Shiva's Self Insert: The Sucksteemers

So... Amidst the chaos of the beginning of 2020, what with the virus outbreak, the continuing train wreck of a certain orange-blob in the Oval Office, and the ever-looming uncertainty of loosing my lucrative job and a lack of credentials beyond 'College Dropout', stuck in quarantine I was spending my time at home, trying to conserve my resources, binging on Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, and spending much of it in a drunken haze due to not having anywhere to go.

On one of those nights I went to sleep.

Then I woke up in my house, but felt different.

Way different.

I showered and got dressed, wondering how fucking hungover I actually was and dared to peek outside, desperate for fresh air.

The neighborhood wasn't my neighborhood.

I wasn't in Indiana anymore.

Wherever 'here' was, it was much warmer, and it wasn't the beginning of spring, from the foliage on the trees it was heading from summer and into fall.

I managed a slight 'squeak' from my vocal cords before registering that there was something in my mailbox.

Grabbing it by instinct I fled back into my house, wondering what the fuck was going on, there couldn't POSSIBLY have been anything hallucinogenic in my screwdriver mix, right?

I started to sober up while opening the letter, realizing that I was a bit shorter and less heavy than I usually was, then I noticed what I was holding.

It was a notice from Lawndale High School, informing 'my parents' that I had been accepted to LHS as a new student.

My jaw dropped, wondering where the hidden camera was, finding myself suddenly wanting to see myself in the floor-length mirror, which for some reason the previous owner of the house had put on the WRONG SIDE of my bedroom door and I hadn't gotten around to fixing it yet, took one look, and screamed.

I wasn't in my thirties anymore.

I was looking exactly as I did when I was in my early days of high school.

My stomach was much flatter, my hair thicker, no piercings or tattoos, but the clothing I had on, while the same as before, still fit me just fine.

The only thought going through my head was, "WTF?!"

I wasn't a coffee drinker, but dammit I wished I had some now, my smartphone and laptop were effectively useless, there was no such thing as WIFI wherever the fuck I was now. So I sat at my kitchen table and grabbed a glass of orange juice and wondered when this nightmare would end.

I looked at the evelope where the letter had come in and noticed it was... Odd.

It was bigger on the inside than it was the outside.

Reaching in for some desperate reason I found something else to pull out.

A note written in a handwriting I didn't know before.

It contained a couple of account numbers for the Bank of Lawndale, a mention that my cash in the house was converted to 90's early 00's currency, and a reminder that I would be having to go to LHS the next day for orientation.

Shaking the envelope upside down I found four more things fall out, a new registration form for my car, a new driver's license, a LHS parking lot pass, and a map of Lawndale.

"I am SO fucked." I muttered to myself.

This shit was SO cliché in other fanfics, and yet here I was, ripped away from my life and loved ones, and of all the places in fiction I could wind up it was fucking Lawndale in the Daria cartoon that made a decent run, but after that run was over...

"Is this... Is this forever?" I asked myself.

The only thing keeping me from freaking out worse than Stacy was the shock.

I didn't remember much about the rest of the day after that.

The next day, I got up, showered, used the facial cleanser that I had since I had some minor breakout on my face (one thing about being a teenager that I DID NOT MISS), then after looking at my wardrobe grabbed the Smashing Pumpkins 'Zero' shirt I had gotten from Amazon late last year, having wanted one for years. I decided it was 'passable' for 90's fashion with a pair of jeans and my blue converse kicks, and I could always find a clothing store on Dega St. (God that sounded weird to actually think to myself) to get some more things to help 'blend in'.

The map indicated I was a bit away from the actual school, so I drove, apparently I was 15 but had a full license... Cartoon logic, I just went with it.

I went through the streets that early morning, seeing things that were kind of familiar, but looked weird as real objects rather than just drawn background buildings and people.

I kind of half-wondered if I tried to go into the houses if there would be actual rooms and things in there, or if it was just a cheap set from a B-Horror movie.

My ponderings were interrupted by arriving at my new prison school no wait it WAS a prison.

Lawndale High School.

The letter indicated that I would be going with an orientation group...

Oh.

I'm going in the same time as a certain pair of sisters.

In my sudden surprise I didn't go in right away but found myself hanging out in the quad.

"Hey," a voice called out to me. It was an average looking boy, "Who are you?"

"I'm Josh," I answered on instinct. "I'm new here."

The kid looked at me funny, just like in my previous round of High School, my effeminate voice was as off-putting as ever.

"This is going to suck." I thought to myself, wondering how much money was in the accounts at the bank, maybe I could just coast for a few years on the amounts there and just stay in isolation.

Everything was interrupted by a certain Lexus pulling up and the newest popular girl stepping out of the car.

Everything about her was perfect, even her red hair was better than mine.

As everyone was distracted by Quinn's arrival, I was the only one to notice Daria slipping around everyone and heading in.

The orientation group consisted of myself, 'Scarlett', the Shaggy cos-player, another generic average boy, a girl in prep-school attire, and of course Daria and Quinn.

Ms. Li was every caricature of herself that the fandom had made her too be.

It made me yearn for my trip to the Bank later that day.

At least Daria livened things up a bit by saying, "Girl overboard" to Li's comments.

But I found myself daring to whisper to Scarlett, "If she goes overboard, beware the splash."

Scarlett actually smiled at that.

After feeding Ms. Manson enough BS to make her think I was well-adjusted, I was given a class schedule, a locker number and combo, and sent to my first class.

I found myself with Daria in Mr. DeMartino's class, and things started playing out like in canon, he decided to pick on Daria and she proved her mettle and he sent us both to our seats, ironically two empties in the front next to each other.

Apparently he didn't want to risk being shown up by TWO new students.

Especially as Kevin and Brittany revealed themselves to be as they were in canon.

As Mr. D yelled at Daria to not show off, I raised my hand.

"And you, JOSHua, think you HAVE the right ANswer?"

"First of all Mr. D. I prefer Josh." I replied flatly, "Also the war that Manifest Destiny was used to justify was the Mexican-American War."

Mr. DeMartino, eye bulging in surprise answered, "That was also suspiciously good..."

I could feel several eyes on me, but I also noticed Daria had glanced at me as well and stared, but what she was thinking was impossible to tell.

I nodded in acknowledgement.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to seriously interact with Daria, or even if I wanted to stay in this place at all.

The rest of the day saw me attend the 'big' classes, Art with Defoe, English with Mr. O'Neill, a science class with a different teacher than Ms. Barch (however it was JANE'S class, so this was canon) but I had a hard time remembering his name, a math class with a teacher straight from God Save the Esteem (who was also unrememberable), a study hall, and of course lunch and leaving Lawndale High.

Not in the order presented, honestly I had no idea how the few teachers at the school covered the classes that they did in canon.

But apparently in this verse, there were WAY more students and WAY more teachers to cover the work load.

There was even a mention of a Vice Principal, but I hadn't seen him yet.

I suspected that Daria would get shoved into the Esteem course with Jane, I had avoided it, so I left at the end of the day and went to the bank with the account information.

Apparently there were two accounts, one was my own from RL with the money I already had earned, the other was an account in my parents name but contained WAY more money than they had ever possessed in RL.

For some reason my name was ALSO on the account, so I could access it.

I left the bank wondering what this meant, on top of everything else.

I got home and decided to decompress, I did some of the homework, though the math crap was as hard as ever for me. I honestly expected the same thing to happen that it did in RL with me, to fail the course all together.

I never could understand math beyond the basics of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and some VERY BASIC division.

Anything else I needed a calculator for otherwise I was screwed...

Wait a minute.

I still had my smartphone.

The apps and the charger still worked just fine.

And one of those apps was a calculator...

I grinned an evil grin.

I had a means to cheat through high school that no one else could POSSIBLY know about.

Now all I had to do was figure out how to get through high school AGAIN as an effeminate, slightly intellectual, gay kid.

And wait a minute, why bother going back?

I had enough money to last several decades.

Then a flash of blinding light hit my eyes and a note appeared in front of me.

It simply read: "If you want to KEEP the money, play along."

Like Jake Morgendorffer often said, "GAWD GAWD DAMMIT!"

I'm stuck in fucking HIGH SCHOOL all over again.

I did my best to avoid wondering if this could possibly get ANY worse.

Because I very much suspected that it could.

FIN