Chapter Seven

Meanwhile, the hallway remained empty of students and faculty. Both sisters looked around with confusion: Shouldn't someone have burst out of a classroom, wondering about the commotion?

As he hustled them off of school property, DeMartino explained to Daria and Quinn that maybe less than thirty seconds had passed during their entire encounter with Phelps. Norlek had the ability to slow time, and that gift had apparently been passed on to his offspring. DeMartino pointed to students running and leaves falling at an exceedingly slow rate. He said that people would react to their chaos... but by then, they would be long gone.

And indeed they were. No sooner had they left campus, than they found themselves in a dark, dank secluded basement area. Quinn shuddered, still trying to shake off her revulsion of the last basement room she had been in, while Daria tried to get a grip on what was happening.

"This is like Dr. Who - without the big-budget special effects," she snarked. "What the hell did you do to us?"

"I don't think I want to know," said Quinn crossly.

"I took you on a SHORTCUT through another dimension," DeMartino said dismissively. "I was a dimensional portal specialist on Xulfanex, you know. It comes in HANDY when you want to escape certain teachers in the hallway or fast-forward through a day of teaching IDIOTS."

"Nice to know at least your disdain for my fellow students wasn't pretend."

"And HOW!"

"I thought you said you were going to take us to see our parents," Quinn muttered. The day's events had left her completely spent, and it was barely noon. She would have liked nothing better than to curl up against her mother and try not to think about what had happened with Phelps in the hallway. Had she really sent her former favorite math teacher flying into the next room? If she could do that without thinking, maybe...

I did kill Stacy.

Oh God, stop it! That alien geek DeMartino doesn't know everything!

His name isn't really DeMartino.

Stop it! I just need to see my dad. Maybe this really is a dream, or a gag. I just need to see Dad...

DeMartino frowned. "They SHOULD be down here."

Quinn felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck.

"If you're such an expert at dimensional travel, why didn't you just whisk us out of there when Phelps had his eye on us?" Daria wanted to know.

"Are you CRAZY? And risk him following us through?"

"That's better than us dying before we got here."

"I already said he was NOT going to kill you," DeMartino groaned.

"Instead he'd just turn us into human-shaped paperweights to give to his friends as souvenirs?"

"No, to his MASTER. He wants -"

"You really don't know what he wants, do you?"

"Are you TELLING me I -"

"God, doesn't anyone care that Mom and Dad are missing?!" Quinn shrieked.

Daria and DeMartino stared at her. "Of course I care," said Daria, an edge in her normal deadpan. "But since I can't cope with the stress by hiding in my room, I have to ask questions. And I keep asking questions until everything makes enough sense to me. And right now, nothing makes sense to me. One hour, I'm just Daria - the next, I'm one of the X-Men. I don't understand what's happening or what else I'm capable of. The only thing I know how to do is ask questions."

Quinn felt pangs of remorse, as well as a deeper camaraderie with her sister. At least she wasn't alone in this, no matter what the outcome. Daria looked around the basement. She spied a couple of jackets lying carelessly on a cinder block in the corner. One was their mother's familiar red blazer.

"It looks like they left them in a hurry," Daria said, frowning.

Quinn shuddered, though she thought the room felt warm. "They might be coming BACK soon," DeMartino said in a tone of forced cheer.

"Or maybe something happened to them!" Quinn shot back, a tear in her voice.

"RIDIculous! If they were in trouble, Norlek would have contacted me."

"On a busted communicator, remember?" Tears welled in Quinn's eyes.

"But STILL, there would have been some-"

"What's that smell?"

DeMartino and Quinn zeroed in on Daria, whose brow was furrowed and nose scrunched in revulsion. Tentatively, Quinn walked over and took a sniff. She doubled over a little and cupped her nose to block out the offending odor.

"Oh God," she gasped, "we have to get away from here! It smells like -"

"Hiya girls!" Jake's cheerful tone cut in. "Who's in the mood for some Moo Goo Gai Pan?"

"-grease."

A door from the outside opened, and soon Jake and Helen appeared, bearing several white cartons with red symbols. Quinn broke for her parents as soon as she saw them and buried her face in Helen's shoulder.

"You hid us under a Good Time Chinese Food restaurant?" Daria said to DeMartino accusingly.

DeMartino shrugged. "Think anyone would WANT to look for you here?"

"Hmm. Smart plan."

Helen, meanwhile, looked at sobbing Quinn's attire with dismay. "What in God's name did you do to her?!" she hissed at DeMartino. "Did you see my poor little baby's covered in blood?!"

"Well GEE, that must have escaped my ATTENTION," DeMartino ground his costume teeth, "for as you can see by my APPEARANCE, we had a few little MISHAPS on the way over!"

"Don't worry Mom," said Quinn meekly. "It's not my blood."

"Mishaps?" Jake's face went pale.

"NOTHING to worry about, trust me."

"Trust you?!" Helen came back sharply. "When you could have gotten our girls killed?! Jake, I told you never trust that man!"

"He's an old friend, honey..." Jake said uneasily.

"Well at least I didn't purposely EXPOSE myself to the world to get some CRAPPY food! And leave the door open a little WIDER: Maybe we can make 'em hear us in BRAZIL!"

"For God's sake!" Helen snapped, reaching over to close the door. "Jake and I figured when the girls got here, they'd be starving, and so are we!"

"His NAME is Norlek!"

"His name is Jake!"

Daria and Quinn cringed, wondering if, perhaps, they were safer back at school under Phelps's paralyzing stare.

"Right now I'm not that hungry," Daria broke in wearily. "I'd rather know what the hell is going to happen to us."

"Ah girls!" said a distressed Jake as he laid down his food cartons on the cinder block, near his jacket. "You must be so confused. I don't even know what to tell you first!"

Daria crossed her arms. "How 'bout whether we still eat like normal people, or whether little holes will form on our stomach that we can ladle food into?"

"God, Daria!" cried Quinn, burying her face further in Helen's shoulder.

"Of course we eat like normal people, kiddo!" Jake said, laughing a little too hard. "Unlike some of those goons on Xulfanex, who have two-"

"That's enough Jake!" Helen said anxiously. She looked at her daughters with a sorrowful expression. "Oh girls, I know how you must feel. It's a tremendous shock to me, too. I mean sure, I knew your father was an alien, but-"

"You knew??"

"Yes," Helen replied softly. She looked at Jake, who was setting up the food to serve. "I suppose we ought to start there."

She eased down onto the floor with Quinn, and Daria sat down beside them. As Jake passed around the opened food cartons, DeMartino heaved a sigh and stood watch in the corner, relieved to have some down time.

"When I landed on this planet, it was early in the year 1968," Jake explained. "Gob and I were complete strangers to earth culture, so when we had the chance, we borrowed a television from someone's cabin and spent as much time as possible studying human behavior."

"Could you understand English?" Quinn frowned.

"Sure! It was easy!"

"Because by some mad coincidence," said Daria, "English just happens to sound exactly like your native language."

"Of course not," Jake said peevishly. "People from Xulfanex enunciate much more frequently. Gob's accent is a prime example!"

Daria and Quinn looked toward DeMartino - and shuddered.

"I learned from television that the Vietnam War was a big concern to young earthlings," Jake continued, "and that it had spawned a movement full people who were at odds with normal society. I knew immediately that costuming myself as a hippie would be the easiest way to fit in. If I said something weird, I could blame it on drugs!"

"And what's your excuse now?" asked Daria.

"All I needed was a background. Drawing from the brief time I spent enslaved in the Xulfanex salt mines before my escape, and the widespread hatred of the war, I came up with a hellish youth spent in military school!"

"You mean those lame stories were made up?" Quinn said with disbelief.

"What about those rants about your father?" Daria wanted to know.

"Oh, that was real." Jake's expression soured. "Lousy alien BASTARD!"

"Jake, honey," Helen reminded him.

"Oh, right. So I enrolled at nearby Middleton College... where I met your mother."

"I was a naive young freshman," said Helen, taking over. "Just seventeen years old, having skipped a grade in elementary school. On my own for the first time, I felt nervous and scared, but I tried to smooth it over with this veneer of confidence. I saw joining the peace movement as a way to be a part of something, so I wouldn't feel so alone. One evening at a rally, I met your father. He seemed like such an odd, sweet man, saying all of the wrong things and having no idea what he was doing... my heart just went out to him."

Helen looked at her husband tenderly. "Little by little I got to know him better... he told me about his scarring past, how military school was so oppressive, he never learned how to do the most ordinary things, like read poetry or drive a car."

"Your mother was always patient with me," Jake marveled. "Without her, I wouldn't be half the man I am today - literally."

"Several years passed, friendship became love," Helen continued, "and we were married. It was then that your father told me he had a few secrets to confess." She rubbed her temples wearily. "By that time, a few things had cropped up that aroused my suspicion. Such as the fact that he could never give me a straight answer about how many years he had spent in military school. Or whether he had any brothers or sisters. Or whether his father was alive or dead. Then one day your father took me aside, and I thought he was going to tell me he'd been gambling when I told him not to."

"But instead, I told her that I had to go away for a while." Jake's face was glum.

"Because," Helen chuckled at the still-absurd memory, "'I'm an alien,' he said. 'And I'm being hunted!'"

"By then, the man you girls know as Mr. Phelps had emigrated across the ocean and set up shop in America." Jake's face darkened. "And he was hot on my trail again."

"Your father told me everything, and in return, I got angry at him and said 'Fine! If you want to leave me, then leave me! But don't make up some ridiculous story that even a five-year old could see through!' I shoved him out the door, and he left." Helen squeezed her eyes shut. "And it was four years before I would see him again. During that time, I moved to San Francisco and tried to start my life over."

"I never forgot her," Jake said, his eyes glistening. "I contacted Gob, who had forged a good life as a traveling carnie-"

"I would take out my EYE and twirl it like a yo-yo. The kiddies LOVED it!" said DeMartino from his corner with gruff wistfulness.

"-and he agreed to smuggle me in with the circus freaks. We traveled cross-country, and even into Canada. It was only when I'd managed to lose my enemy in the Northwest Territories that I felt it was safe to go back and look for your mother." Jake took a deep breath and dabbed at his eyes. "It would be a full six months before I tracked her down in San Francisco. Her family had refused to tell me anything because they hated me, thinking that I was some lousy deserter."

"Though in all fairness, they hated you even before then," said Helen.

"I had to patch together clues from her friends. Even then, it took time to navigate an unfamiliar city. But finally I did it. And one day -"

"He just appeared on my doorstep," said Helen, shaking her head a little, cheeks flushing with emotion. "And I melted. Over the years, I kept telling myself that I wouldn't take him back, and in the first second, that all went out the window."

"So did you believe Dad was an alien?" Daria asked.

"I didn't, at first," Helen murmured, "until he took off a piece of his costume."

Daria and Quinn's eyes widened, and they looked at DeMartino's grey inhuman skin.

"Did you freak?" Quinn whispered.

Helen nodded. "A little. But eventually... love overcame it, and I invited your father back into my life. Then before we knew it, I was pregnant with Daria."