[quote=@Wayward]The feeling set in... rather, the feelings. Pushing. Pulling. A split second of an easy caress. An experience of simultaneously bursting from the inside and being crushed from the out. How would she do what Yiya instructed with so much colliding with her from so many angles?

"Woah!" Toni cried out as the train joltted up and off of the tracks and landed miraculously back into place. She looked out the window and gasped at the sight of dozens of shapeless dark clouds flying by the train. She took firm hold on the seat in front of her. "We've got to do something!" She called out to the others. "Stop the train? Is that safe, Yiya?"[/quote]

[quote=@Mole]"Or maybe we should just keep going?" Her eyes shifted from person to person. Maybe she was being a coward, but at the same time, she kind of felt like running from the fight, "Like, we're super outnumbered, and to be honest, I would like to think Sasha's gun could stop them all, but there's basically an army out there. They also don't seem very reasonable, as much as a Rue-empath as you are..." Her eyes shifted downwards, "And, I'm pretty useless...at the moment."[/quote]

The train screeched and hurtled along the tracks, blurring their sparkling surroundings. Red lights flickered and deadened inside the traincar, and all they could see outside the windows was light and moving shadows.

[color=lavender]"Brace yourselves,"[/color] Yiya called, gripping her chair. Echoh-- which had just been pouring another hopeful cup of tea for Toni --dropped the porcelain saucer with a clatter and spidered its legs across the aisle just as a thunderous explosion ripped through the air far ahead and another catastrophic CRASH rattled in their skulls. The traincar lurched violently while bright sparks flew in cascades across the windows.

A blackened hunk of metal loomed close to Neomi's window and stopped just shy of ramming into the side of the car. It was the train's engine, mangled almost beyond recognition. Blood dripped from the engineer's seat.

Everything fell very still.

Yiya wobbled on her cane and shoved herself to her feet. She looked out the windows at the bright light and the glistening gold and the hordes of shadows shuffling closer. Then she examined Echoh and the Trailing Bird, still safe and vibrant inside its terrarium. Then Neomi and Toni, both of whom she watched with narrowed eyes.

[color=lavender]"It's too late to make a decision, so it's been made for us."[/color]

The door at the end of the traincar slammed. Then slammed again, like a sledgehammer.

Yiya bowed her head. [color=lavender]"It was a pleasure knowing you all."[/color]

The door cracked away from its hinges and exploded inward; splinters of sharp wood flew across the seats, driven by a whirling howling wind that smelled like poppies and seafoam.

A shadow blocked the light in the doorway. It was lanky, draped in a rendering of translucent cloth, its head a spin of flickering gold bands that occasionally flashed sharp teeth.

Toni would feel it like a weight on her chest: the dense confidence of authority, a sharp cut of superior existence entirely void of fear.

The Rue ducked to fit through the door and rose to its full height, spinning and glitching and billowing in the gusts of wind that roared through the traincar.

Yiya looked straight through it. She couldn't see it at all, but she knew something was there. [color=lavender]"Echoh!"[/color] she roared over her shoulder while the Rue stepped closer. [color=lavender]"Run! Toni, Neomi, protect--!"[/color]

The Rue snatched out a long hand and caught Yiya's head in its grip. Sharp talons pressed into the old woman's throat.

Echoh threw open the opposite door and scrambled hurriedly across the gap to the next traincar, struggling to fit the terrarium through.

Outside, the shadows pressed close.