Author's Notes: It's my birthday, and that means fanfiction updates! :-D Also, I'm doing the 100 Themes Challenge on Deviantart, and I realized I could use those prompts for these stories and kill two birds with one stone. Take that, ya dumb birds.

Also, I like to joke that Sam is a furry, but other people say that Dakota has scales, not fur. Is there a special term for that, or can we just go with the generic label of "weird?"

Current Interaction: Sam and Dakota.

If Sam had learned one thing in his seventeen years of life—aside from an endless number of cheat codes and a few basics in programming—it was this: reality kind of sucks. And when it doesn't, it's because it's too busy just being boring.

Sam's mom was always trying to get him to stop playing video games. Even some of his friends thought that he took gaming a little far, like that time he forgot to sleep for a few days and wound up fainting right before he got the ultimate high score on Rumble Cars. His guidance counselor said he needed to "see the real world," but why bother? He'd learned enough about the real world by the time he was six: it was mostly full of jerks who called you a fatso and a loser, and nothing interesting ever happened. In a game he be aliens, wizards, or really hot chicks in robotic armor. In real life he could be…Sam. It just didn't compare.

He did sort of realize that his obsession was, if anything, making him more of a portly loser than he already was. That's why he signed up for the show. He knew that reality TV wasn't reality, really, but it was a nice middle ground for someone trying to ease their way back into the world. Besides, if he made it far enough, maybe he'd get, like, popular or something. But he wasn't expecting much, and he certainly wasn't expecting to meet somebody like Dakota.

Dakota was hot. Hot enough that she could turn into a monster and still be hot—heck, maybe even a little hotter! Plus she was rich and tabloid-famous even before the show. And most importantly of all, she was actually nice to Sam. He wasn't quite sure why, to be honest, but she was and that was all that mattered.

But girls like Dakota didn't really exist, did they? That was the sort of thing that only happened in fiction. Beautiful princesses didn't fall in love with pudgy plumbers in the real world. Nerdy everymen didn't actually get the girl. Monster-women who were really just oddly-colored mega-hotties were just a fantasy, and it's not like Sam was usually into scaly chicks covered in spines really but oh when she punched that giant turtle was that SO FREAKIN' HOT man.

The funny thing was, his mom and some of his friends still thought he was crazy for dating her, but Sam didn't care. He didn't even care that it had been six hours since the last time he played Mines of Worldcraft. He could just sit here in the garden of the hospital where Dakota was being treated and hold her scaly hand, and he was happier than he had ever been playing some dumb old game.

Really.

Next Interaction: Dawn and Zoey.