Well, I don't know why, but I thought it was time for a return from our
good friend, The Skeep. I don't think Zim's been terrorized enough yet.
:} I might just make a little series with The Skeep terrorizing everyone
(though I can imagine it would be incredibly hard to terrorize GIR...) I
dunno...
Anyways, if you didn't bother to read the disclaimer in part one, this is the LAST time I'm telling you!! I don't own any of the IZ characters, but I DO own The Skeep. THE LITTLE FUZZ NUGGET IS MINE!!! MIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNE!!!!!!
Well, anyway, here's part TWO!!! ^^
"The Return of The Skeep"
Zim regained consciousness about an hour later. His back was still to the cold concrete, and the plastic lungfish he had hastily grabbed for a hat was creating a ring of sweat on his forehead. The sun hung lower in the sky now, and would have been right in his eyes, had it not been for a dark figure blocking his light. Zim slowly opened his blue-lensed eyes to be greeted with a glare from a pair of amber-hued eyes, magnified unmercifully by large glass frames.
"Aw, what's wrong Zim?? Did your little friend fly away?" Dib sneered down at the fallen invader. His curiosity about the scene earlier had gotten the best of him: he just had to go back and see what had become of the alien and the bat. The situation was just far too amusing for Dib to ignore.
Zim growled in the back of his throat, eyes narrowing in hatred at his heckler. He then suddenly sprang to his feet and pointed an accusing finger at the raven-haired boy.
"YOU!!!" Zim started, but stopped. He simply froze in place in his position as the other boy eyed him cautiously.
"'Me' what, Zim?" Dib queried, with the subtlest hint of mockery. .
Zim's eye twitched slightly at that, and he growled like a feral cat. "DO NOT PLAY DUMB WITH ME, YOU STINKING HUMAN!!! THIS WAS ALL YOUR DOING!!!" The Irken screeched.
Dib regarded the enraged alien with a rather condescending look, and spoke in a completely deadpan tone. "Right, Zim. I have an entire legion of fluffy little bats under my control because I'm trying to steal your wig. Happy now?"
The alien could only glare at the brash young human before storming off in the direction of the base. Dib watched the alien stomping off over the horizon with a rather amused look. However, he couldn't help wondering about that strange little bat..He remembered some documentary about bats that Gaz had been watching, and according to the very monotonous narrator, North American bats didn't venture out during the day, nor did they ever like to bother with people.
"Huh.." Dib pondered for a moment, but quickly dismissed the matter as unimportant. With a sigh and a shrug, he headed back for home. However, little did he know that two little bright-blue eyes were following him all the way.
Dib remembered to close the front door quietly, so as to avoid his sister's wrath. Gaz, as usual, was planted on the couch with her GameSlave, engrossed in yet another daring battle with the evil Ultra Pigulon. Dib skillfully avoided blocking the light from the TV screen as he made his way to the couch, and plopped down on it like a tossed sack of grain. The sudden weight on the other end of the couch caused Gaz to be thrown upwards and tumble over, her GameSlave slipping from her hands in the process. The game landed under the table, thankfully undamaged. Gaz lay halfway on, halfway off the couch, having just barely kept herself from falling off. Her top lip suddenly began to curl into a vicious sneer..
The low growling noise from the far end of the couch was Dib's first signal that he was going to be in big trouble. Gaz turned her head to look at her big brother, whose skin was suddenly devoid of pigmentation.
"YOU..." Gaz ground her teeth audibly, her tiny hands balling up into tiny, albeit powerful fists.
Dib felt a bead of sweat trickle down the side of his face. He stammered nervously. "Gaz...I..I didn't...I didn't mean to...I..I swear! Gaz, please calm down!"
After a few tense moments of silence, the angry little girl inexplicably withdrew her fists, too tired to bother beating her brother into oblivion. "Dib.." She grumbled, just barely audible.
The boy remained on the alert, not wanting to leave himself open in case this sudden seeming withdrawal was some kind of a new attack strategy.
"Consider yourself lucky that I had just left the save point."
Without any further comments, Gaz hopped down from her perch on the couch to retrieve her beloved GameSlave. Dib wiped away the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, and decided to bury himself in a magazine to avoid any further confrontation. As he was reaching towards the table to retrieve the latest issue of "Crop Circles Magazine", his little sister shot up from the floor in front of him, blocking his access to the table.
Gaz ground out each word with menacing emphasis. "Dib.. WHERE..IS..MY..GAMESLAVE?"
Dib gulped hard, the lump visibly moving down his throat. Without thinking, he blurted out, "How would I know? YOU dropped it!"
Gaz's eye twitched slightly, and she spoke very slowly and deliberately. "Well, it isn't there, DIB...." The hard emphasis on his name made Dib's skin crawl.
"Yeah, well, I don't have it! Maybe it slid under the couch, or something.." Dib suggested nervously. Gaz eyed him suspiciously before going back down to the floor to continue her search.
Dib let out the breath he had been inadvertently holding, and again attempted to reach over to the table to get his magazine, hoping that he had finally convinced his sister that he knew nothing of the GameSlave's whereabouts. However, his hand met wood when he touched the table, and nothing more. The spot on the table that had been previously occupied by his magazine mere minutes ago was now nothing but an empty space and some stray dust. He checked the immediate area around him, but the magazine was nowhere to be found.
"Gaz? Did my magazine fall off the table? It was just here, but now it's gone.." Dib queried of his younger sibling.
"No, DIB..I haven't seen your stupid magazine..and I can't find my GameSlave, either, meaning you BETTER not have DONE anything with it!" The little girl stood up to face her older brother.
"I already told you I didn't have your stupid game!" Dib was exasperated at his sister's persistence.
Gaz's expression suddenly went very cold; her lip began to curl again, and her eye started to pick up that odd little twitch. "Then what's THAT, DIB???" Gaz pointed next to where her brother was sitting.
"What's WHAT?" Dib questioned before looking down to where his sister was pointing. Sitting beside him, screen still flashing almost mockingly, was that accursed GameSlave. Dib's throat tightened suddenly. "You don't think that..that I put that there, do you?"
"Well, then who else put it there, DIB? A wandering packrat, perhaps?" Gaz questioned her brother in only the most cynical of matters.
"It must have landed there when you dropped it, and neither of us noticed it. I sure didn't put it there. And where's my magazine, huh?" Dib tried to turn the tables on the situation.
"I wouldn't take your dumb magazine if you paid me!" Gaz screeched at her brother, and scooped up her newly-found game. The two continued to squabble until they were interrupted by their father, who had just walked into the room.
The Professor motioned to Dib. "Son, you need to learn to take better care of your things. You really shouldn't put your magazines in the toilet." Membrane held up a soggy issue of "Crop Circles Magazine".
"My magazine!" Dib cried out, and ran to retrieve the moistened magazine from his father. He held it carefully, silently mourning the loss of his precious reading material. "The toilet? What was it doing in the toilet? I sure didn't put it there!"
Membrane shook his head, and waved a finger at his son. "Now now, son. It's not polite to fib. If you didn't put it there, than who did?"
Dib narrowed his eyes, and cast a glare over his shoulder at his sister, who had continued playing her GameSlave. Without pausing from her game, she spoke up. "Don't even give me that look, Dib.. I was in the room with you the whole time, so I couldn't have put your stupid magazine in the toilet."
She was right.. Dib looked back up helplessly at his father, who now had his arms crossed, and one eyebrow raised above his ever-present goggles.
"But, I was in the room the whole time, too! I couldn't have done it!" Dib protested, a hint of desperation in his voice.
"Well, then I don't know, son." Membrane shrugged, arms still crossed. "But, I've got a lot of work to do, so you two just play nice now." With that, he turned on his heels, and marched back towards the lab in that weird, "Professor" way of his.
Dib could only just stand there with his dampened magazine, utterly confused. Gaz did not give the matter any thought, as she now had her GameSlave back. All was right with the world as far as she was concerned.
Down in the lab, which in any normal household would have been a basement, Membrane went back to work on building a better mousetrap, after which he would then start work on building a better mouse. Picking up where he left off, he reached for the hand-held blowtorch, only to find it missing. Meticulously combing the countertops, he became further irritated as the torch proved nowhere to be found. He stood for a moment, scratching his head and thinking. He did that a lot, actually. It was then decided, somewhere in his obviously brilliant mind, that he would go ask his children.
Back upstairs, Gaz had, as she does every once in a great while, put away her GameSlave in favor of another activity. She had decided to draw some more demented piggies to decorate the fridge. Dib, meanwhile, was trying desperately to dry his magazine with a paper fan. He was getting nowhere fast. REAL fast.....
Membrane again ventured out of the lab for the second time in over two weeks. Dib thought to himself that they would have to mark this one down on the calendar - twice in one day! Usually, his father was more elusive than a groundhog..
"So, Dad..did you see your shadow?" Dib quipped cynically, still trying to dry his sodden magazine.
Membrane raised one lone eyebrow, and looked down around his feet. It was so dark where he was standing that he failed to cast any shadow. He seemed confused for a moment, then looked back up at his son and answered in his cheery, deadpan way. "Nope!"
"I'll bet he was completely serious just now.." Dib blinked, then just shook his head.
Completely forgetting about his lack of shadow, Membrane questioned his offspring as to the whereabouts of the torch. "Kids, have you seen my hand- held..fire..thingy? You know, that little metal thing that fire comes out of.."
Dib muttered under his breath. "Maybe Gaz's invisible packrats put it in the toilet.." Gaz looked up from her picture to glare at her brother, but said nothing. Membrane just scratched his head and eyed his children curiously before turning to go back to the lab. However, he didn't make it far before he came crashing to the floor with enough force to cause Gaz's soda to splash out onto her piggy picture. This at least distracted her enough to notice that her father on the other side of the room had just fallen flat on his face.
Gaz raised one questioning eyebrow, face actually showing the tiniest hint of concern. "Dad..?"
"I'm okay, kids.." Membrane managed to sit up. "I just tripped over something.." He looked to where he had tripped. There, lying by his feet, was his missing torch. "Well..I'll be darned!" Without another word, Membrane scooped up the torch, and his remaining dignity, and headed back to the lab. The two siblings looked at each other for a moment, then just shrugged and turned back to their previous activities.
Dib had finished drying nearly half the magazine. He was about to start on the other half when he heard his sister's familiar growl. He looked over to where she was laying on the floor. "NOW what's wrong?" He queried.
Gaz ground out a menacing, throaty reply. "Where..are..my..CRAYONS?"
Dib rolled his eyes and sighed, exasperated. "I haven't moved from this spot in the last 15 minutes, Gaz. And besides, what would I want with your crayons? They probably just rolled away or something when Dad fell.."
"The BOX of crayons rolled away, DIB?" Gaz regarded her brother suspiciously.
Dib just shrugged in response. Gaz sighed, and put her head in her hands. After a few minutes, she finally got up to go get another soda. When she opened the fridge door, she was greeted by the sight of her box of crayons, carelessly tossed in the fridge next to one of Dad's many disastrous culinary experiments: corn salad. She turned up her nose, and quickly retrieved her crayons before they might somehow become infected with corn stench.
She stomped back into the living room, crayon box in hand. She stopped in front of the TV, blocking the picture. Dib tried to see around her, then made a sound of protest. "Gaz, could you quit blocking the TV? "Mysterious Mysteries" is on!"
"What were my crayons doing in the fridge, DIB?" Gaz thrust the box of colorful wax sticks in her brother's face.
Dib pushed the box away, and still kept trying to see around his little sister. Irritated, he finally replied, "I don't know! Maybe they were warm, so they jumped in the fridge! Now, could you please move so I can see the TV??"
Gaz decided to let it drop, and went back to coloring her picture. However, when she pulled out the brown crayon to draw some mud for the demented piggies to roll around in, she noticed that the crayon was all...chewed up... Startled, she dropped the crayon, and went to check the rest of the crayons in the box.. Chewed up. Every last one of them.... She made a sound of disgust at her discovery, and turned again to her brother. But, before she could say anything, she heard a strange rustling sound from somewhere, then:
"BURP!"
Gaz twisted her nose in disgust, and glared at her sibling. "DIB! That's DISGUSTING!"
Dib raised one lone eyebrow. "ME? I thought YOU did it!"
Gaz crossed her arms. "No. I did not."
Dib just rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well somebody did it! And I doubt it was Dad, unless he's been eating radishes again..."
"Even on radishes, he never belches THAT loud!" Gaz cocked her head at her brother.
"Yeah, well.." Dib started, but was suddenly interrupted by a strangle rustling sound coming from under the couch. "What the heck was that?"
"I..don't know.." Gaz crawled over to the couch. "It sounds like it came from under here." She sat up, and got the flashlight out of the end table drawer, then shone the beam under the couch. The light immediately reflected off of something shiny...
"Marbles..?" Gaz thought to herself as she tried to get a better look. Then suddenly, the two "marbles" shot towards her.
"SKEEEEEEEEEEP!" A fluffy little creature popped its head out from under the couch. Taken by surprise, Gaz screamed and fell backwards as the critter quickly shuffled out from under the couch, frantically searched the room with its eyes, then took off out the nearby window.
"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT????" Gaz screeched, clutching at her heart and trying to catch her breath.
Dib stared out the window for a few moments. "Was that..?" He shook his head. "Nah..couldn't have been.." Dib just went back to reading his freshly-dried magazine, and put the whole situation out of his mind.
From that point on, Gaz made it a point to keep all windows in the house permanently closed.
Anyways, if you didn't bother to read the disclaimer in part one, this is the LAST time I'm telling you!! I don't own any of the IZ characters, but I DO own The Skeep. THE LITTLE FUZZ NUGGET IS MINE!!! MIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNE!!!!!!
Well, anyway, here's part TWO!!! ^^
"The Return of The Skeep"
Zim regained consciousness about an hour later. His back was still to the cold concrete, and the plastic lungfish he had hastily grabbed for a hat was creating a ring of sweat on his forehead. The sun hung lower in the sky now, and would have been right in his eyes, had it not been for a dark figure blocking his light. Zim slowly opened his blue-lensed eyes to be greeted with a glare from a pair of amber-hued eyes, magnified unmercifully by large glass frames.
"Aw, what's wrong Zim?? Did your little friend fly away?" Dib sneered down at the fallen invader. His curiosity about the scene earlier had gotten the best of him: he just had to go back and see what had become of the alien and the bat. The situation was just far too amusing for Dib to ignore.
Zim growled in the back of his throat, eyes narrowing in hatred at his heckler. He then suddenly sprang to his feet and pointed an accusing finger at the raven-haired boy.
"YOU!!!" Zim started, but stopped. He simply froze in place in his position as the other boy eyed him cautiously.
"'Me' what, Zim?" Dib queried, with the subtlest hint of mockery. .
Zim's eye twitched slightly at that, and he growled like a feral cat. "DO NOT PLAY DUMB WITH ME, YOU STINKING HUMAN!!! THIS WAS ALL YOUR DOING!!!" The Irken screeched.
Dib regarded the enraged alien with a rather condescending look, and spoke in a completely deadpan tone. "Right, Zim. I have an entire legion of fluffy little bats under my control because I'm trying to steal your wig. Happy now?"
The alien could only glare at the brash young human before storming off in the direction of the base. Dib watched the alien stomping off over the horizon with a rather amused look. However, he couldn't help wondering about that strange little bat..He remembered some documentary about bats that Gaz had been watching, and according to the very monotonous narrator, North American bats didn't venture out during the day, nor did they ever like to bother with people.
"Huh.." Dib pondered for a moment, but quickly dismissed the matter as unimportant. With a sigh and a shrug, he headed back for home. However, little did he know that two little bright-blue eyes were following him all the way.
Dib remembered to close the front door quietly, so as to avoid his sister's wrath. Gaz, as usual, was planted on the couch with her GameSlave, engrossed in yet another daring battle with the evil Ultra Pigulon. Dib skillfully avoided blocking the light from the TV screen as he made his way to the couch, and plopped down on it like a tossed sack of grain. The sudden weight on the other end of the couch caused Gaz to be thrown upwards and tumble over, her GameSlave slipping from her hands in the process. The game landed under the table, thankfully undamaged. Gaz lay halfway on, halfway off the couch, having just barely kept herself from falling off. Her top lip suddenly began to curl into a vicious sneer..
The low growling noise from the far end of the couch was Dib's first signal that he was going to be in big trouble. Gaz turned her head to look at her big brother, whose skin was suddenly devoid of pigmentation.
"YOU..." Gaz ground her teeth audibly, her tiny hands balling up into tiny, albeit powerful fists.
Dib felt a bead of sweat trickle down the side of his face. He stammered nervously. "Gaz...I..I didn't...I didn't mean to...I..I swear! Gaz, please calm down!"
After a few tense moments of silence, the angry little girl inexplicably withdrew her fists, too tired to bother beating her brother into oblivion. "Dib.." She grumbled, just barely audible.
The boy remained on the alert, not wanting to leave himself open in case this sudden seeming withdrawal was some kind of a new attack strategy.
"Consider yourself lucky that I had just left the save point."
Without any further comments, Gaz hopped down from her perch on the couch to retrieve her beloved GameSlave. Dib wiped away the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, and decided to bury himself in a magazine to avoid any further confrontation. As he was reaching towards the table to retrieve the latest issue of "Crop Circles Magazine", his little sister shot up from the floor in front of him, blocking his access to the table.
Gaz ground out each word with menacing emphasis. "Dib.. WHERE..IS..MY..GAMESLAVE?"
Dib gulped hard, the lump visibly moving down his throat. Without thinking, he blurted out, "How would I know? YOU dropped it!"
Gaz's eye twitched slightly, and she spoke very slowly and deliberately. "Well, it isn't there, DIB...." The hard emphasis on his name made Dib's skin crawl.
"Yeah, well, I don't have it! Maybe it slid under the couch, or something.." Dib suggested nervously. Gaz eyed him suspiciously before going back down to the floor to continue her search.
Dib let out the breath he had been inadvertently holding, and again attempted to reach over to the table to get his magazine, hoping that he had finally convinced his sister that he knew nothing of the GameSlave's whereabouts. However, his hand met wood when he touched the table, and nothing more. The spot on the table that had been previously occupied by his magazine mere minutes ago was now nothing but an empty space and some stray dust. He checked the immediate area around him, but the magazine was nowhere to be found.
"Gaz? Did my magazine fall off the table? It was just here, but now it's gone.." Dib queried of his younger sibling.
"No, DIB..I haven't seen your stupid magazine..and I can't find my GameSlave, either, meaning you BETTER not have DONE anything with it!" The little girl stood up to face her older brother.
"I already told you I didn't have your stupid game!" Dib was exasperated at his sister's persistence.
Gaz's expression suddenly went very cold; her lip began to curl again, and her eye started to pick up that odd little twitch. "Then what's THAT, DIB???" Gaz pointed next to where her brother was sitting.
"What's WHAT?" Dib questioned before looking down to where his sister was pointing. Sitting beside him, screen still flashing almost mockingly, was that accursed GameSlave. Dib's throat tightened suddenly. "You don't think that..that I put that there, do you?"
"Well, then who else put it there, DIB? A wandering packrat, perhaps?" Gaz questioned her brother in only the most cynical of matters.
"It must have landed there when you dropped it, and neither of us noticed it. I sure didn't put it there. And where's my magazine, huh?" Dib tried to turn the tables on the situation.
"I wouldn't take your dumb magazine if you paid me!" Gaz screeched at her brother, and scooped up her newly-found game. The two continued to squabble until they were interrupted by their father, who had just walked into the room.
The Professor motioned to Dib. "Son, you need to learn to take better care of your things. You really shouldn't put your magazines in the toilet." Membrane held up a soggy issue of "Crop Circles Magazine".
"My magazine!" Dib cried out, and ran to retrieve the moistened magazine from his father. He held it carefully, silently mourning the loss of his precious reading material. "The toilet? What was it doing in the toilet? I sure didn't put it there!"
Membrane shook his head, and waved a finger at his son. "Now now, son. It's not polite to fib. If you didn't put it there, than who did?"
Dib narrowed his eyes, and cast a glare over his shoulder at his sister, who had continued playing her GameSlave. Without pausing from her game, she spoke up. "Don't even give me that look, Dib.. I was in the room with you the whole time, so I couldn't have put your stupid magazine in the toilet."
She was right.. Dib looked back up helplessly at his father, who now had his arms crossed, and one eyebrow raised above his ever-present goggles.
"But, I was in the room the whole time, too! I couldn't have done it!" Dib protested, a hint of desperation in his voice.
"Well, then I don't know, son." Membrane shrugged, arms still crossed. "But, I've got a lot of work to do, so you two just play nice now." With that, he turned on his heels, and marched back towards the lab in that weird, "Professor" way of his.
Dib could only just stand there with his dampened magazine, utterly confused. Gaz did not give the matter any thought, as she now had her GameSlave back. All was right with the world as far as she was concerned.
Down in the lab, which in any normal household would have been a basement, Membrane went back to work on building a better mousetrap, after which he would then start work on building a better mouse. Picking up where he left off, he reached for the hand-held blowtorch, only to find it missing. Meticulously combing the countertops, he became further irritated as the torch proved nowhere to be found. He stood for a moment, scratching his head and thinking. He did that a lot, actually. It was then decided, somewhere in his obviously brilliant mind, that he would go ask his children.
Back upstairs, Gaz had, as she does every once in a great while, put away her GameSlave in favor of another activity. She had decided to draw some more demented piggies to decorate the fridge. Dib, meanwhile, was trying desperately to dry his magazine with a paper fan. He was getting nowhere fast. REAL fast.....
Membrane again ventured out of the lab for the second time in over two weeks. Dib thought to himself that they would have to mark this one down on the calendar - twice in one day! Usually, his father was more elusive than a groundhog..
"So, Dad..did you see your shadow?" Dib quipped cynically, still trying to dry his sodden magazine.
Membrane raised one lone eyebrow, and looked down around his feet. It was so dark where he was standing that he failed to cast any shadow. He seemed confused for a moment, then looked back up at his son and answered in his cheery, deadpan way. "Nope!"
"I'll bet he was completely serious just now.." Dib blinked, then just shook his head.
Completely forgetting about his lack of shadow, Membrane questioned his offspring as to the whereabouts of the torch. "Kids, have you seen my hand- held..fire..thingy? You know, that little metal thing that fire comes out of.."
Dib muttered under his breath. "Maybe Gaz's invisible packrats put it in the toilet.." Gaz looked up from her picture to glare at her brother, but said nothing. Membrane just scratched his head and eyed his children curiously before turning to go back to the lab. However, he didn't make it far before he came crashing to the floor with enough force to cause Gaz's soda to splash out onto her piggy picture. This at least distracted her enough to notice that her father on the other side of the room had just fallen flat on his face.
Gaz raised one questioning eyebrow, face actually showing the tiniest hint of concern. "Dad..?"
"I'm okay, kids.." Membrane managed to sit up. "I just tripped over something.." He looked to where he had tripped. There, lying by his feet, was his missing torch. "Well..I'll be darned!" Without another word, Membrane scooped up the torch, and his remaining dignity, and headed back to the lab. The two siblings looked at each other for a moment, then just shrugged and turned back to their previous activities.
Dib had finished drying nearly half the magazine. He was about to start on the other half when he heard his sister's familiar growl. He looked over to where she was laying on the floor. "NOW what's wrong?" He queried.
Gaz ground out a menacing, throaty reply. "Where..are..my..CRAYONS?"
Dib rolled his eyes and sighed, exasperated. "I haven't moved from this spot in the last 15 minutes, Gaz. And besides, what would I want with your crayons? They probably just rolled away or something when Dad fell.."
"The BOX of crayons rolled away, DIB?" Gaz regarded her brother suspiciously.
Dib just shrugged in response. Gaz sighed, and put her head in her hands. After a few minutes, she finally got up to go get another soda. When she opened the fridge door, she was greeted by the sight of her box of crayons, carelessly tossed in the fridge next to one of Dad's many disastrous culinary experiments: corn salad. She turned up her nose, and quickly retrieved her crayons before they might somehow become infected with corn stench.
She stomped back into the living room, crayon box in hand. She stopped in front of the TV, blocking the picture. Dib tried to see around her, then made a sound of protest. "Gaz, could you quit blocking the TV? "Mysterious Mysteries" is on!"
"What were my crayons doing in the fridge, DIB?" Gaz thrust the box of colorful wax sticks in her brother's face.
Dib pushed the box away, and still kept trying to see around his little sister. Irritated, he finally replied, "I don't know! Maybe they were warm, so they jumped in the fridge! Now, could you please move so I can see the TV??"
Gaz decided to let it drop, and went back to coloring her picture. However, when she pulled out the brown crayon to draw some mud for the demented piggies to roll around in, she noticed that the crayon was all...chewed up... Startled, she dropped the crayon, and went to check the rest of the crayons in the box.. Chewed up. Every last one of them.... She made a sound of disgust at her discovery, and turned again to her brother. But, before she could say anything, she heard a strange rustling sound from somewhere, then:
"BURP!"
Gaz twisted her nose in disgust, and glared at her sibling. "DIB! That's DISGUSTING!"
Dib raised one lone eyebrow. "ME? I thought YOU did it!"
Gaz crossed her arms. "No. I did not."
Dib just rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well somebody did it! And I doubt it was Dad, unless he's been eating radishes again..."
"Even on radishes, he never belches THAT loud!" Gaz cocked her head at her brother.
"Yeah, well.." Dib started, but was suddenly interrupted by a strangle rustling sound coming from under the couch. "What the heck was that?"
"I..don't know.." Gaz crawled over to the couch. "It sounds like it came from under here." She sat up, and got the flashlight out of the end table drawer, then shone the beam under the couch. The light immediately reflected off of something shiny...
"Marbles..?" Gaz thought to herself as she tried to get a better look. Then suddenly, the two "marbles" shot towards her.
"SKEEEEEEEEEEP!" A fluffy little creature popped its head out from under the couch. Taken by surprise, Gaz screamed and fell backwards as the critter quickly shuffled out from under the couch, frantically searched the room with its eyes, then took off out the nearby window.
"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT????" Gaz screeched, clutching at her heart and trying to catch her breath.
Dib stared out the window for a few moments. "Was that..?" He shook his head. "Nah..couldn't have been.." Dib just went back to reading his freshly-dried magazine, and put the whole situation out of his mind.
From that point on, Gaz made it a point to keep all windows in the house permanently closed.