Operation Glitterberries
Chapter 11: I Hate Mondays…
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Disclaimer: Daria and associated characters are owned by MTV and Viacom. This is fan fiction written for entertainment only. No money or other negotiable currency or goods have been exchanged.
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Jane's Monday morning started just as every other morning, with plenty of complains and arguments with herself about the merits of waking up, and as always cutting it a little short regarding school. She was about to go for breakfast and then win the bath for herself for the Nth time, living with her parents plus four brothers and sisters before they vacated the house gave her a competitive streak even if the only remaining one would never do something as classy as taking an early bath for himself. Then she remembered that today she wasn't alone with Trent in the house; Daria was in the house and judging for how she acted yesterday she had expended a much worse weekend than she did, and considering how much of a jerks were the members of her extended family that was saying something.
Deciding that hitting Daria with all the relevant questions about the 'Camping trip of Hell' was far more important right now than a breakfast of cold cereal she went to her long gone sister's room to get her friend while she was groggy and with her defenses low enough that she could get a tasty gossip or two before the walls of Jericho were manned again.
All thoughts of getting to tease her friend were postponed when she saw the state of Penny's room, with an empty bed looking as if no one slept there during the night despite the fact she had set Daria in there after granting her asylum. Somewhat confused she went looking for her and the humidity in the bathroom told her that someone had used the shower, and considering that Trent usually thought twice about taking a bath before noon, even when someone threw up on him, then Daria had probably decided that she felt a little too dirty, yesterday she had been soaked with sweat before falling like a log, and took matters on her own hands.
Taking the chance to get her desired bath before someone else came and threw her out she went straight to the shower and soaked herself in a delicious ice cold bath to fully wake up. Then after drying and dressing she was about to go downstairs when she saw a stray hair in the sink; she was about to dismiss it but something about its length bothered her. When she walked towards the sink to take a closer look she saw that it wasn't just one hair, but many of them, for some reason they reminded her of the time Daria and her were teasing the attendant at Scissor Wizard, and then she saw the garbage can…
"Oh shit!" She went to Trent's room, hoping beyond hope that she would be there, staring at her brother asking if he liked her new look, instead of the other things that her imagination provided thanks to both one chapter too many of 'Sick, Sad, World" and her own best friend.
"Trent, is Daria here? Trent!"
"Officer, they threw the first punch. I swear."
"Trent wake up!"
"Ugh? Janey, what's going on?" Now that he was up, he could see that her usually cool sister seemed scared, and that was enough for him to shred the everlasting cloud on his head.
"Daria is missing. I can't find her or the stuff she came here last night. And when I went to the bathroom I found… I found her hair Trent, in the garbage can. She would never cut her hair like that!" And suddenly Trent was as worried about her sister's cynical friend, if not even more. Daria's hair was probably her most girly feature, even more than the skirts she wore; there were few cases were any chick would cut her hair like that; the one he could think of was when one of the Harpies was molested by some drunk. Even after both Monique and the entire Mystik Spiral had beaten the crap out of him before he could do something, Henrietta had shaved her head clean for reasons he still couldn't really understand.
"I'll go and search downstairs. Have you called her mom? Maybe she went back home for some clothes or something."
Jane didn't even answer him, running to the nearest phone, dialing as fast as she could, just to find the line busy. "Come on Miss M. this is not the time to get stuck to the phone."
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In the Morgendorffer residence the cop Burns had assigned to keep the house secured until they could get the forensics sat in the burn out kitchen eating something he had found in the fridge. The place was eerily silent, mostly because of the damage the phone line suffered from the fire, the foam shoot from the first responders extinguishers, and the thoughtful soaking the fire department did on every surface of the kitchen just in case.
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"She's not here Jane."
"And they don't answer the phone. What can I do Trent?" She was feeling the panic raising in her voice. She knew something was wrong yesterday but she had leaved it for another day. And what if there wasn't another day? What if…
"…Go to school."
"Wait, what?"
"Go to school Jane, maybe Daria went there and you can talk to her there."
"And even if she doesn't want to talk I can shake the truth out of Quinn. Good idea Trent." With that she took her stuff and run straight to Lawndale High, paying no mind to the abnormal number and seriousness of the police in the streets.
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Melody was able to arrive to the gym and put her stuff into the locker without any further complication, but now she was struggling again with her most constant enemy since her crash in the helicopter, the lack of physical conditioning. She had come ready to tackle the available machinery with zeal in order to get her in peak form as soon as possible, but her weak muscles, and the lack of any memory regarding exercise, muscle or otherwise, almost provoked an accident as soon as she took some weights she thought she could handle and was only barely able to avoid getting asphyxiated by the bar crushing her chest. She had been forced herself to be grateful for the trainer who went there and help her remove the bar and then lend her some little neon colored dumbbells that as far are she was concerned were an insult to women all around the world and gave her a series of light exercises worthy only of a child that she had to do with a smile in her face to keep her cover.
The worst part was that, as far as her body was concerned, the exercises he recommended were far more challenging that she expected. She was weak, and that was going to be a problem that she would need to live for a while until she could condition this new body to the old one's standards.
The trainer wasn't impressed with the determination in the girls face. Most of the teens quit when they saw how hard the exercises were, yet this one was still trying to get the heaviest workout possible. That usually meant that she was one of those kids that wanted to get their weight down to one of those stick thin actresses and when exercise would not allow them to do so in a week they would go to worship the ceramic god after each meal to throw down their food.
He would have to at least give her one of the business cards of the nutriologist… after he stopped her from hurting herself on the weights.
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As the man outside the hospital room slowly walked towards the parking he twisted his cigarette without turning it on. For any witness it would have been a weird but not altogether strange way of dealing with the fact that this was a no smoke zone.
Those who knew Captain Burnout or his father would already be running to the hills in abject terror.
He had just leaved Winston's room, and for each one of his questions that were answered another took its place. He had been send to the Morgendorffer house as a favor to one of Chief Jackson's friends at the end of his shift to get some personal papers from the home of a lawyer that had been in a DIU accident in Oakwood with Marianne Richmond as a witness of the procedure, a procedure that apparently wasn't recorded in the logbook due to either idiocy of the sergeant in duty. That explained why he was there, as well as the fact that he had been jumped, this was a milk run, even stopping teen parties in the nice side of town carried more risk than fetching some papers and a night bag.
He hadn't detected any sign of a break in, and in fact Winston was sure that he passed the bathroom where the ambush came from at least thrice before he was knifed. And even then he had time for a snapshot from the hip before the guy was upon him but he had aimed a little too high and missed. The rest was just a litany of the procedures he had performed, which to his eyes were even beyond the standards of the department for similar circumstances and he could at least defend him in case Jackson decided to make him the scapegoat of this fracas.
The meeting with Marianne was far more productive, at least once he had managed to convince his husband not to use the firm's legal counsel to muddle up things thanks to Barney's idiotic theory of painting her as the offender. Thankfully even with a nasty migraine Marianne was reasonable enough to calm her husband and answer his questions.
He now knew that the DIU of the Morgendorffer family was instead an accidental poisoning with some sort of natural LSD wannabe and that the accident part was the older daughter shooting a helicopter. Frankly he had heard of the helicopter doing an emergency landing in the middle of nowhere, but he believed to either be poor maintenance or human error, not someone going berserk. More to the point anyone willing to do that while inside the craft was someone really dangerous and that might not take being cornered well.
The rest of the story was even weirder. After taking Winston's gun the girl had chained both of them before going upstairs. She remarked the fact that they hadn't been mistreated and she even gave Marianne some tips to help Winston, but then she told Marianne some gibberish and then asked her why she was in the home. According to her the scary stuff started once she tried telling the girl about her mother, just to her not recognizing Helen Morgendorffer as such, but firmly believing she had been raped and tortured to insanity alongside the rest of the family. At that point Marianne was sure that she would be killed, but instead the girl took them outside before torching the kitchen and drugging her.
Right now he was radioing an updated bolo with the name and features of Daria Morgendorffer aka Melody Powers as well as her higher threat assessment and then he was going to the station to call the Oakwood Police Department for some information, and if he had some remaining time he was ripping Jackson and his cronies a new one for this.
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Burnout didn't need to worry about calling the OPD, as Eddie Brock was currently halfway to Lawndale already, with one of the lawyers from the Attorney Office in tow. The enmity between Oakwood and Lawndale was one thing, but once it reached the point where they would deny calls from a police unit to another, even when there was a chance that a policeman was down something must be done.
The emergency session with the State Judge and the proceeding charges of Obstruction to Justice took all night to work out, but this time LPD would listen or else…
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Jake awoke in a hospital in Oakwood two days after the accident, thirsty and hurting from a dozen different places we hadn't remembered they existed since the hellish years of military school.
'Where am I?' Opening his eyes he could see only white, first as a hazy blur, but then the blurs gained consistency until he could begin to recognize shapes. 'A curtain, and that's a chair. I think. But what's on the chair. Who… who's on the chair? Red hair… red hair...'
"Quinn…" He could barely talk at all, but this was enough for the figure in the chair to stir, if only a little. "Quinn, where…"
"Daddy? Hey nurse or doctor or whatever. Daddy's waking!" The shout of his younger daughter as she pressed a button in the wall made him cringle. He felt worse than the binge of pot and tequila he took once with Coyote after midterms.
A nurse arrived to the room almost at once, checking his vitals as a doctor came inside the room followed by…
"Helen! Thank god. Why Am I here, what's going on?" Jake asked, even if his throat was so dry he almost couldn't be heard.
"We were in an accident Jake, Quinn and I woke up yesterday, but your case is a little harder and they had to be more careful with the treatment." Helen answered.
"You and Quinn, what about Daria? Is she…" Then it hit him like his father in one of his worse moods.
"NO, KIDDO, NO!"
"I won't kill him"
"Suck it Mad Dog! I'm better than you!"
"Oh god, Daria was in the helicopter and she… oh god." Jake was losing color so fast that Helen was worried about his newly found Arrhythmia. "Mister Morgendorffer, Jake calm down. Get me a sedative!" And it seemed that the doctor shared her concern.
"No, no, no. You don't understand. My kiddo needs help. I was so scared when I saw her in the helicopter; she would never do something like that but she was like possessed."
"Wait, you remember the crash?" The nurse said just to receive a dirty look from the doctor in charge. What? This was probably the most interesting piece of gossip in the history of the hospital and she was curious.
"The crash?" It was a little fuzzy but Jake did remember screams, including his own, while they were falling from the sky. He remembered a hurried conversation and the mention of Migs and then the face of horror of her daughter as the man's head in the forward seat bobbled and they rushed to the ground. "Yeah, I remember some of it."
She was last seen near home, the police is already searching for her, and soon we'll see her." Helen was as usual pretty bad at lying when her family was concerned, something that right now even Jake could clearly see. She was worried and she could barely hide it from Quinn.
"Sorry Mrs. Morgendorffer but I still need to test Mr. Morgendorffer.
"I call for help as soon as I reach the road. I'm sorry I can't do more."
"Oh kiddo."
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"…and students, remember that Saturday's ceremony honoring our own local hero is strictly voluntary, so if you miss it you will volunteer for a week of detentions doing clean up duty and maintenance at our loved Lawndale High."
Jane didn't pay any attention at Li's latest scheme for the glory of LHS; she was too busy looking for someone. All but confirming her worse fears Daria had missed the first period and now she was searching for Quinn to ask her what the hell was going on.
Finally she found Sandi, Stacy and Tiffany on their classroom, and her target couldn't be too far off.
"Sandi, where's Quinn? I need to talk to her."
"Take a turn. We were supposed to do a preliminary study for fall's fashion." Sandi answered.
"Yes, we expended Mr. O'Neill class talking about what the rest of the girls are wearing, I even took notes." Stacy added while Tiffany just concentrated in her mirror, trying to correct an imagined imperfection on her skin.
"Wait? That means that Quinn cut classes?" Now the alarms inside Jane's head were upgrading to DEFCON 1, while it wasn't rare for Quinn to play hooky, she was a loudmouth who always told either her friends, drones, or even Daria herself if she was desperate enough.
"Yes, and she better have a good reason to do so, in fact I'll perform a disciplinary meeting as soon as she gets here, especially if she went to a chic place without inviting us."
As soon as she leaved the classroom she went to the nearest payphone, hoping that the call would be answered by someone, anyone. But she had the same luck that in the morning… meaning none.
She was about to cut class herself when she was found Miss Claire, the one teacher that she wouldn't purposefully contradict, and escorted to class while talking about one of the art exhibits at the community college.
Jane just half listened to the otherwise interesting conversation. She was far too worried about her best friend
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After taking a second -hot- bath in the day to soothe her aching muscles, the first order of business in the day was to ask for the Yellow Pages in the gym and find an optometrist.
The place she had found was old, probably the oldest surviving one in the city, with the sign outside proudly boasting nearly a hundred years of tradition and the counters a mix of modern commercial frames and much older ones that nowadays weren't in use anymore and were probably mementos of the days when spectacles were work of artisans rather than of machines. The man behind the counter looked old enough to be another memento, with far more winkles than his scarce grey hair and golden wire glasses, Melody noted with approval that while his frames looked as old as the shop, the crystal itself was new and perfectly fitted.
Melody's glasses on the other were anything but, in the way in she took the glasses she had found on the Morgendorffer's house, and due to the little use she could get out of them she decided to gamble a little on a ruse and break them completely and mend them even worse than they were before. "Good morning, thank god is open."
"Good morning young lady, what can I help you?"
"Well…" She said as she gestured towards her glasses, "I had a little accident yesterday and my good glasses were broken. And when I went for my reserve ones I discovered that dad sat on them a couple of weeks ago and he confessed just yesterday." The last part was said with feinted exasperation.
"Sorry to hear that, now, let me see those." She handed the glasses with some trepidation, her eyesight was as bad as ever and without them she was virtually defenseless. Much to her relief the examination itself was fairly fast and she was once more seeing things (at least to the front, her periphery vision was still one hell of a weakness).
"Well, there are beyond hope, the frame is pretty battered and the crystal itself is cracked on the edge so reframing is impossible even if I had some frames of the same model, which I don't anyway. And from here I can see that the prescription is not the appropriate for you. Why don't we take a look to the chart?" Melody followed and after a few minutes she finally knew for certain how much damage did the butchers at the Farm did to her 20/20 vision.
"Well, with the needed correction is going to take a few days to get you some new spectacles, which model do you want, depending on the label it might take a few days." Melody browsed through the pictures from the catalog and in a sad voice asked, "Which ones are the fastest? At much as I hate it I cannot be choosy right now, can barely see and my grades are bad enough without being able to see the board."
"I see… Just hold up for a minute please." The man went to the back of the shop and returned five minutes later with a pair of old browline glasses with aluminum top. "These are the only glasses I have that are of the correct diopter, however they're a relic of the late fifties, and I admit that a little heavy than most modern ones, not to mention out of fashion, but I think they will at least be of use long enough for you to get some good glasses for yourself instead of whatever trash can get done faster, don't you think so?" The man said with a kind smile.
"Thanks, but is it okay for you to lend me these vintage glasses?"
"No problem, glasses are tools, and I prefer for them to be used like that instead of just gathering dust. Or worse, having some fool asking me to get these lensless for some swing-retro stuff, as if they were props!"
"Can't see the point in that either." Melody said with a smile, after all her childhood was in the late fifties and while she treasured that time she would never would look backwards, not to her past successes and failures and much less to the old practices. The future of the U.S.A. was always forward. The man answered with another smile at the pun and adjusted the glasses so that they would properly fit her head.
Then she went to the catalog and selected a pair of glasses that were as different from the pair she found in her face the day that she awoke in the chopper. Then she asked a question. "Can you get also one of those yellow tinted graduated goggles for sports?"
"No problem, I can get both your choice and a couple of those for Wednesday. I'll just need an advance payment."
After they money issues were addressed Melody went to the nearest bathroom and applied some mascara to change a little more her look, that plus the new glasses gave her a completely different look from yesterday, which was necessary as each hour would increase the chances of her enemies deciding to post her photo all over the city.
She visited another two optometrists before the day was over. Each one with a different story and a slightly different petition
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Chief Jackson weekend hadn't been one of the bests he ever had. The Lawndale Lion's defeat to the Oakwood Taproots, had been bad for his pockets as he had lost the traditional bet between the fathers of the teams, especially since it had been a reckless helicopter pilot buzzing the field at a critical moment the one that stole the victory of the Lions in the week one of their most famed heroes was supposed to assist. The notice that shortly after that Oakwood had lost that same chopper in the woods had morbidly lifted his mood for a while, the request for getting his troops in up in a frenzy for a completely unnecessary Amber Alert was definitely a way for Oakwood to mess with them after their fixing the game, so he just put to good use the Book and stalled Oakwood's police with it. 'Let them fill the paperwork for their little joke.'
That miscalculation bit him in the ass when the next day he had one of the head honchos of Vitale, Horowitz, Riordan, Schrecter, Schrecter, and Schrecter, 'asked' him to get the Amber Alert rolling as well as the help of his officers to get some documentation from a locket house (with the appropriate permit of the owners of course) and therefore passing the paperwork back to him tenfold. He had done that, asking his man in the sergeant desk to send someone to meet the representative of the law firm while he postponed the paperwork at least 'till Monday, claiming to need a few additional documents. After that he went home earlier just to find his son still morose about the lost, so he went and watched with him some reruns of the Pigskin Channel with the cell phone off to avoid any unwarranted call, if they needed him Barney would dial his house.
Now he was arriving to the office –slightly late as it was his prerogative– hoping to find someone to dump his paperwork while he talked with the mayor about a new initiative to improve the image of the police corps, which had been deteriorating lately just to find the station chaos.
The secretaries were all moving from the phones to the large city map, annotating in it the movement of patrol cars, at the same time he could tell that there were far more units in it than usual and much less cops on their desks.
"What the hell is going on?"
"Boss, one of our guys was knifed last night. We have been combing the area, but no bites yet." One of the desk jockeys of the First Shift answered
"What! Why the hell I wasn't called about it!?"
"Oh, we tried, but your cell was off and Barney decided not to give us your phone number, or god forbids it, your address." The cutting remark came from Burnout, the captain of Lawndale's Major Crimes Unit and his nominal second in command. And right now he was looking almost as pissed as the incident in Lawndale High two years ago. "It would have been quite useful to get your input in this case, since it was under your orders that Frank was send to the house of the primary suspect and I couldn't get that until this morning when the victims could present their declaration."
He could feel the eyes of everyone in the station on his back, so he decided to adjourn to his office. He was going to voice his decision when the same cop who told him about the problem talked again.
"Boss, there are an Oakwood detective and a DA in the lobby, and they're demanding to see you. And boss they have a court order with them."
Jackson could do nothing but facepalm and groan.
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Melody was finally ready, after the optometrist she had gone to a barber shop to get her hair even, this time using as an excuse a 7 year old sister who decided to cut her hair when she was asleep. She had asked, and after a token fight from the barber, cut her hair with the most androgynous style possible. She was certain that with baggy clothes and the appropriate posture she could pass as an effeminate junior high student or as a tomboy as the situation requires.
From then she went to a shopping spree in a place called Dega Street, where she got in different shops a cheap camera, some decent binoculars and an old army jacket from a pawn shop. She would have preferred some additional clothes to give herself some extra options for disguises but she could go to her stash in the gym only in limited occasions. From there she went to a cyber café as far as possible from the one she had visited last time and sit in the darkest corner she could with her knife safely concealed in her clothes.
As soon as she could she disconnected the LAN cable from the machine and inserted the CD she had acquired from her computer the previous day and promptly (and quietly) cursed. The information was partially corrupted, probably from getting her disk before it could properly record the information, but she couldn't deny the possibility that the files were encrypted and without the farm's Crays she couldn't even hope to read those files, so she concentrated on the ones that were legible.
"Damn." She had ended with a large, an utterly useless collection of books that, while quite interesting, were completely normal and, with the exception of the 'Terrorist Cookbook', could be found in any library. There were a few additional archives, but as far as she could see those were little more than homework, and while she expended an hour carefully reading it she could honestly say that other than well written they contained at best some interesting twists for the literature and history ones and at worst were just drivel to keep teachers away.
Then she hit jackpot, one of the papers talked about the classic experiment of the mouse in a maze, standard biology and/or psychology stuff, but while most of the procedure was what she could expect from those experiments, even if it was curious how the feminine was used for the general explanation of the experiment and the description of positive reinforcement, while the masculine was used only whenever they exposed the mouse to negative reinforcement, the last day it was written just a simple word.
Kidnapped
The next annotations were the conclusions of the experiment.
In conclusion, this mouse was repeatedly abused by a ten-year-old boy. As a result, the mouse's primary response to everyday stimuli is fear. Similar reactions also occur in humans.
Take the mugging victim, beaten with nunchaks in an alleyway. As he, or she, recalls the attacker's face - his scraggly goatee and cheap, dangly earring - she learns to hate and fear all men, regardless of age, race or taste in jewelry.
That sounded a lot like the effects of the Morgendorffer family, with one day them being normal and then in less than a weekend driven to madness. She would have a heart to heart talk with J. Barch one of these days, maybe followed by a knife to the heart.
She expended the rest of her time in the café reading the archives for another clue.
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The meeting had been tense, with the both the Jackson and Burns resenting the presence of the Oakwood's detective almost as much as they did with each other, but due to the very real threat of charges of obstruction of justice there wasn't anything to do about it.
"So that idiot Barney took my dismissal a little too literal. While I did told him that I was gone for the day and that I didn't want any calls directed to me unless someone died, I didn't expect him to take that literally, nor to block your calls without even listen to them." Jackson was telling the truth, he had been a little melodramatic but even he expected to be called ASAP whenever one of his officers was down.
Burnout decided to add his two cents, "Believe me, I can tell you that Barney is without any doubt the dimmest guy to ever wear the uniform, and he is literal to a fault. If there is a soul capable of committing such an idiotic mistake is he." The part of him not worried about a crazy delusional teen with a gun was enjoying the pained face of his nominal superior.
"Believe me, he will be punished accordingly." And Jackson was going to make sure to take his pension away after kicking him out, the department was a little low on money and the idiot had performed a crime by hanging on the OPD so he couldn't even sue.
"Okay, now back in tract gentlemen. Did Mrs. Morgendorffer told you of anyplace were her daughter might be?"
"Daria only have one friend…" the detective checked his notebook, "Jane Lane, a sophomore of Lawndale High School. She doesn't remember the address."
Both Jackson and Burns shared a look. Since the incident two years ago the police was strictly forbidden from accessing the installations of the school. It was only a local ordinance, but one that had been part of the measures taken after the riots and heavily endorsed by the governor. In fact the LPD took great care to keep their patrol routes at least a couple of blocks away from the school grounds just in case. Luckily principal Li had taken enough measures to at least prevent students from committing the most blatant crimes thanks to almost paranoid security measures.
It was Burns who took the initiative. "We can call the school, in case Daria isn't there my niece is a sophomore too, with a little bit of luck she's even in the same class. If anyone asks I can go there as her relative and then have a chat with Lane. Li knows that the agreement does allow for discrete investigations as long as we go there unarmed."
"And if Miss Morgendorffer is at the school?" The question came from Eddie, who had a couple of additional days to get a lot of what if's and worst case scenarios on his head.
"We can call the principal first, if she's there then we tell her to discreetly evacuate the school and let a Tactical Team make the arrest, fast and hard. We should also send a couple of uniforms to the Lane's in case she's there."
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Jane was in the middle of DeMartino's class, just waiting for the bell to sound so that she could run straight towards Daria's home and finally discover what the hell was going on with her friend. She had already been called to answer once, and she had done so with a minimum of fuss and sarcasm, she had been so distracted that DeMartino left her alone the rest of the class, directing his attention towards the rest of the students, from time to time looking at Daria's seat between the anger attacks directed at Brittany and Kevin.
Her musings were then interrupted by the arrival of Li followed by an older man. While she wasn't really paying any attention she couldn't help but to notice that Li was particularly nervous and skittish.
She was wondering about that when the man spoke. "Hey Jenny, how's school treating you?"
"Fine Uncle Jeff, what brings you here?"
"Nothing much, just came for some business with around here, and decided to say hello to my favorite niece."
At the same time Li went to her desk. "Miss Lane, please come to my office. I have an urgent… no, no, no, merely an important, and not that important at that, matter to talk with you." For once she wasn't in the mood to even bait the dictator so she rose from her seat and went out. The sooner she dealt with her the sooner she could get out of school.
She was hurriedly taken to the office of Manson, but instead of finding the quack she was soon facing a serious looking Mr. Burns, a Mr. Burns who had his walled out and was showing to her a shiny badge.
"Jane, I'm Captain Burns of the Lawndale Police Department Major Crimes Unit and I need to talk with you about Daria."