Summary: Tohru receives tickets for the luxury cruise upon the Poseidon for her birthday, along with 9 other people from the Sohma family. Midway through the cruise, the ship is fatally struck by a rogue wave, and is capsized. Now Tohru must find out where everyone else is and escape the bowels of the ship before it slips under the ocean's waves. But not everyone can survive fate. . .

Poseidon
Chapter Sixteen
The Engine Room

They past through the door, and came into an annexe before the engine room. The room was quite small and plain, a few computer-looking things were mounted to the walls. In front of them was a cast-iron door, with a words etched into it, depicting "Engine Room A". Kyo prised open the door, and before them was a vast room spanning the width of the whole ship. Boilers lined the floor above them, some which had collapsed, and fallen to the ceiling.
The walls were dark and dingy, and there was a definite smell of burning in the air; dark clouds of smoke hung overhead, swirling almost majestically. There was obviously a fire nearby.
The problem was, they couldn't move on; the room was two floor's high, and below them was a sheer drop to the ceiling below.
The group were still in shock of the fresh deaths of Shigure and Matake. Shigure, the man who had helped Tohru when she was down-and-out, and offered his home to her.
And Matake, a mild-mannered, yet kind guy, who had helped them thus far out of the bowels of the ship.

They stared hopelessly around the room. It was huge, and there were many possible ways to get where they needed to go. The problem was, they didn't know what they were looking for.

"Now what?" asked Kyo, holding a hand to his head "There must be a way outta this ship!"

Tohru looked down, the drop seemed enormous. Just above them was the grid-walkway, there was a rail opposite them, protecting the edge of the walkway.

"Maybe," she began, speaking slowly as she formed the sentence "we could somehow jump and hang onto that rail, and climb our way down?" this was met with quizzical looks "What? I mean look, the railing goes all the way down to the ceiling! We could get outta here faster if we do that!"

Ren looked next too him, where an upside-down map of the ship was screwed to the wall. He scanned the engine room potion of the ship, it was then he noticed it.

"Hey, guys, look," he said, pointing to something on the map.

The group looked, to see he was pointing to the portion of the engine room they were in; Engine Room A. It had a little arrow depicting "You Are Here", and just to the right of them, in a separate room were three circular holes in the hull. The bow thruster room was just across the same walkway they were talking about.

"C'mon, we have to go across that gangway now," said Haru, looking out to it, looming before them.

"Looks like we have no other choice..." replied Yuki, stepping forwards toward the door.

"Okay, be careful, now, Yuki!" shouted Aya, patting his brother's back, which was more like a push to make him go first.

"Thanks, Aya," said Yuki, barely smiling at his older brother.

Yuki, breathed a deep, shuddering sigh as he stood by the edge of the door.

"Remember, all you have to do is climb onto the barrier, and hoist yourself up onto the top of the walkway," said Ren "it's safer than shimmying the whole way."

Yuki lent forward, and jumped slightly. Tohru gasped as he grabbed hold of the barrier, and pulled himself onto the upside-down walkway.

"Okay, someone else come!" came Yuki's voice just above them; they could see him through the gaps in the walkway.

Kyo nodded to Ren, who then climbed up. They continued one by one, up until it was only Tohru and Kyo left.

"Tohru, you go first," said Kyo, turning to her "I'll help you up."

"Oh, okay," said Tohru, shaking slightly with fear as she dried her hands onto her dress. She shuddered a sigh, and Kyo helped her up onto the bar.

The group helped her up onto the walkway, as she breathed quite heavily, it was terrifying looking down, and seeing a sheer drop below you. They looked around them. The bow thruster room was almost directly near them. The problem was, which route to take?
The walkway spread out in front of them, and snaked its way along the wall, and branching out in random places.

"Let's go this way," said Kyo, pointing in the most obvious route to take.

They began to walk along the unstable walkway, which shuddered in its wall brackets. Every so often, someone would slip, needing pulling back up onto the walkway.
They walked in hurried silence, all the while desperate to get to the bow thruster room, and out of the Poseidon once and for all.

They came up to the door, which, was just above them, at about the height of two people up.

"Damn those assholes for building this ship so big!" shouted Kyo, punching the wall, which clanged and echoed around them loudly.

The smoke seemed to have intensified during their expedition, and hung even lower than before.

"Right, Tohru," said Kyo, indicating his shoulders "You get up onto my shoulders, and pull yourself up into the other room, okay?"

"Wait!" shouted Ren, stepping forward "Let me go first, who knows what's on the other side."

"Okay, good idea," replied Kyo, smiling at Ren, and then at Tohru.

With that, Ren pulled himself onto Kyo's shoulders, and with an almighty grunt, Kyo placed Ren eye-level with the bow thruster room door.
Ren struggled to open the door, but eventually it creaked open.
Tohru looked below her, and just realised the water line had increased dramatically.

"Guys! We have to be quick, the water's rising beneath us!" she shouted, as the others looked below them.

And sure enough, they could tell the water level was rising, the ruined boilers on the ceiling of the ship were now completely submerged in the sea water, and they could see the level rising around the edges of the Engine Room.

With that, Ren jumped off Kyo's shoulders and into the bow thruster room.

"It's okay!" came his voice "start sending people up!"

And with that, they hoisted people up into the bow thruster room. It took a while, and the ship had once again become unstable, and began to rock, as parts of the engine room began to spontaneously explode, either due to fuel, or sparks.

They slammed the engine room door shut, and locked it behind them. They were stood on the ceiling of the bow thruster room, but, there was an edge in front of them, where it dramatically shot down, in which three huge tubes stood before them.
It was like a God-send, and the group cheered as their hours of savaging through the bowels of the ship had paid off finally.

Suddenly, an explosion behind them signalled they needed to carry on, they weren't out of the clear yet.

(A/N: I thought I'd cut it there, hopefully, you're all sticking with this to the very end! There's about 3 chapters, I may extend that to four, to round it to a nice, even 20. Anyway, watch out for the next update, coming very soon!)