Balance of Power
by Jill Palmer
jill@mail.one.net
Summary: Quinn meets top-of-the-pecking-order pressure. Crystal meets Trent and Jesse. Jane gets hurt. The hypothetical observer (and how are you people today?) meets a different Crystal than Daria and Co. know. Confused? You won’t be after this episode of Soa... erm, sorry, wrong show. Let’s try after this episode of Daria, shall we? We shall.
(Legal notice: Daria is not mine, she belongs to MTV, blah blah blah. Crystal, however, *is* mine, so you’ll have to fight with me to use her in your story. Post this on your fanfic site if you so wish, but let me know where it is so I can keep tabs on my personality.)
Sandi Griffin flopped onto her bed and sighed.
Ever since that girl Crystal had showed up, Sandi’s life had been a wreck. She’d been home sick Crystal’s first day, so the rest of the Fashion Club naturally assumed it was their leader. (Even though Crystal was in the same classes as that girl Quinn knew, and the Fashion Club was a year behind them.) Sandi had been kicked out for “unfashionable” behavior.
“That I didn’t even do,” she mumbled into her pillow.
***
“Too bad you’re moving back soon,” Jane Lane said to her friend, Crystal Stewart.
“Yeah,” Crystal said. She sighed. “I wish my dad’s damn company would pick a place and leave him in it.”
Daria Morgendorffer finally found the textbook she was looking for. She slammed her locker shut and joined the conversation.
“So how many lives have you helped us ruin?” Daria’s question was directed at Crystal.
“Just one,” she answered. “And we did a good job of it, too.”
“I think a second is in the works,” Daria countered. “Quinn seems to be getting more depressed every day. I’m wondering how long before she gets out her copy of _Winnie-the-Pooh_.”
“The top of the pecking order must be too much pressure for her,” Jane commented.
“Just try to keep me filled in, okay? I don’t wanna miss any serious LHS action.” Crystal didn’t need to expand on it. Daria and Jane *knew* what was meant by serious.
Speak of Jane: “You got our word on it. Any last-minute predictions?”
“Slow down!” Crystal exclaimed, laughing. “I’m not gonna be gone for another week.”
“Speaking of weeks,” Daria said, “there’s only three of them before the Halloween dance. Usually Ms. Li starts announcing it around now, but I haven’t heard so much as a peep about it. Not even from Jodie.”
Jane considered. “Not like Ms. Li to pass up a chance to bring honor and glory to...” She paused, and the threesome finished together, imitating the principal.
“Laaawndale Hiiigh!”
***
Not more than ten feet away, Quinn Morgendorffer was practically in hell.
She was completely stressed out trying to keep the Fashion Club running. (She’d heard some people who get really stressed have their hair fall out, and was *praying* that didn’t happen to her.) It was all that Crystal girl’s fault!
When Crystal, whom Quinn thought was Sandi at the time, turned over the Fashion Club to her, it was a dream come true. The schedule was catching up to her, though. Five times in the past two weeks she’d nearly left the house clashing, that’s how tired she was.
“Meet Virgina” started running through her head. She hadn’t really cared for the song much before this fiasco, but the chorus really applied to her life at the moment.
There was only one problem.
She wanted to go crawling back to Sandi. (Not literally - that would get her pants all dirty!) She’d have to wait and see if Crystal left before she could do so, though.
***
Crystal logged onto an IRC channel as soon as she got home. She found her boyfriend X (short for Xander, which in turn is short for Alexander). A rough transcript of their conversation follows:
User HalloChick has entered #HolidayIsland/
HalloChick: X? You in here?
X: Hey! Long time no hear from! News?
HalloChick: Oh yeah. Lawndale oughta be a great place to launch our band.
X: Great, but useless without a lead guitar.
HalloChick: Oh, keep looking there, WILL YOU! There’s got to be someone there. I’ll keep looking around L-dale.
X: Y’know, if you aren’t back by Monday they’ll probably send a search party after you.
HalloChick: I should be back Sunday. If not, they can send the dam search party. Gotta go.
X: See ya.
User HalloChick has left #HolidayIsland/
Crystal sighed. “Why the hell do I even have to go back to that dump?” she asked no one in particular.
“Because your dad works for a fickle company,” Daria commented from the doorway.
Crystal jumped, the relaxed a bit when she recognized the voice. “Oh, it’s you. I... wasn’t expecting any visitors.”
“That was obvious.” Daria sat down on Crystal’s bed. “I’m going over to Jane’s. Wanna come?”
“Sure.”
“I’m not sure what we’ll find. Jane said the band’s practicing.”
Crystal perked up. “Band?”
“Her brother’s band, Mystik Spiral. But they’re thinking of changing their name.” Daria sighed. “So you up for an adventure?”
“Sounds good to me.”
***
In her room, with “Falls Apart” by Sugar Ray blasting on the stereo, Jane was gluing bits of things to a sculpture when she (albeit barely) heard a knock at her closed door. “Yo!” she called, and Daria and Crystal came in. Jane turned down the music so there would be a chance she could hear what they had to say.
“I figured Crystal might be interested in the band,” Daria said, “so I stopped by her place on the way.”
“How that could be I don’t know,” Jane mused.
Suddenly, a very loud and very bad guitar chord shook the room and knocked over Jane’s statue.
“Who is torturing that poor guitar, and can we make them stop?” Crystal asked.
Jane turned off the music for good. Looked like the girls were going downstairs. “My brother Trent is most likely the torturer,” she answered, “or maybe Jesse. And no, we probably can’t make them stop. Turn it down, possibly.”
Five minutes later, the threesome were downstairs listening to Trent and Jesse practice. If you could call it that. It was really just a series of loud twangs that, in theory, represented a song.
“Yo, TRENT!” Jane yelled over the racket. “Could you turn that down some? We can’t hear our own attempts at thinking upstairs!”
The twangs commenced. Daria got a worried look on her face. Before Jane could pull a yenta act (not to say she wouldn’t anyway), Daria headed over and pulled the amp plugs.
Even through this the twanging commenced, except now you could carry on a normal conversation while listening. Trent, noticing the abrupt change in volume, looked up and saw the three girls.
“Hey Janey,” he said. ‘Hey Daria. Who’s your new friend?”
“Crystal,” Jane said, “meet Trent and Jesse. Guys, this is Crystal Stewart.”
After all were introduced, Crystal started off a conversation. “So, Daria told me you have a band.”
“Yeah,” Trent answered. “It’s called Mystik Spiral.”
Crystal thought this over. “Sounds like someone got high while watching a Weather Channel hurricane report.”
Trent laughed, and had a small coughing attack. “Good one, Crystal.”
“Thinking of changing the name,” Jesse said.
“To Helpful Corn,” Jane scoffed. “Do you guys honestly think *that* would get you anywhere?”
“Let’s see,” Crystal started, ticking of names on her fingers as she listed them. “We’ve got Marcy Playground, T’Pau, Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, Smash Mouth, Barenaked Ladies, Dexi’s Midnight Runners, Soft Cell...”
She could’ve kept right on, but Jane stopped her. “All right, all right! Point taken!”
“You know,” Trent said, “we have a gig this Friday. You guys wanna come?”
“Well, I know I’m interested,” Crystal answered. “Jane looks it too.”
Jane, with an evil smirk on her face, piped up. “And I’m sure Daria would *love* to go, wouldn’t she?”
“Um... sure,” Daria said, then proceeded to treat Jane to an evil glare. It missed by half an inch and vaporized a completely innocent fly.
“We’ll all be here then,” Jane informed the guys, “so don’t worry about picking us up. We’ll go back upstairs and leave you guys to your bonding or whatever it is you do down here.”
***
“Yenta.”
“I am not!”
“Yes.”
“No!”
“Are so.”
“Am not!”
“DING!” Crystal interjected. “Good morning!”
“What?” Daria and Jane chorused, turning to face their friend. Crystal, now on a Monty Python kick, continued.
“Yes, that’s right, good morning! If you wish to continue this argument, you’ll have to pay for the next five minutes.” She practically saw the joke sliding right over their heads and sighed. Changing the subject, she said, “He’s a man of few words, that Jesse.”
Jane got defensive all of a sudden. “He’s *my* man of few words, so back off!”
Daria rolled her eyes. “She didn’t even say anything like that, Lane. All she said was he doesn’t talk much.” A pause for thought, then: “What happened to Tom, anyway?”
“I never want to hear that name again!”
***
That Friday, the threesome found themselves backstage at McGrundy’s Pub.
“I thought their weekly gig here was Sundays,” Daria thought out loud.
“The usual band for tonight traded with them,” Jane said as an answer.
“Oh.”
Onstage, Trent started off the concert. “Hey. We’re Mystik Spiral... but we’re thinking of changing our name.”
“He actually *opens* like that?” Crystal asked incredulously.
“Has been for a while now,” Jane informed her.
As soon as the band started playing (the song of choice is believed to have been “Behind My Eyelids” but Trent never got a chance to start singing), the crowd started booing.
“Tough crowd,” the girls chorused.
Suddenly, a chair leg hit the curtain right where Jane was psuedo-leaning (the best you can against a curtain) on it. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t hit her in the head. But it did, and Jane collapsed.
“Jane!” Daria exclaimed, her voice full of panic no matter how much she tried to hide it. “Crystal, call 911 and get the band offstage.”
***
By the time Crystal finished making the call (and musing “someone out there has *some* arm” out of Daria’s earshot), Mystik Spiral had managed to get themselves offstage. Trent and Jesse had joined Daria around an unconscious Jane.
“There’s an ambulance on the way,” she informed them.
Daria looked up, her glasses off and her face tear-stained. “Okay,” she said quietly.
Crystal sat down next to Daria. “She’ll be all right."
Daria glared at Crystal, pain and anger in her eyes. “How do you know? She obviously isn’t now, and if it gets worse, it’ll hurt me too much. Jane was my only friend until you came, and you’re leaving soon...” That vented, she sighed and looked down at Jane.
Crystal sighed herself. So *that* was it; Daria was afraid of losing her friend. How could she explain to Daria that she knew Jane would be okay without telling her everything?
“Look,” she started. “I have friends who know a lot about this kind of thing. They’ve told me enough that I know she’ll be fine. *Trust me, Daria.*”
The ambulance arrived, and their conversation ended.
END
NOTES
“how long before Quinn gets out _Winnie-the-Pooh_” - A ref to my fic “New Direction”. That’s the one where Quinn was quoting Eeyore because she was depressed, remember?
“Meet Virginia” running through Quinn’s head - The original title of this fic was “I Don’t Really Wanna Be the Queen”. I decided against that because (a) it’s too long and (b) the focus wasn’t exactly *on* Quinn and Sandi anymore.
X, short for (Ale)xander - The Buffy-philes out there know who Xander is. And that *is* what it’s short for too!
“who is torturing that poor guitar” - Lynn said this in “A Meeting of the Brains”. Remember?
Crystal’s analogy of the name Mystik Spiral - A new character from someone *else’s* Daria fic said “someone got stoned while watching the bathtub drain”. Didn’t know who to give credit to or else I would’ve used that.
The band list - Yes, they’re all real bands (if you were wondering).
Crystal’s “Monty Python” kick - Actually, I had “Blind Audition” in my head when I wrote that scene. Really.
