A small town in Sweden November 10, 1928

There was no laughter left in the house. Nothing. A little girl wept silently in the darkness, her sobs heard by no one. The closet door shut out any light, leaving her with the cold comfort of her mother's fur coats given to her by suitors when she had lived in Spain. Her mother used to let her tiny daughter with the chocolate curls wear them while telling her the story of how the poor Swedish farmer had won her heart over the richest men in all of Europe. Her father, the poor farmer who had loved them all and had never let she and her brother know just how truly poor they were.

She couldn't imagine her life without them. Everyone had told God called them home, and that it was unfortunate he had done it while she was still a child in need of a mother. Why had God decided to take them and not her? She couldn't go on, even with Hans she couldn't go on. What could he do anyway? He was only seventeen, eleven years her senior. He wasn't old enough to do anything but farm work and they were leaving the farm. She drew her knees close to her chest and wept for her mother and father now cold and dead in the ground.

She didn't hear her brother call her name over and over again. She never heard his frantic cries begging her to appear from wherever she had hidden. They needed to leave soon, he cried, the debt collectors would be coming soon to take the farm. She reached up and pulled on one of the coats until it fell down onto her head. She wrapped it around her, praying to God that this was merely a cruel nightmare she would awake from.

She closed her eyes singing the lullaby her mother had sang to her every night.

Stockholm, Sweden- March 2, 2005 8:52 p.m.

The trio walked down the long staircase with Hellboy leading the way. It became darker and darker with every step. Ruby followed closely behind Abe who was behind Hellboy, the only light now was shining in yellow, blue and white. The clear pupil less eyes of a devil, a merman and a…whatever Ruby was.

Hellboy had gone over and over again trying to pinpoint exactly what sort of creature this new rainbow colored agent was. She was telekinetic, rainbow colored, had white hair, her eyes looked like mirrors head on, but glowed white when you saw them from any other angle. She had the mentality of a five year old and, in his expert opinion, was a complete effing loon. He'd ever seen or heard about anything like her. It made him not trust her all that much more.

Ruby was tired. Her legs hurt and she wanted more than anything to sit down right now. She had the strongest urge to voice her complaints, but knew they would be thrown out as childish banter. Besides, she didn't feel the need to give Hellboy more ammo to use against her.

She thought of how she could avoid walking without them noticing when she remembered she was telekinetic. Sometimes she forgot all that she was capable of. She focused her mind on the air beneath her feet. She could feel the space between her feet and the stone stairs growing. She focused on making it continue to grow, larger and larger. It took only seconds for the rainbow colored teen to be lifted up two feet above the stairs. She continued to will the air to push her forward, staying right behind Abe. Her legs no longer ached and she didn't have any need to complain at all.

It's amazing what I can do if I think real hard, she thought.

Abe was worried. Ruby's footsteps had stopped. He could hear the clicking of Hellboy's hooves still ahead of him, but the heavy steps of the purple-pink-blue-peach-yellow-green girl had stopped. Her boots made a tiny jingle from the multiple buckles with each step and now he couldn't hear any faint jingle. He reached for Hellboy's shoulder.

"Red, stop," he whispered to the red behemoth just in case something sinister was the cause of Ruby's lack of noise he didn't want whatever it was to hear them, "I think Ruby is gone." His heart raced as he thought of what could have happened to the teenage sized girl that had been right behind him. His heart skipped a beat at the thought she might be dead, or worse. There were so many things worse than death.

"What?" Hellboy spun around and looked at the fish man, "Where the hell did she go?"

Ruby looked at the two talking. She had almost run into Abe when he and Hellboy had suddenly stopped but had saved herself at the last minute. She thought it was probably very rude of her to listen on their whispering conversation, but maybe they just had forgotten about her and meant for her to listen. They propabaly forgot since she was so new and they weren't used to having her around yet. She floated over between the two silently and cautiously.

"What are you guys talking about?" Ruby said in a low whisper when she got between them.

Hellboy was spooked by the sudden appearance of the floating teenager and immediately lost his footing. He yelled as he fell down the remaining steps.

Abe grabbed Ruby by both her shoulders. Like Hellboy he could see well in the dark, even when it was ink black, so he had no trouble spotting the pink shoulder and the yellow shoulder of Ruby. He looked straight into her clear eyes where he could see his own face lighted by their soft white glow.

"Where were you?" his voice was strained and shouting, where the hell had she been? He had thought the worst of her sudden disappearance. He shook her with his grip on her shoulders.

"I was behind you" she answered meekly and looked on the verge of tears while she looked at his worried expression. He shook her shoulders again.

"Why didn't I hear you? I thought something had gotten you!" his heart continued raced, relieved to have her safe but still recovering from her sudden pop up between he and Hellboy.

"My legs were tired so I just floated" she stared at him with her mirror eyes, miming his expression. She was worried about his worry.

"Don't do that again! I was worried about you," his tone was gentler now, "You're new at this, you can't become silent like that or you're going to give everyone a heart attack."

"I'm sorry" she suddenly pressed her white capped head against his chest and wrapped her arms around his neck, "I didn't mean for you to get worried about me. I promise I'll never do something like that again without telling you first, Abe."

Abe was suddenly very nervous. Her head was warm and her fingers were soft against his neck. She looked so small and pretty. "Well, yeah," he stammered, "Just make sure someone knows you're doing that so they don't get worried about you when we're just going down someplace quiet."

She looked up at him and smiled, "I will Abe. I promise," she nestled into his chest before looking up. "Where's Hellboy?"

Abe snapped out of the trance Ruby had put him in and remembered that his friend had fallen down the stairs when Ruby had popped out of nowhere.

"Oh crap! Common!" he grabbed Ruby's hand and raced down the remaining steps as fast as he could go. He had forgotten all about Hellboy.

Ruby tried to keep up with Abe but she wasn't as long limbed and felt herself being more dragged than pulled. She was slowing him down considerably and she still had to make up for all the worry she had caused him.

"Hold on Abe!" her grip on his hand tightened.

"What?" Abe hardly had a second to react when he felt his body lifted through the air. The wind whipped around him as Ruby used her telekinesis to lift them both in the air and faster down the stairway. He was really hoping she could see in the dark and wouldn't run into a wall.

His hopes were only half met. Ruby was fully capable of nocturnal vision, unfortunately she wasn't so capable of not being clumsy and noticing the wall three feet ahead of her. She slammed hard into the wall and fell in a heap. Abe didn't hit the wall, but he did have Ruby fall on him. He found out that big black boots and round aqua blue heads don't mix.

"Ouch", a large mass beneath them began stirring. Both of them yelped as Hellboy pulled himself up from underneath them. The three of them struggled to get up and compose themselves and turned towards the huge wall that had left all of them with a huge headache. It was shaped like a door and had intricate symbols all around it. Ruby pressed her finger to the door and flicked it.

"Ow!" she brought her sore finger to her lips and sucked on it, hoping to dull the pain.

"Bright idea, Einstein," Hellboy shook his head at the inexperienced teen and looked for an opening.

"Like you have a better one," she mumbled under her breath and stuck her tongue out at him.

Abe studied the door and looked at the symbols closely. Suddenly it creaked and began to slowly open.

"Whadya do?" Hellboy said.

Abe turned around and looked at him, "Absolutely nothing."

"I don't like that answer," Ruby said. The two looked at her. They didn't like it much either.


Author's note: Alright so I wrote this chapter and it was quite a bit longer. But after some SERIOUS editing I decided to divede them out and completly revamp the begining. The next one is going to take some time since I'm almost completly changing the direction I inteneded on. But...you can be completly assured toknow that I've written the end of this story! Not that I know exactly when this is going end...