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It's the Saturday before classes start. Ellie has been driving all day, but it's worth it for an entire three months out of the house. And she even drew a single in the dorm lottery, so there's that. It's tiny, but she doesn't have to share.
Suitcases on the bed, she starts unpacking into the dresser that lives underneath. Tops here, pants there, hanging things in the closet. Computer can go on the desk, and then notebooks into the drawers.
It is.
Ellie draws her legs up underneath her and puts on her Imperial face.
Ruby is quite capable of drawing her little terror campaign out for hours, frequently healing the toy - mostly of burns, obviously, but Ruby also seems to quite enjoy turning her nails into claws and drawing blood, and sometimes enjoys striking the toy or breaking bones. The toy moves through anger and defiance, into fear, into screaming, into begging and crying...
She orients the whole thing around showing off to Ellie, giving her the best view.
Sadly, the toy eventually goes catatonic, not responding even once healed or to temperature or pain or shock.
Ellie enjoys the show. Rather thoroughly.
"That seems to be the end of her capacity."
She almost lovingly draws one claw deep across the toy's throat, gaze flicking between Ellie and the girl who's now bleeding out. The toy manages one last choking gurgle, a few twitches - and then dies.
Ruby laughs and burns away the body - and the spilled blood - leaving no trace except what's splattered on her own body.
"You are beautiful and dangerous and quite terribly attractive. All of which you know already, but I feel it bears repeating." She gives her a long, thorough kiss.
Which is exactly how you get a Ruby wiggling delightedly!
"Thank you, your most wonderful Majesty."
"Go and wash off, now. We're going to dinner and then I'm taking you to bed."
And then out to dinner (at a passable restaurant, not a top-class one, Ellie has other things on her mind tonight), and then back to her apartment.
Where Ellie expresses the other things on her mind to Ruby. At length.
She spends all of dinner trying to contain her excited wiggles. It goes on much too long.
Being with Ellie can't go on long enough, though. Ruby loves her so much, and is quite open in expressing this.
Her Ruby. Good. Best.
They still have some time before school starts again...
Ruby has no problem spending the last few days thoroughly getting to know assorted rooms of Ellie's apartment.
Definitely.
Sadly, time continues to march on. Very rude of it. Their second semester rolls around, sooner rather than later.
Alas.
Ellie gets back into the swing of juggling her Ruby, magic, and schoolwork, in approximately that order of priority.
Ruby puts her Ellie at the top of her priority list, too, and improving her magic pretty high - she does want to do that moon trip over summer break - and keeping her grades as high as she can.
Pretty soon, she thinks Ellie's ready for a trip into low earth orbit.
She picks a weekend with low homework, a launch point, and - up up and away!
Getting to even a low orbit requires a lot more speed than they've usually been playing with, and a good bit of endurance and patience.
Zoooooooom!
The world rapidly falls away beneath them - they pass the highest clouds within seconds, get up to the level of what Ruby signals is the International Space Station's orbit in about ten minutes - the Earth still dominates their field of view, massive, but they can see some of space - Ruby's indicated the best view's higher, though, and she keeps rocketing up for another half hour, slowly to a stop only gradually and signaling Ellie when she does.
The world's still big, from up here. But there's an awful lot of it visible.
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