“I mean, I could just take it from you,” Steroid Steve said, eyeing the gun and winking.

The woman flashed a glance up and down at the muscular douche canoe and shook her head.

“No, you couldn’t,” she said directly.

“Got a fuckin’ tough-ass bitch here, boys,” Steroid Steve said. “This thot shot thinks she can out-man me if—”

“I have logged over two-hundred-and-fifty hours training with this pistol alone,” the woman stated in a calm, almost detached tone. “Not to mention the countless hours I have spent fine-tuning my technique with various other firearms, both stateside and, more practically, abroad.”

She tilted her head to the side.

“Physically, you are much larger than me. If you were to attempt to take this weapon away, I would be forced to fire a bullet into your center mass that would travel one-hundred-and-forty-eight miles per second, and at this distance it would burrow all the way through you, out the other side, through the window, and probably bury itself into the dirt near West Eighty-Ninth before you could fire a single synapse from your underdeveloped ape-brain to tell your bladder to piss your pants. It will hurt the whole time, and if you survive, the pain it leaves behind will be your constant, waking nightmare. Now, sit down.”

I was taken aback. Her monologue sounded strangely rehearsed, as if she’d uttered it dozens of times in front of a mirror. I couldn’t think of anyone who spoke like that in real life--maybe in movies, but not on this side of the screen. I wasn’t sure I believed her conviction, but, if nothing else it had been effective. The men stumbled back and sat down at her command.

Was she a soldier? I wondered. She had mentioned overseas training and that seemed like something one of the troops would be required to do. I didn’t know anything about the military, to be honest, other than what I had learned from first-person shooters. Maybe she’d call in a combat drone and light up this whole compartment? That would be pretty cool. Even if I got fried after the train car transformed into an inferno, I’d still get the satisfaction of watching the smug looks melt off of these dick heads’ faces and into a gooey puddle.

I shook my head. What sort of edgelord, intrusive thoughts were these? I was basically two synonyms for the word ‘darkness’ away from writing a Korn song.

I focused on the group before me and smirked. What a strange turn of events. The woman kept the gun trained on them, looking over at Nick.

"You alright?"

Nick nodded, rubbing his bleeding nose where he'd been hit by Steroid Steve during the scuffle.

"How's the kid?" Major Badass asked, referring to me. I groaned and shakily lifted myself.

"He’s perfectly fine," I said, mockingly. “These guys do more slapping than real fighting.”

She gave me an appraising glance and then raised an eyebrow. I hated when people did that.

"Yeah," she said. "Looks like it."

I looked past the woman and over to Eldon. The fool was still slumbering in his seat, head bobbing with the motion of the train car. How he could sleep through all that commotion was as impressive as it was baffling. Looking at Nick, I scowled.

"All these people on the train, and only three of us did anything," I said, then cast a glance at the rest of my classmates with a sense of superiority. Near the back, Matt looked on wide-eyed at Nick and I, then shook his head. Cutsford had ducked down, hiding behind the substantial luggage bag on his lap. Abbie looked sick. Everywhere I glanced, my fellow students were in various stages of either fear or disgust.

Cowards, I thought again.

"Yeah, a lot of good you did," said one of the college bros. "You fat idiot. You just got your ass stomped."

"Oh, please!" I shouted back. "You were barely able to do anything without ganging up on me."

"Oh, yeah?" The one called Dalton demanded. "You wanna go one-on-one, Lunchbox?"

"Yeah," I said, sticking my face out tauntingly. "I do. I'll wreck you like I did your mom's p—"

"Enough!" called a voice from the front of the car. It was the curly-haired woman. All eyes turned to her. There had been something strange about her voice, almost like it had come from… inside my head? But that couldn't be right. Maybe one of those shitheads had given me a concussion?

The woman stepped forward, brandishing the object in her hand. It was a circular thing, and on the first inspection, it looked like a makeup mirror. But, as I peered closer, I could see it looked more like it was made of copper or some other kind of dingy metal. The glow from the device still lit up the area, and the swirling patterns created a strange effect.

"As much as I adore the idea of letting you all kill one another, we are on the precipice of something else," the woman said. "Something great."

"What are you talking about, lady?" Steroid Steve demanded.

"She's kinda hot," whispered one of the other bros. The woman ignored both of these comments and instead pointed out the window. I looked in her indicated direction and saw that the night sky over the city horizon had a curious blue hue. I looked back at the woman and found she was smiling.

I tried desperately to figure out what was going on. Everything seemed to be unfolding in such a strange and dramatic way since I decided to go on this trip, and I wasn’t sure why.

"I hope you all save that passion for when it truly matters," the curly-haired woman said then. "Because it will serve you well."

She looked at Nick.

"Some of you…"

Then she looked at me with a sneer.

"...more than others."

I scowled back.

"What kind of psycho horseshit is this?" Steroid Steve demanded. He made to stand, but the woman raised her hand and he immediately dropped to his seat again with a terrified expression.

"You will see…" she said mysteriously, and then lifted the copper circle and smiled.

"Time to go!" she announced, and then as if by magic, she disappeared. Just... winked out of existence like one of those old CRT televisions switching off.

There were many gasps and excited talking as everyone tried to figure out what had just happened. I struggled to stand upright during this, gripping the back of one of the seats and wincing. I was not going to be able to toot around Dysentery Village with a chest full of broken rib bones. I could barely stand at the moment. I sighed. I’d just get off at the next station and call my aunt to come pick me up because I didn’t want to take a ride in the wee-woo wagon if I didn’t have to. Emergency services were hella expensive, especially within the city limits. No thank you. If my aunt couldn’t get me, I’d just jog my happy ass over to the other platform and head on back to my school.

Which reminded me…

We’d been on the train for a while, and I hadn’t remembered us making any stops. No one had gotten on or off since… well, since one or two stops after all of us did. Where were we, anyway? Turning my attention to the window, I stopped.

The sky had changed.

"What the hell!?" someone I didn't know yelled, and everyone turned to look out the window as well. Instead of the darkness of evening, there were thousands of bright patterns in the air. They glowed an iridescent blue, reminding me of the light from the woman's copper mirror-thing. The designs were tightly-coiled swirls, and they were huge, surrounding our train and reaching far out into the city beyond. Then, I felt a lurch as the train seemed to launch into a higher gear, and everyone jerked as the speed of motion increased.

If we'd been going faster than the speed of sound before, now we were leaving it in the dust. The world whipped by us, but it didn't stop there. No, the train seemed to be exponentially increasing in its movement down the track, and it began to get very difficult for me to keep my balance. I staggered and fell against one of the seats and felt incredible pain as it connected with my side. Well, if they weren't broken before, they definitely were now. I roared in agony and slid to my back.

From my position, I could see directly out of the window now, and the swirling blue lights were intensely bright, almost painful to look at. What was worse—they were getting bigger. I peered through squinting eyes and tried my hardest to keep my eyes on the shapes as the train car began to vibrate. Suddenly, with a loud wrenching of metal, the whole car shook violently, knocking people to the ground all around me. Some were screaming, and others were crying, but the train kept speeding up.

The light was now so bright that it was impossible to keep my eyes open, but I noticed that I could still see the glow through closed eyelids. I threw my arm up to cover my eyes and felt a moment of relief before there was another wrenching. Then... weightlessness.

We were falling.

Gravity seemed to shift and roars of fear erupted around me as the train nosedived off the track. The occupants of the car slammed backward, tumbling over seats and crashing against the back of the train. I was stuck. For the first time ever, I was happy I was too fat to come unglued from my position easily. I couldn't help but chuckle as I realized my weight was keeping me wedged firmly between the seat and the back of the chair in front of me. It was a bizarre reaction, I know, but everything happening seemed so largely incongruent to reality that there didn’t seem to be a better way to process it. I kept laughing, like a maniac.

As we dropped, it was like the gravity shifted again, and now I saw people floating through the air in the free-fall. Abbie Carlson was holding on to the handrails above the middle aisle for dear life, her red hair loose and floating along with her body as she screamed. I chanced a look out the window for some reason, perhaps morbid curiosity?

Beyond the blue, I could make out something rushing at us, a large and static object. We were going to hit the ground!

With a final shout, I felt the train car jerk to a halt and then…

Nothing.

I opened my eyes to what I expected to be… darkness, maybe? Whatever I feared I would find, it was not what I saw.

Instead, as my vision focused, I could see only blue sky and rolling hills.

I looked down at my feet and found that I was barefoot and standing in a patch of lush, green grass. I could see pants on my person, but they weren't my pants, because they weren't baggy enough. They looked to be made of something other than denim, perhaps some sort of brownish canvas. Whatever it was, it felt light and airy. I wasn't wearing my hoodie anymore, either. Instead, I was in a cream-colored shirt that billowed in the light breeze.

"What the hell?" I asked out loud and found that my voice sounded strange and muted. “Why the shit am I dressed like a retired drug dealer?”

I took a deep breath and noticed that my ribs didn't hurt anymore. In fact, I didn't feel much of anything at all. Was this heaven? I hadn't believed in anything like an afterlife before, but now that I was facing the after-effects of what had clearly been my death… this place wasn't so awful, I supposed.

I stared out into the distance and focused on my surroundings. It was gorgeous. I watched as a flock of birds soared along in the sky, careless and free, and I smiled. If I was dead, it would probably be for the best. It sure would beat having to slog back to my aunt and uncle's house, or return to school and have to pretend I was anything other than angry all the time.

I took a step forward, and suddenly, a massive blue orb appeared in front of me.

It seemed to be made of light and swirled viscously, as if there was something liquid within its depths. I remembered the glow from the woman's mirror and the symbols that had surrounded us just a few moments ago.

Then, the orb spoke.

"Welcome to Regaia, sojourner."