Smooth Operator.

11. Chopsticked Or Chopstuck?

CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHOPSTICKED OR CHOPSTUCK?

———

WHEN SHE AWOKE, ESTELA'S HEAD WAS POUNDING. She reached a hand up, her fingertips lightly brushing over her forehead, only for pain to shoot to the surface. God, what had hit her?

Her vision was still blurry, everything around her a kaleidoscope of colours and pixels. Although she couldn't see perfectly, it was obvious that she was alone, and, judging by the complete mess that had been made, nothing good had happened while she was out.

Panicked voices floated around in the back of her mind, saying something like "get off" and "let go," if Estela could catch correctly onto what they were saying, and she couldn't tell if she was truly hearing something, or if she was still tripping.

The woman tried to stand but she was too lightheaded, and opted to crawl through the debris on hands and knees.

Currently her strength was poor, and both the back of her cranium and middle of her forehead racked with pain. As she crawled along the floor, avoiding glass as well as she could, her frame wobbled about, unstable as can be.

Pushing through, Estela crawled in the direction of the voices, towards the drivers' seats.

As she emerged, her vision was beginning to come to. And as she tried blinking out the blur from her eyes, she set sight on an empty gap where a door should be. She was on a train, right? Moving trains are supposed to have doors, aren't they? And this is a moving train. Moving train, no door. No door, moving train.

The breeze emitting from the cavity brushed along Estela's face, sort of soothing the strike along her forehead.

"Let go!"

There it was again.

Estela's eyes examined the doorway, a dark abyss flashing past, the screeching of wheel against rail drilling into her skull. A seatbelt connected to the nearest seat to the doorway seemed to be flying out into the abyss, but the woman could just catch a glimpse of a bruised-knuckled hand clinging on for dear life.

She reached up to rub at her eyes with the back of her bloody, bruised hand, and peered out the doorway, holding at the plush seat beside her to keep her stable.

Surely, Ladybug hung out the door, knuckles a sickly white as they clung on to the seatbelt, and, much to Estela's surprise, one Tangerine held tightly onto that ladybug's ankle.

God, if it were just Ladybug, she would've left him right there, or shot him. But she and Tangerine had made a deal. And, besides, Lemon would probably kill her if he knew she'd let him die.

But The Black Cat took it upon herself to grab hold of The Ladybug's forearm, in the act of a momentary stalemate, and used her remaining strength the pull him back inside the train. Nobody had ever revealed the true strength needed to pull two men, whilst also going against a massive force of a train moving in the other direction.

Another train pulled beside the Shinkansen, startling Estela, and her gripping slipped and she took cover inside, the idea of keeping her own head more important. But as it passed, she resumed her old position.

All three of them grunted and groaned as they used their power to return to the safety (although it was proving to be quite the death trap) of the Shinkansen.