Operation Glitterberries

Chapter 09: Blue Jacaranda

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Disclaimer: Daria and associated characters are owned by MTV and Viacom. Information regarding the Blue Jacaranda was extracted from Wikipedia.

This is fan fiction written for entertainment only. No money or other negotiable currency or goods have been exchanged.

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The Blue Jacaranda, 'Jacaranda mimosifolia' more often known simply as the "Jacaranda", is a sub-tropical tree native to South America that has been widely planted elsewhere because of its beautiful and long-lasting blue flowers. Profuse flowering is regarded as magnificent by some and quite messy by others.

The Blue Jacaranda has been cultivated in almost every part of the world where there is no risk of frost. In the United States, it grows in parts of Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, and Florida, and has been reported to grow in southern Louisiana, the Mediterranean coast of Spain, in southern Portugal and southern Italy, Lusaka, the capital of Zambia also sees the growth of many Jacarandas. It is regarded as an invasive species in parts of South Africa and Queensland, Australia.

It is also the best known alias of an international terrorist wanted by both the West and the East for her relentless and often deadly attacks on the leadership of many satellite countries under their respective spheres of influence. Her mark is the addition of a flower, not exclusively a Blue Jacaranda, in front of a random work of art of the region she is operating, and said art isn't necessarily a piece of renown, in fact half the time she add those to otherwise unremarkable works.

The first known instance of one of her operations was the assassination of the Spanish Prime Minister, and successor of the Dictator Francisco, Franco Luis Carrero Blanco, with a huge underground bomb. The attack now is regarded at the first step to the return of democracy in the country. Later member of the Guardia Civil found that the woman who masterminded the whole operation had left a Blue Jacaranda in front of one of the many statues of the city; one commemorating the resistance against Napoleon invasion of the country. The attack itself was initially accredited to the ETA and incidentally increased tenfold the number of recruits of the European terrorists groups bankrolled by the Soviet Union.

The soviets of course were more than satisfied with the outcome, until a few months later when in a confusing incident, members of the Stasi went into an apartment in Berlin and killed their own Assistant director while he was having an affair with his latest mistress; said femme fatale expended an afternoon under the tender care of the secret police before banishing leaving only a red poppy under a graffiti in the Wall. The Jacaranda had exchanged apartments with a known dissident and then attracted the 'Butcher of the Wall' towards the place using her own body as bait. Once all the pieces were in place she had the man who had lost his entire family to the Stasi guns call the police and let their own brutal tactics finish the deal.

Personally Melody considered the Jacaranda the only International Freedom Fighter worthy of such title. Unlike many of the other guerrilla and terrorist that she had either helped or mercilessly killed during her career the Jacaranda's only goal was to make the life of the oppressed a little better by killing off the worst monsters that managed to worm their way into the darkest sides of governments.

The problem with her was that many of the countries she targeted were American client countries in danger of being swallowed by communism, with governments that had been put there to stop the Red's expansion with an Iron Fist and long ago had the CIA discovered that their tactics and agents were unable to deal with the unconventional tactics the Jacaranda used on her hits, from the subtle use of binary poisons in the middle of a propaganda dinner with hundreds of children to a suicide assault guns blazing in the middle of an army base to one memorable occasion when she had used herself as bait to an U.S. carrier alpha strike were half of the Junta was having a reunion. For that reason the assignment of killing or at least stopping her was given to the Farm and from there to Melody due to her successes in stopping the worst of her attacks from allowing the Reds a foothold.

Theorically Melody had standing orders to kill the Jacaranda on sight but as in with every other issue in the Cold War the ugly face of Realpolitik's meant that depending on whose puppet the country in question was they would often join forces to tackle on a particular foe. Geographically speaking finding her in South America and selected parts of the Middle East and Asia meant that it was their duty to try to kill each other, while on the other hand finding her in Africa and the Caribbean would have them as allies. There were also the memorable occasions when both of them were being gunned down by the same tin dictator or his replacement. Those times the betrayers seldom survived.

The Jacaranda was also the only ally that had never, ever betrayed her, not even her parent agency could claim to be guiltless on that, no matter how easy would have been for her to deal permanently with her, especially surrounded by a whole rebel army that wasn't all that keen of Americans. On the other hand Melody had erred her shots more than once whenever she was shooting her, and she had vowed to herself to never investigate the Jacaranda and her family, which she had casually mentioned in front of her a couple of occasions. It was nice to deal with an honorable enemy for once in her life and career.

And now here, in the middle of the United States of America, in one suburban neighborhood, a younger and untouched version of the Blue Jacaranda was standing in front of her.

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"Jane, we're here!"

Jane could hear Trent screaming through her door, 'Umm, I guess that the gig was a bust after all, well is not as if he actually expected to be free tonight anyway… Did he say we?' Her curiosity picked she rushed towards the front door.

And surprisingly enough it wasn't another member of Mystik Spiral, she had been hoping for Jesse, but her best friend.

"Hey Daria."

Said girl didn't respond, in fact she just opened her eyes big as plates and muttered something illegible she didn't quite catch, but now that she was paying attention she could see a lot of differences with the spectacled girl, for starters she wasn't using her usual skirt, but some jeans of a different cut that the ones she took to Alternapaoosa, and while she was wearing her usual orange t-shirt the accompanying green jacket was missing. She was sweating as if she had just ended one of Morris practical exams and was just getting her breath back, there were cuts and bruises on her bare arms and even her face had a couple of scratches, she could see that while holding her backpack (and since when Daria had a blue backpack?) she was favoring her right side.

But while the clothes were unusual and the injuries could easily be from a mishap in the camping trip, after all Daria wasn't known for her physical progress, it was the look in her eyes the one that was worrying her. She looked lost and confused as if she didn't know where she was or something; if she could select one word to describe it would be shell-shocked.

"Daria, are you okay?"

The question seemed to get her out of her funk, since she blinked, and then it got weird. "Yes, yes I'm fine thank you."

The seemly innocuous answer had the opposite effect in Jane. Forget about weird clothes and weirder injuries; first of all Daria didn't answer with a sarcastic comment, something that she did automatically in most situations; and secondly the tone she used to say those words was tired but polite, with no trace of her usual monotone, even if she could detect an undertone of tension bellow it. And Daria without her sarcastic monotone just isn't Daria.

She shared a look with his brother who then make a move to leave; No matter how much she teased her brother about his sleeping habits and how disconnected he was from the world at large, he was the most emphatic and perceptive man she had ever known. And his look before quietly leaving the room told her that he too got the mixed signals that her friend was broadcasting and he too was worried. "I'll get you some water, do you want anything Janey?"

"No thanks Trent." The way Daria looked at him going to the kitchen was weird as well, she was certainly following him with her eyes, however she didn't quite turned her head, as if she couldn't decide between checking him or her out… And that was a weird image if she ever had one.

"Are you done checking out Trent, because I can sell you tickets if you want?" This time she did spurt a somewhat normal reaction, getting a mighty blush and directing her eyes upfront to her face. It was good to know that she could still tease her as normal, even in her current condition.

She decided to cut the ice with the most obvious topic on her head. "So I'm guessing by how you look that camping with the family wasn't a walk in the park?"

Whatever reaction she expected wasn't the one she got, for a single second the face of her friend showed repressed anger… No, it wasn't anger, but barely suppressed fury of the kind that she had never seen in her life before. It was there a second, and the next it was gone, replaced with a neutral face and a monotone of a different nature that the one her friend commonly used. 'What the hell happened?' She thought concerned, Daria's emotional armor was as thick as a battleship's and with a lot more bite; for something, anything to go through that, it must have been hellish.

"It wasn't the most pleasant of weekends and let's let it like that. And how was your family reunion, I heard the message on the answering machine, and I'm curious about you cheating death once more."

"Well, not death, but maybe my sanity and whatever self esteem that I have left after school. The sad thing is that I'm not joking, this time I started the family meeting in the flight to Nowhereville with the left foot thanks to Trent's uncanny ability to say the wrong thing in the worst possible moment…

"Hey Daria, here's the water. By the way why where you walking towards here so late? You know this 'hood isn't exactly safe at this hour."

'Good one Trent, I don't know if all the noise you call music threw up all the subtlety out of you'

Daria hesitated for a moment before answering. "I wanted to get out of the house…" Jane always had one finely tuned bullshit detector, the best in Lawndale High until Daria trumped her, for everyone except boys, and the next words from her friend's mouth activated it. "…so I told my parents that I was coming here to sleep and that I already asked for your permission. I can go to a hotel afterwards if you want."

"No, don't worry; you can sleep in Penny's room."

"Thank you." The weirdest part of her thanks was the slight smile on her face, which looked nothing like the Mona Lisa one she always used when something went her way. Maybe that was throwing up her BS detector; she had never seen Daria act so naturally or unnaturally as it was in her case, so she wasn't able to get a good reading out of her.

So she continued telling her about the disastrous reunion of the Lanes, hoping to get something, anything, out of her friend and whatever happened in the weekend to make her act like that.

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Melody couldn't describe with words the sheer shock of seeing the black haired girl in front of her.

She was a dead ringer for the Blue Jacaranda, or at least a dead ringer for a fifteen years younger Blue Jacaranda, even if she was lacked the acid burn in her left eye and all the related affections, from the hairdo covering the horrible scars to how she always faced people slightly to the right to cover her blind spot.

However as much as this girl favored physically the Jacaranda, her mannerism were a different matter; her body language was too open in a physical way, getting both within arm's reach and yet too far for a hand to hand strike of her own and emotionally she was even more open if it was possible, first showing happiness for seeing her (and Melody provoked many reactions in people, from fear to lust, but carefree happiness was never one of them) and then a scant second later honest worry.

And that worry was the most dangerous feeling the girl could have, Melody could see that she saw right through her, admittedly feeble, reassurances and made a signal to his male counterpart.

Maybe the Jacaranda was a control subject in the mind scrubbing experiment that they did on her mind, and the signal was for the young man, Trent, to call the cavalry while they keep her distracted?

'No, that makes no sense at all; the Jacaranda doesn't play nice with shadowy organizations.' She followed him leave, ostensibly for a glass of water, while keeping an eye for the far more dangerous terrorist. Regrettably she was too close to get her gun and kill them both, and with her sloppy physical skills she might not be able to take the girl down before his supposed brother came to help.

"Are you done checking out Trent, because I can sell you tickets if you want?" The nature of the question caught her unaware; once more she cursed the hormones that came with this body. Jacaranda would be crazy to ally herself with any organization, much less for something as redoing her teens.

As far as she knew, the Jacaranda had never acted against the United States of America; yes, she had spoiled more than one attempt to place their own men in critical third world countries, but she did respect the values the country was founded. That was the reason why she had cooperated in stopping direct threads to the government in the past.

Also she had stubbornly refused to participate with any single organization of the government, of any government; she knew that the insurgency department of the CIA would give her an honorary citizenship and a vice director post if she deflected to the west. She had refused, just as she had refused her own country behind the Iron Wall.

But then the next question erased all thoughts of hormones and cute backsides, even as she detected the sliver of worry deep within her interrogator voice. How could she ask so nonchalantly about a good American family who was destroyed beyond any possible recovery? The simple thought of making light of their situation let her wanting to go for her hidden knife and bury it deep within the other girl.

She took a second to recover her composure, it wasn't the girls fault to ignore the true circumstances of the trip, and Jacaranda would never made light of such a tragedy. Then after she was sure she would not messily kill her host she weaved an appropriate vague answer followed by an evasion. For a moment she believed it worked and that her host was going to concentrate on giving her information instead of extracting it, but Trent came back with the water and another trickier question.

She hesitated for a moment, thinking that maybe her cover was shot and that she would need to shoot them in return, and then without really thinking about it she weaved her lie. "I wanted to get out of the house so I told my parents that I was coming here to sleep and that I already asked for your permission. I can go to a hotel afterwards if you want." It was ill thought, with more holes than the last boat she rode from Hanoi, and yet while the girl seemed doubtful she offered the room of someone called Penny.

Under the situation, with cops hot on her heels and nowhere to go the safely that the house represented was a godsend. She has truly thankful for the safe haven; despite the fact that she might have to kill both of the inhabitants. But if anything she could see how the blue eyes of her host become a little more suspicious when she thanked her.

No, not suspicious… worried.

'She is worried about me?' The worry in her eyes drove away any homicidal thoughts from her mind. There was still a mystery here, but maybe the Lanes weren't the enemy. At least for now…

Deciding to show at least a modicum of trust she took the glass offered by Trent and let the water touch her lips without actually drinking any of it. It was an old trick to detect any poisonous beverages without risking too much of a dose. She looked their reactions towards the technique; even half trained agents would know when someone was doing it if they pay attention. She relaxed a little when she didn't felt any suspicious numbing of her mouth and the subsequent lack of reaction; they were either innocent, too green to notice, or simply had ready a damn good poison and waiting for the effect to occur.

Then the black haired girl decided to continue her narrative, describing just how long they had to walk before arriving to the house where the reunion was hosted after being left behind by their Aunt Bernice, of the cold reception and the annoying questions, not forgetting the way Uncle Max insulted Trent. While Melody was paying attention to the words, she was not particularly interested in the family reunion other than to see if she could get any clue about the situation she had gotten herself into.

"…The only one who can call him a bum is me; and maybe you if you feel like it." She was definitely more appalled for Trent's sake than for her own. Then Trent came back once more to the living room carrying unopened poptarts and scraps of old pizza. Feeling bold after surviving the water, dirty glass included, and being in dire need of energy after the knifefight (or a gunfight from the cop's perspective) and subsequent escape she devoured the food under the astonished eyes of the Lanes.

"Whoa…"

"Hungry much Daria?"

"Try surviving the last few days off the land and ask me again." She snapped with a little more of an edge than she intended, but curiously they both relaxed at the answer.

"Well, as I was saying then our loving relatives shoved all of us into the living room with a blanket for every five of us. I guess that they thought that our body heat and nasty vocabulary would be more than enough to keep us warm in the night. And after one hellish night of being confused for a pillow by disturbing relatives they decided that the morning activities would start at seven o'clock with an arousing game of crocket. At this point Trent and I decided to blow the joint lest we take those crocket hammers and nailed someone with them."

Somehow, despite hearing about their misadventures Melody didn't feel too much sympathy for the siblings. 'Probably because I slept yesterday under the bed of a flea ridden motel while a sedated pedophile comfortably sleeping on the bed. And lest not forget that I woke up even earlier and for activities less fulfilling than crocket, Like cleaning fingerprints and staging a successful deflowering for the pervert.'

"Poor suffering souls." Once more the quip came out of her mouth without her being able to stop it. And once more she saw how they relaxed more after hearing those words.

"Now that I have faced the extended Lane Clan without Winter or Summer to take most of the flak I can understand better why Penny ran all the way to Latin America."

"She ran all the way to the south of the continent just because of a family meeting?" Melody asked, now being far more interested in the conversation than before.

"Well the official excuse Penny gave to our parents was that she wants to fight for the oppressed. How she plans to do that selling hand-crafted tin picture frames in Mexico I don't know. Wait, didn't that business in Mexico fell flat? I think that now she's in Nicaragua.

Now the situation with the sister made a lot more of sense to Agent Powers that it would do to an American teenager ignorant of the rest of the world. Mexico had recently clean house of the usual rabble of red communist scum in a messy but successful operation that the media had named the Massacre of Tlatelolco. She could see someone such as the Blue Jacaranda wanting to see if a counter hit was possible, but the Mexican government is by far the most stable democracy in the continent; The current reigning party in the country would place a new president every six years by 'popular' vote and having forbidden the reelection of any member of the executive branch in their constitution for over fifty years therefore preventing any one power hungry fool from taking all power for himself, in any case when their term was over the only way to avoid being messily assassinated was to lend his support to the next candidate. While there were the occasional internal plays for power, the whole system was foolproof and tested for decades; to give legitimacy to the government there were three or four more parties with different approaches and competing between them for small and irrelevant counties and states, but ultimately too divided to do any meaningful ruckus. The Republican Party might learn a thing or two of such a smooth operation.

If was easy to imagine the frustration that Jacaranda might have felt when discovering that instead of going there to fight a Medusa, she found a full size Hydra, and if she decapitated the monster the only thing she would accomplish would be to give to the party a ready make martyr. On the other hand the Sandinistas were in dire need of support to overthrow Somoza, the brutal dictator of the country, and the madness that was the war in Nicaragua would be easily stopped with an artillery shell shot from one of the artillery batteries defending the capital, or maybe a strategically cooked meal with ingredients he's allergic. Part of the Jacaranda's charm is the diversity of her methods after all.

But even if that was true there were a lot of unanswered questions in the air. Out of respect she would never search for the Blue's Jacaranda's family, and even if she did the last part that she would search would be in a low income house in a small but fairly prosperous city in the United States. Maybe it was…

The sudden snapping of fingers in front of her brought her musings to a full stop.

"Hey Daria, are you okay. You zoned out on me."

"Yes just a bit tired."

"A bit tired? You look as if a mild breeze might knock you out. Come on, I'll take you to Penny's room. Trent, could you help with her stuff?"

"No! I mean, I'll carry it. There's no need to bother you even more than I have." Melody really didn't want them to see the gun in the backpack.

"Whatever rocks your boat." Jane answered with a puzzled expression.

She was then guided to a room in the second floor, once she saw the bed she started to undress to her underwear to get to the bed.

"Whoa." She could hear the voice of Trent behind her, followed by both siblings leaving the room in a hurry. "Neither has lived in barracks before." Melody giggled a little before taking her gun out of the backpack and hiding it under the pillow. After that there was only darkness.

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"What the hell is wrong with Daria?"

Jane and Trent were once more downstairs after their hasty retreat from Penny's room, where their friend was currently sleeping. And both of them were still reeling from the shock.

"She wasn't acting normal, isn't it?" Trent asked, he was a good judge of character, and right now all of his instincts were screaming for him to go and hide; something particularly strange when dealing with his little sister's small and sarcastic friend.

"Not acting normal? She wasn't acting like herself at all. I mean, when has she been shy about anything?" Trent was about to answer when Jane interrupted him. "Other than talking with you; and since the Alternapaoosa, fiasco she has improved there as well. But today she was hesitant, she almost didn't snark and she was trying to be tactful in occasions. Daria is many things, but tactful is not one of them Trent. And about that striptease she just did? Simply put Daria is a total prude, she would never undress in front of me, much less in front of you."

"And there was this vibe she was sending…" Trent's full body shiver completed the image far better than anything he could say.

"Yeah, I saw it too, or at least I think I did. I swear, did she aim to beat me at the misery weekend game? Because it looks as if she succeeded beyond my wildest nightmares." Jane rubbed her eyes; "I guest that I'll ask tomorrow before school, when she's rested and not as recalcitrant as today."

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A.N. Some of you with knowledge of history will note that many of the events described here are quite real, but that the chronology doesn't make any sense. That is on purpose; Daria created Melody Powers to be a female James Bond, and just as Bond she is atemporal, being part of relevant points of the Cold War. In Daria's mind that will become a blind spot for the many inconsistencies in her biography, especially the fact that she should be a septuagenarian agent forcefully retired from active duty for at least a decade or two.