((Collab between NarcissisticPotato and QuietThinker))
The morning after the fiasco with Isabella was just as uneventful as the day before. The battle-droids needed fixed up and ready for combat within a week at the maximum so Ruby was spent trying to fix them up after idiotic engineers messed up. Again. Like the day before, she was under the constant supervision of her new 'bodyguard' who was alright in her books. She heard him sticking up for her when she left Isabella and him together so clearly, he wasn't too interested in falling under the bitch's powers of seduction. Of course, in a workshop where nearly everything was robotic, he was a bit useless.
"Mark! See that thing that is shining blue and is totally not capable of blowing this place off the face of the Earth, give it to me!" Ruby demanded, turning and craning her neck to peer at him from above a robot that seemed to have a problem with its power core. Most would be a little resistant, handling such a fragile piece of equipment but Ruby could withstand the energy reeling from it.
Mark blinked, unsure what their relationship had developed into. Was he her bodyguard or her assistant? He looked at the part in question and picked it up. As she said, it felt delicate. He wondered how she would react if he were to 'drop' it, before deciding against it. He wanted her to underestimate him, not believe he was useless. With a steady hand, he strode over and passed it up to Ruby as she straddled the metal monster. "Need anything else while you're up there?" He asked with a dash of tiredness.
"Nope." She breathed quickly, stretching her hand out and grasping the power core. It only took a second for her to reveal herself but a second could be an awfully long time for someone who can spend an entire year in the space of a few seconds. Just as she reached down, her blond hair fell, exposing the nape of her neck and subsequently, exposing one of her carefully guarded secrets - a scar. Mark gave it a glance: it was small, a straight line lengthways across, but the positioning was curious. Time snapped back and her shirt didn't fare much better as it slid down, exposing a small amount of lower-back before she righted herself, a light blush coming to her cheeks. She could work on fusion power cores but she forgot the mystical presence of gravity, and Mark had already seen it. A cross at the base of her spine, and upon inspection, it was made by whatever made the mark on her neck. Or rather, whoever made the mark on her neck.
He'd bet his boots that they were surgical scars and fact that they were incredibly small could mean a professional was involved. They were both around the spine, and the lower scar was particularly disturbing. Usually a single straight cut was all that was needed, but here there was an 'X'. He could only guess at what that meant, and he didn't like his guesses. Moreover, she was flushed upon exposing them, but he couldn't be sure that that wasn't from almost flashing her bra. Regardless, it was something he wasn't supposed to see. It would be best if he pretended he hadn't. In an attempt to try and drag the attention away from the scars she assumed he got a quick glance of, she tried to push it to a different subject. "So, why exactly do you work for Aperture?"
It had been a while since anyone had asked him that. Mark gave her the short answer, as she gave him hers. "..We're both Metas: we know what the world thinks of us. We're change. No one likes change. Especially when they have no control over it. They either try to control it or they try to fight it, but ultimately its pointless to try. Aperture sees that. They.. embrace it."
It was then that he noticed she had stopped listening.
---
Later on in the day, Ruby had sent Mark out to go to the canteen and get some food for her. He was to answer to her every beck and call so why not make him her personal butler? While he was gone, she was monitoring the call with Scarlett. She gained quite a bit of information but from the sounds of it, Scarlett had been compromised. She knew the risks and she knew what to do so Ruby quickly instructed the device to self-destruct to cover any tracks. "Fuck!" She shouted loudly, not to anyone in particular - Scarlett was a valuable asset and Ruby should have known security would have been tight. Still, it was good to hear that bastard Ghost willing to give away any secret.
Only a few seconds after destroying all communications with Scarlett, a message suddenly popped up on-screen: it was the intelligence reports that she had filtered through to her from the agencies that monitored these sorts of movements. Frowning, she opened it and read the contents. Some idiot called Battle Master apparently had arrived on-scene at LA on the side of the government. He sounded powerful, which was a little worrying but he didn't have any knowledge on what was happening so his risk wasn't too high. Ruby was just about to file it away before one more scroll brought her face-to-face with the meta in question.
Her mind burned with the mark of recognition as her lungs contracted, making her feel like she was struggling to pull any air in. Her eyes widened, the rest of her body paralysed by the man displayed on the screen. Ruby's ears filled with buzzing, letting everything fade out completely and make her almost forger that she was apparently struggling to breathe. Her breaths were quick, coming out in short gasps as the technology around her blanked in startling confusion. In fact, the building fell into a temporary blackout as Ruby lost most of the control over her powers. *"Adam..."*
Mark found her on the floor in the dark. She was hyperventillating and appeared delirious, a thick sweat dripping from her skin. With haste, he knelt and held her head. "What happened Ruby. Talk to me."
Eventually, she took one last long gulp of air and her eyes, which had faded a little, returned to their usual stunning blue. After a few moments of soft breathing and looking around in confusion, she looked up at him with a frown. "What happened?" She questioned with a raised eyebrow.
He replied immediately and without pause. "You sent me off to the canteen, the power went out and I came back to find you in semi-consciousness. Now I'll ask again, what happened?" This was a different Mark than she had met before hand. It was as if he had transformed into one of her droids.
"I... Um... I..." She lifted a hand and pressed it to her forehead before shaking her head a little - she didn't know whether it was the migraine or just her being weird but she couldn't remember very well. All she remembered was the image but she wasn't going to tell Mark that. "I can't remember. Must have been a power surge or something. Ca- can you just help me to bed?"
It didn't take him long to decide that she was lying, but it took him longer to decide whether or not he'd let Ruby know. He turned against the idea and so picked her up without any visible hesitation. Mark made note that there wasn't any blood on his hands and that it was unlikely that she had fallen, but it was still too dark to be entirely sure. He quickly yet carefully carried Ruby to her sleeping quarters and placed her down on the mattress. A hand on her forehead and revealed that she was hot but not feverish.
"Thanks Mark." She mumbled sleepily as he laid her down on the bed - Ruby wasn't too big and she had barely any fat clinging to her, mainly due to a lack of desire to eat, so she wasn't too heavy in his arms. "You know, you're way too nice to..." With that, she fell into a deep sleep and the rest of her words faded. Little did Ruby know that she hadn't even switched any of the systems off so when they finally did reboot, Mark would be able to see precisely what she was looking at.
She caught him off guard, and he involuntarily opened his mouth as if to say something. Mark wasn't sure what, but he regained his blank expression before the phantom words could form. He backed up to give her some rest and returned to where he found her, just as the lights above flickered back into life. The silence was replaced by a soft hum as the tech and machinery came back to life. He looked around to see if there was anything that could have caused her to have such a violent reaction; there wasn't anything there that could have fallen on her, there were no chemicals that could have come into contact with her.. All that was left in the room that he had not examined was a computer screen. Mark let himself bite his lip and relaxed his thoughts. The refresh rate was limiting to him, and he focused on keeping the display from flickering as he watched the infernal machine reboot. What met his gaze was a portrait of a man he did not recognise, but as nothing else was suspicious, he was going to investigate.