Author's Note: Daria and its associated characters are the property of MTV/Viacom. This was not written for money or any other compensation. It is only fanfic and written for the pure enjoyment of it.

Ah, Spring. The smell of new flowers, the sound of gentle April showers as hits a metal roof. The sight of numerous grills being cleaned - and used once again. The emergence of Scarlett the fairy from her Winter's cocoon.

What? You want to know what I'm talking about? Well, then, you just need to pay attention.

Picture, if you will, a bedroom, a teen girl's bedroom. Now, keep your minds out of the gutter here. This is a classy tale, you know. There is, of course, a bed in it. Otherwise, you couldn't call it a bedroom. You'd have to call it something else, like George or Suzy.

Oh, sorry about that. Where were we? Oh, yes. A teen girl's bedroom. In one corner, hanging from the ceiling by some sort of thread, was some weird, oval-shaped fibrous ball. The fibers on it were so thick, you really couldn't see through it. A poster for the musical group Backflash hung on one of the bedroom's walls. On another wall was a poster of actor Arnold Vosloo dressed as the resurrected mummy Imhotep.

A third wall had a poster of an ankh, along with some text concerning it. The fourth wall (heh) simply had a dresser and a closet door.

Suddenly, a light blinked from somewhere inside the fibrous ball. Then another, and another, and another still, until lights were going off all over it. Then there was a slight beeping sound.

Just then, the covers on the bed were thrown aside and Scarlett the Fairy sat up in her bed.

What's that? What about the cocoon? Did I say that the fibrous ball was a cocoon? No, I did not. That was our young goth fairy's brand new alarm clock, which takes up way too much room, in my ever so humble opinion. But what do I know? She never asks me for advice.

You expected Scarlett to emerge from the cocoon, much like a butterfly? Well, since Scarlett is a fairy, she wasn't born like that. Besides, if she had emerged from a cocoon, she would have been completely naked. We cannot have that. For, as I have said many times, this is a classy tale.

Now, Scarlett was dressed in her usual night clothes, which was a dark knee-length sweater, with special holes cut in the back for her wings.

On a side note, did you know that fairies are rather good at doing their own alterations for their clothing? That's because they hate to pay someone else to do that for them. But, you do not ever want to hear a fairy after she has pricked her finger on a needle. Talk about coloring the air blue.

That brings up a question I've always had, and you should be curious about it, as well. What color is a choking Smurf?

Now, back to the story. Spring is Scarlett the Fairy's favorite time of the year. Why is that, you ask? Because she loves the smell of the new flowers and the new leaves. It's as if everything has come back to life. Plus, since she has wings, she doesn't have to worry about stepping in doggy bombs that seem to magically appear in yards after the snows melt.

First she ate a breakfast of toast and jelly with a glass of fruit juice. Then she got dressed and went outside to fly around and enjoy the day.

It must be nice to be able to do that day in and day out. But really, can you imagine seeing a fairy on an assembly line? Or being a crossing guard? Or even tossing pizza dough in the air?

To be fair, fairies can toss dough in the air. Several pizza places learned the hard way, however, that just because a fairy can toss dough in the air doesn't mean she will actually try to catch it.

The redheaded fairy smelled the flowers and ran her bared feet through a freshly mown lawn down the street (which she had made sure had no smelly surprises.) She was really enjoying herself outside.

So when the butterfly net came down around her, she was totally caught by surprise. Let me tell you, nothing can ruin a day for a fairy like being caught in a net. Usually, it's some idiot kid who wants to use the fairy in a show and tell project at school, or to make a pet out of them.

Fairies really hate both things, but tend to show restraint on the youths. Although many of the youths ended up needing another fairy's help after they went to bed that night.

You know, the Tooth Fairy is generally quite busy in any town that has an abundance of other fairies. Which is quite funny when you consider that the Tooth Fairy is a black man in a tutu. Fortunately, he's very good at his job, even if it does cause him a lot of stress.

Come to think of it, though, dentists really do a booming business in towns with an abundance of fairies. Just ask Kevin Thompson, or ask to see his dentures, and you'll see what I mean.

Now, let's get back to our tale, shall we? When Scarlett looked through the mesh net, she didn't see a child, but instead a man in his late forties and groaned. That meant that he was probably some weirdo who liked female fairies (the personal ads in the Lawndale Sun Herald sometimes really grossed her out.) Or, even worse, he might be a laboratory worker and planned to use her in testing out products.

Normally, such things would be very gauche, not to mention highly illegal, but the authorities have a difficult time keeping track of their fairy population. That's because most fairies refuse to fill out their census forms, or even pay taxes. They tend to be flighty like that. Don't tell Scarlett that I told you that. She'd really be upset with me.

But, since they're so difficult to count accurately, some people think it's safe to "take" a fairy or two on occasion.

Until, that is, they discover just exactly what fairies can do.

As for Scarlett, she looked in frustration at the man who calmly opened a canvas bag and then deposited her into it. She landed square on her butt and looked up at him, a frown on her face and her lower lip puffed out. The man had on dark-framed glasses and she could see that he had a tie, as well as a short-sleeved white shirt. Then he closed the bag and it got real dark inside it.

It looks bad for Scarlett, doesn't it? Well, she didn't panic. She simply closed her eyes, sat in the box lotus style and meditated. Remember that I've said before that she's a 6th degree black belt in fairy fu, and now she was psyching herself up.

Fairy fu still sounds dirty, doesn't it?

The man carried the bag for an undetermined amount of time, then it was tossed on a car seat. The young fairy inside opened her eyes and smiled as she heard the man sit behind the steering wheel and shut the door.

When the car started up and moved out of it's parking spot, Scarlett's smile widened and she conjured a large hole in the side of the bag. She then crawled out and stood up in the seat.

Our young goth fairy has a weakness that she hates to admit to, but it's important to note that she really loves to ride inside a car. One thing that she really wants to do, though, is drive a car herself. Of course, driver's training courses don't allow fairies to attend, and besides, it'd take more than a stack of phone books to allow her to drive safely.

I've noticed, however, that it never stops Toonces from driving.

.

Scarlett climbed up to the top of the passenger seat and propped herself against the headrest as the man drove and spoke to someone via a Bluetooth.

Did you know that fairies have their own versions of a Bluetooth, but theirs is called Fairytooth?

You'd think that fairies would have better sense when naming something, wouldn't you? But at least they didn't call it Sabertooth. Of course, if they had, then the sabertooth tigers would have sued them and it's never a good thing for the two to be adversaries in court. I mean, there's always objections all over the place.

Well, never mind that. That's another story. The man was oblivious to his captive sitting on the back of the car seat as he spoke...until he stopped at a red light and happened to look towards his right.

Scarlett sat contently on the headrest, a smile on her face, as she waited for the green light. She was so content that when he grabbed her, she hadn't been prepared.

Of course, considering where his right thumb landed on her body, the man should have realized that he had made a serious mistake. But the clue meter was obviously turned off, because he held her tightly in his right hand and drove - badly - with his left hand.

Now, our young heroine was a bit miffed. One, she liked to look out the front windshield when she was inside a moving vehicle. Two, she did NOT like being manhandled. Finally, three, he was holding her too tightly and bent her wings.

Fairies really hate having their wings bent. It's always a pain trying to straighten them back out. No, they do not use an iron. They use steam.

Scarlett waited patiently for the man to park the car. After all, she didn't want to cause a wreck. Really, the teenaged fairy felt a bit silly. She had planned to kick this "gentleman" a few times and fly off, but he was now in territory that Kevin Thompson had never been in. If she hadn't been so enamored of the actual drive, she would already be back around her home.

The man finally parked his car outside of a building where Scarlett read the words "Research Facility" on a large white sign. She turned her head and looked at the man, her eyes narrowed.

Shock absorbers are funny, yet amazing, things. To anyone outside, it looked as though the car were jumping around like a bowl of Jello in an earthquake. The shock absorbers helped protect the car in this instance, but it did the man inside very little good.

After nearly five minutes, Scarlett left the car through a now broken driver's side window and flew on home. Though with her bent wings, it appeared to any casual observer that she might be drunk, the way she wiggled and waggled through the air.

Nearly a minute and a half after that, the police showed up in the parking lot. The man cowered and whimpered behind his steering wheel, then squealed in fright when one police officer touched his left arm. When he realized that the police was there and the fairy was gone, he related his story to the two officers.

Finally, one of them asked the man to breathe into a Breathalyzer. For some reason, that offended the man. After all, he had just told the police that a fourteen-inch-tall fairy had just beaten the bejeepers out of him, and broke his thumb as well as his glasses. Then he repeated the part where the young fairy had grabbed his tie and held it as she slapped and kicked his face when he was asked to step outside his car. He ignored them as he continued on his rant.

You know, Tasers are still amazing things, too. It doesn't matter whether you're outside, or inside, a car. You still dance and jerk around uncontrollably.

Of course, Scarlett didn't see that, since she was still trying to control the direction where she was flying.

--END--

Author's Note: I'd like to thank the following people for their comments on this story when it first appeared on the PPMB: Derek, Kristen Bealer, Richard Lobinske, The Angst Guy, Ranger Thorne, Brother Grimace, Charles RB and Doggieboy.