What If No One's Watching? Chapter 22: Those Who Prank, We Salute, an icarly fanfic

Chapter 22: Those Who Prank, We Salute You

Disclaimer: Ha, I totally superglued Dan to the set of iCarly. That's what he gets for owning it.

Day 12 - The Great Prankocalypse

Carly Shay woke up to find Sam gone. Spencer had told Carly Sam was on the couch, but when she checked there was only a blanket tossed casually to the side. Sam never woke up early. Never. Never ever. Dread began to well up inside Carly. This can't be good. It really, really can't. Sam had talked about the pranks she wanted to pull, and part of Carly had hoped (foolishly, she knew) that Sam wouldn't follow through.

Carly went into the kitchen to get something to drink, and she saw Spencer sitting at the table, his eyes distant.

"You okay, Spence?"

"She wouldn't stop talking about them, Carly. Do you think maybe I should just go to the school to check on..."

"No! You are to stay miles away from the school. The last thing I need is for you to fall back on your pranking ways. I'm still having flashbacks."

Spencer nodded, defeated. "I guess I'll go to bed now."

"You haven't been to bed yet?"

"Been thinking about the pranks." He stumbled toward his bedroom. Carly decided she needed to talk to Sam about the conversations she had with Spencer; she didn't need for him to get riled up. She wouldn't do it today, though. Sam would pay attention to nothing she said on this day, Carly knew.

Thirty minutes later there was a knock on her door. Freddie Benson stepped inside. He looked rather haggard himself.

"You okay, Freddie?"

"I'm just worried about Sam. I hope she doesn't push things too far today."

"I'm sure she'll be okay," Carly said, although she had her doubts.

"You ready to go?" he asked. He didn't seem surprised that Sam wasn't there.

Ted Franklin knew a lot about what went on at his school. He had known about the prank contest through some sources in the Detention Posse. However, he had not been able to nail down any information recently. After the Steve Phillips incident, information from members of the Detention Posse had dried up. Also, most of them, as well as most of the school, were afraid of crossing Sam Puckett. Nobody had told him that, but he had known her long enough to know the truth. He found this somewhat humorous, as he thought of Sam as sensitive, although he supposed if he had admitted that to her, she might show him the side the other students were afraid of. He had also heard that within the last few days she had become the girlfriend of Freddie Benson, probably the most mild-mannered boy Ted had seen in many years. He had long ago learned not to worry about high school romances. They were often short and tawdry and silly, plus he didn't like to think of them, as his own girls were getting close to high school age. But he always had a special place in his heart for Sam Puckett, and he was pleased that she had found the one boy who could, perhaps, handle being with her mercurial nature.

Thoughts of Sam Puckett's romantic bliss were the last thing on his mind as he pulled into the school's parking lot, though. He stepped out and looked at one of the signs on the grass. One of the...at least one hundred signs. It was a For Sale sign. He pulled it out of the ground. His cell phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Yes, I saw your sign. Is the school really for sale?" Ted looked at the sign. Yes, that was his phone number on the sign. He sighed. It was today. He quickly got off the phone with the potential buyer. He called his wife and let her know that if she needed to contact him, to call his office phone directly. Then he turned his cell phone off. As he walked, he noticed other signs had different numbers, one he recognized as Mr. Howard's. He would have Rachel warn the staff once he got to his office. And have the custodial staff remove the signs. He better have Rachel order coffee and donuts for them. They were going to be in for a busy day.

At the door to the school he turned around to see the field of signs. He sighed. It was going to be a long, long day. He always came to school feeling prepared for the battle that was high school. Days like this, though...

He shook his head and entered the war zone.

In high school communication, teachers and administrators are often the last to know, like parents who still think little Johnny or Janey is as sweet as pie and probably still has all their GI Joes or Barbies. At the student level, though, it is more realistic. Unlike Ted, they all knew that today was the day. Many of them found some reason to be absent from school that day. Some skipped without any thought of the consequences. Others pretended to be sick. Still others actually found ways to make themselves sick. Trips to the dentist or doctor that had been dreaded were agreed to willingly on this day. When the attendance was tabulated, it was discovered that a quarter of the high school was missing that day, including a few teachers that some students had deemed "almost cool".

Every student that entered the school that day, except for the few who were part of no social circle and thus did not know what awaited, steeled themselves. They, as Ted had, prepared to enter the war zone.

Some of them, the more adventurous, the ones who usually showed up after the tardy bell, were there soon enough to see several classrooms that had all their desks positioned perfectly in the hallway. The custodial staff was still moving desks into rooms by the time the remaining students got there. Principal Franklin was on the phone through the first hour or so, begging for additional custodial assistance from other schools. He knew there was no way to stop the devastation, short of shutting down the school, which he would not do, but he hoped to centralize the impact.

Sam was in such a hurry that she didn't even think about being in public when she gave her boyfriend a quick peck on the cheek.

"The desks?" Freddie asked.

"Uncle Carmine," she said, and grinned.

"For Sale signs?"

"Rodney," she said. She had already seen proof of that. "I gotta go."

"Wait. I know you're gonna be busy, so I packed you some stuff." He gave her a lunch bag. She looked in to see Fat Cakes and beef jerky and other assorted snacks.

"Thank you," she said, giving him another kiss. "But I can't carry this."

He stepped behind her and unzipped her backpack. "Hand the stuff to me, and I'll put it back here. Whoa," he said, looking in. "Be careful, Sam." She grinned and handed him the food one by one.

He came back around. "Good luck, Sam." She smiled and handed him the empty lunch bag.

"Gotta go." And she was gone. Freddie grinned.

Miss Briggs was the first casualty of the day. She wasn't hurt so much as she was buttery. She had opened the door to her room. She had seen the other rooms with the desks arranged outside them, and of course the For Sale signs. But she was, perhaps more than any other teacher at the school, feared. She saw there were no desks outside her room, and she smiled. Feared.

She opened her door. And was pushed back by wave upon wave of popcorn. Buttered popcorn. The greasiness of it was on her dress, in her hair. Francine Briggs had been Redenbachered.

"Cool, popcorn." Gibby walked by and grabbed some from the top of the pile. It was a little stale, but still pretty tasty.

Sam heard about the popcorn as she was setting up another prank. She grimaced. That one was good, and it hurt. Because it wasn't her prank. She still had other tricks up her sleeve, though. And in her pockets. And in her backpack.

Upstair classes were delayed because of the cups on the stairs. The problem was that the cups were filled with water and were so close together that nobody could go up the stairs without knocking some over. Plus, most of the cups were superglued to each other, so that simply removing one at a time was impossible. A team of the custodial staff, mostly those who had been rushed over from other schools, worked to pour each row of cups into a larger bucket.

Even with the help of Uncle Carmine's "friends", that had been the most difficult prank for Sam.

It took the staff longer than they thought it would to empty the bucket when it filled, because they at first were planning to dump it in a toilet. However, when they went into the bathroom, each stall was occupied. They tried another bathroom and encountered the same thing. Finally, frustrated, one of the staff knocked on one of the stalls. No answer. Hoping he didn't get called a pervert, one of them knelt down and looked under one of the stalls.

"What the..."

Then he was climbing over the stall and opened it from the inside. The other staff members saw that the legs they had seen under the stall door were not attached to a boy, but were instead just a pair of shoes and jeans stapled to what looked like a fairly flimsy table.

They had finally removed all the cups. They were at the bottom of the steps with the bucket when they heard a whistle from above. When they looked up, objects began bouncing down the stairs. Rubber balls. Thousands of them. Of all sizes.

One of the men grabbed another who had been about to move. "Don't!" If they tried to move while the balls were still moving like that, one or many of them would likely step on a ball and have their feet fly out from under them.

"I don't know if I can handle this, Jim."

It took a while for the balls to slow enough that they could go upstairs without being concerned about falling. By the time they got up, the culprits were gone.

Sam didn't like to admit it, but this was almost too hard to handle or comprehend. She remembered seeing a cartoon of Mickey Mouse trying to cast a spell and having it become too overwhelming for him. She felt like that. Somebody had run by her and thrust a box into her arms. Before she could turn, they were gone. She looked down and saw a few rubber balls in the box. Rodney was trying to set her up, she figured, and she got rid of the box quickly. It didn't matter that she didn't do that prank. If somebody saw her with the box, they would assume it was her. Which, in most circumstances, wouldn't be that bad an assumption.

She watched as several students struggled with their lockers. She grinned, as she knew just who had superglued them shut. Then she frowned when she saw the same thing happening on the other side of the hall. She hadn't superglued those. It seemed she and Rodney's crew had the same idea.

Suddenly she heard giggles and screams. She turned to see a boy running toward her. A naked boy. She couldn't tell who it was because of the bag on his head. She knew it wasn't Rodney, because Rodney was taller than that. And scrawnier.

Before she could fully comprehend, the boy had gone around the corner, maneuvering around a janitor who tried to grab him.

"Maybe it's one of the football players," she heard one of the girls behind her say.

Sam ran around the corner and looked, but the boy was gone. Well, let Rodney have that one. She certainly wasn't going to streak.

She shared some of her Fat Cakes with Carly. Carly wasn't as big of fan of them as Sam was, but when Sam mentioned that something could have been done to the lunch food, Carly gave in.

"How are you doing, Sam?"

"Hanging in there," Sam said. She looked exhausted, but she also looked thrilled, showing a smile Carly didn't usually see from her. "Rodney seems to be matching me prank for prank, though. Say, you wouldn't want to do some streaking for me, would you?"

"No!" Carly blushed. She had heard about the streaker, but had not seen him. All the girls were talking about it. The majority of them had concluded it was Dwayne Grangen, a junior running back. He denied it and finally ran to the safety of the locker room, away from all the prying eyes of high school girls.

"Where's Freddie?" Carly asked.

"I told him same as you, it's probably not safe in here."

Carly looked to see what time it was, and saw that all the clocks on the walls had different times. She sighed and pulled out her cell phone to see what time it showed.

"Don't worry, Carls. We're halfway there."

Carly watched as one girl walked by with her hands covered in blue dust. She was followed by one who had orange dust on her face and hair.

"Air blowers in the bathroom," Sam said. "By the way, don't use them. If you need to, go to the girls' bathroom next to the principal's office." Carly nodded. She wanted this day to be over. She wanted to go home, actually, and would have, except she wanted to be there to support Sam if things went wrong.

Sam got up and went to the vending machine. Carly chewed on her Fat Cake. She really needed to eat something better once she got home. She looked up as Sam sat down.

"Sam, what happened?" Sam had a Peppy Cola and was drinking from it, but there was a brown, gloopy substance on the can and on Sam's hand.

Sam licked some off her hand. "Somebody put chocolate pudding in the vending machine slot. That one was pretty good. Got to give it to them." She didn't seem to be bothered by the pudding.

After lunch the band sat down for practice, but the first note they played was a little off, as the whoopee cushion on each seat released as they sat. Once the cushions had been removed, the few who had been unwise enough to leave their instruments unattended had to remove objects from tubas and trombones and flutes.

The coach of the football team stared as his team came out for practice. Each and every one of them was wearing a uniform that was too small for him. The coach began to yell at the equipment manager, who insisted it wasn't him. He had washed the uniforms the day before once practice ended, and they had all been fine.

"Shut up!" the coach yelled at a group of girls on the side of the field. They were looking at Dwayne Grangen and admiring his clearly visible abs.

Many of the teachers thought most of the pranks had already been set up, so they didn't pay much attention when they picked up their teacher's editions of their books, only to discover they were student editions. Some of them handled this with aplomb, knowing they didn't need the answers at the back of the book. Others failed miserably. Through the grapevine, Principal Franklin would hear of some of them and would have them in his office the following Monday.

"Sam, you're in class!" Freddie looked surprise.

"Yeah, I needed a short break."

"You needed a break, so you decided to come to class?" Sam smiled at him. I love her, he thought. He couldn't resist that smile, or that twinkle in her eye.

"Shut up," Mr. Howard said. He wasn't singling out Sam or Freddie. The entire class was buzzing with talk.

"You shut up, Baldy."

"Who said that?" Mr. Howard walked up the line of desks, trying to stare each student down.

"Somebody smarter than you. So it could be anybody." Sam and Freddie looked around. Nobody near them seemed to have said anything. And it didn't really sound like it came from...

"Boo!" Mr. Howard jumped. Freddie looked up and pointed to the ceiling. One of the tiles was slightly askew.

Mr. Howard looked up. Then he looked right at Sam. "This is you."

Sam was about to protest when the voice said, "Why you so stupid, Howard?" Sam burst out laughing. Whoever did this had stolen a Puckett line. Freddie grinned and hid his face.

Howard turned to another student and told him to get a ladder from a janitor.

"Well, that's my cue to go," the voice said. "I'll see you at the wig shop, Howie." There was an audible click and then a shuffling sound. The tile fell back into place.

"Hey, Gibby," Carly said. Because of all the ruckus and pranking she hadn't even noticed that she had not seen him that day.

"Hey, Carly, what's happening?"

"It's just so...oh no." Before Gibby could comprehend what was happening, Carly had leaped into his arms. In one jump, she had leaped into his arms.

"Carly?"

"Rats," she said, with her eyes squeezed shut. He looked down. Yes, there were rats. Probably at least three dozen or so. Some of them scampered over his feet. He didn't mind. He had worked in his uncle's pet shop over the summer, and he actually thought rats were cool, but they just got a bad reputation. He didn't really notice the rats much, though, as he concentrated on the girl in his arms, with her eyes closed shut and her arms clasped tightly around his neck. He found himself entranced by her perfume. I feel like a zombie, he thought.

"Are they gone, Gibby?" she whispered.

He looked around. "Yeah, they're gone."

"Okay, you can let me down now." Gibby started to release her, but she still clung to his neck. "Okay, maybe just a little bit longer."

"No problem," Gibby said.

"I'm sorry I'm such a girl, Gibby."

"I wouldn't want you any other way," Gibby said. She opened her eyes and stared directly into his. "Do you want me to take you to your next class?"

"Would you?" she asked. He nodded, and walked with her in his arms. Such a sight would have ran like wildfire through the gossip channels of the school, but on this day it was not even noticed, largely because the main gossip group was trapped in a bathroom, attempting to keep the rats out.

"Hey, look, aliens," Gibby said, looking up, as something fell on his arm. Carly reached out and touched it.

"That's liquid soap, Gibby."

"Even cooler." He looked up and saw that the hallway ceiling was coated with it. "Awesome."

And then it was over. Sam walked down a hallway, almost falling on a floor she had coated with butter herself. Rodney was coming toward her. He held out his hand. She shook it.

"Good day, Sam. What do you got?"

"Three hundred and ninety-four. You?"

"Three ninety-five." He grinned.

"I guess we'll just have to see on Monday who got it," she said. He nodded, and they walked their separate ways. Sam looked up as she felt an arm around her shoulder. Freddie smiled down at her.

"How you feeling, Puckett?"

"Tired."

"Well, guess we need to take you home so you can catch a nap. We got iCarly and a big date tonight."

And Sam, who had barely been able to walk up to that point, smiled. "Freddie?"

He nodded. "Piggyback?"

She grinned. He knelt down, and she climbed on his back, resting her head on his shoulder. She was asleep before they got to the door.

A/N: I wish I could claim all the pranks came from my own mind. The majority were ideas I got online. My humor tends to be verbal. One of my friends called me a "comedy ninja", in that I would jump in with a funny remark and then jump back out before anybody even knew what happened. Pranks were never my forte, so thank you, Google.

I want to apologize if I offended anyone yesterday with my rants about stuff in fanfic. I definitely feel how I do about the review requests, but I probably shouldn't have written about the Freddie and Sam issue I had, especially as the story I referenced is fairly popular and was easily guessable. Let me assure everybody that I have loved the rest of that story, and that was also part of the reason I was thrown off, as, since I don't like them, I usually avoid that type of scenario I previously mentioned and hadn't expected it in that story. Again, apologies.

Thanks for reviews from: afanoffanfic, Geekquality, sfuffasdreamsaremadeon, Moviepal, rangergirl123, SeddierFTW, PurpleJerkWarrior, Sam's Tiger Ate Freddie, ShooshYeah35, UnderxGravity, LadyArtemis101, WothcerLizzieGinny, PurpleJerk, and kiyokoseddie.

Afanoffanfic: Thanks. That's always awesome to hear. Er, read.

rangergirl123: Hopefully this chapter was fast-paced enough for you. Sometimes when I set a goal, there is an (my favorite phrase, apparently) ebb-and-tide to the chapters, and I don't feel that it can constantly be more, more, more of something, or it loses its effectiveness. Also, there are still five more chapters after this one.

SeddierFTW: I hope I cleared up my thoughts on the one issue. And I apologize if I failed to make this clear before, but there is not going to be a double-date. Two different dates. Because Sam insisted.

PurpleJerkWarrior: I didn't take it as an accusation. I thought it was funny, because the thought was something that never crossed my mind until I had Gibby say it. It's going to be weird after five days when I have nothing to update (since I am obviously horrible at building anticipation and making people wait). I don't have any ideas right now, but then again, my "Nothing to Fear" story seemed to pop out of nowhere, so we'll see.

clarksonfan: I know. Sorry. I kept finding myself at several points in this story, thinking to myself, oh, I could have this person say or do this...and then I remembered, oh, yea, K+.

UnderxGravity: You shut up, you, or I'll have Brian Boitano after you. Uh, I mean...what are you talking about? The knocking with the head thing is just a me thing. I've come home with my hands filled and had to do it. Of course, I have a hard head.

LadyArtemis101: I'm just not going to convince people that Freddie is not good at pranks, am I? Meet me at the next comment.

PurpleJerk: With the handcuff, I don't think I would necessarily call that a good prank. To me, that was probably more of a kneejerk reaction kind of thing, without much planning and, in its scope, I don't think it necessarily qualifies as a prank. The Gary Wolf thing is a good prank, I do have to admit. The thing is, though, that he went through Sam torturing him about that chain letter issue and it pushed him enough to do that. Generally, Freddie doesn't have the malice or cunning to fully commit to pranking, and I think Freddie pulling a successful prank is more like the movie "Rudy". Yeah, Rudy had his great moment, but if he had played all season, do we really think that was something he could do consistently? No, I say. Same with Freddie and pranks. I hope we can put the Freddie prankster rumor to bed. The thing with Sam is that people sometimes forget how differently she acts when she is with a boy, and it's probably hard for people to see that in stories like this, because they think, kind of like Freddie did, "it's not a guy; it's Freddie." But it is still a guy. But I am glad to have her being a little more like herself. I don't know that Sam would want to be a lawyer, but, yes, if she did, she would be a good one. I don't tease! Apparently, I skate...wheeee.