anti-shallow zone

Busy helping with laying out the plates and utensils, Sam heard an awkward greeting from behind. When she saw it was Danny approaching, she smirked playfully, returning again to getting the event ready. “‘Best friend,’ huh? Are we stuck in another one of the Ghostwriter’s antics?”

Danny chuckled at the look on his friend’s face, holding up his hand at her. “I swear, I didn’t send them away!” He gave a quick lick to his blue popsicle and looked innocently at the goth.

Sam was pointing at an old carving int he bark, its lines jagged and fading. Spelled crudely were the names of Tucker, Danny, and Sam, and a promise to be 'friends 4ever' underneath. Sam gave a laugh at the sentiment, but her gaze on it was reverent nonetheless. Such losers they were. "I found it during one of my nighttime walks," Sam supplied.  "I thought it'd be nice to show you guys tonight-- that it'd be a little more special.. Corny, huh?"

She tasted simply wonderful: crisp, like the cool air that surrounded them, yet sent flares and sparks of heat into his being; fresh rain, like her love for nature carried about her; and something else—something amazing that she held of her own personal scent and flavor…

Slowly Sam pulled away just enough so that their lips couldn't touch, her hand still securely on his wrist and eyes still closed in post-bliss.

Now he was met with the embarrassment of trying to tell Sam why he was stark-raven naked and was crawling into his bed just as she opened the door.

Having recognized the voice, Sam paused her pencil strokes. It was lunch time. The boys were out on handling a level-one ghost, and so Sam had opted to sit against a tree in the school’s lawn and sketch awhile. She looked up at the despicable figure coldly, eyes as hard as granite.

Lips upturned, Sam placed the side of her palm against her mouth in vain to muffle the sound. A casual smile lingered behind it. “You know,” she started explaining, to avoid looking anymore crazy, “when I was god knows how old, whenever I ate strawberries with the boys, I would smudge them all over my face to look like a vampire and chase Tuck and Danny around. They always screamed so loud, wrapped up make-believe and all, and my mom would have to barge in and send us to time-out.” Sam’s smile turned fond as she went back to her own food and poked at the rice. “It was pretty fun, actually. We always did wacky things like that. I guess we still do.”

"So you’re telling me the last time you had strawberries around Tucker and Danny, you chased them around your house or the school?" he gave a light chuckle. "My dad did stuff like that to my brother and I. Also convinced me that green grapes were baby watermelons. My mom thought we were eating them really fast, but I just kept hiding them in the backyard and planting them so that they could grow up. I was like, twelve when my brother found out and called me stupid for it that I realize the truth," he admitted.

Sam stopped and smiled at her friend before climbing down her front steps to reach him. “Hey, Danny. I’m actually kinda’ beat. I stayed up last night trying to finish that paper for Mr. Lancer,” she droned, now walking alongside him.

Danny was unaware (as usual) of Sam’s gaze drinking in his features, feeling a little better with her offer of them hanging at her place. What a great girl she was! He wished others thought that of her as easily as he did.

Meddling with her stubborn lock, Sam was about to give up and walk away from the cursed thing when her neighbor one locker down from her let a pained noise slip out. She eyed the boy in apparent discomfort, adjusting the straps of her purple spider book bag as she neared him a step. “You okay there?” she checked, announcing her presence to the preoccupied individual.

She led him by the cuffs of his sleeve to the table where her and May sat comfortably chatting over cans of soda barely five minutes before. Silently Sam pulled out a chair to sit in front of him and held his bloodied hands between her own, never one to flinch at sliced skin or broken bones.

The young man’s voice startled her less than his appearance. All was quite normal, and admittedly, his physique was worth applauding, but the scar dominating his features created an underlying countenance of danger Sam had learned to never dare underestimate. “I, uhh..” Drat. She needed an excuse, and quick, but the teen honestly had no idea what realm the cursed Infi-Map tossed her into, let alone a cover story for her blatantly odd apparel.

A glare was her immediate reply. Bruises still dotted her sides from the hard landing. Understandably, Sam wasn’t up to deal with this cruel prankster again. “What do you need, Youngblood? Looking for a fight with Phantom again?”

White ceiling, white walls, that’s what he saw as his eyes crack open. What’s did he die and gone to heaven? That would suck, he’s too young to die. Danny thought he heard someone else in the room with him. His head shifted to find a familiar face sitting in the room with him. He opened his mouth with a perplex but soft happy tone, “S-Sam?”

"I'm usually the one to go to with this type of stuff, but... I don't know this time," Sam admitted, slightly annoyed with herself for not having an answer when it counted most.

"Wha-…. Why would you-…? No. I can’t.. I won’t,” Sam affirmed through momentarily grit teeth. The sharpness of her countenance, though, was quickly replaced with a sorrowful one. She put a hesitant hand on Lilith’s shoulder, saddened lilac eyes piercing through her companion. “Lilith, listen. I don’t know what’s made you think this a solution, but it’s not. Suicide is never the answer. Even if it’s not by your own hand, it’s not-… Are you listening to me, Lilith?”

"Today’s agenda: hit every corner of Amity and ransack all the goods. Who’s with me?"

Sam Manson turned towards the peppy voice. Now in front of her was a seemingly sickly sweet girl in an assemble almost as light and soft as her voice, much to Sam’s distaste. With tentative reluctance, she asked “Can I help you?”, counting on the possibility that maybe this person was lost. Why else would one say hello to a stranger?

Once she was ready and finished wiping off any crumbs from the table for the next guests, she straightened up and smiled at Isa. “You’ll like her. She’s a very kind woman. Truthfully, she’s the only piece of family I have that accepts me for who I am.. She’s the type of person that loves everybody unconditionally.”

"Well, Isa is sure that Sam’s family is quite nice." she said, hoping she can keep her concerns hidden away.

He stopped for a moment at the school, his claws now ablaze as he slashed the school into three parts and then set the building on fire. He let out another feral roar as he slowed down just ever so slightly, a bit tired from how much fire energy he has already used and he wasn’t even half way to Vlad’s mansion. 

Sam had to talk to him. She had to catch his attention, but with all the hellish sights and sounds, how could she bother him to even look at the ground, let alone avoid being squashed by the dragon or trampled by citizens on the way? It felt hopeless, really, but 'give up' wasn't in her vocabulary. She had to do something, fear be damned. Scanning the scene in front of her, Sam locked her eyes onto an destroyed apartment complex and made a run for it.