On The Empty Tracks Of Sodor (GOTP AU)

12. Resting is For the Weak

Boulder wished his afternoon nap had been more restful.

It had taken him some time just to get back into sleep mode once he was settled in his room, and then... images began to form. Flashes of memory, reliving the afternoon over and over.

Cody's cries, Heatwave's wounds... Chase's desperate final call.

I have him! He's safe with me!...

Chase's voice had been quick, as if he had been trying to get the message out before he couldn't anymore... before something cut them off.

Boulder's optics flew open and he sat up. Chase's lack of contact... Perhaps it hadn't been because he was afraid of calling for them... It was because he couldn't.

Chase and Cody's disappearance... the Sodorians' appearance, they seemed almost simultaneous with one another... and the bots had been pulled out of their own world before, by other anomalies than Charisma.

Boulder's optics closed again, his hands and pedes folding together into a meditative position. Sleep wouldn't yield answers... but maybe The Mists would.

He reached out, trying to imagine the place between places... and mists between worlds... and then his optics opened again as sound hit his audio receptors... the loud, thunderous voices of many, many anomalies speaking all at once. The Mists surrounded him like a dense fog, but as it moved and twisted, he could make out individual anomalies all around him- at least a dozen of them. And all of them seemed to be in argument.

Boulder was still learning how to understand and translate their language, but the flashes of red and gold told him that they were angry.

"Charisma?" He called out, searching for the anomaly he knew best, even if it wasn't very well at all. If she was here, then she was too busy fighting with the others to see or notice him... but something else did.

Boulder felt it before he saw it, but then the flicker of movement caught his attention, and he focused on it to see a slithering, black shape making its way through the crowd. It appeared to be made of pure darkness, fragmented and broken, with glowing white eyes and a mouth full of teeth. Pieces of it would fall away, reforming on the end to make a draconic creature with two clawed hands that gripped at the 'gowns' of the nearby Anomalies.

It hissed and appeared to be searching for something... and then its eyes locked on Boulder, and its hisses grew louder.

"Oh scrap-"
Boulder was running before it even began to chase him. Its shriek rang out in his audio receptors as he ran, echoing in the world of endless fog and sparkles. Boulder had never been the fastest rescue bot, but as Blades had once said... Fear was a great motivator.

Still, it was gaining, whatever it was, and Boulder had no idea what to do about it. There wasn't any soil for him to use against it, and he didn't even know if could be affected by solid matter. As he ran and dodged anomalies all around him, he noticed something... he was getting larger. Every time he passed an anomaly, his helm reached a little higher on their forms. How could that be? Was it a mindset thing? Were the anomalies just slowly getting shorter as he got deeper into The Mists?

Something grabbing his leg and knocking him back down halted his thoughts, and he yelped as he hit the ground and then was dragged backward. 

He twisted around to look as the creature's hands gripped his left ankle and tried to pull him towards its mouth. His right leg wound back and then kicked hard. It made contact with the creature's jaw, and it shrieked in pain, releasing the bulldozer's ankle and reeling back. It shook its head hard, and then snarled as Boulder got back up to his pedes.