A/N: And here we are folks, one last request from The Cowardly Christian for this year.
Back in the day, when we were just bouncing ideas for anti-Gaz stories off of each other, I randomly threw out the suggestion of adapting the classic Dexter's Laboratory episode "Streaky Clean". Cowardly responded with a short but detailed outline for a story based on it, which I slightly modified to make it work better for me, and now after all these years I am finally presenting it to you. I hope you all enjoy it.
Also, not as many TWs as usual for these stories, but be aware that this story does contain nudity and some character bashing. If that's not to your liking, feel free to ignore this story.
That all said, read on!
Disclaimer: I have never owned, and will never own, Invader Zim. It is the property of Jhonen Vasquez and Nickelodeon.
XxxxxxxxxxxxxxX
Clean Streak
XxxxxxxxxxxxxxX
Dib and Gaz stood in their father's basement lab, Professor Membrane looming over them dramatically in the dim lighting of the room, a large object under a tarp behind him. They were looking at him in varying levels of curiosity as to why he'd called them down here, Dib's being slightly higher – Gaz didn't mind any excuse to spend time with her dad, but she'd been in the middle of a gaming session, and she frankly found all this science stuff boring anyway.
"Ah, my children, thank you for joining me today!" the Professor declared, rubbing his hands together happily.
"Yeah, uh, you just told us to come down here a minute ago, Dad," Dib pointed out, which his father brushed off.
"Yes son, that's nice," he said offhandedly, "Now then, I'm sure you're wondering why I've called you down here? Well, I have a brand-new invention guaranteed to change the world yet again this year, ready for demonstration!"
"And you're showing us first instead of all your scientist friends?" Gaz asked, mildly intrigued now.
"Oh, they're all far too busy working on more important projects, like crops that can grow in deserts or super margarine to go with super toast," the Professor explained, "This is a more small-scale development, so I can let you kids handle the practical application test."
"…I have mixed feelings about that, but okay," Dib said reluctantly, while Gaz grunted noncommittally.
"Excellent. Then behold, my offspring, the Membrane Clothing Stain Remover 9000!" the Professor declared. Grabbing the tarp behind him, he yanked it away, revealing a large cubical device, made of metal painted with typical Membrane Labs while and blue, with a large glowing orb contained in its center. Cables snaked around it, attached to both a variety of sensor dishes and, most prominently of all, several large laser tubes sticking out of one side.
"So, it's a fancy washing machine?" Gaz asked with an arched brow, unimpressed.
"Oh, it's much more than something so simple, daughter, as I'm sure you'll see once you've helped me with this final test," the Professor stated, opening a panel in the side of the machine and fiddling with something for a moment before turning back to them, "Ah, son! Thank you for volunteering!"
"Wait, what?" Dib exclaimed, blinking in confusion. Looking around, he saw that Gaz had moved back several steps, making it look like he'd stepped forward.
"Seriously?" he asked, deadpan.
"I had enough of Dad's experiments that time you cursed me to only taste pork," she said flatly, even as she watched intently, hoping he was about to get charred by a laser.
"Yeah, I guess that's fair," he grumbled as his father approached, a vial of something colorful in one hand.
"Hold still, son. This is just colored water, but I need to make a big enough stain to properly demonstrate the Remover's capabilities," the Professor explained, barely giving Dib a chance to process that before splashing the vial's contents all over his shirt. Dib grimaced at that, though that was all the reaction he got out before his father's machine suddenly lit up, its scanners angling around to seemingly get a better look at him. When they evidently saw what they were looking for, the laser tubes moved next, positioning themselves to aim at him before flashing with light.
Dib flinched at the discharge, only to blink in confusion as nothing seemed to happen other than an odd tingling sensation that washed over him. Looking himself over, he saw that newly-made stain on his shirt was now gone, the shirt now looking as good as new.
"Haha! Behold! By use of concentrated high-frequency microwaves, the Stain Remover 9000 is able to separate the molecules of any unwanted materials from the fibers of clothing and vaporize them!" the Professor explained with a triumphant laugh, "And to be clear, son, you haven't suffered any burns? Or feel like your insides have been irradiated?"
"No, I feel- wait, those were possibilities?!" Dib started to say, only to exclaim in shock as he processed what he'd just heard. For her part, Gaz snickered at his expression, as well as the mental image of him being charred like a cartoon character exposed to fire.
"There was only a small probability of it," the Professor said offhandedly, "But in any case, this is wonderful! I knew after the lab monkeys stopped combusting that I finally had the lasers properly calibrated, and this proves it! Now we can move to long-term field testing!"
"Wait, can you go back to the part about being irradiated?" Dib asked, only to be ignored. Instead, the Professor walked over to a nearby console and began typing at it. In response, various machines whirred to life, and from the shadows of Membrane's lab emerged large rocket, which robotic arms placed the Stain Remover 9000 inside of, the rocket closing around it.
"And, launch!" the Professor declared, picking up a remote containing just one big red button, which he slammed his fist down onto. This caused the rocket to burst to life, blasting upwards through blast doors that opened in the ceiling just before it could impact, soon disappearing into the sky beyond.
"Ah, I knew that this home rocket launch system was a wise investment," the Professor said to himself as the blast doors closed, "And all those worrywarts at the lab said that going 96 hours without sleep would negatively impact my rational thinking skills. Ha!"
"…Should we be worried about him?" Dib asked his sister quietly.
"Nah, I've seen him act worse," she replied with a shrug, before speaking up, "Hey Dad, why'd you just launch that thing into space?"
"Well daughter, it's really quite simple," the Professor explained, "It's one thing for the Remover to work in person, but it's designed to function over massive distances. So, I've sent it up into geosynchronous orbit over the city, from which it will be able to monitor its designated users – in this case, the three of us – at all times. At any point that any of us are detected as having dirtied our clothes, it will automatically target and eliminate those stains. And thus, the arduous task of performing laundry shall be a thing of the past!"
"Okay. So, now what?" Dib asked.
"Now, you just go about your lives as normal," the Professor said, "Just act as you normally would, and let the Remover do its job cleaning up any incidental messes that you accrue. That should help prove beyond any doubt that this isn't just some gimmick, but a fully practical device."
The conversation more or less dried up after that, the Professor giving his children a few last minor details before sending them on their way. As the two walked back upstairs, Gaz paused mid-step with a thoughtful look, and then intentionally brushed up against the doorway of the stairs, leaving a small dust mark on the hip section of her dress. A second later, the air around her seemed to lighten slightly as a tingling sensation ran over her, and then the mark was gone.
"Huh, so it actually does work from orbit too. Pretty cool, I guess," she muttered.
"If nothing else, this should help me clean up after fights with Zim," Dib thought out loud, before wincing and adding, "Of course, it would be nice if we also had something to handle injuries on top of that, but I'll take what I can get."
"Whatever," Gaz said, not paying him much attention, as usual. Instead, she brushed past him and made her way up to her room, shutting the door behind her and then settling into her gaming corner. Leaning back in her chair and grabbing a soda, she popped it open and sipped it, humming in thought. Glancing down at herself, she tilted the soda, letting a little bit dribble out of its can and spill onto her leg, staining the tights she was wearing. Once again, there was a barely noticeable flash of light that filled her dark room, and then her leg was clean again.
"Yeah, that could definitely be useful," she said with a smirk. Gaz wasn't a slob by any means, but like any true gamer (by her own views, anyway) she would often binge on snack foods and energy drinks, and during particularly intense gaming sessions might end up spilling them if she didn't pay attention to how she'd grab and ingest them. It was frustrating to have to divert even a small amount of focus from her gaming to do that, but now she had a perfect excuse to not have to, as anything that did spill on her clothes would just be immediately cleaned. She could put herself entirely into her gaming without such a petty little annoyance getting in her way!
She was going to enjoy this…
XXXXXXX
The next morning, a yawning Dib made his way down to the kitchen, arching an eyebrow at the sight that greeted him. Gaz was seated at the table having breakfast, as normal, but unlike usual she was playing on her Game Slave with one hand while using the other to scoop up cereal with a spoon. With her focus split, it wasn't surprising that the spoon wasn't always properly entering her mouth, causing small amounts of milk and cereal to spill out and splatter on her dress, only to be almost immediately eliminated by flashes of light.
It only took a few seconds to realize what was happening, and Dib rolled his eyes as he sighed.
"You know, just because we've got the Remover to clean up after us now doesn't mean that you have to suddenly become a slob," he said, only to flinch back under her resulting glare.
"What I do is none of your business," she snapped, "If I want to take advantage of something Dad made to make things easier for myself, I'm going to do it, and you're going to shut up. Got it?"
"Sure, whatever you say," Dib said quickly, holding his hands up defensively. Gaz scoffed at that, then went back to her food and game, Dib quickly grabbing his own food.
Breakfast passed quickly after that, and soon they were washing their dishes off and placing them in the dishwasher. Though while Dib then dried his hands off on a hand towel, Gaz just wipe hers down her dress, which was then dried by a flash of light from the Remover.
"Heh, wasn't sure that would work too. Cool," she said with a smirk. Yet another small everyday annoyance crossed off the list.
"Come on, isn't that just a little lazy?" Dib asked incredulously before he could stop himself, causing Gaz to glare at him for the mild insult. He flinched back, anticipating a beating, but that's not what happened. Instead, after a moment of thought and with a slight smirk, she walked over to the spice rack and grabbed the pepper, shaking a small pile of the black powder into her palm.
"Uh, what are you doing?" Dib asked, relieved at the absence of pain but confused as to what was happening. In response, Gaz walked back over to him, and without preamble blew the pepper into his face.
"Gah, hey! What was that- Achoo!" Dib tried to protest, only to start sneezing as the pepper went up his nose and triggered a reaction. As he repeatedly sneezed, Gaz brushed her hands off and grabbed one of the floating screens that their father had around the house as it passed her by. Hitting a button on it, it flickered with static for a moment before revealing the Professor's face.
"Oh, hello daughter. Shouldn't you be at skool by now?" he asked, tilting his head at her.
"Just about to leave. But I thought you should know that Dib's sick," she said, gesturing behind her to where Dib was still sneezing from the pepper, oblivious to what she was doing.
"I see. Well, we can't have him out spreading disease to his classmates. Remotely initiating quarantine protocols," the Professor said, tapping at a console on his end of the call. This caused a large drone to float into the room and approach Dib, who finally stopped sneezing just in time to see it looming over him with its large pincer arms reaching out to him.
"What the- hey, put me down!" he protested as it grabbed him and lifted him into the air.
"Quarantine protocols engaged. Removing subject to isolation," the drone announced monotonously as it started to float out of the room, taking Dib with it.
"Hang on a second, I'm not sick!" Dib yelled as he fought futilely to break free.
"Now son, I know you care about your education, but illness shouldn't be ignored," the Professor said as his screen floated after the drone, "So, try to just relax and let things take their course. The week-long lockdown in your room on a liquid-and-medicine diet while you recuperate will pass by before you know it!"
Gaz smirked as she watched Dib be dragged off to his room, listening to his protests echoing through the house long after he was out of sight. Only once he was silenced by the sound of his door slamming shut did she finally turn her attention away. Grabbing her backpack from where she'd left it prepared on a chair, she made her way out of the house, figuring that with Dib now locked up for a few days, she'd have some peace for a while.
Oh, she had no idea how wrong she was.
XXXXXXX
Across the neighborhood, in Zim's base, the insane Invader was laughing madly as he stood in front of his latest invention.
"Yes, this is perfect!" he cackled, looking over the purple spherical device covered in spikes and antennae, "With this Freeze Cannon satellite, Zim shall be able to turn any location on Earth into a glacier! Once all the filthy humans are frozen solid, taking over the planet shall be smeet's play!"
"Why do you always feel the need to explain your plans?" the Computer groaned in annoyance, "You've been working on this thing for weeks, I know how it works already, and GIR doesn't care!"
"I got pigs in blankets!" GIR exclaimed as he stood in the corner of the room, juggling several live pigs that were literally wrapped in blankets, seemingly oblivious to what was happening around him.
"See?" the Computer said.
"Silence! Zim has no time for your insolence!" Zim snapped, "Launch the satellite so that we can begin!"
"Yes, master," the Computer sighed, before obeying the command. A robot arm came down from the ceiling and picked up the Freeze Cannon, placing it inside a large nearby tube, which sealed shut afterwards. A moment later, the tube shook as it fired like an artillery cannon, launching the satellite upwards. It burst through the tube's exit on the base's roof and kept going, soon breaching the atmosphere and ending up in space.
If everything had gone according to Zim's plan, the Freeze Cannon would have entered a stable orbit around the planet, allowing him to target any location on the surface at will. But that wasn't what happened, because by sheer happenstance, just as the Freeze Cannon was about to hit the apex of its launch, the Stain Remover 9000's own orbit put it right in its path.
SMASH
The two satellites crashed into each other, partially crumpling the Remover and sending the Freeze Cannon spinning away while crackling with energy from the conveniently-placed damage that it had also taken. That energy surged through the Freeze Cannon, overloading its circuits and causing a blast to discharge from one of its points and shoot back down towards the surface.
BOOM
And then it exploded, ending Zim's latest plan in record time, the only trace of it left being the beam shooting back the way that the Freeze Cannon had come. In fact, it went back exactly the same way, right towards Zim's base, hitting it before Zim even had a chance to realize anything had gone wrong.
With a blinding flash of light, Zim's base was encased in a gigantic amount of ice, all the way down to the lowermost levels. It all happened so fast that Zim was still in the middle of his victory cheer position, while GIR's pigs were still in midair from where he'd thrown them.
This ice would eventually melt on its own several days later, leaving Zim unharmed but very annoyed, all while the neighbors thought it was just some weird post-modern expressionist remodeling job. But, that's a story for another day – what matters is that the Stain Remover 9000 was still in orbit, but now quite damaged. It was still functional, but if one had been able to look inside of it, they would have seen how the needle of one particular gauge shot up from the middle of its green section to the far end of the red.
A gauge that was labeled "Microwave Beam Intensity. Do Not Increase Pass Safe Limit", with the safe limit mark being at the boundary between the yellow and red sections of the gauge…
XXXXXXX
Sometime later at the skool, Gaz was making her way to her usual table at the cafeteria, a tray of barely edible slop that she was pretty sure was supposed to be some kind of meat stew in her hands. Sitting down, and taking a moment to enjoy the solitude – with Dib stuck at home, there was no one in the building with the guts to try and sit with her – she began shoveling the "food" into her mouth, figuring that if she did so quickly enough, the taste wouldn't linger.
Naturally, as a result of this, plenty of the food spilled out of her mouth and onto her dress. She didn't care, of course, thanks to knowing that the Stain Remover was there to take care of that for her. As such, she paid no attention as bits and pieces of so-called meat splattered onto her clothes, nor to the small flashes of light surrounding her as the Remover targeted the resulting stains.
If she had, she might have noticed that each time the light flashed, it wasn't just stains that were vanishing. With each flash the bits of fabric that the stains were on were vaporized, leaving slightly singed holes in her dress and tights. By the time she was done eating, her clothes were ragged, pinpoint holes running across the front of her dress, and the tights in only slightly better shape, all while she was still oblivious to it.
Getting up, she took her tray over to a nearby trashcan to dump what was left. Setting the tray down afterwards, she turned to walk away, but bumped into Zita as the other purple-haired girl was also walking up to the trashcan, distracted by looking in a different direction to say something to someone who had walked past her. This caused some of the leftover slop on her tray to spill and splatter on Gaz's arm; despite knowing that the Remover would deal with this, Gaz nonetheless felt a spike of rage at the action and turned to growl at Zita, who paled as she realized who she'd just bumped into.
"Watch where you're going," Gaz snarled.
"S-sorry, Gaz, it was an accident!" Zita stammered in panic. Eyes darting around in desperate search for a way to avoid a beatdown, she took in the newly-damaged state of the goth's clothes. She arched a brow at it, but quickly latched onto it as an option.
"Um, the ragged look is good on you!" she said, hoping that the compliment would buy her a way out.
"…What?" Gaz blinked, confused by the comment. Looking down at herself to see what Zita was talking about, her eyes widened as she finally registered the state that her clothes were in.
"What the hell?" she exclaimed, while Zita took advantage of the distraction to run off, "What happened to my clothes?!"
As if in response, there was another flash of light as the Remover eliminated the fresh food stain on her arm… and took a large chunk of her sleeve with it.
"Are you freaking kidding me?!" she shouted in disbelief, realizing with horror that the Remover was for some reason burning her clothes away instead of cleaning them. Of all the stupid ways for this to backfire, it had to be like this? She looked ridiculous like this, and it would only look worse if her clothes kept getting shredded… wait a minute. If this kept going, how much clothing was she going to have left?!
Gaz's cheeks turned bright red as a worst-case scenario ran through her head, of all her clothes being vaporized and leaving her naked at skool like some sort of cliché nightmare. Screw that! She wasn't sticking around to let that happen, she decided, immediately turning on the spot and heading towards the door.
As the bell rang to indicate the end of lunch and the start of the next period, students started flooding into the hallway to make their way to their classes, but Gaz ignored them all as she made a beeline for the building exit. She didn't care if she got some sort of reprimand for ditching the rest of the day; she figured that most of the teachers would probably be relieved to not have to be near her and risk invoking her wrath for once, anyway. All she cared about was getting home and safely behind closed doors, until such time as whatever was wrong with the Remover was fixed in order to avoid being publicly humiliated.
However, it wasn't going to be that easy. Because just as she was passing the boys' bathroom, Torque came running out.
"Run! Too many people had the mystery meat and clogged the toilets, and they look like they're about to blow!" he screamed in a mad panic.
"What the-?" Gaz started to say, only to be cut off in the worst possible way.
BOOM
Namely, the bathroom door blowing off its hinges as a virtual tidal wave of sewage exploded out into the hallway. Before anyone could react, it flooded down the corridor, covering everyone and everything in foul poo-water.
There was a moment of stunned silence as everyone processed what had just happened. Then the various sewage-covered students started screaming in disgust and running around in a blind panic, desperately looking for a way to clean themselves off. All except Gaz, who could only stand there, frozen in disbelief at what had just happened. And before she could even try to think of what to do, there was a flash of light as the Remover did its job; in the blink of an eye, the sewage was vaporized off of her, taking her clothes with them, leaving her standing in the hallway in the buff, the sewage having seeped all the way down to her underwear and thus making it a victim of the Remover too.
"AAAHHH!" she gave an uncharacteristic, if perfectly understandable, high-pitched scream as she processed what had happened to her, cheeks turning an even brighter shade of red than they had when she'd been picturing this exact scenario a minute ago. Instinctively wrapping her arms around herself for as much cover as she could get, she ran towards the nearest place to hide that her panicked mind could latch onto, ducking into a janitor's closet and shutting the door behind her.
Gaz sat there in the cramped space for several minutes, practically hyperventilating as she tried to comprehend what she'd just been through. And when she finally calmed down enough to think straight, her embarrassment quickly gave way to anger.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit! How did this happen?! Dad's stuff isn't supposed to go wrong like this! And when it does, it happens to Dib or random people, not me! I'm not the one who's supposed to get humiliated in public!" she snarled, punching a hole in the wall.
Taking a few more minutes to compose herself, she took several deep breaths to finally center herself, and started to think clearly again. First and foremost, she chose to focus on the fact that while this situation was humiliating, she hadn't actually been humiliated yet – everyone else in the hallway had cleared out due to the sewage before her clothes had been vaporized, so no one had actually seen her naked. She just needed to find something else to wear, then head home and tell Dad about this screwup, and then pretend like the whole thing had never happened. But where could she find clothes?
"Well, there's the Lost and Found," she muttered to herself as the idea came to her, "Most of the stuff there is crap I'd look ridiculous in, but it's better than being seen naked."
Of course, she still had to get to the Lost and Found without being seen first, she realized with a grimace. Cracking the closet door open just enough to see out of without exposing herself, she peered out into the hallway to make sure that the coast was clear. Once she confirmed that it was, she took a bracing breath, then darted out of the closet and started making her way through the halls as quickly as she could, keeping herself low in case anyone glanced out of a classroom door's window.
She was almost at the hallway outside the administration office, where the Lost and Found boxes were kept for anyone who passed by, only to skid to a halt as she rounded a corner. Because there, floating down from an adjoining hall, was a large robotic drone labeled "Hall Monitor Bot 2000", it electronic eyes roaming around its surroundings.
Cursing, Gaz ducked behind a nearby trashcan to hide as best as possible. She couldn't believe that she'd forgotten about this thing, which the skool had started using a few months ago when they'd decided that empowering students as hall monitors wasn't efficient enough (and also because they'd stumbled onto some extra money for the budget, and God forbid they do something more helpful with it). Frankly, Gaz would have preferred to run into an actual human hall monitor, since she could just beat them into a coma so they couldn't tell anyone that they saw her naked; this thing, on the other hand, she was sure probably had remote backup drives for its recordings or something that she'd never find. Not to mention, it would drag her to Detention, which wouldn't do her current situation any good. So, she couldn't let it see her, which was a problem considering that it was currently between her and the Lost and Found, and worse, was heading her way.
Looking around in desperation, Gaz saw that the door to the girls' locker room was on the other side of the hallway.
"That's convenient," she muttered, before shaking it off. Grabbing ahold of the trashcan and lifting it up to make sure it stayed covering her in case the Monitor Bot looked in her direction, she dashed across the hall and dove through the door, not letting go of her makeshift cover until the door was shut behind her and a look around the room revealed no one else was there to see her.
"Okay, now I just need to wait until I'm sure that it's gone, and then make a break for it," she said. Though as she did, another idea hit her, and she looked around at her surroundings more closely, "Actually, thinking about it, maybe there's some gym clothes lying around here that I can wear. Save myself the risk of running back out into the hallway like this."
With that, she started to look for lockers she could pry open to search for any gym clothes that had been left here at skool instead of taken home by their owners. For the first time, Gaz wished that she hadn't talked her dad into giving her a parental note excluding her from gym class (which she'd always seen as a waste of time), because then she'd have her own gym clothes to grab instead of having to waste time playing discount burglar like this, she mentally grumbled.
But before she could do much searching, there was a sudden banging on the locker room door that made her jump in surprise.
"Attention, unidentified student!" a monotonous electronic voice announced through the door, "According to the skool scheduling system, there is no gym class this period. Ergo, you are not currently permitted to be in this room. Exit and present your hall pass, or prepare to be escorted to Detention!"
"Dammit!" Gaz spat, realizing that she'd been spotted. And as the Monitor Bot kept banging away at the door, she also realized that she didn't have a lot of time before it was knocked off its hinges and the stupid robot came in to cart her off to the hellhole that she heard that Detention was. Which, since that would mean being dragged naked through the halls to get there, would just be a cherry on top of her life being ruined.
Deciding that there was no way in Hell that she was letting that happen, Gaz instead turned and ran deeper into the locker room, looking for a place to hide. But considering this was a skool gym locker room, there were no realistic options available, and she soon found herself crouching in the corner of the room furthest from the door, hidden behind rows of lockers.
On the bright side, there were a pile of towels stacked back here, and she eagerly wrapped one around herself for the bare minimum of cover. But on the downside, she was literally cornered and had nowhere to go, especially as with a massive crashing sound, the door was knocked off its hinges and the Monitor Bot floated into the room.
"Attention, delinquent student! Refusal to cooperate will only result in increased time in Detention!" it announced as it floated through the room in search of her. Seeing it heading down one row of lockers, Gaz headed down the opposite side, clutching her towel close and keeping the lockers between her and the drone as she tried to sneak back towards the door so that she could reach the Lost and Found after all, hopefully all while the drone was wasting its time methodically searching the locker room.
But unfortunately for Gaz, in keeping with the lousy luck that she'd been having today, she didn't make it that far. Because halfway towards the door, her foot slipped on a slightly wet spot of the floor, causing her to stumble and fall to the side, unintentionally slamming her shoulder hard against a locker door.
"Ah! Son of a-!" she cried out on instinct, before slapping a hand over her mouth to shut herself up, eyes widening in panic at what she had just done. And her fear proved well-founded, as with a whir of its engines, the drone came zooming back around the lockers, electronic eyes locking onto Gaz.
"Student! Present your hall pass immediately or prepare for Detention!" it announced, pincer arms emerging from its body.
Cursing, Gaz scrambled back to her feet and ran towards the door, not really thinking about what she was doing and just trying to get away. Thus, she didn't notice that she was in fact heading towards the wrong door, until she emerged not into the hallway but rather the gym room. Fortunately, as the drone earlier stated, there were currently no classes in here, so there were no witnesses to Gaz's current state, but the downside was that she was not only still being chased by the Monitor Bot, but she was now even further from the only place where she knew that she could get clothing.
"Can this get any worse?!" Gaz growled in rage to herself as she ran back and forth around the large room, barely staying ahead of the drone at every step. The fact that her focus was split on also keeping her towel on didn't help matters, either.
It was because of this split focus that, once again, Gaz went out a door that she wouldn't have meant to before she knew what she was doing. Which was how she found herself suddenly running on asphalt in bright sunlight, having run out of the gym's exterior door and right out of the skool building.
"What?" she exclaimed in disbelief, freezing in shock and blushing brightly as she realized that she was now not just naked at skool, but out in the open as well.
And then she yelped as one of the drone's pincer arms closed around her waist, her momentary distraction having allowed it to catch up with her.
"Delinquent student detained. Identifying," the Monitor Bot announced, picking Gaz up off the ground and holding her close to start scanning her with one of its camera eyes. This caused Gaz to squirm in panic, desperate to get out of his situation while she still could.
"Let go of me!" she snarled. Acting on rage-fueled instinct, she reeled back a fist and slammed it into the electronic eye.
SMASH
"Agh!" Gaz grunted in pain, glad that whatever weird super strength her dad gave her when he made her and Dib would likely keep the damage from being worse than being some slight bruising on the knuckles. But more importantly, the Monitor Bot was much more damaged than her hand was. Electricity surged from the smashed components and across its frame, and it started jerking back and forth in the air as its hover-jets started misfiring.
"Error, error, error, error, error!" the Monitor Bot screeched in a warbling static-filled voice as it flailed about. Which Gaz would have found more comedic if that flailing about didn't also involve its arms, including the one still holding her, resulting in her being tossed back and forth in the air.
"Gonna… be… sick!" she groaned to herself, feeling bile climb up her throat from the wild movements.
BANG
Then, without warning, several small explosions went off across the drone's body. And one of them was right at the base of the arm holding Gaz, which somehow caused it to go flying off at speeds that would make a rocket envious.
"AAAAHHHHH!"
Unfortunately for Gaz, who was still firmly in its grip.
"I. Hate. Today!" she screamed as she flew through the air, a trip that lasted for several minutes until she zoomed into the city park.
SMACK
And slammed right into a tree. Which hurt like Hell, but on the bright side caused the pincer arm to dislodge and let go of her, though that did leave her to tumble out of the tree and land on the ground. Groaning, she pushed herself up and looked herself over for any serious injuries… and barely had time to process the dirt stains now covering her towel before there was a flash of light as the Stain Remover vaporized them, also burning away enough of the towel itself to leave just a few scattered scraps that were then blown away in the light breeze.
"…That figures," Gaz muttered after a moment, by this point rather desensitized to her run of bad luck.
Grumbling, she stood up and looked around. The good news was that she knew that this park was a lot closer to her house than the skool. The bad news was that the house was still a good distance away, and she now had no cover at all.
"I am going to kill someone for this. I don't know who, but someone is going to pay," she muttered as she walked over to a random bush. Grabbing ahold of it, she pulled it clear out of the ground by the roots, and then held it against herself; it wasn't ideal, but at this point it was all she had to work with.
The very thin silver lining was that the park appeared to be deserted, so no one was able to see her as she ran with her bush covering across its length towards the exit that she knew was closest to her house. Reaching it, she paused, glancing past the gate to quickly look both ways down the sidewalk and street, and sighed in relief as she saw that there were no people or cars in sight.
"Okay, I can do this. Just head a few blocks, cut through an alleyway or two, and then once I'm on my street, I'm literally home free," she muttered. Taking a deep breath, she stepped out onto the sidewalk and started making her way across the street. So far, so good…
"And to your left, you'll see what appears to be a naked girl streaking while poorly covering herself with a shrubbery! Guess she lost her nerve halfway through!" declared a loud obnoxious voice as a tour bus marked with a sign which read "Contrivance City Bus Tours" suddenly pulled up out of nowhere next to where Gaz was crossing the street.
"Oh, come on!" Gaz yelled in exasperation and rage at this ridiculous turn of events, even as her face burned in humiliation in reaction to the sounds of laughter and clicking cameras raining down on her from the bus's passengers. Her first instinct was to beat the crap out of all of them and destroy every camera and phone that now had a picture of her in this state, but that would require dropping the bush that was at least giving her a small modicum of cover and fully expose herself, and she couldn't allow that sacrifice of what little dignity she still had left.
So instead, she simply ran down the street as fast as she could. And wouldn't you know it, all of a sudden people were emerging from the surrounding buildings, and the previously-empty street was now quite bustling. And naturally, Gaz's current state was immediately catching everyone's attention.
"Is that girl naked?!"
"What kind of streaker covers up?"
"Must be shy because she's got nothing worth showing off!"
"Someone, please think of the children!"
Gaz's face burned as the laughter, jeers, and insults rained down on her by the crowd, while her situation meant that she couldn't take the time to do more than roughly shove them aside and keep running. She tried to block it all out, and tell herself that she could hunt all these people down and maul them later, but in the meantime, she just had to keep moving.
Before long, she came across an alleyway and darted into it, only able to hope that she was heading the right way. And in one of the few bits of good news she'd had all day, she could recognize the familiar sights of her own street on the other side.
"Oh, thank God, it's almost over," she sighed in relief. Then froze as a sound drew her attention to pile of garbage stacked against one wall of the alley, gaze turning to it just in time to see a large, scruffy dog emerge from it and stare back at her. Though whether this was in curiosity or a glare for her intruding in her territory, Gaz couldn't tell, and she wasn't in a mood to deal with it either way.
"Beat it, mutt. I've had too long a day to deal with hungry strays," Gaz growled at the dog. To punctuate her point, she snapped a branch off of her bush covering and threw it at the dog, the wood bouncing off of its head. The dog blinked in apparent surprise at that, and then its ears folded against its skull, lips pulling back to expose its teeth as it growled back at her.
"Oh, you want to start something, fleabag? Good, I've got a lot of built-up anger and frustration to vent," Gaz snarled, starting to stomp toward the dog, only to stop mid-step as several other large dogs emerged from other hiding places throughout the alley and gather near the first one, joining it in growling at her. And just like that, Gaz felt her bravado collapse – normally, she could more than likely handle this situation just fine, but the lack of a sense of security that came with her nudity left her feeling very vulnerable when facing a pack of wild animals.
"Uh… sorry?" she said to the first dog with an awkward forced smile.
If the dogs were even intelligent to register what Gaz was saying, they weren't impressed by her half-hearted apology. They snarled and lunged at her, and with a panicked string of curses she turned and bolted out of the alleyway, running as fast as she could towards her house. Out of desperation at the sound of the dogs chasing after her, practically able to feel their snapping jaws at her heels, she threw the bush at them in a combined hope of both speeding herself up and trying to knock some of them out.
Regardless of whether either of those things were accomplished, Gaz's panicked brain couldn't register. She was too focused on closing the distance between her and her house, and then slamming herself against the front door; thanks to the house's passive security systems having read her biometrics as she crossed the property line, it was already unlocked and easily gave way to let her literally fall into the house. As she hit the floor, she immediately rolled over and lashed out with a kick to slam the door shut in the dogs' faces. They barked and scratched at the door, still determined to get to her, so she scrambled over to a panel in the wall and activated the house's more intense security measures, and soon she was greeted by the sounds of lasers firing and the dogs yelping. A quick glance out of the window confirmed that they were running away with their tails literally between their legs, at which point Gaz finally allowed herself to collapse from the adrenaline crash.
"Every part of that sucked worse than the part before it," she groaned after a few moments of lying there panting for breath. However, the realization that it was finally over soon hit her, and she broke down in hysterical relieved laughter for several minutes before she managed to compose herself.
"Okay, time to wrap this nonsense up," she muttered as she got back to her feet and made her way to the stairs. Reaching the upper level, she almost went to her room, but stopped and reconsidered it when she glanced at herself and saw the various stains covering her body that she'd picked up from her unwanted adventure. Realizing with a grimace that any clothes she put on like this would just get vaporized all over again, she detoured to the bathroom and took a quick shower; only once she was certain that she had scrubbed herself completely clean did she return to her room and finally get dressed again.
"Thank God. I'm never taking clothes for granted again," she moaned in relief, loving the feeling of cloth covering her whole body, "Now, just need to talk to Dad to make him fix whatever went wrong so that this never happens again."
With that in mind, Gaz made her way back down to the living room, moving as carefully as she could to avoid getting so much as a bit of dust on her clothes and triggering the Remover. Once downstairs, she started to make her way over to the nearest hover-screen to call her dad, only to come up short as it turned on by itself.
"Ah, daughter! Good to see that you're home!" the Professor declared, oblivious to the fact that it was probably too soon for her to back from skool already, "Excellent, that means we can get started with the demonstration right away!"
"Wait, what? What demonstration?" Gaz asked in confusion, as several camera drones flew out of nowhere to surround her from every angle.
"Well, with it now having been nearly 24 hours since the Stain Remover 9000 went into operation in the field with no signs of negative drawbacks, I figured now was as good a time as any to show it off with a livestream demonstration on all the company's social media and news outlets!" the Professor declared, not noticing Gaz's eyes widening in panic, "Now then, just stand still while we apply some stains for the Remover to do its work on."
"No, Dad, wait a minute!" she protested, trying to back away to safety, only to find the drones boxing her in.
"Yes dear, I know you've been camera shy ever since the Pig Girl incident, but I can't use Dib while he's in quarantine," Membrane waved off her concerns, leaving Gaz cursing herself for that stupid prank of all things coming back to haunt her like this.
"Dad, listen to me! You can't-!" she cried out in desperation, only to be cut off as several tubes emerged from the base of the hover-screen, aimed at her, and without any further preamble sprayed her down with ink, soon leaving her completely soaked with it.
"And now, we simply wait for the Remover to detect this and target the stains!" the Professor stated proudly, Gaz too busy instinctively trying to spit out the ink in her mouth and wipe her eyes clear to even think about making one last desperate attempt to flee what was about to happen.
Then there was a flash of light as the Remover did its job, leaving Gaz clean but now naked in front of the cameras and their live audience.
"…Oh my. That was… not expected," the Professor coughed awkwardly, looking away from his now nude daughter and trying to find the switch to shut down the livestream broadcasting her shame for the world to see. For her part, Gaz could only stand there with her face burning and her arms crossed over herself in a pitiful attempt at modesty, wishing for some higher power to strike her dead so that she wouldn't have to feel this humiliation anymore.
SMASH
Instead, the front door burst off of its hinges, allowing the Hall Monitor Bot – heavily damaged but still functional – to float into the house, its remaining electronic eye seeming to glare at Gaz.
"Delinquent student identified as: Gazlene Membrane. You are guilty of being in the hallways without a pass, truancy, and damaging skool property. You will be escorted to Detention immediately, and your permanent record shall be marked to reflect this," the Monitor Bot declared. And then, before Gaz had a chance to react in any way, it swooped forward and grabbed her with its remaining pincer arm, this time taking the precaution of doing so in such a way as to pin her arms to her torso so that she couldn't fight her way free again.
"Hey! Let go!" she demanded as she was snapped out of her embarrassed shock. Unfortunately for her, with her arms pinned and the Monitor Bot keeping her a fair distance away from its body, she could do nothing this time except flail her legs about futilely. And with the Professor too distracted by the sudden flood of angry and/or mocking messages he was receiving in response to the failed demonstration to even notice what was happening, much less do anything to stop it, there was nothing to stop the Monitor Bot from carrying Gaz off back towards the skool.
With no way to break free or cover herself, Gaz could do nothing but burn in humiliation as she was practically paraded through the streets, exposing her nudity to anyone they passed on the way. And of course, because it was just the cherry on top of this awful day for her, the drone got her back to the skool just as it was letting out for the day, letting the whole student body gawk and jeer at her as she was dragged down to the dark pit that was Detention, where she would be left to rot until the skool bothered to let her out.
Honestly, she didn't care if she got out at this point, considering her reputation was now dead and buried. It would be years, if ever, before she could ever be as feared as she was before, when everyone could now just picture her naked.
Dib, meanwhile, was still locked in his room and wouldn't even learn about Gaz's situation or the problem with the Remover until longer after the situation was resolved.
Some people are lucky like that.
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The End
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A/N: Ugh, my inability to write a perfectly-worded ending strikes yet again. Still, hope that the rest of the story was fun enough to make up for it; I tried to really lean into more wacky humor this time around.
Fun fact, Dib was actually supposed to have his own problems dealing with the Remover while stuck at home, but I couldn't come up with anything that worked. Thus, the quick writing out that he got here.
Nothing else to say, so until next time, please review!