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The next morning, Ruby woke up to the smell of smoke and the crackle of a fire. It was pleasant, and the smell was a strange kind of homey comfort. But she hadn't started it, she hadn't even gotten up, so...
She rolled over and shot to her feet in a flurry of rose petals that scattered across their little camp-site, terrified she might have left it burning and already reaching for the coconut shell halves to scoop water up from the river in case it needed to be doused. It would suck to soak the wood, she'd have to dry it out on the beach again, but it was better that than letting a fire burn-
Neo blinked at her, sitting beside the fire and a couple of fried fish cooked the way Ruby had done them - exactly like it, in fact, and when had she learned that? - and cocked her head to the side in an obvious, "You okay?"
"You, uh..." Ruby blinked, dropped her coconut half and scratched at the back of her neck anxiously. "You, uh, caught some fish?"
Neo nodded, well, mutely, pointed at the beach, and mimed stabbing them with her narrow sword. Then she held out the fish she'd made for Ruby and, feeling suddenly very awkward, plopped onto the ground and started to eat. At least that way, Ruby didn't have to talk nearly as much.
Of course, Neo was mute, so that just left them sitting in an awkward silence…
Which was just awesome.
Yep…
"So." Ruby started unsurely once she was done eating, "How, uh, how are you feeling?"
The woman shrugged, cocked her head, then pointed at the leg she kept stretched out to one side and then to her head quizzically.
"Are you… Asking if I mean your leg or, um, the other stuff?" Neo nodded, and Ruby grimaced. To be honest, she'd have loved to ask about the 'other stuff', but… Well, if Neo wanted to talk about any of that, Ruby would let her come to her about it. So she shrugged and said, "Um, your leg."
She made a so-so gesture with a hand and then stood and leaned her weight on the injured leg. It was a bit stiff, still, and neo grimaced when she put too much weight on it - but it held just fine. Even if Neo was in a bit of a hurry to sit back down, and rubbed at her shin to ease the pain out.
"That's great!" Ruby smiled and clapped excitedly, "By tomorrow, you should be back to normal. Which is awesome!"
Neo coked her head and smirked, then drew an 'O' shape in the air and raised an eyebrow in what Ruby guessed meant, "Oh?"
"Yeah!" Ruby nodded, grinning ear to ear at how obvious it all was. "You can help out more around the camp!"
Neo gave her a look at that and rolled her eyes, and Ruby sighed.
"That means I can explore more! Maybe find some other people- Or better shelter, maybe a better camp-site." Really, the possibilities were endless - and Ruby could see the woman's face shift from the kind of bewildered resignation Weiss often wore to a kind of contained excitement as she thought about it all, too. Beaming, Ruby said, "See? It's awesome! Plus, you know, walking is probably fun for you."
Neo nodded, then stiffened and wrapped a hand around the handle of her sword, staring past Ruby at something in the woods.
Ruby leapt and turned through the air, trailing petals as she jumped over the fire and came down beside Neo with her hand stretched out. Silent and without questioning, Neo pressed the handle of the sword to her hand and hobbled up and back as the creature showed itself, pushing through the thick jungle undergrowth further up the river.
Unlike the big lizard from before, this one walked on four legs and turned its head to watch them with one of its deep-set, green eyes. It was thick, too - stocky, with a long, wide body that ended in a stubby little tail that bobbed side-to-side as it trundled into their clearing. Unlike the long, barbed feathers of the first creature they'd met, this one's were barely longer than her hands and looked much thinner and softer. They were colored a dull blue, too, with swirling patterns along its flanks and weaving along its spine.
Its head was smaller than the monster from before's, too, but with a huge, blood-red crest with a pigmented pattern that almost looked like eyes. The crest stretched up and out in a sort of ear shape to either side, with long, bony horns that split out from it like thick, black hair styled up and back in spikes. A long, lone horn split up from its snout and its mouth was beaked, like a bird's. It turned before it reached them and ate from the stubby bushes and low hanging branches along the river-bed.
It watched them, though, the whole time it ate.
"I think it's just an herbivore." Ruby murmured, watching it warily and looking past it as two more pushed through the brush. One was as big as the first, with deep, ruddy brown feathers, but the other was tiny. "Awww, a baby…"
She could feel the judgement coming from the woman standing behind her.
"Oh, shush, Neo." She griped, "It's cute."
After a moment, the three feathered lizards crawled into the water and walked along the river past them, to the beach. Ruby followed them long enough to watch them come to the ocean's edge and start stomping through the water together while the ruddy brown one laid out and sunned itself and then turned back. As cute as the baby was, she wasn't about to try and play with it with Mommy and Daddy watching her.
They were still big animals, and those horns looked nasty.
"They're just sunbathing." Ruby explained when Neo stood and cocked her head, looking half-ready to run or fight at a word from her. "I think they're just plant eaters, so we should be fine as long as we don't, you know… Make 'em mad."
Neo nodded and took her seat again, feeding a few little sticks into the fire to keep it going.
Ruby took a little bit to sit and work on her necklace, punching the precise little holes in the shiny scales and threading them. A couple dozen scales took the better part of an hour, but as the sun started to dip, she tied the knot on the end of the string and held it up in the light. It glinted in dozens of bright colors as she turned it to catch the sun's rays, and Ruby smiled.
It was just so pretty!
Penny was going to love it when she showed it to her, Ruby just knew it.
"Hey, Neo, lookie." Ruby smiled, laying the necklace over her shoulders and nestling the ornamented scales across her chest like one of Weiss' fancy pearl necklaces. "What do ya think?"
Neo looked from it to her, smirked, and shimmered. Ruby's mirror image replaced her, with the pretty necklace and everything, and Neo struck a saucy pose with a finger on her chin, an innocent little look, and her other hand trailing up her stomach towards her chest to play with the scales.
"W-What kind of answer is that?!" She squawked, flushing brightly and flopping back on the sand when the illusion shattered to show Neo laughing madly, if mutely, at her. Playfully pitifully, Ruby whined, "You're so mean…"
But she wasn't trying to kill her, so that was nice.
And hey, she'd made a joke! That had to be progress.
Right?
But, more importantly, "We should probably move camp tomorrow."
Neo cocked her head and drew a question mark in the air, "Why?"
"If those guys can just… Stroll up on us like that, then anyone can." Ruby explained simply, "And besides, we were attacked by a carnivore. Those guys track the big plant eaters, which means one could be right on their trail. Maybe a day behind, I read wolves can track for days back in Beacon, so, you know… Probably don't wanna wake up to one of those looking for breakfast."
Neo grimaced, clearly unhappy to leave their little camp - which was fair, it was quiet and comfortable - but nodded understandingly. After a second, she gestured at their shelter in an obvious question.
"It's just palm fronds and sticks." Ruby shrugged, "I'll just make a new one wherever we get to. And I can, ya know, teach you if you want."
Neo cocked her head the other way, curious.
"You learned to do the fish like I did easily enough just by, uh, I guess watching?" At some point, though Ruby had no idea when she'd done that. She just knew Neo had - the fish were cleaned too similarly, and it was a Beacon course that she'd gone through. Neo only shrugged, though, so Ruby went on, "I could teach you how to make one of these. It's super simple."
Neo thought about it for a little while, shrugged, and nodded lazily. So, she wasn't super motivated to do it…
But!
That meant less work on Ruby, building their shelters and keeping them up while they explored the island. Which, thinking about that…
"Where do you think everyone else is?" She asked, earning a raised eyebrow and another cock of the woman's head. "My team, I mean. My friends."
Neo scowled, then, face twisting in a foul grimace. She crossed her arms and shrugged, turning to watch the fire with a dour, agitated expression. Ruby blinked, brows furrowing confusedly, and Neo huffed, tucking Roman's hat further down on her head and pitching a stick into the fire.
"Neo," she started, "we have to find them."
Neo gave her a look, eyes hard and face harder, and then shrugged as she turned back to the fire.
"We have to figure out where we are." Ruby pressed, turning and pointing up at the giant, at least seemingly magical, tree and adding, "Which is probably not on Remnant. And if it's not on Remnant, then… Well, I don't want to run into the Gods, ookay?"
Neo rolled her eyes and gave Ruby a look like she expected she was joking, but Ruby just held her gaze, face flat and serious. Which made Neo pause, cock her head and draw a question mark in the air again.
"How much were you told?" Neo shrugged and lifted up an empty coconut half, dropped a few bones in it, and showed her. It was maybe a fifth full, so Ruby asked, "You, uh, picked up a few things but weren't really told much?"
Neo smiled and nodded, and Ruby smiled, too. Understanding her was hard, but she was working it out.
One more step to getting Neo on team good guy! Assuming Ruby could get it past Yang, of course… But that was a problem for future Ruby! Who Ruby did not envy! At all! Because Yang was definitely going to kill her!
Anyway…
"Long version or short?" Neo shrugged and waved a hand around them as if to ask what they'd be rushing for, and Ruby sighed. "Okay, so, a long time ago- Like, a super, incredibly long time ago, I mean. Longer than Dust has been a thing, in fact, which yeah, that's crazy, but anyway, there was a super tall, pretty tower out in the middle of nowhere. In it lived a girl named Salem. And, well, you've met her…"
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It ended up taking a couple hours to tell Neo the whole story, and answer any questions she typed out on Ruby's Scroll. Neo was kind of hard to read, though, so Ruby didn't know how she felt about it all. Or even if she believed what Ruby had told her at all! But the woman didn't argue with her, and when she turned in early, she had a pensive kind of look to her. And she'd barely eaten her dinner besides.
Which, normally, Ruby would have made her eat to keep her callories up.
But what Salem was, and who the gods were, was a pretty big pill to choke on…
The next morning, Ruby woke up to the sound of a crackling fire and gently rolling thunder. Some oysters - each the size of her head with shells covered in spikes - were for breakfast alongside a crab as wide as Ruby's torso that Neo had dismembered to cook. The oysters tasted like steamed snot, and had a texture like super sticky chicken nuggets, but the huge crab was actually really good!
And Neo was walking around, too! She carried their food to the river to scatter it and let it float off without even much of a limp.
"I'm happy." Ruby said as Neo brought over a handful of sticks shed apparently cut up while Ruby was sleeping. She froze as she sat, gave Ruby a look, and then sat and fed a few into the fire. "That your leg healed up well, I mean. I was kind of worried, you know?"
Neo gave her a look, eyes narrowing a bit as she drew a question mark.
"I told you, Neo." Ruby smiled, "I'm a Huntress. Whether we were fighting or not, I don't want you dead. Or even hurt!"
Neo gave her a long look, then shrugged and turned to the stack of sticks she'd gathered. Seemingly not sure what to do with them, she just sort of piled them up and looked like she was going to ignore them entirely.
"Here, let me make some more rope." Ruby said as she stood and moved off to gather more of the fronds.
She brought them over and sat next to Neo, walking her through the way to strip and twine them to make sturdy enough ties, and then sat with her and worked for a while. With a few more shorter fronds wrapped around the pile of sticks to keep it dry, she wrapped up and roped up the bundle so it could be stored. Then she used a pair of longer frond-ropes to make a strap for it so that she could carry it like a really big purse and smile.
"See?" Ruby smiled, turning and tugging on the length of rope to make sure it would hold, at least for a while. "We'll need to replace the ropes kind often but, ya know, do with what ya got! This way, we have wood for a fire anywhere we end up!"
Neo smiled and gave her a thumbs up, and Ruby smiled, too. They were actually getting along…
Which Ruby wasn't sure how she felt about, really. After everything Neo had done, just that Ruby knew of, should Ruby really make friends with her? Saving her from the big monster was simple enough, and they had to work together to stay alive, but…
Did Ruby want to get closer to the mute murderer?
But something in the woman felt… Painful and lonely, in a way that Ruby couldn't place. Or even understand why she felt it. But whenever she was close to her, Neo sort of… Put out a vibe of loneliness, and Ruby gravitated to it - if only to try and make her feel better. Which she probably didn't serve, but…
Ruby couldn't help who she was.
So Ruby just ignored it, smiled, and said, "So, which way do ya wanna go first?"
After a moment, Neo smiled and turned to gather up the half-dozen emptied coconut halves and then looked around. Finally, she pointed off the direction they'd run in initially - to the 'east' using the giant tree as 'north'.
"Works for me, yeah." Ruby smiled, "We saw that big ole boy the other way, after all, so hopefully this way is safe."
Thunder rumbled as they stepped onto the beach and Ruby tucked her hood up around her ears and turned to Neo with a smile. Neo just tugged her hat down just a bit, shrugged, and waved for Ruby to lead the way.
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Basically, they met a Styracosaurus. Which, not knowing what it was, they were scared of. Luckily it's an herbivore! So the waifus are safe. XD
And some more subtle hints at something about the island no one has picked up yet, too. Muahahaha!
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Betwixt Onigiri :
Nope~!
Smokey Panda :
Neo is a character that's fun to write, because she has so much TRAGEDY to her. Especially now her book is out.
Kootranova :
It will probably be a short one, yeah.