Chapter 7 A Train Ride from Hell
As nighttime began to approach, Tiger was walking down the passageway of the train with his passport.
He passed by a couple named Hank and Peggy Hill, who were also looking at their own passports.
"Last month, the traveling papers were blue," Hank discussed with his wife. "But now, they're red."
Hearing this, Tiger stopped to merely look at the Hill couple's passports. Indeed, their print was in red. The orange cat then looked at his own passport, to see that his document was forged in blue ink. He gasped, upon realizing that his and his companion's passports were outdated.
"Papers!" One of the guards called out. "Papers, please!"
While Hank and Peggy Hill went up to the calling guard, a flustered Tiger turned abruptly and quickly made his way back to his train compartment to warn Romeo.
"Oh, beg pardon!" Tiger pushed past through the passageway. He then accidentally bumped into Luan Platter.
"Oh, how rude!" Luan scoffed as she frowned at the large cat.
Tiger opened the door to the compartment, and went in. He approached Romeo, who was looking at his own passport. "That's what I hate about this government," He told Romeo. "Everything's in red."
Shocked, Romeo stood up and stared at their outdated passports. "Red?"
"I propose we move to the baggage car, quickly," Tiger suggested. "Before the guards comes."
"I propose we get off this train!" Romeo stated as he and Tiger quickly grabbed their baggage from the rack.
Gary the snail, meanwhile, was still looking outside the window as Sydney slept peacefully in a seat. Just then, the ceiling above her began to glow bright red. Gary stood alert and stared out the window. Suddenly, some familiar red snakes started hovering by the window, causing the snail to make an angry face and start hissing.
Just then, one of the snake demons came up and made a scary face at Gary, scaring him.
Romeo then turned his attention to Sydney, and knelt down to wake her up. "Hey," He shook her a little. "Wake up."
Unexpectedly, Sydney suddenly flailed her arm up, and slugged him right in the nose.
"OUCH!" Romeo fell backwards into the opposite seat, covering his nose with his hand.
Waking up, Sydney sat up in shock. "Oh! Sorry, I thought you were some…" She cut herself off, upon seeing it was Romeo. "Oh, it's you. Well, that's okay then," Sydney frowned, and started to lie back down.
But Romeo grabbed her by the hand, and pulled her from the bench seat towards the compartment door. "C'mon, we gotta go!" He told her.
"Where are we going?" Sydney asked with confusion.
As the three prepared to leave the car, Gary went towards the door and started meowing excitedly as he passed Tiger.
"I think you broke my nose!" Romeo complained. Still clutching onto their suitcases and covering his nose, he hurried after Tiger down the corridor.
Exasperated, Sydney slipped her coat back on. "All men are such babies," She muttered under her breath.
"I heard that!" Romeo called out.
"Good!" Sydney snapped back, following him and Tiger down the corridor.
Later that night, Sydney, Romeo, Tiger, and Gary finally entered the baggage car.
Sydney closed the door behind them, while Romeo looked around in the car. "Ah, yes," He whispered. "Yes, this will do nicely."
Tiger turned back and glared at Romeo. "But she'll freeze in here."
"She can thaw in Paris," Romeo simply told his partner.
Sydney looked at Romeo suspiciously. "The baggage car?"
Romeo and Tiger both responded with a little chuckle through grinning teeth.
"There wouldn't be anything wrong with our papers now, would there, Maestro?" Sydney asked dismissively.
"Of course not, your grace," Romeo lied. "It's just that I…I hate to see you…forced to mingle with all those commoners." He didn't really want to admit that the papers were fraud or that he was using her to get money from the Dowager Empress.
Sydney was not convinced by the feigned smile on Romeo's face.
But neither one of them noticed a red light glow under the crack of the door.
Outside, the snake demons flew underneath the train's carriage car. There, they worked together to pull the couplings apart. Then, the runaway locomotive and baggage car was separated from the dining car by an explosion.
The engine continued to overheat.
Inside their car, the quartet felt the explosion, and fell backwards upon impact. Romeo and Sydney fell into a pile of baggage, half-buried in it.
Tiger got back up, and rushed to the rear door to look out and see what was going on.
"What the heck was that?!" Romeo cried out, alarmed.
"I don't know!" Tiger cried. "But there goes the dining car!" He pointed out the door, revealing that they had been separated from the rest of the train. "And I wanted to try their special!" He moped.
Panicking, everyone tried to get up. As they struggled amidst the luggage, Sydney tried to get out from underneath Romeo. "Get off of me!" She angrily muffled.
"I-I'm trying!" Romeo yelled.
Sydney tried to move a suitcase, only to kick Romeo in the rear with her foot.
"Ow!" They both cried.
Tiger went to look out the window to peer at the train engine. Frightened, he could see the locomotive billowing out lots of smoke and sparks and fire raining down. "Uh, Romeo?"
"What?" Romeo moaned, as he rubbed his sore spot where Sydney kicked him.
"I think someone's flambéed our engine!" Tiger shrieked.
Sydney and Romeo moved forward to see that the engine was blowing smoke and fire.
"Something's not right!" Romeo said. He opened the door, and jumped onto the ladder on the engine's tender. "Wait here, I'll check it out!" He told Sydney and Tiger.
Going to observe the steam engine, Romeo climbed up the ladder to the top, and ran across the coal tender.
The young man jumped down into the engine room. Inside the cab, it was bright orange and blazing hot. Romeo shielded his face from the intense heat. Looking out through his fingers, he could see that nobody was driving the burning train engine.
"Hello?" Romeo called. "Anybody here?!"
He grabbed onto the brake lever to pull it. But it was so hot, that the man yelped and brought his hand back, narrowly dodging an explosion of fire. He scrambled back to the baggage car from the burning locomotive in a hurry.
In the baggage car, Sydney, Tiger, and Gary were all looking out the door in fear.
"We're going way too fast!" She cried, noticing they were going at an extreme speed.
At that moment, Romeo jumped back in front of the others, dirty and singed. "Nobody's driving this train!" He warned them. "We're gonna have to jump!"
The group hurried over to the side door.
Sydney's eyes widened. "Did you say 'jump'?!" She asked in shock, as Romeo opened the side door.
They all looked out to see a sheer cliff dropping into a deep chasm.
"After you!" Sydney told Romeo.
"Fine!" Romeo said, agitated. "Then we'll uncouple the car!"
Hearing this, the minions undercarriage flew over to the coupling between the baggage car and locomotive. There, they melted the coupling, so it could not disconnect.
Romeo jumped back out onto the coupling. "Come on!" He cried. "I need a wrench, an axe! ANYTHING!"
Tiger struggled for a moment to pull a toolbox near the door. "Here!" He handed Romeo a hammer.
Romeo took the hammer, and kept banging the coupling to uncouple the baggage car from the possessed locomotive.
Sydney, meanwhile, searched desperately through the baggage compartment.
Just then, something caught Gary's eye. He spotted a wooden crate, labeled "DANGER - EXPLOSIVES".
Sydney looked down at the box full of dynamites, and smiled, knowing that dynamites would work.
Romeo kept on trying to separate the cars. But the coupling was welded good and tight, so that it would not disconnect. Just then, the head of the hammer snapped off.
Romeo stared at it in shock. "Come on! There's gotta be something in there better than this!" He snapped, furiously throwing the broken hammer away.
Sydney then came out, handing him a stick of dynamite.
Romeo looked at the dynamite, impressed. "That'll work!" Sticking it onto the coupling, he gestured the others toward the other end of the baggage car. "Go! Go! Go!"
They all took cover behind some boxes.
As Romeo held onto Sydney, he asked her, "What do they teach you in those orphanages?"
They ducked their heads in preparations.
The dynamite then exploded on the coupling with a loud KA-BOOM! The engine tender was blown away from the baggage car.
The snake demons looked back to see the baggage car had separated from the locomotive. Growling in disapointed, they raced ahead of the train, towards a bridge up ahead of them.
The engine and its coal tender sped up ahead, with the baggage car not far behind.
Tiger tried to turn on the brake wheel, while Romeo used his jacket to put out some fire from the explosion.
"The brakes are out!" Tiger warned.
"Turn harder!" Romeo told him.
Tiger kept trying to turn the wheel, only then for it to break off, with the orange cat now holding it.
"Don't worry!" Romeo assured them. "We've got plenty of track. We'll just coast to a stop."
Suddenly, a big boom caused the gang to fall down. Jafar's minions murmured gleefully as they united into one large minion. Together, they destroyed the bridge in a flash of red fire.
Everyone stared at the crumbling bridge, and all gasped in horror.
"You were saying?" Sydney asked Romeo.
The baggage car kept picking up speed, heading downhill toward the collapsed bridge.
Romeo looked back into the baggage car for something to stop them. He noticed a chain holding down some cargo, getting an idea. "I've got an idea Tiger, give me a hand with this!" He ran over and grabbed the chain, with Sydney behind him.
Tiger turned to go over and aid Romeo, only for him to lose balance and fall into a box.
Sydney saw him and then grabbed the chain.
Romeo carefully edged his way out of the car. The ground whizzed by beneath him as he lowered himself underneath the baggage car. "Hand me the chain!" He reached his paw up, expecting Tiger to be there. He looked stunned upon seeing it was Sydney handing out over him with the chain. "Not you!"
"Tiger's busy at the moment!" A disgruntled Sydney told him.
Romeo eventually accepted the chain from Sydney, and hooked it onto the undercarriage.
As he was doing so, he looked at the front of the train to see twisted steel flying back at him like shrapnel.
"No! No!" He cried. "Aaaggghhh!"
Luckily, Sydney grabbed the chain and pulled it up, saving Romeo from the debris, just as the shrapnel whipped by, shattering a tree.
The man landed on top of the girl. As they were catching their breath, the two stared at each other for a moment. Their eyes met; Sydney's grey-blue ones looking into Romeo's brown ones, stirring some distant feeling.
Romeo was the first to snap out of it. He blinked, and looked back to see the shattered tree receding in the distance.
"And to think that could've been you," Sydney commented with a smirk.
"Hey, if we live through this," Romeo said to Sydney. "Remind me to thank you. Now hurry - there's no time to lose!"
By this time, the damaged baggage car and the train engine were getting closer to the gorge, near a collision course with the broken bridge.
"Here goes nothing!" Romeo said, in an uneasy tone. "Brace yourselves!" He took the chain and flung its other end out the back. He looked out to see the hook bounce around, until it finally got caught on the tracks.
It was strong enough to pull the baggage car, causing it to turn sideways as it separated, plowed through the snow and began to slow down.
The baggage car continued to slide after the train engine, both getting closer and closer to the gorge.
"Well, this is our stop!" Sydney announced to her friends.
Joining hands together, everyone screamed as they jumped off the baggage car, landing safely into a snowbank.
Romeo and Tiger had also managed to take their luggage with them, as well.
They watched as the overheated train engine and the ruined baggage car both sped all the way to the broken bridge, and then plunged off of it. They came to a crash, ending with a loud explosion into balls of fire, smoke, and flying sparks at the bottom of the gorge.
The group all panted from their near-death experience, as they listened to the fire from down in the chasm.
Romeo then glanced at Sydney in amazement. "Sydney, you saved my life!"
"Well, that's what else we do back at the orphanage, and you're welcome." Sydney responded with a look.