Challenge #00352: The Case For Doing Your Homework

“At last! I have - No! Oxygen, my only weakness! How did you know?”

“… Did you even look up the planet before you got here?”

Zykryxx the Conquerer looked down at the small, blue-green marble in the view screen at his feet. There was, unbelievably, cogniscent life on it. A planet with seventy percent of its surface covered with liquid water.

They were undoubtedly primitives. They were still communication on radio bands, and had only recently graduated to digital in the place of analogue. They were used to war, he could tell from their transmissions. There was not one place on their entire surface that wasn’t at war with some other space for reasons that eluded Zykryxx.

He would turn them into warriors. And he would be magnanimous enough to allow them to fight for his causes in specially designed armour, instead of their soft and fragile skin.

Mammals. They were usually only good for food sources, but these ones… had a talent for war. They even invented weapons that only had to be used once, and then stockpiled them as threats against others of their own kind.

He had already threatened them on their own RF bands. And intercepted and destroyed their primitive weapons.

Nuclear missiles. How cute.

Zykryxx listened to their communications, watched the Auto-translator as it decrypted their various languages. He laughed at their pointless bickering.

He was busy picking the most impressive of their buildings to serve as a backdrop for his glorious conquest.

He expected some attempt at a battle. Their laughable weapons were no match for his, for all their talent at maiming the enemy. Even his natural carapace was proof against their lead bullets.

Their Inglesh was the language of conquerers. He set his Auto-translators to work with that one. He would speak in his native T'toxx, but they would hear their precious Inglesh. Almost in sync.

There. Red Square. That had the largest backdrop of impressive buildings. He let their jets follow him during his descent through the atmosphere. They had already tried their most terrifying weapons on his vessel and failed. Now they were watching to see what happened next.

He descended in glorious wonder. He could see their news feeds. It was theatre. It was a show.

They appreciated a show.

Zykryxx allowed his guard to descent first. Their armour was proof against the rigours of space. No native weapon could touch them.

They didn’t even try.

Zykryxx stood tall, because the natives respected height. He faced down the most prominent of the cameras and bellowed, “BEHOLD THE MIGHT OF ZYKRYXX THE CONQUERER! YOU MAY FIGHT, BUT AS OF THIS MOMENT, YOU AND YOUR WORLD ARE MINE!”

At least, that was the plan.

The problem was, he needed to take a breath of what passed for their air.

So all that came out was, “BEHOLD THE MIGHT OF ZYKRYXxxxxgaaaaaaahhackackackackackack…”

A minion arrived with a breather, but it was too late. He had fallen. Literally.

The natives threw aside their guns and turned to older weapons, like knives and bludgeons. Their talent for war came to the fore in a battle that Zykryxx would have appreciated if it wasn’t happening to his elite troops.

Maiming wasn’t just a side-effect of their weapons. It was a goal of their war. Maimed soldiers could still be interrogated. Investigated. Experimented on. All that was necessary was to render them helpless.

And all they had to do for that was disrupt the armour of the soldiers.

Zykryxx had no doubt that they would also maim him. His limbs could regrow, in time, but they didn’t need to experiment with that genetic bonus. Therefore, with prudence and forethought, he laid down and played helpless.

“How,” he panted through the breather, “How did you know that Oxygen was toxic to me?”

The human looked down on him with its ugly, flat, fleshy face. “You didn’t do all your homework on us, did you?”

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