There are three types of questions: ones you can't answer, ones you shouldn't answer, and ones you need someone else to answer.

This probably fell under that unspoken "all of the above" option.

"Do you think I'm sexy?"

The victim of this question was just some random technician, reddish-purple eyes and not that much taller than some of their Invaders, on some random walkway in some random part of the Massive. The perpetrator of said question was surprisingly Tallest Purple. Now, Purple probably wouldn't be asking some random guy if he was sexy without reason - under normal circumstances, at least. If he were someone else, he might be doing it for the hell of it and the joy of seeing so many poor fools practically explode with indecision.

No, no, this is just Purple we're talking about here.

So why exactly was Purple asking this guy if he was sexy?

Well, if you turn back about six pages or so - the equivalent of three hours earlier - you would have seen a rather peculiar conversation in the bridge. Well, the tail end of a conversation-turned-horrible questionnaire. Yeah. That's more like it.

"Sorry, Zim, we'll have to call you back." Red sighed.

On the other end, Zim's demented SIR unit, GIR, let out a childish and yet somehow evil giggle.

The twin leaders were not prepared for what he then exclaimed.

"And then they'll have sex!"

"With each other?" Zim inquired almost automatically, looking curiously at GIR. Making it quite a bit worse than it probably would or should have been.

Red spluttered and Purple dropped the donut he'd been munching on. Before the other two could make it even worse (if that was possible), the crimson-eyed Tallest turned frantically to a technician, hissing "Cut the transmission!" in a low, dark voice. The screen went black, and Red let out a sigh of relief. But Purple... having lost his donut, he'd started thinking. Thinking hard. Thinking in strange places. Thinking in places no Irken probably should think in.

"Hey, Red..." He said softly.

The other suddenly had a feeling something bad was about to happen.

"Yes?"

"...do you think I'm sexy?"

Red spluttered again and stared at him as though he'd grown a second head or his thumbs back.

"Wait, what?"

"Do you think I'm sexy?"

"What the hell?"

"No, really."

"Shut up!"

"I'm serious, Red!"

"I said shut UP!"

"Come on!"

"JUST STOP TALKING!"

"Ree-eeed! Answer meeeeeeee!"

Ending up in Red fleeing from the room, and Purple whining and then chasing after him.

Bring it back to the present, and the guy still hadn't answered. He was staring at Purple much the same Red had.

"M-My Tallest?"

Purple sighed and repeated the question.

And then there was that recursion of that awkward silence, in which the victim looked up at his Tallest, then at the floor, then the wall, then the other again, repeated, all the while he started trembling and sweating a little. Then he let out a soft whimper and cried "Forgive me, my Tallest!" in an anguished voice before suddenly combusting into a neat pile of greenish goop.

He'd seen this around a thousand times before, as the result of the question, and each and every time it happened he got a bit more nervous. Why wouldn't they answer? Why would they just explode like that? Was it really that hard a question? Yes or no. That's all they had to say. They didn't even have to mean it. And yet they just yelped out an apology and combusted. Why!

"Purple! Get your ass back to the bridge right now!"

The call short-circuited his train of thought, and rather than pondering on why Red had called him like a dog instead of sending some other random guy to fetch him (or even how he could hear him, as he was sure he was in the bowels of the ship), he obeyed it.

Turns out, he actually wasn't that far away, but that has no real importance.

Red stared at him for a minute, then narrowed his eyes, having spied a bit of technician-goo on the front of Purple's Tallest uniform.

"You need to stop asking them that stupid question of yours." He commented darkly.

Purple made some kind of noncomittal noise, then immediately hovered over to yet another technician, coincidentally the one that had cut off the transmission with Zim that had started this whole thing.

"Do you think I'm sexy?" He asked, once again, and Red detected a bit of panicked hope in it this time.

"Purple!"

"Let him answer it."

The technician stared at him, whimpered, then exploded. No apology, for once. That was getting a little annoying.

"See?" Reclining back in his chair. "Cut that out."

"Why?"

"'Cause if you keep asking them, they'll keep exploding, and then there won't be anybody on the ship but us."

"So?"

"We need them to fly it."

Purple still didn't seem to get it - either that, or he was just being stubborn.

"Can't we just put it on autopilot or something?"

One of Red's antennae twitched. "We also need them to get us snacks."

"Damn." Defeatedly. "Curse you, logic."

A moment passed. Purple began to hover over to another one...

"Purple!" Red barked, then shoved a clawful of the aforementioned donuts into his co-leader's mouth before he could ask the question. His victim to-be breathed a sigh of relief before returning to his work. "I told you to cut that out!"

"I can't help it!" Purple yelled back, once he'd half-choked, half-swallowed the donuts. "It's driving me insane!"

"Well, go be insane somewhere else."

"I can't." The violet-eyed leader was almost pouting.

"Why not?"

"Because then I'll ask some other person in that somewhere else."

"Mmyep."

"And then they'll explode."

A slight pause, then, "I'm willing to take that risk."

"You're mean, Red." Purple sniffed, but hovered out of the room anyway, actually somewhat relieved to leave - for the same reason he was be sent out of the room in the first place: more potential victims. Sick, but true. And he didn't think of them as victims, not really... they were more... hapless passersby, or innocent bystanders pulled into answering a simple question. Albeit a simple question that made them explode. Oh well.

"Yes. Yes I am." Red said proudly, after the other had left. Then he winced.

Dammit, he thought darkly. I really, really need to quit paying attention to Zim when he calls us. His stupid is rubbing off on me.

Regardless of whether Zim's stupidity was actually contaminating his psyche, he still had the situation at hand to deal with. Why the other was asking, he could nearly understand. But why they just kept exploding.. even though they could have just given him a lie.. he remembered how he felt when the epidemic started. The first words out of his mouth expressed it all: what the hell.

Maybe that's why they were exploding.

He was male, and he'd felt like exploding. They were male. It was almost simple, actually. Guys aren't supposed to answer those kind of questions from other guys. It's just.. not right. What or whose society said that to start with, he didn't know nor care, but it was true. Too uncomfortable for the other male.

So what about females?

Would they still explode?

He gave the room around him a quick glance, taking note of the sex of all the technicians.

Damn. All male.

Too bad the female gene was an anomaly for Irkens, or this would be much easier.

He began to consider all the females he knew personally.. being Tallest, he wasn't really expected to remember every last fucking female Irken that intruded upon his presence. His memory drew up a grand total of two: the operating Invader, Tenn, and the wanna-be Invader, Tak. If he got Tenn to be the scapegoat, it might interfere with her mission. But Tak...

Tak, he could work with.

He began to grin. The grin was very evil. It scared some of the techs that watched it form.

"Tak," He said coolly through the manic grin, sitting his chair again (he'd been pacing during the thought process leading to this). "Get me Tak."

There were various "Yes, sir!"s and "My Tallest!"s and someone brought the screen back to life - upon the rather haggard face of one violet-eyed female Irken.

Tak.

And wherever the hell she was, she probably didn't like it. Understandable, seeing as how she was upside down.

Her eyes brightened once she saw Red, however, and she gave an upside-down salute. "My Tallest!"

"Tak, I've a proposition for you." He was still grinning evilly. She either didn't care or didn't notice.

"Yes, my Tallest?"

"You still want to be an Invader, right?"

"Oh, do I!"

"Well, I will make you an Invader - on one condition."

"Sir?"

"The next question Purple asks you, you answer yes to."

"What-"

"No no no, don't even think about it - just say yes. Okay? Can you do that, Tak?"

She gave him a critical look, and for a moment, he thought he'd have to go get Tenn. But then she obediently saluted once more, and all was right again.

Around then, Red's antennae detected the return of his co-leader, from wherever the hell he'd gone. His somewhere else had included a someone else, apparently, because he could hear dripping along with the normal hover..y.. noise. Yes. Shut up. There aren't that many words to describe the sound of someone hovering into the room, because hoverbelts don't have feet to make feet noises. Sheesh.

"Here he comes now!" He announced enthusiastically, beaming.

Okay, a little too enthusiastically, but Tak didn't seem to mind. Maybe. Red wasn't looking, and therefore probably didn't care.

Purple hovered up to the screen, looking a little depressed and haggard himself, uniform splattered with more goop from some unfortunate soul. He stared at her for a moment, then, almost immediately (giving her no time to prepare), asked the question.

"Do you think I'm sexy?"

Her reaction was..eh... well, she didn't explode. She stared at Purple incredulously, then Red, then the other again, her cheeks turning a curious darker shade of green. She looked like she was about to explode, though. Once again a look at Red, in which the crimson-eyed leader gave her a sort of "go on..." type of look, and then back to Purple, who was staring at her expectantly.

"I...er...that is to say..." She took a deep breath. "...y-yes?"

Everything went silent, and everyone's attention was immediately drawn to Purple. What would he do in the face of an affirmative response? Would he explode? He probably should, considering the fact that this was his fault to start with, but anyhow.

His eyes got very big, almost smeetlike.

"R-really?"

"Really." Red answered for her, considering she probably couldn't at the moment.

"YAAAAAAAAY!"

Immediately after blasting everyone's hearing, Purple zoomed out of the room like his ass was on fire.

Once again, Red had that feeling that something bad was about to happen. And, like before, his intuition was answered with a big fat "duh."

More like a "what the fuck" in this case, though.

"I'm bringing sexy back

Them other boys don't know how to act

I think you're special what's behind your back

So turn around and I'll pick up the slack-"

Purple came back, and those exact three words were in everyone's mind. Over his uniform he had a big black pinstripe coat with giant pointy shoulders, about three tons of gold around his neck, accompanied by a black, pointy pinstripe hat with a feather from Irk knows where and a pair of dark shades with the middle taped between his eyes to hold them. Behind him was the source of the "music": a small advisor with a boombox over one shoulder, clearly taking too much enjoyment out of this, wearing his own pair of tape-shades and bobbing his head to the beat.

Tak stared at this horrible mutilation of sexy for a moment, then looked at Red.

"Sir... what the fuck?"

"I'll explain it to you later. Maybe. Eventually."

Purple struck an extravagant pose, arms out wide, throwing his head back without the hat falling off. Then he yelled, as loud as possible:

"Look out, universe - Sexy has ARRIVED!"

Red moaned. "Oh dear Irk... what have we done?"

------

Mwhaha... they've unleashed a horrible abomination upon the universe. I laugh at their pain. x3

This is my first step into the Zim section, so don't eat too much of my face off - I need it for school, doncha know.

Inspired from a scene in DemonSurfer's upcoming fic And Then They Had Sex, some stupid black chick announcing "The diva has arrived", and Justin Timberlake's song Sexy Back. Those are some lyrics from it. I heard it on a CSI: Miami episode, actually. R&R, y0.