. Really, just sift through and there will be something that's crazy about it.

"Although. I. Would TOTALLY want to visit a planet that's a food court. I mean, we're talking food throughout the galaxy, right?"

"You would not be the first to tell me that here."

Varian has also said something to that effect a few times whenever Zib talked about his home. That said...

"Yes, it is. Other races of aliens would come to try whatever cuisine they could get their hands on. Although, the staff was typically made up of whichever aliens got banished there as a punishment for pissing off the Irkens, if I recall correctly."

"I'm sure that's true. Of course, you could say that to just about anyone's world. We do have a Snow White here after all, and in my world she's like, one of the oldest fairy tale characters that have stood the test of time."

Luz was also pretty fond of her and wanted to protect her, if she was honest.

"Working as food court staff is a punishment? No, wait, now that I think about that, that's an ingeniously horrible thing to do, from what I hear about the service industry."

"Oh, you have that fairy tale in your world too? It's been ages since I last even thought about 'Snow White', but now that you mention it, I do remember seeing someone with that name posting to the network a few times..."

He had thought maybe it was just someone named after the fairy tale character, not... the actual person themselves. Huh. Maybe he should try talking to them himself sometime. As for Foodcourtia, though...

"Yeah. I've seen what it's like on Earth, I can easily imagine how much worse it is in Foodcourtia when you're having to work on behalf of the Empire as opposed to just simply trying to make a living, you know?"

"Yeah, well, it's her. I never really gave too much thought to how she would translate to current day, but she's honestly a very sweet person. If her stepmother ever showed up, I think there'd be a line of people ready to take her out."

Luz would quietly not mention that she'd be willingly to protect Snow White if by some crazy set of circumstances Snow White's stepmother would show up.

"Well sure. The slaving away for the food is bad enough, but probably constantly having to deal with boss overlords? Having to be among the public, which is a toss of the dice sometimes? It sounds like a nightmare!"

The Building Blocks and other assorted tales!

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If the Tallest had known Dib killed him, they might have sent him a gift basket lol

oh definitely but dib didn't know that or was in denial about that part lmao

Re: oh definitely but dib didn't know that or was in denial about that part lmao

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