Ruby Hale

Ruby Hale was the target for the first mission of Jake. According to the Oracle, they are soul-mate.

She was given the name Ruby Hale by her mother. Perhaps her mother had a nice sense of humor. Or she just wanted the best for her daughter, perfectly knowing that she wouldn't see her grow up.

Ruby and Jake first met when she came to Virtual Reality Games Federation Center to take part in the Qualifying Rounds of the VR Competition, but she was not able to participate because of it being cancelled. As she was in the city with her aunt and having nothing else to do, she opted to try out the full-immersive VR Rooms with Jake where she taught him the fun of VR Games.

## Appearance

### At the VRGF Center

She was a young woman early twenty-something. But, she was truly ugly.

This young woman was lying in a wheelchair. Her legs looked like hairless chicken drumsticks. It was not just some stumps, but more like if the legs had stopped growing midway. If people had seen how ugly could be a nestling chick at birth, they could probably relate.

She suffered from grave scoliosis, making her spine strangely twisted to the left. If it was the only asymmetrical detail it would have been fine, but she was as flat as a chopping board and her nose warped to the right this time.

Her skin was not smooth at all. It appeared to be callous, rough like some badly made cow leather. She was obviously just 20-something year old, but her skin was already showing early signs of wrinkling. Her long wavy hair was white like snow. Though, not the beautiful winter snow you imagined, but rather the one after someone peed on it. It was hard like straw but thin like the hair from an old hag.

If there was something really unique that could redeem this somber description, that would be her eyes. She had different colored eyes. The left eye was a deep marine blue while the right one was amethyst-colored.

Her voice was surprisingly mellifluous and had nothing of the roughness her appearance presumed.

### During the 1st Odeal

Her legs partially hidden by a thin silk dress looked like plucked chicken thighs. They seemed to have stopped growing halfway down, forming two disharmonious stumps at the level of what should have been her knees.

Even though her ample dress hid her shapes, one could tell she suffered from debilitating scoliosis. She was flat and perhaps too skinny, but despite all the problems that would have driven anyone else to despair, she was smiling.

Her face was comparatively quite pleasant to look at, if you disregarded her abnormally twisted nose to the right. Her skin was smooth like a jewel, her eyebrows and long snow-white hair falling down to her waist was captivating, but the most mesmerizing was her eyes.

Her left iris was a deep marine blue while the right one was amethyst coloured.

### Durind the 2nd Ordeal

The shape and color of her eyes and some of the distinctive features of her previous face was still recognazible. Her current body and face were the ones she would have naturally developed if she had not been irradiated so much from the time when she was just a fetus.

However, this Ruby was obviously a stunning woman. She was tall for a woman, taller than most men, and her body was ridiculously athletic for a woman who had been in a wheelchair a few months earlier. In contrast to Jake's tanned complexion, her skin was rather pale, matching perfectly with her long snow-white hair. Her hair was truly immaculate snow white!

## Personality

Despite her terrible appearance, her eyes were full of spirit. She didn't seem to care about how people scrutinized her, as if she had long been used to the reactions her physique could trigger. Her life was a living hell, but she still wanted to find happiness. She desired what she couldn't have.

Originally rather introverted, but cheerful, she had become colder as she grew up. The behavioral transition had been gradual and her comrades had not immediately noticed the difference. It was only recently, after her deformities had healed, that she began to show a completely different persona. Her character had gradually darkened, gradually turning her into a cold and calculating little tyrant. Entering the Mirror Universe had accelerated this personality transition.

Inside the Maze, what Jake saw was the most ghastly, chilling thing he had ever seen. There was an apathy bordering on contempt, while her features were relaxed and neutral as if all her wounds were irrelevant to her. Most importantly, both of her eyes had turned amethyst-colored. Her blue-marine left iris was nowhere in sight.

## History

She owed her cursed appearance to the False Third World War. Her parents lived on the outskirts of London when the city was nuked. Not even fifteen kilometers away from the capital. They had seen the weird multicolored light, listened to the frightened screams reverberating from afar. The couple didn't evacuate immediately. As many ignorant people, they just waited, staying comfy at home.

Then they watched how a military bomber flew above them to finally drop the nuclear bomb that would destroy their future. The couple was not in the impact zone, so they survived just fine. However, as communications were cut off for a time, they waited again for official instructions from the authorities. This waiting forfeited their lives.

The nuclear cloud reached far beyond London's suburb. Because London had a rainy weather, the radioactive fallout didn't spare them. It rained buckets of radioactive water for days and no one could escape this unscathed. When it stopped raining, nuclear dust had infiltrated everything.

When the nuclear winter officially began and her parents were finally evacuated, it was too late. Her father having been exposed to the rain died a few weeks later from global body necrosis while her mother, less exposed, survived a few months.

At this time, she was already pregnant. She lived the last months of her life in a hospital under permanent medical care. A cesarean gave birth prematurely to her daughter. After her mother's death, she was sent to live at her aunt's home.

At this point, the teratogenic properties of the radiations had already caused irreversible damages. She was certainly not the only poor orphan born like this, but not many of them survived with so many complications.

It couldn't be seen from her exterior appearance, but she also had congenital heart disease. Her heart was misshapen, not strong enough to pump blood efficiently. She had to wear support stocking under her clothes to avoid edemas and was easily tired. She also had a very weak immune system that made her easily fall sick.

## Plot

Ruby was truly an orphan and no one really knew who her parents were. The circumstances of her birth were unclear, and all Jake knew was that her mother had not survived the birth. At the VR Center, he thought that Ruby's mother had been exposed to too much radiation, resulting in her daughter's deformities. But he knew from Alima and Patrick, two soldiers working for the government, that very few nukes had been fired during the False World War. And London was not on the list.

During Jake's third Ordeal, he found a clue about Ruby's condition. According to Nylreg's implication, a Digestor spawned inside Ruby's body when she was still a foetus, causing her to be disabled but also being the reason of the changes in her personnality.