Ruby's head hurt. And it didn't hurt in the usual way. It was more like a thumping pain that just wouldn't leave her, as if someone had tried to scramble her brains. She'd closed her eyes shut and wondered to herself if she'd gotten into Yang's little 'hidden supply' of non-soft drinks by mistake last evening. Yang was probably going to be angry with her if she got drunk, but that wasn't the point right now. She groaned, feeling a semi-hard mattress below her. She wasn't sure if someone had replaced her old one with it, but alas.
Slowly, the girl brought herself to an upright, seated position as she rubbed her forehead. In the distance, past the slight tinnitus she was now feeling the full effects of, someone strummed an acoustic guitar calmly. She set her feet on solid ground and felt the weight of the boots she wore all of a sudden. They weren't her usually steel-toed ones. No, they were a fair bit heavier than that, as if the entire sole was made of metal, but Ruby supposed that was just due to her currently-poor state.
She squeezed her eyes, then forced herself to open them, expecting the bright light of the morning sun to blind her temporarily while also worsening her headache. Instead, she was met by a glum, dark place. An empty room, filled with the scent of rotting carpets and tearing, wet wallpapers of various, generally yellowish colors. In the middle of the room, there was a fireplace, to her immediate right was a broken window through which the early morning breeze flowed, causing her to shiver and by the side of her 'bed'-she refused to call what she now saw was a dirty mattress on a skeletal steel frame a bed-was a backpack, a tan jacket with a chest rig of some kind and a sidearm sat on the bedside table.
She jumped to her feet, feeling her headache worsen, then went to the broken mirror in the corner of the room, her heart racing. Picking up a chunk of broken mirror carefully, she looked at herself. Her hairdo was still the same, her silver eyes were still there and she was only lacking make-up, pretty much. Mouth slightly agape, the girl panned down, seeing that she was now wearing a black turtleneck and blue jeans, as well as specialized combat boots of some kind.
"Where's my clothes...?" She murmured, then felt her back and yelped, panicked, "Oh, no! Where's Crescent Rose!?"
"Oh, you're awake!" A heavily-accented male voice said. Ruby swiveled about, dropping the piece of reflective glass onto the floor with a quiet thnk. Wide silver eyes locked onto a man clad in an armored rig of some kind, with the same faded tan coloring as the jacket beside the bed. He had a thick salt-and-pepper beard-mustache combo running from one side of his face to the other and wore a bandana to cover a seemingly balding head. On his back was a strange rifle, held in place by a worn leather strap. He smiled kindly, "Good to know the other Stalkers didn't bring a dead kid in."
"Hi..." Ruby waved awkwardly, still confused. She saw the man was holding a rusty tray with food on it, "Uhm... What happened?"
"A bunch of the boys found you in a ditch close by to the Cordon's border," He remarked as he set the tray down on the table, next to the pistol, "Don't worry... You were at least partially decent," He then added and looked to her. Ruby narrowed her lips, her cheeks flushing red as her stomach suddenly grumbled very audibly. He added, "Eat. I feel like we have a lot to talk about," calmly, before going to the opposite end of the room to let Ruby have at the food.
A steel fork, a pair of cans of what looked to be meat in some sort of sauce and some bread, with a bit of coffee. Not exactly a breakfast of champions, but it was something. As she began digging in, the man sat himself down beside the fireplace and said, "You must've travelled a long way. Only people I've seen with hair like that are the random Tourists coming into the Cordon for a bit of the locally-available 'extreme sports'. Do you remember what dropped you here?"
Ruby looked at him, the forkful of strange meat still in her mouth. She shrugged. In truth, Ruby didn't remember much about how she'd even gotten into this situation. All she knew was that she was studying with the rest of her team. Next thing she knew, she was waking up with a migraine in the middle of this dilapidated house and this fella was greeting her.
"No idea, huh?" He hummed, "Odd."
"Tell me about it," Ruby murmured, then grunted as a sharp pain ran through her head. She looked over to the man and said, "I never got to ask ya your name... Or thank you for the food and... Gonna assume the clothes, too, hehe..." then smiled awkwardly. The man nodded, waving it off as if it was no big deal. To her, it kinda was. She was found by some randoes in the middle of the street, passed out and possibly half-naked and then this guy decided to get her food, a drink and clothes.
"Folks here call me Fanatic. I'm second-in-command of the Rookie Village. Also known as where you are," He replied, "You are?"
"Ruby... Ruby Rose," She smiled.
"Nice to meet you, Ruby," He stated, then stood up, "If you need anything, you can find me by the campfire with a couple of other fellows. For now, I'd suggest putting on the gear I left you. Keep the Loner patch close. It'll help identify you with the other Stalkers around. I'll leave you to eat and get properly dressed for work... Then we have to do a crash course."
"... Alright...?" Ruby nodded, then twitched and remembered, "Hey, one more thing!"
"Shoot," He turned just as he was stepping through the door.
"Have you seen my friends around? We were together when whatever happened... Happened..." She inquired, looking hopefully to him.
He hummed, took a thinker's pose and said, "If you have a description of'em..."
"Sure. One was a white-haired girl with blue eyes and a scar going down her left eye," Ruby began, worried, "The other was a black-haired girl with yellow eyes. Usually wears a bow," She wasn't gonna reveal Blake's Faunus identity to anyone outside their closed circle of friends, although it was clear from the confused expression Fanatic wore that he saw neither of them. A little hopeless, Ruby finished, "And the last one was a blonde with lilac eyes."
That seemed to spark a little something. He smirked, "That last one, I saw. She came through Rookie Village, just like you."
"Really!?" Ruby stood to her feet, hope welling in her chest, "That's my half-sister, Yang!"
"Your half-sister, eh?" He smirked, "Now that you mention it, she did talk about you and those two friends of yours. Went out searching for all of you a little over a week ago with nothing but the clothes on her back and the pistol and TOZ shotgun she managed to swindle some poor fellow out of. Still, a week's plenty of time for her to have gotten through the zone a bit."
"A week...?" Ruby asked, concerned. Fanatic's simple nod made her heart sink, "How am I gonna find her?"
"You won't, without the proper training to survive the Zone... I can help you with that. Eat up, kit up and meet me outside," He noted. Ruby did as ordered while the man left, rapidly munching down on the foodstuffs and downing the bitter coffee in one go. If sugarless, creamless coffee did one thing for Ruby, it was waking her up almost instantly due to the biterness.
Gagging slightly, the girl set aside the tray, then stood to her feet and started putting on the gear. First came the jacket and rig. It was a thick, padded tan jacket that also came with green fingerless gloves and a gas mask, as it seemed. Ruby clipped the belt around her waist, tightened it and made sure to zip up the jacket, before pulling the hood off her head. Following that, she retrieved the pistol, which she slid into the holster that came with the rig. Next, she picked up the backpack and, feeling its weight, she opened it.
Inside, she found a strange device. What looked like a scroll sat in her hands. It was bulkier, thicker and had several more buttons than the scroll. She managed to find the power button, only to be greeted by the three-note beep of the device and a two-dimensional map of the place, with various points of interest on it. She narrowed her eyes, hummed, then looked to the buttons.
Zooming out, the girl's eyes grew wide as saucers...
"... Where am I?" She murmured. Fanatic mentioned the place once. 'The Zone'. What was it...?
She felt her headache coming back. Shaking her head, she slid the PDA into her right hip pocket and continued looking through the bag. A matchbox, a flashlight, a hunting knife, some extra ammunition boxes with several pre-loaded pistol mags and even a can of food and some water for the road in a military canteen. She picked up the mags and put them somewhere more accessible, before closing the bag and slinging it onto her back.
Drawing her pistol, she checked it over, including doing a press check to see if there was a round inside. To her surprise, the gun was fed and ready to go. She searched for the safety of the small, rounded pistol and thumbed it to on, sliding the gun back into his holster. Marching out of the house, Ruby was met by the scent of grass, burning fires and cheap cigarettes. Coughing as a gust of wind brought some smoke a little too close to her nostrils for comfort, she saw them.
At least a dozen men sat in the remains of this small village at the end of the 'Cordon' as Fanatic had called it. Some of the men, both old and young, greeted Ruby with waves of the hand. Others ignored the young Rose as she walked down the beaten path, toward a crackling fire. Two men sat, one squatting, while the other was playing guitar. They noticed Ruby and gave her a simple nod each as the fire crackled on. Beyond the fire, she saw Fanatic, talking to another person dressed similarly to her.
One of the men turned to Fanatic and spoke to him in a language Ruby didn't understand. Fanatic replied in that same language, to which the squatting lad laughed and gave a thumbs up before turning back to listening to his friend play. The squatting lad wore a black balaclava, a green military-style uniform and a chest rig. On his back, he had a strange automatic rifle with wood furnishings.
His friend, meanwhile, had a double-barrel shotgun or a derivative thereof sat beside him. If Ruby's heart wasn't racing as hard as her head was still thumping, she would probably have geeked out over the guy's kit, seeing as it looked actually pretty cool. Even the little nine millimeter pistol she had with her was a freakin' cool design with the red plastic grips that had stars on them.
Right now, though? Her instincts were telling her to freak the heck out.
"Welcome to the Rookie Village proper, Ruby," Fanatic noted, crossing his arms to his chest, "You doing alright?"
"I'm okay, yeah... Still a bit scared, seeing as I have no idea how I wound up here or what here even is..." She replied awkwardly, chuckling as she rubbed the back of her neck. Fanatic snorted, then nodded, seemingly understanding Ruby's little predicament. Ruby gave the place a quick look-see again. A couple of broken houses lay to the right of the main road, several more here, as well as basements and the likes with no doors. At each end of the village, there was an armed guard carrying either a rusted rifle or a shotgun.
"It's not much of a looker, but this is the place most Rookies come in when they first enter the zone. It belongs to..." He hummed, then said, "Well, I would not exactly call us a 'faction', but most unaligned Stalkers are known as 'Loners'. You are technically a Loner, too, now. And there's a lot more of us than there are other bastards out there, trust me," and he gauged her reaction.
She hummed, then rubbed her shoulder, still clearly concerned. He sighed, then said, "I get it. It's a lot to take in, but the PDA you have with you may give you some insights. I and some other Stalkers compiled as much information as we could onto the network so Rookies have an easier time understanding where they are and what is going on. It's a system thing."
Ruby nodded, "So... You said you wanted to teach me how to survive here, right?"
"Not just how to survive," The man smirked, "But how to thrive. You in?"
Ruby thought for a moment. She could venture out into whatever unforgiving nightmare hellscape waited for her out there without any form of knowledge or skills in terms of surviving the place beyond her own Huntress capabilities and die, or she could expend a couple hours at least learning from someone who is a veteran of this 'Zone' and that could provide her with a boost in terms of her chances of survival.
"Sure," She decided, "What could go wrong?"
Unsurprisingly, Ruby shouldn't have asked that question...
"OH, NO!"
Dodging an animal that resembled a boarbatusk, except more bulky, muscled-up and with a hide that was thicker than even that Grimm's, Ruby opened fire with her pistol while the creature turned around. Several of her shots nailed the creature in its face, but it still charged at her on its stumpy legs, its grotesque tusks still stained by the blood of a previous victim.
Ruby rolled off to the side again, "Haha! Try again b-OH!"
Only to be struck by one of the creature's siblings. It trampled over her, but Ruby still thankfully had her Aura. She managed to stand back up after the creature leapt off of her, aimed her pistol and squeezed, only to find it clicking empty. She looked at it, seeing the slide locked back and the chamber empty, then murmured, "Oh, no...!" as she jumped and rolled off to the left, the two boars charging at her in unison. Quickly, she dropped the empty magazine, slapped in a fresh one and let the gun lock back into place with a click.
Following that, she pelted a third boar while Fanatic took care of the second with judicious application of his assault rifle. Ruby looked to him, then said, "How thick are these things' hides?!" before grunting as the first of them punted her onto the ground and pinned her down, causing her weapon to fall out of her hand. She pushed its mouth away as it tried to bite at her throat while searching her belt for her knife.
Finding the sheath and undoing the small buttons that kept the knife in place, Ruby screamed as she dug the blade into the side of the monster's throat, blood washing her face as she'd cut something important. The monster collapsed on top of her after breathing its last oink, forcing Ruby to shove it off. She wiped the blood out of her eyes, grabbed her pistol off the floor and aimed carefully this time.
Two shots left the barrel of the pistol, one for each eye of the boar. It still charged her, until Fanatic turned about, hefted his assault rifle and put several rounds into the monster's head. Ruby looked at the dead monsters and at herself, now stained by blood, and shivered. Cleaning her knife on one of the monsters' hides, she slid it into its sheath and clipped it into place, before gasping and raising her had. She caught a wet cloth.
"Thick enough," The man replied, pushing one of the dead monster pigs with his foot, "Wipe your face. We've got more work to do."
Ruby cleaned herself with the cloth, then asked, "Is life like this every day? I swear, I'm never gonna complain about assignments again at school... I thought Huntress jobs were the toughest ones to undertake..." in a murmur.
"No, life's not so simple... Usually we shoot more at each-other than at pigs or mutants that roam the Zone, though it depends on the situation," The man shrugged, causing Ruby's eyes to grow wide. He hummed, then said, "Fair. Should've expected you wouldn't be aware of the fact that the Zone is pretty much a Free-For-All. Although we stay in our general factions, we see trouble with what we call Bandits coming after us and others. Not to mention Mercenaries usually hunting Loners for sport."
"... Oh..." Ruby paused. This was just getting better by the second, "Well... Would it be a problem if I didn't wanna shoot at people?"
"If you can run fast enough, no," The man shrugged, arranging his bandana and reloading his magazines. He motioned for her to follow him back to the village while she wondered just what had happened to her. Was this some sort of cosmic coincidence? Some random event that just happened to involve her and Yang getting transported to this mess? Maybe with her whole team behind her?
Eitherway... Ruby didn't really care for this place.
And it probably didn't care for her much, either...
