Esteeminator: The Daria Morgendorffer Chronicles
Esteeminator: The Daria Morgendorffer Chronicles is an alternate universe science-fiction novella written by Jim North. It also has elements of slash, and is a crossover with the Terminator franchise, particularly Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles.
The fluctuating timeline of Esteeminator is set in universe D-888.
It was nominated for Favorite Crossover in the 2010 Daria Fanworks Awards.
Synopsis
Daria makes a metal friend at school and joins the fight to save the future.
Summary
Warning: The following may contain plot or ending details.
While attending a self-esteem class at Lawndale High School, Daria meets Jane, an interesting but unusual girl who's behavior seems just a little off. Upon learning that Jane has all of the answers to the final quiz, the two girls test out of the class only to find themselves being subject to the dubious honor of accepting their self-esteem certificates in front of the entire school at a morning assembly.
Once their names are called out, Tiffany advances on the stage and opens fire on Daria with a pistol. Jane jumps in front of the bullets, seemingly unharmed by them, and commands Daria to get out of the school and go to her home as quickly as possible. There, she finds that the house Jane has been living in is abandoned, its only other occupant a middle-aged man named Nick.
Nick tells Daria about Judgment Day, Terminators, the future war between humanity and machines, and her place in that war as the leader of the human resistance in what is left of the eastern United States. She doesn't believe him until Jane arrives with a section of her face torn away from her battle with Tiffany, revealing that she is one of the machines, reprogrammed and sent back through time with Nick to protect Daria from the artificial intelligence Skynet.
Knowing that the Tiffany Terminator will follow them to Jane's house, the three of them leave and find shelter in an abandoned storefront. There, Nick and Jane explain more about the situation, and Daria demands to see her family, a demand that Nick unilaterally vetoes. While he checks on their weapon stash, Daria orders Jane to help her slip away.
At the Morgendorffer residence, Helen, Jake, and Quinn are briefly questioned by police detective James Smythe about the shooting at Lawndale High and Daria's connections with Jane and Tiffany. When they finish, Smythe and the two attending officers step outside to find Tiffany and Jane engaged in battle in the middle of the street. The confrontation comes to a halt when Nick arrives in a stolen truck, which he wrecks into Tiffany. Jane shoots the three policemen in their legs to avoid getting arrested and to keep Tiffany from seeing them as threats and killing them. She, Daria, and Nick steal the detective's car while Tiffany, her organic shell ruined, steals the squad car and gives chase.
In the detective's car, Nick yells at Daria for putting everyone's lives in danger, but Daria yells back at him, demanding to know the whole truth of the situation. Nick acquiesces, admitting that he lied about coming back through time with Jane to help the reprogrammed machine, instead traveling back from some later point with the intentions of stopping her. He reveals that the Jane Terminator had been originally created to replace the real Jane Lane, Daria's wife in the future, with the mission of terminating the future Daria. He says that the future Daria had gone insane over the machine after it was reprogrammed, talking to it for hours, changing its appearance to make it look younger, and made it wear the real Jane's clothes. He was the only one who didn't trust the machine Jane, and he feared that it would cause Daria's younger self to go crazy as well.
The conversation ends when Tiffany catches up with them. After a high-speed pursuit and shootout, Jane manages to wreck the squad car enough to deter the enemy Terminator. Daria and Jane then decide to seek out the present human Jane despite Nick's misgivings, reasoning that Tiffany might seek her out as a secondary target after losing Daria. They find only Trent at the Lane apartment in the city, but he joins them and directs them to the local police department, where Jane is being held in connection with the Lawndale High shooting.
They arrive close on the heels of Tiffany, who has slaughtered her way through the building searching for Jane. The machine Jane saves her just in time, and Nick leads her out to the parking lot where Daria and Trent are waiting with a stolen SUV. Just as they start loading up to leave, the machine Jane and Tiffany burst through a nearby window and continue their fight on the pavement until Tiffany manages to impale Jane with a bent car door.
The humans pile into the SUV and attempt to escape, but Tiffany jumps on the roof of the vehicle and peels it off. After Nick damages her, Trent tries to throw her off but ends up crashing the SUV into a construction yard. While Tiffany bears down on them, the machine Jane reroutes her power supply, picks up the car door, catches up with them, and uses the door to sever Tiffany in half. The police arrive just after Nick removes Tiffany's chip, but Jane and the humans get away with Tiffany's remains.
Back in Lawndale, while recovering from his wound, Detective Smythe learns that the officers that had been with him refuse to back up his story about a robot girl, and that none of the police cameras managed to record anything of the incident at the Morgendorffer house or at the police precinct. He is further informed that an FBI agent would be flying in soon to question everyone about the incident.
Some time later, Daria, the human Jane, Trent, Nick, and the machine Jane - whom they have decided to name Liz, after Jane's middle name - melt down Tiffany's endoskeleton with Thermite. Nick and Daria have a short conversation about the future, both the one that Nick and Liz came from and the new one that they are forging.
Meanwhile, another Terminator advances on the Morgendorffer house but is stopped by Stacy, who is revealed to be a liquid metal Terminator herself intent on protecting Quinn.
