Apatha collapsed as soon as her door was open.
"Skool... so...
DRAINING!" she moaned as she slowly
clawed her way across the
floor, her overloaded
backpack in tow. A claw-like hand reached
over the
edge of her desk and dramatically pulled a handful
of
M&Ms from a blue bowl that lay on a stack of
random
doodles. As the chocolate candies were chewed, the
fatigued
female jumped up with an audible "ping!"
Now filled with
sugar-energy, Apatha cheerfully
grabbed the phone. Punching in
some numbers, she set
the phone to her ear, and hopped as the
other end
rang. A voice crackled onto the other line,
"Hello,
human. I AM NORMAL!"
Apatha giggled and
responded in a voice riddled with
voluntary cracks. "Hey, man,
that video is 2 weeks
over due! Turn it in tomorrow or you're
gonna
paaaaay... LATE FEES!" Both ends of the phone filled
with
laughter as the friends shared their Zim-jokes.
"Anyways,
Ivan. There's that English test coming up.
Want to come over to
study?" asked Apatha.
"Sure, but can Dan come, too? He was
gonna come here
for the studyin'."
"Whatever. See ya in 10!" They hung up.
Soon,
the small three person group was sitting in the
middle of Apatha's
room, books and binders lay open as
they diligently took notes. A
typical scene of Ivan
and Apatha would depict the two
half-studying, and
half-doodling their favorite cartoon
characters, or
laughing as they recreated their favorite
jokes.
In the presence of Dan, such behavior is rare. You
see,
Dan doesn't watch cartoons. He doesn't read comic
books. He
doesn't even eat potatoes (but that's a
different
story)!
"That lipstick's the wrong color for you!"
cried
Apatha, pointing accusingly at Ivan. He laughed. "I
see
your envy of my neck, and I don't blame you!
Droooool over my
magical powers! I have powers pinto
beans can only dream of!"
Of
course, there were times when a quote would slip
out
unsupervised.
The pair fell into fits of ground-pounding
laughter.
Dan hardly flinched as he answered his own
question.
"Inside joke," he muttered.
Apatha regained
her breathing as she calmed down.
"Sorry... sorry. You'd get
it... if you were... cool
like us." She and Ivan grinned as Dan
looked them
over.
Ivan: medium sized; short, spiky, black
hair; plain
color clothing (T-shirt, loose jeans); an evil
grin;
squinting brown eyes.
Apatha: dyed purple streaks in
blond hair; a silver
ankh pendant; plain color clothing (a tank
top and
loose pants, usually); a stupid smile; wide open
gray
eyes.
Nothing obviously strange or crazy about these
two;
you'd need to hang out with them to get a full dose of
what
they're like. Dan sighed. "Yeah, cool. Whatever."
Dan
himself was the epitome of normal, baggy pants and
all. His hair
was black, brown eyes. Pretty normal,
even in spiteful silence,
which now filled the small,
barn-smelling room.
"Okay,
yeah, sorry," Apatha rubbed the back of her
neck cartoonily
(that really should be a real word).
"Here, I'll get us some
drinks."
Now would be a perfect time to bring out the
main
plot, yet, I rather like these semi-real characters
sitting
in my fictional room, drinking stuff and
reading stuff. Okay,
FINE.
As Apatha returned with a Pepsi in either hand and a
Dr.
Pepper balancing on her head, a loud noise
startled her. It
sounded something between a plane
landing and a dead moose. Not a
DYING moose, but a
dead one.
Apatha jumped into the air and
dropped the three cans.
"WTF?" she cried with a giggle.
(Using internet lingo
in real life always makes me laugh)
Ivan
and Dan joined her in the hall way. "I heard a
noise," stated
Dan.
"Well, YEAH!" cried Ivan and Apatha in almost
perfect
unison (Ivan had held his "well" a bit
longer).
"Sounded like a plane or somethin'," said
Ivan.
"Yeah," agreed Apatha. "And a dead moose."
"I
thought that, too," Ivan responded as he headed for
the door.
"C'mon! Let's check it out!"
And so the three
sophomores exited the house of Apatha
and stepped into her back
yard.
It was a sight of pure glee, for there rested
a
Voot-type spaceship which was black and silver. In the
place
of an Irken logo was: Z?
The ship gave of a sparkling gleam
much like the squee
of a fangirl, or frightened little boy. The
rockets
held a power and majesty only held by that of a
murderer
with the upper hand. The tinted glass
concealed the inner seats
with the dark cover of a
hidden voice.
Okay... that was weird.
Anyways, the great craft was a wonderful sight
to
behold. Apatha and Ivan hugged each other, bouncing in
pure
ecstasy.
Dan just looked confused or uninterested or worried
or
all three. No one likes him anyhow. So, as Ivan and
Apatha
circled the craft, exclaiming their absolute
excitement at every
shiny surface, Dan thought and
finally posed a question. "Where
did this come from?"
The Zim-fans stopped. "What...? Who
CARES!" cried
Apatha. "Yeah!" exclaimed Ivan. "Let's get
inside!"
The three teens opened the huge
windshield-type-thing
to reveal exactly three seats. "How
utterly
convenient," mused Apatha. Her eyes looked upward
and
she put on a look of mock-fear, "Almost as if it
was
planned!"
Ivan laughed as he climbed inside. "Let's
hurry! I can
sense the interest of the readership
fading!"
Apatha's eyes widened, "Oh, yeah! Crap! Hurry
up,
Dan."
Dan examined the inside of the ship. It
looked
entirely foreign to him, but to us it would look like
the
inside of Zim's voot, with some added installments
for radio and
the suchlike. "I'm not getting in there.
Do you even know how
to run this thing?"
Apatha sighed. "Don't worry, Ivan
and I are EXPERTS on
voot cruisers! These type of things are all
OVER the
cartoons we watch!"
Dan raised an eyebrow and said nothing.
"I've used more complicated devices as
play things!
I'll figure it out!" said Ivan from inside the
ship,
where he was happily bouncing in his seat. Dan made a
point
by not saying anything.
"Come on, Dan! Don't be such a
dookie-head." said
Apatha in a pleading voice.
"Hehe... Dookie" muttered Ivan.
"But you only know this thing from
CARTOONS! This is
REAL LIFE! Not a cartoon!" cried Dan, waving
his arms
about.
Before Apatha could answer, Ivan poked his
head in
between the two. "Hey! Losing readership!"
Dan
jumped in that instant. If there was anything he
didn't want, it
was to be ignored by all his possible
readers. (Please readers,
love Dan's sorry bum and
read my crap. I promise Zim will be in
it by the third
chapter AT LEAST!)
So the Zim-fans and
Dookie-Dan sat comfortably in
silence for a good 10 seconds. This,
as told later by
Apatha, added a good amount
of
not-doing-anything-humor, which was dearly needed by
the
fic. After this was over, Apatha, who was seated
in the middle,
cracked her knuckles and began to push
buttons. Ivan did the same
on his side, smartly
pressing the right ones at the right
time.
The ship lifted off smoothly, then SHOT INTO THE
FAR
REACHES OF SPACE, creating a wormhole and it warped
into
another dimension! Everyone screamed and
screamed until the voot
slowed down enough for them to
note their surroundings.
Outside
of their silver and black voot was a world
very close and familiar
to us all. That is, except for
Dan. Ivan and Apatha were by this
time just drooling
morons, completely broken down by the sight in
front
of them.
Dan took this opportunity to examine
the
indecipherable controls. "Hey, guys? How did you know
what
to do?"
Ivan snapped from his amazement long enough to
roll
his eyes and say, "Well, duh! This is from a cartoon!
The
controls are rarely consistent, and therefore, no
matter what you
press, you get the same outcome."
"Which is cool!" added Apatha.
The ship slowly came to a stop, and it
lowered
smoothly to the ground. Ivan and Apatha pounced out
onto
the computer-colored landscape and promptly
turned into cartoon
versions of themselves. "Wow!"
exclaimed Apatha. "I always
wondered what I would look
like in JV style!"
Dan removed
himself from his seat in the voot. "What's
JV?" he
questioned as he checked himself out.
Ivan sighed. "He's
SO confused and out-of-his-league
right now."
Apatha
smirked. "I know, totally." She advanced on Dan
slowly. "Do
you have what it takes to know all there
is, to be truly obsessed
about Invader Zim and, maybe,
JtHM as well? Can you handle all the
pointless
information you need in this world to SURVIVE!"
By
now, she was a few inches from Dan's nose with the
facial
expression of a drill sergeant.
"Um... no, not really,"
said Dan as politely as he
could.
Apatha backed off and
looked at Ivan incredulously.
"Well, okay. If you don't wanna
LIVE!"
"Yeah, whatever."
Giggling happily, Ivan
and Apatha skipped down the
street together with Dan sulking
behind. He was a bit
disappointed about his current position, as
would
anyone who had no idea what was going on. Apatha
looked
around at the semi-familiar sights.
"Why is there nothing
good here!" she cried
dramatically in Zim style.
"If
we keep walking, we'll find the Skool really
fast," decided
Ivan.
"How do you know that?" asked Dan as he caught up.
"It's a cartoon. No one wants to sit around and
watch
some characters wander around for hours."
"Yeah!"
Apatha cried triumphantly. "Woo! Ivan,
high-five!" The friends
slapped hands quickly and set
off in a random direction.
"Hey, look! It's Wally!"
"Yeah, you hardly ever see HIM walking around."
"Um, is he a character?"
"Nah, just a background person."
"... And you know his name?
That's incredibly nerdy
and stupid."
"Hey! He's not
JUST a background person! He voices
Tallest Red, as well as some
Family Guy characters in
real life. Also, in the show, he flagged
a bus down,
prompting Gir to say a particularly helpful
line,"
Apatha proved her geekiness with a long
dialogue.
"What... about... the... bus?" recited Ivan.
Dan made ANOTHER point by not saying anything. He
stared
at the two laughing morons with one eyebrow
raised.
They
continued to walk for a very small amount of
time, when the Skool
broke into view. "See, what'd I
tell you?" said Ivan smugly.
"Yeah, Ivan! We were SO
right!" Apatha cried, her excitement
increasing more
and more.
They rushed to the window to the
right of the front
doors. and peered in with held breath. They
stifled
squeals as Ivan pointed to their cartoon heroes. Zim
and
Dib sat in bored silence behind the glass... doing
absolutely
nothing. Did this deter Ivan and Apatha's
excitement? Heck,
no!
"Hey, did ya notice they spelled 'school' with a
'k'?"
came a voice from behind. Dan stood and pondered
the
sign that hung above the facility. "Isn't that
teaching
our youth the wrong way to spell it? Wouldn't
this cause
problems in school? That's probably why the
show was
canceled."
Apatha glared at Dan. Not knowing where to start
she
said, "Quiet, you'll wake the baby!"
Ivan whipped
his head around. "And I thought I was
random." The two giggled
at her pointless statement
while Dan rolled his eyes and pulled
out his iPod.
Movement inside the classroom caused the fans to
quiet
down and listen. After all, nothing boring ever
happens
in the cartoon world. Ah, yes. Ms. Bitters was
rambling on about
the flesh-eating diseases of Africa
as Zim and Dib argued quite
obviously in front of the
class.
"Take it back!" cried
Dib, much to the swooning af
Apatha (she's a bit of a Dib
fangirl).
"I'll never take it back, Dib," Zim
growled
contemptuously, to more swooning of Apatha (she's a
bit
of a Zim fangirl, too).
"But I don't want it!" Dib
squirmed under the heavy
tackle box.
"What makes you
think I want it! I am far too
advanced to be lowered to the level
of carrying that-"
Zim scoffed, "-THING!"
"Hey! We
both have to carry this, Zim! It's too heavy
otherwise!" Dib
strained under the immense weight.
Dan peered in the window. "Why-?"
"Does there NEED to be a reason?" interjected
Ivan, a
little angrily.
Dan sighed and sat down by the window.
Inside, Dib's knees shook as he attempted to
move
along as Ms. Bitters shouted threats involving
parakeets
(homage to KidK!). Zim marched imperiously
ahead. The two boys...
people... male species... um.
Zim and Dib continued on into
the hall, and out of
sight.
Apatha groaned. "I'll bet
all KINDS of cool adventures
are happening in there right
now."
"Well, why don't we go in and..." Ivan
began
deviously, a evil grin beginning to form upon
his
head.
Before he could continue this thought, however,
Zim
and Dib returned looking rather beat up and angry.
"Well,
at least that time warp allowed us to return
relatively unharmed,"
stated Zim loudly.
"Yeah, I liked the part where that lady
exploded into
marshmallows," mused Dib, a look of memory upon
his
face.
"But someday, DIB!" Zim pointed accusingly at
Dib and
yelled, "Someday I will finally get you to..."
he
looked around at his staring classmates. "Uh, get you
to
loan me a pencil, heh heh. I seemed to have
misplaced mine." He
grinned widely.
The class stared in silence. Slowly, Zita
reached an
arm out and a pencil fell from her fingers,
clattering
on Zim's desk. The silence continued for a bit
longer
until Zim coughed, straitened his back and marched to
his
seat. Dib slumped into his as well while Ms.
Bitters loomed over
him, growling.
Outside, Apatha and Ivan rolled on the grass
with
laughter. Dan glowered at the two. "Hey, I can hardly
hear
this song!" he yelled. "It's my favorite one of
the
mix!"
"So.. pause it!" gasped Apatha as she dissolved
into
another fit of giggling. Ivan slapped her on the back
in
mirth. Dan, apparently unhappy with the ongoings
inside the skool,
slumped over in a huff.
"That's not even funny! It's
just lazy writing
disguised as funny! This is totally unclever and
I am
seriously doubting this place can even exist. I mean,
the
darn show's canceled, right?"
Apatha calmed down and
looked at Dan. "Since when did
you speak in italics?"
Dan
gaped. "Well, I... Oh!" he cringed and pointed
angrily. "Don't
try to distract me!"
"Hey, don't doubt the existence! If
you do that, the
whole place might dissolve, and we'll be
gone
forever!" Ivan fell over into a fetal position, his
eyes
wide with fear.
Apatha tsked. "Now see what ya did to Ivan!
He'll have
nightmare visions for weeks!" She patted him
lightly
on the head as Ivan began to chuckle. "Nightmare
visions,"
he murmured between snorts.
Dan opened his mouth to say
something, but the bell
rang before he could speak. Apatha,
instead, filled
the sudden after-bell silence. "EEEEEE!" she
squealed.
Ivan squeaked slightly, but attempted to contain
his
excitement. "Who shall we stalk first?" he asked.
Apatha
considered this. "I guess Dib. Zim's house
can't be THAT
hard to find."
"True that," commented Ivan, with a nod.
"Plus, Dib is a severe cutie!" She grinned and
clasped
her hands together.
Ivan simply stared. "Never... do that again."
Apatha blinked. "But it's true... isn't
it?" She
turned to Dan, a questioning look in her eye.
He
glared.
"Are you serious? Do you think I would
seriously find
a male cartoon character, that doesn't even
exist, to
be attractive!"
"There he goes with the
italics again," muttered
Apatha, rolling her eyes. Dan scowled
at her.
Before anything else could be said, Dib and Gaz
exited
the building surrounded by hundred of
other
animal-like children. "There's our target!"
screamed
Ivan as he jumped forward. "Yeah!" Apatha agreed,
also
pouncing forth in a dramatic pose.
The trio was silent
as Ivan and Apatha remained it
their poses, frozen and waiting.
Apatha finally turned
around. "Ahem?" she coughed curtly at
Dan.
"Yeah, whatever... Hey, can I stay here for a
while?"
Dan looked up from his iPod. Ivan scowled. "No,
now
hurry before they get away!"
And they were off! Into
the magical world of Invader
Zim and the animated antics therein.
Apatha was sure
to keep the group at a safe distance away from
the
ever-observant Dib and his grumbling scary-sister™
Gaz.
As they wandered behind the children, Apatha
tried to enlighten
Dan on the finer points of
animation and, specifically, the world
that surrounded
them. Ivan was adding things whenever he had
something
to add, but he was content with gaping at
his
environment and laughing at humorous signs.
"So, let
me get this straight..." started Dan. "This
little boy we
follow now is the heartthrob of
thousands of nerdy 20-year-old
girls?"
"Yep!" Apatha bounced in joy. "Yet there is
very
little merchandise that features Dib! Which is sad,
but I
luv 'em all the same." She smiled cheerfully.
Ivan sighed
happily. "I wanna watch the Scary Monkey
Show..." He looked
blissfully toward a TV in someone's
window that sported the
growling primate. Apatha
patted his shoulder. "We will after we
see Dib and
Gaz's- Oh, we're here."
Dib and Gaz
turned onto the walkway that was
surrounded by the famous, and
hardly used, blue force
field. Apatha squealed silently. "There
it IS! Oh,
there it is! The place what holds the
eccentric
Membrane's Lab and the vampired Gaz's GameSlave
2!"
"And the unbelieved Dib's computers!" cried Ivan
in a
stage whisper.
"Is 'vampired' even a word?"
asked Dan with scoff. "I
also think 'unbelieved' is
incorrect."
"What is this, a grammar lesson?" asked
Ivan. "Now
let's go up there, and RING THAT
DOORBELL!"
"Yeah!" Apatha thrust a fist into the air.
She gripped
Dan's sleeve with her free hand and followed Ivan
to
the Door... of DIB!