Anne was strong.
Tulip should've already known that. She saw her fight the hulking beast. She saw her slay it with one blow. But it still caught her off guard when she accepted her handshake, to feel her strength firsthand. Her surprise must've shown on her face. From the way Anne sheepishly smiled after, this wasn't the first time it happened.
Tulip stayed out of the way while Anne got to work on… harvesting anything edible from the beast. Some days on the train, Tulip had to resort to eating some rather bizarre things to survive, but she could never imagine herself eating… whatever the beast was supposed to be. The sounds of Anne hacking away were just awful. Tulip clamped her hands over her ears, hummed a low tune to herself, and trained her eyes on a patch of leaves that was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world.
Thankfully, Anne worked fast. When Tulip felt a tap on her shoulder, she turned to see Anne had stuffed everything she collected into a sack until it was fit to burst, hefted over one shoulder. She slid her sword, slick with greyish-blue at this point, back inside the sheath strapped to her back and regarded Tulip with narrowed eyes.
"You're looking rough there, Tulip. Can you walk?" she asked after a brief beat. "I can carry you if you want."
Tulip blinked. Her eyes were drawn to the hefty sack slung over Anne's shoulder. "I can handle myself. You're already carrying so much."
Anne rolled her eyes, but there was a smile on her lips. "Dude, don't worry about me. This," she gave the sack on her shoulder a little shake, "is nothing."
"I'll be fine. Honest," Tulip insisted.
There was a long, long silence, where Anne studied Tulip with a look that Tulip was quickly familiarizing herself with, before Anne shrugged. "If you say so," she said. "Stay close to me, okay?"
Something somewhere in the jungle made a noise and Tulip couldn't tell if it was close or far or safe or dangerous. The point was, she didn't need to be told that.
Anne seemed to know her way quite well through this jungle. Every step she took, every turn she made felt like they came from experience. Experience that a girl her age shouldn't have. But that thought remained half-formed in Tulip's mind. What a hypocrite she'd be, accusing someone of not acting their age. She kept a respectful silence, following after Anne down to her exact footsteps.
Tulip couldn't quite explain why, but something in the way that Anne carried herself made her comfortable with following Anne's lead. Maybe it's the experience. Maybe it's that natural charisma that some people had. Or maybe her brain was just being weird after finally experiencing real, proper human contact for the first time in five months.
That's another surreal fact that Tulip had yet to fully swallow. Anne is a human. Not a strange inhabitant of the train, but a real, flesh and blood human. Atticus and One-One are her dear friends and she loved their company, but she never realized how starved she was for human contact until now. She's now in the company of another human. Or at least, someone who looked very human. The glowing blue eyes weren't something humans could do, last Tulip checked. Still, it didn't stop her from wanting to reach out and maybe, just maybe, graze her hand against Anne's.
"So, Tulip," Anne said suddenly, snapping Tulip out of her thoughts and causing her to realize that she's been staring at Anne's hand for far too long, "you came here with anyone?"
"With- what?" Tulip paused to process the question. That's a little weirdly specific. "N-no, I'm- I'm here alone."
Anne shot her a glance. She looked… surprised. "Really?"
"Yeah," Tulip said slowly. Her eyes narrowed. Her curiosity has been piqued. "Wait, why'd you ask? Did you not come here alone?"
"Nope. Was with my friends. Two of 'em." How casually Anne answered the question surprised Tulip. She expected Anne to, at the very least, show a hint of hesitance.
Anne's easy demeanor flickered like a candle struck by a sudden burst of wind. "The second we got here, we got… separated."
Tulip stared daggers down at her wet, worn out boots. Now she felt guilty of ever seeing Anne in a suspicious light. Losing your friends was rough. She knew the feeling well. "Sorry to hear that."
"I'll find them again." Anne shrugged off the dark clouds around her like they were nothing. She even shot Tulip a quick smile. "This ain't my first rodeo."
Tulip perked up slightly. Not Anne's first rodeo? So her brain wasn't being weird. This girl definitely has experience. Plenty of it. Maybe even enough to know where they were.
"So. Where exactly is here?" she tentatively asked. "Is this… Earth?"
Anne snorted a clipped laugh. "No. No, definitely not."
"Then where are we?"
Anne stopped. Her face was blank. She didn't answer for a long time.
"I have no idea."
After a beat, Anne continued to walk without showing her face. Tulip tried to not let her heart sink too much. Once, she knew less for longer. The train saw to that.
The next leg of the walk passed mostly in silence. Their brief conversation left Tulip bursting with questions, but she held back upon seeing how focused Anne looked finding her way through this jungle. The last thing Tulip wanted was to distract her and get both of them lost. She kept her curiosity in check, for now.
Their path led them to a rather steep, sudden decline. Anne slid her way down while barely breaking her stride. Tulip couldn't quite do the same. She edged her way down slowly, without being able to spread her arms to better balance herself. One foot slid down a little faster than the other, and that was it. She fell on her butt and rolled the rest of the way down, getting more dirt and muck stuck on her everywhere. The pain that had settled into a dull throb flared once again, drawing a cry from Tulip despite her best effort to bite it down.
"Whoa!"
Anne was by her side within seconds. A familiar set of narrowed, worried eyes studied Tulip up and down.
"Yeah, nothing about you is okay. Shouldn't have let you walked in the first place." Anne's last sentence was directed more to herself than to Tulip. "I'm carrying you the rest of the way and that's final."
"No, Anne, it's fine." Tulip tried her best to put on a (most likely terrible) brave face. "This… isn't exactly my first rodeo too."
"Do you have superpowers?"
Tulip blinked. "Uh… no?"
Anne closed her eyes. When she opened them, they glowed an unearthly, brilliant blue. Tulip's jaw fell slack.
"Then I'm carrying you."
Tulip was too dumbfounded to retort. She simply watched as Anne adjusted the position of the sack slung over her shoulders, tying it off across her chest so it functioned more like a backpack. A part of Tulip's mind gained enough coherence to be confused. She'd assumed Anne was going to give her a piggyback ride.
"Wait, how are you gonna- whoa, okay."
Anne carefully slipped her arms underneath Tulip and gently lifted her up in a bridal carry. Okay. Well. She did want to touch Anne's hand again. Though this might be just a bit too much contact than what she was expecting. Tulip couldn't help but feel a little red in the cheeks. Especially with the way Anne was smiling softly, kindly down at her.
"Comfy?" she asked. The blue eyes suddenly didn't feel as intimidating as it used to.
"Uh," Tulip coughed, "yeah."
"Then off we go!"
Anne took off in a brisk jog, as if she wasn't weighed down by anything. It didn't take Tulip long to realize their pace was faster now that Anne was the one doing all the moving. They could have covered so much more distance if Tulip just listened to Anne the first time she asked. She swallowed the rising lump in her throat and kept her face neutral. Again, she'd rather not take up Anne's attention. Not right now.
She's warm. Anne. In perfect contrast to the cold jungle air. Tulip found herself sinking deeper into Anne's embrace. Burying her face in the gap between Anne's armor. Lulled nearly to sleep by the gentle back and forth swaying of Anne's arms. Was it intentional? Was Anne rocking Tulip to sleep like a baby? She didn't care much at this point. The mounting exhaustion drifted her off, thoughts in her head trailing off into muddled mumbles, before simmering into blissful silence. Until she realized the jungle had abruptly ended.
Really. One step, Anne was standing on dirt caked with roots and dry leaves, another step, and she's suddenly standing on an asphalt road. The towering trees were replaced by towering skyscrapers of glass and steel. Strangely shaped, towering skyscrapers. Tulip had to blink away the sleep in her eyes to realize the buildings were shaped roughly like people in the middle of various activities. One row had three buildings, each one shaped like a person in the middle of a sprint, a person reading a newspaper, and a person taking a huge swig out of a mug. Another row had someone doing finger guns, someone taking a deep bow, and someone rocking the guitar. Despite the bizarre shapes, they seem to be functional as buildings, with a front entrance, windows giving her a glimpse of rooms and hallways inside, some even had external elevators. Many, if not all, of these structures were in direct violation of several laws of physics. It would be impossible to build them, let alone for them to stay standing. And yet, they continue to stand.
"Told ya," Anne said. She must've noticed the bewildered look on Tulip's face. Not that she was trying to hide it at all. "Not Earth."
Tulip nodded without meaning to. These structures wouldn't look out of place on the train. The Human City Car.
Tulip had to check her palm again. No numbers. Right.
All the buildings were dark. No signs of life or light could be seen from the windows. The streets were dark and empty too. There were no cars, not even ones parked by the curb. Streetlights lined the sides of the street but none of them were on. The silver moon above remained the only source of light for them both.
"Does anyone live here?" Tulip asked quietly. Something told her the silence of this strange city was not meant to be disturbed.
"Just us, far as I know," Anne replied, no effort to keep her voice low.
Another glance around and something clicked for Tulip. "This place doesn't look abandoned."
"I get what you mean," agreed Anne. "Feels more like it's never been used, right? Like, it got built, but the people it's meant for never showed up?"
A chill ran down Tulip's spine. That's worse than the city being abandoned, somehow. Anne either found nothing wrong with it, or she's been living here for long enough that it no longer affected her.
"What if they show now?" Tulip murmured, less of a question and more of a stream of thought.
Anne made a thinking noise, and blew her lips. "I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there."
Anne followed the city streets as easily as she trekked through the jungle. Eventually, she moved away from the main street, ducking into a smaller side street. This seemed to be a residential area, with relatively smaller buildings more similar to apartment blocks than offices, built from brick and concrete. She jogged to the end of the block, to an apartment that-
Tulip stared. That building couldn't possibly be depicting someone dabbing, right?
"Before you ask," Anne cracked a grin, "it is dabbing."
Well. Okay. Fine.
Anne skirted around to a door painted striking red on the side of the building's 'right leg'. She nudged the door open with her foot, adjusted her hold on Tulip to clutch Tulip closer to her, and sidestepped inside. As the door closed behind them, Tulip had expected to be plunged into darkness, and was pleasantly surprised to see functioning lights, bathing the interior in its dim yellow glow. They stood at the end of a hallway, flanked on either side by a row of polished, wooden doors. The walls were painted a plain beige, and the floor was tiled with blank, black ceramic. Everything about it was the very picture of dull normalcy.
But the pervading sense of wrong remained. Just like the city outside, the inside of the building looks mostly untouched. Even the air itself felt sterile; like it's been scrubbed clean to the point it stung Tulip's nose. There were a few points of comfort, of flaws in the perfect painting, like patches of dirt on the ceramic floor or doodles of arrows on the wall pointing forward, most likely made by Anne during her previous trips through here.
The lights were uneven too. Some shined brighter than others, and some would even… shift? Did the lights just move? Tulip turned her attention towards the ceiling, craned her neck closer, and gasped.
Not a single lamp on the ceiling was on. The lights illuminating this hallway weren't coming from lamps or light bulbs. They came from literal orbs of light, gently floating in place near the ceiling, forming a trail leading deeper into the building.
Tulip gaped. "The lights… aren't-"
"Ah, you noticed." Anne briefly glanced up, regarding the orbs of light with complete nonchalance. Nothing seemed to faze her in this world. "Yeah, we can't get electricity to run here, but there's a lot of paper. So, we improvise with what we have."
That explanation only left Tulip with more questions. A million things she wanted to say bubbled to her throat, but nothing left her lips. The pain, the exhaustion, the bizarreness of it all, had drained her so thoroughly that she let herself fall limp again in Anne's arms.
The trail of lights and arrows on the wall led Anne up a flight of stairs, once, twice, thrice. Neither Tulip nor the sack on her back slowed her down one bit. She turned left, guided by the light until she came to a stop in front of a door marked by the doodle of a strange, circular symbol. This must be it. Tulip silently noted the room's location in her head - third floor, turn left at the stairs, fifth door on the right.
As Anne moved to grab the doorknob, a thought struck Tulip like a bolt. She's going to meet someone new.
"Wait," she quickly cut in. "When you say 'we', how many people is that exactly?"
"Just plus one." Anne saw the sudden nerves, and spared her a soft smile. "Don't worry, she's super nice. You'll like her."
Anne reached down and twisted the doorknob. The door swung open and she, again, clutched Tulip closer to her chest as they passed through the door. Tulip took a deep breath and braced.
Anne announced their entrance.
"Luz, I found someone."
A new challenger appears!
Remember how I said it might be a while before the next chapter is out? Turns out, I lied. I can't stop thinking about this fic. Can't stop working on it. So I thought, might as well get one more chapter out before college starts.
I did not initially plan for this section of the fic to be as long as it is, let alone take up an entire chapter. The overall pacing of the story is supposed to be quite a lot faster than this. But I kinda revamped the whole story while I'm writing this chapter. Made it move slower so I can give each moment more focus.
Now, next time, is really going to take a while to come out. Maybe. Until then!