I own nothing but the fic basically. Tally ho.

Checking off a small box next to the word 'no', a redheaded eighth grader passed a paper note back to he who had wrote and passed it in the first place. Taking the note back, a brown-haired twelve year old murmured aloud to himself as he read the folded piece of paper. "Will u please say yes and ask me to go to this Sadie Hawkins dance thing tomorrow night alredy?" and you checked 'no', of course. Oh, and I see here: PS it's spelled 'already' - with an 'a'. Ugh, of course you'd say no, smart alec."

"Of course," the girl echoed back quietly.

"Oh, come on," the boy insisted. "We were fine passing notes about crazy, old Mrs. Molinet, but as soon as I mentioned that dumb end of the year dance to you, this happens."

"Just drop the subject, alright Ben?"

"Why should I? I don't have anyone to go with - neither do you. Did you just check 'no' because we share a bloodline?"

"Not even," the redhead returned dismissively. "I checked 'no' because why would I ask the single most, biggest dork in the entire school to the Sadie Hawkins dance?"

Before the young man could reply to this, the door to the classroom opened. The teacher was back, and so the pair of twelve year olds fell silent.

Sighing and rolling her eyes as she cocked her head over to the side, Gwen Tennyson made a disapproving, clucking sound with her tongue. Today was both the day before her and her cousin's thirteenth birthday, respectively, and it was the last day of school. The large wall clock in the classroom just could not tick away fast enough for her, and, to make matters worse, her up-to-no-good cousin was surely about to complicate her life. Even if the teacher was back now, she had no evidence - no proof - that Ben would leave her alone. Why should the teacher's presence stop him from harassing her to death?

After all, the last half hour or so of chit chatting and passing notes back and forth were pretty civil (if they did say so themselves, until the dance question, at least) but now - now, Ben was wadding up tiny bits of paper. The wads were small, and a good reference size to Ben's actual brain in Gwen's opinion, and, of course, he was loading each and every one of them into a spit-propelled launcher of some sort that he'd concocted from the remains of a broken ink pen.

Whatever his boredom-born plan was, it wouldn't end well. This much was obvious. Gwen wasn't sure about how exactly she'd get taken down with him when he finally did fall, though she was sure it would happen. She could feel it in her bones.

Shaking her head ever so slightly, subtley, in her cousin's direction as he loaded the last of his paper wads into his broken pen, she was silently willing him to change his mind. She was telling him not to go through with it - that it was stupid - there were better ways of killing boredom. He saw her uneasiness and head shaking and merely raised her a smirk in reply. Why give up now? he was saying in his head. Why waste the pen hull and the paper now that it's all set up anyway?

Raising the pen to his lips, he gave an almighty blow to it. The first two spit wads hit the green board. The third one hit the wall clock Gwen had been fixated on before. It was the fourth spitwad that was the zinger, striking the teacher right on the chin as she sat behind her desk, grading papers. She looked up and over to Ben at once.

"Benjamin Tennyson," Mrs. Molinet said in a sharp, unimpressed tone of voice as she wiped the wad of wet paper from her face. "Go throw away that spitwad launcher and come up to my desk at once. We must set you up with a detention for that bit of nonsense."

As if hitting his teacher - albeit accidently - with a spitwad hadn't been bad and stupid enough, it was then that Ben decided to add fuel to the fire: "It wasn't me who just hit you with that spitwad. It was - it was - it was J.T.!" -by lying.

"Ben," Gwen then said to him, matter-of-factly as she leant over in his direction. "J.T. didn't even bother to come in today. You are an idiot."

"Alright, why don't you come on up here as well, Gwendolyn," Mrs. Molinet then said, an all-too happy grin on her face as she spoke.

"But, Mrs. Molinet -" she began.

"No buts, Miss Tennyson. I want to see the pair of you, and now."

"I didn't really do anything, though!" Gwen insisted loudly, causing her teacher to lean forward sharply, her smile disappearing as she produced a forefinger that was curled inward, beckoning them toward her.

"Come here. Now," she said in a deadly whisper, curling her finger as she spoke, watching as the pair of cousins finally did as they were told and stood from their seats, shuffling their feet as they made to head for her desk. "And while you're at it," she then said to them. "You can bring up the pile of notes that two of you have been passing back and forth. I see them there, piled up on Benjamin's desk."

"Oh, no!" groaned Gwen, who burried her face in her hands at once, a knot in her stomach developing and tightening at an ultra-rapid speed. "We're doomed for the principals office now."

She was right.

"And I quote here, Miss Tennyson, though correct me if I'm wrong: 'Yeah Ben, Mrs. Molinet wouldn't be worth wasting a whoopee cushion on. Her butt is so big that it'd. . . snuff out the sound of it'? Gwendolyn Tennyson!" Rising slightly from his chair before sitting back down again just as quickly, the principal of the middle school eyed her sharply for a moment or two, before sighing and saying in a tired voice, "This is most unlike you, Gwen. I mean, with your cousin here-"

At this, Ben waved a hand as he sat there beside his cousin, a smile on his face. "Hey, Mr. Berkley."

"Erm, hey, Benjamin," the principal replied, before returning his focus to Gwen once more, his hands clasped, thumbs twiddling. "As I was trying to say, this is just not normal behavior from you. At least, not in the years that I've seen you go through our cirriculum here. And given that it's the last day of school and all, I don't quite understand this sudden misbehavior on your part."

"I - I don't know what to say, Mr. Berkley," Gwen began, before pausing when Ben rose from his seat slightly.

"Uhm, Mr. Berkley, sir, I can explain."

"You can?" he asked Ben, before clearing his throat and saying, "Well, go ahead then. Explain."

"Right," Ben replied, continuing on as both Gwen and Mr. Berkley watched him with blank, confused expressions on their face. "See, I wrote all the notes. I passed them to Gwen, but she threw them back to me, not written on. So I filled in her parts, so that if I did get in trouble, then, well, it wouldn't look like only I did it. So yeah, I'm really sorry for getting you in trouble, Gwen, but, that's what happened. That's the truth, sir."

"Hm," Mr. Berkley said, his eyebrows raised. "Well, I do appreciate the honesty, now, at least." Rubbing at his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, the principal then continued on. "Anyway Ben, this isn't going to go away without punishment of some sort. Now though, due to your honesty in the end here, I'll give you a bit of say in the matter."

Standing up from his chair and moving around to stand alongside his desk, Mr. Berkley cleared his throat and said, "It's up to you. You can either have detention today, after class, or you can miss the end of the year Sadie Hawkins dance. Your choice."

"I'll take the detention, sir," Ben answered him, before glancing toward Gwen, who looked even further confused.

"Very well then," Mr. Berkley replied, heading toward the door to leave his office. "I'll just go let Mrs. Molinet know about the decisions made on discipline. If you'll excuse me, please, both of you."

Watching as her principal left on out through his office door, Gwen shook her head a bit as she then moved to look over to Ben. "So, I'm dying to know, what'd you do all that for?"

"Eh," Ben replied, giving a shrug. "Didn't wanna see you get all in trouble and stuff on the last day of school."

"Aw, well, thank you, Ben," Gwen replied, smiling sweetly at him. "I owe you one."

"Hm," Ben said, arching an eyebrow at Gwen as a devlish grin pulled at the corners of his cheeks. "Well in that case, if you really insist that you, uh, owe me one…"

Sensing once again that something fishy was going on, Gwen said, "What, Ben? What is it? What are you up to?"

Standing from his seat, Ben reached into his pocket and removed a slightly crumpled, half-folded piece of paper. Unfolding it and continuing to smile as Gwen gave a sigh, Ben read aloud:

"Will you please say yes and ask me to go to this Sadie Hawkins dance thing tomorrow night already?"

"Oy vey," Gwen replied, before slowly rising from her own seat, folding her arms over her bosom. "I should have known you wouldn't do anything like what you just did for me for nothing."

"Well, go on," Ben said to her simply, a triumphant look blazing on his face. "You know you want to."

"Oh, alright, enough crowing already."

"Crowing? Really, Gwen? Crowing?"

"Don't push it by picking on me, Ben," she said to him sharply, before saying, "Right. So, will you go to the Sadie Hawkins dance with me?"

"I'd be happy to, Gwen," he said brightly, before adding, "You know what'd make this perfect? Sealing the moment with a kiss to the cheek or something."

"You have mental problems," she said to him, before rolling her eyes and turning away from him, walking toward the door to the leave the office, as well.

"Maybe I do, but you just asked me to the dance, so what does that say about you?" he called out after her, though he didn't care if she answered back or not, really. She'd survived the battle, but he'd both orchestrated and won the war.