Ch 19 - Ruby in the Wild

She was beautiful, with a strong face, high cheekbones, and features that suggested Mediterranean heritage. Her skin was bronzed in a way that suggested it was her natural color, not the result of tanning, while her long, red hair rippled like a thick cape hanging halfway down her back.

With those kind of looks, she had to be an actress in the movie, but I didn’t recognize her. Not surprising, really. The ad that called for more extras had highlighted the fact that the movie featured a lot of new talent from overseas.

Her outfit perfectly showed off her toned, athletic physique too. Hey, I recognized that outfit. She was wearing the exact same clothing as Ruby Roundhouse from Jumanji. The red crop-top shirt and odd, leather halter top left her fantastic abs bare, while the short, olive-green shorts barely reached the tops of her thighs. In fact, despite having a very different face, her body looked almost exactly like Ruby, other than being barefoot.

“Are you okay?” she called, pausing a few fee away.

I smiled. “Yeah, amazingly I survived.”

It felt so good to speak with another living human.

“I’m so glad,” she said, returning my smile, and she had a great smile. “Thanks for helping.”

She spoke with a faint Irish accent that was a delight to listen to.

“I’m glad I found you before the ogre figured out how to climb that tree. I think we’re on the same team.”

She suddenly gasped, looking stricken. Without a word, she spun and sprinted across the clearing. I followed, scanning for more dangers, but saw nothing.

She stopped on the far side of the meadow near a disgusting bloody mess. It took me a moment to realize I was seeing the remains of a person who had been totally smashed in exactly the way that ogre’s club had nearly smashed me.

The woman retreated a few steps, one hand going to her mouth. Then she lurched away and threw up noisily. I turned away too, fighting down my own bile. I’d already seen too much nastiness since arriving on this murder world, but the shock of seeing another brutally murdered corpse rattled me with undiminished force.

“I hate this place,” I growled. I’d seen people die before, but not from the kind of violence that seemed commonplace here.

The woman was sobbing. I placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry I arrived too late.”

“His name was Joseph Walker. He and I woke up very close together and teamed up almost immediately.” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat and added in a whisper, “He distracted the ogre long enough for me to get up that tree.”

That was very brave, but I wished he’d found a way to get up the tree too. I started to speak again, but she lurched away, gagging loudly as if about to throw up again.

She glanced at me and grimaced through her tears. “I’m so sorry, but you smell like that ogre and I can’t . . . It’s . . . I’m sorry.”

“Oh.” I retreated a step and glanced down at myself. I was pretty gross. I hadn’t washed after the fight with the serpent either.

Most of the monster gore disappeared when I looted them, but not all of it. No idea why. My own blood still covered quite a bit of me, and the stench of the ogre clung to me too. I sniffed myself and grimaced. I did reek.

I triggered another Laundry Day potion. At this rate, I was going to run out before the end of day one. I closed my eyes and savored the warm cleansing process, then sighed. It felt so good to feel clean after fighting a monster.

“How did you do that?” she breathed, rising and staring with open wonder.

“It’s a potion I received from a loot box. It’s called Laundry Day.”

“Do you have any more?”

I hesitated. She was a bit grimy, but not filthy like I had been. “I don’t have many and I don’t really like using them until I’m totally nasty.”

“I get that, but do you have enough to loan me one anyway?” she pleaded. She was super cute, but I had an almost fiancée so just batting her big, brown eyes wouldn’t make me cave. Was it wise to waste a potion?

“Please?” she asked again, taking half a step closer. “The whole world’s gone banjaxed. Feeling clean would help me deal with all this better.”

I sighed. Using an Irish slang definitely helped her cause. Besides, she was on my team. I had just saved her life, but a bit more good will couldn’t hurt.

“Fine. Sure, but remember I don’t have many.”

“Thank you!” she gushed. Maybe using the potion would help her cope with Joseph’s death a bit better.

I extracted the potion and handed it over.

“Thank you so much,” she repeated as she opened the bottle.

Rainbow light surrounded her for a few seconds as dirt and grime floated away. Her clothing turned pristine and her brown skin seemed to glow in the late afternoon light. I decided to search the trees for any other danger.

Behind me, she sighed just the way I had when I first used the potion. If we’d had that kind of cleaning experience back on Earth, mom wouldn’t have had to hound me to shower after football in high school.

When she finished, I turned back and asked, “Better?”

“Much.” She sighed and glanced down at herself. “Too bad I don’t have better clothes. This ridiculous outfit makes me look like an exhibitionist. It’s all I’ve gotten so far, though, and it’s a lot better than the string bikini I woke up in.”

I chuckled. “Tell me about it. I woke up wearing boxers, but I got lucky with a couple loot boxes.” I tugged at my jacket, feeling doubly grateful I’d gotten good clothes. I hadn’t even considered I might get something stupid like Robin Hood tights.

The jacket still had a hole in the right shoulder. I was hoping it would self-repair, but it hadn’t yet and I had no idea how to fix leather.

She eyed my jacket and cloak with obvious longing, but didn’t say what I knew she wanted to.

“Want to borrow this?” I asked, fingering my jacket.

Cyrus’s clothing choices at game start left a lot to be desired. Waking up in some strange dude’s boxers had freaked me out.

She hesitated before shaking her head. “No, but thanks. How about your cloak?”

I grimaced and shook my head. “Sorry, but that’s actually my best item. I need it for getting close to monsters unseen. I’d prefer loaning you the jacket, or even my shirt.”

Did that make me sound like an uncaring jerk? I wanted to help and to share what I had, but I couldn’t reduce my effectiveness in battle. I’d already had to save her from one monster and expected to do the bulk of the fighting in the future. I needed every advantage, or we could both get splattered like poor Joseph.

She sighed and shook her head. “I’m fine for now, but if we don’t find more clothes soon, I might take you up on the shirt. I have to ask, though. Where did you get those shorts?”

I chuckled, glancing down at my fuzzy shorts, happy for an excuse to discuss something less tragic. “The monster I looted them from was adorable, but nasty. You wouldn’t believe how soft these are. Want to feel them?”

She raised one eyebrow and I realized what I’d just asked. My cheeks flushed.

“Sorry. That probably came out a lot creepier than I intended.”

Idiot. Isabella would slap me if she heard me talk like that to another woman.

“Yeah, it did,” she agreed, but managed the hint of a smile.

To save my reputation before she thought me some kind of pervert, I opened my inventory and extracted my moccasins. “I noticed you don’t have any shoes. Interested?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed and eagerly accepted them. She slipped them on and sighed in exactly the way I had when I first got them.

“I’m glad they fit okay.” They should have looked like boats on her.

“I don’t see how they can. They feel like they’re made for me, but then you never would have been able to put them on.”

“Maybe clothes adjust to fit. Everything I’ve tried on feels like it was tailored for me.”

She shrugged and tossed her long hair over one shoulder. “I’m just glad it worked.”

“I’m Lucas, by the way,” I said, extending my hand.

She took it with a firm grip. “Right. We kind of got sidetracked. I don’t usually talk about the underwear I woke up in before introducing myself. This place makes me an eejit. I’m Ruby.”

“Ruby Roundhouse?” I couldn’t help exclaiming.

She scowled. “Ruby Lopez.”

“Maybe whoever’s running the show has a sense of humor.”

“The loot box I got the outfit from said it was custom selected for me. I did actually wear a costume like this to a comicon once.”

“You go to comicons?”

“I am not a nerd,” she declared, her scowl back in full force. “Some friends invited me.”

I lifted my hands in a sign of peace. “No problem. I’ve wanted to go to comicons before, but never got the chance.”

Her scowl faded and she asked hesitantly, “How tall are you?”

“Nothing like random questions to break tension.”

“Sorry, it’s just, I feel like I’ve gained a couple inches somehow.”

She gestured at her fantastic physique. “Like I said, I wore a similar costume once, but I was too short to really pull it off. Now, it feels better, but I’ve felt a bit unbalanced. You look about average height, so I shouldn’t be almost as tall as you.”

“I’m five-eleven.” Or maybe more, if Cyrus’s comment about gaining some height proved true. I couldn’t wait to measure myself against Tomas. Matching his height for the first time in my life would make the insane experiment worth all the negatives.

I scanned her again, keeping my gaze objective. “You look maybe five-eight, five-nine?”

Ruby nodded and said softly, “I used to be five-five.”

“Weird. I might have actually gained an inch from a loot box, but that can’t be normal.”

She crossed her arms, not hiding her worry. “How do they know so much about us? How did they even bring us here?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, and that initial panic I’d felt after waking up bubbled closer to the surface again. “It’s clear we’re not in Kansas any more, but—“

Cyrus interjected. “Ha! I understood that reference.”

“What the hell?” Ruby muttered, tensing and scanning the sky.

I glanced up too. “You get all the references even though you claim you only barely scanned our planet.”

“I only had a fraction of the time usually allocated, but I did find your movies. They are fascinating. I never found anything like that on any of the other—“

He broke off.

“Other what?” Ruby asked.

Cyrus did not respond.

“That doesn’t really get less startling, despite how many times he does that.”

“You sound like you’ve had actual conversations with whoever that is.” Ruby was looking at me strangely.

I shrugged. “He calls himself Cyrus now.”

“Cyrus?”

“It’s kind of a long story. We can chat about it more later. First, I think we need to find the last person on our team, don’t you?”

“Have you found anyone else?”

I grimaced, glancing at Joseph’s corpse again. “I did, but a monster had already killed him.”

Ruby’s mood crashed and fresh tears filled her eyes. She glanced at the corpse, shuddered, and looked away. When I looked over at it again, Eva asked, “Do you want to loot Joseph’s body?”

I accepted out of reflex, then cursed myself for a fool. I should have asked Ruby if she wanted to.

The remains shrank in a similar way to Andy’s body. This time, the remains condensed into the recognizable form of a man in his 30s. He looked kind of skeletal, like he’d been on a starvation diet, but otherwise whole.

“Look,” I said gently.

Ruby turned and gasped. “Joseph! How?”

“I got a prompt to loot him. Looting makes monsters disappear, but does this to people. I don’t know why.”

She shuddered, hugging herself and whispered, “Loot.”

“I know it’s not what we’d do at home, but this world is brutal. He’s dead. If he has any useful loot, we need it. I’m sure he would want us to use it to stay alive.”

She took a long breath, looking a bit sick. “I’m glad you got the prompt. I don’t think I could have . . .”

“I understand. This world is insane, but we can’t ignore any advantage.”

She nodded slowly. “I can accept that, but shouldn’t we bury him, or something?”

“Yeah, I made a cairn in a pile of stones for Andy.” The ogre had thrown enough boulders, we could probably do something similar. “Do you have a way to make a fire?”

“Inside my tent, I do. I chose Mystic Looter, Base Camp and Bio Morph for my utility spells.”

“That’s how you climbed that tree.”

“Yeah, it saved my life.”

I really wanted to ask her about how Bio Morph worked. I’d never be able to climb that tree without the utility spell. I squashed the questions though. We could chat about it later. Discussing our choices was a welcome distraction from dealing with death.

“I’m glad we chose different utility spells. Gives us a wider range to work with. I picked Mystic Looter too, plus Linguasight and Navigation.”

I decided not to share the fact that I had a fourth utility spell. That would raise too many questions I couldn’t answer.

“Linguasight?”

“Mostly for Identify. I got an upgrade in a loot box, and it helps a ton.”

“Huh. I hadn’t even considered that one.”

“I’ve got some torches. We could pile rocks like I did for Andy, or gather wood for a pyre. You knew him. What do you think?”

She considered it. “Pyre. A pile of rocks just feels cold.”

“Sure. Let’s do it.”

We set about gathering wood and piling it into a huge pyre in the pond-sized indentation the ogre had smashed into the ground. That way the fire would have less chance of spreading.

As we worked I said, “We’re supposed to have a team of 5. Two are dead already. We’re not off to a good start. I hope we can find our final teammate alive.”

“Do you have any idea which way to go?”

“No. I got one bonus ability to help find you, but it’s spent now. My map only shows places I’ve been, or the area immediately around me. Did Joseph have anything helpful?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a frown. “Life was pretty hectic, but I think he kept more of the loot than I did.”

I finally checked the loot I got from Joseph’s body. He had a lot less than I did, but a lot more than poor Andy. A few dozen mana crystals, 1 minor healing potion, a few food rations and a partial box of water flasks. I also got his basic cotton trousers. I might take a look at those later, but the thought of wearing a dead guy’s pants kind of creeped me out.

I gave Ruby the healing potion, but she refused the food and water rations. “I can make all I want with Base Camp.”

More interesting was a heavy leather tome titled Dictionary of Monsters. The description read, “Contains information on most monster species found within the game.”

That sounded super helpful. I definitely planned to study it, but noticed the next item. An ostrich egg explosive with delay timer.

Wild. It produced an explosive blast, then a cloud of sleep gas. He should have used that on the ogre. It might have saved his life. Then again, maybe the ogre got too close too fast.

“Did Joseph have a jacket?” I asked as I pulled the item from my inventory. It was a simple jean jacket in a loose style, almost like a barn jacket.

“No. Did you get that with his loot?” she exclaimed, reaching out and accepting it eagerly.

When she slipped it on, it first hung very loose, but then shrank to fit. It hung past her hips, and she looked immensely relieved to have it.

Then she scowled and took it off.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t wear this.” She gestured at her minimal clothing. “These actually give me a pretty good defense boost, but I just got a message that the boost is voided if I wear any other clothing over it.”

“That’s insane.”

What purpose did Cyrus have in forcing her to run around only half clothed? Maybe it had something to do with the mysterious viewers he kept alluding to? Either way, it was nothing short of cruel to force her to choose between modesty and better defense.

We got back to work.