Ruggie and Malleus

Ruggie has admitted that he is scared of Malleus, refusing to go to Diasomnia unless Leona goes with him. 

After Leona successfully goads Malleus into a verbal sparring match Ruggie reflects that Malleus might be more normal than he’d thought.

Ruggie’s fear of Malleus might still persist, with Leona approaching Malleus himself in another vignette while Silver and Lilia reflect on how Ruggie seems afraid of him, though Lilia wishes other students like Ruggie could be chummier. 

Tsum-Malleus has a voice line of, “Bucchi’s tsum lookalike fled before I could offer it work. I was going to ask it to be my tsum lookalike’s playmate.”

Ruggie manages to overcome his fear of Malleus for money, striking up a conversation with him during New Years to make a sale.

As of this writing Malleus and Ruggie have never actually interacted in the main story. Book 2 involves Ruggie taking a magic-boosting potion to magically control a crowd of campus visitors “like a stampede of wildebeests” to crush Malleus before a spelldrive game, but the plan is compromised, to Ruggie’s shock.

(In the novel it is confirmed that Malleus was later informed of what happened, but we have maybe never had such confirmation in the game.)

In Book 7 Leona and Ruggie visit Diasomnia, both saying that they had expected their invitation to Lilia’s farewell party to lead to an ambush for revenge. Lilia says that he has his own regrets about the incident and is willing to call it water under the bridge (Sebek is not convinced), while Ruggie says he would actually prefer if Lilia were to stay at NRC, as “With him gone, who’s gonna chaperone Malleus?”

Lilia encourages him to “let sleeping dragons lie.”

Ruggie is very upset about the dream-world situation of Book 7, saying, “This goes way beyond just dangling false hope in someone’s face!…Putting me to sleep and sticking me with this mockery of an illusion… He’s gonna pay!” (Jack: “I’ve never seen Ruggie cry like this before…”)