Ruby only caught the tail-end of Touko's comment about her core, and spun around to face her (and Fugo and.....Haku? Was she remembering that right?).
"Thedoctor'striedtofixthi-"
Her words were blurring together even more than was normal for her, and she flailed her arms in panic for a second before shooting Kai an imploring look over her shoulder. Kai, who had been busy sifting through the veritable mountain of cookies to try and find the stuff they'd requested prior, raised his head to meet her eyes.
[R: KAI-I-NEEDTOEXPLAINTHISHELP]
Kai was silent for a moment. There was a way he could help her...probably....but after what had happened with....He shook himself.
"Focus on the now, Ruby needs your help.
[K: Okay. This is going to feel a little weird, but I promise I'm just trying to help. Please, don't fight this.]
For the first time since they'd met, he stepped almost fully onto the network they shared and asserted his presence there, instead of hanging around on the edges like he'd been doing prior. Ruby, who until this point had been getting increasingly fidgety in her panic, suddenly went very still and visibly relaxed, eyes closing in relief before she stiffened again and raised her head. To an outside observer, it was almost as though a switch had been flipped inside her head. Where she'd previously been open and expressive with her body language, now it was very subdued, her facial expression more closed off, and the cadence of her speech closer to what little Kai had spoken out loud. Kai met her eyes, nodded, and went back to searching.
"The doctor has tried to fix this, but he couldn't because he doesn't know what he did to make me like this. I...we....weren't as....well thought out, as some of his other creations."
Kai's eyes glittered with something resembling dark amusement, but he stayed silent. Ruby missed the whole thing, and continued to speak.
"I....technically have two power cores. One is a standard one.....but it's a bit old fashioned. I have to actually eat stuff to recharge....can't recharge the proper way. The other one is...the Doctor calls it a "Kinetic Conversion Engine"....but he has no clue exactly what is or how he built it. It....ah, I can't explain this very well....it's like I'm running on a treadmill, the faster I go the faster the treadmill goes, but as I speed up it gets easier to speed up and harder to stop? I can't think-of-another-way-to-descri-"
Kai's eyebrows narrowed together in concentration and Ruby visibly twitched before catching herself and continuing.
"So, I'm basically powered by movement." She paused briefly to stare at her hands, apparently marvelling at how steady they seemed to be. "But I don't really....calm down....from getting like this. It's easy for humans, you just take deeper breaths and you can calm down, right? But me? All the extra energy I build up takes a while to....drain off somewhere?....it....I feel like I'm pouring water into a well....it's still there, and I can pull more out if my main core is running low to keep myself going. I've been doing it for a while now, but I guess all the running I did on the way here was more than I needed to stay active..."
Kai grimaced and glanced off to the side for a second, an uncomfortable sensation in the back of his mind forming as Ruby continued talking.
"I feel....bad...for that? Hm...."
Ruby turned her head slightly to look at him, and he nodded, stepping back to his usual spot on the network. Ruby sagged slightly, but caught herself before she fell over. If anything, she looked slightly winded, but relieved at the same time.
"Whoo.....okay...I think I'm okay now."
Her movements looked more natural now, still quick but no longer as obviously blurry as before. Ducking her head to hide her embarrassed blush, she bent down to grab an armful of cookies and started to work her way through them. At the same time, Kai rose from where he'd been crouched with a large bundle of different fabrics in his arms.
"I think I found everything." He shot Touko a glance. "Is there somewhere we can go to get changed?"