Work Text:
Daria and Jane stand over the empty refrigerator box in the Morgendorffer family's side yard. "This means something," Daria says. "I just can't remember what. It's not just a cardboard box."
"Um, from here it looks exactly like a cardboard box," Jane points out.
"It's like it's trying to tell me something."
"All I can hear is the gentle caress of a spring zephyr through the corrugations. Quite a relaxing ambience."
"You're right. It is relaxing."
"Joke, Daria? We do them on planet Earth sometimes?"
Daria drops to her knees and crawls inside the box. At the far end, she sits up and crosses her legs. "This feels... oddly right."
"OK, you're from Zippotron and you don't understand our 'joke' customs." Jane tosses her arms in resignation. "Doesn't every kid play with empty boxes? We're like cats at that age. Heck, I think I had one of these when I was six or seven, until Penny and Wind roughhoused it to pieces. Huh. The things you forget." She stuffs her hands into her jacket pockets and realizes that among all the other junk she is carrying a black marker pen. Idly, she draws a circle on the top surface of the box. Then she adds an arrow, one with a bit of flair to the curve since she is an artist after all, and adds the word "ZAP!" above it.
Daria hasn't said anything.
Jane thumps her finger down upon the ink button.
From somewhere she cannot place, she hears a hum.
"That you trying to carry a tune, Daria?"
Jane bends down to look inside. Daria is searching about herself, seeming even more puzzled now than before. The hum is louder in here, but it's not coming from Daria.
Curiouser and curiouser, Jane crawls inside to join her best friend.
From every direction, there comes a terrific noise: BOINK!
And Jane is staring into her own face.
The two Janes spring backward from each other, splitting the cardboard walls and bringing the cardboard ceiling down upon the two Darias.
Then the two Darias are standing, each clutching her own hair as it falls over her shoulder.
None of the four can think of a thing to say.
And then Quinn Morgendorffer steps out of the house, looks from one, to the other, to the other, to the other. "M-o-ooom! Daria's brought my worst nightmare to life!"