The planet Meekrob was a wasteland. All of its living inhabitants had fled. All that remained was the debris, still waiting for the clean up crews to arrive. The Irkens had gained another planet.

Zim and Dib landed their ships and stepped out. Zim surveyed the landscape. A war had taken place here, and had left behind only ashes of a once great civilization. Nothing lived there anymore. He slowly took a step forward. If Tenn wasn't here, he didn't know where else to look for her. He began to turn around, but something caught his eye. A slight hint of sky blue in the endless field of black and grey ashes. Zim turned to face the color and began walking. Dib saw his movement and followed.

No, Zim thought as he drew closer. Oh, Tallest, no.

For in the ashes lay a single Irken body, fluids seeping out of wounds around her middle section. One had pierced her Squeedly Spooch. Her unseeing sky blue eyes forever watched the sky.

Zim fell to his knees beside the one he now knew he loved.

Tenn had never been much of a fighter. That was why she had become an Invader, not a soldier. But somehow, she had ended up needing to fight. And she had lost.

Invaders need no one. Zim thought. That couldn't be further from the truth.

Invaders need no one. He looked around. Tenn's was the only Irken body near here. He looked back to her. This Invader needed someone. Someone to aid her in battle, or to hold her hand as the light faded from her eyes and the life from her veins.

Invaders need no one. He was an Invader, and he needed her.

This was the first time Dib had seen Tenn without her holographic disguise on. But he could still recognize the curves of her body and the blue of her eyes, now fogged in death. He knelt beside her, as Zim was, and carefully extended a hand to guide her eyes shut. Dib looked down at the corpse of the girl he loved, and a single tear rolled down his face and landed in the ashes next to him. Then another, and another. Dib closed his eyes, and for the first time in his life, cried.

Why? he asked silently. Why did she have to die? I don't care that she was Irken. I don't care that she destroyed a planet. It doesn't matter anymore. I love her.

Invaders need no one. That's what they were taught. Emotions were useless and led to failure. Zim look around again. No one had come to Tenn's rescue. The only footprints near her were her's, his, and Dib's. No one had come to her rescue, because they were Irken. They were machines. They did as they were told and tore apart people's lives. They destroyed planets because they wanted to and left only ruin in their wake. They left their own kind alone to die. Zim looked down at the tragedy in front of him and the crying boy at his side. This is what he had been taught, no, programed, to do and to enjoy. This was Irken.

No, Zim thought. No longer. I am no longer Irken. I will not do this anymore. Irk is no longer my home.

Maybe it had never been.

He stood up and walked back over to his ship. In a matter of days, this planet would be paved over and made into whatever the Tallest saw fit, and Tenn's body would be destroyed.

Zim touched the controls of his ship. Dib walked over to Tak's ship in a daze and entered.

Zim angled his Voot into the sky and turned it toward the only place he had left to call home.

The planet with a sky the color of Tenn's sky blue eyes.