-----
 
 

Irk Imperial Palace
2 weeks later
 
 

  In her office, Dirn landed hard in her chair, and sunk forward. She massaged her forehead and groaned. "That... could have gone a lot better."

  The coronation hadn't been so bad. The organizers had done all they could to rework the ceremony to accomodate the strange circumstances. There was only one scepter and one ornamental sword and everything possible had been done to choreograph things so that both Tallest were holding it at the same time. It would have been easier if they'd had opposable thumbs. With their hands they can only really hook on to things, and that started causing some difficulty...

  Dirn still didn't see why Purple had felt the need to claw Red's face, or why Red had to beat Purple over the head with the scepter, but...

  "At least it's over," she said, leaning back against the chair, head towards the ceiling. And as soon as she'd said it, she knew it was wrong. No, it was only the beginning.

  "Look at the mess Advisor Gori's left me with," she whimpered. "They fight like a couple of rabid Blorchians in a too-small cage. And they hate the armor and keep trying to wear those ugly uniforms of theirs, and they keep rejecting the kitchen's menus and requesting all that repulsive junk food for dinner, and the red one is talking about morale campaigns and the purple one is drafting enviromental reforms...!"

  Dirn pulled herself upright, purple eyes glowing in fury. "This is not how Tallests act! Stupid, foolish Gori! Now I have to work to compensate for your errors as well!"

  "No one can ever say I didn't try," said a quiet voice. Dirn's antennae shot up. She glanced around the room. There, in the corner, hidden by the late afternoon shadow, sat a small female Irken in advisor's garments, fingers laced together and green eyes staring out over them. "There were mitigating circumstances, as I am sure you are aware, Advisor Dirn. I suggest you forget about it, unless you want me to bring up what your contribution to this whole mess is."

  The senior advisor bent forward across her desk. She hissed, "No one was to be told of that!"

  "I was not told," Gori said simply. "I worked it out for myself. It wasn't hard. Tallest Rarg did very few things for himself in his old age and you are not only His --or shall I say Their-- Tallest's chief advisor but are usually seen taking on more duties than your occupation asks of you. Of course you're the one."

  Dirn stood up, arms braced on the desk. "There were special circumstances that--"

  "--That I am aware of."

  "And don't think it doesn't haunt me!" the chief advisor cried. "Every waking moment I replay every foul-up that I have to claim responsibility for since Rarg gave me that assignment. Every day I am reminded of the mistakes that were made and how I was powerless to correct them. And now more than ever, the results of those errors will haunt me!"

  "They are not beyond our power now, Advisor Dirn." Gori's voice was unusually calm. "They may be Tallest, but they will never forget where it is they came from, and who they owe their lives to. We can make them ours. We will own them just as we used to, but now we own the most powerful Irkens in the empire."
 
 

  Purple turned away from the monitor. "Okay, I can take this Dirn saying what a pair of brats we are, but that's going a bit too far with Gori there."

  "Mm-hm," came Red's reply, still sucking on the straw to his soda. He had bandages on his face from where Purple had drawn blood earlier that day.

  "Do we wait until she assaults us with the taser or just get rid of her now?"

  Red shrugged. "Your choice. I got to do the last one."

  "Heh-- I still remember the look on Gori's face when you told her," said Red, grinning. "Y'know, she'd been shorter than us for nearly our whole childhood, but she never looked small until that moment... It was great!" he cackled.

  "Did it make up for all the times getting electrocuted?"

  "Nah... But when we saw her fifteen years later working on Foodcourtia, that made up for it. Hilarious! She was the tallest one there, too!" At the memory of this, both Tallest burst into laughter. Purple had to brace himself on Red's shoulder armor or risk falling over.

  "...Look, you can't just transport smog to another planet, Red."

  "Why not?"

  "It's a waste of resources! We have to collect the bad air, get a ship to hold the air, get fuel to power the ship, get a crew to pilot, get a destination-- and that's another thing! What planet is going to say 'hey, we don't mind taking on all your filthy air, come dump it on us'?"

  "Actually... there is Sama over in the Chno-4 quadrant. The little guys there thrive on fossil fuel exhaust, no joke."

  Purple stared at nothing for a while, face fixed in disbelief. After a while he shook his head. "Even if we did that, we still have to find a way to cut down on the things making the pollution in the first place. There should be filters installed at all power plants but apparently they haven't been checked in centuries. Centuries! Can you imagine?"

  "So we get inspectors to go around to check the filters, order the filters replaced..."

  "...Set up standards at factories on yearly pollutant production and a fines system for those that go over the health inspector's limit--"

  "Health inspector?"

  "We ought to have them. Some people to check to make sure the air stays clean enough to survive in, at least." Purple gave Red an 'and if you disagree with me you'll regret it' look. He'd been giving that one out a lot lately. "I know a lot of people are used to the outside air, but we always stayed in a filtered air environment, and look how it's affecting us now. Who knows what kind of damage it's doing to people that have been exposed to it their whole lives."

  Red nodded, slouching a bit. "Yeah, okay. I 'spose if we tell them that healthy air makes better soldiers then they'll all be fine with it... Um... on the subject of the, er, subjects, what about the food rations...?"

  They'd learned a bit out economics since their outing at age four. Red and Purple knew now that food was rationed because quantities were limited, even though the upper-class government had no such restrictions placed on them. Purple had suggested that the food be distributed more evenly, but Red had shot this down. He was just getting to the point with nachos that he didn't faint from sensory overload when he ate them, he didn't want to go back to eating the same food as everyone else.

  "We own two planets besides Irk," Purple said slowly, looking at the map laid out on the table between them. "Rubbishinia and Devastis. Devastis is just a military training planet and Rubbishinia is pretty self-explanatory, I think."

  "And that's it."

  "Uh-huh. There's no harvestable resources on either of them. We haven't been very successful in this whole universal conquest thing. Mind you, we're not actively trying to conquer the universe. That might be part of the... problem..." Purple slowed to a stop as he saw the expression on Red's face. It was the grin of someone beginning to formulate a plan. Purple sighed. "Please don't take that at face value. It could never work..."

  "Yes it could!" Red nearly shouted, standing up. Then, forgetting his antigrav belt, wobbled a little in the air before steadying himself. "It's all about morale, you see. You get soldiers excited about something and you can lead them into anything, and to any victory."

  Purple looked up at Red, arms crossed over his chest. Red got so much weird information from those books of his as a kid, maybe there was something in those library things...

  But it could never work. This was just romanticism taking over. Red needed a swift kick in the shins, and since Purple couldn't do that in his armor, he settled on a snide remark. "And we'll call it Operation Our Certain Doom."

  Red grinned widely. "I like it! Except maybe drop the first word and change the second one, same meaning but a bit longer?"

  Purple rolled his eyes and thought for a moment. "Impending, maybe?"

  "Excellent!" Red announced, reaching forward and grabbing Purple's arm, drawing him to his feet and then off it, thanks to anti-gravity belt. "We'll own half the galaxy before the year is through! The two of us will make this empire invincible!"

  And through the embarassment, the annoyance and the exasperation, something in Purple was saying "Y'know, it just might work..." He gave a tiny smile.
 
 

Devastis
Half a year later
 
 

  "And... he's the highest-ranking soldier that's still alive, is that what you're telling us?"

  The advisor fidgeted nervously with his clipboard. "Yes, sirs. A true veteran as well, sir. Participated in too many campaigns to even list! The Battle of Spork, Operation Smilie..."

  "We lost those, didn't we?" Purple said skeptically.

  "Yyyes, sirs, but..."

  "Apparently by the stupidity of our own men?"

  "Not men, sir, just--"

  "Just that man right there, is that what you're getting at?" Red asked, jabbing a claw finger at the small Irken down on the observation floor below them. Seeing the guesture, the tiny soldier waved back excitedly. Red rolled his eyes.

  "It's never been proven, sir," the advisor said hastily, staring down at his electronic notes. "But frankly, my Tallest, he is the most experienced soldier we have. One of the only, as a matter of fact. Most of our former officers were lead to their deaths during the Battle of South Ctrola-Five two years ago."

  "We don't have a lot of choice, do we?" Purple sighed. "Right, fine. Give him a mecha or something. He can't go too wrong if he has three other pilots controlling the thing with him, can he?"

  "You!" Red yelled, pointing at the soldier. "You, Soldier Zim! Get up here!"

  The Irken addressed as Zim started running, hardly containing squeals of excitement. He boarded a hover platform to the upper observation deck jumped over the side onto the landing before the platform had even reached it, and skidded over.

  Arriving a mere few feet from the Tallest, Soldier Zim pulled off a textbook salute, grinning happily.

  Purple glared. He turned to his companion. "Can I kill him yet?"

  "Shh," Red replied, trying to keep his face placid. He directed his eyes to the tiny Irken. "Okay, soldier: we don't want to know about your marks in academy, your record of loyalty or what you think of our clothes. Just tell us your previous experience in mechanical pilotry."

  "Yessir, my Tallest!" Zim barked dutifully, saluting again. Purple's eye twitched. "First-class voot runner pilot, thirty years experience. Second-rank level-two mech pilot, ten years experience. Twelfth-tier level-eight battlecruiser pilot, half year experience--"

  "Wait, wait. What battlecruiser?" Purple demanded.

  "The... The Silverbolt, my Tallest," said Zim nervously.

  "That flew into a sun on its maiden voyage!" the violet-eyed Tallest nearly yelled, leaning forward. Then, forgetting that his center of gravity was misaligned in the present armor suit, started wobbling.

  Red quickly stuck out a hand and grasped his fellow Tallest by his bare upper arm, pulling Purple back upright and steadying him. Glancing back at the soldier, Red saw that Zim's eyes had bugged out in shock at what he had witnessed.

  The rust-eyed Tallest glared at the small soldier until the latter lost his nerve and turned away.

  Purple had turned bright green in embarassment. "I bet you would have trouble balancing too if half your organs got relocated to your backpod! I'm going to murder whoever thought to make stupid subspace matter displacement into a fashion statement! I'll bet it never occured to whoever designed these that you need a stomach in order to digest stuff. You know we can only take in liquids and goo-stuff when we're like this? And furthermore..."

  The look on Zim's face, as his eyes bulged to almost popped out of their sockets, said one thing: Whoa, too much information...

  Clearing his throat, Red continued towards Zim, "And what else?"

  "Our waists are not this thin!" Purple raged.

  "Should I come back another time?" Zim said delicately.

  "No, wait, just hold on," the red-eyed Tallest said irritably, turning around to hover away and dragging the still-fuming Purple with him. Once a good distance from Zim, who was now quite mild-manneredly studying the floor, Red sighed, flexed his hand a little, and punched Purple across the face. "Quit being a moron."

  Purple whimpered slightly and rubbed where he'd been struck. "Thanks, but... How is it you can stay so calm? You've got be in just a bad of a state as I am. Bleeding quasars, when's the last time we ate? Really ate? I'm dying for some chili fries right now; something with some substance to it... Ug, you know this isn't the issue at all. I'm just sick of this. I'm sick of him," Purple hissed, glaring at the small soldier who was now idly adjusting his gloves.

  "Need I remind you what we're here for? We need to look over this very carefully. If we don't pick the right men, we'll have a wasted cause. We need this operation to succeed, Purple. So both of us are going to have to deal with some discomfort."

  "This is your damn operation; I don't see why I need to--"

  "Don't give me that, dammit. You're Tallest too. Imagine what people will say if they think their leaders are divided on an issue-- it'll be a nova a lot worse than what they'll be saying thanks to your rant about our waists back there, rest assured."

  "Hey! Words are one thing, but let's not forget who grabbed whose bare arm back there. In front of a soldier, no less!"

  "Oh, for crying out loud...!"

  Back near the center of the observation deck, the tiny Soldier Zim turned to the purple-robed advisor standing as if frozen in place, fingers clenching his clipboard so tightly it seemed ready to snap in half.

  "Ehherrr... Do they always act like this?"

  Red hovered back over hurriedly. "You're getting a mecha, and if you screw anything up..."

  Zim saluted dutifully. "I would do nothing to upset my Tallest! You can expect nothing but a flawless performance! You won't be let down, sir!"