Author's Note: READ THIS. Though I ran out of summary space, there are some details you should know. This is an Invader Zim and, um, something else crossover. (I could tell you, but that would spoil a later part of the fic.) However, you don't need to be familiar with either series to really understand this, because it's mostly centered around Ingrid. And yes, there is a reason this is in the romance section. There will later be some FillmoreIngrid in this fic, but it'll be a LONG haul before we get to that, for obvious reasons. Hopefully you'll bare with me until then.

With that said, I don't own anything. Enjoy the fic.

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It was a dark and stormy day at the Safety Patrol, and Ingrid Third was bored.

This sentiment was shared by most of her peers. Catching up on paper work was not fun, just something they had to do. Currently, Fillmore was filling out forms at lightning speed while Ingrid read and corrected them roughly twice as fast. Tehama was organizing all the files on her computer into various folders while Anza helped Danny with his boxes upon boxes of uncategorized photos. The radio was on in Vallejo's office, faint music mixing with the sounds of rain and lightning. On a cold day it might have been miserable, but today it was warm outside, and they had the window open. The whole scene seemed homely and familiar to Ingrid.

She realized, as she continued in her proofreading, that this was closest to a routine she'd had in a long time. With her disciplinary problems and her father's job swappings, she'd never stayed in one place for very long. Except before her mother died. That had been a long time ago, though. Now she was settled in for the first time in years. Familiar faces, tasks she knew how to do by heart, in a place she knew better than her own home. The moment was so common now that it was boring. Dear lord, how long had it been since that had happened?

Then she paused, absentmindedly having done part of her corrections in the wrong language. Cringing, glad no one had caught her in her lapse, she redid it. Huh, that was odd. It had been a long time since she'd made that error. Hearing a gasp, she instinctively hunched over her paper, glancing up. Tehama was staring at her.

"Ingrid, your first name is-"

"Don't even think it," the black clad girl returned sharply. "It took a lot of bribery just to get Folsom off my back. I don't even want to know what it would take to get the school to shut up."

Tehama grinned back at her. "Still, wow. What language is it from? My mom's big into baby names and stuff, but I'm not so good at guessing."

Ingrid immediately thought of what it would be, had it followed normal naming conventions. "I think it's Korean. I'm not sure, though. My dad would probably know…"

Fillmore gave her a look that was part smile, part questioning. "How come I never knew about your secret Korean first name?"

"You didn't ask."

"Mmm-hmm," he murmured, going back to work. "Well, see if I ever tell you my middle name."

"It's Dilbert," Tehama announced, and the room burst into laughter.

Ingrid smiled warmly at her partner. Well, see if he ever lived it down. The next time he got uptight, she knew exactly what she was going to call him. Chuckling, she went back to the paperwork, which no longer seemed boring. In the warm, cozy room, surrounded by good friends, it was impossible to bored. In fact, for the first time in a while, the feeling that overwhelmed her senses was pure contentment. Music, rain, and Dilbert – what more could she want? When Fillmore gave her an annoyed look, she burst out giggling, which made him groan. Oh, yeah. This was the life.

Too bad it couldn't last.

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The move was inevitable.

Ingrid wasn't stupid. She couldn't deny reality. She knew it was coming. But she didn't want it to. She didn't want to leave this place. These people were so welcoming, so loving. She had made friends here, lots of them, and she didn't want to leave them. There were finally people who understood her. Her moments of weirdness, her Abe Lincoln lunchbox, even her photographic memory was appreciated here. No one ever thought of her as useless here. Starting from Fillmore and gradually expanding to others, people thought of her as useful, special, part of a team. Those last few words had never been used to describe her in her entire life.

She frowned. It wasn't just that, though. It had more to do with the fact that she felt like she cared for someone in return. In her lifetime, more than a few people had cared about her. They did for her intelligence, or out of sympathy, or because it was required. Fillmore was the first person to ever care about things like justice and what was fair. Then he had exposed her to a world of people who cared about those things. Those concepts had been so dead to her they didn't even matter anymore. Here people wanted to do the world some good, and strangely enough, she felt protective of them. The whole Safety Patrol was like a family to her. They took in wayward and downtrodden people, and built them up to be something great. Not for profit, or because they had to, but because they wanted to. Out of the goodness of their hearts. The very idea made her want to protect them, help them, be a hero like them. They were precious. Fillmore most of all.

Yet she hadn't told them. She couldn't. The words wouldn't come when she tried, not after she found out where she was moving. The time never seemed right. She couldn't break up warm, fuzzy moments like yesterday to monger pity. Ingrid considered telling Fillmore and letting him break the news to everyone. She knew she had to tell someone. If she just disappeared, he would never forgive her. If she didn't, that meant facing at least one of them. Anza was out of question, because he lived clear on the other side of town. Tehama was busy tonight visiting her grandmother at the hospital. Vallejo would be furious at her – he wasn't even an option. The rest of the Patrol was officially on off duty today. She couldn't even contact them over the walkie-talkies. It had to be Fillmore. He might be furious, he might be depressed, he might never forgive her, but she couldn't lay around every night wallowing in self pity.

Sitting up on her bed, she pulled out the walkie-talkie, and made the inevitable call.

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The entire city was just like she remembered it.

A thick smog coated the air, making the sky red and orange during the day and eerily purple at night. The people were always awake and always moving. Night time streets seemed more crowded than daytime streets here. Sirens of police and ambulances raged constantly. The thriving Goth scene flocked to the mall to buy fashionable clothes and sneer at the equally prominent preppy kids. Amidst this, crime thrived, from bootlegging to outright robbery. And no matter how much the police tried, nothing ever changed. Muggings happened on the street, gangsters ran around school with knives and their gang colors on full display, and regulations were just suggestions, be it the law or the school rules.

Ingrid didn't like it. It was just so familiar she couldn't fight it. This was her. This was who she was. This place had made her, taken her from a weak, crying girl who missed her mommy and made her a rebel with a cold streak. The problem was that after a while she became so cold it had taken years to defrost her. Now that she was back, she was already becoming apathetic. Someone had been shot on her way to school the first day. She didn't spare it more than a curious glance. That was the epitome of this industrial nightmare: die, live, never care.

By the end of the first year, she knew there was no hope for it. The city infected her like a virus. She was cold, cruel and uncaring. She hurt the school system that had broken and remade her, as if it would do her any good. She stayed up til all hours, knowing here the teachers were inattentive and she could get straight A's and sleep through class. Here there were no rewards for goodness. Failing students and Ingrid were treated the same. Nameless, worthless, never remembered. Not that it mattered much, since she was back to her old life and her old nemesis. He hadn't changed either, other than a moment of sullen silence when his other enemy died. A death that, though it was her best friend here, barely made her even pause. X's Ingrid would have cried and spent hours on the phone with Fillmore. But she wasn't Ingrid anymore. She didn't cry anymore.

This was all his fault. His rejection had reminded her why that this was a good idea. It was all coming back to her. This was all she could be. Theft, arson, skipping school, and fighting aliens. Searching for ghosts. Chasing vampires. The familiarity was not warm and comforting, as it had been at X. There were no good people fighting for justice and fairness here. There was only evil and lesser evils. Gray and black instead of white and black. Though she had fought to escape it, it seemed the corrupt nature of her hometown could not be escaped. She was not cut out for the life of a good and studious Safety Patroller. She wasn't even capable of sticking up for people without Fillmore to be her morale officer. This was his fault. If he hadn't stopped speaking to her, she wouldn't have realized just how suited to the dark side she actually was.

Not that she was evil, she reassured herself. She wasn't even bad. She just wasn't good. She wasn't clean. She was fighting greater evils, evils that didn't exist at X but ran rampant here. Here no one could remain morally upright for very long. It was easier to become part of a lying, gossiping, filthy crowd of near clones. Fighting the paranormal madness in this city was the closest she could ever come to being her X self. The people here were just too far gone to save. Maybe she was, too. But she'd be dead soon. Paranormal investigators didn't last very long here. Nothing did. Everything was disposable, even people.

Not that it mattered, given she was contemplating all of this as she lay, body drenched in pain, alongside a seldom used, abandoned highway. No one would be coming for her. The school never called her father when she missed weeks at a time, an hour would hardly be cause for concern. Her father was too busy now to know even if they did call. The best she could hope for was that resting here would give her enough strength to call a cab. Then she could figure out some way to hobble to said cab. Her left leg should still be okay for that, even she didn't feel up to it right now. The irony that a year ago even thirty minutes without contact would have been enough to summon up Fillmore and several school nurses was not lost on her. In fact, she was hallucinating that he was here right now. Stupid, that. Maybe it had something to do with her glasses tinting everything purple.

Except it wasn't a hallucination. The school bus exhaust was burning in her lungs. Fillmore's shadow was casting a cool patch of shade over her limp form. And his worried, familiar voice was begging for her to say something, to not be unconscious. Come on, kid, he begged, just give me your name, an ID, something.

"Sel," she muttered, gazing at him dazedly, and then everything went black as he bent over to pick her up.