Author's Note: Hello my dear readers. Thanks for the reviews and your readership once again. I hope you enjoy.

Tron- Freddie/Tori? It might be an interesting story to write sometime down the line once my other stories are complete, however I can not make any promises. The reason from dropping from two to one chapter an update is a combination of the amount of time available I have to write and trying to prevent burnout. The last thing I would want to do is have the quality of the story drop as a price for longer updates.

Urias- Yes, the puppet is actually the puppet master behind this whole story. He gets his shot at Carly and gets Cat out of the way in having not to deal with her if Robbie gets with her. :) Also, I forgot to mention in the last update, I did see Nathan Kress in the last Victorious and according to Lane on theSlap that is Freddie sitting with him. I wish they would have aired that episode earlier so I could have wrote another weekend trip for Freddie, but there might be that episode happening in another story.

Chapter 26

Premiere Theater
Los Angeles, CA
Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Behave.

The thought echoed through Sam's head throughout the day even as she was exited the restroom stall to wash her hands from the restroom of the movie theater she and Jade had gone to spend the evening. As she pumped some soap in her hands from the dispenser and began washing them, the annoyance of the statement grated on her nerves.

Behave.

That was Carly's instruction to Sam before they even left Seattle.

Carly had instructed her as if she was a petulant child to behave before going on a family trip.

Carly hadn't spoken to her about what happened during the lock-in and that weekend. The closest she had in addressing Sam's role in what happened was warning her not to do anything to antagonize Cat and the rest of them in L.A. None of them were particularly happy with her coming down with Freddie and her and from Freddie's attitude after speaking with them between the last day of school and when the iCarly trio and Spencer left Seattle, no one was going to put up with any of the blonde's attempt to disrupt their summer. Any goodwill and friendship that was created among them that night at Kenan's house during the party had vanished with her actions during the lock-in.

They had drawn a line that Sam was not to cross.

She didn't give a damn about their line or them at this point either. They were just obstacles and an unneeded distraction for Carly to get back with Freddie. Freddie may not have been Sam's favorite person (but was warming up to him since he finally found his spine), but Carly loved him and wanted him, so the blonde would swallow down her own preferences and do what she had to do to make it happen.

Taking all that into account, Sam didn't understand why she even agreed to go to the movies with the gothic looking teenager. She let Carly convince her to go as a gesture that they were here to just have a good time and really be friends and maintain the bonds they had formed weeks ago as she stayed with Cat for the evening. She thought it was a naïve position to hold that they could somehow be friends, but she didn't put up too much of a fight in trying to convince the brunette in not going with Jade. The idea of Carly spending the evening with Cat did not sit well with the blonde as it felt like she was fraternizing with the enemy.

Didn't Carly realize that Cat was the competition if she wanted Freddie back as only hers? She's the enemy. You don't make nice with the enemy.

The only decent thing turning out for this evening that Sam would admit was that Jade had good taste in movies: a good violent and scary movie was the best way to start off the night as far as Sam was concern. However, the pale teenager had watched her like a predator for most of the night. It pricked at her that maybe in another life she could have gotten along with the raven and blue streaked hair teenager, but that wasn't going to happen in this universe.

The dirty blonde was so distracted with her thoughts and washing her hands that she didn't initially hear Jade step inside the restroom. The raven haired teenager shut the door behind her then slide the trashcan sitting beside the exit under the door handle.

The noise of the scrapping trashcan caught Sam's attention and she looked up from sink and turned her head to see Jade staring back at her with harsh glare. The dirty blonde held the look as she walked over to the paper towel dispenser and grabbed a few to dry her hands off. She quickly dried her hands then wadded the used paper and threw it on the sink countertop.

The two teenagers held their stares for a moment. Sam took a breath then asked in a guarded tone, "You want to have it out right here, right now?"

Jade chuckled as she responded, "No, we're just going to have a friendly conversation. You can have one of those, right little doggie?"

Sam narrowed her eyes on the pale teenager and frowned as she let a little growl from her throat.

Jade grinned then replied in a tone that showed her happiness with getting under the girl's skin, "You're not use to someone giving it back to you, are you?" She thought for a moment that this was going to be more fun than getting under Tori's skin. She didn't consider Sam a fellow Alpha Female to respect.

Sam smirked and raised an eyebrow as she replied, "They're just smart enough to keep their stupid opinions to themselves and not piss me off. I can show you why they're afraid."

She did something Sam didn't expect: she laughed. It wasn't a short giggle, but an out and out loud laugh. Sam frowned and her brow furled as she was perplexed with her laughter.

Once Jade calmed down somewhat from her laughter, she replied, "Of what? You? This is L.A. with a million girls just like you: a mother that is a bed hopping whore so she can pay the bills and a father that abandoned you and supposedly no one really loves you, blah, blah, blah. We'll just ignore the fact that you mooch off of the Shays for food and a roof over your head." Jade snorted out a laugh then continued, "It's a story that people have heard a thousand times over. You think that gives you a license to act like a bitch and no one call you out on it because people will feel sorry for you or you'll just hit them."

Sam clenched her fists as she glared at her pale opponent. She had to resist the urge to charge her and rip those blue and green streaks out of her hair.

Jade held on to her grin as she replied, "I've done my research."

The blonde growled out, "So you know what I'm capable of then?"

"Yes… picking on people that won't or can't fight back." Jade raised her hands to shake them and grin, "Uhhh, you're real scary. You ran away from a girl in a Halloween Nixon mask and a fake toy ax."

Sam's frown deepened as Jade was seriously starting to t-her off.

Jade chuckled as she dropped her hands and replied, "The police report was quite thorough. I can't believe you admitted to that little tidbit. Gibby had to save you? Really?"

The blonde outright growled, "Enough of your yammering, we should go ahead and go at it and get it out of the way."

Jade cocked an eyebrow and raised a finger then replied, "We could, but then I'd have to show you the meaning of real pain right now and we couldn't have our talk."

Sam took a step forward and Jade matched the step. The blonde web-hostess stared at the greenish/blue eyes and saw the lack of fear that she usually saw in a person's eyes when she was staring them down. It was an intriguing development: someone who would fight back… but it also annoyed her further.

Jade replied with a small, coy smile, "Take your swing, but you better hope it puts me down or they'll carry you out."

Sam shook her head in disgust. "I don't want to hear any mess for Freddie if I hurt you too bad, so a friendly conversation? Then what do you want to talk about?"

Jade smirked as she replied sarcastically, "Tell yourself whatever you have to so you can feel better about yourself. You need all the self-esteem you need with how pathetic you really are."

The dirty blonde clenched her mouth shut tight as her blood burned. She wanted nothing more to wipe that smirk off of the actress' face. However, before she could reply with anything, Jade continued, "What did I want to talk about? Simple, you're not going to pull any of your chizz while you're here. You're not going to interfere with Cat and Freddie's relationship like you did back at Ridgeway. You know, when you sent your best friend to the hospital. You're lucky Freddie didn't put you in a neighboring bed."

Another one that would just dump it entirely all on her with no one else taking responsibility. "You don't know what I did or why I did what I did," the Seattle native replied defensively.

Jade hummed out and shrugged a shoulder to show she really didn't care about the blonde's reasons. "You tried to make Cat think Freddie was cheating on her to break them up to leave him free for Carly to take her run at him. That kind of sums up what you did and why you did it."

Jade disregarded the cold stare the blonde was giving her as she continued, "Here's the thing: Carls had her shot and she chose to let him go. Let them deal with it and mind your own business."

"She's my best friend and it is my business. Maybe you need to butt out," Sam replied confidently.

Jade nodded along as she processed what she considered dribble from the blonde. "Yeah, well… I'm not good at listening to stupid people; they annoy me too much beside the fact that since they are stupid, they say stupid stuff. It may not look like it, but Cat's my best friend. Freddie's a good guy that doesn't the chizz you put him through or what happened that night at your high school. You know what? He's my friend too, so if you're going to try to screw their lives over, it's my business and you're going to deal with me."

Sam snorted out as she looked Jade up and down. "You think you scare me you emo reject?"

She smiled in response as she answered, "Scare you? If I wanted to scare you, I'd just dress up as Nixon and swing around a toy ax. Do Republicans scare you that much?" Jade shook her head then replied, "I don't care about scaring you, but just letting you know that you will pay for whatever you try and Carly isn't going to bail you out of it. I'm not letting Dorfman's daughter get in my way."

The trouble-making Seattle native thought for a moment until she realized what she had told Carly that Monday morning after the brunette saw the video. The memory brought a confident smile to her face and she shrugged a shoulder as she replied, "It doesn't matter. Freddie doesn't love Cat, he loves Carly. She's the love of his life and she's going to win anyway. I just wanted to maybe spare Freddie and Cat the heartbreak of going through their joke of a relationship until they break up and Freddie goes back to Carly."

"Oh how selfless of you," Jade sarcastically replied with a snort of breath. "Feed that load of chizz to someone else." The pale singer took a breath and smiled. "You might be right: Cat and Freddie don't work out and he and Carly get back together, but…"

"But what?" Sam snapped back.

"They're going to figure it out all on their own and you're not going to slip any 'foreign bacon' chizz in the middle of their relationship."

Sam lost her confident smile as her past actions were thrown in her face by someone else.

"Yeah, we all know how you screwed him over last time not giving them a chance, but you are not going to do it to them. Freddie won't let you pull that on him again, Cat isn't going to fall for anything you do and the rest of us will stop you. But please, go ahead and try. It might be entertaining."

Her anger had dissipated from the singer's threat and replaced with that rarely felt emotion of true regret, "You never did what you thought was right, but it turned around and blew up in your face? You wouldn't take the chance to fix that mistake if you had another shot at it and damn how wrong methods could be?"

Jade's own righteous indignation faded at the brief moment of honesty from the blonde. She couldn't help but think back on when she and Tori got the dog for Beck, but the animal mauled his father a little bit. It was a silly little scheme to try to get Beck to accept her back and it blew up in her face, but she did get back with Beck. She held her tongue as the blonde continued, "Yeah, I know I janked over my best friend and I should have kept my mouth shut now, but I don't give a damn whether you think I'm a gank or a bitch or the villain or whatever the Hell you think I am in trying to fix what I should have never broken."

The dark headed girl shook her head slightly. "So this is really about you, not Carly? You can tell yourself that you're doing it or whatever you're planning to do to help her get Freddie back, but it is really about you fixing your screw up. Even when you're trying to think about others, you're still thinking about yourself."

Sam nodded in agreement then whispered, "Maybe, but at least Carly will be happy with Freddie. It's the least I can do for my best friend."

Jade hated to admit it, but she found a hint of admiration for the girl in being so loyal to her friend. Maybe if things weren't playing out how they were at the moment, they could have been friends, but Jade didn't have time for 'what ifs'. She cocked her head to the side as she replied, "As much trouble as you've cause… Carly's still lucky to have you to count on, so that's something, but…"

Sam asked in a curt tone, "But what?"

"The best thing you can do to help Carly is nothing. I'm probably not the best in trusting my friends to make the best decisions, but that's really the only thing you should do: trust Carly and let things play out if you want any of this to come out in any good way, that's what you'll have to do."

The blonde trouble maker let out a slow breath as she looked to Jade staring back at her as if she was a puzzle instead of prey.

Jade whispered out sadly, "You want redemption? Or do you want your friend to be happy? You might only get one. Think about that… and the fact that I'll make you sad for a long time if you try to hurt my friends." She frowned and continued in a colder tone, "If it is a choice between Cat and your redemption then to Hell with your redemption. I have my friend to watch out for too." She held her stare for a few brief moments at the blonde then turned and headed to the door. She slid the trashcan aside and opened the door to exit and as she was doing so, she called out, "Hurry up before I leave your behind."

Sam stared at the closing restroom door and clenched her jaw tight. The dark headed teenager may not have scared her, but she might have a point.