Well, well, well, what have we here?
A new chapter, huh? Oooh, I'm really scared!

... No, seriously, I'm scared. 0_0

VAT IS DAS? I'm EARLY? Oh my goodness gracious me! THE WORLD'S GONE CRAZY! AAAAAHHH! ... Okay, I'm fine now. :3

Anyway, yep! Imma day early! Well, I just enjoyed writing this chapter SO MUCH that I may or my not have devoted some of my time writing this when I SHOULD have been working on my English and Science assignents, uheh... ^^" BUT, besides that, I'm actually REALLY PROUD of how this turned out! OMG I love writing so much!

Wwwwow, I'm sounding like a giddy little girl... which is pretty much what I am at heart! :)

Dark. That was all Elinor's mind comprehended. Where was she? How long had she been like this? These were questions that she needed answers to. Desperately.

The last thing she remembered was a massive explosion, some strange people with Australian accents, a storm and… Ruby. What the Hell had she been thinking? Ruby was a nice girl! All she had done since they had met by the party table was help Elinor; why did she go and bare her fangs at her? She couldn't be that mean… could she?

Elinor sighed (or at least she thought she did). Maybe she was better off running away from the world: no friends, no family, no nothin'. She couldn't risk the lives of anyone who helped her, or was nice to her. She wouldn't have been able to live with herself if something bad… had happened… to them…

'Oh my God,' she thought to herself, panic surging through her, 'Jesus Christ, Lord Almighty… what happened to everyone else?!' she was now, or at least she assumed, hyperventilating (again), 'Were they captured too? Oh, please no, please no, please no, please no…'

Those monster kids were innocent! If they were going through heck knew what, it would all be ELINOR'S fault!

At that point in time, Elinor had managed to work herself up into a state of overdrive. Her brain felt like it was on fire, her limbs like electricity was shooting through them, her stomach as if it had tightened up like a rubber band. She fought whatever darkness she was in, like something was forcing her to keep her eyes shut, and not move. Fight it! Fight it! Fight it!

Click!

A light bulb flickered on revealing where Elinor was. As it turned out, she had only been chained to a wall in an extremely dark room. Oh.

"Good," said a female voice, "You're awake."

Elinor looked up from where she had been staring at the ground (without realising it a few moments ago), to glare at a women who looked to be in her early thirties. She had her light blonde hair tied into a neat bun, and she was wearing a business suit.

'Great. A suit,' Elinor thought.

The women looked like she had an air of authority about her, like she owned the place. Knowing Elinor's luck, she probably did.

"We've been tracking you for quite a while," said the lady, with a creepily chipper voice, "You certainly know how to avoid detection."

She paused to see Elinor's reaction. She replied by hissing with her forked tongue.

The women continued, "We must admit, we were surprised when we found you inside an old Victorian mansion with… others," she said the last word like it tasted bad to pronounce it.

Elinor felt her anger again. This time it felt like it was burning away in her stomach, and eating the bottom of her lungs. She swore, if she wasn't chained up…

"You don't seem to be very talkative," the lady commented, piercing her eyes a little, "Perhaps you're less intelligent than we thought."

'OOOOOOH YOU DID NOT JUST SAY THAT!' was what Elinor wanted to say. However, she did an amazing feat and managed to control her anger for once: it wasn't professional to lose your anger in front of your captives. She had had plenty of experience with that.

"I don't talk very much to people that I don't like," Elinor growled.

The lady, instead of looking threatened, simply smirked a little and wrote something down in a notebook.

"You mustn't like very many people, then," the lady said.

Elinor remained silent.

"Where are the others?" she hissed after a while of staring each other down.

"Oh, don't worry," said the lady, "They're quite alright. As long as you cooperate, your friends will stay that way."

BOOM. Elinor lost it.

She lurched as far as the chains would allow, snarling and hissing, trying to claw her way out of her chains in frenzy. She hated this woman. Hated her.

"Now, now," the woman said, as if she were a mother calming a child throwing a tantrum, "Just behave. You wouldn't want anything to happen to your friends, now would you?"

Elinor breathed heavily, in and out. In and out. She was glaring at the woman with all the anger and predatorial strength she could muster. Slowly, she closed her mouth and relaxed her muscles.

"Good girl," the woman said. And with that she left the room, turning off the light as she went, drowning Elinor once again in darkness...

Only to leave her in her confusion; the lady had addressed all the kids from the mansion as 'her friends'. Well, at least this would give her something to think about while she was stuck here...

Ruby groaned. There was a searing pain in the back of her head, and her arm felt like a knife was shoved into it. She looked around with her blurry vision, and could make out some vertical bars. Wait, what?

Ruby tried to stand up, only to have her head whack an extremely low roof. She covered her now pumping-with-pain head, and looked around again. She looked like she was in some kind of... cage? Why would she be, of all places, in a cage? It just didn't make sense.

"Ruby?"

The red head perked up instantly at the mention of her name, for she knew exactly whom it had come from. Right across her, on the other side of a bar wall, was Skull Boy.

"Ruby!" he cried, crawling over as fast as he could to the happiest girl in the world, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Skull Boy," Ruby lied. Actually, she was in quite a lot of pain. But just the sight of Skull Boy made her heart beat so much faster.

"Do you know what's happening?" Skull Boy asked Ruby, anxiousness in his eyes and voice.

"I don't know," Ruby said, truthfully this time, "Where's everyone else?"

"I don't know where they are," Skull Boy said, "Either that or we're the only ones here... I'm just so happy to see you, Ruby!"

At that, Ruby felt her cheeks blush. Then a thought crossed her mind, and suddenly she sat up straight, almost bumping her head again.

"Where's Elinor?" she asked.

Skull Boy was quiet for a moment. Ruby felt the atmosphere around them tense up.

"They took Elinor away," Skull Boy said, "I don't know where, but they injected something in her; I think it was some kind of sleeping syndrome..." Skull Boy looked off into space in thought.

"Why would they only be interested in Elinor?" Ruby wondered.

"Maybe they'll come back for us," Skull Boy said, sounding worried.

"Hey," Ruby said with her reassuring voice on, "It'll to be okay, Skull Boy. It's going to be okay."

Ruby pushed her fingers through the bars into Skull Boy's side. Skull Boy pushed his bony, gloved hands up against hers and they looked into each other's eyes.

"Alright, Ruby," Skull Boy said, "I believe you."

It pained Ruby that she didn't have the heart to tell Skull Boy that Elinor had tried to potentially hurt her right before the strange men showed up.

ELINOR WHAT HAVE YOU GOTTEN EVERYONE INTO?!

Ehem... Well! It seems that the only thing we have gathered from who these people are from this chapter is that they know what they're doing, they don't give their 'guests' very nice rooms, and they wear SUITS (Suits are never a good sign, unless you're Jack Skellington or James Bond. ]8|).

I originally planned on making this chapter longer, but I have this three to four page limit on my chapters, for some strange reason, so I might also post something up tomorrow as well, if I can coax my brain into it...

Thank you for reading! Please don't forget to leave a review, if you like!

Ruby Gloom and all participating characters DO NOT BELONG TO MOI.

However, Elinor DOES.

...

And so do the mysterious Australian monster-hunting people (Or do they? -.0)

See ya!