Disclaimer: I do not own anything Nickelodeon owns.

Claimer: This story is mine, though. I'm the one thinking it up and writing it down.

One

OOC & Inconsistent Ladies

*A note: If you don't want to have a laugh at my ridiculously OOC Sam, I suggest you skip over the small scenes and go straight to the last two, which present an inconsistency with canon portrayal of Danny and Valerie, and a humorous interaction between Sam and Valerie. Also, remember that all of this is crap-draft material, given that it was cut during revisions, rather than actually revised. This isn't meant to be story-quality writing, this is just a chance to mock an author and have a laugh.

From ch12: In the Speeder, when Tucker and Sam are talking about the plan and such.

"Not if dating means he gets ridiculously overprotective." She throws her head back onto the headrest, murmurs: "Maybe this is a bad idea—maybe we don't work together after all."

The Speeder halts abruptly. She sits up, eyes bulging. "Tucker! The heck?"

"Take that back," Tucker says. "Geez, Sam, you sound like a soap opera. It took you guys this long to get together, and these sudden and very uncharacteristic insecurities are not about to mess it up."

She bites her tongue, thinks. Cringes. "Okay, you're right. Ew. Sorry."

type: OOC-ness; I think I watched a cheesy chick-flick before writing this chapter, and I mucked up Sam's characterization a bit. A lot.

Same chapter, same scene.

"But what's the harm in visiting Clockwork?"

"Danny might overhear," she tries. "Clockwork might tell him—who knows whose side that guy is on. I don't know, something just feels off."

"Something feels off?" Tucker asks. "Yeah, sure. Spit it out, Sam."

She shrinks into her seat. "That obvious?"

"Not that much. Wasn't quite sure till tonight."

She sighs. "It sucks, Tucker. I'm scared shitless and it's incredibly hypocritical of me. All I ever do is tell Danny to be brave, that everything is going to be okay—and now this? The first time I'm confronted with an issue this big and I'm chickening out?"

"You have every right to be scared shitless," Tucker says.

"But no right to be chickening out."

He scrunches his eyebrows. "Well, I can't say I expected this to be such a problem. You're the one that came up with the idea, anyway." He thinks for a minute. "What exactly is it that's got you scared shitless?"

type: OOC-ness; pretty much the same reasoning as before. Also inconsistency, because at first she tries to make excuses, but I'd already mentioned (I think) that she can't hide stuff from Tucker and doesn't even bother trying anymore.

Same chapter, same scene.

"I told you not to keep it a secret."

"I'm not saying I regret it"—though she does—"I'm just saying that if I can't tell him about this, how can I ask about everything else?"

"You can tell him. You just don't want to."

"He'll flip! Go insane! He'll worry, and stress, and he won't tell me a word of it because he insists on being all macho and keeping his shit to himself—damn it, Tucker, he's a real teenager sometimes."

"You whined a lot less about his behavior when you guys weren't dating."

"I'm privileged now. I can say whatever I want."

"As opposed to… when?"

type: OOC-ness; Sam again... This one is a bit humorous, I think—I wanted to conserve the last bits of dialogue at first but then figured they were kind of OOC, too.

Same chapter, last scene.

"I didn't even ask for training!"

She didn't, but this is not the sort of thing he's going to skim over. "Doesn't mean you don't need it," he says as he ducks another snowball. "Your aim sucks."

"No more than Jazz's," she retorts.

"Jazz doesn't need good aim."

"My aim isn't that bad."

He grins. "It isn't that good, either." He throws a snowball high into the air. "Hit it!"

She aims, fires. It's a little sloppy, as she's not used to firing ectoblasts before charging up first, but she does hit the snowball. "See?" she gloats. "My aim is perfect."

He sneaks up behind her, holds her around the waist. She jumps. "Your stance is terrible, though. You should've kept perfectly still."

"Watch me sneak up on you and see if you keep thinking that."

type: OOC-ness on Sam's part again. She would've demanded training, not whined over it. I guess this bit is just funny.

Timeline: Chapter eleven, scene 1.

Cut or replaced: Replaced entirely.

Valerie seems to have figured this out as well, he thinks, as he spots her taking out three in a row. But she's kind of shocked by the discovery, too—struck still for a moment, just a moment, long enough for this other guy to creep up behind her… "Valerie! Duck!"

He shoots, but she doesn't duck and the blast definitely would've singed her hair off if it weren't for that mask.

Oh, shit. Mask. He called her Valerie. "Hey! How do you know my—AH! YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT!"

He's kind of thankful that these uglies are around to distract her, but she'll definitely ask questions later. Girls always ask questions.

The battle isn't quite that difficult to win—one hit takes these guys out—but it's disconcerting to have the sheer size of these ghosts encircling you, with the freakishly large guns and sticks and knives—seriously, machetes?—pointed at you from every direction.

But it's over nearly as fast as it began, and he doesn't have a scratch on him. The same cannot be said for Valerie.

"There goes that sleeveless top for picture day…" he hears her mutter, somewhere to his left. He turns to see her dropping to the ground, board compacting and guns retracting. She's examining a cut on her shoulder.

He approaches her tentatively. From his spot a few feet away, he can see blood—bright red as it tends to be—dripping down her arm. It doesn't look that deep, and probably won't scar, but it'll definitely look nasty for a couple days. And then there's the fact that a ghost made that cut… "You should get someone to look at it," he says, startling her. "You don't want ectoplasm floating around your bloodstream."

He would know.

"What were those things?" she asks, totally ignoring him. He kind of expects it—she's a girl, you know. "And how—and you'd better give me a good, straight answer, ghost—how do you know my name? Who else knows? Huh?"

He holds his hands up, I'm totally innocent, please don't shoot. "This is the first time I've seen ghosts like those. Especially ghosts that easy to take out. Honest!"

She doesn't seem to care that much about that. "And—my—name?"

Valerie has a bullshit detector built into that suit somewhere, he's sure of it. She's not good at believing him when he's telling the truth, yes, but when he's lying—she can tell. He doesn't usually need to lie to her—why would he? She never asks the questions that would force him to lie (unlike now); on the contrary, she always asks (ahem, accuses) about things that gave him the liberty to be perfectly, totally honest with her.

(Of course, she didn't ever believe him, but that's not the point.)

Heck, during the incident, when Sam showed up with a thermos and a med kit, throwing caution to the wind, she'd still had a hard time accepting Sam's words—not his, but hers—when she clarified that yes, she's Danny's friend, no, she's not overshadowed, go away before you make this worse, Huntress.

Sam had been smart enough to call her Huntress, he recalls.

"Uh…" is his best answer. Think of a lie, think of a lie, oh crap, what now?

Valerie looks murderous.

Okay, improvisation it is. "Sam, Tucker and I know." A pause, he panics. Oh, right—"And Danny. The other one. Fenton. He knows, too. We, uh, know, you see, because…" Word vomit fails him, and he's silent.

Valerie does not seem to care one whit about the blood still dripping down her arm. He tries for a distraction: "You really should get someone to look at—"

"My name, ghost! Talk!"

Right. "Don't you think it's likely that one of us saw you don the outfit once? Or that, maybe, Vlad let it slip at some point?" he tries. It would've worked if it'd been his first response.

"I'm the one asking questions!" she pulls out a gun, and now he's worried. "Straight—forward—answer. Now."

"Look, Valerie—"

"Don't call me that!"

"Right, sorry." He takes a step back, hands still in the air. What to do, what to say… he could run for it—fly for it?—and there's a chance she might not catch him if he goes invisible. He could slip through the ground, follow the sewage back home.

But… Valerie looks kind of scared. Her grip on the gun doesn't tremble, but there's something way too stiff about the way she's holding it. He hasn't fought her in years, true, but this is the sort of thing that applies for any ghost hunter, any person with a weapon. Body language isn't quite as personal as some people like to think.

She probably feels the way he would if their roles were reversed—well, okay, not exactly. But if he tries to see things her way, he has to admit he'd be out of it, too. As far as he knows, she still sees him as an enemy.

[later on in the same scene...]

"You grow at the same rate as someone we know. Your voice changed at the same time as that same someone we know. And—seriously? The name? And then two years ago I basically blast your insides out and you still take a hit for me from that other ghost, and boom. Sam Manson to the rescue, I'm shooed off like yesterday's trash, and you're dripping green and red while that glowy ghost aura is flickering like my neighbor's lightbulb. Fenton doesn't go to school for a week after that. I wonder why."

Why this was cut: I wrote this at an unreasonably late hour, and my brain wasn't working, and I'd totally forgotten that maybe it was plausible for Danny to know Valerie's name, and that this is supposed to be the scene where she confesses that he knows her secret, so maybe it's plausible for him to know hers… I don't really know what I was thinking, but I liked this scene a lot because I found their interaction really interesting. Valerie getting defensive and violent though internally she's freaking out, him trying to find a way out of it… would've been fun to explore, but… well, inconsistencies.

Timeline: Chapter twelve.

Cut or replaced: Cut.

It starts with whispers—following her every move the moment she steps out of first period. She hears Danny's name, not hers or Tucker's, and she panics: did Valerie spill his secret?

It's instinctual to suspect Valerie, she explains to Danny when he accuses her of being too harsh on her.

His secret is intact, though—any and every rumor at Casper goes through Paulina, and she's not enveloping Danny in hugs and crying out "ghost boy!" just yet. So she heads off to second period a little more relaxed.

By now, people are staring and pointing, too. Even some teachers are looking at her funny. She's not about to let these people get to her, though, so she ignores it. She has third period with both Danny and Tucker, and the looks increase tenfold. She hears her name in the whispers this time, so she confirms it has something to do with her, probably Tucker, too. But what?

She can't think of anything. After fourth period, a class she has with neither of the boys, she's getting fed up—this is when Valerie of all people steps up to her. She thinks the girl is going to try to be helpful, maybe try to win her over now that her animosity has been made fairly clear (the silent treatment and averted gazes can do that). Instead, though, Valerie pats her on the shoulder and gives her a sly grin, saying: "Took you long enough."

Something about the friendliness of the gesture puts her off, and instead of stopping to ponder what she could mean by that, she outright asks it: "What took me long enough?"

Valerie raises her eyebrows. "You're saying it's not true?"

"You have to define it. What the hell is everyone talking about?"

The eyebrows reach higher, if that's possible. Then Valerie laughs. "You and Fenton—you finally got together, right?"

She doesn't blush, given how annoyed she is. "That's what this is about? You're serious?"

Valerie nods as if this is some extremely grave matter. "So it's true?"

She nods. "But how did everybody find out?" She's not one for PDA, so…

"Oh, that," Valerie shrugs. "Tucker starting collecting bet money."

Her eyes widen. She can't be serious. "Who would bet on us?"

"Pretty much everyone," she deadpans. "I lost about twenty bucks back in our sophomore year—this has been going on for a while."

She can't believe it, except—she can. This is so very Tucker. This scheme reminds her of that time he set up a daycare for flour bags of all things, and promptly lost all his money. She wonders… "Did Tucker win anything?"

Valerie thinks for a minute. "I think so. The one's I'm sure of are Lancer and Mikey."

She doesn't know which of the two baffles her more.

Why this was cut: I couldn't find a way to fit it with the mood of the chapter, and I found the bit about Tucker a little OOC. I think that the idea of the entire school betting on these two is hilarious, but not quite plausible, much less within the mood of this story. Would've been excellent, though misplaced, comic relief.

A/N:

Quick heads-up: I can't promise a posting schedule for these, given that I'm not done with the story yet. I want to post these in sections, grouping similar scenes into categories to post as chapters, but can't do that knowing that I've got about three chapters left to mess with. I've also planned some one-shots but I'm not sure when those will come around.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this first section, hope you had a laugh here and there. About the last scene: it's the only one that's plausible within the story's canon, and you can consider it a "behind the scenes" bit rather than a cut, didn't-ever-happen bit. You decide for yourself. I personally don't think it happened, given the lack of friction between the girls. Also, though I find the idea hilarious, I don't think Tucker would collect bets (and if he did, I don't think that many people would be so invested in the game).

See you!

—Rose.