Disclaimer: yup, still don't own.

Chapter 3

The jolt flung the families forward and then backward in their seats. Tomoyo's eyes snapped open. Yukito awoke as he hit the seat infront of him. The sound of Sonomi's sharp scream hung in the air long after they recovered.

"Fujitaka, pull over," Sonomi said then in a pleading voice, her hands over her heart. "Stop let them pass."

Fujitaka did not answer. His eyes darted from the rearview mirror to the road ahead.

"What's happening now?" Sakura called back to Touya. He was at the window again, his forehead against the cold glass.

"Nothing," he reported. "The Triumph's still there and it's not slowing down. They're blowing the horn!"

His last words were lost in the long, arrogant blast of the Triumph's horn.

"Fujitaka, please."

At the wheel of the bus, Fujitaka started to tremble. This was something he had never been able to control. All his life the combination of helplessness and fear had caused his bones to rattle. As a boy his nickname had been "Shaky".

"Fujitaka!" Sonomi cried sharply. She moved to the edge of her seat. She felt as though she had lost his attention. He seemed to be in a trance. "Fujitaka!"

"He's coming at us again!" Touya called.

Everyone tensed. Sakura braced herself against the back of her father's seat. Her knuckles were white.

"Hold on," Sonomi cried.

The jolt came then, hard. Sakura's head was flung against her father's seat. She heard Sonomi scream, heard Touya yell as he was thrown backwards into the aisle. She straightened. In the pale light from the dashboard her eyes were wide with her own fear.

She wet her dry lips. "Maybe he should pull over, Dad."

Sakura put her hand on her father's shoulder as she spoke and felt him trembling. It was as frightening as feeling a stone tremble. "Dad?" she had never thought of her father as anything but hard and unyielding. She said again, "Dad?"

Mr. Kinomoto did not answer. His shoulder jerked as he reached down to change gears; again he clutched the steering wheel. And beneath was the terrible shivering, as if his very bones had turned to ice. Sakura was more alarmed by this than she was about the boys behind them.

"Dad, are you alright?"

As she leaned forward, waiting for his answer, Touya screamed, "He's coming at us again!"

Instantly Fujitaka steered the bus to the right in a desperate attempt to avoid the jolt. Sakura was thrown sideways. Behind them, tyres screeched.

"That stopped them," Touya yelled in triumph.

"They missed!"

"For now," Yukito added. Both boys were at the back of the bus now, peering with white faces at the car behind them.

"I don't believe this," Yukito added. "Why doesn't he leave us alone."

Touya was holding on to the seat with both hands now, swaying wildly as if he were riding a bucking horse.

"He's coming again!"

"Dad, he's coming!"

Mr. Kinomoto strained forward. His shoulders flexed as he steered to the right again. This time he went too far. Sakura felt the front wheel slip off the crumbling blacktop and on to the soft earth. Fujitaka yanked the wheel to the left.

The bus wavered on the edge of the road, swerving back and forth. The headlights shone first on the trees to the left, then on the stone bank on the right. The Triumph passed, sending a spray of water up on to the window.

At that moment the window wipers stopped. Fujitaka peered blindly over the steering wheel. The world was lost in a sheet of water. He hit the brakes. For what seemed an eternity, the bus wavered.

Sakura, with her hand on her father's shoulder, knew the exact moment when her father lost control of the bus. He was pulling the steering wheel to the left with all his strength, and the bus turned to the right.

Sakura gasped as the bus went off the road. A flash of lightening lit up the world and Sakura saw the trees looming up ahead.

For a moment the top-heavy bus swayed in the soft earth.

Before Sakura buried her head in her arms, the window wipers swept across the window for one last time, and Sakura saw the trees directly ahead. She held on for dear life.

The head on crash Sakura expected did not happen. At the last moment the bus ground-looped. Skidding in the soft, slick earth it hit the trees sideways.

There was an awful sound of metal scraping against wood and a pause. Then with terrible slowness, the bus turned over on its side. It rested against trees which bent beneath the weight.

The shock jarred Sakura from her seat, and sent her flying across the bus and landed against the opposite window, her shoulder jammed into the cold glass.

Sakura trying to sit up, looked around the rest of the bus, Tomoyo was also trying to sit up, and her father, somehow still suspended in the drivers seat, was struggling to free himself.

In the back, either Touya weakly called, "help," while Yukito replied with a, "me too."

Sakura couldn't see Sonomi, but she could hear weak puffs near her.

Then without warning, one of the trees that the bus was leaning against, snapped. The sound was as sharp as gunfire. The front of the bus dipped alarmingly. Then there was another crack. A second tree bent and broke.

Sakura's hands flew upward as she felt the bus sliding over the embankment to the creek below. She screamed. She tumbled backwards.

The bus thudded on to its top. It slid, hit a tree, hesitated for a moment, and rolled over again. Then it began to drop down the long, steep bank.

Sakura was being battered around brutally in the bus until it suddenly came to rest, jammed in between some rocks.

Inside the bus, Sakura lay where she had fallen, the front corner of the bus, crumpled on her side. She opened her eyes.

She could not see anything. The darkness was absolute Sakura blinked, waiting for her eyes to adjust. The darkness continued. There was not even the memory of light.

Sakura put her hand to her eyes. Pain shot through her shoulder, and she dropped her hand limply to her side.

As she lay there stunned, not sure where she was or what had happened, a steak of lightening jagged in the sky. It repeated itself, turning the world white with a light brighter than the sun.

Sakura, her eyes wide with shock and fear, looked out at the world literally turned upside down. The lightening flashed beyond them. Her body lay on the ceiling. Darkness, and, somehow, water lay below them.

The darkness came again, merciful this time, Sakura closed her eyes and opened them again, and just before she slipped into unconsciousness, she saw a pair of amber eyes staring into her own.

Hey hey, so…..what do you think? Who do you think those eyes belong to? I wonder…*rolls eyes* well please, please review!!! And if you see a need, you can flame.