My Little Ventrue Pt. 09 Ch. 16

Natasha, dressed in an actual suit now and not pajamas, shook her head. Focus! Important stuff.

"We f-found tears here," she pointed at the map displayed on her laptop, "here, and here, and here." Click click, she drew a thick red dot on each point.

"And we're ignoring old tears?" Noah asked. Natasha nodded. "Then, we know about tears here, here, and here." He took the mouse and repeated the procedure. "Thankfully none of the tears from the Gurihal -- physical world -- seem to be visible to the naked eye. Likely the work of Black Blood, not wanting the Kindred in Dolareido learning what it's up to."

Sándor nodded as he stepped in and took the mouse from Noah. Somehow, he knew how to use one. The elders preferred to use a touchscreen, and Kindred knew better than to push the issue; oldies liked to touch things with their fingers.

"I've traveled through the dream, and have found tears that could..." He frowned at the map of Dolareido on the screen. "How do I mark elevation?"

Natasha stood up straight. "Elevation?" She hadn't even thought of that! "Um, uh, g-give me a moment. I'll get this loaded in another program." Everyone stared on, Avery and Sándor with obvious confused expressions on their faces, as she loaded the 2D map of Dolareido, and set it as a flat plane in a 3D map of Dolareido used by the Invictus. A few seconds of tabbing between the programs, and she redrew the marks they'd made already.

Sándor took the mouse back, but frowned at the screen as the map rotated in three axes wildly.

Natasha managed to choke down a giggle, and took the mouse from him again. "T-Tell me where it is."

The poor man sighed and nodded. Smart enough to use a mouse, not smart enough to understand how to hold middle click and drag a focus point through three planes.

"Up. Maybe a mile up."

"Up there?" she asked. "W-Why?"

"It's not easy to think about the dream realm as a place alongside the physical, unlike the spirit realm. But there is... levels, to the dream world. There is distance." He frowned as he looked down, processing. "It's hard to think of it like that, but not impossible."

Natasha was happy not trying. Maybe Begotten had some sort of sixth sense about it, but the time Natasha had been in the dream realm, she could not imagine trying to understand where it was in the physical world. It wasn't in the physical world! Trying to locate where it fit in the real world was a strange idea.

"There is a connection," Sándor said, reading her mind. "A geographic connection. Human minds are like tethers on the dream realm, and it's... attached to the world, in a way." Nodding to himself, his words more for his own benefit than hers, he pointed at a spot. "Here. A nightmare about a city here. And here, a nightmare about a basement filled with the dead. And... here, the hospital nightmare Jack, Clara and I found a tear in."

She drew on the spot, but he shook his head. Of course, he was pointing at a 3D image on a 2D screen, and it took some back and forth before they got a good spot.

It made sense, in a strange way. The Begotten didn't tell Tash much, but Fiona told Damien a few things, and Damien told Tash a few things. Human minds -- probably vampire minds too -- dreamed, and lived in their own mental realm when they did, safe and protected, mostly. But sometimes they could have a dream or nightmare so powerful it created a mark in the dream world. It was a place, something to find. It had to have, if even in the most weird and indirect way, some geographic connection to the physical world.

She wasn't sure she entirely believed that, or if it was true, it could be like pointing out where a floating object was in the ocean on a map, and then saying it was still there months later. Maybe true, maybe not.

"And," Sándor said, "here, here, and here."

"Three above, three b-below?"

"Mhmm."

"Dreams and n-nightmares?"

He shook his head. "Dreams and nightmares both go into the dream, which... which isn't actually above, but it does feel like it rests above." Oh god even Sándor didn't trust his coordinates. "The ones below are from The Great Below, including the one Jack, Clara and I came out of."

"You went back there?" Clara asked.

"I've been there before. I'm sure I'll go there again."

"Why?"

He managed a slow shrug as he looked at the screen. "Monsters go where we wish."

Natasha blinked at him. It was easy to forget Sándor wasn't just a man, or even a paranormal like the vampires and werewolves. He was a nightmare monster, a whole different class of paranormal, a creature that vampires and werewolves could only look at with awe. More than once she'd heard Jessy or Jack compare them to Pennywise, in all regards, and that was far more terrifying an idea than any vampire or werewolf. Clowns were scary enough.

"It's still dangerous, don't get yourself killed," Avery said, earning a few raised eyebrows pointed at her. "If you're scouting for tears, and Tash is busy, ask us for help." More eyebrows raised. "Oh fuck off."

There were chuckles. Even Sándor managed a smile.

Natasha however, stared at the 3D map in front of her, and slowly rotated it with the mouse as she considered. That was a weird mess of dots.

"Anyone see a pattern?" Noah asked. Everyone shook their heads. "Natasha, any sort of algorithm you could run to test for possible patterns?"

"M-Maybe. I don't know how, but I could get someone in the Invictus to help." She stared at the arrangement some more. "But... if... if there's one more tear here," she pointed at a spot in Dolareido, beneath one of Sándor's, "I think I see a pattern."

"You do?" Noah almost sounded offended. Matt and Art chuckled at each other, earning a quick frown from the man. Private joke?

"Um, y-yes. Here. Three dots from above can be make a triangle. The three dots below can also be a triangle. B-but there's eight dots between them. Except, eight could be..." She added another dot, completing the point of a triangle, far sharper than the triangles above and below. Then she added some more dots, finishing more triangles, until the eight dots in the middle became twelve.

"It'd have taken us months, maybe years to find those," Clara said, blinking.

Natasha smiled, and drew some lines, connecting the dots.

It was a weird shape, and a 3D shape at that. A six-pointed star plastered in the center of Dolareido, with a triangle above it that fit nicely into the star's hexagon center, along with the triangle below it.

"I b-bet, if Sándor went looking, he might find a tear... here." She drew a dot above the three high ones he drew. "And here." Another below the three on the bottom. She attached them with lines, completing an almost symmetrical, crystal shape. "I d-don't know about how you'd find those. Those look... high, and um, deep. But they'd confirm."

Sándor returned to his usual statue face as he looked at the shape. "I can look, but you're right. That is high, and deep. It would be dangerous looking for them."

Noah shook his head. "It's an interesting pattern you've created. And yeah, it would have taken us years to find those other tears, assuming they exist. We should check if they do. But we don't have to find them all, just one or two to confirm this shape is probably what's up. If it is, then..."

Avery nodded. "Then we check out what's going on in the center."

"We've been there before," Clara said. "Didn't find anything unusual. It's just a street in South Side, right?"

There was only one special thing about that spot in that particular road. According to the map, it was basically the most center point of the populated part of the city. People typically thought of the Elysium Tower as the center Dolareido, but it was more the center of South Side and its entertainment district. There were other parts to Dolareido, the more Northern neighborhoods, Devil's Corner, and Rich Side, and they skewed what would really be considered the population center of the city.

Thankfully the 3D map included a color legend for population centers. Everyone in Natasha's apartment could see the weird shape being drawn centered on it.

Natasha nodded. "There's nothing there. M-Maybe in the tunnels?"

Clara shook her head. "Been through there too. Didn't find anything."

"Then maybe there is no center p-point. Maybe these high and low t-tears are what need to be finished?" She pointed at the tears Sándor was afraid of looking for. "Or... m-maybe whatever's going to happen in the center hasn't happened yet?" Finally, some potential good news. Everyone relaxed a little as they realized they might actually be able to get ahead of this problem.

"Then we can get some people on it," Avery said. "Or you can?"

Tash paced around in front of the laptop. People stared at her, waiting. In the past, that many eyes on her waiting for her words would have made her so anxious, she'd turn into a stuttering mess. Not anymore! Well, not so much.

"I can ask the P-Prince to have our best trained thralls investigate, but... b-but if we're thinking this is something Black Blood is doing, then we should have a paranormal investigating, maybe?"

They all looked at each other. Who to send? Who was good enough to keep an eye out?

Sándor shook his head. "Too risky. Black Blood isn't like other spirits. We might need to bide our time, and only check that area every so often."

Arturo groaned and growled simultaneously. "You mean wait for it to make the first move? It's already made first move! Lots of them!"

But the Begotten just shook his head. "Nothing has come of Black Blood's actions yet."

This time, Tash shook her head. "I d-don't know. This war between the Invictus and Carthians is odd, and the t-timing is awfully convenient."

They all nodded, even Sándor. Something was building up to something. Unfortunately, they had no idea what that something was. A ritual? A big explosion?

"Still," Sándor said, "let's go slow. I want to see what's on the other side of that tear we found here." He pointed at the far triangle point, the tear they'd found in the Hisil, the one he was confused about. "It's important."

"It better be," Avery said. "I had to negotiate with fucking Red Tide to get it to help us."

"Make a bad deal?" Eric asked.

"No. It knows Black Blood is a problem, and it wants it gone, too."

"Didn't have to convince it about the tears being Black Blood's doing?"

"It already knew, the fucker. And it's agreed to provide Black Blood a distraction while we investigate the tears. So as long as we do that, deal satisfied."

Tash frowned. Red Tide was horrifying, and the idea that it was also smart enough to get information like that made it worse.

"So that's the plan," Clara said. "Tomorrow, we take a trip into the Hisil, and Red Tide provides a distraction."

Eric raised a hand. "What kind of distraction?"

Avery shrugged and laughed. "I guess we'll know when it happens. Red Tide, is an asshole."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"She did what?"

Tash smiled as she sat down on the stairs beside Jack, in his big fancy mansion, and gestured to nothing in front of them, as if the memory was on display for them in the center of his lobby.

"She apologized! I w-was very surprised."

Jack smiled at her, then at himself as he looked down. "Good. Good."

Mulder sat on Tash's shoulder closer to Jack, while Scully sat on his shoulder closer to Tash, so both birds were next to each other. Jack reached up and pet Scully behind the head, scratching under her feathers, and Tash did the same for Mulder. Of all the things Tash knew of Jack, she hadn't known the boy had an interest in birds -- crows, at least -- until after he made friends with the two birds. Well, crows and ravens were interesting birds, and Kindred naturally gravitated toward them.

Would it be in the same, in a much smaller city? Maybe a town in the woods? Probably not. Dolareido overflowed with rats and crows, but in the woods, Ventrue and Gangrels probably acquired other animals. Owls, coyotes, maybe snakes. Owls would make for awesome, and hilariously cliche familiars.

"You sound, um... I d-don't know. Like you're relieved, that she apologized, I mean."

"I guess I am. I guess a part of me has been afraid I'd grow up to be an elder, trapped in my old ideas."

"Oh, right. I g-guess that is a real fear. Some Kindred can't change, except maybe from what long torpors cause." And it wasn't like those changes were wanted ones. The dreams were supposedly quite intense.

"I was wondering about that. Daniel. The curse tried to break into his mind, but couldn't."

"Well, I mean, n-no Ventrue could Dominate an elder, especially one as old as my sire."

Jack shook his head. "His mind though, it was... it was a fortress, Tash."

"F-Fortress?"

"The curse sorta gives me a metaphor to see, to visualize what's going on."

"Really?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I guess it's a side effect of it being able to communicate with me."

Suddenly, Natasha knew exactly what it felt like to be a member of the Ordo Dracul. She very much wanted to dive into Jack's mind, and unlock the secrets of the curse. She wanted to take a scalpel -- metaphorical of course! -- and dissect his brain. She wanted to do experiments and see how he responded. She wanted to record data, and then see if she could recreate whatever things about the curse made it... 'the curse'.

It didn't take much to jump from that, to picturing herself a hundred years from now, wearing a lab coat or some such, and doing experiments on a strange creature she'd caught, something pinned down on a surgery table. If Antoinette could somehow do that to spirits, she'd probably do that. Maybe she already had, and just didn't tell Tash about it? She definitely had dark secrets she didn't tell her about, secrets Tash would learn with time. Spooky.

"Extraordinary."

Jack laughed. "You sound like Antoinette."

Uh oh. Caught.

"Daniel's mind," he continued, "is... Holy fuck. No wonder he is who he is. You got a hell of a sire. And honestly, I kinda understand his interest in Athalia now."

"Oh?"

"She's the only woman who could penetrate that man's walls."

That definitely made sense. Natasha struggled to even talk to the man, and Daniel actively tried to open his gates to her. Tried and failed, but tried. Athalia was direct and loud enough she could probably kick them down.

"I... I w-wanted to thank you. About Vivienne."

With a heavy groan, Jack stood up and paced in front of her. "Please don't."

"D... D-Don't?"

"Don't. It was a shit situation, and I let Bruce die to save Vivi."

Natasha nodded as she squirmed. "Sorry."

"Aw, come on don't apologize. It... It's not like that. I just really don't want to go through the typical conversations about it, you know? I don't want to sit down and have a painful talk every time shit goes bad. Just... Let's just say Vivi survived and Bruce didn't, and Joe was to blame. Done."

Poor Jack. Why did horrible things keep falling in his lap? They happened so often, he'd grown frustrated not with the events, but with the conversations that followed.

How many horrible talks had Jack had in just a few years? It must have been dozens. Conversations with his mom, with Athalia, with Beatrice, and probably others Tash didn't even know about.

Jack continued to pace, glancing her way every so often between what looked like compulsive scratches he made on Scully's neck, like someone with a nervous tick scratching their head, which Jack also did. Scully liked scratches, so no harm no foul.

Mulder cawed from Tash's shoulder. No need for Animalism. He was concerned for his master.

"I understand," she said. "B-But, thank you anyway."

He managed a small smile for her, before sitting down beside her again.

"Progress on figuring out the tears situation?"

"Avery's got a plan. W-We're gonna... do something soon. Dangerous."

"Need help?"

She laughed. "You know you c-can't. You know--"

"I know. Gotta handle the fallout of this stupid Joe situation. Christ, I--"

Tash pat his knee. "Let me handle the t-tears issue for now, ok? I'll be fine. Avery's on board now."

"Thank god. After... after the fight the Ripper had with her, I was afraid they wouldn't help me."

Tash smirked at him. "B-But I'm not you."

"Good point."