The worlds Jane saw ran the gamut. There were worlds where for one reason or another she and Daria never became friends. There were two in particular she found interesting: the first was a world where the Morgendorffers had been delayed by one day during the move, so Daria never wound up in the self-esteem course and while she and Jane interacted a few times, they never became actual friends.

The other was a world where Daria and Quinn went to Fielding Prep instead of Lawndale High. Jane's counterpart in that world still met Daria, but again, they weren't really friends. Jane couldn't help but feel they both dodged a bullet in that case. She wasn't sure what Fielding was actually like in her world, but if it was anything like the pit of vipers that this Fielding seemed to be, Jane wouldn't wish that on her worst enemy.

There were, of course, plenty of worlds where they became friends, but the divergent point was, once again, the Tom Thing. There were worlds where they got through it and fixed their friendship, others where they didn't. Worlds where, after several years, they managed to rekindle their friendship, older and wiser. There was one where Jane deliberately strung Daria along, but slept with Tom behind her back in revenge and let it slip. It had been Daria who broke things off there. There was one where it turned out Tom was a manipulative sociopath and Daria never got in the car with him. Quinn, on the other hand, did, and things turned out really badly for him after that.

Others in that same line were disturbing. There was one where Jane watched as her counterpart actually broke into the Morgendorffer house with the intention of killing Daria. There were several where Daria, eaten up by the guilt, tried, and sometimes succeeded, in killing herself. One had both Daria and Jane killing Tom and burying his body deep in the woods in revenge.

Unfortunately, not every disturbing universe she saw was that cathartic...

–

"It's okay," Older Jane soothed. She rubbed her hand up and down Jane's back as the younger girl heaved and puked into a nearby bush. "It's okay."

Jane wiped her mouth as she sat back on her knees and glared at her older self. "No, it is NOT fucking okay!"

She wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to blot out the things she saw: Daria's name carved into her counterpart's stomach. The look of fear and pain in her eyes. The sneer on Trent's face as he dug his fingernails into her shoulder. The dead look in his eyes that made Jane squirm when she saw it.

"Trent would never... he wouldn't... not ever..." Jane muttered, beginning to rock back and forth. Older Jane gently touched Jane's shoulder and pulled slightly so the girl faced her.

"Look at me," Older Jane said. She waited until Jane looked up at her, her blue eyes watery. Older Jane looked back with a hard, but sympathetic expression.

"That is not your Trent, okay?" she said. "He is not your brother. Your brother is on his way back to Lawndale right now. He loves you and cares for you. That... thing is far away from here and behind bars where he belongs."

"He should be fucking dead," Jane whispered. "And his corpse mutilated beyond recognition."

"You're right," Older Jane confirmed. "And who knows? Maybe one day he'll get exactly what's coming to him. It hasn't all played out yet. But just keep telling yourself 'that is not my brother.' That is just one version of Trent, and thankfully, Trents like him are EXCEEDINGLY rare in this multiverse."

Jane swallowed. "You sure?"

Older Jane nodded. "I haven't been everywhere, but I've seen quite a bit and I have yet to find a Trent as bad as that one, or one that was even worse. But if there was, I'm pretty sure I would have seen him by now."

Jane nodded. She started to get back to her feet. Older Jane helped her.

"So, do you want to keep looking?" asked Older Jane. Jane looked back at the holographic grid of earths. Her brow furrowed.

"Yes," she said. She looked back up at Older Jane. "But can that thing show me worlds where nice things happen for a bit?"

Older Jane smiled. "Sure thing, kid."

There were, surprisingly, quite a few worlds where nice things happened. Worlds where Jane and Daria's friendship survived the Tom Thing and was all the stronger for it. Worlds where the two of them lost touch, but found each other again when one or the other really needed them. There was a world where Daria became principal of Lawndale High, but still kept in touch with Jane through some Star Trek-like video chat thing on the weird flat TVs that seemed to be everywhere in the worlds which moved beyond Jane's own idea of "the present." There were worlds where both girls, now well into their thirties, were living in New York. Jane making a living doing her art, and Daria writing for a late night TV show. Even Trent was there, entering his forties and managing to eke out a living with a new band. In some of them, they made a new friend who took an opportunity to DJ at the club Trent worked at. That usually led to romance and Trent moving to Arkansas, of all places, to be with her.

There were worlds where both girls moved beyond friendship and into romance. There were a LOT of those. But even then, those worlds had interesting dynamics. There was one where Jane, Daria, and Tom became a romantic triad during college. Another where she and Daria were together but were open to seeing other people. One world had the two of them becoming intimate while dating a couple of LHS football players of all things. Jane couldn't help but laugh a little at that one. Daria was dating a Norse god of a guy who stood a full foot and a half taller than her. And yet, the window showed that all four of them had quite a bit of naughty fun in a luxury hot tub on a regular basis.

There were even worlds where one or the other of them had their genders flipped. Dariuses and Janes. Darias and Johns. Even one world where due to an ancient family curse, Daria found herself becoming "Dorian." Most of these wound up with the two of them getting together.

When Jane had Older Jane turn the filter back off, she found the weird worlds. The world where everything had apparently been shifted forward by twenty years and rather than being hippies, Helen and Jake had been punks... and still were. The sheer chaos in that world made Jane stare transfixed.

But what stood out to her was the fact that she and Daria were still the same. And when the Alison of that world successfully manipulated that Jane into sleeping with her, and that Jane told Daria...

Well, Jane always figured Daria had the power to start a riot. It was amazing to see it happen in practice though.

There was a dystopian world where the Fashion Club ran everything and Jane and Daria fought against it. A world where nukes had hit the United States and the two of them were two hundred miles away from Lawndale at the time and had only each other to rely on in the immediate aftermath. There was the world where Quinn was one of five quintuplets, all terrible in their own way, which had bullied and alienated Daria to the point where she latched onto Jane in desperation in an attempt to have her own life.

There were worlds that showed the future. Both girls attending and graduating college in Boston. Daria getting married while Jane opened a gallery in Lawndale. Both busy and going their separate ways but always staying in touch. There was a world where Jane opened her own business, creating props and costume pieces for movies and TV. Daria's own life hadn't worked out in that one, but that Jane had taken her in and that led to something truly amazing that blew Jane's mind when she saw it.

"Holiday Island was only the tip of the iceberg in that one," Older Jane said when she saw which world Jane was looking at.

Then she found the tragic worlds. A world where Daria's writing had caused two morons in her old town to go on a shooting spree, and being held responsible and under suspicion when the Morgendorffers moved to Lawndale to get away from the scandal. The Jane there was in the foster system, since her parents were constantly AWOL and because of circumstances there Trent had been drafted into the army and deployed overseas. The two found each other and tried to make it work, but the confluence of an email and a news broadcast, both ill timed, had nearly resulted in both girls killing themselves.

Jane felt her heart sink as she saw a world where an older version of herself, similar to the one living in New York with Daria, was trying to put her life back together after years of drug abuse and dependency.

A world where Daria's intelligence was below normal instead of above average, and her family couldn't cope with it. In the end, tragedy struck and Daria was institutionalized, with only Jane coming to see her. There was a world where Sandi stabbed Daria in the back and when she went to Jane for help, Jane responded by stabbing her in the heart. (Also some shady secret recruiting at Lawndale High by the government stuff, but Jane couldn't really follow all that.)

Speaking of, there was a world where nearly everyone at Lawndale High was a sleeper agent for some other shadowy government organization led by Jake's father of all people that involved building a complex machine to punch through other realities with Daria caught in the middle of it, but managing to bring Jane out of her own brainwashing in the end. There was even one where the two of them waited out the end of the world together.

And then there were the worlds where Daria sacrificed herself to save Jane. Jane watched as Daria after Daria gave up her life to ensure their Jane's safety. Countless Janes holding Daria during her last breath, sobbing as her best friend died. Almost all of the Daria dying with the same words on their lips:

"I love you, Jane."

Jane wiped her eyes and turned away from the earths. Older Jane, seated once again on the log, looked up at her.

"Seen enough?" she asked.

"Enough to know you're up to something," Jane replied. "A LOT of worlds out there where Daria's practically a saint."

"There's just as many where we die so she can live too, you know," Older Jane replied. Jane shook her head.

"No, that's not what I mean. You said you weren't here to try to convince me that I had to stick with Daria. But from everything I've seen, that seems to be what you're trying to do. Daria's almost always the good guy in these worlds."

"Most Daria Morgendorffers, despite being extremely judgmental, are actually good people, Jane."

"'Most?'" Jane asked, quirking an eyebrow. Older Jane sighed and stood up again. She began fiddling with the square on her wrist.

"Oh, I get it," she said. "You think I'm deliberately filtering out the worlds where Daria isn't the hero, or even a good person. Okay then, allow me to introduce you to the worst of the worst."

The grid cleared except for five earths. They all opened revealing five different Darias. Older Jane tapped the first one. On the screen, that Daria was dressed in a 1930s era outfit, complete with bobbed hair and hat. She held a tommy gun and was firing at unseen assailants.

"Daria Penelope Morgendorffer," Older Jane said. "Born November of 1915. Ran away from home at age 17 and wound up in Chicago. In 1932, while serving a stretch in the Cook County Jail, she became acquainted with Pia "Bad Penny" Lanelli, daughter of notorious crime boss Vincenzo "Poppa" Lanelli."

The scene shifted and Jane stared at the image of herself, also dressed for the era standing next to Daria. There was a man tied to a chair in front of them and the Jane on screen stepped forward and proceeded to bash the man's kneecaps with a nine iron.

"While Bad Penny brought Daria into the family, it was Penny's younger sister Gianna "Janey" Lanelli who taught her the ropes. As time went on, they went down in history as the most ruthless enforcers in Poppa Lanelli's organization. Estimates put their collective kills at around 88 during their most active period between 1932 and 1940."

"What happened to them?" Jane asked.

Older Jane shrugged. "The Lanelli family, or rather the "Lanes," went mostly legit when America got involved in World War II. Daria, Janey, and Bad Penny kept the racketeering up themselves for a while after 1941, but being women and sexism being what it is, eventually both Penny and Janey wound up face down and bleeding out outside the family townhouse in 1944. Daria vanished, but rumors persisted she was still pulling strings in the underworld. She surfaced in Lawndale in 1947, far from Chicago. The crime statistics went up in the area shortly afterward, but nobody could ever prove anything. One thing was for sure, the Morgendorffer family soon rose to the top in Lawndale's social circles and stayed there for a good long while, well into the 80s and beyond."

"Morgendorffer family?" Jane asked. Older Jane nodded.

"Scandalized the hell out of people too. Daria got married in 1950 but her husband was the one to change his last name."

Older Jane tapped the screen closed and moved to the next one. This one showed an older Daria in some sort of prison jumpsuit. She was in a plexiglas cell and calmly talking to a Jane who was dressed in a sharp business suit. Jane did not look happy to be talking to Daria.

"Daria Oliva Morgendorffer," Older Jane began. "Convicted of no less than 37 murders in both Highland, Texas and Lawndale, Maryland. That the FBI could prove, at any rate. It's believed her victim count is easily double that. You think we felt betrayed when Daria told us she kissed Tom? We've got nothing on this Jane. Her best friend turned out to be a murderous monster. After graduating from Lawndale High, that Jane enrolled at Lawndale State and threw herself into Criminology and Forensic Science, eventually joining the FBI. She became one of the best agents and profilers in the Bureau. Right now, she's working on another case, and much to her disgust and regret, she has to consult with her Daria on it."

"Jesus," Jane whispered. Older Jane nodded.

"Yeah," she confirmed. "I don't know how all this plays out. We're looking at 'now' in that universe."

Jane looked at the familiar Mona Lisa smile on Daria's face and shivered.

Older Jane closed the screen and moved to the next one, a Daria who seemed even more expressionless than usual.

"Daria Katherine Morgendorffer, a completely emotionless sociopath. Thanks to her, the Fashion Gang managed to take over the underworld of Lawndale and pretty much run the town."

"How?" Jane asked. She looked closer at the Daria on screen. She didn't look that much different than her Daria.

Older Jane swiped the screen. Jane's eyes widened at the carnage that appeared and she dashed to the bush and dry heaved into it. She came back.

"That was a dirty trick," she snarled at Older Jane.

"Sorry," Older Jane said. She closed the window and moved to the next one. It displayed Daria and Jane in a church somewhere. Jane was dressed in shabby but serviceable clothes. Daria had her hair cut short and was dressed in an expensive overcoat. A gold pin shaped like a stylized "Rx" symbol was on the lapel. Jane watched in horror as the Jane on screen hugged Daria, then stepped back.

"Daria Nicole Morgendorffer," Older Jane narrated. "Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalist. Nearly killed in 2007 when the economy completely collapsed and riots broke out in the major cities. Disappeared and was presumed dead until what we're seeing now. Became one of the largest underworld drug lords in the city."

Both Janes looked at the scene. Jane gasped and Older Jane sighed as Daria pulled a gun on the Jane in the church.

"And she's about to kill the last shred of humanity she has left," Older Jane finished.

–

"I'm really very sorry about this, Jane," said Daria as she extended the hand holding the gun. "But you've distracted Tommy boy from his mission and I just can't have that."

"No!" Jane sobbed. It couldn't be. This soulless monster couldn't be the mastermind she'd been helping. Couldn't be the one who had been sending Tom out to assassinate high profile targets in the city. Couldn't be the Doctor, the source of some of the most addictive morphine derivatives ever pushed on the streets. Couldn't be her best friend of so long ago.

"Daria, no, please!" Jane begged. Daria took a step forward, her eyes cold and dead.

"I'm sorry, but it has to be this way."

Jane turned and ran back toward the altar, hoping to get to the door near the front that led to the rectory. She heard more than felt the shots that entered her back and severed her spinal cord. She fell to the floor, her legs numb, her lungs on fire.

She heard steps coming from behind her and a cold voice whispered in her ear.

"If it's any consolation," Daria said, glancing up at the crucifix hanging on the wall. "He'll probably welcome you with open arms."

Daria stood up and walked away from Jane's dying body. She paused at the large set of double doors and looked back. For just a moment, the mask slipped, and Daria looked at her friend with pain, love, and remorse.

"Goodbye Jane," she whispered. Then she was gone.

A few minutes later, so was Jane.

"What was the point of that?" Jane asked, her voice harsh. "Why did she have to kill that version of us?"

"To further her goals," Older Jane answered. She closed the screen.

"Really?" Jane snorted. "And what the hell could those possibly be? I mean, Jesus, it didn't look like that version of us was any threat to her!"

"That Daria has one goal in mind," Older Jane said. "The total annihilation of the human race."

Jane stared. "What?"

Older Jane nodded, her expression grave. "That Daria experienced humanity at its worst on one terrible night and she's since devoted herself to making sure that humanity is wiped out. Whether they do it to themselves, or she gets herself in a position of power where she can influence things in that direction. Makes no difference to her. Everyone on the planet is going to die if she gets her way."

"Genocide?" Jane stared at the little holographic planet. "I mean, I'm getting that not every Daria is pure and noble or even just a good person, but that just seems... extreme for her."

"Extreme?" Older Jane's eyebrows raised. "You think that's extreme?"

She moved to the next screen and touched it. It expanded even larger. On it was a Daria dressed in a way Jane never expected Daria to dress. She wore a matte black catsuit with a brown leather utility belt slung low around her hips. The zipper of the suit was down, showing a fair bit of cleavage, not that anyone would look for long, considering the scarred skin right above it and the silver heart shaped locket that seemed to be embedded in her chest. A floor length, blood red, hooded cloak was around her shoulders, moving as if it had a will of its own. This Daria didn't wear glasses and she had a malevolent smirk on her face. Hovering between her hands was a black sphere the size of a volleyball that pulsed with malignant red light.

"Daria Judith Morgendorffer," Older Jane said. "Responsible for literally uncountable deaths across the multiverse."

"What do you mean 'literally uncountable?'" Jane asked.

"They're uncountable because we don't have words for numbers big enough for the number of people she's killed. She has destroyed entire universes. She's burned other worlds to a crisp, murdered millions for the fun of it, and made a particular point of brutally maiming, torturing, and otherwise mutilating every other Daria Morgendorffer unlucky enough to cross her path."

Jane looked at the black clad Daria in shock. "No way," she breathed.

"Yes way," Older Jane said. "I was there. I saw worlds wiped out before my eyes. I saw Darias in multiple universes choking on their own blood when Judith found them. I had to watch as she nearly beat my Daria to death, and if we hadn't jumped worlds when we did, she would have finished the job and made me watch."

"What the hell happened to her? How did she get so strong?" Jane asked, her eyes wide.

"She enacted a ritual and became the vessel for a destructive force called the Worldburner," said Older Jane. She sighed heavily. "She was unstoppable, except by her counterpart, the Worldhopper. But no one knew where or when or even how to find them. So a bunch of people, some of them other versions of people you know, some you have no idea who they are, banded together to keep Judith busy while giving the Worldhopper time to appear. It didn't quite work out. Judith figured out what was going on and stopped playing with them so she could go find the Worldhopper herself."

"The Worldhopper," Jane said thoughtfully. She looked from the image of Judith to Older Jane. "Your Daria?"

Older Jane nodded. "My Daria. Judith caught up with us a couple of times. Our home world was wiped out in the process. But we found friends. And luckily for me, Judith had a soft spot for the Jane Lanes she encountered. She rarely killed any of us."

"Why? What did she do?"

"She collected us," Older Jane replied. "Kept us in a well stocked and opulent prison. Hundreds of Jane Lanes of nearly every age and gender. Those who had powers or abilities that could actually help them oppose her she kept in stasis pods in another part of her lair. That proved to be a bad move for her. Once I got there, I was able to rally most of us together and we put a crimp in her ultimate plan."

"Which was?" Jane's voice was horrified, but fascinated.

Older Jane shrugged. "Destroy every other universe in existence while keeping her home universe safe. Then she'd go back and subjugate the place as its new vengeful god, presumably with a harem of Janes she could either play with or keep like pets. There were quite a few Janes she had who were more than willing to go along with her. One of them's still out there, somewhere, wreaking havoc across the multiverse. She calls herself 'NegaJane,' if you can believe that."

"I actually can... and that scares me," said Jane. "So you led this... Army of Jane against Judith?"

"Mostly against her own forces. She'd acquired allies of her own and... look, honestly, it's a really long story and it would probably take something like three years to tell it all. Long story short, my Daria finally ascended to her full power as the Worldhopper and she destroyed Judith. Judith is dead and gone and she's never coming back."

"Why would she collect us like that?" Jane asked. "She was a Daria. She had to know that almost any Jane she collected would be horrified and fight against her. Why take that risk?"

Older Jane smiled. "And here's where we get to the point of this little chat. All of this was to show you one fundamental truth that echoes across this entire multiverse."

Jane frowned. "And that is?"

Older Jane came over and gently put her hands on Jane's shoulders. "There are plenty of worlds out there where Jane Lane doesn't love, or even like, Daria Morgendorffer."

She brought her head down so she could look Jane square in the eyes.

"There is only a small handful of worlds where Daria Morgendorffer doesn't love Jane Lane."