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Irk capital
Afternoon following the Great Assigning
 
 

  The city was ablaze. Irk's sun was choked out overhead, the entire sky was a dirty rose color, and the crumbles of buildings were lined with orange and yellow from the flames. The tremors from the renegade mecha were felt through the air itself, and so even the Tallest, floating above the ground, could not escape the sensation of every deathly footstep.

  Red and Purple watched in complete silence from the imperial office at the top of the palace. The viewing windows' glass was cracked and broken, the furniture lay in disarray in a scattered mess upon the floor.

  Why? What was wrong with this man? What was so terribly wrong in this Zim's head that he would activate a destroyer robot on his own planet?!

  Purple was thankful for the first time for the armor that he wore, so immobile as it was that he couldn't fall to his knees from the shock. This was too much. This was too, too much.

  Red was trembling, but Purple couldn't bring himself to reach out to steady or comfort him. And he saw, looking at the armor-clasped arms that refused to support his brethren, that he himself was shaking. After seeing this, Purple was aware suddenly of the stinging behind his eyes as tears welled up there. He forced them to stay where they were. No action more insulting to a Tallest than to cry, no action more insulting to a Tallest than to cry, no action more insulting...

  "Oh goddess," he whimpered, swaying forward. His arms met the glass and his body rested there. In his head, shouting over all the other thoughts, the name of the soldier responsible for all of this. Zim, Zim, Zim: the name to become synonymous with all pain and all suffering--! It was all his fault, it was all his fault, and Purple felt the liquid in his eyes begin to come forward. His thoughts retreated to one of the infofeed's most important lessons...

  No action more insulting to a Tallest than to cry, no action more insulting to a Tallest than to cry, no action more insulting, no action more insulting, no action more insulting...

  He didn't cry, but he did turn to leave.

  "Purple?" Red murmured, looking around at him.

  "I can't..."

  "No... Look... We can... Please, don't..."

  "Everything's over now, don't you see? Everything's been ruined! I can't take this. I can't handle something like this. I should never have been made Tallest!" Purple's voice was cracking now, and the sting behind his eyes was growing painful. He stopped and tried to calm his breathing.

  "Purple... What...?"

  Before Red could say more, Purple was hovering towards the door, putting as much speed into it as the belt would allow. Red called out and started after him, but got no more than a few feet before Purple had disappeared through the doorway, leaving him alone.

  Red bowed his head. "If it's what you want..."
 
 

  A cleaning droid, completely unaware of the chaos in the city around it, scuttled into one of its many assigned rooms. It saw in a nonsentient way of the various pieces of clothing strewn about on the floor, that upon inspection turned out to be garments of Tallest armor. It gave an electronic shrug and brushed all of these into a neat pile in the corner for the launderers to pick up later, and went further in to continue its duties.

  It had been given a special bit of programming earlier that day to withdraw from the room a pair of items that were not out of place. The droid had found these orders odd but hadn't the mind to question them, and scuttled on its little spider legs to the wardrobe, and with small vice-like arms mounted on top of its head opened the middle drawer.

  At this point the droid became even more perplexed, for its instructions had been to retrieve two sets of white garments to send to the incinerators, and only one set was present. But the droid recovered from this incongruency and extracted the white garments, fitting them into the compartment in its back. It closed the drawer neatly as had also been instructed, and then proceeded to clean the rest of the room.
 
 

  Purple ran. The city stretched out before him. In the distance, the country side, all bare, cracked earth and nary a soul for miles.

  There was hardly a soul to be found in the city. The tremors in the ground were weakening now as Zim's mecha was heading off into the west, and all that could be seen around Purple were the ruins left in the robot's wake. Here and there he found a body-- crushed under the robot's foot, by the parts of buildings it had dislodged or simply from the fires. Foul, acrid scents filled the air, so powerful that it seemed Purple could rip off his antennae and still smell them. The heat and smoke of the fire burned at his eyes and tore at his lungs. But nevertheless he ran.

  He tripped, falling forward on the concrete and twisted metal. Crumbles of a building torn down and blackened by laser fire by the mecha lay under Purple, and he was reminded once more: This is all Zim's fault. Pulling himself back to his feet, he looked back over the city he was leaving behind. A lot of the buildings were destroyed. The palace, at least, had not suffered much damage, although the wooden gate had been quick to fall in the fires.

  An entire city ruined because they'd tolerated someone they shouldn't have...

  "Damn you, Zim," he whispered. He started running again.

  The city outskirts drew nearer, but not fast enough. Purple hastened his pace, white-booted feet pounding on the cracked metal pavement. He dodged fallen debris and bodies littering the streets, running as fast as he could manage, as much to escape as to have never been there. If he couldn't register the destruction around him, he wouldn't remember it...

  "Hey! Hey you! Stop! Please stop!"

  Shot back into reality, Purple skidded to a halt. He looked around wildly. No, there were no palace guards, no soldiers, not even that meddling Dirn, so who had...?

  "Over here. Please, come help us. It's... it's terrible."

  Scanning the rubble around him, Purple sighted a pair of bodies among it. One lay down on the ground, and another was bent over it, glancing up occasionally at Purple to see if the tall Irken was coming towards them.

  For a while, Purple stood still, wondering what he should do. If he slowed down, someone from the palace would catch up with him later. And since when did he help people? 'Tallests helped those that help themselves...' But that wasn't the fact of it, Purple knew; Tallests didn't help anyone.

  No. No, he just couldn't. Just because he wasn't Tallest didn't mean he could be anything a Tallest wasn't. He would be no use at all.

  Purple resumed his run.

  Run; that's right, a voice in his head told him. Just run away from everything. You're meant to be dead by this time anyway. What you do now means nothing.
 
 

  Dirn pushed at the turbolift door, which was ajar and stuck at an angle. She struggled with it until it could admit her, sliding in sideways, and then the female advisor emerged into the wide office.

  She bowed habitually. "My Tallest," she said with formality and nothing else, "we have received word from the west cities that they are willing to aid in Invader Zim's capture..." Dirn looked up again, seeing the scene before her as if for the first time. "My Tallest... where is Tallest Purple?"

  "There is no such person," said Red placidly, looking out the window with hands laced together behind his back. "The former Tallest Purple has decided on an early retirement. I am the Tallest now."

  I can't deal with this, Dirn thought mournfully. Too much has happened today to even process this...

  "Are you certain, sir?"

  "Yes, Advisor Dirn. Now leave me in peace."

  Grimly, the small Irken bowed, and retreated. She looked over her shoulder as she reached the turbolift. The Almighty Tallest, now singular, still stood unmoving at the window.

  She exited in silence.

  Aware that he was alone again, Red let out a whimpering cry and held his face in his hands.
 
 

  Purple walked alone in the city's outskirts. His body ached, but his head throbbed in an even heavier pain.

  Alone to his thoughts, he came to touch upon subjects he had thought on only fleetingly in the past.

  One time accused of being suicidal, Purple had vehemently denied such a claim. No self-respecting Irken with much to give to the mighty empire would ever consider taking his own life. And he had never attempted to take his life, and he knew now that he couldn't manage it if he'd sought to do it.

  Let the desert swallow him, then. Let it do to him what it would.
 
 

  The Almighty Tallest sat alone in his quarters. These lay in the interior of the palace and had barely been touched, although some of the decorations had been strewn about the floor and a few lay broken.

  Red sat in a chair and rested his arms and head on a table in front of him. He stared at nothing.

  He could think of nothing. Thoughts just weren't coming to him. They all seemed stopped in a half-formed state at the back of his mind. Yes; it was like his mind had stopped. It was a stillness inside, while outside all chaos raged.

  Purple had always been the unstable one. The guy would never admit it, but he was. He wasn't completely insane, but he drifted over to insanity occasionally. And more often than he'd even realize, Purple was suicidal. Red saw this now.

  He worried that his lifelong companion was dead. He feared that the one compassionate person in the universe was gone. And that without Purple, he would fade into his own special brand of nothingness. Thinking of nothing, remembering nothing, and being hurt by everything, because now he would be alone.

  This empire was through. He saw it in the advisors' eyes even before this incident. And he'd seen it in the cities and in the people. The Irken Empire was dying, and he and Purple were cast to be the cause. The advisors had been riding on something like Zim to turn up.

  Red knew he could quell the rebellion. But keeping people happy was all he'd be able to manage on his own, and meanwhile the empire would still decline. There needed to be a more elaborate answer.

  But with Purple gone, what could he do?

  With Purple dead, what could he ever, ever do?

  Red raised his head. But what if he isn't...?

  There might still be time!

  He shot up from his seat, and knocked the table over in doing so. Paying it no mind, Red whirred past it, unsnapping the waistbands of his armor as he went, and hovered over to the wardrobe, pulling open the middle drawer.

  There was a long silence, and then a loud yell echoed through the entire palace. "Diiiiirn!"

  Red heard the loud, frantic footsteps down the hallway as Dirn sprinted toward the door. It swung open for her and she stood there, hanging on to the frame, panting. "Yes, my Tallest?"

  "Where the nova is my uniform?"

  Dirn looked astonished, and then insulted. "The... old school uniform, my lord?"

  "Yes. It was here this morning, and I'll be damned if it's Purple that took it a bit ago. Where is it?"

  The advisor trembled. "Perhaps the launderers took it, sir...?"

  Red considered arguing. He considered it quite heavily. But in the end he shook his head and continued. "I'm going out, and like nova I'm going like this. I need that uniform right now, Dirn."

  "But sir, I don't think--"

  The Tallest stared furiously at her, wide-eyed. He said with patient anger, "Then - get - me - something - else."