A/N: This plot bunny has been hopping around my head for a while now, so I just had to give in and write it down, even though I have two papers to write and am in the middle of various WIPs for other fandoms already. (Oops…)

Anyway, this is just the beginning, so it'll be setting us up for the main plot, which I – for one – am actually really looking forward to, but will be familiar for a while. It will be my first multichapter fic of this fandom, so feedback is much appreciated!

Disclaimer: What isn't mine: Harry Potter, Buffy, Smallville, iCarly… and the list goes on and on… it's quite depressing though, so I'm going to stop there.

Chapter 1

Only yesterday had Ms Briggs and Mr. Howard found themselves degraded back to mere teachers, which (surprisingly enough) had relieved the entire student body at Ridgeway. However, both of the nasty instructors seemed to recover from their loss of co-principal status by torturing their students even more than usual. Just earlier that day, Ms Briggs had given a group of twenty students detention for 'loitering in the halls' during passing period. And then, during lunch she had assigned a certain Sam Puckett double detention for throwing her lunch in Gibby's face. Not two seconds later, Mr. Howard had walked by and dished out the same punishment to Gibby for not wearing a shirt. When Gibby protested that his shirt was completely covered in Sam's mashed potatoes and gravy, the bitter old man had tripled his time.

The scene played out something like this:

"I can't believe we allgot detention!" Freddie whined as he sat next to his two friends. Across from him, Sam started stuffing her mouth with the pseudo-steak they were serving today.

"I know," Carly replied, opening her plastic baggie to remove her straw, napkin, and spork. "Ms Briggs is really in a bad mood today."

"And when is the lady not in a bad mood?" Sam commented sarcastically, gravy-tinted spit spewing out of her mouth to land on the table.

"True," Carly admitted before turning to her meal. As she did, the spork in her hand caught her attention.

"I'm sure she has some good days," Freddie insisted. "Even Ms Briggs has to be happy during vaca—"

"Sporks are so weird," Carly observed, cutting the boy off. Without bothering to protest, he just turned his gaze to said object.

"They are," Sam agreed, holding out her own plastic utensil. "It's like a spoon that wanted to be a fork."

"Or a fork that wanted to be a spoon," Freddie pointed out.

"No," Sam retorted. "It's definitely a spoon wanting to be a fork."

"Or maybe a fork and a spoon got together and had little mutant spork babies," Carly remarked. All three of them tilted their heads to the right, staring at the sporks.

"What's so interesting?" Gibby asked, probably wondering why the three teenagers were sitting perfectly still and looking at their sporks as if they were about to start singing and dancing.

"Sporks," Carly answered simply, not breaking her gaze. Freddie and Sam were also still studying the sporks the girls held suspended in midair, even as Sam reached down with her left hand to pick up a slice of wanna-be meat from her lunch dish and lift it to her mouth. But as she tore a gigantic chunk out of it, Freddie slid his eyes over to the blonde, staring incredulously at the way she was particularly vicious towards her meat.

"What'd the meat do to you?" he questioned, pulling both girls out of their spork trances.

"I just need to take it all out on something. Meat is good," Sam explained. In response, Carly shrugged and Freddie rolled his eyes.

"Well, hopefully detention won't be too terrible," the techie stated, rising a grunt out of the blonde meat-eater.

"Of course it will be terrible. It'll be worse!" Sam declared, ripping off more of her meat. "Brigg's still all upset over the party in the halls thing while super-what-not whoever was here."

"And for being locked up in that closet," Carly added.

"Neuh, we all know Briggs and Howard ended up having a huge make-out session," Sam replied, sending all three of her tablemates into bad mental places – a fact which was exemplified by the expressions of horror and pure disgust pasted on their faces.

"Sam!" Freddie groaned. "Now I need to wash my brain with soap…"

"Need help with that, Freddork?" she offered, earning an as-if glare from the boy.

"Seriously, Sam," Carly reprimanded. "Stop forcing yucky mental pictures into our heads!"

"Not my fault you all live in the gutter," she shot back. "Ugh, why'd you remind me of that anyway, Fredalina? Now I'm all worked up again!"

"I didn't do anything, Sam!" Freddie protested. "Control your own emotions."

"I can't just stop getting all mad when I'm so mad!" Sam exclaimed, stuffing the rest of her fake steak into her mouth in an effort to calm herself.

"Great, Sam," Carly whined. "You're all upset and you finished off your meat. You know you need to make it last!"

"It's not my fault," Sam objected as she started to shake in fury. "Fredanna's the one that brought the stupid subject back up!"

Halfway through the boy's sputtering, a loud splat interrupted the noise of the cafeteria, bringing every pair of eyes to the mess of brown-streaked mashed potatoes all over a certain Gibby Gibson.

"Sam!" Carly chided. "You just hit Gibby in the face!"

"And I feel a whole lot better now," she replied happily, slurping her chocolate milk through Carly's straw.

"It's okay," Gibby mumbled through white goop, using his hand to scrape away what he could.

"Samantha Puckett!"

The yell echoed through the room, bouncing all eyes between the moody teacher and annoyed blonde whose good mood had miraculously evaporated.

"Food fights are strictly against the rules!" Ms Briggs hollered. "That's detention for all this week."

"You already gave me detention," Sam reminded her sourly, scowling at the woman.

"Then that's double detention!" the crabby lady exclaimed before swooping around on her feet and dramatically exiting the cafeteria.

"You still got…" Carly offered to Gibby, pointing to the clunks of potato still stuck to his face. Wordlessly, the boy habitually lifted off his shirt and began to wipe his face off properly.

"Shirtless boy!"

Sighing and raising his eyes to the ceiling as if to pray to whatever ceiling gods there were out there that they would take him up above to live on the roof, Gibby waited for Mr. Howard to continue his scolding, as he no doubt was about to.

"How many times to I have to tell you to keep yourself covered!" the grouchy man yelled, not wanting any answer. But Gibby gave him one anyway.

"But this time I was really—"

"Oh, stop coming up with excuses!" the old man demanded. "That'll be detention, with me, for all this week."

"But Ms Briggs already gave me detention this week!" Gibby protested.

"Then I guess I'll see you next week," Mr. Howard replied without a pause. "And put back on your shirt!"

"But it's covered in gravy and potatoes!"

"Don't talk back to a teacher!" the man yelled venomously.

"I just—!"

"Next week and the week after!" the grump proclaimed before storming off.

Such a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad series of events is exactly what had Sam in such a mood that even an entire pound of ham couldn't cure. Freddie and Carly knew this for a fact since the girl was currently finishing off the pound which they had purchased on the way home from school. After that torturous time with Briggs, they knew she would need it.

"I can't believe I have to deal with that witch for another two weeks," Sam groaned as she chewed the last bit of ham.

"At least you don't have three," Freddie pointed out.

"Poor Gibby," Carly said for the umpteenth time that afternoon.

"I really don't think I can take this," Sam complained. "She drives me insane!"

"How hard is it to drive somebody insane when they're already there?" Freddie asked Carly, clearly amused.

"Shut up, Fredella," Sam commanded. "Before I do it for you."

"Hey, take your anger out on Briggs, not me," Freddie told her, backing away just in case.

"Whatever, Fredderly, that's…" Sam froze, a mischievous grin inching across her face. "That's brilliant."

"Oh, Sam, nothing illegal," Carly pleaded.

"Spoil my fun," Sam pouted.

"And that's supposed to stop Sam?" Freddie asked with a raised eyebrow.

"True…" Sam and Carly remarked together.

"What's so factual that it's echoing-true's worthy?" Spencer questioned as he walked into the apartment, paper bags cradled in his arms.

"The fact that something being illegal wouldn't stop Sam from doing it," Carly informed him.

"Ah," he uttered, placing his bags on the kitchen counter as he thought. "Yeah, definitely echoing-true's worthy."

"Besides, after the horror Briggs and Howard put us through while they were 'co-principals," Sam shot nastily, writing finger quotes in the air as she spoke, "they deserve to be hit with something good."

"I don't wanna know," Carly announced. Then she turned sharply towards Sam and grinned. "Okay, tell me!"

"Well, I haven't thought of the perfect thing yet," Sam replied, frowning slightly. "It'll take me some time to come up with a fitting revenge."

"Wow, I'm surprised you don't have a list of possible pranks lying around," Freddie commented dryly.

"Nah, too time consuming," Sam responded with a lazy wave of her hand.

"Why did you buy so many golf balls?" Carly wondered out loud, even though everyone in the room could guess what Spencer would say. Pausing from unloading the boxes of golf balls stacked within his paper bags, Spencer leaned up against the counter to explain.

"Remember that time I was making those test holes for the mini golf course and all those kids came over and brought all those clubs?"

"Wasn't that a long time ago? Like over a year?" Carly asked as the memories came back. It wasn't a fun memory to recall, since she was still a bit disappointed that her friends had rigged her interview so she never even had the chance to accept or deny an invitation to attend Briarwood. But she was over it. Totally completely over with a capital O.

Mostly.

"I have no idea," Spencer admitted. "I know the clubs have been staring at me for forever though. Sometimes they're scary. Like at night, when I forget they're in my closet and I go in there and they always jump out at me, like hideous, lengthy monsters."

By this time, Sam and Freddie were exchanging glances – as per usual when the elder Shay told such stories.

"Well, I still have all the clubs because the owner of King Putt said they weren't colorful enough to match his course, so they've been stocked up in my room. Then, last night, I got this inspiration!" Spencer formed an invisible shape in the air as he described his newest idea. "I'm going to make this sculpture out of golf clubs and golf balls of a man playing baseball!"

None of the teens bothered to ask why a man being constructed of golf bits would play baseball.

"Cool!" Carly exclaimed, catching the excitement from her brother. With those two, excitement seemed to spread as fast as laughs or sneezes. "But why did you need more golf balls? You had a pretty big collection of those, too."

"Oh, I gave those to Mr. Puttani," he explained. When all three of the teenagers in the apartment shot him quizzical glances, he expanded. "He's the owner of King Putt."

"Is he related to Socko?" Freddie inquired.

"I don't think so," Spencer replied slowly, not quite understanding where that came from. "Why? I mean, I could ask—"

"No reason," Sam assured him.

"Okay," he said, dismissing the last ten seconds of the conversation as he finished emptying his bag of golf balls.

"Maybe I should pelt Briggs with golf balls…" Sam thought aloud, a grin curving its way onto her face.

"And get suspended for sending her into the hospital," Freddie finished for her, earning a glare from the blonde.

"Freddie has a point," Carly added. "And as much as I dislike Briggs, you shouldn't actually kill her."

"Dislike? You only dislike the skunksack?" Sam demanded in shock. "I hate her!"

"Hate is a strong word," Carly explained.

"Which is why I use it often," Sam responded coolly, flipping through the channels so fast that Freddie couldn't figure out what any of the shows were that she was passing.

"Sam," he whined. "Can't you just pick a station and stick with it?"

"There's nothing good on," she protested before turning off the television and throwing the remote onto the coffee table. "Besides, my brain's stuck on pranking Briggs."

"Hey, speaking of pranking…" Freddie began, a grin appearing on his face. "You know what we haven't done in a while?"

"Our homework? 'Cause I'll pass," Sam proclaimed.

"No," he said simply, eyes sparkling as he let a moment of silence build up the suspense for the curious girls. "Messed with Lewbert."

With those words, the three teens grinned at each other, Sam's expression matching Freddie's almost too well. In Spencer's opinion, that is.

"I know there's a reason we keep you around," Sam told Freddie.

"Because I'm brilliant," he replied in a giddy tone.

"What should we do?" Carly asked, excited for the event which was most definitely going into the next iCarly show.

"Hmmm," Sam murmured while thinking. When she brought out that half-smile of hers, Carly and Freddie only had to wait a moment for the idea to come out.

"Hey, Spence," she called. "Could we borrow some of those golf balls?"