iGet A Weird Text

The iCarly fanbase was something else at times.

Thanks to them, all you had to do to find out all the happening's in the lives of the three underage teenagers behind iCarly was do a search on Zaplook.

Carly's birthday, Sam's bra size, and Freddie's imaginary girlfriend from the third grade could all be found on the iCarly wiki, information that was a lot more personal than anything Carly or Sam had written on their blogs. Freddie had installed blogs and forums on the iCarly website weeks after their first broadcast; iCarly was growing popular faster than they'd anticipated, so Freddie figured it was a good idea for them to share a little about themselves on the internet. There was a surge of questions about Spencer on Carly's blog and some fans who wanted to know about the 'shirtless fat boy' who frequently guest-starred in some of their broadcasts, so soon enough Spencer and Gibby started writing blogs too.

Needless to say, this was a COLOSSAL mistake that the web celebrities could do nothing about at this point. The web show was watched, read, and loved by children and teens worldwide - children and teens who relied on the blogs and forums the same way a movie theater would rely on popcorn and soda; getting rid of the blogs would cause some of their fanbase to taper off, and the wiki was part of Wikipedia, an organization far too large for them to take on like they did with Dingo.

Freddie privately marveled at the irony of the situation. When Dingo Studios was ripping ideas from iCarly for Totally Teri, they were susceptible to serious legal action for plagiarism, if only he or Spencer had realized this at the time instead of driving all the way to Hollywood and uncovering the frozen head of Charles Dingo. But now they were totally within their rights to demand that material related to their cast be taken down, except that would hurt more than help their reputation.

So instead the three web show hosts decided to grin and bear with their personal lives being speculated on. Carly's father was a part of the Armed Forces, so if anything really bad started to spiral out of their control, they could always fall back on the support of the US of A like they'd done in the past. Colonel Shay had sent Carly an email once telling her to contact him if they were ever confronted by a creep like Neville or nutbag fans like Nora ever again.

Freddie wondered if the two guys from Smosh ever dealt with this sort of trouble from their fans.

It was unsettling to read the things their more obsessive fans wrote about them at first, but things got better with time. There was a thread on the forums, made by a user called 'PurpleCandyCaneXX' that said Carly looked like some child actress from LA named Miranda Cosomething, and the thread showed a picture of her: clear skin, dark-haired, and a gorgeous smile. In fact, the only way to tell them apart was their hair: this Miranda person had brown highlights, and Carly did not.

Another user on the forums named 'DanWarp' asked a question about whether Carly should date Freddie, or if he Sam were a better couple. In forty-two hours, comments raged throughout the forums arguing over whether the relationships of the web show hosts were important or not. Those who believed Carly and Freddie should date were part of a group called Creddie, and those who thought Sam and Freddie were better were called Seddie.

Rather than answer the dynamic question, Carly was forced to upload a video to the iCarly website by herself. Freddie wasn't there because his mother was in the middle of trying to file a restraining order on Sam, after the blonde had attempted to murder her son with a tripod from the iCarly studio. The video, titled 'Sam's Worst Outbursts - Part 3', showed the remains of the studio after Sam had torn it apart pursuing Freddie with the tripid, wielding it like a machete.

A year or two passed in a surprising way. Sam and Freddie had dated and gone through a number of fights before finally breaking up, though they still remained good friends and co-workers. Now Sam only gave him Texas Wedgies at half strength so as not to maim him, no matter how angry she was. Plagiarizing the iCarly wiki became one of her hobbies, part in revenge for all of the nasty things that fans said about her, and part to abuse the pages about Lewbert and Miss Briggs. The insults she concocted went from silly to rage-inducing; she really enjoyed trolling the shippers, and she never stayed on one side for long.

Since Sam loved being an internet troll, she was quickly becoming more internet-savvy than Fredward and more connected with their fans than Carly, albeit in a negative fashion.

And that was what gave her the idea she pitched to Carly during one of their bull sessions.

Sam pulled some of the most recurrent, safe-for-work questions from the iCarly forums and each question would be answered live during the webcast. They thought up a silly introduction, gathered the necessary props, had Freddie put some of his kung-fu special effects skills into the mix, and they were all ready for a special web cast that Thursday night.

Carly was drinking from her water bottle five minutes before the show started, and she noticed Sam looking down at something. Nonchalantly, Carly kept drinking while she stared in Sam's direction, spying on the Pearphone in the blonde's hand as Sam's eyes widened, seemingly in shock.

Sam's eyes flicked at her, making Carly spit up some of her water as she tried to act invisible, glancing in every direction that wasn't Sam's. This seemed to have worked, because Sam got up from her seat and walked over to her and asked," Hey Carls, you didn't leave anything in the microwave or the oven did you?"

"No," said Carly, wiping her chin.

"Are you sure?" Sam asked again.

"Yes," Carly replied, not sure what Sam was getting at. Then she remembered that this was Sam she was talking to. She put her water bottle down adnd sighed, "You can stay over for dinner, but only if you promise not do that thing with your mouth."

Sam started to say something, but then she quickly raised an eyebrow. "No it's not, wait, what mouth thing?"

"You know, that thing you do when you put a piece of chicken in your mouth and suck all the meat off of it." Carly explained, shuddering a bit when she tried to repress the memory from last Tuesday. Sam knew Carly could be squeamish from time to time, but she kept that opinion private because free food was on the line. She agreed not to suck any meat off of any bones, but Carly wasn't finished. "What were you going to say before that?"

"Oh, nothing."

Yet when Sam said "Oh, nothing" like that, she really meant that something really bad was on its way. Carly wasn't taking any chances. The last time she had, Gibby spent two days trapped in the ceiling of a psychotic family with nothing to eat or drink or a change of clothes. "Sam," she said forcefully, her head tilted skeptically.

"It's nothing, I swear," Sam tried, and failed, to assure her. Before Carly could probe any further, Freddie called them to the set. Sam wasn't getting away with this one, Carly would make sure of that. She couldn't scrape the image of Sam out of her brain, looking down at her phone like she had just learned that bacon, ham, and sausage were about to become illegal in the United States and she was the only person who could stop it.

Take that Dad, and take THAT classes on sociology and psychology, thought Spencer as he finished another proud sculpture for a wealthy client. The Shays would be eating well for another week it seemed.

And all for two hundred dollars worth of paint and art supplies, which truthfully paled in comparison to the cost of the five-hundred gallon propane tank he'd had brought into the loft. He'd felt odd about asking the client for one of their propane tanks, so he looked for a different company and discretely purchased one to use as a reference for the sculpture. The new tank replaced the living room couch, but fortunately, the workers who'd brought it in through the front door were able to bring it upstairs without altering Lewbert or any of the Bushwell staff.

Not only would the contract he'd made with Mr. Hill for a "mascot aka Propane statue" cover what Spencer paid for the tank, but it would also come out to double the costs of the materials. Though if the ninjas who had brought the propane tank up to one of the upper floors of the building and managed to fit it inside of their loft, in a period of time long enough so that Carly nor Sam or Freddie were able to hear or spot it being brought inside, hadn't been able to do so, then Carly would probably have told him this was a bad idea. Ha! She wouldn't say that when they were eating lobster for dinner tomorrow night, or whenever he was able to get the completed statue out of the building.

It occurred to the older Shay that he might be able to make do with a picture of a propane tank from the internet, instead of having one brought into his home. Spencer Shay was not the brightest of role models; very soon though, he would be thousands of dollars richer than most role models in the greater Seattle area, or at least the parents of the children those role models inspired. That had to count for something.

Building the sculpture was actually pretty easy. He already had the shoes constructed, and the majority of the body would consist of one huge, anthropomorphic propane tank, followed with arms, eyes, and legs. Spencer normally didn't dabble in "regular" sculptures, regular in this case meaning "a sculpture that consists of pastels, glue, and other conventional art materials instead of random pieces of junk that (Spencer) found throughout the Bushwell building". For one of his rarer pieces, he felt the sculpture had come out rather well. The terms for the sculpture were "a mascot that cleanly represents the wonder of propane and appeals to small children".

The final product was several meters tall; the dilated, cartoon-like eyes almost touched the ceiling. Spencer stepped off his step ladder and started to adjust one of the arms when he heard a loud cry from upstairs and almost tripped because it was Carly's voice. His legs flaring with adrenaline, he spotted three teenagers racing, scrambling down the stairs one after another.

Spencer was a big brother first and an artist second. The arm on his sculpture needed to be adjusted so that the glue didn't stick together, but the way Carly and her friends panicked said it could wait.

Carly stopped to catch her breath and almost said something, but spotted the propane tank situated in their living room. Sure, she had managed to get a giant trampoline into their apartment without Spencer knowing, but come on!

"There's a weird text on our phones that s-" Freddie blurted with his hands on his knees, noticing the giant propane tank before he could finish. "Why is there a propane tank where your couch is supposed to be?" he asked, looking at Carly.

Carly frowned, glaring at Spencer. "I don't know. When did we get a huge, expensive propane-powered couch in our living room?"

Hearing Carly call it a 'propane-powered couch' made Sam curious. Catching her breath, she flashed a pitiful grin at Spencer. "Wait, can we grill food on this thing?"

"Sam, you need a grill to cook food, that's just a propane t-" Freddie started to explain before the right side of his face was covered with an orange light.

Though it wasn't just him. Each of them noticed a split-second before it happened that an orange light filled the room. Then, things started to get hot, hotter than anyone would have liked. Carly turned her head in the nick of time and was able to see the trace of a spark. Spencer, who was on the other side of the room, saw the yellow flash. Sam and Freddie, who were behind Carly, shielded themselves before they were engulfed.

A close comparison might be something like being at the tip of the barrel of a gun just as it fired.

Without any warning, an explosion happened, shaking all of Bushwell.

The fire department was called - naturally, if a giant explosion occurred and suddenly there were massive, yellow-orange flames covering an apartment complex, the emergency services would be summoned post-haste. People were rushing out of the building as fire crews spilled into the lobby with hoses, tubes, axes, and fire-retardant suits. Smoke billowed across the Seattle skyline like the calling card of a mad bomber.

Blogs would rally and try to claim that this was a terrorist attack, and soon fear welcomed many into its rash embrace. Bushwell Plaza would receive a thorough investigation, and many staff members were put under watch by the FBI. It was hard to believe that a 31-year old man paid to have a propane tank brought into his apartment without being spotted by a single Bushwell staff member.

Three stretchers emerged with burnt victims on them, their fates hanging in the balance.

But one thing remained certain. The Shay apartment had exploded that night.

And someone was paid a very large sum of money.