Gaz could hear some sort of lesson being taught by the droning teacher, something about phylogenetic trees portraying the evolutionary history of genes or whatever.

Gaz occasionally lifted her head to face her teacher so she could seem like she was paying attention and taking notes. In truth, she was mindlessly skirting her pen across the margins of her notebook, the rest of the blue lines barren.

She made her final mark on her doodle and she mentally stepped back to take in her full piece– a large canon destroying her Biology teacher. She realized her drafting skills had improved since her early days of drawing pigs and crude imaginings of Dib dying or being tortured. Her art, she concluded, would not be good enough for a stranger to look at it and say 'wow! you're super talented, I can only draw a stick figure. draw me!' but maybe adequate enough to earn a friendly, approving chuckle. And then the inquiry 'draw me!', Which of course would earn a punch from Gaz because geez it's annoying. Gaz never did anything for anyone unless the third party owned her something, was a viable resource to her at the moment, or was family (even that was a stretch). She never thought of it as being cold or cruel, it was a reasonable conclusion when it came to interacting with other people. Despite her stature, she could easily take care of herself and work towards whatever she wanted. Growing up with family too preoccupied with their obsession or work molded her into a self preserving ball of terror, and she was perfectly fine with that. When it came to exerting physical pain towards others, Gaz found it to be especially amusing. She had no sympathy towards her fellow race because frankly, humans were all either stupid or insane. Merely talking to anyone annoyed her, and she had to exercise extreme self control even in the presence of anyone inferior.

And this AP biology teacher was really testing her patience. He began to drool and blinked each eyelid at the time, keeping his index finger hovering without purpose in the air. Gaz grit her teeth, hoping class would end soon, or be interrupted due to a teacher mysteriously getting caught in some weird (proper term: Alien) trap again. The teacher's drool escalated into a waterfall, spreading to the furthest ends of the classroom walls, and the students struggled to stay afloat in saliva that reeked of leftover tuna. Gaz frantically looked across the room to the clock for assurance that her he'll would finally end, she looked to the window and wondered if her fists would survive crashing through the glass to escape. Something, anything–

Then, a much, much too airy voice came from the intercom.

"Attention all teachers!"

The teacher jerked his head in confusion and closed his mouth into a silent "oh?" in attention. The saliva began to drain out of the classroom through the cranny of the door, and the group of soaked students sighed in relief.

The voice continued,"You might remember some of your classrooms being closed due to construction. well, I am here on behalf of the mysterious student council to say that we have listened to the complaints of teachers and finally installed the prep rally tunnels so the performing arts kids can prep sooner. Please fa….family…? familer…. get used to the prep rally button next to the detention and underground classroom button. The principal told me that you should ignore any grinding sounds you may hear because it's probably the air conditioner."

Everyone in the room collectively blinked in anticipation. Skool announcements always ended with a shrie–

"EMERGENCY PREP RALLY IN 6 MINUTES!!! BYE!"

Okay, when she begged whatever higher power for some sort of out, she did NOT mean those awful, horrible, intolerable high skool prep rallies. Gaz groaned and writhed, not caring she was drawing the attention of 20 pairs of eyes. She clenched her fists and raised them to the sky, bellowing "I NEARLY DROWNED IN SALIVA, IN THIS GODFORSAKEN CLASS, TO GET "SAVED" BY A PREP RALLY?? CURSE YOU HIGHER POWERS, CURSE YYOOOUUU!"

Prep rallies may have been fun for the band or–eugh– the snooty dance teams, but never for Gaz.

She was not too keen on spending an entire hour baking under the sun in bleachers that were practically frying racks. Often, birds would perch on the benches and sizzle to a crisp in a matter of seconds. Sure, the smell of cooked bird might be enticing for a while, but after a sum of birds were fried, the stench of burnt meat would make even an anosmic tear in disgust. Which is why Gaz came prepared under her father's patented "Frying-Under Conditions Kit: Umbrella edition". The stench was brought to a minimum and blocked any UV rays, plus it had a built in cooler. Gaz thought the title could use some work though.

Underneath the umbrella with her was of course, her brother. The prep rally was almost over when Dib started incoherently mumbling about Zim suddenly disappearing from the bleachers. Gaz blandly suggested that maybe Zim had burned under the sun and died.

"HHHHELLO MY FELLOW ABOLISHMENTS! It is I, you're most powerful and important human student, ZIM!"

Gaz stopped mid-sentence from a fresh insult to Dib, and both Membrane siblings snapped their heads towards the alien. She was a bit far from the bottom of the football yard, but she could she the tiny creature using a bound and gagged student body president as his stool. In fact, Zim was surrounded by body, staff and council members who were bound. Gaz mentally nodded in approval at his stealthy success in shutting up the chatterboxes halfway through the last dance performance.

Dib gasped in a way only Dib could gasp: annoyingly loud and long. He grabbed Gaz's shoulders and said,

"Zim's taken those students hostage Gaz! And he's probably gonna do some alien thing to us right now, or announce he's launching his biggest invasion! He's never gone this far at a prep rally Gaz!"

Dib was unknowingly rocking Gaz back and forth, making her lose her grip on the F.U.C….. erm, Patented Umbrella. It swayed to the right just enough so that a beam of radioactive sunlight hit her pinky toe, sending a wave of pain through her foot.

Gaz narrowed her brows and growled, "Let go Dib. NOW."

Her brother quickly released his grip and raced down the bleachers, announcing, You don't have to tell me twice Gaz! I'm on it!"

Once again, Dib was completely oblivious to the pain he cause her in spouting his Paranormal nonsense. Gaz clenched her jaw and began to rub her burnt foot, hopefully alleviating some of the heat. It didn't work, and her pinky toe began to pulse, sending waves through her legs. Gaz grimaced and decided to focus on Zim's announcement to distract herself.

"I have an important announcement to close off this torturous human ritual with… I am dating! Yes, Zim is 'going out', as you all here say. Yep, my human liver is churning with courtship."

The entire crowd of teenagers were silent. Zim assumed it was out of shock.

Dib stopped halfway through his tackle to fully absorb what Zim had just said. Dating? Was he serious? That was his big announcement???

One teenager broke the silence and shouted, "ok yeah, can we go to lunch now?"

Zim looked down to the student body president, who bit back tears as his heels dug into her scalp. She weakly nodded and Zim dismissed the students to lunch. Some kids pushed against each other as they descended from the bleachers, others decided to jump straight from their seats and hit the ground with deadly crack. A few wimps never lifted their heads from the pavement.

Dib pushed against the wave of children to confront Zim, who was awkwardly shuffling to avoid getting stepped on. Dib dragged Gaz along simply because she still had protective umbrella. The pointy haired boy pointed a finger towards Zim, but immediately recoiled as his finger came in contact with sunlight. He nudged Gaz's wrist forward so the umbrella covered all three of them.

Dib turned back at Zim and shouted, "I don't know what you're planning Zim, but you know I'll do whatever it takes to stop you from taking over the earth!"

Faux blue eyes rolled in defiance, and two rows of zippered nodules flashed, "Your large head must be empty Dib, I simply said I was dating. That's what normal humans do, right? There's no trick up my sleeve."

Dib grunted, obviously unconvinced. Zim unlocked his piercing glare at his nemesis and looked up at the enormous cover-thingy. His eyes traced the metal digits back to a curved handle, which was being held by Gaz.

Zim brought his hand to his chin, rubbed in thoughtfully and said, "What is this contraption? It ingeniously blocks the sun from burning Zim."

"It's an umbrella, you moron. Every human knows what that is." Gaz said.

Zim shifted at her retort and weakly responded,"ehh, of course!"

"And not everyone has to date you know. You only go shoving it in everyone's throats if you're really insecure, needy and just a plain weirdo-"

"WHICH I AM NOT, GRUNT!" Zim barked in retaliation. He knew this insufferable, violently scary girl well enough to know when she casted an insult, and he was NOT going to let it slide. Unknowingly, his pak legs peaked out from his back in reflex. He felt their tips whir in preparation for battle, and he itched to disintegrate her, but forced them back in stationary mode lest he risk exposing his nature.

"-ok, sure, whatever. Either way people are gonna get curious to see your date Zim. You're just gonna make it harder if you keep announcing it. Now that I think about it though, I wanna be there when this comes to bite you in the but. It'll make for a good laugh." Gaz finished and began to walk away.

Dib saw the fury boiling up inside Zim. He really appreciated it when his sister helped his cause in rare instances. Dib topped off her warning with his own,

"And I'll be there too Zim! I still haven't given up our fight, and my dissection recordings will air sooner than you think! I'll show everyone that you're a rotten aliieeaaaaAAAAAGAZWAITUPAAAAA!"

Dib's entire body felt like it was on fire without his sister to cover him. He began bolting to her side, sort of running, sort of dancing on his toes with pain. He couldn't hear past his screaming or the deafening pulse of hurt shooting through him. The field was now completely empty, and the unmoving students stuck to the asphalt suddenly disappeared. The only sound reverberating through the perimeter was Dib's cry and the amused laughter of a purple haired girl and a green alien.

I changed things up a little bit! and by a bit I mean a lot. I'm kinda experimenting with my style of storytelling and the lengths of my chapters so be patient with me ya goobs.

Also I might not be able to post as often because I finally have a job for the first time now (yay wooo), so I'll try to make up for it by longer chapters to cover more ground :)