Ruby stopped running as soon as she regained consciousness, her feet were beyond sore and her breathing was ragged. As she leaned on her knees for support, she noticed that she was naked, after a brief glance around, she noticed that she was out and about in public. She quickly wrapped the towel that she was carrying around her body and started looking for a hole to hide in and probably die in as well.
It was the end, her normal life was over, even if the worse didn't happen on her way home, not that she knew where that was, but someone would definitely see her, they might even take pictures of her body.
Ruby looked up to the heavens as tears filled her eyes, she wanted to know if whoever was responsible for her life falling apart was happy.
As tears blurred her sight she stared into the night sky. Then she wiped away her tears to make sure she wasn't seeing things incorrectly, with clear vision she stared up, and saw a shattered moon. She was breathless for a moment, then quickly realized that if that had happened while she was streaking then maybe no one had paid attention to her or even cared about her during that.
So her life wasn't over, Ruby quickly calmed herself down and took off for anything that seemed familiar to when Raven was driving her around. As she ran, she passed by houses and streetlights, and after a while realized that the town didn't seem to have any power. She quickly assumed that whatever shattered the moon had probably taken out the power as well.
She stopped by an intersection that seemed familiar, but after a few seconds she realized that she was mistaken. Before she could get back to running, she heard heavy breathing behind her.
'Duck!' Ruby thought, and perhaps it was the desperation with which she thought it, or maybe it was the fact that when she had pictured the top of her chest and head being being removed from her body, she had actually felt every millisecond of it, regardless, for the second time in her life, she followed through on what her thoughts told her to do.
It was only after nearly giving herself whiplash with the speed that she collapsed with, did she realize that she hadn't even seen any eyes yet. As she craned her head to look up, but before she could question or second guess herself, a jet black paw with jagged white claws sang through the now empty space, Ruby heard the air shrieking out in pain.
'Left!' She dived to the left as another claw tore through wind, producing another ear piercing whistle.
'Run!' She broke into a mad dash, forgetting everything she had learned about pacing herself from her old track club.
It didn't take long for the sound of a heavy pounding to catch up to her, Ruby's heart rate accelerated as the pounding came closer and closer. For a second, it had stopped, but before she could feel any relief. 'Duck!' And so she did.
A huge black beast soared above her, its jaw wide open, ready to catch its prey.
Ruby, unfortunately, wasn't used to ducking while she was running past her full speed, and so she tumbled forth. Her skin met concrete and was scraped off, her right hand had managed to position itself to stop her momentum, and snapped at her wrist. She did manage to save her skull by using her left arm as a cushion.
As pain racked her body, she was too busy staring into the luminous pits of orange and red swirls to feel its effects.
She pictured the monster raising its claw high in the air.
The monster raised its claw high into the air.
She pictured the monster swinging down at her.
The monster swung down at her.
She pictured the huge claws ripping her body into ribbons, her flesh being torn apart, her bones shattering, and her blood being sent flying.
The huge claw smashed against the object in its path, and the transparent glowing green wall shattered.
Ruby had time to blink, and began to wonder where the glass wall had come from, then she felt her body being dragged away from the monster. Her mouth opened to scream, but the speed she was being dragged with took her breath away.
Her body left the ground and after being carried up two stories, it was dropped on a rather flat roof. As the impact shook her bones, the pain from her fractures were finally registering with her. As tears started to well up, she felt a wire unravel from where it held her stomach, her eyes trailed the wire and she saw a floating knife, she back-traced and at the other end of the wire, she saw something.
That something was an orange furred cat with green eyes, a set of green lined limbs, a pair of pink butterfly wings, and a dozen knife tipped wires exiting from its back and just floating in the air. "Salutations!" It spoke in a distinctively feminine voice filled with cheer.
Ruby's pain was momentarily forgotten as she stared dumbfounded at the talking cat-thing.
"It seems that you have fallen into the Nightmare without being properly prepared." It said as a knife poked and prodded at the towel that was loosely wrapped around her body.
Ruby instinctively raised her right hand to swat away the curious knife, but the sudden sharp and throbbing pain interrupted her. She bit her lip to hold back a cry of shock.
"It seems that you are injured." The green eyes of the cat-thing shined brightly, blinding Ruby. "It seems that you have a dista—"
"CAW!" A giant black blur dove down.
Ruby was frozen in place holding her swollen wrist with a rather weak grip, when the giant talons of a new monster pierced straight through the odd cat-thing. Green fluid splashed from the prey's wounds and against her face, it tasted like battery acid and sizzled upon contact, her right eye was blinded and she felt her teeth melting.
She screamed and was about to thrash about on the rooftop, when she felt a sharp tugging on her arm. In the next instant she was a few stories above the ground and she heard her shoulder pop, through wind battered sight, she managed to see that a wire was biting into her forearm. She almost cursed that cat-thing for dragging her along with it to its death.
And yet, even with all her pain and fear, at least she'll probably die on impact, so she was at some sort of peace.
"—nd a few scraps along your skin, please seek medical aid immediately." The cheery voice of the cat-thing echoed along her bones, starting from the wire wrapped around her arm.
Panic and fear reentered her body when confusion opened the door. "H-help me!" She didn't know why she was asking a half-dead cat-thing for help, but it had saved her from the beast on the ground, so maybe it could even help her in the sky.
"What kind of aid do you require?"
"Anything! Just save me!"
"By which means do you consider acceptable help?"
'I'm going to strangle this fucking stupid piece of cat-shit!' Ruby's immediate response to that thought was a smile, and she considered cuddling the cute thing later. And then she felt the tendons in her arm start to tear.
"Any!"
"Do you understand the-"
"Yes!"
"Do you agree-"
"Yes!"
"Do you accep-"
"Yes! Yes! Yes to anything else! Just help me!"
"Please register your name."
"Ruby Rose!"
"Authorization Confirmed!"
Ruby felt the world freeze at those words, the previous neck-breaking speed she was traveling at was gone and she was left suspended in the night sky. A green glow traveled down the wire and entered her bones. Electricity crawled throughout her cardiovascular, skeletal, muscular, and nervous system. She surprisingly didn't feel any pain from the experience. "What is this?" Sure she had asked for help, but she didn't even know what the cat-thing was doing to her.
"Instating Ruby Rose as a Temporary Phantasmal Hunter!"
Ruby felt an otherworldly energy vitalize her cells, power was circulating through every vein and running across every muscle and nerve. "Hkkkkt." She couldn't breathe, her lungs couldn't provide enough oxygen. Her heart wasn't pumping fast enough, and it was drowning in her blood.
"Please place your hand on the provided medium."
Ruby shifted her left eye around in panic, but around her was just empty air.
"Warning! Energy reserves have entered critical conditions, pleas- pleas- please help m-"
Dead silence filled the line, and the world resumed moving, then the wire pulling her along went slack. There was a short moment when her momentum carried her aloft, but gravity quickly found her and yanked her down. Ruby would die a little pissed off, she could've died with peace in her heart, but then she was shown a glimmer of hope, only for the world to snuff it out right before her.
At least the last thing she would see wouldn't be a massive flying monster, it had moved away and revealed the shattered moon. And while it was a little unsettling, it was also kinda beautiful in her only working eye.
Then she saw a long silver line leading upto a green dot. It seems that the monster had released the cat-thing after killing it. Ruby didn't dwell on it, she wanted her final moments to be peaceful. When she met her Mom for the first time in the afterlife, she wanted to do it with a smile on her face.
"Thanks for the life you gave me, I'm sorry I couldn't live like a normal person." Ruby closed her eye and resigned herself to her fate.
'Everyone else can fucking die!' She suddenly thought, and then she smiled on reflex.
As the sound of rushing wind faded, it suddenly picked up and Ruby felt like throwing up. Nausea and vertigo combined, and the sandwich that she had for dinner was struggling to stay down. She opened her eye and found the world was spinning around her, or rather she was spinning.
As the moon flashed before her eyes, she happened to see the cat-thing blocking out the moon right before it smashed into her face. The momentary clarity she gained from the shock informed her that the wire was wrapped around her entire body, but it was only really noticeable around her neck. As she was losing consciousness and the ground was fast approaching her, she sank her teeth into the still warm flesh of the cat-thing, she bit through muscles, tendons, and bones, until finally her jaw held the crystalline heart of the creature.
Energy resurged through her body, and the crystal heart exploded like a firework in her mouth, she swallowed it without a second thought. Her body couldn't contain the burst of energy, and rays of green light shot through her body, and then as her heart pounded in her chest, a large silver sun illuminated the surrounding neighborhood, and at the center of it was Ruby.
The light faded and she spun around one more time, so she was facing the ground, and she opened her cloak. The cloak was dark red and when it opened up it appeared like she had a large pair of bat-like wings, and she slowly descended as light a as a feather, her dark black boots made contact with the ground first, then she slammed the butt of the scythe that was taller than her against the concrete, cracking the ground in a web-like pattern.
She opened her eyes in confusion, she was no longer in a towel, but was dressed in a rather fancy set of gothic-lolita clothes and holding a giant scythe. Although she wasn't complaining about being saved, or being dressed, in her opinion her skirt was a bit too short, at least she was wearing leggings. Then she noticed that her body didn't hurt anymore, her arms were both fine, not even a scratch was on them.
"Salutations, Temporary Phantasmal Hunter, Ruby Rose!" A voice spoke with a distinctively familiar feminine one filled with cheer.
Ruby looked over and found an orange furred cat-thing with green eyes being carried by the flapping of her pink butterfly wings. It looked identical to the other one, but this one was all in one piece. "How?"
"Support Equipment Penny is ready for combat! Where is our destination?" It said as it stared at Ruby.
Ruby stared back at the thing, she looked into the green eyes, and found nothing. It wasn't the same type of nothing that was like silence, but was closer to a nothingness that was reminiscent of a hollow space.
Then she heard another familiar sound, more heavy breathing came from behind her. This time Ruby's thoughts didn't tell her to duck, but to attack. Her body acted reflexively, she planted one foot down, and swiveled around on the ball of it, her other foot kicked off the ground, her waist twisted and she swung the scythe diagonally with the full force of her body.
The red blade sliced through the pouncing beast, cleaving it in two. Black ash and red embers spun out from each half of the body as they fell around her before dissolving away. She spun the surprisingly light scythe in her hands, as she took in the sight of the disappearing beast.
"What's happening?" Ruby wondered if whatever shattered the moon had something to do with these monsters, or if it had something to do with the small cat-thing, and why the hell she was dressed so oddly in the middle of the night holding a weapon as she stared at the dead body of a beast. Whatever this all was, all she knew was that it wasn't normal.
Thanks for reading! I'm always open to feedback, so please leave a review, or reply in my forum, about what you liked or hated about this chapter or the whole story. If anyone wants to be a Beta Reader, then PM me and we'll talk details.
