Disclaimer: The show Victorious and the characters from the Addams Family, and associated copyrights are property of someone else and not me.
Outgoth the Goth
Chapter 7 – The art of war.
No One's POV.
Jade made herself some pasta with alfredo sauce and sat down with the Art of War book. Surprisingly Jade found the book to be quite interesting.
The book itself is laid out into chapters dealing with such topics as, Laying Plans, Tactical Dispositions, Weak Points and Uses of Spies. What Jade appreciated was that many of the lessons Sun Tzu, were written very generally so they could be applied to many different situations.
Not everything in the book could be used by Jade, but she found several passages she felt were useful. She made a point to underline them.
Those included
"All warfare is based on deception. Hence when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; When using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near; we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near."
And
"Ponder and deliberate before you make a move."
And
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."
A lot of the things were common sense, but reading all at once put Jade more of a tactical mindset.
After she had finished the book, which wasn't terribly long, she instead of sitting down for a horror movie marathon, she poured herself a bottle of wine and sat by the pool in the back yard thinking over what had happened and what should happen next.
"I've had two near misses with death in the last few days. I could call the police, but tell them what? That a light nearly fell on me and I was nearly t-boned by a garbage truck. A garbage truck whose license plate I did not get. I could tell that I think a certain person was behind them. I got nothing, nada, no evidence and they'd probably lock me up before they did her. She'd come out on top and I'd come across looking like I'd lost my marbles. Maybe I have lost my marbles. Freak accidents do happen." Jade said aloud before taking a long drink of her wine.
She would sit there until the whole bottle of wine was gone, thinking about it all.
Jade spent the next day, Sunday, at home, a small part of her wanting to avoid tempting fate, but she mostly stayed home to work on a project for scriptwriting class and a paper for history. Her thoughts thought frequently drifted to Tori and what could she possibly see in that dark cloud.
By Sunday, the itch to reach out to Tori started to become just a bit too much. That and she wanted to know just how meeting her parents went.
"At least then, Addams can't show up and interrupt." Jade thought happily after coming up with a suitable excuse to call.
So Jade dialed and after 3 rings, she heard a familiar voice on the other end.
"Hello Jade. What do you need?" Said Tori, in a cautious tone.
Slightly put off by Tori assuming yet again she needed something, Jade huffed. "Vega, What makes I need something."
"Because you never call me. Unless you want something."
Jade had to admit that Vega was right and silently cursed herself.
"OK, you're right, I forgot to write it down, Did Sikowitz tell us to read to page 150 or 170 in the reading assignment for class?"
"Page 150."
"Ok…..Hey I'm curious. You met Wednesday's parents, how did it go."
There was an odd pause, before Tori answered. "They live on that big mansion up on Hillsdale. The one that was empty for all those years. The strange thing is that it looks more run down now that it did before they moved it. It's like a museum of curious and strange things. Kind of like your bedroom, only it's a whole house."
"Hmmm…" Jade said, trying to suppress her jealousy.
"I met their butler, lurch. Tall, quiet but polite. I met her parents, Gomez and Morticia. She has a brother, a grandma and cousin It, but they were out for the evening. Something about a swamp."
"So did they like you? Everyone likes you." Jade replied letting some sarcasm creep into her voice.
"You don't!" Came an even sharper reply.
Jade immediately felt defensive. "I've never said that?"
"Yes you have lots of times, I even recorded it once. Just in case you denied ever saying it, would you like me to play it for you?"
Jade felt her stomach fall out, "No! Look I say a lot of things. I was just curious about your time."
"Well Gomez seemed to like me a bit, her mother didn't. I was nice and polite and the strange thing was the nicer and more polite I was, the colder to me she got. They kept talking about dead relatives. One thing's for sure, they're loaded. We had Steak and it was really good. Though I was the only one that ate it cooked, they all at it raw. You alright from your close call?"
"Which one?" Jade, hadn't planned to tell Tori about the near miss at the intersection, but it just came out.
"Huh?"
"I was at an intersection on Friday just after school and for some reason, when the light turned green I was slow to get going. It was good I was. "
Jade could hear a good amount of concern suddenly appear in Tori's voice. "Why?"
"Some asshole driving a garbage truck ran a red light and barreled through the intersection. If I had gone right way, he would have t-boned me right on the driver's side door."
"Oh my god. Were you Ok? Did you get his number?"
"I'm fine." Jade said tersely. "He missed me, but he was gone in a flash. I didn't get his number. "
"I could talk to my dad?"
"Don't bother, it was a city garbage truck, there's a million of the dam things around. It'd be impossible to figure out which asshole did it."
There was a sudden audible click on the line before Tori could answer.
"Jade, Wednesday is on the other line. Can you hold on a sec?"
Gritting her teeth, Jade made a fist. "Sure?"
"How it the fuck did she know? Its like she knew I was talking to Tori." Jade thought to herself.
A few seconds later, Tori came back on. "Can I call you back? Wednesday is coming over to take me shopping."
"Fine!" Jade replied before hanging up.
Jade was frustrated but decided to not let it get to her. In fact something Sun Tzu said ran in her mind.
"Appear weak where you are strong, appear strong where you are weak"
"Turn things on their head, in a sense. And how did he put it, All warfare is based on deception." Jade mused quietly, which brought a strategy to mind for the Goth.
The next day Jade came into school, carrying three cups of coffee from Jet Brew on one of those little trays. As expected she found Tori and the always dour looking Wednesday Addams at Tori's locker.
With smirk Jade approached the pair. "Hello Tori, Wednesday, You know Wedensday. I think we got off on the wrong foot. I think you and I may have some things in common. So as a peace offering, I brought you and Tori coffee's from Jet brew."
Jade then handed a cup to Tori. "Unless I'm mistaken, half decaf with a dash of mint."
Smiling Tori took the cup. "You're right. Thanks Jade."
Looking to Wednesday Jade held out a cup. "With you I guessed black with a hint of arsenic, but I'm fresh out of arsenic so it's just straight coffee. I got the Columbian Dark roast for you. It's quite good."
Wednesday narrowed her eyes and stared at the cup. "Why are you obviously trying to curry favor with me and Tori? From what I understand the only time you've ever given coffee to anyone is when you poured it over Tori's head. So there must be an ulterior motive involved."
Using her acting skills to put on a look that indicated she was a bit insulted, Jade carefully placed the cup in Wednesday's hand. "You're welcome."
Then Jade turned to Tori. "Enjoy the coffee Vega."
Turning on her heel, Jade walked away without saying another word.
But while she wasn't talking, she ducked around the corner and carefully listened. A moment later she could hear Tori's voice say in a rather harsh fashion.
"Wednesday, that wasn't nice. Jade gave you coffee and you promptly insult her, by reading something into it. Granted she's mean, selfish and not very nice, but you were just plain rude!"
"But she…" Protested Wednesday.
"But nothing. Manners are manners. Come on….."
Suppressing her laughter, Jade sipped her coffee and slipped away. It was a small victory, getting Wednesday scolded by Tori, but to Jade it was a step in the right direction. Jade suspected that Tori may just do that as she possibly may have felt bad about jumping to the same conclusion yesterday.
The rest of the day proceeded Normally, Jade acted aloof and quiet. At least once or twice she could see Tori was semi irritated with Wednesday.
Jade however, caught Wednesday glaring at her at least once and soon began to get a feeling that something would soon happen. Of course, it did occur to Jade that the two incidents could be nothing more than near fatal accidents.
Jade rather wanted that to be the case. In the meantime, she figured she wait a day or so and carefully think out her next move.
It was two days later and Jade was about to leave for school. She was dressed, had her bag and walked up to her car and put the key in the lock.
But her hand didn't move, like it had disobeyed her mental will to turn the key. A second later it responded and she began to turn they key but stopped as she felt a sense of Deja-Vu to the other two previous incidents. But again she felt no real sense of danger, just it seemed very familiar.
She backed up and looked at the car and it looked normal, no damage and it was parked in the same spot in the driveway as last night.
But the fact that her hand wouldn't unlock the door right away told her something. It was stay out of the car. She put down her bag and began a close inspection of the outside of the car and underside of the car.
Again nothing seemed to be wrong.
So she stood by the driver's side door and looked inside for two solid minutes. Has she gotten in and began to drive she'd be getting on the expressway about this point.
"I'm being stupid." Jade muttered as she spotted something small moving on the car seat. Leaning close to the window, Jade could see it was a spider.
Not just any spider, the thing about 2 inches long was black and had an unmistakable red hourglass shape on its body. It was a poisonous Black Widow Spider.
"FUCK!" Yelled Jade as she quickly opened the door, grabbed the scissors from her boot and used it to impale the arachnid. The creature's legs flayed for a moment before stopping as it died.
While Jade wasn't afraid of spiders, she was a little bit freaked that one found its way into her car. She knew of course that such spiders were found in southern California but it seemed strange.
She walked to the curb where the trash cans were, it was trash day, and dumped the dead spider in the garbage. She made a thorough check of the car which turned up no more spiders, but she did find 94 cents in change, a pair of scissors she thought she had lost and a very old and used condom. The condom was left over from session in the back seat with Beck, almost a year ago.
The spider didn't gross her out, but the condom and the thought of having sex with Beck, did. It was also discarded in the trash.
As she put the lid on the can and grabbed her bag, Jade nodded, "Yeah, she's definitely trying to kill me."
Actually spiders have been known to nest in peoples cars. Mazda had a car recall for that specific reason some years back. They kept finding spiders in them.
The passages Jade reads from "The Art of War" are in fact from the book.
I know this chapter is rather light on Wednesday Addams, but we'll see more of her in future chapters.