It had taken approximately 1 month of flying in a rental before I arrived. 1 week left till the test. Of course I had to beg Scat to cover all my shifts. The man was completely unwilling and growing increasingly angry with what he considered increased signs of 'DEFICIENCY', one of the fastest ways for an irken to be labeled defective.
He finally relented when I had promised to treat him to another feast of my personally baked goods. With millions of workers in the vicinity all working on THE MASSIVE my goods were almost always auctioned to the highest bidder at the time leaving me extremely short stocked constantly, I occasionally offered Scat 1 or 2 cupcakes but of course that wasn't enough.
Now that he finally had something I wanted he actually strong armed me and made me promise to give him two tables worth of desserts. Something I eventually relented to. With my job covered i had ordered a rental spittle runner, and began making my way over to Devastis
Planet Devastis was designed to be completely dedicated to military training, so there was nothing to do with the free time, especially not on my small ship. Having 1 week to do absolutely nothing but wait gave me the chance to do but merely think for once. I thought about plans, about the galaxies, even thought about Zim and how to avoid that walking nuclear bomb, but i had eventually i contemplated my deepest desires
It took about a day before my antenna leaned back in sadness, I tilted my head down looking between my legs. Irkens were one of the only sentient species to reproduce without any 'fun', vortians got to 'do the do' to reproduce, how the irken race ended up deciding to lose their sex characteristics was a small mystery.
I softly promised myself I'd restore that ability for myself perhaps enslave some races along the way that I find appealing for that sort of thing.
Next I considered what other desires I had. I truly wished to see the star wars universe play out, to see Darth Vader, the Empire, and the rebellion. What happened after didn't matter much, I would truly interfere from there on, but did I merely want to be limited to these universes?
The answer was easy, NO!! Irkens can live for hundreds of years! I had no doubt I could live for longer with alchemy, despite being weak at the moment I was certain alchemy was a path toward immortality I could use.
And once I was an immortal two universes would only have so much to offer before exploring them in their entirety. The force seemed limited by itself as strange as that was. I could travel between universes but only where the force existed it seemed…
That's why I had already made it my goal to find other universes. I already had an idea of how to go further, how to atleast gain a few dozen more places to explore.
The Florpus hole….
It wasn't an entirely bad idea, a giant space anomaly that is the manifestation of several realities crashing together. That sounded like a great way to gain access to a multiverse, at least in theory to my dumb meat brain…
I just had to let the timeline of events play out, get stronger along the way, and finally do my hearts desire and have fun across a multiverse
A small smile crept on my face, it sounded like a decent plan. It would take about another like 6 decades though, if my invader Zim knowledge was accurate, with my height it would be smooth sailing as an irken. Conquering planets exploring the stars. I had this strange desire to gain power before drastically changing the Star Wars Universe. There were still plenty of battles left before the attack on Coruscant, officially setting up the events for the revenge of the Sith.
Maybe I'll miss one of the cool ones like the invasion of Umbara…. I hope not
Thoughts shifting and looking back between my legs, maybe I could even date Ashoka…
While that sounded bad she was technically older than me by about 2 to 3 years and by the time of the rise of the empire she would be an adult. The star wars universe did have significantly more attractive aliens than Invader Zim.
I smirked at the thought of having zygerrians as slaves. Wouldn't that be ironic? Slavers to slaves, that would be perfect….
And like that I continued to daydream.
~Later~
It had been a truly relaxing time waiting for the test to begin and it wasn't long after when a Maimbot began marching toward an unsuspecting vending machine. Why the destruction of a vending machine would lead to half the planets power going out was beyond me
I waited a bit until zim eventually got out of the giant war machine and collected his snacks, deciding that the longer Tak is trapped perhaps the more grateful she'll be
Flying my spittle runner down, I parked, and made my way towards the surprisingly decently intact vending machine.
I mean come on that thing took a blast from a giant Maimbot and was only cut in half
"SOMEBODY! PLEASEEEE HELLPPP ME!"
There was a constant pounding sound, Taks face peeking out behind green glass. She sees me walking up and her furious eyes suddenly relax
"Oh thank tallest! Please you have to help me"
"Relax, I'll move the debris"
Irkens could be considered incredibly strong for their size, and I had 3 times the average irken strength, so moving the large chunks of debris wasn't too big of a problem. I also used the force to help me move it.
She seemed to be staring at me intently through the glass, looks like she hasn't recognized me yet, I smile imagining her shock when I free her.
"Step back" I reach into my PAK summoning my lightsaber from my inventory into my hand, igniting the blue blade before approaching the tightly shut door
I can sense her surprise before stepping away, possibly from never having seen such a strange device, maybe even imagining the lightsaber as some sort of engineering tool. I begin slowly cutting a hole into the door, the same way the Jedi usually do. A few seconds later and a huge oval chunk of the door slides off before thunking onto the ground
She walks out slowly with relief on her face, coming toward me and bowing slightly. We were the same height meaning we were essentially equals, but since i had helped her she was showing me proper respect.
"Thank you so much, i won't forget this, but i have to go so i don't miss the test"
*PPFFTTT* I try to hold it in but i break out laughing, my hands crossing over my chest
Her eyes raise in surprise, just staring at me while I'm laughing my ass off, the look on her face makes me laugh harder
"..wellll…thanks again..I'll be leaving now"
"Oh come on Tak, it's been a few years but come on" I rub a tear from my eye
"Huh? Who…who're you?"
Straightening up arms stretched out i smile broadly toward her
"..du..dumbo!"
"Dabo…"
"Yo..you're taller.."
"Thank you for noticing"
Broad grin across my face, flexing my arms for added effect
Her face hardens slightly, perhaps from seeing me take enjoyment from clearly being in a superior position
"Well…thanks, i'll try to pay back the favor"
She turns seeming slightly ticked
"Wait" she stops, antenna raising slightly in response
"Give me your contact ID, so we can keep in touch"
This seemed to surprise her somewhat, she turned staring curiously at me
"What do you want that for?"
"To talk to you, of course"
"You want to talk with me???"
"Of course! we were smeets together after all"
"Do you talk to others from our generation?"
"Well not really—"
"Then what do you want to talk to me for?
"Because i want to stay in touch with you"
"...stay in touch? Why?"
"Ugh…just because i want to"
"Why?"
I was speechless, she actually had me stumped, to be honest there really wasn't any practical reason to stay in touch with Tak, I'm not even sure what I intended to do by saving her. She was a pretty attractive female Irken but she was way less appealing than aliens from the galaxy far far away. She also couldn't really be considered a female due to the lack of equipment…
"Just cause….i guess"
That answer seemed to annoy her slightly, one of her eyes twitching
"Fine, here" she sent a short range communication burst from her PAK into mine, mine having recorded her contact information
With that done, she didn't even say bye as she just began walking away. I found myself pretty satisfied overall and waved bye to her
"Call you later Tak!"
She just kept marching away, perhaps forgetting that this whole half of the planet lost power, I'll just let her figure that one out on her own though.
~1 week later~
The test scores had come out immediately showing the several hundreds or so irkens who gained invader trainee status. The interesting part? TAK CAME 33rd!
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, YOU LET ZIM BEAT YOU!!!"
I yelled at my spittle runners console in front of me, still flying back to planet Vort to rejoin the Massive.
"He must've cheated…there's no way that idiot would have gotten first…."
She was in denial, a painful expression on her face. Admittedly 33rd out of hundreds of thousands was extremely impressive but i wasn't gonna give her that when she lost to Zim, she came right behind Tenn the chick who gets sent to planet Meekrob. Somehow skoodge did better as well being placed 3rd
"HAHAHAHA TAK IT HURTS"
"WHAT PLACE DID YOU GET!"
Letting my laughing die down while staring at the furious irken i giggled slightly before calming down fully
"I didn't take the test"
"DIDN'T TAKE THE TEST?! What were you doing on Devastis then!"
"Oh you know, fixing stuff. When half the planets power went out i happened to be in the area and got called for emergency repairs"
That was a lie of course but she seemed to grit her teeth at realizing i didn't take the test
"Whatever, clearly i was overestimating you…i almost forgot you came last in our class"
"Ohhh myyyy….is that how you speak to friends? Maybe i should just hang up"
That seemed to make her scowl lessen slightly, there was a hint of confusion on her face as well. She was too easy to read. She was clearly bothered by the word friend, a title not so easily given for someone as irritating as this chick.
I grinned once more which seemed to tick her off again. Her eyes narrowed in silent fury toward me but she didn't say anything. It seemed I had hit a 'low' blow. Deciding it best to stop poking the beast i chose to end the call
"Haha, well you appear to be busy Tak, i'll call you later. Let me know how Invader training goes"
She just nodded, her anger subsiding slightly. Interesting….
I waved one last time before the call ended, leaning back and getting ready for the remaining 3 week long trip to the Massive. At least she was safe from Operation Impending Doom I when Zim kills all the other invaders, well all except skoooge…
~THE MASSIVE~
The trip overall was uneventful in fact I considered the whole thing a nice stress free vacation, the empire has just been working me like a slave my only solace being my irken diet of donuts, chips, nachos, and so much more junk food. Honestly that diet is superior to any other by far, eating so poorly but still being more physically fit than other species, that's what i call the true trait of a superior speciesl.
Anyway the Massive itself had completely finished its construction, I could feel the ship beaming with eagerness, wishing to fly away as soon as possible. The only hold up being the arrival of the tallest as well as the rest of the armada that would be escorting the ship despite definitely not needing an escort.
The Massive was truly incredible, manned with half a billion irkens, each one considered the best and brightest of their respective fields, hundreds of thousands of engineers just to keep this baby running, despite not needing it due to my 'one with machines' and the force. Hell the ship was polishing itself basically.
Unsurprisingly the Tallest were the last to arrive, and with that the ship finally set sail away from the planet vort's system. The tallest first plan of action of course was to test out the irken empire's new toy. With the first order given to fly to the nearest barren planet and blow it to kingdom come.
The entire crew looked at the Massive's first performance with anticipation. The slow charge built up along the Bridge Cannons firing window and a humongous purple beam of absolute destruction completely eviscerated a planet. The spectacle sending the entire crew into shock and having the Tallest railing with laughter
Spending the whole day blowing up completely barren planets and asteroids in the craziest joyride to have ever existed. It took a while for them to calm down and get bored with blowing up planet after planet.
Incredible…
I was looking at a monitor within my room aboard the massive, my temporary duty station as the chief officer of the Massives weapons systems. It was an enchanting site, seeing the Massive blow up a planet. Hearing the tallest wicked glee filled laughter, feeling the massive itself feel childish joy at the destruction it was causing.
And even though it would take a long time, I knew one day this ship would be mine, I'd be the one giving out orders and destroying worlds….
It was only a matter of time now
~Enter the Florpus~
DECADES!
It's been decades aboard the massive. Decades of watching the whole universe try to resist the Irken Empire, decades of conquering one planet after another, decades of listening to the Massive almost mirror the tallest feelings, decades of being under someone's command, patient decades all for this moment
I was on the bridge, not The Massives bridge, but the bridge of one of the nearby cannon cruisers. A long rifle shaped ship designed for organic sweeps. I was currently overseeing a computer detailing the cruiser's current engineering log, but I ignored it and focused on a monitor at the center of the bridge. The captain in the center of the room watches a monitor with trepidation. The monitor a live broadcast of THE MASSIVEs bridge.
"MY TAAALLLLESSTTTTT, the..earth…its gone.."
"That's great news! Crisis averted!"
"Hurray! Now we don't have to turn!
"Si..sirs, there's still the HORRIFYING space hole straight ahead!"
…
"...why are you so negative?"
*CHEERS*The ship began childishly cheering as well. *yay, woohoo, yeahhh—--*
SUDDENLY! PAIN!
Everyone on the bridge was screaming in absolute pain even me
The scene before my eyes was what could be described as otherworldly horror. My perception of reality shifting every few moments, my concept of reality shifting with each moment of crippling physical torture. Looking around the bridge the entire crew was panicked and screaming. The space around us as well as our own bodies were shifting through several forms of reality each providing some new unimaginable temporary experience. Our bones became as frail as paper, our limbs suddenly caught fire, our seats would gooify, and our vision would cut out. All temporary horrors.
outside the viewport, The florpus hole looked completely different from the movie. It looked horrifying, what exactly would someone find at the end of several crushed realities? I don't know and I didn't want to find out as I felt a strange mental tug calling for me and an even deeper fear rising up from within myself. But it didn't feel like my own fear, suddenly the force was tugging along my consciousness seemingly trying to tell me something
MY HAND
My hand had unconsciously raised itself, I felt my magic power draining away!
based on the looks of things it took advantage of the tear in dimensions, perhaps the spatial anomaly making playing with physics easier. The torn space of absolute horror suddenly tore further, this secondary tear in reality had rainbow light gushing out of it, a sight that seemed like the light one may see at the end of line.
The massive along with the dozens of ships that escorted it flew through the secondary tear within the blink of an eye!
We weren't colliding with alternate realities at least not anymore, and the pain intensified even further
Instead we were seemingly swimming through some type of distorted White space with fluorescent waves of the entire color wheel, in the distance what looked like humongous spatial waves of beautiful colors. Surrounding us in every direction were what looked like black stars giving off beautiful beams of shadows into this pure white world that dazzled with rainbow light the entire space was filled with them along with the glowing waves.
I would have taken a moment to admire this place if I wasn't screaming my heart out, along with everyone else including the Massive itself, screaming into my head for help, begging me to make the pain stop, the first real pain the Massive had ever encountered.
Here we were on a collision course for a black star, but it seemed the force had other plans as our starboard engine kicked into high gear adjusting our course slightly, immediately heading toward another black star. The Massive however sunk into the sphere without reflection. The depth with shadowy light…
Its pain its suffering had suddenly cut off.
But I had no chance to think of it as the pain was becoming increasingly unbearable as I stayed in the space. Perhaps the force would have tried to dodge this one as well but our engines seemingly went out!
There was nothing I could do, only try to endure, this place weighing on our existence itself.
I starred with one eye out the viewport, seeing the black stars beams of shade slowly encompass us before we collided with its spherical surface of pitch black beauty
Darkness
For a split moment there was nothing, eerily similar to how I teleported to the Star Wars galaxy
Then
*WHOOPOSHH* *WOOOOM! WOOOOM!...*
It felt like I had lost consciousness from the pain, for the first time ever i couldn't feel anything
Alarms were blaring, I was floating! Gravity generators were offline. Dozens of groaning bridgemen slowly getting their bearing and groaning, some popping eyeballs back into place and others completely unconscious floating randomly.
Looking out the viewport the entire ship was spinning, the humongous cannon shaped ship was spinning uncontrollably through space…
I quickly got to my cracked console, sparks flying out of it but it was very slowly mending itself before me. Running a diagnostic showed that we'd lost physical connection to 75% of the ship, we're blind to over half the ship! Something no enemy had ever accomplished to ship of our class!
The parts i could see were seemingly on fire and had hull breaches leading to vacuum
Looking up I saw the Captain holding onto his console. The look on his face was the first time I'd seen the light of intelligence and purpose on his face in decades. The empire really ruined talents like this guy.
He started barking out orders to the barely conscious officers with dignity and grace. The respect the officers held for the tallest in the room quickly bringing them back to reality as they flew toward their consoles and began working on what they could to help the ship
I needed to look at my status!
DING! SKILL GAINED!
[*&%#* Tear] (active) - LVL 1/10
Create a tear in &!^%*
DING! SKILL GAINED!
[*!%&* Sailing] (passive) - LVL 1/#?
You can sail through $&*!? to reach other universes!
Class - [Necromancer] - LVL 27/100
HP - 9/150
MP - 3/500
SP - 150*/150
STR - 30
END - 30
DEX - 30
INT - 100 (+ 50)
WIS - 100
CHA - 20
LCK - 20
Unallocated Stats: 0
Skills:
ACTIVE:
[Raise Undead] - LVL 2/10, [Force Sight] LVL MAX, [Force Telekinesis] - LVL MAX,
[Force Imbue] - LVL MAX, [Force Heal] - LVL 8/10, [Enhanced Senses] - LVL 5/10, [Enhanced Movement] - LVL 6/10, [Precognition] - LVL 4/10,
[Summon Skeleton] - LVL 3/10, [Geomancy] - LVL 5/10, ,[Bone Armor] - LVL 2/10,
[Mechu-deru] - LVL 4/10
PASSIVE:
[Force Sensitive] - LVL 8/10, [Force Meditation] - LVL MAX, [Sprinting] - LVL 3/10, [Acrobatics] - LVL 2/10, [Climbing] - LVL 2/10, [Parkour] - LVL 3/10,
[Brawling] - LVL 3/10,
[Melee Weapons] - LVL 1/10 {Knives - LVL 2/10, Lightsaber - LVL 8/10},
[Anatomy] - LVL 3/10, [Butcher] - LVL 1/10, [Chemistry] - LVL 2/10, [Traps] - LVL 2/10,
[Stun Resistance] - LVL 5/10, [Driving] - 2/10, [Piloting] - 4/10, [Marksmanship] - LVL 5/10,
[Ranged Weapons] - LVL 6/10 {Small Arms - LVL 6/10, Explosive Ballistics - LVL 1/10, Heavy Weapons - LVL 2/10},
[Mechanics] - LVL MAX, [Computers] - LVL MAX, [Advanced Weaponsmith] - LVL MAX, [Masseuse] - LVL 9/10, [Cooking] - LVL MAX, [Merchant] - LVL 9/10,
[Mana Manipulation] - LVL 2/10, [Force Veil] - LVL 4/10, [Acid Resistance] - LVL 7/10, [Alchemy] - LVL 8/10, [Herbalism] - LVL 9/10, [Farming] - LVL 4/10
Traits:
[Mana gifted], [One with THE FORCE], [2nd Mind], [Robotic Stamina],
[Dimensional Traveler], [One with Machines], [The Chef], [Smart Man's Gun],
[Man with Machine]
"CHIEF ENGINEER DABO!!! GIVE ME A STATUS REPORT!"
"Yes sir!" I gave a quick salute to the Captain the man frantic and clearly losing his patience
"Captain, most of the ship's systems are down! An unknown number of the crew are currently out of commission, I'm receiving a communication request from small groups of engineers they're going to try to revive an engine! We seem to be falling into some planetary orbit!"
"Everyone focus on restoring the ship, i need to think"
and with that the entire crew got back to work, clearly survival was of the utmost importance right now, the ship was slowly falling into a planet's gravity!
Closing my eyes I tried to see what the force could show me and…it wasn't much, it seems we've traveled to another universe the force doesn't exist in, although it was spreading.
The captain shuffled through several status reports. Our ship was extremely damaged. Several minutes passed with no contact from the engineers, they were failing to revive the engine. As time passed the slow burn of falling into the atmosphere began to materialize. It was too late
"All hands abandon ship! Run for the escape pods! I'm setting all functional warheads to self-destruct along with all remaining energy cores!"
A 10 MINUTE COUNTDOWN BEGAN IN THE BRIDGE
To say I was shocked would be an understatement, our best weapon. The ship itself was gone from the get go! Of course I wouldn't stay stunned for long and sprinted to the escape pods my stats and height allowing me to easily pass the much slower irkens. And imagine my surprise when the first pod I had come across had my best friend in it. SCAT!
"DABO! HURRY UP!"
Jumping into the cramped pod I noticed we had 4 other guests with us, 4 other small guests. But with my entering Scat had taken to the pilot seat, hatch sealing behind me and the pod ejected from the barrel of the formerly mighty destructive cannon cruiser. I sat down besides the small ones and strapped myself in, knowing my health had not yet recovered and death was oh sooo close.
The pod looked like it had survived several crash landings as most of its electronic components sparked erratically! The only saving grace was that my presence slowly mended this damage and that the engines were pushing us further away from the cannon cruiser's blast radius.
Looking out the only viewport I saw a clear blue sky as we flew high above stormy clouds. In the distance other irken pods flew ahead of us, perhaps some had wisely waited in the pods to see if the engineers could even fix the ship. Some flew steadily forward but others flew much faster toward the ground, some having their engines just fail entirely. Our pod cruised forward for several minutes when the blue sky had vanished! PURPLE! A blinding Purple light accompanied soon after by an intense shockwave had finally pushed our pod toward the ground.
AHHHHHHH!!!!!
The entire compartment had become a cacophony of screaming, the pod spinning out of control!
And then–
*CRRAAASSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH*