Hello. First fan-fic here. Hope you enjoy it. You better not think I own DP, lest you deserve five across the face. Tal's an original character. Hopefully he won't become a "Gary Stu", but that might be a bit difficult.


Chapter 1: On Any Other Day

Mondays at school are hardly ever fun. It's bad enough having to deal with boring classes, bad food, and jerks that you'd never meet outside of the classroom. This problem is even more acute when your school has some major issues with social structure, such as Casper High. In this wretched high school, filled with dumb jocks and vapid popular girls, "hardly ever" turns to "never ever".

Fourteen year old Samantha Manson, the black haired, amethyst-eyed, black-garbed individualistic goth of Casper High, was having a similar thought. After suffering through a few hours of boring lecture over things that she thought were common knowledge, she was now being tormented by her best friend, and her best friend, going gaga over the gorgeous gremlin that called itself a girl. Everyone else called that gremlin Paulina.

"Guys? Hello?" Sam called, trying to get their attention. Not getting a response from either of the two, she snapped her fingers in front of the clouded sapphire eyes of the friend closest to her. Like every other time she tried, that didn't work. At all.

Sam frowned. Usually, she put up with it. Any other day, she would wait while her best friend, the resident technology buff Tucker Foley, and her best friend, shy-unassuming-I-catch-ghosts-in-my-spare-time Danny Fenton drooled over the gremlin.

Those days, however, didn't follow a nightmare where she confessed her love to Danny and got a rejection right in the face. Those days did not follow a night where she wandered through her memories of Danny under Ember's spell, wondering what would could have been. So today, Sam felt she deserved a break from the lovelorn looks. Sam put her salad back in her paper bag, walked out of the lunchroom, and headed down a hall.

"I wish there was a classroom that I could sit in and eat, that didn't have guys that thought with their genitals rather than their brains," she thought bitterly. Looking through the windows of various classrooms, most of them either contained classes in progress, or a teacher preparing for the next class. She'd rather have privacy.

When she reached the end of the hall, she saw a little classroom with the lights on. No one seemed to be in it. Sam turned the handle, and the door opened. A smile of satisfaction, the first smile she had in school all day today, snuck onto her face as she entered the room.

She looked around. The classroom must have been a former science lab. In the front of the room, where she was, there were twelve wooden lab tables, six to a side. In the back of the room, there were four clusters of computers, four to a cluster. Scanning the room with more care than she had when she entered, it appeared to be empty.

With a smile of satisfaction that something finally went right today, Sam sat down, pulled her salad out of the paper bag, and began to eat.

"You know, Paulina will never go for you without a selfish reason behind it..." a voice in Danny's head nagged while his eyes bored holes into the Latina girl.

"Shut up! She's turning her head this way!"

"So is Dash, Romeo."

"Fentina!" the muscle-bound, blond-haired, crap-for-brains athlete called out, snapping Danny and Tucker out of their Paulina-induced trances.

"You and four-eyes over there better stop staring at Paulina before I pound both of you into yesterday." the jock threatened, standing up and cracking his knuckles. The two adolescents gulped as several other members of the football team did the same.

Paulina piped up, choosing now to acknowledge the two social outcasts. "Like you two losers would ever have a chance with me anyway! I wouldn't go out with you even if I was desperate!"

The girls and the jocks laughed while Danny and Tucker looked down in disappointment. Looking at them again, Paulina's brain picked up on change in the normal scene. A change she could work with. "Why don't you go find your loser goth girlfriend, Fenton, and raise the coolness of the cafeteria by 50 points?"

Danny and Tucker's heads bolted up. "She's not a loser," Danny retorted absent-mindedly as his head whirled around. "Sam?" he said aloud before registering the fact she wasn't there. "Aww, man..." he groaned, before grabbing Tucker and running off amidst the popular kids laughing at them.

Danny (and therefore Tucker, who was firmly in Danny's grip and was rather annoyed about that) left the cafeteria, and ran to the first place Danny could think of regarding Sam's location: her locker. When he got there...

...If you, the reader, thought she was there, you didn't pay attention to the above section of the story. Shame on you.

Danny frowned. "Where IS she? Why did she leave?" he asked to no one as ran his right hand through his space-black hair.

"We stared at Paulina for about half the lunch period, Danny. She probably got fed up and left." Tucker piped up.

Danny thought about this for a while. He was just about to ask why she would leave if she never did before when he was met with Tucker's revenge for Danny dragging him down the hall.

"Y'know, Danny, you never did deny that Sam was your girlfriend back there." the red-capped boy needled slyly.

Danny's gaze went from Tucker, whom Danny was looking at while the spectacled boy was talking, to everywhere but Tucker. "I-I just forgot."

"You didn't seem to forget denying that she was a loser."

"S-so? What's your point?" Danny stammered.

Tucker grinned devilishly. His best friend's face was burning with embarrassment. "You have the hots for Sam!" the boy half-yelled, laughing.

"No! She's just my friend! Don't you pay attention?" Danny yelled, with enough speed to tell Tucker that Danny felt exactly the opposite way.

"I do pay attention, which is why I know that's a load of crap."

"Shut up, Tucker." Danny thought of something fast to change the subject. It took a rather large amount of brainpower. "Let's check classrooms."

The two walked down the empty hall, one person to a side, looking for Sam in one of the rooms. After a whole ten seconds of searching, Tucker decided to push Operation Payback v1.8 forward.

"Danny has a crush on Sa-am!" Tucker said in an off-key, sing-song voice.

"Shut up, Tucker." the halfa muttered.

A little time passed before: "Danny has a crush on Sa-am!"

"Shut up, Tucker," Danny growled, more anger creeping into this reply.

Another wait. "Danny has a crush on--"

"SHUT UP, TUCKER!" Danny yelled, turning to face Tucker with an expression that made it look like the halfa was ready to kill.

Tucker looked subdued, and didn't say anything else on the matter. He really couldn't, a bunch of teachers had came out in the hall to see what was going on, and Tucker knew saying something about it again would sign his death certificate. Inside, though, he was smiling. Mission accomplished.

They reached the end of the hall, and looked inside the last classroom. If everything was normal in Casper High, they should have seen Ms. Manson eating peacefully in the room...

...Seriously, everything normal in Casper High? Please.

The two saw a darkened room, chairs stacked on tables. Dust caked everything. The room appeared to have been out of use for a few years.

Crestfallen, Danny mumbled quietly "Let's go back and look ag-," before the bell signaling return to class rang.

"Looks like we'll have to find your girlfriend later," Tucker said off-handedly, running back to class.

Danny ran after him. "You're a dead man, Foley!"

Sam heard the bell, but didn't really want to go to class and face her best/best friend right now. She was vocalizing all of her thoughts to herself. Saying things aloud seemed to make her feel better.

"I'll get detention if I don't go, though, and that'll be worse than being in class with those two..." she muttered. She threw away her paper bag and started to leave.

"You don't have to leave, y'know. If you want to stay, I'll write a pass for you," a voice rang out from the back of the room.

Sam's head snapped to the source of the voice. It was a tall, lanky guy. Brown hair, green eyes behind a pair of glasses, rather pale skin. Solid dark-blue shirt with black swish pants and black sandals. Sam glared at him.

"Who the hell are you! How long have you been back there? Were you listening to me!"

The guy chuckled, moving a few steps forward.

"Name's Tal Marylin, I've been back here all day working, yes, I did listen to you. It was a lot more interesting than organizing formulae, to be frank. Anyway, like I said, I can write a pass for you if you don't want to leave. I'm a teacher's aide."

Sam just glared at him. The absolute nerve! This guy was obviously back there the whole time; there wasn't another door into the room. He didn't even say anything when she entered the room! Like she'd want to stay in a room with someone as conniving as that him!

On any other day, she'd walk out right now. On any other day, she'd actually give the guy a piece of her mind, then walk out. But today... Sam felt she needed someone to talk to. This guy, as rude as he was, had already listened to her spill some of her guts, and he did say her guts were 'interesting'. She contemplated staying. One thought was bugging her, though.

"What if this guy just wants me to stay because he hopes to have a shot with me, as unlikely as that sounds?" she thought.

As if the guy could read her thoughts, he spoke up, giving her a slight smirk. "Y'know, that kid you described... Fenton, I think his name was. He sounds cute. Pity he isn't a junior like I am."

Sam let a laugh escape her. She found it funny because it was just so... so... blunt. She smiled.

"Fine, I'll stay... Tal, was it? But only if you'll hear me out."

He gave a smart-ass grin, his eyes looking at her levelly. "I certainly don't have anything else better to do. But you have to tell me your name."

"Sam Manson. You should get that pass out now, you'll be here for a while."