"Wait, did you say six times?" An hour ago, the girl behind Daria in Mr. O'Neill's quintessentially useless self-esteem building session had been whispering to her to sit back and ignore the details, and now they're walking together, Daria looking up at dark hair and a face just a bit too angular to be called heart-shaped and extraordinarily blue eyes.
"Practice makes perfect?" Jane suggests.
"So, you know all the answers for the final quiz, right? Why not just pass the test and get out?"
"Best place for me that time of day," Jane says, opaquely.
Daria asks, "What did they misinterpret to send you to Mr. O'Neill's Village? Did they find a Nirvana tape in your locker?"
"Hmpfh. All right, let me guess: You were a classical-only kid, until you discovered the parts of your parents' classic-rock collection that were actually good, and now you're trying to sift the meaningful bits out from all the music that's sold to teenagers now."
"Um..." Daria doesn't want to say exactly right here. "I guess I showed off my brain powers in history class and outed myself as a bookworm. And I guess discovering the Beatles for the first time might be one of those experiences that's both intensely personal and completely universal. But..."
"You like Zappa, but only when he's being caustic, not when the self-indulgence wins, so yes on We're Only in it for the Money but no on the second half of Freak Out!, I bet."
This is getting spooky.
"You sing Tom Lehrer's periodic table song to yourself but always trip up on the the chlorine carbon cobalt line, and 'The Masochism Tango' gives you feelings you can't quite pin down."
"Wait. Stop." Daria stands in place on the sidewalk. Jane turns to face her and waits for her to speak. "There's no way anyone could know all of this. I've never had anyone to share opinions with. I don't even keep a diary that you could have broken into my house to read. What's going on, Jane?"
The air around them begins to tremble. Jane breaks her eyes away from Daria to look up and about, as Lawndale begins to break apart, like a reflection in tinfoil that is being crumpled. "This is early, is what's going on," she says. For the first time, Daria hears worry in her.
The things behind the world come out now. Strings of barbed wire as thick as Daria's arm, uncoiling from the ground and dropping from the sky. Trees barren of leaf, bringing a predawn fog too cold to burn away. Sere-brown underbrush of needles and thorns.
Daria looks to her feet, to avert her eyes from it all, and a snake is crawling over her boots—no, not a snake, a discarded hollow snake-skin, still moving.
Daria's scream has made it halfway up her petrified throat when Jane's boot crushes down upon the impossible snake and kicks it away. Daria looks up again to see that Jane's right hand is holding a black handgun and her left arm now bears a round metal goddamn shield whose inside face is... clockwork?
"The sooner you trust me, the better odds we've got," Jane says.
A cable of barbed wire moves to enclose them, and Jane blasts it apart with a shot that leaves Daria's ears ringing. "Stay close to me," Jane yells. "And I know I make it look fucking awesome, but whatever you do, don't make a contract to become a magical girl."