[i]Lady...fucks?[/i]

Taro’s thought process as he tried to determine whether or not that title included him was interrupted by stronger and stronger tremors. He didn’t quite get what was going on, and the back and forth on whether things here should have been dead or alive were trying to spark an existential crisis that his mind wasn’t really capable of debunking. He had, silently and proudly, told himself that he would have known if he was dead, because if he was dead then he wouldn’t be alive —which he was, fallacy aside. Taro quickly tucked out of the way of the pushy lady and raised an eyebrow as she chucked Akito over her shoulder with ease. As she turned to order the group to move their asses, Taro felt his eye twitch. Shouldn’t he have been the one telling them to get going? Surely his speech would have been much more rousing and much less dependent on using the “fuck crutch”.   

[color=8dc73f]“What Izuki said. Well, not word for word, I mean, I don’t think I could get away with—nevermind. We should go. Let’s go,”[/color] he said, as if he had to get in the final word before they ran from whatever nightmare thing was hunting them and their little flame friend. However, he did not beat feet right away towards the exit. Instead, he sidled past the others and made his way to Mari. If she was blind like Izuki had said, then it was a gentlemanly—the train shook with another heavy tremor—[i]Okay, we need to just get the hell outta here.[/i]

[color=8dc73f]“Hey, Mari,”[/color] he said, outstretching his hand towards her with a bright smile. [color=8dc73f]“I’m Taro. Sorry you got stuck with me, but Izuki’s right,”[/color] he leaned in closer to whisper, [color=8dc73f]“and she sort of scares the crap out of me. Look, er, listen, I’m sure you probably don’t really need my help, so consider this to be doing me a favor so that chick doesn’t yell at me? Cool?”[/color]

He glanced down at his outstretched hand, flushed a shade of red, and grabbed her hand. [color=8dc73f]“Okay, let’s go. Nothing in our way right now, but,”[/color] the train shook again, [color=8dc73f]“but we should hurry up and talk about the scenery another time. Just yell at me if pulling too fast, okay?”[/color]

And with that, Taro began half-dragging Mari after Izuki and Akito, all thoughts of playing in the engine room taking a backseat as whatever that thing’s friend grew louder and louder. His eyes fell on the blue wisp as it darted through to the next train cart, serving as some sort of guiding beacon for the group of young adults. Hopefully the thing held the pinky swear to the same level of sacredness that they did—Taro doubted it would be easy to find a way to cut off the pinky of a flame guy just for lying to them, especially if he ended up killing all of them. 

[i]That’s not a pleasant picture,[/i] thought Taro, his grip tightening on Mari’s hand as they fell in behind the others.