It was a universal law that if you drop anything on the floor within a ten foot radius of a bed, that object will slowly and surely be sucked underneath the bed by some unseen magnetic force.

Or at least that's the theory Carly came up with on a Thursday night while she was searching desperately for a spare set of her brother's motorcycle keys. They had mysteriously disappeared one day when Spencer had a root canal scheduled at the dentist. He ended up missing his appointment and made a dramatic show of seeming disappointed about it. Of course, Carly saw straight through that paper-thin act. After a brief lecture on responsibility, she had left Spencer to spend the rest of the day slouching guiltily in the condo's assigned, "Punishment Corner," to begrudgingly stare at the wall and think about the consequences of his actions. An hour later when she returned to check on him, she had discovered her brother in an act of rebellion vivaciously painting a mural where he once so glumly stood.

Now she was on her hand and knees, swatting aside used paintbrushes, dirty socks and a torn aquarium net that a particularly clever goldfish had once exploited to outwit its master. She pushed aside an ancient fading quilt given to him by their Yakamite grandfather and recoiled for only a second before tossing out a moldy, half-eaten pizza crust. It was the fourth one she came across in thirteen minutes. Carly decided then and there that her brother, however much of a creative genius he was, however freshly conditioned his hair or neatly pressed his shirts were… was completely disgusting.

The brunette was surprised that there wasn't more sophisticated organic life crawling around underneath Spencer's bed. By now, she had half expected to meet a mass of talking bacteria sporting a bowler hat and a curled moustache introducing itself to her in a British accent.

Eureka, there it was. With a large sweeping gesture, Carly fished out the keyring from underneath her brother's bed, her arm coming out covered with a large clump of dust bunnies and a few long hairs. Sitting back on her haunches and covering her nose in the crook of her elbow, she violently shook it, producing a cloud of dust that could be described as a miniature tornado.

Footsteps treaded into the room from behind her. "I found the bugs; they were right where you said they'd be." Freddie said incredulously, his palm extended toward her, presenting the tiny cameras in his hands. He knew that she wouldn't know the worth of them but Freddie felt dwarfed by the small fortune in his grasp.

"What do you think we should do with them?" Carly asked, leaning forward to straighten out Spencer's comforter, positioning his pillows neatly in place.

Freddie scratched at his chin thoughtfully, "Well, if Sam was here, I'd suggest we surgically implant them into her earlobes so we'd always know where she was and wouldn't have to play this constant game of hide and seek with her." He drolled, attempting to sound lackadaisical and cheery.

"Just because you have a chip in your head doesn't mean we all want one." Carly commented back gingerly, trying to indulge in his playful banter.

A sneeze caught Carly off guard. It must've been contagious because it caused Freddie to sneeze too. For that brief stretch of time, in that reciprocity of biological functions, they shed their awkwardness and savored their shared moment. "Lurking underneath that pile of clothes over there are dust creatures that belong in a horror movie." Carly explained with a sincere bit of whimsy.

"I'll fight them off for you." Freddie casually mentioned.

And thus that instant was gone. Carly meant to smile, but it came out wobbly. "That's such a boy thing to say."

"What do you mean?"

"Only a boy would offer to be so gallant in such an offhand way," she asserted. "Girls are much more subtle. They're less obvious about the way they offer to help each other."

"Are you saying you don't like my chivalry?"

"No, I do like it. I get that it's who you are. You're a knightly boy. I accept that you're a boy. I'm happy that you're a boy."

Freddie looked happy that he was a boy too.

"I just don't necessarily need your heroics all the time, Freddie. You know, I have functioned in life for a good sixteen years fighting many of my own battles. I'm not made of glass." Carly fluffed a pillow meticulously. "I'm made out of.. human parts, just like you. Bones and muscle and skin and…"

"Fat," Freddie yielded.

"Not too much fat though!" Carly was quick to jump, "Just... a healthy amount. The average amount. The necessary amount." she clarified.

"I don't know how else to be." Freddie admitted, suddenly feeling unsure of himself. "Look, I understand that sometimes it can be stifling but… it's in my nature to be protective, Carly. It's the way I've been raised."

"There's a difference between being protective and controlling, Freddie. Protect me without trying to control me and I'll protect you too." Carly offered wearily. "Maybe I want to be the one to fight off the wild and ravageous dust creatures for you."

He gave a stilted cough, clearing his throat in an obvious ploy to get her attention. She turned her head to look at him. There was concern written all over Freddie's face. "I don't really think you're in any condition to do that." At her quizzical expression, he gestured with a tilt of his head towards the nearby bureau mirror.

Dark circles ringed her eyes, her skin was pallid and splotchy and her hair was a mess of wet tangles. "Ugh. I look like a nightmare. I should have my female license revoked." Carly joked, a tinge of shame coloring her words. "Let me go wash my face and we'll go to the garage." She rubbed at her eyes, making her way to the bathroom.

"Do you even know how to drive Spencer's motorcycle?" Freddie asked in consideration.

"No," was all that came back at him.

Freddie groaned.

"I'll learn! There's a manual. I'm a quick study. I study quickly. If quickness and studiousness were the two most valued traits in our society, people would run up to me to lift me onto their shoulders and make me their president." Carly's head popped out of the entryway, comb in hand, its teeth brushing through her hair. "You know, you don't believe in me as much as I'd like you to." She narrowed her eyes and pointed at him accusingly with the blade of her comb before disappearing behind the creak of the bathroom door.

"I do believe in you." Freddie quietly insisted, tucking the spy cams into his shirt pocket. "I'm just a boy... A boy who is horrible at being subtle."

"It doesn't make sense."

Cal muttered to himself as he watched a black and white projection on his wall of the newest .avi file that was sent to him by his trusty source. It was a file attached to an e-mail stating that his impeccably groomed sidekick was no longer interested in dealing with him anymore and that their agreement was dropped. He read it in disdain with a plan to inflict something horrible on the youngster later.

Right now, it was this damned film that had him swelling in frustration. "There's no explanation for it," he whispered to himself as two floating forms danced their way to and fro in front of his eyes. "More than six independent magnetic fields simultaneously working in succession. Lines of movement spontaneous rather than patterned. No veritable device to be found. No third party present as a control factor. It looks… innate. Instinctual. Quite beautiful actually."

"Where's our girl?" he gruffly demanded.

"I-I-in the lab, sir." the redheaded doctor responded, her voice shaky with fear.

"What have you done so far?"

"Everything you've asked for, Agent Zimmerman. We've taken skin grafts, blood, tissue, hair, saliva, nail and urine samples. There is this puzzling anomaly of her body metabolizing our injected sedatives at triple the rate than we expected so we've heightened the dosage to keep her calm and malleable during our procedures."

"Triple the rate?" Cal asked for clarification.

"Yes sir, they cycle through her like nothing else I've seen before. It's enough to make any medical professional worry. Even with the slight concussion earlier today, she's woken up twice to injure eight more of our orderlies in the last four hours of captivity."

Cal cursed, knowing that there was something occurring he didn't have a grasp on yet. Something bewildering. "I assume an ice bath is being utilized to slow the chemical purge?" An affirmative nod answered him. "I want an MRI scan added to the procedure list and conclusions delivered to me with your lead neuroscientist as soon as it's done."

"Understood, sir." she confirmed, scurrying out of his sight.

"Well, that was a wash-out idea." Carly simpered, adjusting her helmet as she and Freddie crawled out of the ditch. Her knees were scraped up and her pride wounded.

"Quick study… Huh." The battered brown-eyed boy remarked behind her despondently.

Carly didn't know what to say to that smartening comment so she turned around, pursed her lips and began started walking backwards with an outstretched arm.

"What are you doing now?" Freddie couldn't keep the haughty edge from escaping the corners of his mouth.

"Hitch-hiking! I am hitch-hiking because despite the dangers and the riskiness and the "Oh no, RUN!" I've always yelled at movie theatre screens when the driver turns out to be ill-intentioned and tries to harm the poor young runaway girl he's giving a lift to, I have somewhere I need to be." Carly announced grumpily.

Freddie opened his mouth to say something before thinking better of it. He snapped his mouth closed and tightened his jaw resolutely, turning around to mimic her motions as the tail end of their two-person backwards parade.

They marched on for a solid twenty minutes without a single car or truck passing their way.

A gleaming flash of light caught Carly's attention and she looked to her right side to discover a broken tail-light hovering next to her. Attached to it was a mud-splashed motorcycle with a half-tank of gas available following her since the collision. Her head shot to her left to fall on the boy next door for an explanation.

"I'm just keeping our options open. You wanna try again?" Freddie asked supportively while landing the motorcycle next to her in a heap of creaking metal.

A look of sheer joy burst across Carly's face as she launched herself at him in a Carly-sized bearhug, nearly bowling him over. Freddie bewilderingly caught her in his arms twirling her around once before setting her down so she could hop onto the two-wheeler. "I wasn't sure you were going to trust me after that last wipe-out," she admitted, her hands finding a steady grip on the steering handles.

"It wasn't so bad. I still have all my limbs." Freddie situated himself comfortably behind her, worriedly grimacing in an effort to optimistically grin. Curiosity struck him at the most inopportune of times. "Why did we crash anyways?"

"I just confused my gas and brake pedals. It won't happen again."

In a seedy motel room off the interstate highway, Griffin took a puff from his cigarette and flipped through the newspaper scanning the winning lottery numbers to see if his ticket figures matched up. No dice. He nearly spilled the bowl of food balancing on his lap due to his disappointment. "Damn," he huffed in frustration, a burst of smoke ambushing his line of sight. Whether it was a stray spark jumping from his cigarette or the clumsy tip striking against the page, his newspaper caught on fire and he yelped, jumping up from the suspicious bed to throw the flaming object on the ground and stomped on it furiously with his boots while waving his leather jacket around to dissipate the smoke.

That scorched patch of carpet presented itself as a souvenir to the misery of his existence.

Four hours of careful driving and it was nearly midnight when Carly and Freddie arrived at their destination.

"This is it?" He asked judiciously, staring pointedly at the dimly-lit building fifty yards ahead of them.

"Yeah," she said, the dark ramparts giving her goosebumps up and down her arms.

"It's an old, abandoned army base. Nobody comes in and out of there anymore."

"Sam's in there. I know it." she said, her fingers aching to clutch at the wire fence separating them from the edifice.

Carly stepped behind Freddie as he bent over and wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders. With a considerable amount of willpower, Freddie focused on a point of origin above him and created a moving vacuum, slowly sucking the weight of the pair upwards, clearing the barbed wire fence. He released the vacuum allowing the mass to disperse and the twosome to land on the other side gently on their feet.

"Why did you look so nervous doing that?" Carly asked, earnestly examining the beads of sweat on his forehead.

"That was a good forty feet off the ground, hovering above a fence with running electricity surging through it. Why wouldn't I be nervous?"

"But you can control it, right?"

"Yeah… mostly. But sometimes I can't. Like with your control of mind-reading, even when you've got it turned off, there are thoughts that jump out at you that you can't help hearing right?"

"Yeah, just like the advertisements that come on during Girly Cow," she nodded before projecting in her radio voice, "'We will return you to your regular programming after these commercials.'"

"Carly…" Freddie started, "Does it work the other way around?"

She paused in her tracks. "What do you mean?"

The ever vigilant soldier stood at the entrance to the military medical base, armed with his rifle ready to halt anyone who didn't have clearance to enter. He stared straight in front of himself before feeling the overwhelming urge to look upwards. Huh. The stars are looking so pretty tonight. He noted to himself as his gaze lingered. He shook his head, snapping himself out of his daze as he adjusted his hold on his gun and focused forward. Hm… my toes itch. He lifted his foot and scratched the toe of it on the heel of his other boot. Why does it itch so much? He scratched it as a more furious pace. Is it a blister? A spider bite maybe? The leather of his boots were coming apart at the seams due to the accelerated pace of friction. Is my foot on fire? Sheer panic began overwhelming the young soldier. OH SWEET JESUS, MY FEET ARE ON FIRE. Tumbling to the ground, the flailing guard kicked his legs trying to put out the imaginary flames. He ripped his shoes off and fanned his socks, the heat becoming nearly unbearable to him.

He shot forward like a flame when he spied the two young teenagers hiding in the bushes. "Hey! HEY! WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING OVER THERE?" He hopped from one bare burning foot to the other as he scurried towards them. "You kids have a- do you have a- a can- a canteen? I need a bucket of water. I need to put out my feet!" He pathetically croaked out, his voice a tilted whine.

Freddie ducked his head from behind the bush first, cautiously stepping near him. "We're not carrying any water bottles but there's a river about an hour's walk that way." Freddie gestured to the west where the land was flat for miles. "You can't miss it. It's right over those hills."

Freddie couldn't contain his laughter as the soldier turned tail and started running for the desert.

"It worked?" A prudent set of feminine eyes peeked out from behind a branch.

"It worked." Freddie assured her, a huge grin emanating from his face.

Carly stepped out from behind the shrubbery, perspiration clinging to the side of her cheek. She wiped her neck with the back of her wrist abashedly as she took in a deep breath. "That wasn't as easy as it looked."

"It doesn't matter. You did it! That was amazing. I acquiesce to you." Freddie put his hand to his heart and bowed down to her in a graceful motion.

Carly took a step to the side, bent one leg behind the other and curtsied to him modestly. "Well, I couldn't have done it without you." she spoke with honesty. It was a relief to see the entrance way to the bunker so wide open and available for entry. The two friends felt a weight taken from their shoulders at bypassing through their first obstacle. "You know, the stars really are pretty tonight." Carly reflected, taking one last look at the sky before determinedly jaunting into the new unpredictable territory.

"Yeah, check out that full moon." Freddie remarked sportively as he followed her inside.

Author's Note: I've outlined the next five chapters and I know exactly where this story's going. Cam and Seddie are in the works. As for a chapter release timetable? Inconclusive. I've never been busier in my life than right now.

I should also mention that I had another iCarly story in progress on this site that I've taken down to simply continue as an original story rather than a fanfic. It was far too AUish anyways.

I'm actually fairly satisfied with Creddie's foundation and the way they're developing. What do you readers think? Review. :)

Thank you Kurai-and-Yein, Blacksite, Sockstar, MosquitoMilk, ThePhantomHokage, an akward fish, DufFan, HannahCha, Alphateam101, and JohnFreeman for your opinions.