Post by GO FUCK YOURSELF NICK on Oct 10, 2015 11:10:14 GMT -6
October 1, 2015
Tujunga, California
The house in Tujunga was off the beaten path, miles from the freeway and down a road that was more dirt than asphalt. Even though it was technically part of Los Angeles County, this place could not have been a sharper contrast to the constant movement of Los Angeles. Out here, sagebrush and other desert plants grew wild and rattlesnakes made their homes among the rocks and behind the house, there was the Big Tujunga Creek.
Her mother had always hated how isolated the place was, but Ruby loved it. Whenever she needed to escape from San Diego and everything that was happening there, this was where she came. Although her mother insisted on fighting for at least partial ownership of the house, Hank Tyler’s will had been very clear in that Ruby was supposed to be his sole heir, and therefore the property, along with everything it contained, belonged to her. It was as if Hank Tyler had known that someday, his daughter would need the tranquility that the place offered, and Ruby had so far kept its existence from becoming common knowledge. Only the Kanemotos and the Imperium knew that she owned the place, and none of them had ever been there.
So when she had given the address and the instructions to Kevin Hardaway, she knew that she was breaking many of her personal rules. Their meeting, to answer the question he had posed her as his reward for helping her against VIOLENCE, could have been held at her apartment in San Diego. The apartment was a plain studio, without many of the personal touches one would expect. To Ruby, it was just a place to sleep. And since he had asked her why she was the person she was now, she felt the answer would be better given here, in a place far more significant to her than the apartment.
She hated him for asking the question like that. Her hope was that he’d say the first thing that came to mind and she’d be able to give some blowoff answer on Twitter and that would be the end of it. But he’d actually taken the time to think about it, and now instead of preparing for her title match with Aries Reed, she was preparing to let the man who’d tried to kill her several times into the parts of her life that she kept secret.
And as she cleared off the kitchen table, she wasn’t sure which one was going to be more difficult.
At least the first floor was in decent shape. Her father’s office was locked, but the living room, kitchen, and dining room were all dust-free. She wasn’t sure why she cared so much - considering that their last meeting had taken place in the woods, she didn’t think he would be judging her on her housekeeping. But as it got closer to six, she found that she couldn’t sit still, so she went into the office and continued working on her favorite project in the house. Her father’s book collection had long ago spread to other rooms, but the office was where he kept the volumes he deemed most important, and Ruby had made it her job to inventory them in case she ever needed them for reference.
Before she knew it, the clock was showing 6:05 and sure enough, there was an insistent pounding on the front door that could only be from one person.
“Yeah, I’m coming, don’t break my fucking door down,” she yelled out, closing the office door behind her as she went to go make possibly the biggest mistake of her life to date.
Sure enough, when she got to the front and opened the door, there was Kevin Hardaway on the other side of it, looking so confused that Ruby almost laughed.
"Okay so why do you live someplace that looks like it's straight out of The Hills Have Eyes?" he asked her, stepping over the threshold. "Wait... you do actually live here, right?"
Ruby rolled her eyes at him. "I figured it would complete our horror movie trilogy. Seedy motel, clearing in the woods, and now creepy old house in the middle of nowhere.” She paused for a moment, then let out a long, slow breath. “Yes, it’s my house. I don’t live here full time, which is why it looks kind of abandoned. But there’s still electricity, which means cold beer in the fridge. Come on.”
She lead him into the kitchen and grabbed two bottles from the refrigerator, sliding one across the table to him as she took a seat.
“So. You want to know what makes me Ruby Tyler today. For that, we have to go back a little bit, so I brought you here. I get billed from Barstow because that’s where I grew up, but we moved out here when I was sixteen or so. Couple of years later, I moved to Texas for college, and then came back after graduation. Four months later, my dad died in a car accident in Venezuela, which is where this story actually begins.” Ruby brought her beer to her lips and drank, keeping her voice as level as possible. She’d promised him honesty, but she would be damned if she’d let him see how much it still affected her to this day.
“He died while he was on a research trip, some Central American ghost legend he was chasing. My dad was an anthropology professor and he specialized in folklore, namely, tracing the legends back to their sources. Every legend is based in fact, and as time passes, it grows and changes into the story that we hear today. He was always traveling from one place to another, chasing down leads on his research subjects, and he kept track of it all in his journals. I found the most recent one in the bag with his things, after my mother and I had claimed the body.” On cue, she reached into the messenger bag hanging off her chair and withdrew a leather-bound notebook with newspaper clippings, book pages, and other miscellaneous bits sticking out of it. She offered it to Kevin and he flipped through a few pages, noting some of the stories that her father had taken an interest in.
“Was he also an editor for a News of the Weird column?” he asked, and the laughter in his voice made her regret ever bringing him here. But the concern in hers made him immediately stop. “Sorry,” he said more seriously. “Go ahead.”
Ruby studied him for a moment. All the shit he’d done to her, and this was the moment he decided to start apologizing? But she guessed it was better than nothing, so she continued. “Okay, so you see, in that journal are names and numbers of people in different states, none of whom I knew. I figured my dad’s social circle was pretty much confined to other academics, but when I called, a few of them answered. And that’s how I got into what I do now - the whole hunting thing. Turns out a lot of the legends my dad was researching had more basis in reality than I thought. For the first few months, I worked mostly on my own, taking jobs in whatever city or town I was in. You’d be surprised by how much there is out there.” But then she remembered that she was speaking to the First Son of mara’s Family, and she laughed a little. “Although given that you used to run with a bona fide Voodoo priestess and a natural medium along with whatever other weird shit mara had going on, maybe you already know.”
He nodded. “Yeah. My tolerance for weird shit is pretty high, sweetheart. Has been for a long time. Way before her to be honest. Not like you’re gonna scare me with anything.” He closed the journal, focusing on her instead. Ruby took a drink, then continued.
“In the beginning it wasn’t anything too serious, mostly just angry poltergeists and a couple of revenants. Nothing a couple shotgun shells of rock salt and burning the remains couldn’t take care of, although there was this one case where the ghost was of a woman who got killed by her husband, and they took the woman’s hair and used it to make a doll for their daughter. Creepy, but apparently very popular in the nineteenth century. I’d found the grave, burned the bones, but she still hung on. Took me days to figure out what it was that was keeping her here. Um, but yeah. Anyway.”
As much as she liked talking about her early days as a hunter, they weren’t really relevant to the larger story that she was trying to tell him, and if she started getting sidetracked now, she would never finish answering the question he’d asked her. Hardaway was grinning, leaning back in his chair. “Ruby the Ghostbuster, huh?”
“Tip of the iceberg, darlin’,” she replied, shaking her head a little. “You should hear the one about the time I ran into a wendigo. Buut that’s neither here nor there. Like I was saying, I’m on my own for a few months and I happen to come back to California for both a match and a job. The job involves a guy who has an old box with Hebrew writing on it and a few small items inside. Long story short, turns out there’s a demonic entity called a dybbuk attached to the thing. Dybbuks are pretty low on the demonic hierarchy, but they still cause a ton of damage. He was keeping the box in the basement and all the lights got smashed out. People would get sick from being around this thing. The guy would hear scratching and growling, like something was trying to escape. Really freaky stuff. So I get called in to help with this case, but little do I know, there’s a couple of other guys already on it. That’s how I met Masato and Tsurugi, only I didn’t know it was them at the time. Guys like them, they typically don’t like dealing with independents, but since this thing wasn’t actually possessing anyone it took a little bit of digging to figure out how to neutralize the dybbuk. We did it though, and when they introduced themselves, I found out that their dad, Ren, was friends with my father.”
Kevin nodded, silent for once as she stopped talking. For all she was trying to keep this as cold and clinical as possible, he had seen the way she dealt with both Masato and Tsurugi on social media. Whatever had happened there was still raw and open, and it surprised him that she was delving this deep into things with him of all people. At the same time though, he wasn’t about to stop it.
Ruby paused for a long drink from her beer bottle, composing herself for the next chapter of this tale. Somehow, talking about the Kanemotos and her time with the Order was more difficult than talking about losing her father. She supposed it was due to the nature of the losses. Her father’s death was an accident and while it may have come too soon, there was still a finality there that she lacked with Ren and the boys. She had chosen to leave them and the fallout from that decision still affected each of them nearly two years later.
“Unlike me, the Kanemotos didn’t operate independently. The group they’re part of is just called the Order. Mostly you get born into it, but they do on occasion allow outsiders to join. You have to be sponsored by both a Hunter and a Guide. Guides are the ones who help train Hunters, give them their assignments, repair weapons, stuff like that. Ren’s a Guide, and the boys are Hunters. Masato is the one who ended up sponsoring me. So for almost a year, I trained with them. Every waking moment was spent working toward the goal of me joining the Order. I ended up moving into one of the guest rooms in their house and... I didn’t expect for things to turn out like they did. I figured it would just be a business partnership, you know? But Ren had known my dad for years, and spending all my time with Masato and Tsurugi turned them from acquaintances into family. I never had siblings growing up, and now all of a sudden I had two brothers as well as a stepfather that I actually liked and respected. And then it all went to shit.”
For the first time since she’d started telling him the story, Ruby looked away from him, turning her gaze toward the kitchen window and the dying light of the California sun. She didn’t want him to see this part, but in the interest of honesty, it had to come out. He watched her as she clenched her hand into a fist, her nails digging deep into her palm, and he leaned forward in anticipation of whatever she was going to say next.
“In order to expel a demon from a human host, you have to kill the host with a blessed blade. There are prayers and sigils you can use to temporarily banish them from a place, but the only surefire way to get rid of them is to kill them. The first time I did it, I thought I was going to go crazy. I couldn’t get his face out of my mind. While the demon had control, he kicked my ass all around this empty bar in the middle of nowhere. I got him though - right under the chin, up into the brain. That was supposed to be it. I was told from day one, when you kill a demon, the person whose body they’re using is already gone. Turns out that’s not exactly true. In this case, as he was dying and the demon was escaping, he thanked me. He actually thanked me for freeing him. He’d been in there the whole time the demon had control. When I thought it was just the demon, it was easy. See evil, slay evil, you know?”
Ruby bit down hard on her lower lip, forcing herself to get a grip. Only Tsurugi knew the depth of her guilt for that first kill. As much as she was trying to present all of this information as simple fact, without any emotional attachment to her words, it was becoming more and more difficult. She wondered if she should even be sharing any of this with him. How could she trust a man who had threatened to end her life on more than one occasion? And yet, despite those threats, he had come to her aid, and he had proven that he could keep a secret - though she could have lived without the allusions to their nights together on social media.
He nodded to her. “Yeah. Do what you gotta do. Get the job done. Makes sense to me.”
Privately, she wondered if he was judging her, but given their history she didn’t think he was. He of all people would understand the position she’d been put into, especially as time went on. “The worst part was that I knew it was only the first time I was going to have to do it, if I wanted to stay as part of the Order. And at the time, I did. The Kanemotos were the only family I trusted. So, I figured out a way to justify it in my head. A lot of possessions happen when the person is vulnerable emotionally. Another one I took out, the host had lost his wife and two young kids to a drunk driver. He was full of rage and pain and an absolutely perfect target for a demon. The demon promises them an end to the suffering and a way to get revenge and before they know it, their body is being controlled by the forces of Hell. I actually thought that was what had happened with you, especially when you started talking about your daughter’s mother and what happened to her. So, word of advice, if demonic entities start trying to possess you, don’t let them. Because then I’m really not going to be able to stop Masato and it was difficult enough getting him to not kill Amy - who I’m getting to eventually. Jesus, this is a long story.”
Ruby ran her fingers back through her hair and shifted in her seat, drumming her fingers against the tabletop. “You regretting cheating your way into the tragic backstory yet?” she asked him, the corners of her lips turning up into the ghost of a smile.
“Not on your life, sweetheart. Keep going.”
She sighed. Of course he wasn’t going to let her out of this that easily. She should have known better.
“Okay. So, I learn to make my peace with, you know, killing people for a living. Everything’s all well and good, I’m busting my ass in training, and I’m set to face Masato in January as my final test to see if I’m fit to join the Order. At the end of December, I get assigned a job. Low level demon, perfect for a rookie, don’t even need to take the boys as backup. That’s what Ren told me. So I go. And, well... it was the opposite of that. I ended that night with a broken hand, some broken ribs, a handful of internal injuries, a dislocated shoulder, a sprained ankle, and probably some other stuff. I was in such bad shape that I legitimately thought I was going to die. I managed to banish the thing though, long enough to get away. Which also almost ended in me dying, because it’s really hard to drive when you’re in that much pain, as it turns out. And I kind of drifted into oncoming traffic and wound up having to steer my car into a ditch. Paramedics get called, I get taken to a hospital and get patched up enough to discharge myself and go back to the house.”
He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “No wonder me trying to kill you only made you mad.”
And although he didn’t think she would, Ruby actually snorted in amusement. “Long story short, Ren told me what he was ordered to tell me, and I was not supposed to come back from that job. So that night, I packed up and I left because I couldn’t handle what had happened. I trusted Ren more than anyone else, and he’d broken that trust. I should have said my goodbyes in person, but I couldn’t. I left them notes instead. Masato still hasn’t forgiven me for it, but then again, no one ever told him why I left. It’s easier to let him hate me than to destroy the relationship he has with his father, though. Ren is his hero and the Order is his life, and I don’t have the right to take that away from him, even if I thought for a second that he’d believe me.”
Kevin leaned forward and started to reach for her hand, but then thought the better of it as Ruby crossed her arms over her chest and blew a lock of hair our of her face.
“And then, of course, I go on a ghost hunt with my best friend last year and she winds up getting possessed by something and going crazy. After I left the Order, I went back to working independently. Pretty much lived out of my car for the year, until I get a call from Collins telling me he’s got a couple jobs for me, as a wrestler and a hunter. Took him up on the offer, went out to San Diego in January, and the rest is history.”
The silence between them stretched into what seemed an eternity. Ruby started picking at the label on her beer bottle, avoiding his gaze.
“That was a lot more than I asked for,” he said finally, making her look up at him. “I wanted to know why you react to me the way you do. I wasn’t expecting to get your life story out of it.”
She glared at him, her grip on the bottle tightening as she considered whether or not to smash it over his head. She took a deep breath in, trying to settle herself before she answered him. “Because. In order to understand the way I am with you, you have to understand what happened before you got involved. I say that I can kill you because I know that I can. I don’t run when you say you’re going to do the same to me because I’ve faced worse shit than you and here I still am, somehow.”
“And dragging me back to that motel with you?”
“Well I mean…” Ruby raked her hand back through her hair, a blush rising in her cheeks as she stood up. She started moving around the kitchen as she talked, suddenly unable to settle herself after spending all this time sitting and talking with him. “Okay. This is going to sound ridiculous. But when you talk about your demons, literal or otherwise, my first reaction isn’t yeah, this guy’s nuts. My first reaction is holy shit, this guy gets it. This guy gets me. Which is the part that scares the shit out of me. I feel like I’m going out of my fucking mind more often than not with all these secrets and lies and being around you makes me feel like I’m not as crazy as I think I am and yet at the same time I’m actively trying to not let myself go off the deep end. Like I said, it’s fucking stupid. I shouldn’t feel okay when I’m around you, and yet I do because you know what? At least you’re fucking honest with me. At least you’re not deliberately hiding shit or blowing up my personal life. You’re the last person in the world that I should trust and the only person I can. How fucked is that?”
He moved in closer to her and she put a hand on his chest to stop him. He put his hand over hers and she looked up, not sure whether to laugh or cry. “It’s pretty fucked up. Pretty sure I can get you to stop thinking about it though... you still got those handcuffs I left you with?”
Ruby rolled her eyes and pushed him back lightly. “I do, but not now. I have to get ready to face Aries freaking Reed.”
“Oh, like he’s gonna be more of a challenge than I was. He’s not out to kill you.”
“Which is exactly why I need to get to work. I’ve been in survival mode since the first night you came out and decided to drive me headfirst into the canvas. And I don’t want to strangle him nearly as much as I do you most days... although I think I’d probably get a boost in my paycheck if I did,” she joked, getting a laugh out of him as well.
“Promise you won’t enjoy it as much with him as you do with me?” he asked her, his tone lighter than she’d ever heard it.
“You I hate with a burning passion. Him I just don’t like and want to beat because it’ll be fun. There’s a very big difference, trust me.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth, taking a step back and leaning against the kitchen counter. “By the way? You’re actually kind of an okay person when you’re not being a psychotic asshole.”
He raised a brow at her. “So does that mean I get to hang out a little longer?”
“I just admitted you might be an okay person, don’t make me change my mind, all right?”
Tujunga, California
The house in Tujunga was off the beaten path, miles from the freeway and down a road that was more dirt than asphalt. Even though it was technically part of Los Angeles County, this place could not have been a sharper contrast to the constant movement of Los Angeles. Out here, sagebrush and other desert plants grew wild and rattlesnakes made their homes among the rocks and behind the house, there was the Big Tujunga Creek.
Her mother had always hated how isolated the place was, but Ruby loved it. Whenever she needed to escape from San Diego and everything that was happening there, this was where she came. Although her mother insisted on fighting for at least partial ownership of the house, Hank Tyler’s will had been very clear in that Ruby was supposed to be his sole heir, and therefore the property, along with everything it contained, belonged to her. It was as if Hank Tyler had known that someday, his daughter would need the tranquility that the place offered, and Ruby had so far kept its existence from becoming common knowledge. Only the Kanemotos and the Imperium knew that she owned the place, and none of them had ever been there.
So when she had given the address and the instructions to Kevin Hardaway, she knew that she was breaking many of her personal rules. Their meeting, to answer the question he had posed her as his reward for helping her against VIOLENCE, could have been held at her apartment in San Diego. The apartment was a plain studio, without many of the personal touches one would expect. To Ruby, it was just a place to sleep. And since he had asked her why she was the person she was now, she felt the answer would be better given here, in a place far more significant to her than the apartment.
She hated him for asking the question like that. Her hope was that he’d say the first thing that came to mind and she’d be able to give some blowoff answer on Twitter and that would be the end of it. But he’d actually taken the time to think about it, and now instead of preparing for her title match with Aries Reed, she was preparing to let the man who’d tried to kill her several times into the parts of her life that she kept secret.
And as she cleared off the kitchen table, she wasn’t sure which one was going to be more difficult.
At least the first floor was in decent shape. Her father’s office was locked, but the living room, kitchen, and dining room were all dust-free. She wasn’t sure why she cared so much - considering that their last meeting had taken place in the woods, she didn’t think he would be judging her on her housekeeping. But as it got closer to six, she found that she couldn’t sit still, so she went into the office and continued working on her favorite project in the house. Her father’s book collection had long ago spread to other rooms, but the office was where he kept the volumes he deemed most important, and Ruby had made it her job to inventory them in case she ever needed them for reference.
Before she knew it, the clock was showing 6:05 and sure enough, there was an insistent pounding on the front door that could only be from one person.
“Yeah, I’m coming, don’t break my fucking door down,” she yelled out, closing the office door behind her as she went to go make possibly the biggest mistake of her life to date.
Sure enough, when she got to the front and opened the door, there was Kevin Hardaway on the other side of it, looking so confused that Ruby almost laughed.
"Okay so why do you live someplace that looks like it's straight out of The Hills Have Eyes?" he asked her, stepping over the threshold. "Wait... you do actually live here, right?"
Ruby rolled her eyes at him. "I figured it would complete our horror movie trilogy. Seedy motel, clearing in the woods, and now creepy old house in the middle of nowhere.” She paused for a moment, then let out a long, slow breath. “Yes, it’s my house. I don’t live here full time, which is why it looks kind of abandoned. But there’s still electricity, which means cold beer in the fridge. Come on.”
She lead him into the kitchen and grabbed two bottles from the refrigerator, sliding one across the table to him as she took a seat.
“So. You want to know what makes me Ruby Tyler today. For that, we have to go back a little bit, so I brought you here. I get billed from Barstow because that’s where I grew up, but we moved out here when I was sixteen or so. Couple of years later, I moved to Texas for college, and then came back after graduation. Four months later, my dad died in a car accident in Venezuela, which is where this story actually begins.” Ruby brought her beer to her lips and drank, keeping her voice as level as possible. She’d promised him honesty, but she would be damned if she’d let him see how much it still affected her to this day.
“He died while he was on a research trip, some Central American ghost legend he was chasing. My dad was an anthropology professor and he specialized in folklore, namely, tracing the legends back to their sources. Every legend is based in fact, and as time passes, it grows and changes into the story that we hear today. He was always traveling from one place to another, chasing down leads on his research subjects, and he kept track of it all in his journals. I found the most recent one in the bag with his things, after my mother and I had claimed the body.” On cue, she reached into the messenger bag hanging off her chair and withdrew a leather-bound notebook with newspaper clippings, book pages, and other miscellaneous bits sticking out of it. She offered it to Kevin and he flipped through a few pages, noting some of the stories that her father had taken an interest in.
“Was he also an editor for a News of the Weird column?” he asked, and the laughter in his voice made her regret ever bringing him here. But the concern in hers made him immediately stop. “Sorry,” he said more seriously. “Go ahead.”
Ruby studied him for a moment. All the shit he’d done to her, and this was the moment he decided to start apologizing? But she guessed it was better than nothing, so she continued. “Okay, so you see, in that journal are names and numbers of people in different states, none of whom I knew. I figured my dad’s social circle was pretty much confined to other academics, but when I called, a few of them answered. And that’s how I got into what I do now - the whole hunting thing. Turns out a lot of the legends my dad was researching had more basis in reality than I thought. For the first few months, I worked mostly on my own, taking jobs in whatever city or town I was in. You’d be surprised by how much there is out there.” But then she remembered that she was speaking to the First Son of mara’s Family, and she laughed a little. “Although given that you used to run with a bona fide Voodoo priestess and a natural medium along with whatever other weird shit mara had going on, maybe you already know.”
He nodded. “Yeah. My tolerance for weird shit is pretty high, sweetheart. Has been for a long time. Way before her to be honest. Not like you’re gonna scare me with anything.” He closed the journal, focusing on her instead. Ruby took a drink, then continued.
“In the beginning it wasn’t anything too serious, mostly just angry poltergeists and a couple of revenants. Nothing a couple shotgun shells of rock salt and burning the remains couldn’t take care of, although there was this one case where the ghost was of a woman who got killed by her husband, and they took the woman’s hair and used it to make a doll for their daughter. Creepy, but apparently very popular in the nineteenth century. I’d found the grave, burned the bones, but she still hung on. Took me days to figure out what it was that was keeping her here. Um, but yeah. Anyway.”
As much as she liked talking about her early days as a hunter, they weren’t really relevant to the larger story that she was trying to tell him, and if she started getting sidetracked now, she would never finish answering the question he’d asked her. Hardaway was grinning, leaning back in his chair. “Ruby the Ghostbuster, huh?”
“Tip of the iceberg, darlin’,” she replied, shaking her head a little. “You should hear the one about the time I ran into a wendigo. Buut that’s neither here nor there. Like I was saying, I’m on my own for a few months and I happen to come back to California for both a match and a job. The job involves a guy who has an old box with Hebrew writing on it and a few small items inside. Long story short, turns out there’s a demonic entity called a dybbuk attached to the thing. Dybbuks are pretty low on the demonic hierarchy, but they still cause a ton of damage. He was keeping the box in the basement and all the lights got smashed out. People would get sick from being around this thing. The guy would hear scratching and growling, like something was trying to escape. Really freaky stuff. So I get called in to help with this case, but little do I know, there’s a couple of other guys already on it. That’s how I met Masato and Tsurugi, only I didn’t know it was them at the time. Guys like them, they typically don’t like dealing with independents, but since this thing wasn’t actually possessing anyone it took a little bit of digging to figure out how to neutralize the dybbuk. We did it though, and when they introduced themselves, I found out that their dad, Ren, was friends with my father.”
Kevin nodded, silent for once as she stopped talking. For all she was trying to keep this as cold and clinical as possible, he had seen the way she dealt with both Masato and Tsurugi on social media. Whatever had happened there was still raw and open, and it surprised him that she was delving this deep into things with him of all people. At the same time though, he wasn’t about to stop it.
Ruby paused for a long drink from her beer bottle, composing herself for the next chapter of this tale. Somehow, talking about the Kanemotos and her time with the Order was more difficult than talking about losing her father. She supposed it was due to the nature of the losses. Her father’s death was an accident and while it may have come too soon, there was still a finality there that she lacked with Ren and the boys. She had chosen to leave them and the fallout from that decision still affected each of them nearly two years later.
“Unlike me, the Kanemotos didn’t operate independently. The group they’re part of is just called the Order. Mostly you get born into it, but they do on occasion allow outsiders to join. You have to be sponsored by both a Hunter and a Guide. Guides are the ones who help train Hunters, give them their assignments, repair weapons, stuff like that. Ren’s a Guide, and the boys are Hunters. Masato is the one who ended up sponsoring me. So for almost a year, I trained with them. Every waking moment was spent working toward the goal of me joining the Order. I ended up moving into one of the guest rooms in their house and... I didn’t expect for things to turn out like they did. I figured it would just be a business partnership, you know? But Ren had known my dad for years, and spending all my time with Masato and Tsurugi turned them from acquaintances into family. I never had siblings growing up, and now all of a sudden I had two brothers as well as a stepfather that I actually liked and respected. And then it all went to shit.”
For the first time since she’d started telling him the story, Ruby looked away from him, turning her gaze toward the kitchen window and the dying light of the California sun. She didn’t want him to see this part, but in the interest of honesty, it had to come out. He watched her as she clenched her hand into a fist, her nails digging deep into her palm, and he leaned forward in anticipation of whatever she was going to say next.
“In order to expel a demon from a human host, you have to kill the host with a blessed blade. There are prayers and sigils you can use to temporarily banish them from a place, but the only surefire way to get rid of them is to kill them. The first time I did it, I thought I was going to go crazy. I couldn’t get his face out of my mind. While the demon had control, he kicked my ass all around this empty bar in the middle of nowhere. I got him though - right under the chin, up into the brain. That was supposed to be it. I was told from day one, when you kill a demon, the person whose body they’re using is already gone. Turns out that’s not exactly true. In this case, as he was dying and the demon was escaping, he thanked me. He actually thanked me for freeing him. He’d been in there the whole time the demon had control. When I thought it was just the demon, it was easy. See evil, slay evil, you know?”
Ruby bit down hard on her lower lip, forcing herself to get a grip. Only Tsurugi knew the depth of her guilt for that first kill. As much as she was trying to present all of this information as simple fact, without any emotional attachment to her words, it was becoming more and more difficult. She wondered if she should even be sharing any of this with him. How could she trust a man who had threatened to end her life on more than one occasion? And yet, despite those threats, he had come to her aid, and he had proven that he could keep a secret - though she could have lived without the allusions to their nights together on social media.
He nodded to her. “Yeah. Do what you gotta do. Get the job done. Makes sense to me.”
Privately, she wondered if he was judging her, but given their history she didn’t think he was. He of all people would understand the position she’d been put into, especially as time went on. “The worst part was that I knew it was only the first time I was going to have to do it, if I wanted to stay as part of the Order. And at the time, I did. The Kanemotos were the only family I trusted. So, I figured out a way to justify it in my head. A lot of possessions happen when the person is vulnerable emotionally. Another one I took out, the host had lost his wife and two young kids to a drunk driver. He was full of rage and pain and an absolutely perfect target for a demon. The demon promises them an end to the suffering and a way to get revenge and before they know it, their body is being controlled by the forces of Hell. I actually thought that was what had happened with you, especially when you started talking about your daughter’s mother and what happened to her. So, word of advice, if demonic entities start trying to possess you, don’t let them. Because then I’m really not going to be able to stop Masato and it was difficult enough getting him to not kill Amy - who I’m getting to eventually. Jesus, this is a long story.”
Ruby ran her fingers back through her hair and shifted in her seat, drumming her fingers against the tabletop. “You regretting cheating your way into the tragic backstory yet?” she asked him, the corners of her lips turning up into the ghost of a smile.
“Not on your life, sweetheart. Keep going.”
She sighed. Of course he wasn’t going to let her out of this that easily. She should have known better.
“Okay. So, I learn to make my peace with, you know, killing people for a living. Everything’s all well and good, I’m busting my ass in training, and I’m set to face Masato in January as my final test to see if I’m fit to join the Order. At the end of December, I get assigned a job. Low level demon, perfect for a rookie, don’t even need to take the boys as backup. That’s what Ren told me. So I go. And, well... it was the opposite of that. I ended that night with a broken hand, some broken ribs, a handful of internal injuries, a dislocated shoulder, a sprained ankle, and probably some other stuff. I was in such bad shape that I legitimately thought I was going to die. I managed to banish the thing though, long enough to get away. Which also almost ended in me dying, because it’s really hard to drive when you’re in that much pain, as it turns out. And I kind of drifted into oncoming traffic and wound up having to steer my car into a ditch. Paramedics get called, I get taken to a hospital and get patched up enough to discharge myself and go back to the house.”
He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “No wonder me trying to kill you only made you mad.”
And although he didn’t think she would, Ruby actually snorted in amusement. “Long story short, Ren told me what he was ordered to tell me, and I was not supposed to come back from that job. So that night, I packed up and I left because I couldn’t handle what had happened. I trusted Ren more than anyone else, and he’d broken that trust. I should have said my goodbyes in person, but I couldn’t. I left them notes instead. Masato still hasn’t forgiven me for it, but then again, no one ever told him why I left. It’s easier to let him hate me than to destroy the relationship he has with his father, though. Ren is his hero and the Order is his life, and I don’t have the right to take that away from him, even if I thought for a second that he’d believe me.”
Kevin leaned forward and started to reach for her hand, but then thought the better of it as Ruby crossed her arms over her chest and blew a lock of hair our of her face.
“And then, of course, I go on a ghost hunt with my best friend last year and she winds up getting possessed by something and going crazy. After I left the Order, I went back to working independently. Pretty much lived out of my car for the year, until I get a call from Collins telling me he’s got a couple jobs for me, as a wrestler and a hunter. Took him up on the offer, went out to San Diego in January, and the rest is history.”
The silence between them stretched into what seemed an eternity. Ruby started picking at the label on her beer bottle, avoiding his gaze.
“That was a lot more than I asked for,” he said finally, making her look up at him. “I wanted to know why you react to me the way you do. I wasn’t expecting to get your life story out of it.”
She glared at him, her grip on the bottle tightening as she considered whether or not to smash it over his head. She took a deep breath in, trying to settle herself before she answered him. “Because. In order to understand the way I am with you, you have to understand what happened before you got involved. I say that I can kill you because I know that I can. I don’t run when you say you’re going to do the same to me because I’ve faced worse shit than you and here I still am, somehow.”
“And dragging me back to that motel with you?”
“Well I mean…” Ruby raked her hand back through her hair, a blush rising in her cheeks as she stood up. She started moving around the kitchen as she talked, suddenly unable to settle herself after spending all this time sitting and talking with him. “Okay. This is going to sound ridiculous. But when you talk about your demons, literal or otherwise, my first reaction isn’t yeah, this guy’s nuts. My first reaction is holy shit, this guy gets it. This guy gets me. Which is the part that scares the shit out of me. I feel like I’m going out of my fucking mind more often than not with all these secrets and lies and being around you makes me feel like I’m not as crazy as I think I am and yet at the same time I’m actively trying to not let myself go off the deep end. Like I said, it’s fucking stupid. I shouldn’t feel okay when I’m around you, and yet I do because you know what? At least you’re fucking honest with me. At least you’re not deliberately hiding shit or blowing up my personal life. You’re the last person in the world that I should trust and the only person I can. How fucked is that?”
He moved in closer to her and she put a hand on his chest to stop him. He put his hand over hers and she looked up, not sure whether to laugh or cry. “It’s pretty fucked up. Pretty sure I can get you to stop thinking about it though... you still got those handcuffs I left you with?”
Ruby rolled her eyes and pushed him back lightly. “I do, but not now. I have to get ready to face Aries freaking Reed.”
“Oh, like he’s gonna be more of a challenge than I was. He’s not out to kill you.”
“Which is exactly why I need to get to work. I’ve been in survival mode since the first night you came out and decided to drive me headfirst into the canvas. And I don’t want to strangle him nearly as much as I do you most days... although I think I’d probably get a boost in my paycheck if I did,” she joked, getting a laugh out of him as well.
“Promise you won’t enjoy it as much with him as you do with me?” he asked her, his tone lighter than she’d ever heard it.
“You I hate with a burning passion. Him I just don’t like and want to beat because it’ll be fun. There’s a very big difference, trust me.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth, taking a step back and leaning against the kitchen counter. “By the way? You’re actually kind of an okay person when you’re not being a psychotic asshole.”
He raised a brow at her. “So does that mean I get to hang out a little longer?”
“I just admitted you might be an okay person, don’t make me change my mind, all right?”
Here I am against the Blackest Sun of EXODUS, the Silver-Tongued Devil himself, the one and only Aries Reed.
You do a lot of talking, Aries. We’ve heard time and time again that you’re constantly stirring up shit. That you’re gonna go out there and win every damn match you have in this company. And you know what?
You really haven’t delivered.
You choked against Genji Yamato. I get it, dude’s a legend. But you’re a young, up and coming star… supposedly. And you let a guy who was doing this when I was in kindergarten beat you.
What about those tag belts, huh? Two-time EXODUS Pro Tag Team Champion… except you lost those belts in your first defense. And then when you won them back, you proceeded to destroy them along with your tag partnership, leaving you with nothing.
You’re a guy who’s had some lucky breaks despite annoying the boss’s pet intern enough that she’s about ready to get in the ring with you herself. You had REVOLUTION, but that’s as dead as your tag reign.
Noticing a pattern here?
Every accolade you’ve ever actually won, you’ve dropped or destroyed. The rest of it is just talk. Endless, sometimes funny, mostly irritating talk.
You’ve got a point, my record in EXODUS is far from perfect. But it’s not like yours is much better in recent months. Besides the thing with Yamato, which arguably only garnered attention because of his name, not yours, what exactly have you done?
A whole bunch of jack shit, that’s what.
Call me a stand-in champion and a placeholder all you want. Tell the world that you’re going to be the greatest San Diego Bay champion this company has ever seen and that the Blackest Sun is going to eclipse Savannah Taylor’s record-breaking reign. In fact, tell the world whatever the hell you want.
Because when the time comes?
You’re gonna choke on every single word.
The last time you won a championship, you tore it to shreds. I am not going to let you disrespect my title like that. And whether you like it or not, it’s staying in my hands on Sunday night, and do you know why?
Not because I’ll have a chair or a light tube at my disposal.
Not because Kevin Hardaway is going to come out at the last second and get in my way like he did with SHOZO.
But because when I won this title, I got curbstomped with my head in a chair. Do you know what that does to a person’s neck? I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. I could have died that night, at the hands of the person I’d taken the belt away from. Could have, but didn’t.
And then I put not only the belt but my body on the line in the rematch, the second ever Chairshot Survival match in this company. I got beaten with chairs and put through a table, among other things, and I came out victorious once again.
When was the last time you felt so dedicated to something that you would risk your life and your health to keep it out of the wrong hands? When was the last time you felt that kind of fire in your veins? Have you ever actually given a shit about anything other than yourself?
I am not a throwaway champion. If I was, you wouldn’t be facing me for my belt.
You think that just because my biggest successes in this company have been in hardcore matches, I’ll be easy for you to overcome. In your mind, you’re already raising that belt above your head and handing Tom Matheny some index cards so that he can tell the audience to fuck off if they don’t like their new San Diego Bay champion.
In my mind? There is one thought and one thought only - defend that title with everything I have in me. You’re right when you say that it’s been awhile since I’ve had an actual wrestling match in this company but you know what?
I don’t give a shit.
You want to see how good I am in a ring without chairs and tubes and other stuff? Then that’s exactly what you’re going to get.
And then you’ll make up some bullshit about how the world is against you because they don’t like your attitude and that’s why you keep getting held down.
Let me tell you something, buddy.
The only thing holding you back? Is you and that fucking mouth of yours. Shut up, learn to deliver, and then maybe people will start taking you seriously.
I put in a lot of hard work to get ready for this match and I really, really hope you did the same because I want a challenge. I want you to bring everything you’ve got and I want to see the look on your stupid fucking face when you see that your best isn’t good enough to beat a placeholder champion like me.
Because trust me, that picture’s gonna speak more words than you ever could.
Peace out, bitch.