Just because Dib had laid claim to loving all of that weird paranormal stuff doesn't mean that Gaz can't enjoy it too. True, he was extremely obsessive and definitely wrong about there being a ghost in their childhood home (It's amazing what you can do with a few spare holographic projectors and a voice modulator) but she had to admit that there was probably a bit of merit to some of his beliefs. Even though she faked the ghost, it doesn't mean that ghosts are inherently an impossibility. Just means her 'stupid big-headed' brother is gullible as hell. Right now he's off in Wisconsin or Wyoming trying to hunt bigfoot, which is definitely an interesting way to spend a gap year, if you asked Gaz, she muses to herself. She thinks he's right that aliens are real, but not necessarily that they're going to arrive any minute and suck all our brains out or whatever. But it's likely that there's life elsewhere out there. It's easy to believe that anyway when you look at the stars at night. Gaz isn't too fond of a lot of things, or people, but she quietly admits to herself that it's nice out in the middle of nowhere. When art school gets too stressful, it's nice to drive out to some field somewhere, look at the stars, and murder pigs on her gameslave. Nothing but the peaceful sounds of crickets and video game silence.
It's her first year of college, and her first time on her own, although Dib drops by in between his trips and her dad's been by once. Although she had no one to tell, she was actually enjoying school for the first time in her life. She smiled to herself as she remarked that she hadn't felt the need to shove anybody down a laundry chute yet, so that's something.
Gaz was currently studying graphic design at a small art college in Pennsylvania, and her dream was to create art for video games in the future. She thought that this was also a surefire way to get access to video games before the general public did. That would be nice. Another bonus, she mused, was that next year she was going to be 21, and would no longer have to rely on Dib for alcohol, and would need to put up with his paranormal talks less. All good things are coming, she thought.
She paused her gameslave and just observed the stars. This far away from civilization, you can see all the hundreds of meteors that burn up in the atmosphere every second. Gaz would be hard pressed to confess this, but she thought it was beautiful. In her mind, she could stay here for years and waste away if the night didn't end. Closing her eyes just to absorb the sound of the crickets and the smell of the night air, she felt like the world had stopped spinning just for her.
Unfortunately, it seems nothing good can last forever. The wind picked up, making her feel cold. She sighed, another night cut short, and just as she was rolling up the towel she used to lie on, this loud noise interrupted her train of thought. It sounded like an extremely loud and annoying whistling, and it was just getting louder by the second. Deeper sounding too, almost sounds like… a bomb? She paused in place, looking at the ground to think about the noise, when she noticed a soft orange glow reflecting on the grass, seeming to come from behind her. Confused, she turned around, her eyes widening as a large red fireball flew right at her.
"Shit!" She cried out, ducking to hit the ground faster than she ever thought she was capable of just to see this strange object smash into the ground a hundred feet in front of her. It looked round, but fire completely obscured the tail end of it, so she couldn't really get a good look at the object.
'Holy shit, a meteor almost killed me. Dib is never gonna believe this.' She thought. Although… The fire looked like it was dying down a bit, and as it did, she noticed something… odd. Meteors aren't red or pink. Or shiny... Right? Christ, it kinda looks like a... spaceship. She felt her heart lurch in her chest as the realization struck her, that she was looking at a spaceship.
"Um. Okay." She muttered to herself. "I don't think there was a class on 'What to do if a spaceship crash-lands in front of you,' but I can think of something." She stared numbly at the fire, when she remembered she had a fire extinguisher in her car! A gift from her crazy, paranoid brother. Quickly running to her car, she grabbed the fire extinguisher from the trunk, and carefully approached the burning wreck. It was roughly the size of a minivan, with half of its mass appearing to be the engines… of some kind. Gaz fumbled with the fire extinguisher nervously, a hysterical laugh at the absurdity of the situation bubbling up in her throat. As soon as she got it to work, she set out to put out the fire. As the flames died out, she noticed a large, strange symbol on the side. It had a circle in the middle, with a triangle below it, and two smaller triangular shapes on top. She thought that it almost looked like a strange, abstract representation of a mouse's head.
With the fires having shrunken down to embers, she decided to investigate the rest of the ship. She slowly walked around it, holding the fire extinguisher in a defensive stance. She kept her eyes on the ship as she walked, and when she reached what she thought was the front, she noticed it. The alien. Lying face down halfway out of the shattered windshield, its green skin reflecting the red warning lights flashing from inside the ship. She took a cautious step closer to it and nudged its hand. To her surprise, the alien groaned, and the hand twitched. She jumped back, raising her fire extinguisher just in case, but nothing happened. It stopped moving. She stared at it… him? Her? There was no way to know if this thing even had gender, Gaz mused. She shoved the gender argument to the back of her mind, deciding on action. Ignoring all those times Dib ranted about 'Don't touch aliens yadda yadda,' she reached for his shoulders, and lifted him up from under his arms and pulled. He was a lot heavier than he looked. Gaz huffed and pulled again, finally making some headway. When he was safely out of the ship and on the grass, she tried her best to gently put him on the ground, although she may have… dropped him a little because of her exhaustion.
She took a few moments to breathe, and then the thought occurred to her that there may be… others. Walking back to the ship, she picked up her fire extinguisher, braced herself, and then peered inside through the broken glass. The cockpit of the ship was empty, save for two jump seats, a silver box with the same insignia on it as the one on the outside of the spaceship, and a small robot, roughly the size of an eight-year-old. Its head looked a little bashed in, and it had some stray wiring poking out from its body. Making another, possibly poor decision, Gaz carefully climbed down into the cockpit and grabbed the robot, tucking it under one arm, and the metal suitcase under the other. Having collected her cargo, she tried to climb back out of the cockpit, but she slipped, and cut her hand on the glass.
"Ow!" She hissed, pulling her hand back quickly. Blood seeped from the fresh cut on her palm, and she cursed herself for not being more careful. Finally, emerging from the ship, she weighed what she had to do next. She very well could just walk away… but, the alien clearly needed help. She sighed, and placed the robot and suitcase on the grass next to her discarded fire extinguisher. Making up her mind, she turned and walked away from the ship towards her car. Getting in, she took a deep breath, turned it on, and then drove it up next to the ship. It occurred to her as she did this, that what she was doing was probably, deeply, very illegal. She needed to pick up the pace. She scrambled out of the car and hurriedly tossed the robot and the suitcase into the trunk of her car. Next, her new passenger. He was still lying unmoving on the grass where she left him, and Gaz hoped he hadn't died. Upon closer inspection, he was still alive, but Gaz also noticed that he was bleeding a dark green, and had blood stained on his hands as well. Not particularly wanting to get blood on the floor of her 2006 Nissan Sentra, she arranged her stargazing towel as best as she could on the backseat. After that was done, she went to do the hard bit, dragging him into the car. Once again she lifted him from under his shoulders, and he moaned a bit in his sleep, which she took as a good sign. She struggled to drag him the few feet to the car, and almost dropped him when she tried to get the backseat door open.
It took forever to get him in a position lying down in the backseat because he was so tall. She had to pull the passenger seat up and push his legs in just to fit him in there. Thankfully, she kept a blanket in the car, so she had something to cover him with in case a cop stopped her and asked if she rescued any aliens recently…
Finally, with everything packed up and ready to go, Gaz began the hour long drive back to her apartment. The alien doesn't wake up the entire time, but he shifts and makes small noises here and there so he hasn't died, yet. She was so anxious about him suddenly waking that she gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. Pulling into the apartment parking lot, she realized she had a problem. The next step is to somehow get the alien out of the car, and into her apartment, with no one seeing him. Fuck.
Luckily for her, it's 3 AM, so few people should be out and about, but this is a college town, and everything is brightly lit. All the time. Unfortunately, there's no real way around this situation, so she only had one option. Drag him up to her apartment and pray no one saw him. Gaz was grateful that her parking spot is in a lesser lit area, far from the building, but unluckily for her it's far from the building, which means she has to drag him even further. She sighed, and decided not to put it off any further. She opened the passenger door where his head was, and took a deep breath.
"Alright, let's do this." She muttered to herself. Dragging him out of the car, she somehow managed to hook one of his arms over her shoulder. She then clumsily grabbed the blanket, and threw it over his head.
"Yeah, that's not suspicious at all." Hopefully, this would fake the appearance of a drunk friend, but she wasn't tall enough for this, so his boots were dragging on the ground as she walked. She huffed, and thanked her lucky stars that the lobby was empty, and that her complex had an elevator. She didn't even want to think about stairs. Somehow, she made it all the way to her apartment without a single drunk freshman stumbling through the halls and annoying her. She fumbled with her keys one handed when she got to her door, partly leaning the alien against the wall so he didn't fall. Finally, the door opened, and she dragged him into the apartment, kicking the door closed with her foot. Not wanting to get blood on any of her furniture, she carefully (as carefully as she could) deposited the alien on the floor of her bedroom, so she could go looking for towels. Quickly grabbing some towels from her bathroom, she speed walked back to the bedroom to lay them out on the bed, to prepare for her new guest. With that done, the next step was simple. Get the alien onto the bed.
"Why are you so heavy!" Gaz groaned as she lifted him, struggling to pull him over to the bed. First, she dropped his torso on the bed, and then lifted his legs to get him all the way on it. He had a strange sort of… backpack on his back, so she just laid him on his side, and finally, she could get a good look at him.
He does not look good, Gaz thought. There's a big gash on his right shoulder and she was pretty sure he leaked that dark green blood all over the apartment. She sighed as she realized she was going to have to clean the hallway tonight. He's wearing this long red shirt thing with an uneven hem so it's shorter at the sides but longer at the front and back. Black pants, black boots, black gloves, nice style. He doesn't have a nose, but there are two slits in the center of his face that probably do the same thing, and he has antennae. It must be some sort of... bug alien, she thinks. There's another gash on his head so he probably has a concussion, and strangely, more dark green blood all over the front of his shirt and hands, although she can't find any more injuries.
Thankfully, she has a first aid kid, gifted by her ever-absent father when she moved out. The first step is to treat the wound on his shoulder. Unfortunately, to get to it, she has to get the right sleeve off, so she pulls off his glove and cuts it off at the shoulder with the scissors from the first aid kit.
It's not a pretty-looking injury by any means, so she cleans it with alcohol and does her best to stitch it up with some surgical thread from the kit. The Alien doesn't seem to like this, as his face screws up and he grumbles in his sleep, but he has yet to wake up. After stitching the cut on his forehead as well, and making sure the rest of him is okay, she drapes the blanket from the car over him to keep him warm, and sets about cleaning the apartment hall and lobby. It's annoying, but it must be done. Then, thankful for her skills with computers and the lax security in the apartment complex, she hacks in and deletes all the security camera footage.
Finally, just as the sun rises, she curls up on the sofa, and falls asleep.