# 12- Secrets

Despite the fact that it was only 6 PM, Northern Campus was almost deserted. This, of course, was because MacBooze's was having its annual 'All Booze ½ Off Sale' and this was Friday on a college campus, but it was still kind of creepy. Even the night janitors, champions of clean, were off getting blitzed. Every building, every room on campus was dark and empty.

Well, every room but one.

A gravel pounded down, echoing in the nearly empty room's silence. "I call this meeting of PFRC to order."

There was a snort from one corner of the room.

"Problems from the peanut gallery?"

Liz nodded, scooting her chair forward so she could be seen in the weak light Jas liked to call 'ambiance.' Tall, with short plain raven coloured hair, Liz was the only female in the history of the college to have made the Men's Wrestling, Hockey, and Football teams and immediately quit them after claiming everyone else on the team was too wussy for her tastes. She still got calls from them, begging her to come back. Liz was the brawn and the connections for the group, ordering parts, hauling things around, and welding things together. "PFRC is a stupid name," she said pronouncing the acronym as 'Ferk.' Her voice was surprisingly delicate considering her large frame.

Pouting, Jas pushed some of her dyed green hair out of her eyes. Unlike Liz, Jas was in all ways small. She had tiny hands and a thin frame with the largest almond shaped green eyes that anyone had ever seen. She could play the entire chess club at once and beat every single one of them in the same number of moves, but most days she couldn't remember her own class schedule or how to tie her shoes. She was the brains behind the operation, creating designs and programming and otherwise ordering Liz around. Whenever they managed to crash-land some ship prototype and a paranormal investigator wannabe from the Swollen Eyeball was stalking them around she liked to play 'Which one of us is the alien' game with them. They almost always lost. "What's the matter with it?"

"It stands for Permanent Floating Riot Club!"

"So?"

"So we don't cause riots!"

"Unless people are running from us in terror."

"We don't float!"

"Except when we get the H2 generator out. Or when we take a side trip to space."

"We're not permanent!"

Jas raised an eyebrow. "I'll give you that one. In a cosmological sense, nothing is permanent. After all, even the universe will one day turn upon itself and begin to im-"

"Shut up!" Liz hissed, gripping her desk so hard it nearly cracked in half. "Our club name has nothing to do with what we actually do! We're the freaking UFO club for O-Giro's sake! We're building a spaceship in the old school swimming pool!"

"Exactly!"

"Exactly what!? The pool is in the basement of Walker! There's no way to get it out except for busting through a three story building!"

"Which will severely cut into our Student Activity Fees, I know," Jas said cheerfully, arranging some pieces of paper in front of her. "All the more reason to complete our precious shippy before those horrible people destroy campus with her." Clocking her head to one side, she smiled. "I'm thinking about naming her Mir. You know, like that old space station that no one ever cared about since it was Russian? I like it because Russians invented alcohol. And Russian dancing. And those little dolls that you stick inside each other like some sort of freaky bio-engineering experiment that went horribly horribly wrong."

Liz blinked. "That's nice," she said. "Can we change our club name to something more appropriate now?"

"Oh! I know! We can call us Uber!"

'Which stands for…"

"Permanent Floating Riot Club!"

Liz slapped her hand against her forehead and groaned loudly, shaking her head. "Nevermind!" she moaned in disgust. "Forget I even said anything!"

Jas nodded solemnly. "Alright." She closed her eyes then opened them again. "Who are you?" she asked, looking at her friend.

She didn't know what to say. "Jas… You're an ass."

"And you use up all the hot water whenever you take a shower so I hate you too. Now, on to business!" All the room's lights snapped off, plunging the room into darkness. There was a slight hum from above as the room's projector slid down from the ceiling and turned on. Sliding her jump drive into the built in computer terminal Jas began to grumble when the computer failed to recognize her program. "Stupid freaking…"

"You used Keystroke to make the slideshow again, didn't you?" Liz sighed, feeling board.

Jas nodded. "That's all there is in Walker."

"Jas… That computer's a Dell, not an Apple 'Fruit of the month.'"

"That shouldn't matter."

Before Liz could argue otherwise, the computer made a choking noise and the slideshow sprang to life. Liz groaned and decided not to ask what Jas had done to run the Mac program on a computer that didn't support it.

The screen lit up slowly, projecting a giant Wal-Mart smiley face up on the screen. Grinning widely, Jas stood up and picked up a pointer from next to the screen. "As you can see everything is going fine," she said cheerfully. Then, she sat down, turned off the projector, and had the lights come back on.

All Liz could do was stare. "That's it? You dragged me to this stupid meeting when I should be studying when all you wanted to tell me was that!?"

"Studying?" Jas questioned, looking puzzled. "What on Earth would you actually study for?"

Liz opened her mouth for a retort then stopped, frowning. True, there really was no reason for her to study. She had downloaded all her textbooks into her internal memory on the first day of class. "It's the principle of the thing!" she protested.

"Well, we still have your report to go through if you have it completed."

"I do." She handed Jas her jump-drive, holding in a sigh as the room went dark and the screen slowly lit up. On the screen was a short, frog looking man with a huge mouth, stubby hands and an immense gut. "As I always do," Liz stared, getting up to stand next to the screen, "I researched any and all incoming and current students that may qualify to enter our ranks. First up is a transfer student from California, a Mr. Ivan Tahoppalot."

Jas nodded solemnly, grabbing out a piece of paper and drawing a line down the middle. "Let the judging begin."

"Mr. Tahoppalot qualifies for our club as he is a quarter alien. Or at least I think he's a quarter alien. That, or one of his parents got rather frisky with a frog."

"Parents with an unusual sexual preference… A plus for Ivan."

Liz stared at the picture wondering why she was even doing this. She hated this stupid little man. He had grabbed her breasts, claiming it was 'a custom from where he came from' and had the audacity to be upset when she hung him from the flagpole by the throat. "He's easily bullied."

"Possible Toady status means another plus for Ivan."

"He admits to having eaten road kill whenever he's been too lazy to go out a buy something."

"Recycles."

"And lastly, he likes to abuse kittens in his spare time."

Jas blinked down at her paper, then looked up at Liz with a hurt look on her face. "The cute little black ones with the white sock and the star on their forehead too?"

"Especially those," Liz lied.

"Disqualified and put on our hit list!" Jas declared, carefully writing the words 'Kitten Hater' on the top of the sheet and putting it in her backpack. "Next!"

Liz switched to the next slide which showed a young man with dark hair, glasses, and a trench coat. His hair was in an unusual scythe shape and he seemed to have been caught in the act of hitting someone cropped out of the picture with his textbooks. "Next is Dib Membrane."

Creating a new sheet with Dib's name on it, Jas looked up as Liz started her presentation.

"Mr. Membrane qualifies as he has actively been thwarting alien plans since the sixth grade and has a great deal of paranormal experience."

Looking up in puzzlement, Jas clocked her head to one side. "Hmmm… Savior of Earth?" she muttered, writing that down in the plus side.

"He's also the son of world famous, Professor Membrane, head of Membrane Labs."

This seemed to please Jas more. "Free goodies," she muttered.

"He already owns his own spaceship."

Jas's head snapped up. "What!? What kind! Tell me, tell me, tell me!"

Grinning widely, Liz complied. "A custom built Irken Voot Cruiser."

"Warranty?"

"Expired."

Moaning in frustration, Jas wrote down, 'has own ship,' in capital letters anyway.

"He's… nice I guess," Liz continued, trying to think back to when she was spying on this subject. Yeah, nice was a pretty good description of him. When she had come to him, pretending to be a lost Freshman he's been kind and tried his best to help her find her fictitious classroom to the point of missing a class of his own. It would be nice to have someone like that around. They were easy to boss around and too shy to protest it usually.

"Nice?" came the questioning voice.

"Nice body," Liz clarified, knowing what Jas would care most about. She switched the slide to one taken while the boy was undressing.

As she expected, Jas was instantly hypnotized by the sight of relatively unhairy and attractive bare guy chest. "Can I keep him?" Jas asked, writing down 'Hot for this school,' on the paper.

"Last but not least," Liz said switching to a picture of the boy soaking in a tub to fully distract Jas. "He'spartoftheSwollenEyeball."

Despite the fact that she'd been staring blissfully at the goofy look on the boy's face, Jas's head snapped up to glare at Liz with those words. "He's what!?"

"One of the most attractive men on campus? I mean, considering that we go to a Tech school and all."

"No, no no. That's not what you said." Jas glared at Liz until she made the much bigger girl break into a sweat. "He's part of the Swollen Eyeball, isn't he?"

"Now what makes you think tha-"

"Isn't he!?"

"Yes…"

Crumpling up the paper and tossing it in the trash, Jas crossed her legs and looked huffy. "I can't believe you suggested one of those stupid Eyeball jerks for our club! You know how I hate them!" Liz nodded unhappily, seeing free labour vanishing away. "And you were distracting me with hot guy, for here, pictures too! I can't believe that you would do something like that! I can't believe that you would take pictures like that. You're a pervert!"

"Oh shut up," Liz growled, switching to the next slide. "The last possible applicant is this Zim idiot." On the screen was the rest of the photo that had been cut out showing that Dib had been attacking a short green alien with his textbook as the alien pulled a laser blaster on him. "Qualifies because he's Irken."

Jas sniffed angrily, but eyed the image wearily. "Aren't they the short insane, 'We wanna rule the Universe like Napoleon' race?"

"Yes."

"I can't wait until they find their Russia in winter."

"Agreed. Pros for Zim include the fact that he owns his own ship, he could get us discounts from the Irken inventors, and he has one of those SIR units you've been eyeing. Cons are that said SIR unit is completely insane slash malfunctioning (she changed the slide to an image of a short blue eyed robot dancing in the center of the Quad with a rubber moose and a disturbed looking pig) and he's trying to take over the world."

Still mad, Jas eyed the SIR unit hungrily. "Any chance we could just admit the robot?"

"Negative. Not even this Irken would be stupid enough to not notice when you started tinkering with that thing."

Sighing, Jas nodded. "Then he's rejected as well." Leaning back in her chair, she removed Liz's jump-drive and pocketed it. "No new members then. Meeting adjourned."

Liz nodded in agreement, following Jas out the door. Wearily, she eyed the bulge of her jump-drive in Jas's pocket. "I'm never going to get that back, am I?"

"So long as those pics of that hot for our school hot guy are on it? Never."

"Do you know what I had to go through to get those pictures?" Liz growled, opening the door for Jas.

They stepped into the chill fall night. Jas shivered, Liz didn't feel a thing.

"No idea," Jas admitted. "But I will once you show me."

Laughing, Liz bumped her elbow against Jas's, almost sending the girl into a tree. "Now who's the pervert?"

Jas stopped herself from falling and somehow became dignified enough to be able to shrug. "Dunno. But you better hope that boy never quits the Swollen Eyeball or you're going to be replaced so fast your head's going to spin."

Laughing more, Liz clapped Jas on the back, sending her into a pile of leaves then started running as the human got up and began chasing her, shouting angrily.

And up in a tree, Zim and Dib watched them go, eyebrows raised. "Weirdos," Zim muttered, leaning back on a tree branch.

Dib nodded in agreement, adjusting his flashlight so it illuminated his textbook better. "You know Zim, there's a library like fifty feet away that would be easier to study in."

"SILENCE! Zim likes the tree! If you have a problem, then go take your FILTHY meat body so some other location!"

Sighing, Dib shook his head. "Whatever.

Hey... This isn't any of those stories that I mentioned earlier...

I'm a liar!!!!!

Sobs...

Next up: Chocolate? (How many times have I promised this already??)