Presently the young lady would grin impishly to herself as she dangles there from the edge of the rooftop, looking upwards. Looking down now she takes in her options. Well she still has to get to the top of that bigger building. Her sense of direction (surprisingly) keeps her aware as to which direction she is to go from here.
And something out of the corner of her eyes diverts that attention. A shadow emerging from the rooftoop. A man's armored head partially blocking out a sun hanging in the sky. Ruby's eyes widen with surprise as he speaks, and she immediately lets out a little
"eeep!" Muscles in her legs and arms tense as she prepares to push off of the roof and avoid the inevitable bit of offense he would bring towards her. And then abruptly, the look upon Ruby's features shift. They shift to mirror the confusion upon the man's face.
View attachment 244428She is watching his eyes, and they roll into the back of his head as his large armored form begins to lean forward. A moment of indecision, and Ruby closes her eyes tightly and curls up as best she can while still hanging off the roof. She is expecting him to fall on her. At which time she could go with the momentum and actually get away. Might hurt, but she is assured an escape. But that plan never is able to be put into practice.
His lumbering body seems to stop mid-decscent, and then Moon Knight's form is revealed behind the now unconscious man. Or… is it Mr. Knight now? A wide smile now replaces the look of confusion, a gaze of genuine relief. With a grunt her hand shoots out towards his and she uses her feet to scale the wall as she is pulled up. Now on the roof proper with him, she takes a few deep breaths and nods. She then looks back up to him
"oh oh sorry about that… used ta scoutin on my own." Her smile drawing into a more apologetic one. Her gaze moves now more towards the path she thinks she has to go. Are there
more guards now on the rooftops or is she just
noticing the multitude of guards now?
"Okay, Mr. Knight."
A quick aside… she isn't calling him 'Mr. Knight' because that is the proper nomenclature for this iteration of Marc Spector. It's more of her being polite, thinking that his true last name is 'Knight'.
Going back to the scene… Ruby continues.
"Ya can move as fast as me." She reaches out and grasps his hand, smiling more widely now
"Just breath normal, kay?" Those observing the pair would next see Mr. Knight and Ruby Rose engulfed in a stream of a swirling red streamer and a thinner ribbon, the color of eggshell, ragged and gently glowing. The red and glowing ribbon swirl around one another as together they move along the rooftops at a very high speed, a trail of dissipating rose petals in their wake.
The red part of the swirling energies resembles the cloak Ruby wears, and the other bears resemblance to the wrappings an ancient God would use in the Middle East, perhaps for a Pharaoh. And the glow, it almost seems to be soft enough to be the glow of the moon.
Mr. Knight's perceptions would seem heightened to such a degree the world around him seems to be moving far more slowly than it should be. The peripherals of his vision would be filled with swirling rose petals, and he would have a weightless sensation the whole of the time. In fact as they move, a guard would notice them and start to raise his rifle towards them. But the barrel of the rifle barely gets halfway up into the air before they pass him. The guard seeming in slow motion. From rooftop to rooftop they bound together, zipping between the posted guards. The pattern they move in is erratic, as if anticipating long range fire from somewhere. Flowing upwards then off of one of the rooftops, the Pantheon is now where they would land. On the ledge at first, and then flowing right up the dome itself. And when they are at the highest point, Mr. Knight would find himself once more… himself. Rose petals scatter around them, and suddenly Ruby is kneeling in front of him with her rifle aiming outwards and down towards the city proper. She looks through the high powered scope of her rifle, looking for an area that resembles a market place, or a gathering point of some kind.
"Help me find it!" She says, knowing the jig is up and assuming they will be swarmed soon. Assuming.
"I dunno what kinds of.. things… stuff this place has, so the quicker we can find this the better!"
L'Arathras
"Unusual box, huh?..." The Dullahan pondered out loud "You mean the TARDIS, Thea?" he asked the gynoid, though by the time he asked, she ran off to do something else. When the mage endorsed the young lady's idea, it caught up to Rath. Summoning his helmet to his head again, hiding his fascination with the peculiar way of flying the girl had. Against his better judgment, he didn't stop Moon Knight from following her. That said, his skillfull display of acrobatics shown as he climbed and traversed rooftops off-sight.
This Rome place had certainly seen better days. It stunk of disarray and corruption. This was only further confirmed when a group of guards, oozing arrogance from every filthy pore of theirs, threatened the group's teen. The fellow knight stepped in in order to not get things escalated, which was great, his effort gave them a bit more breathing room before these streets were no longer safe for them. Not that they were safe for the locals, but that's a different subject.
Once he saw a small gap with no nearby guards or civilians passing by, Rath cleared his throat "Folks, a moment?" asking for a bit of attention from his new teammates. "I'll go see the others, and keep us communicated." He then seemed to address someone else "Raum? Could you stay in the boy's shadow and help the knight keep an eye on him?" A different voice, a gravelly one that didn't resemble Rath's at all responded "You know, for a magical geezer, you sure forget the magic word a lot..." The undead's palm met his face "... Please?" he asked, mildly irritated "Hawha! You got it! You also want me to keep us able to talk, right? Worry not haw! Your old pal Raum will give you a wing!" Almost as soon as he finished, a shadow quickly dragged from Rath's shadow, to Kota's. "As for me, I'll be talking to you through Raum. Hopefully we'll meet up again soon." Then, after another check of not being seen by neither the law, nor the common folk, Rath walked into an abandoned alley. His figure soon turned jet black, and his body dissolved into a murder of crows, all of them scattering across the city. Going to several vantage points, checking on multiple spots for this so called "out of place box".
One of the crows that scattered headed to the top of the Pantheon, since it was the best vantage point. And right there it spotted two familiar figures. The crow landed next to the young girl and Moon Knight. Looking up at them, the bird spoke up "It's me, L'Arathras. Have you found anything yet?"
Well, give Mr. Knight a minute, he felt like he just got off a roller coaster after stuffing his face with junk food. That girl's method of fast travel was intense, enough that once she and Knight returned to normal movement and separated, Knight stumbled slightly from the motion sickness. "Whoooooa~" Knight moaned out, waving his hands out in front of himself to gain balance. "Right! Just... Gimme a minute!" He then told Ruby once she asked for help looking around. Not everyone could keep their stomachs intact after something like that.
Ruby's search would be rather difficult, as the plaza before the Pantheon was crowded with people. There were no signs of markets to be had anywhere, not even a vendor. Just soldiers and gallows, like the one Thea was analyzing. Although, she would notice something else of interest the longer she kept searching. Along the far left side of the plaza, where the largest road intersected, a small militia of soldiers came marching through. About two dozen, gathered around a large prisoner carriage, which was pulled by two black horses.
Curiously, though, there was only one person inside the cell, which was big enough to hold ten people. It was a woman, with long blonde hair, and wearing a dirty, torn light blue dress. Her hands were cuffed behind her back, with a steel chain connected to a heavy iron collar to restrict her head and bodily movements. Both in front, and behind the carriage, were men dressed in priest robes. She couldn't hear what they were saying, as they were so far away, but it looked like they were chanting in prayer.
The carriage was brought before the Pantheon, parking right in front of the steps leading inside. The woman would be pulled out by five of the guards, using long metal rodes to poke and stab at her to move out her cell through the bars. Once she was outside, they connected their rods to her collar and force her before the now gathering crowd of onlookers, curious as to what was going on.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" One of the priests, the oldest looking of them, shouted to the crowds to gather their attention. The other priests dressed in dark brown garbs, and each either held a cross, or a bible to offer protection. This older priest, however, wore a garb colored in faded with green streak lines, with a cross of his own dangling from the middle of his robes. "Evil haunts our great città! And it mocks all the good, God-loving values that are the core of our lives!"
As if to humiliate the woman, she is pushed to her knees in front of the crowd, as the Priest gestured to her as the culprit behind his proclamations. "This 'creature' you see before you, adorn in the cloth of a noble courtesan, was found preying on men, women and children of our Holy City! Through her seduction of those who faltered from Gods enlightenment, she had made seductive promises of sins to gain their trust! Only to then strike at them when most vulnerable and feast upon their souls for nourishment of her wicked self!" It was at this point Ruby would notice something about the woman.
She had dragon horns sticking out her blonde hair. With the crowd themselves horrified to see this human woman branded with the horns of a demonic creature. "Such demons like this, sent from the Devil himself, have become festered in this city the further from God's light we stray from! For it is without faith, such damnable roaches, such vile and evil creatures like this, will we see even more merciless creatures like these plague our streets, murder our kin, turn families against each other, and become beasts of the world like the Devil wishes of us! I too know fear, my friends. I am also a slave to the terror his presence breeds! But there is strength in numbers! Let us fight this devil together, let us purge our streets of such evils, and let us bring the light of God into our hearts, before anymore are taken by this demon before us!"
When the priest finished speaking, the crowd was in an uproar. Whether they bought his preaching, or began to gawk at the freak show before them, they were now glued to the sight of this woman. Who was she? Was she truly a demon that roamed the streets?.... Not really.
Reality is, she was a 'scattered,' same as Ruby, Knight, Kota, Kat and Thea. She had done no such murdering, or anything of 'sinful' behavior. She had been taken from her world and put here, found by Borgia guards and imprisoned before she could even be told where she was.
Thea places a hand on Kota's shoulder and gives a single reassuring squeeze. Turning his head, he would be greeted with as warm a smile a cybernetic organism is able to express without being able to emote with her eyes.
"Do not take that personally. Human prejudice is a daily occurrence in this time period. Good job, you and everyone else-" she looks around at the rest of the group present, stopping at Katunich to give him a thumbs up. "-you kept your calm and de-escalated the situation. Now excuse me, that dead man is also an anomaly. I will investigate." She walks across the court, navigating the crowd with a quick ease. Thea stands at the gallows, scanning the hanged man for anything anomalous. It would be better if she could stand on the gallows to physically examine him, but given a guard became hostile over a simple shoulder bump, it was best to not invite unwanted attention by attempting that.
Not that Thea was inconspicuous staring at a dead body while wearing red and white clothing with a Coca-Cola hat, but she would procure more period appropriate attire when the chance next presents itself.
The scans of the dead bard revealed nothing in particular. While his attire was certainly odd in comparison to the other dead commoners hanging in the air, the only noteworthy thing about him was his ring. It was adorned with an Onyx stone, perfectly shaped to look like a triangle, while the ring itself was made from ivory.
It had a trace amount of strange energy emitting from it, but even if she were to grab it, Thea didn't have the tools in hand to study it further. For now, all she had was a confirmation it was anomalous.
"...... Psst," a voice then quietly whispered to her. When she looked up, the bards eyes were staring down at her.
"Can you get me down?" The hanging bard asked her politely.
"I've been hanging here all day, and I'm losing my mind from the boredom." From the way he phrased it, his hanging had lost its novelty to him
