Hey gu- alright, alright, I'm not dead! Just had a come-and-go writers block over the past couple of months. Right now though, I think it's gone :D
Anyway… guess it's time to (finally) get down to business. New chappie, hope ya enjoy, yada yada, all that shebang.
Do I even need to keep on doing the disclaimer? It's a bit of a waste of time, really… whatever. I don't own TD, but I own any OCs mentioned. Majority of them are filler characters, and are in no way related to the contestants.
Chapter 11 – Little Choice
Hectic times flew past for some of the contestants, and it caused mistakes, holdups, delays of some form, and the most common one – hasty decisions. Ideas were clashing at a time where things needed to be done fast.
Everyone had their fair share of problems, yet the majority were quickly solved. Three stories, however, stood out. It was either a last ditch effort, something that had to be done before it was too late, or standing on opposite sides of the fence. But first…
xx
There was two days left of the week, including the current one. All the contestants at the hotel were still worried as ever, due to there still being four of them stuck in the states.
Dakota shut the door to her hotel room and locked it, then walking down the hallway with a pink suitcase lugging along behind her. She stopped at the stairs, just as Beth poked her head out from her room.
"Oh… are you going back home?" She asked, walking out.
"Yeah." Dakota replied. "I live in Toronto, so now that I know Sam's safe, I'll be going back to see my daddy. I haven't seen him since I was in hospital to get rid of my mutation."
"Oh wow… so I guess it was a success?"
"It was, and I… I cried when the doctor said that I was completely free of it. I still don't know how they did it… removing something like that seems almost impossible. Well… I guess I'm going now."
Beth watched on in silence as Dakota slowly walked down the stairs, then sighing and stepping back into her room.
Meanwhile, in a TV room, Geoff was sitting in the middle of a large sofa, remote in hand and flicking through the channels. DJ and Cody were both on nearby couches, not really watching what was on the screen.
"Man... this bites. I really wanna go home, but not until Bridgette gets back." Geoff said with a sigh, putting the remote down after stopping at a sports channel.
"Dude, I'm kinda feeling the same." DJ added, shrugging. "I'm not going home until everyone's back… even if I want to." He sighed and looked down. "I miss my momma."
Cody stared on in silence, thinking about several things at once. One that stood out to him the most, however, was the lack of 'attention' he was getting from Sierra. And it was a massive drop.
Earlier, the two had run into each other outside the hotel, and instead of pulling Cody into a tight hug, Sierra just giggled and said hi before running off, leaving Cody feeling rather confused.
Footsteps pulled him back to reality, and he looked up to see Courtney walking into the room. A few seconds after, Heather followed.
"Uh… any news?" Geoff asked, sitting up.
"No, no more people back yet." Courtney replied, sighing.
"Oh… dang…"
"Hey, how'd you guys get outta San Diego?" DJ asked out of curiosity.
"Oh, that." Heather said, rolling her eyes.
"I guess I could tell you what happened…" Courtney said slowly, walking over to an empty sofa.
xx
FLASHBACK
Location: San Diego International Airport, San Diego
Contestants in area: Courtney, Heather
"You seriously think we are going to get away with this?" Heather hissed, looking annoyed and nervous at the same time.
"Just shut up and follow my lead." Courtney whispered back, creasing her brow in frustration. "Besides, you're the one who does have their passport, and we've gotten through customs here perfectly fine, so why should you be worrying?"
"Ugh… whatever. Let's get onto this stupid plane."
In the past hour, Courtney had quickly made a call to Montreal from a telephone box, and managed to get all the passport details she needed from her brother, who was the only one at home. Not long after, she even found a fan who had two pictures of her, both of which had no autograph. Courtney took one and signed the other, leaving the girl feeling shocked but excited.
Now, she and Heather had successfully gone through customs at San Diego, and were due to board their plane.
Being a few feet in front, Courtney exited the gangway as she stepped onto the plane, quickly showing the air hostess her boarding pass before going to find her seat, which was the sixth row from the front.
"Four, five… six." She muttered, carefully sidestepping in front of the seats before sitting down at the window seat, letting out a sigh afterwards. "Finally…"
Spotting her former teammate in the sixth row, Heather quickly walked down the aisle and flopped into the middle seat, relaxing her shoulders.
"Better than a train, and so much better than a bus." She said, sitting up.
Barely ten minutes after they had gotten on, with the flight safety demonstration happening in the middle of that time, the plane was in the air and headed for Toronto. In the first two hours of the flight, both girls had watched a movie each, and also eventually got their passenger arrival cards.
"Great, I don't have a pen…" Heather groaned, staring blankly at her card.
Raising an eyebrow, Courtney reached down for a small bag that she had managed to buy at the airport, and pulled two pens out of it.
"Uh… here's one." She said slowly, carefully placing a blue ballpoint pen on Heather's tray table.
Heather looked at it for a few seconds before muttering a slightly unintelligible "thanks" and picking the pen up.
Looking away, Courtney sighed and turned to her own arrival card, then going back into her bag and pulling out a piece of paper with all her necessary passport details on it.
"Okay…" She muttered, putting the paper down and picking the other pen up.
Another two and a half hours later, it had gotten darker due to crossing through four time zones, including the far west and mid-east.
Courtney woke up from a nap to hear an announcement, stating that the plane would be landing in Toronto in the next twenty minutes. She let out a heavy sigh and looked to her left, noticing that Heather was still asleep.
"She'll wake up with the landing." Courtney said quietly, snickering at the thought.
It wasn't long before the city lights were visible from the plane windows, and got closer with every second. Due to it being late evening in Toronto, the cabin lights had been dimmed for landing.
After five or so minutes, the plane eventually reached touchdown with a slight thud, and just as Courtney had thought, Heather woke with a jolt, and groaned.
"Ugh, can they not be any quieter?" She grumbled, looking out the window and realizing that they had landed. "Oh… right." She bent down and pulled her backpack out from under the seat in front, quickly stuffing her arrival card and passport into the front pocket.
After watching the large airport building slowly come into view for a minute, Courtney quickly grabbed her bag from under the seat, making sure that her arrival card and passport details were in there, and zipped it up.
Once the plane came to a stop, all the passengers on board unplugged their seatbelts and started to gather their things, those at the very front standing up as the door was opened.
Heather slung her bag over her shoulder and stood up, waiting in front of the empty aisle seat until she found a gap in the line. Courtney soon followed suit, having to wait for a middle-aged couple to walk past before she could get out. As soon as she did get onto the gangway, she started to run, not bothering if she was tired.
"Wait up!" Heather called from several feet away, running after her.
The two girls ran into the airport proper, and didn't stop running until they eventually got to customs.
Knowing that she had no problem with getting through, Heather went straight to get her passport checked and stamped, as well as hand her arrival card over. Once she was done, she waited on the other side for Courtney, who had been held back a bit due to not having a physical passport with her.
"Ugh, knew this would happen at some point…" Heather groaned, rolling her eyes and looking away.
But to her surprise, a few minutes later, Courtney had passed through customs, and was already heading towards the baggage claim area.
"Well… I guess it did work…" Heather muttered, following at a jog to catch up.
xx
"So we headed through baggage claim, and went to find a bus… which we did find, and now… now we're here." Courtney finished, shrugging.
"Whoa… uh, how did you pay for the flight?" Cody asked.
"Same way as how we got the original one. I'm still not sure how we managed that though."
"Oh… okay."
Standing up, DJ walked over to the nearby window with a raised eyebrow, hoping to see one of the four yet to come standing outside. Unfortunately, the only people out there were Beth and Lindsay, both sitting cross-legged on the grass under a tree and talking.
"Man, where are they?" He wondered, stepping back with a disappointed sigh.
"Dude… I dunno." Geoff replied, looking down.
xx
Location: Chicago Union Station, Central Chicago
Contestants in area: Gwen, Duncan
Once again, rain was bucketing down in Chicago, accompanied by fairly strong winds, making it even more miserable.
Gwen stared out of the rain-splattered window, just in time to see the train slowly coming to a stop outside the station. She reached down and pulled her bag out from under the seat in front and stood up, pulling the hood of her raincoat over her head.
"Just when it couldn't get any worse." She muttered with a sigh, looking out the window once again and noticing the slowly growing puddles on the platform. "Separated from Bridgette, huge train delay in Minneapolis, and now it's pouring down." The doors then opened, and she quickly walked out, running through the rain towards the main building and darting inside.
The station was rather busy for a wet day, with the majority of the people inside the building taking shelter from the torrential rain. However, a reasonable amount were waiting for trains to arrive, whether they were catching them or picking someone up who was on a train.
Sitting down on a bench, Gwen looked to her right, spotting Duncan leaning against a wall some distance away. She rolled her eyes, knowing that as awkward as it'd end up, they would have to converse at some point – most likely about what train they were catching next. She stared ahead for a few minutes, lost in thought about what would happen once they finally did get back to Toronto – and back to their home town, which by some coincidence was Vancouver. Gwen was so deep in thought, she barely heard the few words spoken to her.
"Are we catching the next train?"
Gwen flinched slightly and shook her head, then casting an annoyed glance in Duncan's direction.
"I don't know, when is the next train? Got a schedule?" She questioned, quirking an eyebrow.
"Well I thought you'd have one."
"Then no I don't, smarty pants. Get one yourself. Or check the screen thing."
Duncan looked away with an irritated expression before slowly walking off to a large screen next to the main entrance, which showed timetables for the rest of that day, as well as the next.
"There's one in… twenty minutes…?" He muttered in surprise, raising an eyebrow. "And then one two and a half hours later… first one then."
Meanwhile, Gwen had gotten up and taken a route map from a nearby stand, and was carefully examining it.
"So… go through Cleveland, then Albany, and straight up to Toronto… that's probably the best route to take, if we want to get there quickly." She said quietly, looking over her shoulder. "Better be a train coming by that's on that route." Folding the route map back up, she jogged towards the large screen, eventually spotting a Cleveland-Albany-Toronto line that left in two and a half hours' time. "There."
Having heard her footsteps, Duncan quickly looked over his shoulder as Gwen slowed down to a stop several feet away.
"There's one that leaves in twenty minutes." He said briefly, gesturing to the screen as he stepped forward to take a closer look. "It… goes round through the capital or something."
"Well that's out of the question then." Gwen replied, crossing her arms. "It'll take a lot longer than going straight through Cleveland and Albany before going up to Toronto. "I know it leaves later, but it'll be a much quicker ride, if you want to get a ticket back to Vancouver after that."
"Uh, no, I'd rather take a train coming sooner than later, especially with the rain here."
"Well it'll be a much longer route, and I'd really like to get the quicker one, even if it means waiting around for a bit."
"With that rain outside? How do we get from here to a café or something?"
Gwen sighed and looked up to the roof, deciding that she had to hammer it in.
"Alright, we're on a tight schedule here," she began, "Chris gave us a week to do this, starting at the beginning of the week, and it's now Saturday. It took me and Bridgette nearly a whole day to train from New York to here, which went through Pittsburgh and Cleveland. And we couldn't sleep for half of it. Coming back, it's going to go past a bit quicker because we've got to cross time zones, which is going to take an hour out. So, I'm leaving the decision to you as to which route we take, and it'll need to be made now."
Duncan stared ahead for several minutes, contemplating what Gwen had just said. It was either get on the soon to come train, or wait a while for one that was skipping most of the major cities. He wanted to take the longer route, but he reluctantly admitted to himself that she was right.
"Fine." He said, nodding briefly. "We'll wait for the later train."
XX
Location: Train leaving Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Contestants on train: Bridgette, Lightning
It had been raining for several days in Minneapolis, which had dampened a few spirits. But on this day, it was merely cloudy. A double decker train had just made its last stop in the city, and was headed for Milwaukee next.
On board the train, on the upper level of the third carriage, Bridgette had two different train schedules on the tray table in front of her, as well as a train route map.
"Okay, there has to be a better way to get to Toronto than this… right?" She asked herself, looking up in thought. "Where's that calculator I got in Fargo…" She reached over for her backpack, which was on the neighbouring seat, and quickly pulled out a calculator from the front pocket.
Meanwhile, Lightning was further down the carriage, flicking through a sports magazine.
"Man this sha-sucks…" He muttered, closing the magazine and putting it down. "First Lightning thought he was gonna be outta the States in a flash… but not now…" Looking over his shoulder, he got up and jogged down to the end of the carriage, opening the door and quickly going into the next.
Having noticed Lightning going past yet brushed it aside, Bridgette continued looking at the schedules and route map, racking her brains for an answer.
"How long was it from Newark to Chicago… something like twenty hours?" She wondered, turning to the calculator. "We went from Eastern to Central Time, so… wait, it was somewhere around 23 hours. We got into New York at around… six or seven in the evening, had to wait an hour for the train to Newark… then waited two hours for the Amtrak train…" Bridgette sighed and hung her head. "I just can't get anywhere with this… maybe I need to sleep…"
Nearly three hours later, the train was not far away from going through Madison, Wisconsin, as well as having one state to cross before coming into Eastern Time.
Bridgette opened her eyes and turned to the window, having been asleep for two and a half hours of the time that had passed. She looked down at the schedules and route map still on the tray table, and she suddenly realized what had to be done.
"If it's going to take a day from Chicago to New York… then another half day from there to Toronto… and then again it's a Saturday, so one more day after this… we should stay on the train?" She looked at the route map again, stopping when she saw a quicker route. "Oh… why not go through Cleveland and Albany? It'll skip a lot of the big cities… like New York…"
Pushing the route map to the side slightly, Bridgette picked up one of the schedules and looked at it, almost immediately spotting a train that went at half past midnight from Chicago to Toronto.
"It's at a crazy time… but it'll definitely work." She said, smiling. "Okay… finally sorted it out." She looked over her shoulder as Lightning sauntered back into the carriage, an open packet of crisps in his hand. "Alright, as much as I don't exactly want to be talking about this with someone I barely know… it'll have to happen.
XX
Yay, I've finally completed this :D hope you all enjoyed, and don't bother if timing seems to be a bit out of place with some of the mini-chapters. It was… quite confusing to work out.
Next chapter… hm, let's see if I can get back onto this fortnightly update schedule again. So not this weekend, but the next.
Until next time!