Ellie tries out her own variation of Ruby's smoke trick, willing herself to fuzz out into a cloud of sparks. She should be able to avoid injury and hurt the attacker, this way.

Ruby pulls up short, yelping a bit when her nose gets stung, and then swishes to the side, away from the cloud of sparks, and breathes out fire - and the 'cloud of sparks' trick is apparently hard to maintain for more than a second. Being a cloud of sparks feels exceptionally weird, too.

It works, though!

She ducks low under the fire and springs for Ruby.

Ruby ducks into the fire, swirling into flame and smoke vaguely shaped like a nightmare image of a tiger.

Smoke starts filling the clearing pretty rapidly.

Can she still track her with the life-sense-buzz?

Yes, though tracking anything else is a bit hard - Ruby's not particularly bothering to hide, and seems to be using the smoke more because it's choking and noxious.

She is made out of lightning she shouldn't need to breathe-

That seems to work.

After the next clash, Ruby fades into the smoke - and keeps fading, her glowing pulse going diffuse.

Ellie jumps up, above the smoke, to see if there's anything a higher perspective can offer.

She can spot some suspicious swirls.

Suspicious. Good targets for pouncing.

One of the swirls contains: a Ruby! She rolls with Ellie's pounce, trying to bite her.

She fuzzes out, then bites back.

Smoke!

Ruby's speeding up, leaving fewer gaps between strikes.

This is fun.

She pushes herself to keep up.

Ruby seems to be enjoying herself, too, leaving behind entirely unnecessarily dramatic swirls of flame, jumping in and out of smoke form as needed, sometimes baiting Ellie to pursue her, sometimes rushing past, sometimes moving unexpectedly.

They both get in a few minor hits - Ruby's more skilled, but she's also a lot more reckless.

Still, Ruby seems to be hitting a bit more often than Ellie is.

That is displeasing. But not unexpected.

She is learning new tricks, though.

Ruby's not quite keeping just ahead of her - she's clearly mostly used to either playing with prey or trying to full on slaughter someone - but she's definitely holding off on adding some tricks until Ellie catches up with the prior tricks.

Like, for instance: apparently she can fly, standing on four little swirls of flame. She mostly uses this to add another dimension to her mobility.

What! That is incredibly cheating!

Ruby laughs.

"What, lightning's just a ground thing now?" she calls down.

Oh, it's on.

Let's see... Little rockets doesn't really make sense with lightning, but- she should be able to just zap through the air, right?

She is lightning, after all.

She actually seems faster zapping through the air - Ruby barely dodges her.

Or Ruby's slower. Either way, advantage: Ellie.

She laughs and picks up her game - Ellie's definitely challenging her, though.

Also the clearing up to the height of the trees can be filled with fire now. Nyah.

Good thing she can fly. Attack!