A/N: This is my first Invader Zim fanfiction, so please be kind if you don't like it. Other than that, I can't think of anything else to say that wouldn't come off as ranting. Happy reading!
Disclaimer: Although it would be quite fabulous if I did, I do not own and did not create Invader Zim.
The bell's droning ring sounded across town, signaling the start of yet another day for the students at Skool. Seemingly in unison, the teachers began either lecturing or writing on the chalkboard, while the children either looked bored or disturbingly attentive. The only thing that differed slightly from normal was the arrival of a new student—in Ms. Bitters' class, to be specific.
"Children, it is to my great dismay that yet another hopeless classmate is to join you today," Ms. Bitters informed her students with her usual indifference.
"Hopefully, this one won't be weird—or crazy," one of the students said under his breath, causing gazes to be shot at Zim and Dib.
As if on cue, the door opened slowly, eventually revealing the curious face of a young girl carrying a black, purse-like bag over her shoulder. Cherry-red bangs were brushed along her brow, the rest of her hair ending at her neck, with small tufts poking out from behind her ears. Her eyes were a brilliant blue, and she wore a sea foam green, knee-length halter dress with a huge, navy blue bow in the back, which tied around her waist. Her stockings had black and blue horizontal stripes and she wore black, patent leather boots.
"Looks normal enough to me," the same boy from before said.
"You must be Rin," Ms. Bitters assumed with a rather nonchalant tone. The girl nodded. "Well, have a seat somewhere. . . ."
Ms. Bitters scanned the room quickly, noticing an open seat next to Dib. "There," she pointed with her long, thin finger. "You'll sit next to Dib."
The girl walked to her seat, her emotions hard to read, as her face remained serene. She placed her black bag beneath her seat and sat down with perfect posture, her hands folded neatly on her lap. She realized within a few seconds that someone was staring at her, and when she looked over to see Dib's eyes fixated on her face, she felt the sudden urge to leave the room. Her face flushed and she turned her head quickly in the opposite direction of Dib, keeping her eyes on the desk in front of her. Being stared at made her feel uncomfortably exposed.
"So, Rin, if you wish to say anything, I would do it now, before it becomes a threat to your survival," Ms. Bitters broke into Rin's uneasy thoughts with an irritated voice.
She looked up and smiled slightly. "Um, actually, I can't think of anything that important."
"Oh. Well, on with today's lesson, then. . . ."
At lunch, Rin's recent arrival was painfully apparent. Her fellow classmates had already gathered into their various cliques, leaving her stranded in a sea of empty aisles and uninviting lunch tables. On more than one occasion, she was turned down when she asked to sit with someone, and eventually, her only options were sitting with Dib, and what she guessed was his sister, or with the curious green kid, Zim.
Considering how Dib's previous staring at her made her skin crawl, Rin decided she'd choose Zim. If he turned her down . . . well, then she supposed she's have to grin and bear it.
"Excuse me?"
Zim, who had been poking at his food warily with his spoon, whipped his head up at her, his eyes riddled with suspicion.
She tried not to let his untrusting looks sidetrack her. "Um, would you mind if I sat here with you?"
He looked confused. "Uh . . . yes I would," he finished quickly and looked back to his tray.
She frowned at his curtness momentarily, but she let her pride go and asked again. "Please?"
He looked up again with agitated, narrow eyes. He seemed to be about to say something nasty until he looked into Rin's irises, whereupon all of his aggression vanished. The sudden feeling of ease angered him to the point that he snapped his spoon in half subconsciously. Looking over at the broken spoon in his hand, he wondered how he could've possibly lost his train of thought like that.
"I'm afraid I really don't have any other place to sit. Can I please sit here?" He heard Rin asking again, in her aggravatingly innocent voice.
"Huh? I guess," he said begrudgingly, already beginning to dread having not only to sit staring at human food, but also be surrounded by the nauseating smell of human flesh.
Shockingly, the longer Rin sat beside him, Zim realized she didn't have any distinguishable odor—in fact, she smelled almost pleasant, which seemed a bit strange. He hadn't been on Earth that long, but he'd lived amongst humans long enough to know that every one of them had their own, distinct stench.
Maybe his senses were deceiving him. Just to make sure, he leaned over and tried to get a better whiff of Rin's scent, sniffing her hair as she chewed on a few potato chips from the paper bag she'd brought for lunch. Almost instantly, Rin pulled away and shot Zim an apprehensive look, gulping down the chips with visible skepticism.
"Were you just sniffing my hair?" she asked in a disgusted tone.
"No," Zim answered casually, then looked back to the icky green slime that covered his lunch tray.
Rin shrugged and went back to eating.
I couldn't smell a thing, Zim thought to himself as Rin continued to eat. Maybe I was rushing; surely, she must share the same stink that covers the other humans.
He attempted to smell her hair again, but this time, Rin whirred her head around before Zim had a chance to look away and whistle innocently. Instead, he sat there, close enough to Rin to feel her breath on his face, and looked dumbly into her eyes.
"I knew it! You were trying to sniff me," she said with a glare.
"No I wasn't," Zim replied calmly.
"Yes you were! I just saw you."
"No you didn't."
She stared at him blankly for a moment, at a loss for words after such a stupid comeback.
When she recovered, her voice was tired. "Okay, this is obviously going nowhere. Can you please just move away from me?"
Zim moved away. "And stop trying to sniff me, too," she muttered just as Zim was about to try again.
She doesn't have a scent . . . well, at least not a horrible one. She actually smells pretty good, Zim thought to himself. I've never encountered a human whose stench didn't make me sick . . . well, maybe there are some humans out there that actually take time to bathe themselves.
Across the cafeteria, Dib sat at his table, watching Zim interact with the new girl and waiting for him to do something weird. He noticed Zim kept trying to sniff her hair, and while that did seem a bit strange, Dib realized it didn't have anything to do with proving Zim was an alien—maybe the new girl's shampoo had a really nice smell. She didn't seem to appreciate all of the attention, though.
"Don't you ever get tired of watching Zim all the time?" Gaz asked while her eyes remained transfixed on the screen of her Game Slave 2.
"Actually, no," Dib admitted. "Anyway, I'm not just watching Zim. A new girl arrived in our class today, and she's sitting with him right now. He keeps trying to sniff her hair for some reason, but that doesn't seem to creep her out too much. I'm waiting for him to do something really weird."
As much as Dib concentrated on the two, they simply sat there together, Rin munching away on potato chips while Zim stared at his food with his usual disgust. At one point, Rin pulled out a muffin from her lunch bag and offered it to Zim, but when he declined—like Dib expected he would—Rin simply shrugged and ate it herself.
"Nothing's happening. Zim's actually acting normal," Dib said with a disappointed sigh. He slouched on the bench and rested his cheek in his hand, absently taking a spoonful of the green mass from his tray and eating it.
Eventually, Rin got up to throw away her paper bag, walking past Dib in the process. He watched as she stepped over to the trashcan and gently tossed the crumpled bag out, thinking that maybe he'd exaggerated the coincidence of her sitting with Zim; maybe she was too normal for anything weird to happen. Actually, she seemed almost boring; everything she did was proper and lady-like, as if she'd been transferred out of a top-notch boarding school. Her dress was free of wrinkles, her leather boots shiny and new, her hair perfectly smoothed, and her skin as clear as porcelain. It was kind of annoying, how perfect she seemed.
Then, as she walked beneath the sunlight filtering through a grimy window on her way back to her seat, Dib could've swore he saw her skin was glowing—and sparkling. He blinked his eyes and rubbed them roughly—just in case he was dreaming—but when she was still shimmering when he reopened his eyes, Dib knew something was up.
"Gaz! Look at that!" He pointed at Rin, her sparkles fading but still present as she shifted back into the shadows. "Look at her skin!"
Conveniently, when Gaz finally looked up, Rin's flesh had returned to normal. "Stop being stupid," Gaz grumbled.
"No, really! Her skin—it gave off this weird glow when she walked under the window, and it was all glittery," Dib explained, suddenly feeling full of energy.
"'Glittery'? Dad was right; you really have been watching too much of My Pretty Pony," Gaz muttered.
"No, I know what I saw," Dib said defensively. "And I told you, I was channel-surfing, and that show just happened to be on. I didn't actually watch it."
"Whatever. Just leave me alone."
Dib didn't seem to hear her; he was too busy thinking about reasons for the new girl to have such an odd . . . skin complexion. He figured she probably wasn't an Irken, seeing as he'd never seen Zim's skin glimmer when he was out in the sunlight. However, that didn't mean he had to rule her out as an alien completely. He also didn't want to become too sure of anything right away, seeing as he had hardly any evidence of her being anything but normal.
I'll just have to start collecting some evidence, Dib thought excitedly. Maybe this new girl won't be so boring after all.