Daria, Jane, and Quinn faced Alan Bellard down at his Chestnut Hill house. To an outside observer, it would have been an unequal confrontation. Three girls in scrubs against a grown man, secure in the advantage of property and class behind him.
Alan Bellard was no fool. He knew exactly what he was facing. He pulled out the .38 from his robe pocket, quickly aimed it at Jane….
…and fired.
The force of the shot knocked Jane three feet backwards, onto her back.
Quinn screamed, a loud shriek like the shriek of a wounded cat. Daria stood by helplessly, unthinking as Bellard disappeared inside his home.
Almost scared to look, Daria looked down at the fallen form of Jane. Quinn covered her mouth so that no sound of pain could escape her mouth and shake her young form to the core.
The two watched Jane on the porch lying supine. Jane's hands were palm up, as if someone had said "stick 'em up", and her eyes were wide open in terror, tears pooling in the lower lids. Suspended two inches from her body, held back by magnetic force was the hot, smoking slug from Bellard's revolver.
Jane swallowed hard. Her lips quivered in fury. "GET—THE—BASTARD!!!"
(la la LA la la)
The door was one and three quarters inches of solid oak. It had a good chance of stopping most low caliber bullets, and had no chance at stopping Quinn Morgendorffer.
Before Daria could caution her sister, Quinn dived into the fray, full of confidence and eager to test her power. A powerful lightning bolt from Quinn turned the oak door into cinders and its eerie blue incandescence lit up the porch.
Quinn looked inside the living room, her eyes darting quickly. Left, right, center. Strands of hair began to stand up on their own as arcs of force darted quickly from hand to hand, somehow touching but not quite touching her scrubs and leaving her clothing intact.
What to do? Go up the stairs? Follow the guy? Where was he? Should she blast something?
-- QUINN! HE HAS YOU IN HIS SIGHTS! --
--DIVE!! --
Quinn comprehended the first part of the message –it was not the first time Daria had spoken to her telepathically. The second part of the message, however, did an end run around Quinn's conscious and went straight to Quinn's pre-conscious, to her hindbrain.
Normally, Quinn would have demurred if someone asked her to throw herself on a parquet floor.
It wasn't that Quinn would have obeyed against her will. Will didn't seem to be a part of it at all.
She dived, as if she were a four year old jumping into a pool. Her body glowed with electricity, a light so bright that it beamed through the large living room windows and searchlit the street.
She didn't see Bellard with the weapon he had. A grenade launcher. He fired it right in the direction that Quinn would have been.
The explosive force of the shot broke one of the windows. Daria ducked as glass blew out of the window frame, followed by a heavy cloud of black smoke. It seemed as if the house was now on fire.
Quinn was…gone. Jane seemed mentally paralyzed into inaction.
Daria took her finger, and in the way one would flick a pebble with thumb and middle finger, Daria flicked the bullet out of Jane's way. The bullet had spent its kinetic force; Jane seemed paralyed more by possibility and her close call than anything else.
Daria pulled Jane to her feet. "Quinn!!" said Daria, trying to tell Jane what happened. "Quinn's---!!" She couldn't complete her thoughts which came rushing like a cold winter wind.
Jane panted out her words. "Where—is—he--?"
Daria concentrated. "Upstairs! He's going upstairs!"
"I'll take care of him! Go into the living room! See what happened!!"
(la la LA la la)
Daria gingerly stepped through the splintered door. She first thought of desperately waving the plumes of smoke away. Somehow, in the moment of crisis, her natural personality came back and she began to think more clearly.
As long as there's smoke, it makes it harder to be hit!
Daria stepped forward, and then stopped, hearing the creaky floor. What happened? Daria had to know if Quinn was all right!
Disregarding her safety, Daria swept the smoke our of her face to see more clearly. There were no more lights on in the living room, and the only illumination came from fingers of reflected light from the streetlights.
Bellard's living room now had a massive hole in the floor. A couch had not quite fallen through the floor, and now rested in the crater, an odd monument. Most of the couch was now either in the basement or the crawlspace of the house, the arm of the couch breaking through to the surface at an odd angle, stuck like a spoon in a bowl of pudding.
-- Quinn! QUINN!! --
::- ( beebledeebledeeble) …. oooo…. -::
It was Quinn!! Quinn's thoughts seemed scattered…but Daria told herself that that was how Quinn's brain normally worked. She was ALIVE!! She wasn't on the floor anymore, but she was…somewhere! Probably under the house, somewhere, but alive!!
She could now help Jane. She just had to find Jane, first!
(la la LA la la)
Bellard ran into the large upstairs den with its huge bay windows. He had no chance to call anyone and this was going all fuck-all very quickly. Dynell would expect Bellard to know how to defend himself without any help.
The explosive launcher Bellard held was a very expensive weapon. It could actually fire around corners, with a flip-up television camera so that the shooter could see what was around the corner he was using as cover. Unfortunately, the launcher wouldn't be of much use in a straight-up fight against three supers.
Somewhere, in the distance, the alarm of one of the SUVs went off. Someone trying to break in to a car? During all this row?
Fine, he thought. If they want to escape, let them. He didn't feel all that secure, trapped in the house like a rat in a cage.
A bright set of headlights blinked back and forth, trying to alarm the concerned, wealthy, upright citizens of Chestnut Hill that someone was trying to get away with private property, earned by honest sweat and toil. Bellard wished that the fucking alarm would go off. The blinking lights could be easily seen at eye level. He was tempted to shoot the damn thing and shut it up permanently.
Eye level? He was on the second floor.
And the car headed straight for him. Faintly, he heard a voice outside.
"Shoot at THIS, ASSHOLE!!"
Bellard ran in the other direction as the bay windows of the den shattered as a red 2004 Mitsubishi Outlander SUV was hurled into Bellard's den and desposited jack dab into the second floor of the house its lights flashing in alarm, its horn beeping frantically, trying to warn others of its theft from the parked position. The force of the impact shattered Bellard's desk and computer system, knocked a beanbag chair to the side, and came close to hitting his upstairs stereo. The massive vehicle skidded forward, crushing a couch, and came to a screeching halt outside the den door.
With preternatural calm, Bellard, escaping to the upstairs hallway of the house, closed the den door behind him. He didn't know what was going to be following him and didn't want to know, either.
The narrow upstairs gave him a few rooms to hide in, all dead-ends. Bellard looked down at the crater that used to be a living room. Undoubtedly, he had vaporized his first assailant; what he had in his hands could take care of anybody.
Behind him was a ½ bathroom. Bellard aimed the grenade launcher into the room and fired. Porcelain, bathroom fixtures, lights exploded as Bellard calmly shielded his eyes. Instead of a back bathroom window, there was now a hole in the wall through which the rest of the Chestnut Hill neighborhood could be seen.
Bellard calmly turned in the opposite direction and aimed the grenade launcher at the closed den door, the Mitsubishi in his den still beeping its horn wildly at nothing. He would not need the around-the-corner capacity of his weapon to take care of whatever came through that door.
-- Mr. Bellard, you might want to look behind you… --
A voice in his head! Bellard rapidly turned towards the mess he had made of the upstairs bathroom, prepared for battle, gun at the ready.
It was at that point that the door to the den opened behind him.
Before Bellard could readjust to the fact that he was now facing the wrong direction, Jane used her power and ripped the grenade launcher from his hands, praying that she had gripped the outer area as tightly as she could without upsetting the trigger.
The weapon flew straight into Jane's grasp.
Bellard now faced Jane and Daria, who had somehow both miraculously made it upstairs.
"Forget about the gun in your robe," said Daria. Daria carried the clothes of the three girls in a bag strapped to her shoulder. "I'll know when you're shooting before you even think about it."
Jane put Bellard's weapon aside. "Let's see, you tried to kill Daria's sister, and you tried to kill me. You also tried to kill Russell Stark. That makes you oh-for-three."
"And I want to go one-for-one," growled Daria. "If Quinn's hurt, we're going to make you pay!"
Bellard put up his hands, backing into the bathroom.
"That's quite a long drop," said Jane. "Two stories. Think you can break into a run before I bring my ride with me?"
To punctuate Jane's point, behind them, the three could hear the floor of the den finally giving way and a loud crash of something very heavy down to the ground floor. The Mitsubishi finally stopped beeping.
"And there are a hell of a lot of things I could hit you with," said Jane. Bellard had now backed into the ½ bathroom, with nothing to his back but Philadelphia air and a twenty-foot drop to the ground.
"I might take my chances," said Bellard, calmly. "Or just try to quick-draw you."
"Why did you want to kill Russell Stark?" said Daria, as Bellard eyed the open ground below.
….
The two story house had a crawlspace that had never been converted into a true basement. The area was large enough to stand up in, but for now was nothing but insulation and pipes.
The door to the crawlspace exploded with concussive force. A young girl walked out, wearing a black set of scrubs that used to be pink. She was furious, with lightning in her eyes and a willingness to kill.
"DAMMIT!! Let me get my hands on him!!" Quinn was looking for a target. She was covered in grime and looked very unhappy.
"Quinn!!" It was a voice from somewhere up high.
Quinn looked up. There appeared to be a sizable hole in the house. Standing at the hole, his back turned to Quinn, was the man who had fired that gun at her.
"Hey! You! I dare you to jump!" shouted Quinn.
"Quinn!! Are you okay?!" It was Daria.
"He – he – HE RUINED MY CLOTHES!!" Quinn could have torn him apart with her teeth if she had a chance.
"Still think your chances are good if you jump?" smirked Jane.
Bellard did a rapid mental calculus. No escape through the girls in blue and red. No escape from a jump from the crazy electric girl in pink. There was only one way out of the situation, and he hated to use it. But his freedom was at stake, and he had no other options.
Bellard smiled. "Bye."
And before Daria could say anying, Bellard stepped out through the hole in the side of the house and into the open air.
Daria and Quinn could hear the sound of lightning crackle. "Crap!" shouted Daria. "Quinn killed the guy!!"
The two rushed to the hole in the wall and looked down.
"He's getting away!!" screamed Quinn. "Get him!!"
The two looked down, as Quinn was leaping and pointing straight up.
Daria and Jane looked up. They could see a man in a robe flying through the air, like a guided missile, disappearing into the night sky.
"Get him," said Daria to Jane.
"What the hell? It took all I had just to get you up to the – "
-- GET HIM! --
Jane's mind snapped shut, and before she could put up any resistance, her body acted. She found herself leaping out the window.
oh shit twenty feet there go my poor legs
With all her energy, Jane concentrated on flying, fast, hard, anyway, anywhere.
And she…was….
…GOING!!
"AAHHHHH!!!!!" Jane rocketed quickly up. Quinn in the back yard began shrinking rapidly as Jane propelled herself skyward. She began looking around, looking in the sky, looking anywhere for the man in the robe, flying, continuing a couple of seconds unimpeded by gravity.
Now she remembered what she had learned in Utah.
There is a danger, said her instructor, that you might accidentally propel yourself with such powerful magnetic force that you could find yourself very quickly in the forbidding upper atmosphere. Or, even worse, out of earth's gravity, where you'd die in space.
Jane rapidly brought a stop to her flight.
She closed her eyes, and took an intake of cold air into her lungs.
Slowly, she opened her eyes.
She was suspended in midair in the night sky. She could look down, trying to figure out how high she was. It was so dark that the house was hard to make out anymore and there were little lights that might have been cars.
From her vantage point, she looked down and saw the life of cities beneath her, glowing yellow grids surrounded by the blackness of the country, occasional outposts of tiny lit dots indicating country homes, expanses of pitch black that might have been fields, or lakes, and watching a faint glow from the horizon. She didn't understand this strange new world she found herself in, but Jane thought it was wonderful.
It is so peaceful…up here. I wish I could bring the world up here. It was something that everyone needed to see. The world, at night, from the sky.
Jane looked up, down, in any direction she could find. Bellard was gone. He had quite literally flown the coop. So much for that idea.
It was then that Jane was struck with a thought. Half in anxiety, and half in annoyance, she shouted, to no one in particular, "Hey! How do I get DOWN from here??"
(la la LA la la)
Daria slept a fitful sleep.
Quinn and Daria had made their way out of the Bellard home, Daria taking the rickety stairs back down. A crowd of homeowners had crowded the area. There were no police around, but Daria suspected they would arrive.
She had to give Quinn credit for shouting "Police! This house is going to explode!!" The cry cleared the block of onlookers immediately, and gave the two time to escape before the anxious thoughts of the onlookers could flood Daria's mind. Even so, Daria heard the Ping of Death from her monitor, and only thoughts of being in Trent's arms brought her to peaceful calm as the two escaped.
Quinn remembered the number Jane had called. Daria was surprised at Quinn's facility for remembering phone numbers. Not more than thirty minutes later, Daria and Quinn sat on a Philadelphia park bench waiting for a private cab to deliver both of them to the airport.
Quinn seemed uninjured, but used bottled water to clean herself up. What wasn't cool was Quinn using Jane's clothes as a towel.
"Daria, we can't find Jane anyway! It's not like she's coming back real soon!!" Trust Quinn to be practical.
Daria and Jane worried about Jane during the entire flight back. Did she find Bellard? Did Bellard kill her? What the hell had happened to Jane? Neither said anything, afraid to give voice to their fears.
The two had made it back to Lawndale just in time for second period at Lawndale High School. Daria muttered something about Jane being on a fact-finding mission. She was a complete zombie the rest of the day. Even O'Neill didn't bother her.
One of Quinn's admirers drove the two home. Somehow, the two of them stayed awake long enough for Helen's leaden microwave lasagna to settle to their stomachs. Helen asked the two why they didn't seem vibrant. Quinn and Daria said nothing. Helen had her own suspicions. Teenagers! They stay up all night at a slumber party and have to pay for it the next day!!
At 7:12 PM, Daria crawled into bed. She had been awake for God knows how long. Barch had assigned homework for the next day, but Daria was unable to function at all.
Within a minute, she escaped into unconsciousness, the nights events seeming like a bad dream.