[S&%# o!? c&$ o?! l^#; d ]
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After climbing up the stairs, and removing some rather pesky ghost bats, Ruby found there were two doors at the top of the stairs.
One of which was coated in flames, so Ruby made it a personal priority to search that one first after dousing flames with water.
Once the door was doused and cooled Ruby stepped into the Tea Room, seeing two moderately large tables, a pair of cabinets on the wall… and a bucket of ice so cold the bucket is partially frozen.
"Okay…" Ruby muttered as she looked around the room, "What's in this- OW!" Ruby interrupted herself when one of the plates in the room threw themselves at her.
And almost immediately afterwards she was grabbed from behind by ghostly why arms and pulled into a hug.
"AH!" Ruby yelped as she struggled a bit to look behind her at the ghost, before she activated her Semblance once again and bounced around.
The ghost could barely hold onto Ruby in the first place and now it was flung across the room from her movements and slammed into a second grabber ghost, and then into one of the cabinets.
"I don't know why I haven't been using my Semblance this whole time." Ruby muttered as she blinded the ghost's with her flashlight before vacuuming them up, which in turn allowed the lights to come back on.
With a large white chest appearing on the table without the frozen bucket.
"Wait… Could that be the Ice Medal in there?" Ruby muttered to herself as she pulled the chest off the table and opened it, revealing a white medal that was cold to the touch.
"Yes!" Ruby cheered holding the medal high, "I don't think I need E. Gadd to explain this one at this point. I just need a source of… Cold." Ruby's head turned to the frozen bucket, "Well that's convenient."
As she approached the frozen bucket an Ice Elemental Spirit popped out and was promptly, with an apology, sucked into the vacuum that was the Poltergust.
Next Ruby checked the Boo Radar, whom was hiding in the cabinets.
"Jingle, jangles, Mr. Boojangles!" The Boo declared… Right before it was vacuumed up with extreme proficiency.
"One less." Ruby said, "You know, ghosts aren't starting to scare me as much now."
With the Tea Room cleared, Ruby turned her attention to the Dustboy Horror's map of the mansion to figure out where to go next.
Only to be surprised that there were four unlocked doors she could enter.
"Okay… I'll start with the cluster of doors at the end there!" Ruby muttered.
With that Ruby stepped out of the tearoom and into the Second Floor hallways, avoiding ghost mice, bats, and the exploding ghost hedgehogs that were crawling out of the painting near the bathrooms.
Thankfully only a few came out of the wall, leaving Ruby completely dumbfounded at what they were.
"That just makes no sense!" Ruby cried out before she stepped into the door on her right, entering Nana's Room
Where the first thing Ruby noticed was a rocking chair that was consistently rocking with no one in it.
"Oh no." Ruby muttered as she lifted the Dustboy Horror up to see the ghost.
An old woman with large white hair and a purple dress that was constantly knitting… Something.
"She's probably guarding a key." Ruby muttered, she really didn't want to harass an old lady, but she had to if she needed to progress through the Mansion.
She started to approach the old lady, only to trip on the carpet and knock a trio of yarn balls out of their bowl.
"Ah ha! Haha ha!" The old ghost laughed at Ruby's mistake.
"Why you…" Ruby growled grabbing one of the yarn balls and throwing it at the old lady, something Ruby wouldn't normally do, but if it meant saving her mom, Ruby would do anything.
Surprising Ruby was the fact that the yarn not only made contact with the old woman, but knocked her out of the rocking chair and exposed her Spectral Heart. To which Ruby was quick to take advantage of and began to vacuum the old ghost up.
Ruby stumbled a bit when she stepped on one of the yarn balls, causing her to careen into the bookshelf in the room, but Ruby quickly recovered and managed to capture the old ghost, lighting up the room and revealing a chest.
Ruby smiled as she looked at the chest, then noticed an old journal had been knocked out of the bookshelf.
Ruby frowned and looked at the journal and skimmed it a bit. From what Ruby figured, it was the old lady's journal, and she had a bit of a mischievous streak considering she dumped ice in this 'Ms. Petunia's' bath. Still at the very least it would be information to file away for later as Ruby got to work finding the Boo in the room, and find it she did as the Boo hid in the old spinning wheel in the room.
"Stinky, Stinky, LimBooger!" The Boo cackled as Ruby began to vacuum the ghost up.
"I don't care about your names!" Ruby cried out as the ghost was quickly captured, "Seriously I don't need to know all your pun names! I get enough bad puns from my sister!"
Ruby took a minute to calm down taking the key from the chest, which much to her ire lead all the way back near the entrance of the mansion, right next to Chauncey's Room, before leaving the room and heading to the room at the end of the hall, The Bathroom.
And the first thing Ruby noticed was that the Shower was running, and then she noticed the shadow on the drawn curtain was a female one… One with a body shape that would bring most women to envy.
"That's no doubt a ghost." Ruby muttered, "Still I hope nobody sees this or I'll be labelled a pervert no doubt.
Ruby grabbed the curtain and tore it to the side to reveal…
A fat woman in a bikini, pink skin, and a pig's nose.
"What the-!?" Ruby cried out and the ghost herself gave off a huff of annoyance and chuck a large amount of water from the tub at Ruby, who jumped out of the way as she didn't want to get wet… Then proceeded to ignore Ruby.
"Okay, that was deserved I suppose." Ruby muttered before releasing a stream of ice from the Poltergust, dropping the temperature of the water quickly.
"Ah- Achoo!" The ghost of Ms. Petunia sneezed, right before Ruby began the suction of the Poltergust and very quickly caught the ghost. Lighting up the room and causing a key to appear on top of a shelf in the room.
After grabbing the key, which lead back to the only room she couldn't access on the first floor, Ruby went into the next room, the Washroom.
Ruby noticed the leak coming off the pipe to the toilet and the Water Elemental Spirit floating around, and quickly sucked it up in case she needed it in the room, and in doing so, shook a ghost out of the toilet, whose Spectral Heart was ablaze.
Ruby took a brief moment to douse the heart, and then continued to soak it until it had faded away, lighting up the room and revealing a green chest full of money and treasure, of which Ruby was happy to vacuum up.
Next was the last door of the floor that was unlocked for Ruby, to which after dealing with a ghost that pulled purple orbs from its mouth in an attempt to bowl Ruby over, literally, ruby entered the Astral Hall.
It was just two cabinets, and five candelabras making a circle around a star on the ground, with each candelabra sat at a point.
"Okay." Ruby said as she searched the room, but not a single ghost appeared, "Maybe later?" Ruby asked before leaving the room through the door at the end opposite of where she entered…
Only to find herself back in the same room.
"What?" Ruby asked turning around and opening the door, finding herself in the hallway once more, "Maybe I need to light the candles in there?" Ruby asked as a Fire Elemental Spirit floated out of one of the nearby candles attached to the walls, which Ruby quickly sucked up before returning to the Astral Hall and lighting all the candles.
As soon as they were lit, all of them started to turn purple, and metallic vines sealed the doors shut.
Followed by a yellow ghost crying out from behind Ruby. Causing the Huntress in training to jump from the surprise, but she recovered fast enough to turn around, flash, then capture the ghost.
Almost immediately after a Masked Ghost appeared, to which Ruby quickly removed the mask of and caught.
Then a Masked ghost and a yellow ghost appeared, Ruby used the flames of the Poltergust to erase the yellow ghost from existence before focusing on capturing the Masked ghost.
To end the onslaught was a pair of masked ghosts and a grabber, to which Ruby disposed of the grabber like she did the previous Yellow Ghost and after demasking both of the other ghosts caught them at the same time.
The room lit up after that, but unlike normal, nothing appeared, outside of the Boo Radar activating.
To which Ruby found that Boo hiding within one of the Candelabra.
"I'm Boonswoggle! Plooah!" The Boo declared, before Ruby attempted to capture it, however it slipped out through the wall… This resulted in Ruby chasing the Boo between the Hall and the Astral Hall for a good minute before it was captured.
"Why can't they just stay and fight." Ruby muttered as she returned to the Astral Hall and this time successfully entered the next room.
The Observatory, where Ruby noticed, and was quickly drawn to the telescope.
Peering through the Telescope, Ruby found herself amazed that she could see the stars, even though she was certain that it was stormy out… And then she saw the moon, but something wasn't right.
The moon was whole, no debris of rocks, just a whole moon.
"What?" Ruby muttered as she stepped away from the Telescope, and then noticed that the room had changed.
In fact haf of the walls were gone, with stars surrounding the area, and a small balcony that she could step onto.
"Whoa… Ruby muttered as she stepped out onto the balcony, where she noticed several small comets streaking past her. "So pretty." Ruby muttered as she reached out to try and grab one of the comets.
Instead she hit one of them and launched it toward the moon, which caused several explosions to come from the moon and when the explosions stopped, the moon was gone.
"Oops." Ruby muttered right before she was blinded.
When she could see again, she saw a snaking path of light in front of her, ending at a small dome of meteorite that had something white flowing above it.
Ruby was shocked at the white object as she knew what it was, she used her semblance to traverse the short path to reach the white object, which was reintroduced to gravity the moment Ruby touched it.
A white cloak and hood, with a rose motif pin on it.
"Mom…" Ruby said looking at the cloak, taking a moment to sit down and hug the cloak close to her.
Above all else at the moment, Ruby just needed a moment to herself.
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Alright, that's it for this chapter, in the next we're getting into backtracking a bit… God I hated this part of the game, despite me loving the game so much because right about the Astral hall is when this just got infuriating for me.
Granted it was mainly the Boo's having too much health so they would constantly leave the room and I had to keep chasing them back and forth, which was especially infuriating on the Second floor when they can easily decide they want to go back to Area 1.
The other part is because this is when we start having to go back to previous areas to catch ghosts and then of course my favorite Boss coming at the end of Area 3.
I swear, Boolossus could have been the final boss and I would have been none the wiser compared to King Boo.
Anyway, I got work tomorrow so I may not be updating this story every day, but I'm gonna try my hardest to do so.
Also I know that FF is being a bit of a bitch at the moment, as usual, but I've noticed the app can still pull up recently posted chapters... Well for me at least. If this shit gets screwed up I'll repost chapters so this can be fixed, hopefully.
So I'll see you next time.