Hi, everybody! :-) This is my first fanfic here. I don't own Invader Zim.
"Isn't this the best cartoon ever?" sighed my friend Ella, as she gazed at Zim laughing evilly on the TV screen. I looked up from my science homework, unsure whether I should tell my friend how utterly strange it was that she was crushing on a cartoon character. I decided against it. She seemed so happy when watching Invader Zim. Who was I to destroy her Zim-related fantasies?
Finishing up the last question, I threw my hands in the air, relieved. "And I am done with homework until Monday! Take THAT, Chemistry."
Ella pried her eyes away from the TV just long enough to give me a smirk. "Good for you, Zene. Now we can focus on watching the best cartoon known to man. Or Irken."
I flopped myself down onto the couch next to Ella and let my brain run idle as I paid half-attention to the show.
When the commercial break came on, Ella slowly stretched. "Wouldn't it be awesome if we could live in Zim's world?" she said, or rather, yawned. I thought back to the slight creepiness of all the humans in the cartoon, along with the squalid surroundings.
"It'd be a complete nightmare." I said, pretending to shudder, just to get my point across.
"It would be complete AWESOME." retorted Ella. I laughed, glad that my friend still enjoyed cartoons.
"I hungry." she said, after a while.
"Food's in the kitchen." I mumbled, ignoring her bad grammar and instead eyeing the book that I was currently reading. The next instant I had gotten the book and curled up with it on the couch.
Ella, in the meantime, had gotten a piece of pizza leftover from lunch, and was in the process of trying to see how much of it she could eat in one bite.
"It tastes better if you CHEW it." I said, trying not to laugh. She made a face.
"Ew. I don't want to TASTE it. Who LIKES the taste of veggie pizza, anyways? It NEEDS pepperoni."
"A lot of people like veggie pizza." I assured her, but she had now gotten bored with the subject and instead was eyeing the book in my hands. "You're going to miss the best parts." she said, as she let herself fall onto the couch again.
"I'm sure you'll fill me in on the details later." I said, and she rolled her eyes and smiled. That's when IZ came back on, and she was once again lost in the world of strange aliens and large-headed paranormal investigators.
I don't know HOW long the storm had been going on, but I was the first to notice. The thunder was not the soft, rolling kind that I enjoyed listening to. It was the sharp, roaring kind that seemed to make the entire house shake. The rain was torrential, coming down harder than Niagara.
I stared outside the window for a few seconds, before turning to look at Ella. She had finally noticed the bad weather. "You think maybe I should stay over tonight? There's no way I'm walking home in THAT."
"Yeah. You want to call your mom?"
"Nah. I'll just text her." she said, whipping out her cell phone. I watched her hands move swiftly, typing a message, and wondered how someone who could text so quickly had a typing speed of half a word per minute on the computer.
Suddenly, a bright bolt of lightning light lit up the inside of the house, giving everything a strange, ethereal glow for a few seconds before it was gone. Not wanting to be outdone, a particularly loud thunderclap sounded, making the house shake violently. That's when the power went off.
Mostly. The lights were off. The buzz of the refrigerator in the kitchen had stopped. Everything but the television, me, and Ella seemed dead.
I glanced at Ella, who was staring, wide eyed, at the TV, which was emanating a strange, purplish glow. The IZ cartoon she had been watching seemed to have frozen on one image - Zim's yard, strange lawn ornaments and all. But, the image wasn't really FROZEN. Oddly enough, it was raining in the scene. A soft, drizzling type of rain that some people like to run around in.
Things went on like this for a few seconds that seemed more like minutes. The television showing this strange scene, with me and Ella glancing from the screen, to each other, and back to the screen. Finally, Ella slowly got up and walked towards the TV.
"No, wait! You don't know if it's safe..." I told her, but, as usual, she ignored me. She reached tentatively towards the TV to touch it. I closed my eyes right before she made contact with the screen, not wanting to see my best friend getting electrified. I counted up to ten, and, when nothing happened, I dared to open my eyes. Ella stood in the same spot, seemingly unharmed, but eyes wide in shock. Following her gaze, I noticed her hand, which had NOT been exposed to high voltage electricity, as I had feared, but instead, gone straight through the TV screen, only to emerge as a cartoonish hand on the other side.
After getting over her initial reaction, a slow, mischievous, smirk spread across Ella's face. She looked up at me, and I felt the familiar urge to tell her 'no', the one I usually got when her face took on that expression.
"Zene," she started, and I crossed my arms.
"No, Ella. No." She ignored me.
"We are going,"
"No."
"to the world."
"No."
"of Invader Zim."
I stared at her, not at all surprised at Ella's reaction, but still completely in shock at the possibility of entering a cartoon world. I saw Ella beginning to climb into the TV (you don't say THAT every day XD), and ran to hold her back.
"Ella! Think this through! What if we get stuck in that world?" I said, trying, unsuccessfully, to reason with her. I held on to her arm, but she managed to use this to her advantage and pull me in with her.
"Would that be a BAD thing?" she said, in complete fangirl mode. If Zim had walked by at that moment, which was unlikely because, well, it was RAINING, her head probably would've exploded.
"EXTREMELY bad." I said, with the tone that a teacher might take on when trying to explain to a student WHY two plus two equals four. Just. So. Frustrating.
"Relax, Zene. This is probably a dream, anyways. Can you think of any other logical explanation?" she said with a smirk, knowing the word "logic" worked wonders on me.
I sighed, and looked back to where we had come from. It was a strange, swirling portal that hung in the air for a few more moments before disappearing. Dream or not, I panicked. Grabbing Ella's shoulder, I pointed to where our way out wasn't.
"It's fine." she said, with the calm even tone that only an insane person could manage under these circumstances. "Dream, remember?"
I took a deep breath and repeated the words in my head. This is just a dream. This is just a dream.
…Then, why did everything feel so REAL? Well, as real as you can get when you look like a cartoon. I felt the rain drops on my skin, heard the grass crunch beneath my feet. I didn't know about Ella, but MY dreams were never quite as punctilious when it came to the smaller details.
