Title: The Placeholder
"Hi Jack." I waved at the pirate sitting alone on a foldout chair facing in the direction of Venture Tower. Hmm, wasn't he supposed to have that mummified king from the sarcophagus here too? Or was that butterflied away because he knew the PRT would be poking at the sarcophagus at one point and so he decided not to bother?
"Hey." He nodded back before taking a long drag from his very expensive-looking cigar, making me mildly curious as to where he got it or more likely just who he stole it from. "Ready for the show?" He was trying to be nonchalant, but he always had this faint undercurrent of unease with me once he realised I was actually a second gen.
"Of course." I nodded in affirmation, plopping Beorn down on one of the empty chairs before stepping up to Yukie and then leaning against her while Caine stood off quietly to the side, being all broody and stuff.
Seems the timing of our arrival was perfect as within moments a massive explosion rocked the top of Venture Tower.
Haha suck it LaCroix! Shouldn't have opened it.
I rested my head on Yukie's shoulder and considered how things would be likely to go next.
I'll need to have a talk with Brook and explain the situation behind the sarcophagus she's been chasing all these nights. I also kinda want to explain that I'm actually a fledgeling as well. Hopefully she'll forgive me for all the lying. It's just a pity I wasn't actually a proper antediluvian. That would be neat. Then again growing up without indoor plumbing and no TV would probably have been a pain in the ass.
I was pulled from my musings about how terrible life would've been without things like internet access and cat memes when Caine's hand landed on my shoulder. I tilted my head back and looked up at him.
Why do people have to be so tall?
I suddenly found myself scooped off of my feet as my Sire held me in his arms in a princess carry. Appropriate, cause I kind am, but still weird because there's no real reason for me to be carried around right now.
"Sire?" I asked, very confused. At least Jack and Yukie likewise appeared equally shocked and/or confused at his sudden weird behavior.
"Temporis is such an interesting discipline." He began to say, shifting me in his arms so he could bite a finger and smear some of his extremely potent vitae across my forehead in a glyph of some sort. I began to have a sudden sinking feeling in my gut. One that was confirmed when he continued speaking. "And you still have some growing up to do, I think."
Shit!
I began to plead frantically. "Oh no! No no no no no! W-wait Sire!!! There's no need t-"
That was as far as I managed to get before he tossed me out his arms. I may or may not have shrieked as I was hurled through time and everything went black. I admit nothing.
Injured and bleeding, but still very much alive, Sebastian LaCroix laughed at the pure foolishness of the stupid fledgeling as she walked out, leaving his key behind. His glory could have been hers. She had the key and he would have been too weakened to stop her from diablerising the sleeping ancient within.
Instead the idiot lacked the ambition to reach out and claim that power for herself, and that would be her downfall once he took that power himself and enacted revenge for this humiliation. These wounds - while painful and impeding - would not stop him from claiming his true destiny!
The french vampire didn't even bother spending vitae to heal himself in his haste to claim his prize before anything else happened tonight. He crawled across the floor towards the key - leaving a bloody trail across the marble floor behind him - and ignored the indignity of such an act.
Because he had won!
He would diablerise the sleeping antediluvian within the sarcophagus and use that power to catapult himself to new heights of power and prestige! He would take his rightful place as the sole ruler of the city, and perhaps even one day, the country.
Nothing would be beyond his grasp. And then he could take revenge on the fledgeling and that upstart little Malkavian chit who must obviously have been using the fledgeling against him from the start, taking advantage of the fledgeling's lack of ambition for her own ends.
It was a struggle to heave himself up the side of the sarcophagus, key in hand, and then even more so to shove the heavy stone lid off once the ancient relic had been unlocked.
And there was his prize. The sleeping antediluvian. It was difficult to tell the gender with how atrophied the muscles and skin are, let alone with the burial shroud wrapped around the figure.
What he could tell was the figure was tiny, not even five foot tall if he had to guess. Pathetically small for what the kine had thought was an ancient king and what he knew was an ancient vampire. But it made sense. Diets would have been poor back then, with malnutrition leading to smaller stature. This was simply further proof he was about to consume a torpid ancient.
Oh how he had won! This was the moment when the great Sebastian LaCroix rose up and proved how mighty he truly was, the start of a grant and glorious future. The Anarch rabble would be crushed beneath his rule, the treacherous Kuei-jin snakes would be tossed back into the Pacific. And from there his reach would grow!
He laughed in triumph… right up until the moment the slumbering ancient's pale blue eyes snapped open and focused on him with an alarming intensity.
Runes encircling the interior of the sarcophagus lit with bright red light, and a translucent magical barrier - tinged red like blood - appeared before him, blocking him off from any attempts at halting or otherwise impeding the awakening of this ancient.
"No!" LaCroix shrieked, hammering a bloody fist against the unyielding magical barrier, before slipping on his own blood and tumbling back down painfully onto his tailbone on the marbled tiles of his penthouse office.
The ancient kindred sat up - atrophied muscles tearing and dry skin cracking with the motion - before reaching towards something at its feet he hadn't previously noticed. It lifted an ancient, earthenware jar and broke the waxen seal.
His inner Beast salivated at the scent of potent vitae that filled the air once the seal of the jar was breached. The tiny ancient lifted the jar to cracked and broken lips and drank the entire lot in one go.
As the potent blood poured down its throat life began to return to return the withered corpse, like watching a time-lapse of a corpse being mummified in reverse. Hair sprouted, flesh began to fill across old bones, skin mended and took on the appearance it had once held when the kindred was first embraced, leaving the ancient's gender - and identity - plain to see.
LaCroix stared in disbelief as the headache that had plagued him for the last two weeks was revealed to have been a slumbering ancient.
"Heeheeheee. It was me~" Pandora giggled from her seated position within the sarcophagus, peals of childish giggles heralding the death of all his hopes and dreams. "It was me all along~"
The injured prince could only stare dumbfounded as the tiny ancient snapped her fingers, causing the barrier protecting her to vanish as well as change the ancient burial cloth she was wrapped in into something that would look more at home somewhere like ancient Mesopotamia or Sumeria.
Her giggles died down, and she stepped out of the stone sarcophagus and stared down at him as if he was a particularly vile insect.
"[And thus Qayin spoke: Thou shalt not slay thy sire and drink his heart's blood.]" The ancient growled in some unknown tongue, staring down at him like he wasn't worth wiping her boots on. "Or in words a little shit like you can understand: Amaranth is forbidden."
He expected a sudden surge of violence and retribution, but it never came, instead she simply spun on her heel and stomped off, her outfit changing again into that ridiculous goth style that was all the rage with a subset of kine these nights.
LaCroix had almost thought himself in the clear, until the air ripped in front of him and a pile of explosives the size of a car appeared before his eyes, along with a timer set to five seconds counting down.
Manic, broken laughter slipped from his lips as the timer counted down his doom.
I stood quietly and watched as my Sire tossed my younger self out of his arms and out of time, followed shortly by my younger self's own Yukie. Damn that brings back memories.
As soon as younger-me was gone I stepped forward, dropping the cloak of Obfuscate hiding myself and my own Yukie - who I'd collected from the old monastery after Caine had tossed her forward to that point in time.
Temporis was such bullshit.
"You should know by now Sire. Growing older may be mandatory, growing up is optional." I quipped, shooting him a wide grin.
"And yet it still did you some good, did it not?" He grinned back, spreading his arms wide in a 'what can you do' gesture.
"Yeah, guess so." I said, conceding the point, before quickly stepping forward so I could latch on and hug him, he'd left himself conveniently exposed after all. Sure I'd only last seen him a couple hours ago from my perspective - before I went into torpor anyways - but my Dad Sire needs all the hugs I can sneak upon him.
"Uh… what just happened?" Jack asked, eyeing my sudden 'reappearance' and minor costume swap. I was still 'gothy', but in a slightly different outfit to the one my younger self had been wearing.
"Guess I owe you some explanations huh, Jack?" I said, resting my head against my Sire's chest and looking over at the young ex-pirate. "Well, the short story is the Pandora that Caine just tossed thousands of years into the past is… or I guess was in this case… a baby little Second Generation fledgeling embraced around… ten nights ago?" I looked up at Caine for confirmation.
I made a mental note to get those stored memories of my early life back from my Yukie. I'm gonna need them soon.
"Thirteen." He corrected me.
"Right, thirteen nights ago, who was lying her ass off pretending to be an elder so she wouldn't get diablerised by anyone with an ounce of ambition." I carried on, enjoying the look of incredulity on the youngster's face. "From there I had to go the long way round to get back to 'present day', so yeah. I'm now a fourteen thousand - and some change - year old antediluvian now, freshly woken from thousands of years of torpor. Because my Sire thinks he's funny."
"I'm hilarious." The First Murderer said in a completely deadpan voice, which to my eternal annoyance was actually kinda funny. I'd whack him on the chest for that but that sevenfold retribution curse is a bitch to feel.
He knew it too. His smugness intensified despite not an inch of his facial expression changing.
Damnit Yukie, don't laugh at his terrible sense of humour.
Instead of smacking him I simply broke off the hug and stepped back to glare at him.
"And your ghoul?" Jack asked, sparing my Sire from my disapproving look. For now.
"Yukie's only three thousand. There's a lot more being tossed through time and a lot less torpor in her version of the trip, courtesy of Caine." I explained.
"Three thousand, two-hundred and eighty five, forgetful demon." Yukie added with a roll of her eyes.
"I forget your birthday one time and you never let me live it down." I grumbled. Then blinked. "Wait! That means I'm finally older than you." I grinned.
"And yet I'm still the grown-up." My mean, cruel bullying girlfriend snarked back.
Ack the truth! It burns!
I pouted at her.
"So what now?" Jack asked, seeming completely out of his depth. Not that I could really blame him.
"Well first I'm gonna go adopt a kickass fledgeling and some thin-bloods. After that, who knows? Probably go exploring, play some pranks. You know, just generally make a nuisance of myself while making fun of all this Gehenna stuff everyone is taking so seriously. Oh! I should find a way to prank Absimiliard again to remind him I'm still alive."
"Please don't." Yukie sighed. "Remember what happened the last time."
"Oh come on. Only twelve people died, and that was all Absimiliard and they were jerks anyway."
"No, that was the time before last time." She reminded me with a put-upon sigh.
Jack just stared at us with wide eyes.
"Really?" I blinked. "Oh yeah, you're right. Last time was when we-"
"That was all you, demon."
"-accidentally ruined Enoch and Danu's place while hiding from Absimiliard while he threw that big temper tantrum. Hehe, good times." I reminisced. My eldest brother and his super uptight wife were sooooo mad afterwards. Irad had to take me out of the city on campaign with him to give them time to calm down.
I wonder how long it took them to get the smell of rotting fish out? I never actually did get round to asking.
I sighed heavily. I miss them. Yukie, sensing how my thoughts were headed, wrapped her arms around me and pulled me tight. My dear ghoul then poked me in the side to get my attention before handing me a simple stone necklace containing memories from before my younger self was sent back.
They were created with a modification of a similar ritual. That ritual allowed one to store memories by transferring them into an item for later retrieval, however you couldn't actually remember what it was you had stored. My ritual copied the memories instead, which meant it was more for refreshing my memory of the important events and details I'd been worried I may forget.
I'd done the same for Yukie, and then given her the amulets the memories were stored on for safe keeping. This way we'd be able to quickly reacclimatise back to the modern world after so long away from it.
"[Thanks Dear.]" I smiled at her, holding the amulet against my head and taking in all the important memories I'd chosen to store within it so I wouldn't acccidentally forget important stuff when I'd made it back to the modern times.
"[You are welcome, demon.]" She pressed a kiss to the top of my head.
All sorts of little details and things I'd gradually forgotten over the ages rushed back to prominence, slotting back into place in my head. Including…
Bearington! I can't believe I'd forgotten about him!
I quickly rushed over and hugged him close. The first gift my Sire gave me! Oh I have so many ideas for enchanting the shit out of him.
But first I guess we'd better go find Brook and see how she's doing.
Contrary to my expectations Caine didn't drive us off in his taxi to go check in with Brook. Instead he told us to wait where we were.
So instead we sat and caught up, while Jack watched awkwardly for a while before deciding he'd rather wander off to do whatever it is he does for fun. There were only two chairs so my Sire took one while Yukie took the other and I sat on her lap. One of the few advantages of being small is being able to use other people as seats. Especially your girlfriend because then it doubles as cuddle time.
"So what happened next?" I asked as Caine regaled us with a story of back when he was wandering about in ancient Rome.
"Cato demanded to know what the message said and wasn't a happy man when Caesar read out a personal love letter addressed to him from Cato's half-sister. To the entire senate." He chuckled in amusement.
I was about to ask about Cato's response when my Sire's taxi pulled up
He shot me an amused look. "Go on." He shooed me off.
Taking the hint I hopped up off Yukie and helped tug her to her feet, eager to see Brook again.
My restored memories were fresh in my mind, so despite the huge gulf in time since I last saw her I was able to pick things back up where I'd left off. Like despite my age I am still the same person I've always been: Absolutely kickass amazing… and definitely not irresponsible despite how much Yukie seems to disagree.
"Stop lying to yourself, demon." My mean, cruel girlfriend poked me in the side.
Ugh, I should never have encouraged her to learn how to read minds.
Ignoring Yukie for the moment I skipped forward towards Brook, my long skirt swishing about my legs. "Hi Brook!" I waved cheerily. "Long time no see."
"Wasn't that long ago 'Dora." Brook replied, looking pretty determined about something. "You promised me some answers." She glared fiercely down at me.
"Yeah I did." I grinned up at her. Why does she have to be so damn tall? "I guess I should confess something first… I'm secre-"
"-secretly a Second Generation vampire that has been inside that damn sarcophagus this whole time?" She interjected, completely deadpan.
"No, I'm secretly a-" I began to correct her before my brain processed what she'd actually said. "Wait what!? How did you know?!" I asked her incredulously.
"'Dora." She said flatly. "You are really not subtle. Like at all. And also Rosa calls you 'dark daughter', and since Caine is apparently the 'dark father' it really wasn't much of a stretch to put two and two together."
"But… I… you… y-you ruined my dramatic reveal." I pouted dejectedly. "I was gonna surprise you and everything. And stop laughing Yukie. It's not funny." I whined at my ghoul, who was trying - and failing horribly - not to laugh.
"It really is." My cruel, bullying demon-hunting girlfriend snickered.
"So, answers." Brook said expectantly.
"You know, I was expecting a lot more awe and stuff following this reveal. Maybe some minor bits of existential terror when you realised I was really a fourteen thousand year old Antediluvian." I pouted.
"Yeah, that's impressive and all 'Dora, but despite all that I also know you're a bit of a scatterbrain." She said it completely matter of factly, lancing right into my unbeating heart.
Yukie collapsed to the ground, clutching her belly and laughing her lungs out. "Traitor. Stop acting like Jabal." I grumbled at my hysterical ghoul before focusing back on Brook. "I am not a scatterbrain." I argued.
"Alright, maybe not. But you are a big softie."
"I…" I raised my finger to dispute that, but then lowered it before sighing. "Fair enough, I guess that is accurate. So, any questions?"
"So, you're definitely a real Second Generation vampire then?" Brook asked. "And Caine's real?"
"I am." I nodded. "And he is. Caine is my sire. My siblings were Enoch the Wise, Irad the Strong, and Zillah the Bitch."
"She wasn't a bitch, demon. She just didn't like you." Yukie said automatically from down on her spot on the floor, and while I couldn't see it I could tell she was rolling her eyes at me. At least she was getting her laughter under control.
Even if she was still trying to defend my mean bitch of a sister.
"And that just proves she's a bitch. I mean seriously: who wouldn't like me? I'm me. Just look at Absimiliard. He didn't like me either and he totally turned out to be a whiny little bitch." I countered.
Seriously, if my sister hadn't actually embraced him before I arrived I'd have actually thought that she embraced him specifically to annoy me. Hell, all her childer were either annoying little shits or pains in my ass. Absimiliard, Malakai, Taifon, Veresh, Kalastrera, Saulot, Genbar. Every single one of them was either a whiny little bitch - or went out of their way to annoy and/or bully me for giggles in Malakai's case - which proves Zillah was a bitch. It's totally hereditary.
Haqim was cool though. Definitely my favourite of the lot.
"One of the many reasons Absimiliard hated you was because you kept smearing the walls of his home with animal dung."
"Hehe yeah, good times. We should do that again sometime." I imagined the expression on his pretty-boy face when he realised I wasn't actually dead.
Then I remembered he was cursed to be ugly now. Maybe I should add a mirror or two as well when I pay him a visit? Yeah that'd be hilarious. Probably need to track down a Malkavian and shake them a bunch - just like one of those magic 8-balls - so I can ask Malakai where Absimiliard is hiding out these nights.
I hope he's in torpor. Then I can surround him with prank stuff for when he wakes up.
"Please don't, demon." My responsible girlfriend said firmly, knocking my thoughts away from trying to figure out how to use blood magic to put some fresh dog poop into a magical stasis that I could tie to a torpid Cainite. She's lucky I love her so much.
Yukie got back to her feet and wrapped her arms around me to distract me.
"I didn't do anything." I whined.
"You have your plotting mischief face on."
"But this is my normal face!"
"Exactly."
*Snnrk*
We both glanced over at Brook, who appeared to be trying not to laugh at our banter.
Oh right, I owed her some answers. Tormenting my worthless nephew can come later.
I decided to pretend that last little bit didn't happen. "So, any other questions?" I asked her.
"So, is Pandora really your name? Because I doubt they spoke ancient Greek fourteen-thousand years ago. Actually, what did they speak? Oh! And what was the writing system like? Your legends? Cultural holidays? Tell me everything!" She demanded eagerly, face lighting up as her history nerd side came to the fore.
"Pandora is one of my names, though in the First City I was known as Amity." I began.
"Or also 'that damn, tiny little menace'." Yukie piped up unhelpfully from over my shoulder.
"Or that too." I rolled my eyes. Some of my relatives had zero sense of humour. At least Caine usually found my antics to lighten everyone's mood amusing, so long as I kept the property damage down anyways. "And we spoke Enochian back then. Writing was in ancient squiggles, though back then I guess it was just called squiggles."
"It was cuniform." Yukie corrected me while rolling her eyes.
"You have to teach me." Brook had stars in her eyes. Then she blinked in realisation. "And you're really fourteen thousand years old? Wait, how does that work? You have blue eyes and those weren't supposed to appear until around ten thousand years ago."
"There's a bit of time travel involved." I shrugged. "I was born after blue eyes became a thing, but Caine sent me and Yukie back in time to the First City because he has a terrible sense of humour."
"I find him funny, demon."
"Not helping Yukie."
"Time travel? Really?" Brook asked with a raised brow ignoring the byplay between me and my girlfriend.
"Yeah there's a discipline called Temporis. It does time stuff. Anyways I'm fourteen thousand years old, give or take a couple centuries. It's not like they had good calendars back then. Yukie is over three thousand."
"Three thousand, two-hundred and eighty five." She reminded me again, poking me in the belly.
"Wouldn't you be older if you were also in the First City?" Brook asked Yukie.
"My demon's sire used Temporis to move me forward in time after that. Twice."
"Twice?"
"I went into torpor just before the deluge, then Caine woke me up around four thousand years ago-ish where Yukie had been tossed forward to meet me." I explained.
It gave us time to mourn, because the First City was our home for thousands of years. I got to know and love my siblings - even if Zillah was a bit of a bitch and her brood were all pains in the ass - and got to spend time with so many nieces and nephews. I loved the people. I loved my family. I loved the city.
And it was all gone.
We mourned together. I like to think we helped Caine mourn for the city and everyone too, if only a little bit. Yukie certainly helped me with my own sorrow.
I left that stuff out of my explanations to Brook though. It was kinda personal after all. "And then Caine put me back to sleep and swapped me out for the Assyrian king who was meant to be in the box and tossed Yukie forward again to the modern day. You know the rest of the story from there."
Brook digested that for a bit while I cuddled back against Yukie. "So what now?" She asked after a while.
"Well with Frenchie dead and gone you're free to spread your wings and fly, little fledgeling. But if you want you and Heather can tag along with us. I'm planning to adopt the thin-bloods. And you, if you want." I offered hopefully.
"I think I'd like that." The young fledgeling smiled back. "And you still have to teach me Enochian and tell me all about the First City. All of it."
"Deal, though that'll take a while, as it is a bit of a story after all."