[Thread] Ruby and Speed
Who: Ruby, Speed
What: Random outdoor encounter?
When: Nowish
Where: Outside
Rating:PG-13 (ruby's got a mouth on her)
( Your dead lovers have left a trail of broken hearts and misspent hopes )
What: Random outdoor encounter?
When: Nowish
Where: Outside
Rating:PG-13 (ruby's got a mouth on her)
( Your dead lovers have left a trail of broken hearts and misspent hopes )
He hadn't been paying much attention to all the goings on lately, but he didn't really need to to know what was going on. It was always the same. Different story, same thing. Hectic, bloody annoying (and he's not even British!), and chaotic enough to give the Abyss a run for its money.
So outside it was. It was kind of peaceful out here. The forest was quite beautiful actually. He started walking down a random deer trail and was soon immersed deeply within the comforting sights, smells, and sounds of the forest. He'd never been a nature person really, but it was times like these that he could really think about changing that. Well, maybe not, but still. It was perfect.
EXCEPT FOR THAT! What the hell? he thought to himself. CSI to the core, instead of turning around and going back to safety or running for dear life, curiosity drove the natural investigator to head towards the disturbance. What could have possibly caused such a loud explosion? He wondered and headed further into the forest.
There it was again, this time louder, and a blast of brief heat scorched his face a moment after the loud BOOM! sound. This time he hesitated. If he got any closer it was possible he might end up in the middle of one of these unusual explosions, and that was never a good thing.
On the other hand, he was really curious now.
He took another step forward.
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She bent backward slightly, angling her wings so she made a wide, backward arc into a dive back toward the ground. She closed her eyes. She was falling. Falling, falling. Falling was nice. She couldn't feel the terror that humans did at falling. She had wings. Falling wasn't a fearful thing. It was a release. Falling was nice.
She finally felt the ground approaching and opened her eyes again. At what was probably the last possible moment for a creature her size Ruby pulled up her wings and forced them downward a couple of times to pull her straight and slow her descent enough to not be painful. She still hit the ground hard enough to cause it to shake considerably. Tree branches rattled and groaned and dirt went flying in a wave in every direction around her. She looked down. A little crater even. Very nice ruby. She looked smug then turned and took her claws to another tree. It exploded into splinters. She smiled for a moment then made a face of irritation as she realized that she'd gotten chunks of wood in her fur. This wouldn't do.
She sat down on her haunches and began to pick the debris out of her usually pristine fur, destruction of the forest totally forgotten in favor of grooming. she pulled the last significantly sized piece of wood out of her fur then shook herself vigorously so the rest of the dust would fly off. She actually looked pretty comical, something that was usually powerful and graceful (in this form at least) shaking like a puppy.
She then stopped and sniffed. Speed? She wrinkled her nose. Was he CRAZY? shouldn't he be running away from her? Ah well. She looked around. He couldn't be TOO close, she didn't see him...unless he was hiding.
"Speed?" she quested.
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He started forward again cautiously now. He peered around, shoulders hunched forward as he crept along. His hand hovered over the gun holstered at his hip, still being worn despite his Paradisa-invoked problem. It was habit to strap it on, habit to reach for it in time of danger. He didn't even realize he was doing it.
Another noise caught his attention. Speed stopped to listen. It faded, but something else twittered softly at his ears. He strained to listen with all his might.
He walked forward cautiously, extremely slowly. The noise stopped again. Then he heard the voice.
Sighing out a deep breath he hadn't even realized he was holding up until that moment, Speed relaxed and walked forward more quickly. His hand still hovered over his useless gun and his eyes darted here and there with caution, but he wasn't so afraid anymore.
It was only Ruby.
He stepped through a particularly nasty set of brambles, slightly off the path he had been following up until that point, and slid into view of the large, pink dragon. He looked at her skeptically and then shook his head.
"What have you been doing?"
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A sigh. He was close. She dropped her ears back down and relaxed. He knew she was there, she figured he'd be there soon enough. For a second she sort of thought that she wanted to be alone....but then changed her mind. She wouldn't mind Speed's company at all.
She yawned cavernously to the side and quirked one ear slightly as he asked her what she'd been doing. Her form glowed, wiggled, and shrunk then changed into that of a small pink cat-thing with wings before she even really thought about answering his question. Not that the answer required a lot of thought.
"Blowing up trees. What are you doing?"
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Trying to keep a straight face, Speed did his best to reply as matter-of-factly as possible. "Oh, really? And what, pray tell, did the trees do to you do deserve such punishment?"
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In the spirit of joking she gave Speed a big grin at his question. What had they done to her? "They barked." she stated matter of factly then gave Speed a wink.
She so rarely joked about her resemblance to a cat that she sort of startled HERSELF with that one but it had just been too obvious to pass up.
"And you didn't answer my question," she reminded him, landing on a large fallen log next to an intact patch of grass. She glanced at it, contemplating sitting on it, but decided against it. It wouldn't feel as nice against fur as it would against skin but she didn't feel like changing forms again at that particular moment.
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He watched her for a moment, deigning to answer her question right away. He snapped his fingers softly to get her attention, then raised his hand to his shoulder and patted it twice lightly.
"Me? What am I doing? I'm acting normal. I'm just out for a nice stroll." He finally answered, waiting for her to respond to his offer.
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She contemplated his offer as he finally answered his question, eyeballing his shoulder critically. After a moment of debate she flicked open her wings and made the short hop over to where he stood, landing lightly on his shoulder and flipping her tail casually around the back of his neck for balance.
"Normal is relative, Speed." She grinned, "There's nothing abnormal about me blowing up trees. It's a good way to release excess energy." The real word she should have put in place of energy was frustration but there was no need to announce her inner turmoil to the world.
The last thing she really wanted everyone else to know was that she was distressed. People fussing over her usually just made it worse.
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"Really now," he said simply. He reached back and swatted at her tail once--it was tickling him there. But he made no effort to move it or anything, just dropped his hand back to his side.
He began walking again, easily backtracking until he found the trail and started on it once more. "So you just randomly blow up trees, hmm?" he mused aloud. He stepped around a fallen tree trunk. He could tell with a cursory glance that it was rotten on the inside and had likely died for that reason. "I guess that's like me going for a speedy bike ride. Or--more like Calleigh going to the shooting range and unloading several clips of ammo at a single target." He couldn't help but smirk at the image formed in his head at that one.
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She settled herself down comfortably on his shoulder as he walked back to the deer path. She had actually never really been down here much. When she was in the woods it was usually for blowing up purposes. She'd taken a nap in a particularly nice patch of sun once but she hadn't exactly been taking in the scenery then. It was actually a pretty nice forest. Better than a lot of the ones back home. No monsters here.
She made a sound of agreement when he described his and Calleigh's ways of blowing off steam. Sounded similar to her. "Sounds similar to me. Though I can't usually hit targets multiple times..." She grinned and shrugged her shoulders. It was more of a roll of her shoulders than a shrug but it was the best she could do in this particular form.
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"Yea, I bet." He smirked. He tried to continue ignoring her tail, but she kept twitching it every-so-often. He was about to swat at it again when he stopped short.
The CSI paused in his step and glanced down where his next step would have landed. A tiny amphibian scuttled across the path, probably looking for some watery place to reside. His brows rose curiously, but he kept quiet and stoic otherwise.
He continued walking. "Well, it tends to also be a stress reliever," he said idly, or at least made it sound as such.
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She felt more inclined to chase things like that in this form. She did have to hunt for herself when she was at home, after all! She had the hunting instinct of any predator. She shifted her weight from her right back leg to her left a couple of times as Speed spoke.
When he'd finished she gave him a look, cursing internally that he'd started walking again. She'd had every intention of pouncing on that little creature.
"Yeah I s'pose if that's what you want to use it for that works too."
She grinned a little. Clever Speed. He could tell....or at least had a hunch that something was off with her. He had better instincts than most humans.
She wondered if he was just taking a random stroll or if they had a destination where she'd be able to chase bugs take a nap or something.
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Finally he sighed and looked back at the path. He wasn't going to push it. He was not going to pull her own trick against her; it wasn't in his nature. He wasn't nosy--unless it had something to do with a case.
He kept walking down the path, becoming increasingly more curious as to were it led as he did so. He'd never been outside in the forest like this before, not except once or twice on the edge just to pick at some trees idly. He'd never gone inside of it, never explored any of the small game trails. It was wonderful, but he was growing tired of it.
Just when he was about to turn around and head back "home," something caught his eye. It wasn't anything shiny or anything like that, just different. He peeked through the next few bushes recently overgrown on the path and saw what he thought he'd seen. Past the couple of bushes stretched a small meadow. On the opposite side ran a small stream. He wondered why he, or at least Ruby, hadn't heard it, but then he noticed it wasn't really moving too fast and the forest probably stunted the sound.
Or maybe Ruby just hadn't said anything to him. That seemed more likely.
He stepped around the two bushes and into the clearing. It was quaint, and definitely peaceful. He could hear the stream now and it was quite peaceful. Briefly he wondered if this is where the amphibian had come from, and if so how had he gotten so far away from his home?
He walked further into the meadow, heading for the bank and a rock to pick up and play with.
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She shook the thoughts out of her head. Useless to think about. Especially right now. Speed didn't really deserve to have her in some ridiculous crappy mood.
She smiled a little at the little stream as they walked toward it. Streams were nice. They had fish. When they reached the bank of the stream she sat on Speed's shoulder for a few moments then unwound her tail and hopped off of it onto a rock, looking intently at the surface of the water. Sure enough. Brook trout. Yum.
Of course she wasn't particularly hungry. It was just fun to catch them.
She leaned over the surface of the water holding perfectly still for a moment, her paw very slowly creeping over the surface of the water. At the last moment she thought better of it though and sat back, looking at her paw. She didn't want to get wet.
She tapped her paw on the ground thoughtfully then looked up at Speed. Let's hope this worked. She had screwed it up a few times and she wasn't sure how well speed would react to seeing her totally naked in human form. She concentrated on the movement of the water and began to change forms. When the pop that signified the change was over sounded she looked down urgently. Shorts and a black tank top. SWEET! She'd done it right.
She chose not to look at Speed but her hand shot into the water and emerged with a fish, flopping around in panic. She grinned and looked up at Speed as she dropped it back into the water. For a second she thought about saying something corny but chose not to. It was a peaceful meadow, no use messing up the quiet with some pointless and even stupid comment.
She chose, instead, to wiggle into a different position on the boulder and stick her toes into the water.
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