Chapter 6: My Literalittle Dashie…s

"…And to sweeten the deal, I entitle you to the entire planet Mercury after this plan's INEVITABLE success!"

In his office, Zim had just finished proposing a world-domination contract to Twilight, who had been sitting back in Zim's spinning office chair and nonchalantly twirling an Irken monie in the space between her front hooves via telekinesis.

"Tempting, very tempting, but let me ask you something."

"Yes?" Zim asked.

"Why is it that you want to take over this planet, rather than destroy it? It doesn't exactly have anything of value," Twilight said, flicking the monie at the windowsill behind her. "It's full of miserable crazies, they make war, chaos, and Apple products, and, as your computer's databanks tell me, they haven't made anything that another world could create at ten times the speed and twelve times the quality!"

Zim sighed, "This has to be at least the ninth time I said this, it's because the HUMANS are the only beings capable of producing… dubstep- as they call it, though its true name is Dark-Energy Powered Electricity."

"Really?" said Twilight. "I think that I've heard of this before…"

"D.E.P.E. is a language, dear quadruped; the humans throw words of it onto discs and MPEG-Layer Three devices like some kind of MUSIC."

Twilight scoffed, "Yeah, we have that."

"Ah, but not the kind of D.E.P.E. that the government humans have access to," said Zim.

Twilight's ears perked up, "Okay, now I'm interested, how is this different from other- ah, D.E.P.E?"

Zim beckoned for Twilight to get off his chair and threw a blue print on his desk: one of the D.A.D.s from chapter four. "Dark energy, especially when mimicking electricity, is unstable, but it can be filtered, the sort of noises you once heard were not pure D.E.P.E., THIS-" Zim violently poked the blueprint, "-is completely unfiltered, and very, very catchy. Those who have harvested its power-" Zim pulled out another blueprint of a device that looked like a rocket launcher with a much wider barrel and several levers and buttons, "-have used it to construct a D.E.P.E.R., or, as they have named it-" Zim pointed to the title on the blueprint, "-a bass-cannon."

"I plan on constructing such a device as they have, and will use it to tunnel to the very center of the earth, and drop the Biological Animation Stimulation Shift, the thermonuclear power source for the D.E.P.E.R., into the core, imploding it, and leaving me, ZIM, the first Irken- NAY, the ONLY LIVING POSSESSOR OF THE MOST POWERFUL WEAPON IN ALL THE MULTIVERSE!"

"That's very interesting," said Twilight, sitting back down, "but how do you plan to reconstruct the power source if you drop it into the earth's core?"

"I am on the brink of completing the construction of a magnificent cloning machine, almost MILITARY GRADE," Zim made an o-shape with his thumb and his middle finger, "priceless, babe."

"O…kay, just one more question," said Twilight.

"Good, because you were only entitled to five," Zim replied.

"What do you plan to do after you're done with the earth?" Twilight asked. "What, do you go into retirement or something?"

"I have no fucking idea," Zim said, suddenly sanely, "I guess I'll just blow up the sun or something. Actually, I think I might uncover the mystery of rainbow excrement."

"Eat Skittles," Kat said, poking her head in to the door.

"Well, mystery solved, now I just have one goal," said Zim, and his nonexistent pupils pointed in different directions as he madly walked out the door.

"A true example of genius," Twilight said sarcastically, she wiped Zim's blueprints and his contract into the waste basket next to the desk and went back to fiddling with her coin.

Lard Nar happily rampaged through the island of Manhattan in his newly acquired gigadoomer mech, which, actually, wasn't quite a gigadoomer, as it was only 600 feet tall, whereas a mathematically accurate gigadoomer mech would be roughly 4-5 miles tall, as the megadoomer mech was 30 feet tall, the kilodoomer mech was originally designed for flea-sized organisms from the planet Pluto, and 3% of a foot tall, the very first in the line of –doomer mechs was actually designed nearly seven billion years ago by Vortians when they were still single-celled organisms, and about 0.003% of a foot tall. Aside from that, this one was about 1/60 of the size of an actual gigadoomer, so we'll call it the decaduomegadoomer to be more mathematically correct.

Anyway, Lard Nar, the little sadistic anarchist bastard, was happily trampling the cars of innocents in his decaduomegadoomer mech over the streets of Manhattan whilst eating a Vortburger at the same time.

Sadly, if you couldn't tell by the fact that it's a six hundred foot fucking tall robot made of heavy metal and full of advanced heavy weaponry, it was moving incredibly slowly, at about five miles per hour, so it would be daytime before it reached its checkpoint, THEN we can explain what it looks like.

…

Wow, this is actually very hard to watch, back to ponies.

Zim was up on the apartment building's roof making a contract with Rainbow Dash like the one he made with Twilight, this contract had the same sort of pathetic guidelines as the last one, and rather than Mercury, she was promised the planet Venus as a celestial reward.

"So, what do you say?" said Zim to Rainbow Dash as she was sitting on a cloud.

"How about instead of Venus, I get to personally destroy every flying machine on this planet?"

Zim stroked an invisible beard on his chin as he thought of this, it would take a lot of time to personally destroy every airplane in existence, then a nonexistent light bulb came into existence while at the same time remaining nonexistent directly over his head for a split second, so all that could be seen was the air molecules in which one would imply that a light bulb could be placed, but there was never really a light bulb there.

"How about I assign you the task of personally dropping the earth-shattering thermonuclear power core of the D.E.P.E.R. into the center of the earth?" Zim asked enthusiastically.

"That sounds nice," was Rainbow Dash's answer, and with that, the deal was implicitly settled.

"Very well," said Zim. "That being said, I need you to test a piece of dangerous cloning technology to ensure the safe copying of the B.A.S.S. core."

"For that, I'm probably going to want Venus," said Rainbow Dash, hopping off of her cloud.

"Pluto," Zim growled.

Rainbow Dash groaned. "Fine, jeez."

With those two words, a mysterious chat bubble appeared above her head with her previous sentence in large, red, angry capital letters, and for some reason, the animators decided to draw detail into her face for this one second, the lazy bastards.

The previous paragraph's implied events were disregarded as minor déjà vu, and Zim proceeded to drag Rainbow Dash by one of her wings into the elevator, despite the fact that she was entirely willing to walk.

Twenty-one floors later, Zim and Rainbow Dash arrived on the ninth floor and entered the apartment (for those of you who didn't pay attention in chapter one, it was door seventeen).

To increase dramatic effect that you didn't realize was necessary until now, Anomalous Materials from the Black Mesa soundtrack began playing in the background as Zim entered his poor excuse for a laboratory with a black eye that he received off screen, and Rainbow Dash following him, no longer being dragged.

Zim twisted a knob on the wall, and the area of wall that the window occupied opened up like a door, two thick cords protruded from the bottom corners of this doorway, and formed a bridge from cyan energy, another doorway opened vertically at the other end of this bridge, only allowing a harsh white light to escape through.

"I'm sorry if this offends you in any way, there was just no room for the base in the apartment," Zim said, and he walked calmly across the bridge.

Rainbow Dash did not trust this bridge to remain operational, so she flew over it, "Are people here used to seeing a floating solid energy bridge in the sky?"

Zim stopped himself at the jamb of the doorway, "Honestly, most of these humans are too stupid to even notice," Zim continued into the door with Rainbow Dash at his heels, and the cords retracted back into their sockets, the window-door closing above them.

Of course, these robots, these aliens, and these ponies were also too… well, not stupid, but ignorant- to notice the shining distant speck that was the decaduomegadoomer gradually approaching this floating laboratory- not intentionally, but more or less the apartment nearby, it was just a matter of coincidence that the mech's targeting system was slightly inaccurate, and pointed twenty feet to the right of where its trajectory was actually propelling it.

Zim's one-way-sky laboratory was lit entirely with fluorescent ceiling lights, causing great pain to Rainbow Dash's pupils, and shrinking said pupils to a size where they were slightly larger than beads (which, in Equestria, where pupils alone were normally the size of agate marbles on steroids, would be very, very small for pupils).

Inside the laboratory was a conveyer belt connected to a simple cube-shaped chamber that was six feet wide, six feet long, and six feet tall. The chamber was connected to- gasp- another chamber, which sat to the left, perched on a pedestal to match the height of the conveyer belt, this chamber had an opening in the side that could be closed like a garage. To the side of the conveyer belt was a large container for placing the self-restoring boxes that sat in the right chamber, waiting for use.

GIR, Lee, and Aaron the MiniSIR stood by the conveyer belt to spectate its testing.

Aaron hopped off of his perch on GIR's head, and landed with an over-dramatic dive-roll on the ground, he clapped his metal hands together with enthusiasm, "Excellent, our subject is here. Shall I lower the pedestal?"

"That won't be necessary," Rainbow Dash replied, and she leapt into the chamber without hesitation. "Just a question, what are the odds of me exploding during this experiment?"

"Hang on," said Lee, numbers flashed across his left eye. "One in nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine-"

"Is it that safe?" Dashie said, surprised.

"Safe? OH! I thought you were talking about the odds of you not exploding!" said Lee stupidly.

Before Rainbow Dash could exit the chamber, Zim shut the garage-type door over the opening in the chamber and pushed the big, red, candy-like button that started up the machine, which was conveniently located to the side of the chamber.

And so they waited.

Six minutes passed by, Lee yawned, GIR fooled around with a plush moose, and Aaron studied his shiny metal fingers.

"I could really go for some nachos right now," Lee said, sighing.

"As could I," Zim replied.

Aaron growled. "Okay, seriously, it's been six minutes, WHY isn't she screaming in pain yet?"

Zim groaned, "My god, man, you expect everyone to scream in pain whenever they're being cloned, what if being cloned is like getting high or… removing dried paste from your fingers? Ever think of-"

"Don't talk about paste!" Rainbow Dash shouted from inside the chamber.

"Or… you don't feel anything, completely numb, that would be understandable, wouldn't it?" Zim asked.

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Lee replied.

Aaron scoffed, GIR continued to screw around with his moose.

"What numbers did you put into that thing, Zim?" Lee said irritably.

"I just put in the code for a single clone, that's it," said Zim, surprised. "It honestly doesn't make sense for the machine to be taking this long."

As if to reply to Zim's statement, the machine apparently finished its duty, and shat a box out of the right chamber. The speaker came on. "We must apologize for the five minute delay, machine was unable to copy subject's mind into a full-size copy, at that, what we cannot make up for in quality, we make up for in quantity, because I'm stupid like that. Enjoy your seventy-two one-inch copies."

"Well, that's a shame," said Zim, a tin shield popping out of his PAK and covering his face.

The box popped open, and several dozen (to be exact, six dozen) small blue blurs flooded into the room, moving in unstable patterns and scattering across the laboratory.

"I… see… so… many… Pegasi," Aaron squeaked, and deactivated; the mind of a common MiniSIR can only take so many combinations of awesome and Skittles.

"Well, I guess we should let her out now, this is going to scare the SHIT out of her," Zim said as he walked over to the chamber that he stored Rainbow Dash into.

Zim began to open the sliding door when Rainbow Dash tore it down herself.

"You could'a told me that thing was going to run out of air when it stopped!" she said, coughing, she ran out of the chamber and took a breath of relatively fresh air (considering the purity of the air in an industrial matter to energy to matter conversion device). One of the miniature clones hit her in the face in their unstable flight pattern and landed on the floor. "…The hell is that?"

"A computer error," Zim muttered as he plucked the poor thing off of the floor.

"It smells like Skittles!" GIR said happily, he put his moose down and tried to grab for the clone in Zim's hand.

Lee held GIR back. "No, GIR! It doesn't taste like Skittles! IT TASTES NOTHING LIKE SKITTLES!"

Rainbow Dash followed Zim, "So, what, are you just going to kill them?"

"Well, what the heck else am I supposed to do with them? They're errors, Dash, tiny, flying errors," Zim said. "I'll just make a better machine, that's all."

"In all honesty, I think that that idea is stupid. Very, very, very stupid," Rainbow Dash walked in front of Zim and faced him. "Not only are you killing seventy-two copies of myself, convincing me that you wouldn't hesitate to do the same thing to me, but you're WASTING AMMO."

"Ammo?" said Zim.

The Pegasus groaned, and picked up a convenient bullet. "Look at this bullet."

Zim looked at the bullet, the clone in his hand beginning to shout insults at him. "Okay?"

"Now, look at what you have in your hand."

Zim had a look at the miniature Pegasus in his palm, for a few moments he switched back and forth between the lead projectile in Rainbow Dash's hooves and the clone, back, forth, back, forth, back, forth, back-

"COME ON ALREADY!" screamed the miniature Rainbow Dash.

"Oh, bullets, I see!" Zim said. "That's GENIUS! GLAD I THOUGHT OF IT!"

Rainbow Dash muttered, "My moments of genius are wasted on you people."

"Huh?" Zim asked.

"Screw you."

"Well, if that's all, then we can get on to-"

BZKCHRT

As the mainstream comic sound effect implied, the power went out, meaning that the tear-jerkingly slow mech from earlier was less than eighty miles from the apartment ('cause that thing uses a shitload of power, you know?)

Zim screamed in anger at this power outage. "ALWAYS something, there's ALWAYS SOMETHING to distract me from my work."

There was a popping noise, a moist ball flew into Zim's face, Rainbow Dash screamed in what sounded like pain.

"Ah, that's a side-effect of the machine that I should have told you about, it is possible that your left eye will pop out of your skull shortly after the cloning process," Zim said.

"You better have a way to fix this."

"Surprisingly, my dear, I do not!" said Zim in a delightfully mad tone.

GIR had been following the two with both of Lee's arms still clinging to his head (though severed from their original body) in the hopes that he could snack on the creature in Zim's hand, but instead, he found a more tender morsel, an eyeball about the size of a baseball lying on the floor, which he picked up and tossed down his gullet.

"Lee, you were wrong, its eye tasted just like Skittles!" GIR shouted to Lee.

"Well, that's a shame, don't worry, Dashie, I'm sure you'll get your eye back in two or three days," Zim teased, and he casually walked across the solid energy bridge back to the apartment.

Rainbow Dash lunged for GIR's neck and screamed, "AAAAAAAAAAAA-"

-Chapter End-