Man it's been awhile since I've been here. Things have been happening, I guess, but I've returned.
After 3
Ruby and Yang were quick to move from their hospital room. It wasn't like they were particularly injured to begin with, and they were very interested in what they heard on the intercom. The strange man who came out of nowhere and attacked Ruby was finally awake. Whoever or whatever he was, it was finally their chance to find out. That is, if they even spoke the same language. He didn't respond well to Ruby's questions, or at all for that matter. If they spoke a different language, someone with a telepathy skill could be brought in, although it would definitely take some time. They both hoped it wouldn't be the case. If they were lucky, maybe this person was from the same world as Madara was. That way, they might be able to learn something about his origins.
Unfortunately, those thoughts, hopes and minor fears, were shaken loose along with the hallway they were in. somewhere in the distance, there was a loud crash or explosion, and it caused the building they were in to wobble. The sisters were nearly knocked off their feet by the sudden strength of the tremor, but managed to steady themselves with each other. Promptly, the lights overhead turned red, and a security alarm blared its piercing wail. A mechanical voice began instructing everyone inside to begin evacuating, but Ruby and Yang were deaf to it. In just a few seconds, their scrolls pinged with the same notification. The facility automatically sent out a distress call to all nearby huntsmen and huntresses, of which they were obviously the closest.
"I'll check the east wing, I'll check the west." Yang called out, already making her way to her half of the facility.
"Got it!" Ruby answered and, in an instant, disappeared in an explosion of flower petals. It took mere seconds for her to whisk her way through the many rooms and halls of the hospital. Luckily, most of the facility remained intact, despite the violence of the tremors. They were built with a vast amount of resources after all. The few pieces of debris that were loosened from wherever they were before were easily cleared away or bypassed.
Ruby carefully swept each room she came across, making sure that she didn't accidentally miss anyone, which would have disastrous results. She left the door of each room she checked open, for her own sake. Soon, however, she came upon a closed door, from which she could hear repeated banging. She peered through the small glass pane that was built into the door, and saw the panicked face of a nurse. Ruby couldn't hear what she was saying, but she didn't need to. Rather, the nurse needed to hear her to avoid serious injury.
"Hold on! I'm getting you out!" Ruby shouted, hoping the woman would hear her.
Naturally, Ruby first tried the handle. It wouldn't budge, no matter how much she pushed with her twigs for arms. Abandoning the test of strength, she backed away and unfolded Crescent Rose. she made sure to brandish the weapon so that the nurse could see it, and subsequently clear the way. Ruby then pointed the barrel at the handle, and pulled the trigger. Immediately, the bullet obliterated the handle, along with a good chunk of the door itself. Needless to say, it allowed Ruby to open the door without much resistance. The nurse burst out from the room, strained both emotionally and physically.
"Thank you. Thank you so much." The nurse said, repeatedly bowing her head. "Ms. huntress, I-"
"Sorry, can't stay here. I gotta go." Ruby said, and turned back towards the end of the corridor untravelled. But before she could move, the nurse spoke up again.
"Wait, please! Just before the rumbling happened, Dr. Hearts called for me to come to emergency room 04, saying that the strange white skinned patient was waking up. I think that's the source. It's ten rooms past the door on the left."
Ruby stared at her for a moment, but then quickly nodded. "Alright, thanks. Get out of here as fast as you can." Without waiting for the nurse's reply, Ruby dashed off once more, following her directions to the letter. She counted the number of doors she passed until coming upon a short hallway, and at the end of the hallway was a pair of doors. She could see fire and smoke beyond the small glass windows built into the door, and rushed through them. On the other side, she found a massive hole in the meter thick wall. Most flammable things in the room were burning bright and young, and a middle aged man on the ground. He was neither breathing nor moving, and when Ruby checked for his pulse, she found none.
Ruby looked back towards the hole in the wall, and through her right eye, saw a faint trail of chakra leading out. Certain that this was the fault of the pale horned guy, she took out her scroll and called Yang.
"Ruby?" Yang's voice came through, finally, after about 10 seconds.
"No time to explain. I'm going after the guy who did all this." Ruby shouted into her scroll. She noticed that the trail was beginning to dissipate, and she couldn't wait around any longer. She ignored her sister telling her to wait, hung up and immediately gave chase.
She ran at top speed, but it wasn't enough to keep up with the evaporating trail. So, of course, she activated her semblance and charged herself with lightning chakra. Her semblance rendered her virtually intangible. With the exception of things like walls and entire buildings, she could ignore just about anything that found itself in her way. The longer she ran, the thicker the trail became, to her fortune and relief. She was getting closer, without a doubt, but maybe it would've been better if she didn't.
She came to a sudden stop, causing the electricity that gathered around her to scatter and shout. She finally caught up to her person of interest, that strange pale man. He was staring down some pedestrian like he was trying to take their very soul. The civilian, unsurprisingly, looked utterly confused and rather uncomfortable with the attention.
"Hey!" Ruby shouted, getting the pale man's attention. He turned his head to her, allowing the passerby to slip away and resume whatever it was he was doing.
"Who are you?" Ruby asked loudly, though still unsure if he understood the language.
The pale man suddenly strutted towards Ruby, although made no obviously hostile motions. He simply stopped in front of her and stared into her eyes instead. He actually seemed much more interested with her than the other guy. Ruby couldn't help but feel put off by the attention. Something about the way he was looking at her, or what was going on behind the eyes, felt completely wrong. Eventually, he finally opened his mouth to speak, but only in a whisper.
"Fascinating…" He said, cupping his chin in his hand.
"Umm, what? No, more importantly, who are you?" Ruby asked defensively.
The veins around his eyes suddenly bulged out from under his skin, just like before. "How does something with so little chakra like you possess such an eye? And what is that other eye?"
"You… know what these are?" Ruby muttered to herself, growing curious herself. "Do you know my brother then? His name's Madara-AAH!" Ruby suddenly jumped back, reacting to the fraction of a second that the Rinnegan allowed her to detect. Not a moment later, the man's hand shot up from his side, and if Ruby hadn't moved, she would have been jabbed in the face. Even as his arm stuck out, he looked as calm as he did before.
"Hmm, you're somewhat faster than I thought, but I can't let someone with that eye roam freely." He said coldly before reorienting himself into an offensive posture.
Ruby unfolded Crescent Rose again and held it by her side, ready to slice apart anything that stood in her way. Immediately, the man was upon her with one arm outstretched. As he swung, his fingernails extended to the length of a machete blade. She blocked with the blade of her scythe, locking them both into place. She activated the scythe's second function, and the now-electrified blade easily cut through his nails. He jumped back, with surprise painted clearly on his face.
He quickly rebounded towards her, avoiding her consecutive strikes with almost no effort. Even after ramping up her speed, she couldn't land an actual hit on him, despite him being noticeably larger than herself. The smile on his face was mocking her and the speed she prided herself in. Her attacks were becoming faster, but less precise and even easier to deal with, but dodging wasn't the only thing her opponent was up to.
Eventually, the man suddenly jumped back well beyond the range of her scythe. Ruby quickly began to advance, but her first step landed her foot in something wet and slimy. She looked down at her feet and saw that she just stepped into a large puddle of a translucent blue liquid. In fact, she'd been dancing around in this fluid for quite awhile. Crescent rose was covered in it too. She was able to quickly identify the source, with the same liquid seemingly leaking from the pale man's fingertips. More unnerving, was the thin yet confident smile on his face.
He held up a single finger, and a small blue fire appeared floating above it. He pointed it at the pool that Ruby was standing in, causing it to ignite. The fire spread rapidly, even faster than Ruby could flee. She barely managed to escape without being caught up in the pool of blue fire. However, he then pointed his flaming finger at Ruby herself. She saw his chakra move from his finger towards her at high speed, and she moved her scythe in front of her to shield herself.
Crescent Rose was set ablaze, forcing Ruby to drop it and continue to move. She didn't know how much of that fire her aura would be able to handle, if any at all. As much as it hurt to abandon her partner, she couldn't repair it if she became well done. A sense of horror soon filled her when she saw what was becoming of her beloved weapon. The red paint was all but gone already, and the blade was starting to lose its shape, slowly but surely.
She moved as quickly as she could, circling around the man so fast that anyone else would only see a bright ring of light forming around him. Electricity was sparking from her entire body, crackling violently and growing more powerful as she kept running. Finally, after reaching a certain threshold, she managed to wipe the smile from his face. It became more of a mix of curiosity and apprehension as arcs of electricity jumped from the walls and onto his body, forcing him to fidget and spasm in place.
Ruby suddenly changed course, running towards the wall of a nearby building and continuing her course vertically. She launched herself into the sky, the ring of electricity would contain him long enough for her descent, which came immediately. She fell upon him like a lightning bolt, but not before using her semblance to escape the epicenter of a massive arc flash.
The city block was filled with light and energy, and the subsequent boom shattered every window within 50 meters. Ruby waited until then to return to being corporeal, and was finally able to stop running.
"Eye of the storm" she called it, an attack that used up almost all of her stamina and chakra to form. It could punch through just about anything known to man, including the largest and oldest of Grimm, and strike it down with the power of the heavens.
Exhausted, Ruby fell to one knee to catch her breath. She couldn't even hold both of her eyes open anymore, which prompted her left eye to activate. Her aura began to blink, and the flickering became more frequent with each second. As she got back onto her feet, her aura cracked and dispersed, but her exhaustion was gone and her eyes felt fine. It took quite a while to figure out, but she was glad she now understood it.
Right on time, her scroll started to ring. It was probably Yang, asking just where she'd gone and what she did. Unfortunately, that came with the realization that she might have just done something irreversible. Before answering her scroll, she looked back towards the epicenter of her discharge. There were scorch marks created by the electrical explosion, but there was nothing else, much to her concern. She didn't believe for a second that she completely vaporized him, and if he was gone, then he must have escaped. Since he didn't try to attack Ruby while she was distracted, then he either was too wounded to continue to fight, or he lost interest. She hoped it wasn't the latter as she answered her scroll.
"Hello?" Ruby said quietly.
"Ruby, I saw that flash and I'm headed your way. What's happening over there?" Yang quickly asked.
"The guy… umm, he escaped, but I'm fine. How far are you?"
"Two minutes."
"Alright, I'll stay put then." Ruby said, before hanging up.
She found Crescent Rose nearby, or rather, a large mess of half-melted metal and paint that used to be Crescent Rose. Once again, she shuddered to think what would've happened if that fluid got on her. How that guy used it, it wasn't like anything she'd seen before. He didn't wave his hands together to make any kind of signs. The way his eyes and the veins around them expanded large enough to be visible under his skin was unsettling, as was the lack of actual movement of the eyes themselves. It was like he could see her without needing to look. For the first time in a very long time, she was actually happy that she was going to have to write up a report of what she did. That man was too dangerous for only her to know about.
