Chapter Twenty

"Daria!" Quinn cried. "Mr. Phelps took Dad away!"

"But he couldn't have," Daria stammered, rushing down the stairs. "We never saw..."

"He didn't even give us a chance to say good-bye!"

As they tried to sort through what had happened, a shadow fell over them and grew ever wider, until it covered them completely. Daria and Quinn turned around and looked.

A grey, tentacled creature with bulging eyes hovered over them. One of the tentacles held on to Jake's body, which it then laid gently on the ground. Daria and Quinn stared, but could not speak. The creature did not speak either, had no capacity for speech. Yet somehow, from the depths of its inner being, it was able to summon a voice that the sisters recognized.

"Girls..."

Their eyes widened.

"D-dad?"

"Yes, it's me."

The creature continued to stare down at them, his body vibrating and tentacles waving about in the air. Surprisingly though, his presence aroused no fear - just feelings of warmth and familiarity.

"We thought you were dead!" Quinn cried.

"No... just stunned. The one you call Phelps did damage my costume pretty badly, but he didn't destroy my actual body. I was able to retreat into the lower half before he leapt onto my costume's neck. Then, while you were fighting in the stairwell, I managed to creep out of my costume the back way, and by the time I was completely out, Phelps was leaving."

"Will he stay gone?" asked Daria.

"I wish I knew," Jake - no, Norlek - replied. "But it seems like he had a very significant change of heart in order to just take off. He never takes his eye off of his target. Never. If I hadn't surrendered, I would have had to run from him until I died."

"Will you... stay like that from now on?" asked Quinn in a soft voice. She wanted to hug him, but those tentacles repelled.

Norlek looked down at his Jake costume. "Only until I can fix this. I'll need a steel rod in the neck to get the head to stay up on its own." His "voice" grew excited. "All this time I thought I was losing my power, it turned out some parts of my costume were stopped up, so it was repressed. Once I give it a thorough repair, I'll be better than ever!"

His daughters were glad, though the weirdness of the situation left them disoriented. They each took deep breaths, trying to calm down and absorb their new reality. Phelps was gone. DeMartino was gone, perhaps for good. Their father wasn't dead, but he was... different. Daria looked around at the quiet parking garage with the crumbled beams and shattered cars, when her breath stuck in her throat.

"Oh my God - Mom and Aunt Amy!"

She and Quinn turned and scrambled over to the area where they had left them. Quinn moaned, feeling a burning in her chest. Aunt Amy had to be dead. There was no way an ambulance could have gotten to her through so much mayhem. And her mother as well - Quinn hadn't heard her voice for a long time, which meant that she might have gotten hit by a falling beam or a stray bumper.

When she and Daria reached the area, they found two still figures. Quinn's heart thudded in her chest.

"What?" Daria whispered. "He..."

"He... he froze them!"

Indeed, Amy was lying and clutching her stomach, as she had immediately upon impact, while Helen sat with the phone to her ear, mouth ajar.

"Phelps froze them! That was his final revenge!" Quinn turned and looked at her father tearfully as he slithered toward them.

Daria gazed at the two figures hard and tried to keep from crying herself. Maybe there was a way they could undo it. There had to be a way.

"No," said Norlek. "Look closer."

They did... and to their surprise, they saw tiny bits of movement. Helen's jaw was closing very slowly, as if she had just uttered a word, while Amy's brow was getting more and more furrowed.

"They're in a slower frame of time," said Norlek with relief. "You must have caused it while you were fighting."

Quinn recalled their flight from Lawndale High, when they had slowed time for everyone else. Aunt Amy and her mother were the only full-blooded humans in the room.

"Then it's not too late," Daria whispered. "Dad, can we keep their time at a slow pace until we can get Aunt Amy to a hospital?"

"Yes," said Norlek, "though you'll have to hurry. One never knows how long these time discrepancies last."

"We'll need to wheel her on something," Daria told Quinn. "Better we avoid a car, because then what we'd get stuck in would give new meaning to the word 'traffic jam.'"

"Dad, will you come with us?" asked Quinn.

"I'll have to fix my costume first," Norlek replied. "There's no way anyone will pass me by if I look like this. That will take a few hours at least."

"What about Mom?" asked Daria.

"I'll just have to stay with her until she comes out of it," said Norlek. In a slightly rueful tone, he added, "She's never seen me completely out of costume before. I wonder what she'll say."

"Are you sure we'll be all right?" Quinn's voice had an anxious edge.

"Honey, you and your sister took on one of the most determined foes ever created. And by all accounts, you've won. You managed to do what I could only dream of. I'd say you'll be more than all right."

Quinn allowed herself a small smile of relief. Then she turned to Daria - they had to get moving.