So, I got an idea to do this from a picture I saw of a young Danny, Tucker, and Sam. I get the impression from the show that Danny and Tucker didn't meet Sam until they were in middle school, but I really wanted to do a story where they meet when they were little kids. I don't have a specific age for them, but they're all probably about five or six, maybe seven. Enjoy!

It was time to play outside. It was Danny and Tucker's favorite part of the day. They would spend it running around, screaming, shouting, throwing things. They would be knights fighting a dragon, astronauts flying into space, and countless other adventures they would come up with.

Danny knew the other kids thought that he and Tucker were weird. Most of the other kids had started to grow out of playing pretend, but even the one who still did, didn't do it with the same level of seriousness that Danny and Tucker did. It was a level of seriousness only possible with two friends who had known each other forever. Danny and Tucker had thought of inviting other kids to play, but none of the other kids wanted to fight a dragon and get "killed" while fighting, like Danny and Tucker sometimes did. No one wanted to play astronauts where the space ship crashed on an unknown planet, and they had to fight off aliens.

But one day, Danny and Tucker hadn't yet decided what they were going to play, when they noticed a little girl. They had seen her every day, but they had never really taken notice of what she was doing. She had black hair, purple eyes, and was dressed in a frilly pink dress with pink, red, and white flowers on it. She walked over to the area of the playground that was mostly dirt and proceeded to sit down in it, roll in it, and rub the dirt all over her dress.

Danny and Tucker were both very confused. They knew boys like to get dirty, but none of the girls they had seen seemed to enjoy getting their clothes dirty.

"That's Samantha Mason," Tucker whispered, as if he was afraid she would overhear him, "She's really weird."

Danny gave him a weird look, "How would you know? You never talk to her."

"All the other kids say she is. She eats weird food. She doesn't talk to anyone. She only uses the black crayon. And, she always come in from outside with her clothes all messed up like that."

Danny looked over at the girl again. Sure, it was strange that she was acting like that, but that didn't mean she was weird. He looked back at Tucker, "Well, all the other kids think we're weird too. So maybe she's really not that weird." He started to walk over to her.

Tucker grabbed the back of his shirt, "No, Danny! What if she beats you up?"

Danny gave Tucker another weird look, "Why would she beat me up?"

"She beat Dash up the other day, just because he said her dress was nice."

"Why would Dash say her dress was nice?"

"His friends dared him to."
Danny could see that Tucker was freaked out. He kind of was too. But he remembered how he felt the first day of school, when everyone told him there was a ghost attack, and laughed at him when he hid under the table. He didn't really believe in ghosts, but when your parents are ghost hunters and have your family do "ghost attack drills", he couldn't help but be at least a little bit nervous when people talked about ghosts. The kids still taunted him about ghosts. He hated it. Tucker had been the only one who hadn't laughed. Now that he thought about it, the girl hadn't laughed either. He took a deep breath, "Well, I'm going to say hello."

"Danny! No!" Tucker urgently whispered as Danny started to walk across the playground. Tucker glanced around nervously and slowly followed Danny.

Danny and Tucker both stood beside the girl for a minute. She looked up and glared at them.

Tucker nudged Danny. Danny gave her a weak smile, "H-hi, Samantha."

Danny and Tucker had gone home that day with a black eye and a fat lip respectively.

Every day that week, despite Tucker's protests, Danny would go and sit beside Samantha on the playground, while he and Tucker would build castles and rockets with the mud, and then pretend they were monsters who could crush a house just by stepping on it.

The next week, when Danny had walked over to the girl, she had looked up and said, "Your name's Danny, right?"

Danny gulped. "Yep," he squeaked.

The girl looked back at the ground, "Mine's Sam."

Everyday after that, Danny would greet her, "Hey, Sam."

And she would say, "Hey, Danny."

One day, Tucker and Danny decided that they wanted to play dragons. Danny felt bad leaving Sam alone, so he asked her if she would like to play.

"Play what?" she asked.

"Tucker and I were going to play knights and dragons, and I, uh, I just wanted to know if you wanted to too," Danny stuttered. He still hadn't quite gotten used to talking to Sam. But he kept trying. She was the only person other than Tucker who didn't tease him about ghosts.

She thought for a minute, "How do you play that?"

Danny nudged Tucker. "W-well," Tucker started, "Danny and I pretend we're knights going on a quest to defeat an evil dragon. You could be a princess."

That day, Tucker went home with a black eye.

The next day, Tucker offered to let Sam be a knight with him and Danny, but Sam said she wanted to be the dragon. Danny and Tucker had agreed. By the time, school was over, they were all sad to leave. Tucker and Danny told Sam that they usually went to the park on Saturdays, and she could met them there if she wanted.

Everyday from then on, the three of them would play together. As they got older, they didn't play pretend as much, but they would play board games and cards games. They would watch movies and just hang out. The three of them had become an inseparable trio.

I really, really loved writing this. I just love little Danny, Sam, and Tucker! So, please leave a review. If enough people enjoyed, and maybe even if not, I may write some more stories about them when they were little. Please let me know if you would be interested in seeing more of that. Thanks.