Toni dug her grip more tightly into the seat. Neomi had a point, she knew; if they did stop, assuming they could, they might not last long against so many Rue with so much aggression pressing against the train.
The train rocked violently again. Sparks flew off the tracks, illuminating the gathering darkness of the surrounding Rue. Toni's chest felt ready to explode, and might have when the train's engine was ripped out and flung out along the tracks.
The train came to a hard, grinding stop. Reasserting herself in the wake, she looked to Neomi, who seemed to be the only one other than Yiya that took the harsh stop well enough to get back up. "Are you ok?" she asked, rising up from the seat.
“I…” Neomi took several breaths before looking up at Toni. Her arms were still tightly hugging her backpack. She swallowed before continuing, “I think so. What about you?” Her eyes glanced from Toni to the others. She felt a strong sense of horror. This was not what she was expecting.
Shaking herself off, more so of her remaining nerves than dust, Toni offered Neomi a hand up. "I should be--." A burning feeling began building in her forehead, like having her face held close to a fire. "I'll be fine. Come on; we're better off being on out feet."
Neomi drew in another deep breath and took Toni’s hand. “You’re right… Thanks…—,” Right before she could finish saying anything, Yiya got to her feet and made a bow, along with some sort of goodbye. What?
Just then, a Rue smashed through the train’s doorway, and Neomi screamed. She held her backpack to her face as a feeble attempt to protect herself from the flying wood shards.
“Toni, run! Neomi, protect…”
The Rue’s sharp claws reached out and grabbed Yiya’s head, pressing them into her neck.
Peeking out from behind her backpack, Neomi gasped, again. She couldn’t catch her breath. It was not a time to second guess her decision. However, the thought was insistently trying to bombard her. She wanted to help Yiya, and the thought wasn’t helping.
She was too weak to do anything but run. It made her feel like a coward. She closed her eyes and forced herself to move. “Come on, Toni!”
A heavy horror had filled Toni's heart; the tingling heat in her head seared in a flash of pain that was there and gone in a single instance. When it left all she could see was the mass of shadow encroaching around Yiya. Toni turned to Neomi with a wide gaze. "But Yiya… We can't leave her; we'll be lost without her."
Neomi looked pleadingly at the other girl and began to run. Her feet felt like lead, but somehow, they still moved quickly after Echoh into the next train car. She didn’t want to dare watch as Toni tried to save Yiya and kept her eyes on the moving terrarium — just as instructed.
Neomi turned to follow Echoh; Toni watched as she disappeared into the next car. She was still scared, but tried to steel herself enough to calm down. Slowly, Toni stepped over debris and through a shallow pool of the train driver's blood. She took a smooth, deep breath. "Let her go," she spoke, mostly in stern tone, as though ordering the Rue like a misbehaving child.
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