Wildwing crept through the trees. When he had first heard her voice, he thought he was imagining things. As he had gotten closer, he saw her. Ruby was standing in the middle of the meadow with her back to him. She appeared to be arguing with herself.
Maybe she was arguing with the spirits. She could be fighting with her imaginary friend, for all he cared. As long as it kept her attention away from him and his goal, he just needed her to stay distracted for a little bit more.
"I need food and I need water!" she heatedly told the invisible person. "Without either, you'll be picking up my bones along with the metal scraps."
The stealthy duck didn't have much time if the tone of her voice was anything to go by. He was almost there, just a few short inches from his target. He didn't even dare breathe for fear of her turning around.
Her scream of frustration stopped him cold. Wildwing looked over at Ruby and saw that her back was still to him. Her head and shoulders slumped in defeat. He thought he heard her sniff.
"You can come out now," she said softly. "He's gone."
How did she know Wildwing was there? He had been very careful to make no noise and to stay behind her. There was no way that she could know that he was there.
He made a grab for her bag when a red form exploded out of it. He froze as the lizard type thing turned and hissed at him. It took the goalie a moment for his brain to accept the flames covering its body.
What the heck was that? It couldn't be the salamander from the other night. That creature hadn't been bigger than his thumb. This thing was at least as long as his hand and forearm combined.
"Great," she grumbled.
He shifted his gaze to her to see her glaring at him and his stomach dropped to the vicinity of his boots.
"As if my day wasn't bad enough. The Mask isn't here, Wildwing. Leave!"
Her eyes glowed briefly and Wildwing suddenly found himself trotting down the hill. He wasn't able to stop until he got back to the bike. He lifted the seat to get his helmet out. He was ready to leave Ruby, just like she wanted. Then what she had said finally registered in his brain.
"I need food and I need water! Without either, you'll be picking up my bones along with the metal scraps."
As he thought about it, she sounded more than just angry, but scared. Wildwing was tempted to just leave when he remembered what he had told his team the other night. If something happened to her, how would they get the mask back? Tanya wasn't making any headway with creating a feasible power supply for the new mask.
Blast her! What was it about this mage that made him want to get to know her one minute and wring her neck the next? Ever since that strange spark of light hit him in the chest, he hadn't been on his game. Whenever she was upset, his heart felt funny and Wildwing couldn't understand why.
He grabbed the bag of food out of the storage area and slammed the seat back down. With a frustrated growl, he marched back up the hill. He didn't care how many times she sent him away, Wildwing was going to get food and water in her if for no other reason than the make his heart stop feeling like it was in a vice grip.
As he got closer to the meadow, Wildwing slowed down and moved as stealthily as possible. There was no point in letting her know he was coming until he could offer her the food and water. While still a ways away, he stopped and watched.
The dark haired mage was on her hands and knees, digging through the dirt. Every once and a while, she'd hand something to the salamander and it would run over to a pile of twisted and burnt metal. It was a fair sized pile, but he had a feeling that there was a lot more still out there. There had been a lot of drones the other night.
The salamander spit out the small bit of metal in its mouth and then ran back to her. How long had she been working at this? The pile wasn't all that big, so probably not for long. However, Ruby had melted a lot of the drones, so maybe she hadn't gotten to the larger pieces yet. Maybe she couldn't move them on her own.
The Mighty Duck captain moved closer, as quietly as he could. When he got to the last of the trees, he heard a strange noise. He barely dared breathe, waiting to see if it would happen again. There it was.
Wildwing knew that sound too well. He watched her and a moment later she hastily wiped her cheeks with the back of her dirty hands. She was crying as quietly as possible, but he would have had to have been dead not to recognize it.
The squeeze on his heart tightened and it was hard for him to breathe. Why was she out here digging up the scraps of metal and crying? She didn't have food or water, so she wasn't prepared. Was Ruby being forced to do this? What could be powerful enough to make her do its bidding? It couldn't be the salamander, it was hiding in her bag when she was arguing with whatever it was.
Another sniff brought him out of his thoughts. She took another swipe at a cheek and bent back to her digging. The hair that had escaped her ponytail was hanging down in her face, but she ignored it.
Another quiet sob and Wildwing couldn't take it any more. He pulled a bottle of water from his bag and boldly walked over to her. He hoped he wasn't making a really big mistake.
The salamander saw him first. It hissed and went running to her. She stared at the thing in confusion and that allowed him to get to her without being blasted. He thrust the bottle at her just as she turned to look at him.
"Here," he said gruffly and he waited for her to take the bottle.
Ruby stared at it with eyes dulled with exhaustion. He could see that the dirt had mixed with her tears, leaving muddy smears across her face. When she still didn't take the water, he opened it for her.
"Drink," he ordered.
She sat there in the dirt, just staring at the bottle. Just when he thought he was going to have to force her to drink, she reached out with a shaking hand. Wildwing let her take the bottle, but kept his hand up in case she needed help with it.
She spilled only a little water as she took a long pull. She finally lowered the bottle with a sigh of relief. The hand that seemed to be holding his heart in a death grip loosened a little.
"Thank you," Ruby whispered.
"You're welcome," he responded quietly. "What are you doing out here?"
"Cleaning up my mess," she answered just before taking another drink.
"Why you?" he asked. "Why aren't the earth spirits or whatever doing this?"
"They tried and all they did was make things worse," she replied. "Now I have to dig everything up."
"Well, why aren't they helping?" he questioned, a frown creasing his brow.
"Remember how I said that with me being here things might get interesting?" she asked.
"Yeah..." he hesitantly answered.
"I wasn't wrong," she stated with a sigh.
"What happened?" he asked as he squatted down to her level.
"I had a run in with an earth Elemental the night I retrieved The Mask," she told him while staring at the large chunk of metal she was working to uncover. "He decided that I needed to clean up the mess. I don't know why he won't let the earth spirits help. Maybe he's punishing me for making the mess in the first place. Maybe he thinks it's funny. Who can tell with Elementals?"
She took another drink and sighed. She carefully set the bottle down and went back to her digging. He put the cap back on the bottle for her.
"How long have you been out here?" he asked.
"Since about dawn," she answered, not looking at him.
"How'd you get here?" he questioned.
"Took a cab to the park entrance and then walked here," she replied.
"So you were dropped off at the front entrance down the hill, right?" he confirmed, having the strange feeling she wasn't. "The one that leads into the parking lot?"
"No," she denied. "There's no parking lot at the entrance I went through."
Wildwing frowned at that. He knew the entrance she was talking about. The only parking was along a residential street. Short of coming in on the eastern side of the park, he wasn't sure she could have given herself a longer hike.
"When was the last time you ate?" he softly inquired.
"Before I came out here," she whispered.
It kind of surprised him that she was being so cooperative. He had a feeling that dehydration, exhaustion and hunger had something to do with it. They probably had a lot to do with it.
"Didn't you bring any supplies?" he asked, having a feeling he already knew the answer.
"I had a bottle of water," she responded while she exposed more of the twisted metal. "Finished it a few hours ago."
"Can you stop long enough to eat?" he inquired and she halted her digging and stared at him.
"The Mask..." she started.
"Isn't for sale," he finished. "I got that. This isn't about the mask. It's about you not falling flat on your beak."
"Why?" she asked several seconds later.
"Because it's the decent thing to do," he answered. "How about we forget about the mask for a while and concentrate on getting some food in you."
"I can't leave until the meadow is cleaned up," she informed him.
"Then it's a good thing I brought lunch," he replied as he stood up. "Let's get out of the sun so we don't become roasted ducks."
She slowly nodded her agreement and laboriously got to her feet. When she stumbled, Wildwing instinctively put his hand under her elbow to steady her. It startled Ruby probably more than it did him and he quickly took his hand away.
She gave him a small smile of thanks and he indicated toward the trees. She carefully made her way to a shady spot. She found a suitable place and slowly sank down. He handed her the bottle of water she left behind before opening his bag.
"My hands are filthy," she mumbled when he tried to hand her a sandwich.
"You can wash them off in the...," he started until he noticed that there was a problem. "What happened to the waterfall?"
"I think some of the metal ended up the hill and is blocking the water," she told him.
"Ok, then it's a good thing I brought extra water," he said as he brought out a new bottle of water.
Ruby would have objected to wasting perfectly good drinking water, but she was too tired to think straight and she really didn't want to eat dirt. Wildwing poured the water while she cleaned off her hands. It took almost the entire bottle clean her hands and it was a big bottle. Luckily he had thought to bring napkins so she wasn't sitting there with wet feathers.
He found a spot to sit that wasn't close enough for them to accidentally touch, but close enough for him to hand her food. He handed her the extra sandwich again and she gladly took it. They ate in silence for a while until the salamander suddenly reappeared.
"That's not the same salamander from the other night, is it?" he asked as the creature crawled into her lap.
"It is," she confirmed after she finished chewing and swallowing.
"But it's so much bigger," he started.
"I know," she sighed as the Elemental rolled over onto its back. "It seems Elementals grow very quickly. I'm hoping he's almost fully grown. If he gets much bigger I'm going to need to get a larger bag."
"That explains why your bag didn't match your shoes," he blurted out and that got him a less than pleased look. "Mallory made that observation the other night when you made the news."
He quickly shut his beak before he put his other foot in it. They sat in silence for a while. She scratched the salamander's belly while she ate.
"I'm sorry you lost the game the other night," she said when the salamander was done getting its belly rubbed.
"You watched the game?" he asked in surprise.
"Of course I watched the game," she replied. "I like hockey as much as the next duck. Just because I don't play doesn't mean I can't watch and enjoy a good game."
"That game didn't qualify as good," he grumbled.
"Yeah, I noticed," she commiserated. "Though it was nice to watch a real game. The ones at Twin Beaks are less than civilized."
"How so?" he inquired.
"When mages play hockey, the spells are moving faster than the puck," she explained. "It's almost anything goes and it usually does. There are magical barriers as well as the normal ones to keep the spells from hitting any of the spectators."
"Doesn't sound really fair or fun," he muttered.
"It's horrifying at first," she admitted. "After a while you get used to it and then it gets amusing. I guess it's funnier if you actually played, but I was just one of the score keepers, so it was starting to get annoying. I feel sorry for Emily because now she has to score all of the games by herself."
"Is she not a good score keeper?" he inquired.
"She keeps score just fine," she replied. "But she's such a timid little thing that someone has to sit with her so none of the players can intimidate her."
"Tell me about Twin Beaks," he requested, relaxing against the tree. "I'm surprised no one ever discovered a village of mages out in the mountains."
"That's because there isn't a village or a town or even a city," she explained as she finished her lunch. "The Tomb of Drake DuCaine is located in the heart of the mountain. The mages live in the caverns surrounding the tomb.
"But why there?" he asked.
"Why not?" she countered with a shrug. "We needed to go somewhere and Twin Beaks was the most logical place. We were in charge of keeping The Mask safe until the Saurians returned. Drake DuCaine believed that it was just a matter of time before they broke out of their prison."
"So why wasn't the mask used once they returned?" he questioned.
"I asked the same question when I found out that The Mask was at Twin Beaks," she bitterly replied. "The answer boiled down to 'It's not our problem'. Too bad for them, I made it their problem."
She sounded very smug.
"The story you told Gipsy the other day, that wasn't just a story, was it?" he inquired while she took a drink.
"Very good," she responded as she saluted him with her bottle.
"Why are there so few mages?" he asked.
"Without the mages, Drake DuCaine would have never defeated the Saurians," she said staring at her lap. "In fact, the mages were the ones who opened the portal that sent the Saurians to their prison. When the Saurian overlords were captured and sentenced to the dimensional prison, the wizards cursed all of the mages of Puckworld. We can't have children. All of the mages who exist come from the regular population."
"You said that your home was destroyed when the Saurians attacked," he stated. "How is it that you became a mage and no one else in your family did?"
"You have to be in a life threatening situation before the magic comes to you," she told him.
"My team and I have been in dozens of life threatening situations," he pointed out.
"And yet, you're still here," she countered. "You have to be on the verge of actually dying."
"Your parents died in that attack," he said. "Why didn't they become mages? Heck, why wasn't Puckworld overrun with mages after Dragaunus showed up?"
"The magic doesn't take ducks against their will," she explained. "In a fraction of a second, you are given the choice. Accept the magic and become a mage or deny it and die. People are so poisoned against mages that they'd rather be dead than become one. Out of all those who were given the choice after Dragaunus started attacking, it seems I was the only one who said 'yes'."
"What made you say 'yes'?" he asked.
"I had just watched my parents die," she softly told him. "I couldn't watch my baby sister die, too. It just wasn't an option for me. If it was you and Nosedive, which would you chose?"
"I'd probably do the same," he admitted a few seconds later.
They sat in silence for a while as she finished her water. She was tired and so wanted to just lie down and take a nap. However, the pull to finish the job Ruby had started was getting harder and harder to ignore.
"Thank you for the food and water," she said as she got to her feet. "I need to get back to work."
She handed him the empty bottle and headed back out into the meadow.
Author's Notes: A strange place to leave it, but the scene is extremely long and this was the best place to break it up.