Treno Rosso

WELCOME aboard the fabulous Treno Rosso! Where... normal things happen....

It's not a slash fic!

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“I'm going to have to ask you your name, sir.”

The name-tag pinned to her shirt said NANDA, and in smaller letters underneath SECURITY.

“And I'm going to have to tell you,” he gulped, a little frightened by Nanda's dominating appearance, “it's Jonny.”

Nanda scanned her clipboard, which Jonny swore came out of nowhere, and found his answer satisfactory. She stepped aside and Jonny went up the small set of stairs.

The first car was the foyer, mostly empty except for a few little decorations here and there. A subtle door in the back led to the coat room, which Jonny had no use for. He walked instead through the large doorway highlighted by flashing neon lightbulbs and into the second car.

The place was phosphorescent, the ceiling giving a means of attachment to several dangling glowsticks- pink, green, yellow, orange. A few people were standing in there, mingling with each other and sipping from black plastic cups.

Jonny continued right on through to the third car, which was even more intense. He was instantly submerged in total darkness, but a mere three seconds later a bright white light hit him. The spotlight followed as he made his way to the center of the car, at which point there appeared a large crowd gathered around him.

There were a few disappointed groans drawn from the assembly, and utterances about mistaken identity, but one man emerged who grabbed Jonny by the arm and dragged him to the side.

“You're nearly late,” the man snarled, “he'll be here any minute.”

“Terribly sorry,” Jonny replied. “I've never been to one of these before.”

“Obviously.”

Moments later another man walked into the spotlight, and the crowd erupted into boisterous cheering. From his scalp sprouted spiky reddish-brown hair, and he wore a classic tuxedo accessorized by a light pink scarf.

Jonny only vaguely knew that he was supposed to clap along with them.

“Please,” the man tiredly said. “Give it up already.”

“Yeah, I'll give it up to you!” a woman shouted from across the room. A few more feminine voices cooed in agreement, and the man smiled.

“Now, that's what we like to hear.”

Suddenly, everything in the room was lit up in a red glow. The wall behind the man prominently displayed the words TRENO ROSSO in large, black letters.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, pausing to feel the buildup of anticipation in the air. He buckled his knees a little, bent his torso toward the crowd, and smiled as the crowd went wild with suspenseful silence. Then he all but whispered the two magical words, “All aboard.”

Lights sparked and everything went black once more. The crowd hushed in awe and waited for the show to start. Soon enough, one tiny light was lit just moments later. The light expanded itself to its right for a while, then abruptly popped and split in two. Then both lights expanded, and split once more, producing four separate lights. And those four continued the cycle until there was a seemingly random blob of light glowing on the wall. The lights slowly faded into different colors, the combination of which produced the image of a young woman. The men let out a few howls and whistles, and the woman sighed at how beautiful the lady was compared to themselves.

Jonny patiently watched as the lights transformed in front of his eyes. Up to that point in his life, he had never seen anything so spectacular, though he was certainly in for a surprise later on. At that moment, it was all he could do not to let his jaw drop to the ground.

The young woman looked around the room, almost judging the people in there, then she turned. The audience screamed in madness as the lights shifted in a most spectacular way. She looked back once, winked, and walked away. Slowly the lights died until there was only a single one left.

Then a bright blue line of light dashed across the wall and trickled down to the floor. Tiny waves of white light simulated some sort of ocean. Jonny had almost convinced himself that he even heard the sound of the ocean nearby. After a minute or so, he heard something else.

“Enjoying yourself so far?” Jonny turned to see the man with the tuxedo standing next to him. “I see this is your first time here.”

“It is, yes, and yes, I am. It's pretty cool.”

“Well, I'm glad you think so. A lot of work goes into these shows. They're not easy to plan.”

“Well, you do a great job.”

Then, as if to prove him wrong, the lights did something odd. Well, at first they were fine, and from the depths of the ocean emerged a frighteningly large whale. It swam and moaned its awful cry, then a circle of yellow light flew from its mouth and up into the imaginary sky.

The bright yellow sun started to flicker, until the light burst completely. The crowd gasped loudly and then the entire car shook.

“Shit!” The tuxedo man stormed off and the rest of the lighted wall died. The red glow returned, and where the man was headed Jonny could see another man, though he looked more like a frightened boy. He was holding some sort of board, shaking his head at the tuxedo man with his eyebrows scrunched together in terror.

Jonny leaned over to the person next to him and said, “I assume this isn't part of the show?”

“Hell no,” the man replied, “but it's freaking awesome!”

“Well, what do you think is wrong?”

The man turned to Jonny and gave a look of total disgust. “I don't know, man, but who cares?”

“I was just curious,” was what Jonny had intended to reply with, but moments before the sound left his mouth the car shook again. This time it was so forceful that several people were knocked to the ground.

The man in the tuxedo straightened his posture and spun around. His eyes were much wider than before, and even though he tried to present himself in a calm manner, it was obvious that he had no clue what was going on.

“Everyone please remain calm,” he ordered, then went back to talking to the man with the board.

Jonny looked around at the other people in the room. Despite the recent jolt, none of them seemed to be too worried about the present situation, distracted by conversations with their friends. But Jonny had no one to talk to and keep him relaxed, and very suddenly he felt the sick feeling in his stomach he always felt whenever he rode an elevator. It wasn't his usual reaction to anxiety, but he didn't think to attribute it to anything else.

He walked around the room a bit to settle his nerves. He listened to the mass of people speak with itself as he weaved in and out of the clumps of chatterers.

“And he said there was no way to fix it, I'd have to get a new one, and I told him that if he loves me and would like to keep being my husband, he'd best go out and buy it, because I couldn't go out with my hair all wet like that and there's no way I can let it air dry, I'd look like a giant ball of poof!”

Jonny wondered just how legitimate this woman's marriage was if she'd consider leaving her husband over something as small as a hairdryer. Judging by the look on her friend's face, it was not an unexpected or even unusual threat on her part.

A few feet over stood a man with the largest mustache Jonny had ever seen. It was dark and trailed all the way to the floor. When he talked his mouth barely moved, the sound muffled by his great hair, and it was almost amazing how capable the man was of supporting such a weight. Of course, he was rather large himself, which probably helped.

He must have caught Jonny staring, because he stopped talking to his companion and glared at Jonny with an evil look pinned to his eyes. Jonny shivered in fear and decided to continue on. Eventually, he found himself wandering over to the tuxedo man and his terrified subordinate.

“I swear I didn't do anything!” the man with the board said. “N-Not anything that I don't normally do.”

The tuxedo man watched him suspiciously through narrowed eyes.

“Fine,” he finally sighed. “And what the fuck was up with that whale? What did you think you were doing?”

“I...I was just... I'm sorry,” he replied in a low voice, bowing his head in shame. “It just kinda appeared. I-I had this dream last night and-”

“I don't really care to hear about your crazy night-visions. You know what these people come here for, and I- as well as they- expect you to deliver. Make sure this... whale shit doesn't happen again.”

“Yes, sir!” The board man nodded his head fervently, and the tuxedo man rushed off to find some other source of the problem.

“That's quite an impressive contraption you've got there,” Jonny said of the board, and the man, who had been watching his boss leave, shot his head over to Jonny's direction. He quickly looked from Jonny to the board, then back again, all the while with large eyes.

“It controls the light,” he explained. “That's what it does, it controls the light.”

“Really? How does that work exactly?”

The man and his board quickly slid down to the ground, Jonny soon to follow. The man laid the board across his lap and silently admired it for a few seconds.

Several round buttons, all various colors, lined the right-hand edge of the board. The rest of the board was completely blank. The man ran his left hand over the empty spot, carefully and appreciatively.

“The board does everything. All I have to do is hit one of these buttons, whichever color I want to show up. A-And then I just draw.” The man traced a few invisible figures on the board, then he looked up at Jonny. “The board does everything.”

“Except draw whales,” Jonny said in an attempt to be witty. But the man simply frowned in return.

“I-I didn't mean for that to happen.”

Now that he had seemed to have put this man in a bad mood, Jonny tried to make up for it with compliments. “I thought it was spectacular.”

It took a few seconds, but the man's eyes softened, and he even smiled a little. “Have you ever been trying to focus on one thing, but you keep thinking about something else, and that something else just kinda slips? A-And then it mixes with what you're supposed to be doing.”

Jonny thought for a moment. “Oh, you mean like in school when you're supposed to be taking notes or something, you accidentally fill the page with hearts around the name of the girl you like?”

“I never went to school,” the man replied, shaking his head. “B-but I guess it could be like that.”

“You never went to school?” Jonny asked with curiosity.

“I know what it is, I've heard about it plenty of times before,” the man said, “but I've never gone. I-I don't think I've even seen a school in person before. But it could be like what you said.”

“I'm not judging you or anything,” Jonny held his hands out, “I've just never met anyone who has never gone to school.”

“Neither have I,” the man replied. “I'm the only person I know... l-like that.”

“Just out of curiosity, how old are you?”

“T-Twenty,” the man shyly answered. Jonny was certainly surprised by his response; he thought the man had been much younger.

“Twenty? My, you look so young even for your age.” Jonny pressed one of his hands against his chest and continued, “I'm twenty, also, but I've been told I look closer to thirty. Or twenty-five or whatever. You are tall, though, but you look pretty young.” Jonny examined the man a bit further. “You're very skinny, too.”

The man seemed to take offense to this, or at least he grew rather defensive. “I'm not that skinny, I'm normal. J-Just like everyone else, I mean, I eat one meal a day!”

“One meal?”

“Yes.” Jonny suddenly realized that the man was much closer to him now, leaned in with big eyes that asked Why won't you believe me? “I'm normal.”

“That's not really normal,” Jonny slowly said in an apologetic tone.

“W-well, then, what do you suggest is normal?”

“Most people eat, like, three meals a day. Some even more than that.”

The man began to look even more terrified than when he was being reprimanded by his boss. He turned his head to the ground and started breathing heavily. After a minute or so, he looked back to Jonny and forcefully demanded, “W-what's your name?”

Jonny calmly and politely told the man his name, and the man then turned away once more. He drew his knees up to his chest and held onto the board with both arms.

“What's yours?” Jonny quietly asked.

“I- AH!” he exclaimed, as a third shake of the car had sent his head smacking into the wall behind him.

“Are you OK?” Jonny watched as the man rubbed the back of his head. Then he realized that the weird elevator sensation he had felt before was gone.

“HOLY SHIT!” someone cried out. Everyone's heads turned to the center of the room, where the tuxedo man was looking through some sort of periscope. He thrust it back up into the ceiling and nervously looked around at the crowd, wringing his hands like they were made of flimsy cloth.

“What's going on?” someone from the crowd shouted. A few murmurs of agreement followed, and the tuxedo man's nervousness increased tenfold.

“It appears that... Well, it seems that somehow... we are... you see, I'm not sure just how it happened, but-”

“Spit it out already!”

“We're floating in the sky.”

A burst of outraged cries emerged from mostly everyone in the room. The sky? Was this guy joking? Did he think this was funny?

The only person in the room who wholeheartedly believed him was the man with the board. And he believed his boss not only because he was his boss, but because the man knew this was going to happen. He couldn't have flat out told anyone, but somewhere in his subconscious he had predicted it.

“My dream,” he quietly said, but no one heard him. He looked down at his board and drew a small whale. Then he looked up and tried to respond to Jonny's earlier question, but Jonny was already gone by that time.

He was halfway to where stood the tuxedo man, trying to shrink himself into nonexistence to escape the sudden mob upon him. Jonny wasn't being threatening, though, he merely wanted to be closer in order to hear better whatever else the man had to say.

“I promise you,” he sweatily told them, “I will have this fixed as soon as possible.”

The mob did not seem too thrilled with the tuxedo man's assurance, and so a blended bomb of angry outbursts exploded in his face.

“How the hell are you going to fix something like this?”

“He's probably lying to us to begin with!”

“Just having a laugh at our expense- Well, I'll tell you something. I did not pay my hard-earned money to be made a fool of!”

“Excuse me?” Despite the excessive loudness of the mob, Jonny's polite speaking stuck out like a yellow piano key.

The mob silenced, and one by one the people turned around to see who had the audacity to be so patient in the current situation. Jonny felt very much uncomfortable with the sudden and massive attention focused on him, his shirt collar seemingly suffocating him as a result.

“Yes?” the tuxedo man replied through the path the mob had opened, assuming his former manner of lording over everyone else.

With two fingers Jonny pulled at his shirt, trying to relieve the smothering feeling. “How far up are we?”

“Um...” The tuxedo man stuttered for a bit, fumbling to find the words he needed. “P-past the trees, it seems. Or we're in a very desolated area... I think we're past the trees.”

Jonny blankly stared and the man for a few moments, then said “OK,” and turned to walk away. The mob started up again, their noise threatening to drown out all other sound in the world. He wasn't sure where to go from here, as there was not much to do without the entertainment of the light show, and it was obviously impossible for him to leave the car, unless he wanted to die. Which he didn't want to do.

While walking he was startled by the board man, who popped up out of nowhere and said in a mass of jumbled words, “T-There's no way to fix it!”

“Oh my god!” he exclaimed, clutching his chest and breathing heavy. He shook his head and tried to think clearly. “I'm sorry, what did you say?”

“There's no way to fix it,” he repeated. “The car. We're stuck here for a while.”

“Always good to know,” Jonny said with a hint of sarcasm. “But just out of curiosity- you're pretty certain about this. How is that so?”

“I-I had this dream last night, and this happened. I remember. It happened.”

“So there's no way to fix it?” The man shook his head. “Do things at least get better?”

“It depends on who you are,” the man vaguely replied.

“What do you mean?”

“I-It depends on who you are.” His eyes shifted to the massive mob, though when Jonny turned he realized they were focused more on the tuxedo man. Jonny looked back to the man with the board, who in turned looked back at Jonny. “Things won't get better for everyone.”

END OF PART ONE>>>>>

<<<<< COMMENCE PART TWO

“Tell me more about yourself.”

The man blinked a few times. “I-I'm not really sure where to start.”

Jonny shrugged and said, “You could start with your name. You never did tell me, since we were interrupted.”

“Oh yeah!” The man smiled brightly, and through his grin he continued, “I don't have a name.”

Jonny had been sitting with the board man for quite some time as he was recollecting his dream. Jonny only made sense of half of what he was saying, and even then he didn't bother to really piece any of it together. He was much too tired for that. The man was not, though; it seemed like he was constantly in a state of super hyperactivity. Although, his alertness seemed to be more of a paranoia.

Deep beneath his blue eyes, glowing almost purple in the red light, was some crazy and possibly tragic tale, Jonny could tell. And for some reason he felt desperate to find this man's story and read and reread it until he knew it by heart.

“How is it that you don't have a name?” Jonny asked.

“I-I don't know, I was just never given one.”

“Well, what do people call you?”

“Oh, well, the only person who talks to me is my boss, Mr. C,” he began, “and he just calls me kid.”

“Uh...” Jonny paused for a bit, tapping his thumb against his leg. “What about your parents? They never...”

Jonny trailed off as the nameless man shook his head. “I've never had parents either. I-I mean, I must have had them at some point, but they were gone before I could remember them. Mr. C took me in,” he said, smiling in the direction of the tuxedo man. “He said I have real talent.”

“How long have you been working for him?”

“Since I was... well, for as long as I can remember. M-Maybe I was five or so.”

Jonny was just about to respond when suddenly a loud noise emerged from the middle of the room. It was a deep rumbling noise, much like thunder, but there didn't seem to be anything visibly causing it. Slowly, the people in the room began to panic, all backing away from the center and towards the walls.

One woman wasn't watching as she stepped backwards, and she nearly bumped into Jonny. She stopped a mere two inches away, and he stood up to avoid being stepped on in the future. The nameless man stood up beside him and craned his neck to see past the people in front of him.

“J-Jonny, this is it,” he quietly said. “It's coming.”

Jonny thought back to the man's long recollection, trying to remember any single word he had mentioned that would give Jonny even the slightest clue as to what “it” was. But, sadly, he found nothing in the back of his mind, so he just pretended he knew what the man meant.

“What do we do?” Jonny asked.

“There's nothing we can do,” the man replied with frightened eyes. “We just have to... stand and wait.”

The woman in front of Jonny spun around, her long hair whipping through the air and over her shoulder. “Stand and wait for what?” she nosily asked.

“For the dream to end,” he vaguely responded. He tightly gripped the board in his arms and stared at where the rumbling was still sounding. A tired look washed over his face momentarily, then was quickly replaced by more fear.

“Are we going to be all right?”

The man looked over to the woman, still clutching the board with all his might. “W-what's your name?” he asked her.

“Rachel,” she kindly answered.

“You will be more than all right, Rachel,” he said, shifting his view back to the noise. He took a deep breath, and with grave confidence began to walk away from Jonny and Rachel. Jonny watched him, wishing that he'd been able to pay more attention to the man's dream.

The man slowed down as he reached the center of the room. He looked at the people around him, then with a look of utter sadness, he dropped the board. It fell to the ground, tumbling so that when it collided with the hard surface, the multicolored buttons smashed.

The only reaction from the people was a confused silence. Only Jonny knew the significance of the now-broken board, and even then he hadn't realized just how important it was, if not only to the nameless man.

Right on cue, the tuxedo man came storming into view. He stopped in front of the nameless man, his eyes fervently moving back and forth between the man and the ground. He huffed, clenching his jaw and flaring his nostrils.

“What are you doing?” he hissed.

“T-Things change. Sometimes.” The nameless man held in his fear, staring with the best blank expression he could muster. Then he drew a sharp breath and closed his eyes, as if preparing to be struck. No one hit him, but moments later the rumbling grew louder until it roared and the car began to shake.

Then, quite abruptly, the two men vanished, and the car settled. Jonny wasn't sure what sort of weird force pushed him to do so, but he thought it would be a grand idea to check the periscope. He shoved his way through the chattering crowd, all discussing how strange everything was. Perhaps this was a new edition to the show?

Jonny knew very well that it was not an act whatsoever, but he didn't bother telling anyone else that. As far as he was concerned, revealing any information to these people was like adding fuel to the fire.

He stopped under the periscope and reached his arms out to grab it. It took a few tries, but he finally caught it and pulled it down. He waited a few moments before looking, preparing himself because he had no idea what he was going to see when he finally did look, and judging by the way things had already gone, it was not going to be anything good.

Unfortunately, the only thing he could see was absolute nothingness. It was a possibility that some large thing was blocking his ability to see out of the scope, but if that was true, it didn't make much of a difference.

“Look!” someone shouted. Jonny lifted the periscope and shot his head in the direction of the woman's gesture. The whole crowd turned to see that the wall had begun to light up once more as the red glow in the room dimmed.

The lights at first were unidentifiable, until the blobs began to form coherent human shapes. The two men stood on some sort of platform in an otherwise empty sea of darkness. They faced each other, silently, but their body language spoke wonders more than any words could have.

The tuxedo man nearly towered over the nameless man, a clearly cross expression strewn over his dominating face, but the nameless man stared back at him with poised confidence. Without the board, neither men amounted to much, and they both knew it. The only thing left to do was to find out which was worth more in the end.

The tuxedo man opened his mouth to speak, and perhaps in his own little world the words came out, but to those left remaining in the car the words merely appeared on the wall written as if they were dialogue in some video game.

“What have you done?” a man read aloud. “You've ruined everything!”

Whispers emerged around the room; the people asked themselves what they thought was happening. No one knew but Jonny, and even then he only had a vague idea.

“No,” the man continued, this time reading the words of the nameless man. “I'm fixing it.”

“What is there to fix? Things are going great for us, wouldn't you agree?”

“W-well-”

“We've got plenty of people coming to see our shows. We're making more money now than we ever have before, and you've gone and destroyed the one thing we need in order to make this all work.”

“That's not true. T-The board does everything... except I control it.”

“So what?”

The lights changed so that the only thing visible was a close-up of the nameless man. Jonny began to walk away from the periscope and closer to the wall.

“I'm not very useful without it... but it's useless without me. You said it yourself, I have talent!”

“Please!” Now the tuxedo man was being displayed. “You really think you're that special? Anyone with two hands and a brain could do what you do.”

“Yeah, well, they don't even need those to do what you do.”

The crowd let out a simultaneous hushed gasp. The view pulled out so that once again both men could be seen. The tuxedo man raised a clenched hand, the nameless man remaining defiantly standing, and as he brought his hand down to strike an item materialized in his hold.

He hadn't meant for it to happen, he wasn't even aware that it could have happened. But as the tuxedo man brought his hand down, the sword that suddenly appeared pierced right through the nameless man's chest, dropping him to the ground in an instant.

Thoroughly entertained, the audience began a small applause. Jonny's heart sank at the sight; he was convinced that not only was this not an act, whatever actions occurred in this strange place the men were in would be as real as if they were still in the car with the crowd. The nameless man's body lay motionless on the floor of the platform, the tuxedo man gaping over him.

Then the lights simulating his dead body went out, and only the tuxedo man was left on the platform. He looked around, now totally confused at what was going on. He had no clue where he was, or what had caused him to do what he had just done. He worried briefly that the nameless man had been the one who brought them there, and now that he was finished there would be no way to get out; he'd be trapped in this foreign world forever.

His worry was cut short by another rumbling sound. He alertly looked around, eyes wide with fear. The ground he stood on began to tremble, and he collapsed himself to avoid being knocked down by force. Out of the darkness grew a large pair of eyes. But there were not any old eyes; the pair belonged to a giant whale, which showed itself moments later.

Dramatic irony set in as the tuxedo man cradled back and forth, staring at the ground where the nameless man had been, completely unaware that a giant whale was headed straight for him. The whale stopped a mere foot away from the platform and sounded a loud cry. It became more apparent that this was all reality when the cry made its way through the car. The people looked up at the ceiling, as if it would provide some sort of information.

It then seemed to dawn on them the true nature of the nameless man's fate, and they began to shout angry phrases at the tuxedo man. They urged the whale on, though unsure of what its purpose was. It cried again and the man looked up at it frightfully.

“Your reign has lasted long enough, mortal,” the whale bellowed. “It's time you understand what it's like to be treated inhumanely.”

The man's tuxedo was gone, replaced with tarnished rags barely covering his pale skin. He seemed to accept his destiny quite readily, nodding along, though still with fearfulness in his every move.

“And the kid,” he softly spoke, “is he... is he dead?”

The man blinked with sadness, staring at the whale until he began to fade. Then the whale turned to the audience and addressed them.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” it began, “I regret to inform you that you have seen the last of the Treno Rosso days. There was once a strong magic instilled in these walls... and it still exists. But you'll find that when suffocated, the will to perform is diminished...”

“Tell us more!” someone shouted, a few others yelled out in agreement.

“There is no more to tell,” it said. “You've seen it all, only the future holds what the past does not. Please, if you will, the lights-”

On cue, the wall darkened and the whale was no more. But the red light did not rise again; instead, the room was left in black. It was impossible to see anything or anyone else in the room, and so the people all stood still as they wondered what to do.

Several minutes passed in the dark, and all Jonny could think about was how he should have just stayed home. The sight of the nameless man laying unconscious prodded his mind over and over. He felt helpless, like maybe, just maybe, there was something he could have done. The fact that there was no way to stop it just made him feel worse.

The spotlight slowly returned to the middle of the room as it had before the whole fiasco began. The crowd half-expected the tuxedo man to return and make an announcement, but they were sadly reminded that such a thing would not ever happen again.

So they thought nothing of the new light, and turned away to continue their conversations. Some thought of leaving, but were too engaged in speculation to actually to do so. The feeling swept over Jonny that something important was about to happen, and as a result he forced himself to stare into the light.

As quickly as he had once vanished, the nameless man reappeared under the spotlight. But this time, he was floating in midair, his arms dangling limply from his bloody torso. His eyes were closed and his lips barely parted; his youth shone brightly through his illuminated visage. He looked almost peaceful.

The audience oohed and ahhed; some turned away, but most were fixed on the man's body like it was some sort of magnet, pulling them in and refusing to let them go. Then slowly the sword pulled itself out of his flesh, the blade suspiciously clean and shining in the spotlight. Once it had removed itself entirely, Jonny thought he saw faint movement in the man.

Sure enough, the man's chest gently rose and fell every few seconds. Jonny made his way over as close as he could get without stepping into the light. The sword straightened itself, then plunged to the ground. Following suit, the man's body dropped lightning-fast. He nearly hit the ground with a dull thud, but before his body fell that far, he was caught by Jonny. His eyes remained closed for a few more moments as he rested in Jonny's arms, until a loud alarm sounded.

The people began to panic, but took the alarm as a hint to leave, and so bodies quickly began to fill the exits. The man's eyes flew open and he blinked at Jonny a few times.

“You have to leave,” he urgently said.

“Not without you,” Jonny replied.

“The siren... you have to leave.”

“You're coming with me.” The man tried to smile, but shook his head.

“Jonny, this is my home.”

“What will happen if you stay?”

“Nothing will happen. But you have to leave.”

“Why would you stay? There's nothing here to stay for-”

“Something will happen if you don't leave,” the man said, in a much more serious tone. “Please.”

The man sat up, though shakily at first, to allow Jonny to stand. Jonny continued to sit and stare at the man, stunned by his stubbornness. But he eventually came to his senses and joined the mass of people leaving. Before he got through the door, he took one last glance back at the man, sitting on the ground and playing with the sword that was not too long ago a part of him.

All the occupants of the glowstick room had disappeared, and as Jonny exited the train completely he noticed that Nanda had gone, too. He wasn't sure what to make of everything he'd witnessed that afternoon, and another disruption to his thought process did nothing to help.

Once all of the people were in a distance far enough from the train, an explosion burst on the site. Mostly everyone spun around to see what had blown up- unsurprisingly, the train. But it seemed to have vaporized rather than exploded, since there was no trace of it after the dust settled.

Jonny took a little longer than the others to look away and start for home. When he finally did, he hung his head low and frowned at the dirt beneath his feet. Steadily, his feet moved across the land, and since he was not looking at much else, he didn't notice that he'd been accompanied by another person.

“I wonder what my name would have been. Something... Greek. Maybe. Or... I don't know what else.”

Jonny almost slapped himself to make sure he was sane. “What?”

“You think German?” the man asked. “I don't know any German names. Then again, I don't know any Greek names, either...”

“Do you have some fixation with Gs? Maybe it would have been French.”

The man tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “What, like Jean-Claude or something? Do you think I look like a Jean-Claude?”

“No,” Jonny replied. He took a few moments and examined the man's features, his bold, blue eyes and rather large nose, and just underneath, bright pink lips. “You look like a... Christopher. Is that Greek?”

The man stared for a few seconds, then shrugged. “I don't know. I don't any Greek names. But it works for me?”

“Hmm...” Jonny paused for a few moments. “Well, I had a fish called Christopher once. I guess it's good enough for you.”

“A fish, how lovely.” The man was silent, pondering his new name while they continued to walk. “Aren't you going to ask me?”

“Ask you what?”

“What happened.”

“Oh... what happened?” Jonny asked.

The man stopped walking and looked at the ground for a few seconds. Then he lifted his eyes to Jonny and said, “I've never had a home.”

It seemed almost as if this man's job was to evoke sympathy. If it was, he was certainly quite the professional.

“Would you like one?” Jonny asked him. “I mean, I don't live in a glamorous mansion or anything, but you're welcome to stay with me if you like.”

“Is that really a home?” the man hesitantly asked.

“Home is... whatever you want it to be, I guess,” Jonny said. “I don't think there's really a clear definition out there.”

The man absentmindedly nodded for a while, then said, “OK,” and began once more to walk with Jonny. “Thank you, Jonny.”

“Uh... you're welcome.”

“Thank you for saving me,” the man clarified. “It's all thanks to you, believe it or not.”

“...How?” Jonny asked.

“My dream,” the man said, pointed his finger in the air with relevance. “You have a birthmark, do you not?”

“Yeah,” Jonny agreed, “on my ankle.”

Jonny stopped and lifted his pant leg up a bit. He had never noticed it before, but at the present the mark seemed to take a definite shape. And the more Jonny thought about it, the more he realized it looked like-

“A whale!” the man exclaimed. “I knew it was you all along!” He clapped his hands a few times, nearly ready to start jumping up and down. “Thank you, Jonny.”

Jonny shook his head as he started to walk yet again. “I think I need to eat or something, I feel like I'm going crazy.”

“Well, I hardly think not eating makes you crazy,” the man obliviously replied.

“Right,” Jonny said dismissively. “On the way back we can stop and get some food.”

The man waved one of his hands in the air. “Oh, I'm fine, I already ate this morning.” Then, upon seeing Jonny's reaction, he said, “Three meals. OK. I'm gonna have to get used to this.”

“I'm sure you'll catch on quick enough,” Jonny laughed.

“What's my name again?” the man suddenly asked, snapping his head in Jonny's direction.

“Did you agree to Christopher?”

“Christopher, right,” the man smiled, “Christopher the fish. But I'm not a fish. It's all good.”

“Are you sure not eating doesn't make you crazy?” Jonny asked, and the man shrugged.

“I don't see why it would,” he replied. Jonny said nothing more, but allowed for silence to fall between them as they took the last few steps to Jonny's car. Christopher, as he was now officially called, was rather intrigued by such a machine, having never really been anywhere or seen anything apart from the train.

Turning around the corner onto the road, they passed a large sign stuck into the ground. It was wooden, mostly rotted and broken now, but on its surface were white letters just barely visible spelling out TRENO ROSSO. Christopher glanced for as long as he could at the words that, very much like several other aspects of his life, had always been with him, yet he never truly understood, before the car sped ahead and it was behind him forever.