Character Commentary: The New Queen Part 1

Arnold: And now we move on to an Invader ZIM fic.

Helga: This oughta be good.

Ch. 1: It Begins

She was terrifying. The scariest girl in the school. Everyone feared her. And now that she was fourteen, and a freshman in High Skool, even her teachers had learned to fear her.

Sid: It's..."school". Not...ya know, THAT.

Arnold: Actually Sid, that's how "school" is spelt in the Invader ZIM universe. In fact, no school even has a name, and honestly there's really only the one school. What makes the writer so sure Skool wasn't ALREADY a high school?

Gaz.

Helga: The scariest Nicktoon girl.

Arnold: Well you're pretty scary too.

She still had purple hair, and it was still short. A little shorter even. It also didn't stick out before her face anymore. Instead it was just between her ears and her shoulders. Large locks of hair were separated, and framed her face from behind her ears quite nicely. Her bangs were separated into large locks as well. Her amber eyes were closed and yet she was still able to see.

Nadine: I've always wondered how that worked.

As always she'd be sitting in class and playing her Game Slave. The newest edition. Along with the newest game of her Vampire Piggys. The one she was playing currently was the forth in its saga.

Arnold: THAT however is a spelling error. But it's excusable as it AND the correct spelling in this context are BOTH ways to spell the word.

She was in the back of her homeroom. Like always, she'd be there half the day, have lunch, then gym, and then spend the remainder of the day in another teacher's classroom. It had been seven months since she began her freshman year. she could still remember it, too. Probably because that was also the day she had her reputation as the girl who was badass enough to beat up Jim.

~(*)~

Gaz had left Dib behind at home, not needing anybody to walk with her to school anymore. They may have been able to walk home, and oh did Gaz wish she could've walked that day, but the bus that would take them to school had already started rolling up the street. And Gaz took that moment to rethink her plan. She waited for the bus, a bad idea. Dib ran out of the house just as the bus was pulling up to their house.

"Gaz! Why didn't you come get me?" he asked as they boarded.

"I'm concentrating, Dib," Gaz said. She sat down in an empty seat at the front of the bus. She was thankful that she had the game to block out Dib's latest plans to expose Zim. She thought Zim would've at least done something to cripple humanity enough by now. But Dib was doing a good job. To Gaz's disappointment. She'd never really admit it, but she wanted the same thing Zim seemed to want. For the destruction of the human race to be at her own hand.

When she was able to reach a save point in the game she saved and shut the game off. the bus stopped in front of the school and she and Dib got off. Gaz ignored him as they separated in the halls to go to their homeroom. She took out her schedule, and looked down at it as she made her way through the halls. Not too far in she already bumped into a cheerleader who was standing in the middle of the hall like an idiot.

"Hey! Watch where you're going, freshman!" she said snidely.

"Bite me," Gaz said. And tried to walk around her. The girl stepped in front of her.

"Not until you say you're sorry," she said. Gaz growled. And glared up at the cheerleader with one of her death glares.

"That freshman bother you, Mare?" a boy said. "Mare" looked behind her and then back at Gaz, a smile on her face.

"Jiiiiim," she whined. "This freshman is being mean to me. Make her stop?" she asked. "Jim", was a big man. His face was kinda scared and he had a black eye. Gaz had heard that someone had been in a car accident no more than a week before.

"No problem, doll," he said. Gaz leaned on one leg, setting her arm on her hip.

"Woah, what happened to you, scar-face?" she asked. Jim growled and grabbed her by the shoulders. He lifted her in the air easily and moved over to a nearby trashcan farther down the hall. Some students were telling him to dump her in, and others were either too scared to say anything, or were telling him he was being and jerk.

"What are you...?" Gaz looked down when he stopped. She glared at him fiercely. "Not in this lifetime, scar-face!"

Gaz stuck her feet on both sides of the can when Jim tried to push her down. Mare was yelling at him to just shove her in. Gaz growled loud enough for the other kids to hear her. When Jim lifted her up again to try a second time, she kicked him in the jaw. he let her go and stumbled back. Gaz landed on the can, with her feet in their last places. She jumped off it, off the wall behind her, and turned in the air as she kicked Jim again in the face. Some kids flinched and other started to cheer for Gaz. When Gaz landed, Jim made for a swing to her and she easily jumped out of the way. He swung at her three more times. And each time she dodged. She felt her back hit the wall and ducked as Jim swung at her again.

Jim took in a hissing breath after his fist hit the wall. Gaz went under and head-butted him in the gut. He fell back like a ton of bricks. When he tried to get up, Gaz set her foot on his chest. Near his neck.

"Now..." she said. "What are you going to say?"

"..."

"Well?"

"Get off," Jim said. Gaz narrowed her eyes and let her foot slip closers to his throat.

"Hey! Get off him!" Mare said. Gaz shot her a deadly glare out of the corner of her eye. Mare made an 'eep!' sound and backed off.

"Say it," Gaz ordered. Jim grimaced.

"I'm... sorry," he forced himself to choke out.

"Good. Mess with me again and I won't so easy on you. And you'll be plummeted into a world pain and suffering from which the only escape is by my hand," Gaz threatened. She stepped off of Jim and picked up her schedule. Walking off to her first class, Game Slave in hand.

~(*)~

Gaz sighed. That had been the only day she didn't absolutely hate the school. And Dib was already causing her to be near her breaking point with her patience with him. She was about ready to strangle him, and Zim. She didn't hate Zim, no. But it was starting to get harder to tolerate him. She knew the destruction of the human race was, in fact, a similar goal to them both. Gaz just simply hated humanity. Zim... he wanted to control Earth for his 'Tallest'. Gaz had only seen them but once before, maybe more times than that, she wasn't sure. But she didn't care that much. They were just taller than everyone else on their planet, they weren't very bright for leaders of a whole Empire as big as the Irkens'.

Gaz heard the chime of the intercom. She reached a save point after the daily announcements and calmly shut off her game. Her relatively good mood didn't last long.

"W-would a m-miss Gaz p-please come to the p-principal's office?"

Gaz growled. She grabbed her pencil and cleanly snapped it in half. She wasn't in the mood to deal with this. Her classmates scooted to the edges of their seats as she gathered her things and left the room. She scowled the entire way down to the office and as she walked into the lobby. When she turned to the secretary she pointed to the office as she cowered behind her desk. Gaz didn't need to know. She already knew the way. The secretary was simply trying to get her to move along faster without trying to invoke her wrath. Gaz didn't blame her. Part of the fear she installed to the other students and teachers was due to her attire of choice. Which every teacher, and the secretary dismissed.

Gaz wore a black shirt that was more like a long dress that reached to her mid-thighs with long sleeves and skull and bone designs on the front, black pants with red stitching and chains (which weren't allowed by school rules because chains were considered weapons. But they all dismissed them because they didn't want to risk receiving the blunt end of those weapons), and boots that had small rhinestone skulls and bones running down the sides. Gaz had modified them herself. They used to be just ordinary black combat boots before she got her hands on them.

Gerald: So she went from her original Pepito-esque design...

Phoebe: To trying to dress like Tak and instead looking like a cross between Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Devi.

She pushed open the principal's door and stepped inside. Dib and Zim, who had been arguing before, stopped as she barged in. You were suppose to knock. But she had had a feeling it would've had something to do with Dib. Dib's hair was still the same, and so was his glasses and attire. Zim was in his usual Irken uniform, and even his disguise was the same. He had had the fortune of growing while on Earth. But he was still stuck being about two inches shorter than Dib. The principal was at his desk, waiting for Gaz. She pulled up a chair and sat down between the two, who she forced into their seats.

"What was it this time?" she asked. Really not in the mood to deal with it right then. The day hadn't been going well for her.

"The Dib-thing attacked me!" Zim shouted.

"I did not!" Dib shouted. His voice still as annoying to Gaz as ever. Both of them annoyed her. Although both of their voices weren't as high-pitched as they used to be. "I was just trying to prove what he really was!"

Gaz punched them both in the face to shut them up. The principal allowed this, though. He had wanted them to shut up, too.

"Gaz?" he asked. Gaz sighed heavily.

"Please forgive them, sir. My brother was simply being an idiot again and Zim was merely trying to defend himself," Gaz said as calmly as she could manage. The principal tapped his fingers on the desk.

"...Alright. But they'll have to attend detention together for breaking that lunch table," he said. Gaz opened one eye, but he didn't elaborate. "And Gaz... you'll be joining them."

"What? Why?" she shouted. Outside, the secretary flinched.

"Because of what you did to that poor kid this morning," he explained. Gaz paused. And then nodded her head in agreement. Even she agreed that she had to have detention for THAT. She smirked. But quickly wiped it off her face. "You'll all be serving about a week of detention. Is that understood?"

"Yes," they all said.

"Good. Now, Since school is being let out early in about ten minutes... I suppose you can all wait in the detention room now if you want. I will allow you to get back to your lockers to get something for the lunch you missed, and then report to room 26D. If you're not there within five minutes, I'll have to call your parents."

Zim made his own sound of fear silently. He had dismantled his robot parents years before; and couldn't afford to have that secret found out.

Helga: Wow. It's almost as if that was a DUMB IDEA!

When the principal dismissed them, Zim made sure he was the first into the room. Dib and Gaz came in after him. The teacher didn't look up from his magazine, and just told them to take a seat wherever they liked. After he phoned them in and the bell rang, it seemed like they were the only ones who would be in that room. Gaz had been there before because of Jim. And she knew that the detention teacher left after about ten minutes to watch TV in the teachers' lounge. He was usually gone all the three hours. Gaz had left after waiting twenty minutes and didn't hear about it the next day. They all sat in the back of the room. Gaz had to sit between the two again. As she and Dib ate their lunch, the teacher left without saying a word or even looking up. Once the door shut, Dib started to glare at Zim. Who wasn't eating anything.

"You know, it's not very HUMAN to never eat anything during lunch," Dib said. Gaz sighed and bowed her head. Zim turned his head away from Dib.

It was going to be a long detention session.

Arnold: This was definitely one of the best stories I've read.

Sid: Boy howdy, this was good.