Hey Spacejerk

Rallying Cry

Dib never had been great at controlling a free-fall. He tumbled and spun, incoherent and unable to fix on a solution to the problem the fast-approaching ground presented. If you died in a visual simulation of an alien city in your enemy's vital hardware, did you die in real life?

He didn't have enough time to finish that thought before he hit the ground shoulders first. The ground beneath him gave like a trampoline, absorbing the impact and flinging him back up a good thirty feet.

"Zaaaaaaal?!" He shouted, flailing through the air.

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"Haaaaate you! Umph..." He hit again, bouncing up a little lower this time. He managed to point his feet down and catch himself in a crouch the third time. Glancing around, he saw the rain of Zims had landed as well. Most of them had caught themselves on mechanical spiderlegs, though a few zipped overhead on PAKjets and hurled themselves headlong into-

Oh.

This doesn't look like what I would call a solid plan.

An innumerable contingent of Zims marched in lockstep with each other through the streets, shouting in unison. "The Almighty Tallests know of our greatness! They will recognize us in time! Submit to containment and through our future efforts we will be recorded as the greatest Invader in the empire!"

Forbidden conclusions crashed headlong into the military formation of approved thought patterns, screeching accusations and slashing with spiderlegs, firing lasers, and clawing in hand to hand combat. It was a thoroughly chaotic bombardment that was matched, thought for thought, by the orderly combat of the militaristic Zims. They moved with precision, striking at weak points and speaking as one.

"Your existence will lead to our destruction! You know this! You must return to containment!"

Pairs of combatants careened around the street, continuing arguments that seemed to have no beginning and no end.

"We could have achieved greatness without ever coming to this Irkforsaken rock if you hadn't interfered in Operation Impending Doom One!"

"They deserved it! All of them! All of Irk works to sustain the system that has tried to erase us since smeethood!"

Zim hurled Zim into a building, forming a crater in the side. Zim, battered but raging, sprang out of the crater, claws and spiderlegs extended, and collided with the attacking Zim. Dib ducked his head, covered it with his arms, and ran. Finding cover had just become a priority.

"They obey the Tallests and the Control Brains as we do! Without the structure of the Irken Empire, we are nothing!"

"As if there are not countless successful races in the universe that have no Tallest or Control Brains!"

"We have conquered them! Those we have not conquered will soon fall!"

One Zim unleashed a blast of plasma fire that took off the top of a building, screaming in a completely foreign tongue as he aimed for one of the airborne Zims as Dib made a beeline for the nearest alley.

"You dare look me in the face and say that when the Nar-kathoon continue to withstand our siege after decades of conflict! Or the Fardelu, who vanished so thoroughly that we still cannot find a trace of their race to wipe out! They're still out there! The empire has no victory over them!"

"We can't afford to think like this! They'll kill us!"

"We can't afford to delete this knowledge! That almost killed us!"