Author's Note: Tumblr has decided that August is Writer's Month. Here is my short entry for the first prompt, "Annoyance." Hopefully I'll be able to do more IZ fics in the coming weeks.

It was quiet. Too quiet.

That was a dumb cliché that Gaz had never understood. How could a room be too quiet? She seemed to spend her whole life in rooms that weren't quiet enough. It was hard enough to play her Game Slave at skool with Mr. Elliot's droning or the general cacophony of the cafeteria, and somehow even worse at home, where Dib was constantly talking or watching the TV too loudly or breathing in that really annoying way that bhe breathed whenever he was reading his paranormal tabloids or whatever.

But at the moment, he was gone. Gaz hadn't seen him since...actually, she wasn't sure. Yesterday? The day before? It didn't really matter. The point being, she was alone, the living room was silent, and she was free to just sit on the couch, playing her video game in peace for a change.

And yet, Gaz found that silence strangely unnerving.

It was probably that this game was too easy. It was new, and everybody online was raving about it, but as far as Gaz was concerned it was just a rehash of Vampire Piggies VI, except with the vampire piggies switched out for werewolf cows. There wasn't a single new challenge for her. Ironically, it might have actually been more fun to have Dib bothering her—at least then she would have the added difficulty of ignoring him.

Gaz paused for just a moment to check the time. 8 P.M. Huh. This was usually when Dib would watch the stupid rerun of this week's Mysterious Mysteries.

She hesitated for a few seconds, looked around to make sure that there was nobody watching, then turned on the TV.

"—here at Mysterious Mysteries of Strange Mystery have always known the answer to this question. And that answer is a resounding 'maybe.' Which is why, as always…"

Huh. This was actually really helping. The host's voice was a bit too soothing for her liking, but most of the guests were shrill and whiny, and it was easy to imagine them as a coterie of Dibs, dancing around the couch and bothering her with their latest pointless complaints.

A few minutes passed, and Gaz found herself in the lair of the final boss. She took a quick potion, set up her best weapons and—

The door slammed open. "GAZ!"

She jumped, dropped her Game Slave and barely managed to click off the TV as Dib stumbled into the room, tripping over himself as he reached the couch. His skin was bruised, his clothes were torn, and for some reason a piranha was chomping on the elbow of his trenchcoat.

He was on his feet in about a second. "You won't believe what happened, Gaz!" he said, carelessly tearing the fish from his clothing. "I was infiltrating Zim's base when—"

"I don't care."

"You will when you hear what happened! Anyway, I was about to uncover his latest plan when this giant beaver showed up! I didn't know what was happening at first, but then the beaver got us both in his spaceship and—"

This was going to take a while, so Gaz turned back to her game, strolling confidently into the Alpha Werecow's cavern. She shouldered her silver railgun as Dib went on about some other dimension and a cult of aliens who now worshiped him as a god. It was really distracting.

Almost silently, Gaz sighed.