I don't own Invader Zim. Still. Characters created by Jhonen Vasquez. Still.
Thanks for your patience. I was getting everything ready several chapters ahead. AND I was having computer problems.
Chapter Two: What are you doing?
"There are two things which I know are infinite, the universe and human stupidity... and I'm not so sure about the universe." Albert Einstein
As soon as the stream of rainwater from the roof hit him, Zim yanked himself free and dashed back inside, rolling on the floor and screaming, as clouds of smoke began billowing. The other kids backed away to form a circle around him, not sure what, if anything, they should do. Even the teacher was staring, too surprised to utter a single word.
Dib was more than a little wet himself as he jumped back indoors, but if this demonstration got even person behind him, it would be well worth it!
"THERE! SEE?" he shrieked, pointing to Zim with one arm while flailing the other around in every direction. "I ask you, who else do you know... what HUMAN... does THAT... over a little rain? Screams... and... and SMOKES?"
For a second no one, except Zim, made a sound... Dib realized he was holding his breath...
"NOW do you see NOW? THAT'S what I'm talking about! And that's not all he does!"
As the teacher looked from Zim to Dib, frowning at such roughness, one of the kids suddenly spoke up.
"My aunt hates rain and sometimes she goes out and it starts to rain and she screams and runs
back inside and looks for her rain bonnet," Keef offered helpfully. He added, "And she smokes too."
Only with great difficulty did Dib restrain himself from pounding his head against the wall in frustration. "People... only... smoke... when they have... A CIGARETTE!" he pointed out with forced calm, but the damage to his point had been done. "... or a PIPE, or a... "
"No, Dib, it's do YOU see?" sniffed Zita, turning on her heel and walking out the door.
"... or a CIGAR or a TORCH or a LANTERN, or... or a... "
"Ignore Dib, he's just crazy," was the general consensus among the kids, shoving their way
past him. The teacher just shook her head and tut tutted.
X X X X X X
Holding his books over his head like a makeshift umbrella, Zim ran for the safety of his base as fast as he could go. Watching him, Dib hopped from one foot to the other in a powerless frenzy , knowing only too well that once securely barricaded indoors, the alien would continue his evil plotting against the earth!
But taking it up with Zim would have to wait for the following day; that morning Gaz had made it quite clear that she expected Dib to come home with her after skool instead of chasing any green kid.
Weighing the options, Dib quickly decided that once he and Gaz were home again, he could always run out again in pursuit of Zim. Wait a minute, on top of all that, today was grocery day; over breakfast that morning he'd noticed that the cereal was getting low. Asking Gaz just this once to lift a finger got him ignored at best; asking her a second time was never a good idea. Okay, then after he got the groceries he'd get Zim!
As the rain began to fall harder, other kids' parents began driving up to the school to pick them up. Though he knew full well what the chances were, Dib couldn't resist a quick look around for their own family car. As famous as his father was, Dib would feel privileged beyond compare if his dad could simply keep a half hour free once in a while to pick them up at skool.
Dib abandoned his brief and fruitless search to turn back to the skool doors. "Hurry, Gaz!" he implored. "The fate of the world depends on how quick you get out today!"
Gaz finally appeared in the middle of the crowd of yelling kids charging down the hall, her eyes as usual glued to nothing else but her GameSlave. When somebody suddenly jostled her in running past, Gaz put her game on Pause just long enough to catch this someone and viciously slam whoever it was halfway through the wall.
So when Dib ran up to her to share all the information he had collected that day, he was even more careful than usual not to actually run into her. "I know he's up to something Gaz! I just know it! He's been quiet all day! He's never quiet! Haven't you ever heard the expression 'the calm before the storm'?"
Though certainly capable of delivering a storm herself, Gaz remained ominously silent as they began to head home.
"Gaz, please, listen. This is important. I mean, REALLY important. If we don't do anything and the earth is destroyed, there'll be no more video games. Or pizza either." Not much got Gaz's attention, but if this didn't, nothing would.
Gaz was determined not to grant him even enough attention to say shut up.
In his passion Dib took this lack of her usual snarling rudeness to indicate actual interest. "Oh, thanks Gaz! This is really important and you can be a real big help! I'll do anything you want! I won't say anything while you play your video games and I won't even say anything at all ever and I'll even make sure you have fresh batteries all the time and... !
"Ahem... so. If you see Zim in the hall tomorrow, take careful note of where he is and the time, and make sure you tell me at lunch if you see him in the morning, and if you see him in the afternoon - "
As they continued along the sidewalk bordering the skool playground, Dib continued describing all his plans and backup plans, complete with some really ingenious ways for Gaz to get a coded message to him should the danger be immediate and were she so inclined... not that Gaz was responding to a single word he was saying.
Just as two vampire piggies appeared on opposite sides of the screen, requiring the utmost concentration and split second timing, Dib shrieked, "GAZ WATCH OUT!"
The GameSlave leaped from Gaz's fingers but she nimbly caught it in midair... just in time to see the "Game Over" screen. The car, which had halted inches away from her with a brief tire screech, received only the barest flicker of her notice as it turned aside, windshield wipers slapping indignantly, to pick up some other kid.
Gaz was much more aware of the lost game than any car. She avoided a world she viewed with only the iciest contempt by saturating herself in video games; only now did she realize it was even raining, and she directed her glare at Dib as if the weather was his doing.
Whether or not excessive video game playing makes a person more violent or just more insensitive is a matter of much speculation. But their constant stimulation definitely does make a person much less tolerant of interruptions.
Dib turned cold all over. Telling Gaz what to do was never a good idea, raising his voice to her was even worse, and a lost game certainly didn't help matters. Anything could happen now.
But instead of immediately flying into him with all four fists and feet, she did the last thing he expected. She defiantly stepped off the sidewalk and stomped out to the dotted line in the middle of the road, where she turned around, stuck out her chin, and folded her arms high on her chest. From this spot she stared Dib straight in the eye to demonstrate that she certainly had no intentions of watching out for anything or anybody simply because he told her to.
"GAZ! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Frantically Dib whipped his head back and forth as the traffic churned past her in both directions. That the cars now avoided the center line more carefully than ever was completely lost on Dib. His whirling mind grappled with one question: if chasing after her would make matters better or worse.
Pedestrians, both kids and parents, began noticing the girl in the middle of the street. Someone taller than Dib shouted behind him, "Go out there and get her, you big stupid thing, before a car hits your poor little sister!" even as the younger kids cheered Gaz on with, "You show him!"
What such reckless disregard for her own safety was supposed to "show" anybody, Dib couldn't imagine. While such a savagely determined young girl might be an amusing novelty to some, Dib knew nothing was praiseworthy about such sheer pigheadedness embraced for its own sake at the worst possible time and place.
"This is dangerous, Gaz, for you and for EVERYBODY!" Dib protested, as another car swept by. Staring at Gaz the whole time, the driver veered dangerously close to another knot of kids who were leaving the skoolyard and who weren't seeing too well themselves, what with keeping their heads covered.
Despite the rain, kids from the other classes were pausing to watch the unfolding drama. They kept exchanging comments like "Wow, she can sure stand up for herself!" even as they wondered why he had "allowed" her to go out in the road in the first place. Dib couldn't believe his ears. If anybody got run over, not only would they change their tune quickly enough, he'd end up getting blamed for the result of Gaz's stubbornness.
Strangers's invitations to "Come here, honey," went completely ignored. Dib kept hearing, "Just tell her to get out of the road, you wimp!" but that was precisely how she came to be there in the first place... and he had no desire to make a bad situation still worse.
Each time Dib got desperate enough to brace himself for a quick dash out into the street after her, a car would zoom up from nowhere, blocking his path and splashing gutter water over him. Some drivers honked their horns, each blast driving him into deeper agonies of terror and helplessness, guilt and embarrassment.
Despite her brother's concern for her safety, Gaz was obviously relishing every second of the scene she was creating. She leaped on every opportunity she could get to make Dib squirm, and milked it of all possible opportunities to rub his nose in the fact that the upper hand was unrelentingly and unmistakably hers.
Whatever you show most people, however absurd, however unjust, they accept blindly and without question, and the witnesses to this spectacle were no exception. Whenever horrible things happened to Dib, people concluded that he therefore deserved them. That everyone called Dib crazy was proof enough for many that he really was crazy. Gaz would need a good reason to be standing out in the middle of the road; therefore, chasing its own lazy, circular logic, the crowd automatically assumed that she did have a good reason.
To make matters even worse, their pre-existing beliefs about big brothers and little sisters twisted Dib's pleas into threats, while insisting on hearing Gaz's threats as pleas.
"GAZ! THIS ISN'T FUNNY! Are you trying to get yourself killed?" Dib shouted even louder.
"Stop threatening to kill that poor little girl!" shouted someone behind Dib, as Gaz's already grim expression hardened still more.
"Dib. I'm warning you. Shut up or we'll be out here all night."
"Yes, just let her back on the sidewalk!" shouted someone else.
Helpless to end this horrible deadlock, Dib found himself fighting back a sudden terror that he wouldn't be able to keep from crying, right here in front of everybody. Without warning, the words leaped from his throat. "GAZ! PLEASE! GET OUT OF THE ROAD BEFORE YOU GET RUN OVER!"
Raising her foot over the far lane, Gaz ground her words out through gritted teeth. "If you don't shut your mouth... right now Dib... I'll step out in the middle of the OTHER lane. Now SHUT... UP!"
Completely disarmed, Dib fell silent, still twitching his head back and forth as the traffic continued to pass by her. A thought briefly passed through his mind to just walk away, escape this crowd and leave Gaz to start watching out for traffic herself, but it left him just as quickly. Writhing with helplessness and guilt but having no idea what to do, he began scratching up inside the sleeves of his trench coat.
After what seemed like forever, a lull finally came in the traffic. Without a glance to either the left or the right, Gaz finally headed back towards the sidewalk. Holding his breath in the silence, Dib swore he could hear tires screech somewhere.
Two steps before she would have regained the safety of the sidewalk, Gaz planted her feet. When Dib reached out to pull her in the rest of the way the look in her eyes changed his mind. A cement truck could have been heading toward her but she didn't seem too concerned.
With what seemed like the entire skool watching, Gaz dictated her terms of what Dib would have to do before she would finally end this twisted game. With steel in her voice, she ordered, "Say you're sorry."
The absurdity threw so intense a spinning sensation into Dib that he threw out his arms to keep his balance. ME? ME? ME SORRY?
Even over the rain, everyone could hear Gaz's every word as the crowd of bystanders fell silent, waiting like vultures for Dib's reaction.
"You made me lose my game!"Gaz seethed, as indignant as if her very life had been staked on it. "If you do that again you really WILL be sorry. And never, NEVER tell me what to do. You will always ask. And keep that big mouth of yours shut all the way home. Your voice makes me sick."
As scattered gasps of admiration for Gaz began to rise here and there, Dib's face burned. Nothing could be more grotesquely humiliating than having such a hypocritical ultimatum held over him before the whole school by his mis-described "little" sister. Not a thing about Gaz was little... nothing, that is, except her small-minded pettiness in leaping on any trivial thing that didn't go the way she wanted.
Gaz was confident that Dib had no choice but to cave in. Her cool order, "You WILL agree," finally shook him loose from his paralysis of shame and horror.
Anything, anything at all to end this... "O - Okay," he croaked out.
"And what else."
This is a nightmare, it has to be, please let me wake up... "I... I'm sorry, Gaz... " he managed.
"Stop mumbling, Dib." Gaz held a hand up behind her ear.
His face grew even hotter. God oh God anything just get this over with and get me away from it... Tensing even more, Dib shut his eyes and took a deep breath before taking this plunge into bottomless mortification. From somewhere far away he heard himself blurt out, "I'msorry!" immediately before the applause and cheering exploded behind him.
At long last Gaz saw fit to step back on the sidewalk.
(A/N) The next couple of chapters are going to be depressing indeed (well, they're what I'd call depressing), perhaps the grimmest stuff I've done to date, and things won't start to get any better until Chapter Five. So if you'd prefer to read Chapters Three Four and Five together, I'll update quickly.
A great big thank you to my beta reader for this chapter, thejennamonster.