Daria, Jane, and Quinn sat in Daria's room. The floor was covered with empty boxes and wrapping paper strewn about all over, with Quinn maintaining a running commentary of woe.

She held a sweater up to her chest. "Deer? DEER?! Do you know how geeky deer are? It's like, hell-oh! I'm not my grandmother, there's no way I'll meet cute guys on the slopes wearing an embroidered deer! And the orange sweater? My god! Tropical colors and winter fashions, are a must-not! Never let someone who dresses in pink do your clothes shopping for you! If I have to be locked away in here with Ms. Hall buying my clothes, it might as well be murderer's row! She probably thinks pleated skirts are in! My popularity will plummet! Hmm…I wonder what Mormon boys like?"

Jane looked over to Daria. "That's it, the pleated skirt comment, she has to die now!"

"I've already set the date. Don't try to change history." Daria was busy playing with her new laptop. She wondered why Dawn Hall had bought the three so much stuff for no good reason. "Why don't you draw something?"

"Why don't you write something? I'm not in the mood. Although the boxes of paint are just what I needed. And real canvas, too instead of cardboard."

Quinn interrupted. "Jane, does the shade of blue in this sweater match the blue in these slacks? Colors have to match and not almost-match!"

"Gaahh!" Jane put her hands over her ears. "I'm getting out of here! The other side of the mansion, anything but this!"

The door opened and Dawn Hall burst in. "Daria, Quinn! Your mother's here in my office! She's unconscious!"

The three stopped the argument. Quinn ran past the door past the three of them at full tilt. Daria quickly closed the laptop and half-ran, half-jogged behind Quinn. Dawn Hall followed behind, leaving Jane by herself.

"Ah hell," said Jane to an empty room, "it will be fun, at least!" She ran out to play catch-up.

(la la LA la la)

"Kiddo! I'm so glad you're all right!"

Jake Morgendorffer had Daria in a bear hug. Daria grimaced, as her father was holding her too tight and too close for comfort. Quinn anxiously attended to a dizzy Helen, dabbing her forehead with water.

"Mom! Mo-oommm!! Say something!!"

"Uh…." Helen's eyes flickered open. "…h-how many billion dollars?" She blinked. "Quinn…is that you?"

Quinn hugged Helen.

"I missed you, Mom!" Helen hugged her younger daughter back.

Helen slowly climbed to a sitting position. "Daria! Daria, thank God we found you! Thank God you're safe!"

"Not safe…" moaned Daria…"parent…crushing…ribs…breaking…!!"

"Jake…I think Daria understands!"

Jake grinned wildly, and looking at Helen, let go of Daria, who immediately straightened her jacket a few centimeters.

"So," said Daria, "exactly how mad are you?"

"I'm…I'm…." Helen tried to find words. "I don't care. I'm not mad, I'm happy!! I'm very, very happy!!" She stood up to put Daria in her own crushing parental bearhug. Quinn and Jake grabbed Daria from the other side, leaving Jane to watch a very annoyed Daria.

"It's good when a family comes together!" said Jane. "That's how we do it in the Lane family! We ignore our problems, too!"

"Works for me," mumbled Daria, slowly extricating herself from the Morgendorffer huddle.

"I would like to announce," said Dawn Hall, "that all of you will be guests at the Russell Stark mansion for a couple of days…if, that is, it's okay with you Helen?"

"Of course!"

"What about Eric?" said Daria.

"The hell with Eric!"

"Yeah!" said Jake. "The hell with Eric! Eric can go to hell!! Daria…Daria, why did you feel you had to run away?"

"I'm not going to a mental hospital. You should have known at least that much about me."

"You weren't going to be admitted against your will, Daria!" said Helen. "But we know that if we didn't bring you there, you would never have known how concerned we were. You would have never taken that seriously."

"Not take it seriously? Try me. Why do you think I ran out?"

"Daria, you don't have to go anywhere you want to go! The only thing we want is all of us together again!"

"And the crazy voices in my head? And the happy pills you want to give me?"

Dawn Hall interrupted. "I told Helen that you had talked things over with Russell Stark, and that you had agreed to be seen by his doctors. Helen thinks that's a good idea, and since you yourself think it's a good idea, Daria, I don't see what the problem is."

Helen? Dawn Hall calling her mom by her first name smelled fishy to Daria.

"So…" said Dawn Hall, "why don't I prepare a room for everyone where we can have some quality time?"

"Of course!" said Helen. "We can have a nice family dinner. And I promise, Daria, that no decision about your health and your well being will ever be made without your permission again!"

Daria stared at the ground. "Uh…allright", she mumbled. She didn't want to continue the conversation. Helen had already made one such decision; there was no guarantee that things would not return to "normal" once everyone got home. Suddenly, Daria felt much more comfortable in Russell Stark's deserted mansion that she would have felt in the bosom of her padded room at Lawndale.

(la la LA la la)

"Trent!!"

"Hey Janey!" Trent carried his guitar with him into the entrance hall. Jane wrapped him in a bearhug, but Trent didn't mind, not at all.

"Trent, I'm glad you're here! I can use a little less Morgendorffer family togetherness!"

"Yeah." Trent coughed. "So…how's Daria doing?"

"Well…everyone's pretending that everything's okay right now. The spell on Daria's mom will probably wear off when the full moon comes, and then she reverts back to her wolf form. So I think she'll be glad to see you just to get away from her parents."

"How are you?"

Gee, Trent, where do I start? "Can I get you anything to drink?"

"Soda is cool."

"Well, sit down, Trent. You're going to need all the soda you can handle."

(la la LA la la)

The afternoon passed in a quite uncomfortable way. Jane and Trent watched with amusement as Helen and Jake attempted to compensate for their lack of attention. Quinn basked in the glow of being in the center of someone's universe again. To Jane and Trent, it was completely dysfunctional, which is what made it so awesome cool. Jane, frankly, was a little jealous.

- Jane, how the hell do I get away from these people? -

I'll think of something "Say, Trent…why don't you get our your guitar and play some tunes?"

"Tunes?" said Jake. "Awesome! Do you know, 'I'd Like to Teach The World To Sing!'"

"Trent," said Helen, "you wouldn't happen to know the words to 'You've Got a Friend'?"

"Or 'Pieces of Me' by Ashlee Simpson?" said Quinn.

"Help!" said Daria.

"Sorry," said Jane, "got to float a boat. I'll be back!" She wanted no more of Morgendorffer togetherness, at least not for a few decades. As Jane left the room, Trent was asking the three if they had heard of Korn.

Jane snuck out of the room, grabbed Stark's blue phone and dialed X01. "Ms. Hall? Jane Lane here? We need a rescue and we need it fast!"

"From what?"

"Uh…from joy, happiness, and parental love. Would that be too much to ask?"

(la la LA la la)

"Thank God you got the butler guy to show Mom and Dad around!" said Daria.

"Yeah!" said Quinn, "it meant that Trent had to stop playing!"

"Well," said Dawn Hall, "there are a few minor matters that need to be taken care of. You want the Legion to succeed, and we need to discuss that right now."

"So," said Daria, "have you told my parents about our powers?"

"No." One crisis at a time, thought Hall. "The Legion is taking all of my brainpower." For example, how to kill this idea.

"Daria and I were talking about this this morning," said Jane.

"Hey! Why wasn't I told?" asked Quinn.

"As I was saying," continued Jane, "we thought that tsunami relief would be a good idea. Maybe we could go over there and help in some way."

"Significant help, but anonymous help," continued Daria. "There are a lot of people there ahead of us."

"Exactly," argued Hall, "which means that it doesn't give us the profile we want. Furthermore, your abilities wouldn't be significant. Quinn can't power an entire village. Jane would be good for moving rubbish about, but that's it, and I doubt Daria would be able to locate survivors."

Jane and Daria looked crestfallen. Hall was right. Flying to Indonesia seemed like a dumb idea.

"On the other hand," said Hall, "you can definitely raise money for tsunami relief with your abilities. Give me a couple of days. The Mormons have a lot of money and I'm sure they can be convinced to give more."

"Raise money? As…entertainers?" said Daria.

"Cool!" said Quinn. Daria glared daggers at Quinn.

"Quinn's right," said Hall. "We know that all of you can do a few simple things. We'll put together a show, a presentation. Entertainment. People will contribute, and it raises the foundation of the Quest Foundation."

"You mean, 'the Legion'," said Jane.

"Same thing, really."

"What if our parents plan to drag us home?" said Daria.

"I've discussed Russell's ideas with your parents. They think it's a good idea for you to do some charity work. Furthermore, I talked it over with your principal, and she seemed quite happy to have you working for Quest."

"For a kickback?" said Daria.

Hall grimaced. "Uh…yes. For a kickback." Dawn Hall supposed that Angela Li's avarice knew no bounds.

"We're not entertainers. We wouldn't even know where to start," said Daria.

"Let me take care of that. A few simple tricks. Enough to please an audience. And as for you, Daria," said Dawn Hall, "your doctor will be here tomorrow. So you have three or four more days of freedom." Hall loved how she framed the last sentence…it went right by the three unwary young women.

Russell, when I catch up with you again, you and I are going to have another talk about your dumb ideas. Which, of course, you'll ignore. Well, you might be an immovable object, but I'm an irresistible object. And I don't think the Morgendorffers have anything on me when it comes to 'irrestistible'.

(la la LA la la)

"Daria? I'm Dr. Burchell."

Daria reached over the desk to take Burchell's hand. Mary Helen Burchell was an older woman, middle-aged, with Quinn's figure but with an aura of authority to set off the long gray hair and wrinkles.

"I'm going to try to help you with your problem. Your mother also wants to make sure that your blood pressure problem is just that…blood pressure. And nothing else."

Daria squirmed. "Are you a psych?"

"No. Dawn Hall filled me in."

"So…exactly how many people know I can read minds? Counting Trent, Mister Stark, Dawn Hall, and you, that makes far too many."

"Someone has to know. Ms. Hall doesn't have the medical background. For right now, we'll assume that your problem is secondary hypertension – hypertension caused by something else other than the standard causes."

"Which means my brain."

"Right. And I'm going to treat you with a thiazide diuretic at first."

"A diuretic?" Daria turned white at the thought of accidentally losing control over her bladder.

"HCTZ has fewer side effects. I'd rather you be inconvenienced with a run to the bathroom rather than losing your vision or suffering a stroke."

"Great."

"In the meantime, you'll be wearing this." Dr. Burchell walked over and snapped a computerized wrist band on Daria's left wrist.

"What's that?" Daria felt the wrist band inflate, putting pressure on her inner lower arm.

"Blood pressure gauge. This device will monitor your blood pressure up to every two minutes. We can also monitor it when you're using your powers, see how high it's getting and develop some biofeedback techniques to get it under control. The device also measures skin temperature. When you're tense and anxious, your skin temperature will drop.

"When that happens, a light will come on and a small tone will sound. The goal is to get you aware of your body and figure out on your own somehow how to control the power before it hurts you."

"Maybe I could just stop reading minds completely."

"Doubtful. The power is a part of you. It would be like promising never to use your left leg again. There's always the danger of involuntary use. So this is something we have to approach seriously."

More work ahead. Daria hated it, having to come face to face with the fear that Stark had put in her head. Like it or now, however, it was the way she was now. Quinn could throw electricity without any side effects, and Jane never had headaches when she used her magnetic powers.

Why am I always the one who gets the short end of the stick?

(la la LA la la)

"Fluffy!!"

Sandi Griffin called out to the backyard. "Fluffy!! FLUFFY!!"

Griffin heard a voice calling from the living room. "Alexandra! Stop calling for that stupid cat! It's a house cat, it will come back! Stop making a fool of yourself!"

You just hate my cat. You always have. It took forever for Sandi to convince her mother that she was responsible enough to take care of a cat. And true to form, her mother hadn't helped her with anything, except to take Fluffy to the vet every now and then. Her brothers spent more time teasing the cat than feeding it.

"Fluffy!"

Damn stupid cat.

"Alexandra, get in here! Your friend is here!!"

Sandi made a noise of displeasure as she consigned herself to reenter the house. She walked over to the front door, where Tiffany was waiting.

"Hey, Tiffany."

"Heyyyyyyy. What are you doing?"

Sandi sighed. "Fluffy got out."

"Bumm-errrrr." Tiffany looked around. "So…cats come back home…right?"

"I hope so. Every now and then – " Sandi thought better of continuing. An explanation would be lost on Tiffany. "So…have you heard anything about Quinn?"

"I was going to ask you." Quinn had been out of school for about three days now. Daria was also gone, and Quinn's parents were gone, too. Rumor had it that the two girls had run away from home.

"As member of the Fashion Club, we have to decide how Quinn's action affects us. Like, for example, is running away cool enough to raise your popularity? Or is it shameful enough to lower it?"

"Yeahhh…and, why would Quinn run away? It's like hell-oh? Vice President of the Fashion Club?"

"It's probably that crazy cousin of hers! I bet she drove Quinn to it. Of course, running away with such an incredibly unpopular person is definitely not popular. We might have to put Quinn on sabbatical until we can determine how it impacts on the Fashion Club!"

Sandi inwardly smiled at the thought. She hoped that Quinn was safe, wherever she was. Quinn should have come to me! I would have been glad to get out of here!

The two girls entered Sandi's bedroom. Tiffany set her purse down.

"So…like…where's Stacy?"

Sandi frowned. "Stacy is having her 'moments'. Quinn's unexplained leave of absence is perplexing our secretary. This episode might also reflect negatively on Stacy's popularity as well."

"Ohhh."

"We also have to decide what we'll do if…you know…something very bad happens."

Sandi looked for a reaction from Tiffany. Nothing. A stone face. There was many a time Sandi felt like she was talking to a wall.

"If Quinn is dead. Or hurt," said Sandi.

"But…she's alive, right?"

"Yeah. But she might not be alive when they find her."

"Ohhh."

Sandi knew that she sometimes had to reinforce ideas with Tiffany if she wanted an immediate answer. There were times when Sandi thought Tiffany wasn't paying attention, but Tiffany was…and vice versa. Sandi really wished she were talking about this with Stacy, even though Stacy was a real pain in the neck. A sobbing and frightened Stacy was better sometimes than Tiffany. At least with Stacy, you always know how she's thinking. The two of them, averaged out, added up to something resembling a friend.

"Sandi!" It was Sam, from somewhere else. "Sandi, I see Fluffy out in the backyard!"

Sandi immediately ran downstairs. Tiffany followed along. As they opened the back door to the kitchen, certainly enough there was Fluffly, trotting home as if nothing interesting had happened.

"Fluffy! Come here, sweetie!!" Sandi bent down to embrace Fluffy when Fluffy got there. Tiffany bent down as well, most likely because Sandi had bent down.

As Fluffy got closer, the two girls saw that Fluffy was carrying something in his mouth.

"Ewwww!!!!"

Fluffy carried the mouse up to the Griffin doorstep. The cat dropped the mouse out of its mouth, expected to be rewarded by the gigantic brown-furred alpha cat that walked on its hind legs.

"That is soooo grosss!" said Tiffany.

Sandi looked at the mouse. The mouse was blue, the kind of blue that didn't appear in nature.

"Tiffany, does that mouse look midnight blue to you?" Fluffy looked at the two girls examining his prize.

"I think it's more a royyyyal blue…" said Tiffany.

AAACHHHOOOO!!! Fluffy sneezed, unexpectedly, a spray of cat spittle spraying both Sandi and Tiffany in the face!

"EWWWWWWW!!!!" said Sandi

"I'm allllergic….!" said Tiffany.

Tiffany began coughing wildly. As Sandi tried to hold Tiffany still – getting a face full of coughing from Tiffany – Fluffy confidently strode back into the house. After all, his work was done.