Perhaps the hardest part on having a young smeet on board the Massive was the fact that they were still in the middle of Operation Impending Doom II. This meant that at a young age, Ilk witnessed things most her age wouldn't see until after completing the basic training.
This included watching how planets marked for conquest by her father and uncle were went through the Organic Sweep, its inhabitants either were exterminated or enslaved, and the planetary conversion team turned their home into... whatever dad and uncle fancied at the time. The last planet they conquered was made into a shopping mall, and its citizens forced to work in it.
The odd thing? Ilk didn't like it. There, she said it!
Everybody said their species was superior, and as such they could do as they wished, stomping out on inferior creatures to expand their Empire. Well, Ilk lacked that mentality. Superior or not, they were still invading someone else's home, destroying it and turning it into something else without any regard for how its natives would feel.
Ilk didn't dare tell her father this, however. He looked so happy every time they conquered another planet she didn't want to disappoint him, especially if he eventually wanted her to become an Invader herself (hopefully not).
She was surprised to learn Zim was not a real Invader, but that his 'mission' on the backwater planet named Earth was a ploy to get him away from OID2 and keep him from ruining it; apparently his knack for destruction was a bit too much even for Irken standards, and it ended up in him ruining the original Operation Impending Doom and nearly causing the end of their civilization.
Ilk knew she should hate Zim, but... Okay, she liked him, satisfied?! She didn't know why, though, maybe it was because he was the only Irken who was actually honest 98% with her; everyone on the Massive, her father and uncle included, sugarcoated or hid things from her sometimes. She'd give them a honesty percentage of 75%.
Besides, watching Zim break stuff was funny.
"Zim, how is it like to be an Invader?" she asked him through video-chat that night. She kind of didn't feel like joining the post-planet conquering party.
"Ah, so My Tallest's smeet wishes to become an Invader just like Zim!" he said in delight. "Well, all you have to do is gather vital information about your assigned planet's defenses and study the dominant species, then you disable their defenses and call the Armada for the Organic Sweep!"
"Yeah, I know that part," Ilk pointed out, lowering her antennae. "What I mean is how does it feel to interact with the native people? I mean, they must be interesting..."
"The hyoomans? Interesting! NEVER! I assure you, they are the most pathetic, disgusting earth-worms you'll find in the whole universe!"
"EARTH-WORMS!" Zim's defective SIR unit, also known as GIR (Ilk barely contained a laugh when she recalled what uncle Purple said the 'G' stood for), popped out in front of the screen, holding a bucket filled with squirming, slimy pink worms.
"GIR, get those things out of the lab, you're spreading germs everywhere!" Zim snapped, pushing the little robot out of the way. "Anyway, I can tell you more when your father and uncle bring the Armada to take his puny rock! I'm pretty sure you'll want to see the almighty Zim in action personally, right?"
"Yeah, sure, Zim." Ilk said with a small giggle. She felt bad for him not knowing his mission was an excuse to keep him away from the Armada.
A few hours later, when Ilk was in the kitchen looking for some trimisu before uncle Purple ate it all again, she had to hide under the table when she heard him and dad coming in. Thankfully, she was so small it wasn't a problem to hide inside one of the pots.
"I tell you, Ilk would make a wonderful engineer!" she heard uncle Pur's voice. "She's got the brains and wits for it! Heck, she even managed to hack into your data pad when she was a few months old!"
"Perhaps, but I think she'd do even better an Invader," dad said. "You just said it yourself, she has the smarts to successfully and I bet she'll be even better in combat. Who knows, perhaps we could even assign Earth to her."
"Wait a minute, you mean you're actually considering that one?"
"Why not? I mean, they do have tasty snacks."
"I agree on that one." Ilk imagined uncle Pur taking a bit of the trimisu on the table. "And from what I hear, there's even more. We've only tasted a few. Plus, I want to see the talking earth-beasts!"
Dad probably rolled his eyes. "You've seen too many earth-films, Pur."
"Anyway, it really won't be up to us. It's up to the Control Brains."
Not an Invader. Not an Invader. Ilk was chanting in her head.
Her PAK would be put in her spine when she arrived at the Academy; from what she'd heard, birthed-smeets were given PAKs made from scratch by the Control Brains, since there was no point in giving them another personality when they already developed their own. Perhaps that's how PAKs passed to new cloned smeets had been created in the first place.
Ilk had never been in the presence of a Control Brain. The one located in the Massive was strictly off-limits to her until she had a PAK, her father said otherwise or the Brain itself demanded to see her.
She still found it hard to believe dad and uncle had actual 'bosses', she had believed they were at the top of the hierarchy until a few weeks ago when almost going into the Control Brain chamber only to be caught at the last moment by one of the technicians in charge.
So the Control Brains would decide her future? What kind of job she'd have and who she'd be? Hopefully they would put her in the science division, just like uncle Purple said. She wasn't sure she wanted to contribute in bringing down a civilization to its knees.
*IZ*
"Doesn't this count as invading privacy?"
"Not when it's my daughter. Now shut up and let me hear!"
Okay, he promised Ilk he wouldn't eavesdrop on her conversations, but she never said anything about sending a mini-probe through the ventilation system, right?
Lately she had taken to making 'friends' with lesser species on Spacebook; while many Irkens considered such an action to be unacceptable, Red saw no problem with it. In fact, it might even be used to their advantage.
"She's going to get mad at us!" Purple chimed, snacking on some cotton-candy type of snack.
"What she can't see won't hurt her," Red said in a low voice, using his irkpad to see what Ilk was doing with the probe's camera. "Now be quiet!"
He zoomed in enough to see Ilk's irkpad, and noted she was video chatting with a young Screwhead. The mention of those yellow irked him ever since he learned of the massive escape they pulled a few years ago.
"So how are you doing, Smikko?" Ilk asked.
"Well, It's not that bad," the screwhead named Smikko stated. "At least dad let me use the tablet again, though it will be a while before he gets accustomed to me being friends with... well, you."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cause you problems with your dad..."
"That's okay. I mean, I can't really blame him; he blames them for losing mom, but surely he'll come around... hopefully. How about you? What about your dad?"
Red's squeedly-spooch skipped a beat. Did he know...? He was almost immediately relieved when Ilk said. "We're good. He spends a bit too much time in the laboratory, but other than that I have nothing to complain."
"See? She can even make up believable lies in extreme circumstances!"
"Extreme? She's just chatting with a boy!" Purple pointed out. "Anyone can do that!"
"By the way, I'd like to ask you something," Smikko whispered. "Is it true that the Empire is in war with the Sobrekt?"
That definitely caught both Tallest's attention.
"Raise the volume!" Purple exclaimed, pointing at the irkpad as he leaned in closer.
"What do you mean?" Ilk asked.
"The Sobrekt have been talking about it. Apparently, two invaders stole a sacred flower from Sobr; ever since, the Sobrekt have been verypissed at the Irken Empire. I've even heard rumours that they're planning something."
"Well, I haven't heard anything around here regarding the Sobrekt, but why would the Tallest want a simple flower?"
Red and Purple exchanged knowing glances.
"That's what the Sobrekt are trying to figure out, but given the circumstances they consider it an act of war. However I think they'll take a while, they like planning ahead and being fully prepared before launching an attack of any sorts, especially if the enemy is as powerful as the Empire."
"Sobrekt, Sobrekt, why must it always be the Sobrekt?!" Purple groaned as he emptied a whole bag of chips into his mouth. "Bg dil, it wss just uh stupidd flowr!"
"At least we'll be prepared if they decide to actually initiate a war, though frankly I don't think even they are reckless enough to do that."
No they weren't! Not if they were smart enough discover an invader, though judging by the way they reacted to that implied they had lots of guts.
Great, now they're using earth slangs too.
What worried Red the most, however, was the fact that Ilk would probably get curious about the whole thing with the flower; he had forbidden everybody aboard the Massive that had testified the event to tell her anything about it. He didn't want her to worry about it.
Sadly, sometimes he forgot Ilk was a bit too inquisitive for her own good.
A few hours later, during dinner she asked him. "Hey, daddy, do you know of any invaders stealing something from the Sobrekt?"
It caught him completely by surprise to the point he did a perfect spit of soda right in Purple's face, to the latter's dismay.
"The Sobrekt, you say?" he said, trying and failing not to sound nervous. "Why, of course not! Why would we send invaders to Sobr? Those lizards are savages!"
"Weren't the Slaughtering Rat People savages too?" Ilk pointed out.
"That's different, they weren't fully sentient and lacked any technology to be considered a threat," Purple explained, wiping the soda from his face with a napkin. "Sobrekt, on the other hand, are famous for their hybrid creations."
"Hybrids?"
"You know, you mix DNA from various animal species to make a new animal with combined traits from all those animals," Red explained. "Well, the Sobrekt have a knack for doing that and they're known to send their... hybrekts to do their dirty job."
It was an understatement, of course. Nobody could hold a candle to the Sobrekt when it came to genetic engineering, not even the Irken Empire, and that is something considering Irkens technically clone their offspring. Many tried to get their hands on the secret behind the Sobrekt hybrids, better known as Hybrekts (Purple made it up a while ago, and everybody liked it so much it became official).
Those hands were sent back to their homeworld without their owners.
One of the assignments of that Invader sent to Sobr back in the day-yes, the one who lost his head and PAK for it-was to steal the genetic hybridization research and send it to the Tallest in an attempt to re-create their own hybrids for militarization.
And we all know how 'well' that issue ended.
"So you don't know anything about it?" Ilk asked.
"No, sweetheart. In any case, it must be some rogue defectives seeking to tarnish our reputation. Don't worry, we'll figure something out."
Purple nodded. "Yeah, it's not like they were trying to save a dying smeet from the-" he didn't manage to finish, as out of seemingly nowhere a toilet plunger went flying straight into his mouth, knocking him backwards. Ilk glanced back at her father, who looked away feigning an innocent look.
See? This is what she's talking about!
Honesty percentage: seventy.
*IZ*
Oh, dear, looks like the Sobrekt are up to something. Just for the record, they are very vengeful. Expect them to bite back if you make them mad for some reason.
Smikko is a character from another story i'm currently planning involving the Screwheads, the yellow guys with the screwheads on their heads from Megadoomer. That one is parallel to 'The Smeet', I might tell you guys more about it when i've got it settled.