At Kaath's rebuke, Ruby shrugged and focused her attentions on Walker's injury. Since he was busy conversing with Kaath at the moment, she opted to work with minimal intrusions, and motioned for him to remove his top garments as she fetched a first aid kit from the bag. The first order of business was to clean the wound. Walker had unwisely removed the bolt himself, likely causing further damage to his already injured shoulder. Worse, he'd stuffed an unsanitary cloth in it and put himself at greater risk of infection. Ruby bit back a groan of frustration and set to work flushing out the wound with small amounts of clean water before applying antibiotic ointment. With a little analgesic and a bit of deft sewing, she closed the wound and bandaged it up.

Of course, no wound treatment would be complete without a mama's kiss to make it better. She pecked the bandaged wound and patted his shoulder. [color=red]"You did great, Walker,"[/color] she murmured in his ear.

Ruby found herself a clean spot a few steps away and sat down, where she pulled out her vial of Nightmare Oil to observe it. It began to evaporate almost immediately. Intrigued, she marked its current level with her thumbnail and held it in her bag for a few seconds. When she pulled it out again, it began evaporating again where it left off.

[color=red]"Huh. It reacts to light."[/color] She put it back in the bag and jotted down some observations in her notebook.
[i]
Induces pleasure response in small quantities.
Induces hallucinations in large quantities.
Potent response with topical administration.
High photosensitivity.
[/i]
After a few more measurements of its viscosity and weight, Ruby crossed her arms and huffed. [color=red]"What is this stuff? I'm tempted to say it's some kind of antidepressant, like an SSRI. But photosensitivity? Topical administration? And how did they manage to get such a potent transdermal dose? It'd have to be, like, on the order of fentanyl to get the kind of strength."[/color]

She mulled it over with a deep frown on her face. Then something Walker said caught her ear. [color=green]"He got us this far, at least this one did, and if he isn't showing any signs of recovery by the time its time to leave, well, we can't be lugging around a corpse for numerous practical reasons."[/color]

[i]A corpse? The kite?[/i] Ruby glanced over at the kite. Sure enough, he remained still, right where they'd left him. But he'd mentioned [i]kites[/i] earlier, as if there were more of them. What on earth were they talking about? She scooted over to Walker's side to listen in to the conversation.