Disclaimer: I do not own Persona or any of the characters described therin.

Pre-Author's Notes: This story contains two original characters that I introduced in other stories, which I can post if anyone would like (otherwise, they're already posted on my homepage). Anyway, I hope I've explained them well enough for their function in this story.

Pushing Up Daisies
by Kocchi Highwind

Magic and technology
Voodoo dolls and chants
Electricity
We're makin'
(Weird science)
Fantasy and microchips
Shooting from the hip
Something different
We're makin'
...
From my heart and from my hands
Why don't people understand
My intentions?

--Oingo Boingo, "Weird Science"

Part 1: The Legend

The night was frosty, the company, equally so as they followed their friend deeper into the forest. It was fall in Lunarvale, and the St. Hermelin "loser" posse had picked a particularly Halloweenish night to have a slasher movie marathon. Afterwards, as a capper for an already creepy night, one girl had convinced the others to follow her to what she claimed was an historical grave site....

"Ellen, how much farther?" Brad demanded.

"We've been out here for an hour and forty-two minutes," Nate stated, checking his Indiglo watch.

"I'm cold! Let's go back in," Alana complained.

"Will you guys quit whining? We're almost there," Ellen replied. Her answer was muffled by the encroaching trees as she foraged ahead. The others stopped.

"I ain't up for this crap," said Mark, "I'm goin' home."

"And how are you going to do that?" Nate asked reasonably. "I don't think any of us thought to leave a trail of breadcrumbs."

"Forget that. I'll find my way." Mark turned to leave.

Suddenly, a large owl swooped down from a pine tree, buzzing Mark's bright yellow cap. Mark turned around.

"Maybe I'll just hang with you guys."

"Come on!" Ellen exclaimed. She turned suddenly and disappeared behind a patch of sycamore trees.

Slowly, the group trudged on, past the sycamores.

"We're here," said Ellen. She was standing in the center of a large clearing ringed by twelve towering sycamores.

"Huh?" asked the group.

"I told you we were close...."

"What is this place, anyway?" Mary spoke quietly.

Ellen's face lit up. "It's a burial ground! Legend has it that the Toltecs used this place for human sacrifice. They stopped using it, though."

Alana's voice was a little bit squeakier than normal as she asked, "Why?"

Ellen's mouth curved upwards, revealing a set of menacing white teeth that gleamed in the light of the flashlights held by Brad and Nate. "Well...after one season of terrible drought, in which many Toltecs died, it is said that the priests and medicine men and elders convened up here for another sacrifice, in the hopes of appeasing their gods. But what they found when they got here was...."

"Piracy of a Stephen King novel?" Nate offered.

Ellen batted her eyes and smirked. "No."

Alana gulped. "What, then?"

Ellen shrugged. "Nothing. When they got here, they found a hole in the ground where the last sacrifice had been buried. They assumed the body had been stolen, and that's why the gods had punished them."

"Is that the whole story...or is there more?" Mary wanted to know.

"They were wrong," Ellen continued. "The next night, as they prepared for the second sacrifice, a chill was in the air. Many of the group had a strong feeling of foreboding."

"Brrrrrr!" Mary shivered. Mark was quick to slide an arm around her shoulders.

Ellen went on. "They proceeded with the ritual. But, just as they were about to kill the sacrifice...BAM!"

The group jumped.

"The original victim appeared from behind the trees and slaughtered them all!"

"He – he wasn't dead?" Mary was trembling.

Ellen intoned ominously, "That depends what you mean. We might say he was undead. The magic that haunts this ground brought him back to life as an evil, pus-dripping, bloodthirsty ZOMBIE freak!"

"I'm outta here," Alana said as she darted out of the circle.

"Me, too!" Brad followed.

"Preposterous!" said Nate. "There were never any Toltecs in this area!"

"Who cares? All I know's this place is freaky, and me an' Mary are getting the hell out." Mark also turned to leave.

"Aw, what a bunch of fraidy-cats," Ellen said loudly, as she, too, turned to follow.

"I liked your story, Ellen," said Daisy as the group moved out of the forest. Daisy was an unfinished android created by Nate to be a more perfect version of the girl he had a crush on, but she had gained sentience after an electrical storm.

"Thanks, Daisy. I'm glad somebody appreciates it," she added, glaring at Nate.

Nate shrugged. "I'm sorry, Ellen, but I just don't believe that we just saw a Toltec burial ground. The Toltecs lived in the Americas."

Ellen persisted, "I read it in a book on great legends of the Indians at the library. I may have some details wrong, but the place is right. Other historical records confirm it."

"I love legends," Daisy declared. "Nate, do we have book on ghosts or legends at home?"

"We have books on everything. Why don't you read a nice astronomy text? You like stars, too."

"l like astrology. Anyway, I want to read about legends! They're so great!"

Nate frowned. "Yeah, great. Come on, Daisy. Let's get you home to bed."

~^^~

The next Monday at lunch, Nate spoke to Ellen.

"I'm going to be brief. I don't have a lot of time right now, because I have to get to my next class."

"Yeah, I know. How did you get stuck with ninth-hour lunch, anyway?"

"It's just been that kind of year, I think. Anyway, what I wanted to say is, I didn't mean to rain on your parade Saturday. It's just that Daisy is so impressionable, I don't want her getting any strange ideas."

Ellen wrinkled her nose. "I don't get it. If you programmed her and gave her knowledge, why is she impressionable?"

"Well, I couldn't very well program her with everything I know, could I? Even if I did, I don't know everything. To make up for what would otherwise have been a substantial knowledge deficit, I focused my attention on her RAM instead of her ROM."

Ellen frowned. "Nate, I'm into fantasy, not sci-fi. What's the translation for human beings?"

"Instead of trying to give her an unchanging knowledge bank, I gave her the ability to learn. I thought that would be more useful in the long run." Nate finished with a troubled look at his shoes.

"Okay, that sounds good. So you can teach her anything she doesn't already know."

"Right. The problem – " Nate looked up at Ellen " – is that I spent so much time doing that, that I forgot to program a lot of the basic things that I take for granted."

"Like what?"

"Well...I've seen her walking along the center line of our street. And once I caught her just before she put a knife in the toaster!"

Ellen's eyes widened. "Wow! What are you going to do about it?"

"I'm teaching her everything I can think of," Nate sighed wearily. "I replaced the regular scissors with safety scissors and told her not to run with them. I had the servants childproof the electrical outlets. I told the maid to use the type of window cleaner that leaves streaks. All adhesive or fluid substances in the entire mansion are non-toxic or clearly marked with Mr. Yuck. All markers are now washable. I don't know what else to do."

"Do you have to keep, like, constant eye on her?"

"Like she was five years old."

"Oh my."

"I can only hope that my instructions took."

The bell rang; Nate was late to class.

"Good luck with your droid, man," Ellen said cheerfully as Nate trudged to his class.

~^^~

Nate and Daisy met outside the school at 4:30 sharp, and they began their short walk to the student parking lot.

"How was school today, Daisy?" Nate asked as he scanned the area for his black BMW. Inside his pocket, he fidgeted nervously with the key.

"It was good. I feel like I've learned so much that my brain is going to explode!" She frowned suddenly. "There is one thing I can't get, though."

"What's that?" Nate asked, bracing himself for the answer.

"I can't sing, no matter how hard I try," she pouted.

Nate flicked a button attached to his keyring and, with a beep, the doors of his car unlocked. "Not to worry," he reassured as they stepped into the car, "I equipped you with a respiratory system for this purpose. It's only a matter of learning how to turn air into sound."

"Impossible."

Nate shrugged as well as one can when holding a steering wheel. "The hardest part is training your ear to hear pitches properly. And I'm pretty sure that you don't have any trouble with that. You are remembering to breathe?"

"Breathe?"

"Yes. You have to have good breath support to produce a good sound, either from an instrument or from your own voice."

Daisy shrugged. "I don't get it."

"Well, why don't you have Mariel over to coach you today?" Nate smiled reassuringly and patted Daisy's knee.

"I guess," Daisy agreed unhappily. "I just wish I were a real girl."

~^^~

As soon as he got home, Nate went up to his room and called Mariel to explain the situation. Mariel was Nate's oldest and dearest friend; not surprisingly, she had not taken well to Daisy, the theoretically perfect version of herself.

"Having a robotic girlfriend isn't all it's cracked up to be, huh?" Mariel's voice crackled over the line, but Nate had a feeling it was less the phone than sheer spite.

"She's not my – " Nate began, but Mariel was already gone. Nate sighed and hung up his receiver.

Realizing that he had no idea where Daisy was, Nate quickly checked out his window. From there he could see most of the front lawn, and...Daisy was rollerblading on the smooth blacktop of the driveway. Nodding with satisfaction to see that she was wearing all of her protective gear, Nate sat down on his bed to take a well-deserved rest. A new tape had come in the mail. Nate took from his bookbag a video cassette wrapped in plain brown paper. Unwrapping it, he leaned across his bed to shove the tape into his personal VCR. Within seconds, the familiar faces of Bob Saget, Dave Coulier, and John Stamos flashed on the screen while a soothing jingle played. Nate reached over to his nightstand, where a plate of miniature bran muffins and butter cookies was laid out. A frosty glass of milk stood at attention next to the plate. Nate relaxed, popping a cookie into his mouth. On the TV, beautiful California girl D.J. was getting ready to dump the rich but sensitive Nelson. Just as Nate was about to wash down the cookie and share an emotional moment with his favorite character, a scream rang out from outside.

"Oh, Daisy," he groaned, taking off at a run for the front door. He took the two flights of stairs three at a time, jumping the last five steps on each staircase. He sprinted thirty feet from the stairs to the foyer and hurdled the various shoes lying on the floor. He continued down the hundred yards of his driveway and finally fell panting by the roadside. And there was Daisy, lying on the road about five feet from an SUV. The owner of the SUV was inspecting her body.

"Looks like she got hit by a car," the motorist observed.

Nate's words came interspersed with gasps and coughs. "Of COURSE she was hit by a car, you fool!" he shouted.

"You got it wrong, chum," the man replied. "I didn't run her over."

"Well, then, who did?" Nate demanded.

"Beats me, but it looks like you're gonna need a pretty big spatula."

"Ugh!" With a grunt, Nate lunged at Daisy. Seizing her wrist, he whipped his own towards his face and stared wildly at his watch. "She's dead." He furrowed his brow and looked back at his watch. "And my watch has stopped."

Nate knew that Daisy could get hurt, but he hadn't anticipated this. Just as he was really starting to enjoy her company, and despite his numerous precautions, she was dead. Even worse, she was the spitting image of Mariel – that was plain disturbing. For a brief second, Nate felt physically and emotionally crushed, like a popped balloon. Then he simply went numb.

Nate looked at the body blankly while the motorist shook his head. Then Nate turned to look at the motorist, a strange and ominous glint in his blue-gray eyes. The motorist turned to run, but Nate was too fast for him. Shoving the man out of the way, Nate hoisted Daisy from the street and stuffed her into the SUV. He swiftly flicked the power locks, and, with the car's owner pounding at its tinted windows, punched the gas and drove off. He felt an unexpected clarity of mind and purpose, and he reminded himself to thank Ellen later.

About an hour later, Nate had showered away the dirt and grime, changed into a white linen suit, and was just about ready to start watching Full House again. Outside, a storm had gathered and was threatening rain. Once again, he was interrupted, this time by the sound of the front door opening....