CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHOPSTICKED OR CHOPSTUCK?

———

WHEN SHE AWOKE, ESTELA'S HEAD WAS POUNDING. She reached a hand up, her fingertips lightly brushing over her forehead, only for pain to shoot to the surface. God, what had hit her?

Her vision was still blurry, everything around her a kaleidoscope of colours and pixels. Although she couldn't see perfectly, it was obvious that she was alone, and, judging by the complete mess that had been made, nothing good had happened while she was out.

Panicked voices floated around in the back of her mind, saying something like "get off" and "let go," if Estela could catch correctly onto what they were saying, and she couldn't tell if she was truly hearing something, or if she was still tripping.

The woman tried to stand but she was too lightheaded, and opted to crawl through the debris on hands and knees.

Currently her strength was poor, and both the back of her cranium and middle of her forehead racked with pain. As she crawled along the floor, avoiding glass as well as she could, her frame wobbled about, unstable as can be.

Pushing through, Estela crawled in the direction of the voices, towards the drivers' seats.

As she emerged, her vision was beginning to come to. And as she tried blinking out the blur from her eyes, she set sight on an empty gap where a door should be. She was on a train, right? Moving trains are supposed to have doors, aren't they? And this is a moving train. Moving train, no door. No door, moving train.

The breeze emitting from the cavity brushed along Estela's face, sort of soothing the strike along her forehead.

"Let go!"

There it was again.

Estela's eyes examined the doorway, a dark abyss flashing past, the screeching of wheel against rail drilling into her skull. A seatbelt connected to the nearest seat to the doorway seemed to be flying out into the abyss, but the woman could just catch a glimpse of a bruised-knuckled hand clinging on for dear life.

She reached up to rub at her eyes with the back of her bloody, bruised hand, and peered out the doorway, holding at the plush seat beside her to keep her stable.

Surely, Ladybug hung out the door, knuckles a sickly white as they clung on to the seatbelt, and, much to Estela's surprise, one Tangerine held tightly onto that ladybug's ankle.

God, if it were just Ladybug, she would've left him right there, or shot him. But she and Tangerine had made a deal. And, besides, Lemon would probably kill her if he knew she'd let him die.

But The Black Cat took it upon herself to grab hold of The Ladybug's forearm, in the act of a momentary stalemate, and used her remaining strength the pull him back inside the train. Nobody had ever revealed the true strength needed to pull two men, whilst also going against a massive force of a train moving in the other direction.

Another train pulled beside the Shinkansen, startling Estela, and her gripping slipped and she took cover inside, the idea of keeping her own head more important. But as it passed, she resumed her old position.

All three of them grunted and groaned as they used their power to return to the safety (although it was proving to be quite the death trap) of the Shinkansen.

But as soon as Tangerine had clambered back inside, he'd barely given either himself or The Ladybug any time to recover, and tackled the other man's torso, to which he retaliated, and morphed the tackle into a headlock, so he'd barely been touched.

Fortunately, The Ladybug wasn't the only one with a few unexpected tricks up his sleeve, for Tangerine grabbed hold of the man's waist, and flipped him right over his shoulder.

"Grab something!" The British man yelled as The Ladybug flew in mid-air.

Not allowing any time to pass, The Black Cat pushed herself to her feet, her world dizzying as she did so, and grabbed the first thing she spotted; a pair of metal chopsticks upon the counter.

She assumed position on top of Ladybug once again — this seemed like quite the routine, don't you think? — and drove her fists down, chopstick-clad, into his face, her bodyweight drilling him to the floor with both knees settled on his torso.

Beneath her, Ladybug's face was almost beginning to grow purple, his teeth gritted, as he attempted to hold back the metal daggers with his own strength against Black Cat's wrists.

"My gun's in my jacket," Estela growled through gritted teeth, eyes not leaving Ladybug's manic blue pools.

"The fuck d'you want me to do about that?" Tangerine replied, running a hand through his head, the wax that had been previously styling his hair completely sweated out and messed up.

"Are you fucking dumb? Grab it. I'm fed up with this little shit!"

The woman pushed her strength further, pressing further down into Ladybug, metal chopsticks inches from his eye sockets.

Tangerine hesitated. "Where in your jacket?" His eyes flickered over Estela's frame.

"Inside pocket," Estela replied unwaveringly, "over my heart."

The man kneeled down beside The Ladybug and The Black Cat, the two still in their own miniature battle.

When he examined Estela up close, the bruise on her temple was beginning to grow darker; around the area where he'd previously tried to clean her up, her under-makeup blemishes were more obvious; her mascara was beginning to smudge under her eyes from the repeated battering and sweating; black curls were beginning to fall free from her slick ponytail, which was getting less and less slick with each strike to her head. And her expression was deadly.

"So you want me to... just, like, put my hand in there and grab it, yeah?" The male asked, eyebrows furrowing, hand laying on his chin.

"Yes, just fucking get it and put it against his fucking head!" Estela roared, eyes removing from Ladybug's for a moment to glare daggers into Tangerine's. "Stop being a fucking pussy about it, it's just a fucking gun."

That's not what I'm being a fucking pussy about, Tangerine thought, his mouth pulling into a thin line as he edged his hand closer to the lapel of Estela's black blazer.

He removed the woman from his eye line, settling on the fun-looking Japanese snacks racked up overhead.

His rough finger tips broke the barrier of the blazer's exterior, its expensive material interesting him (after this, he may have to ask Estela where she gets her jackets from.) He kept his palm against the inside of the jacket, not daring to turn his hand around, despite his gold rings catching the fabric of Estela's shirt underneath.

They met a pocket, a break in the satin, and dove inside. As The Black Cat had said, the pistol was in there.

Tangerine's fingers wrapped around the grip and pulled the Beretta from its resting place.

"That was easy enough, wasn't it?" Estela breathed, a condescending tone to her voice.

Tangerine fixed his grip on the gun, holding it tight as he pressed the black glinting barrel against Ladybug's temple.

"Give up now, you cunt, or I'll pull the fucking trigger."

Ladybug's eyes flicked between the woman above him and the man holding a gun to his head. "If– If you kill me... You won't get to know what happened to the kid."

At this, the fruit and the cat met eyes for a moment. They knew he was right.

Ring, ring!

The cell phone in Tangerine's pocket sprung to life.

But Tangerine, nor The Black Cat, would stand down. This was about intimidation, threatening. If they could do both of those things, intimidate and threat, then they could get the upperhand on this Ladybug guy.

"You gonna get that?" Ladybug strained, his eyes staying trained on Tangerine's.

"No!" And the gun pressed further into Ladybug's skin, hard enough to leave the mark of an "o" on his temple.

"You... probably ought to get that."

Click. Thumb against hammer.

"Could be important."

Tangerine growled, abruptly pulling the gun away from The Ladybug's head. "Fuck! Fine. Stand down, Estela."

Estela grunted, pulling the chopsticks away from the man, disarming herself as well, and rolled off of his torso, whilst Tangerine fished the mobile from his pocket.

"Yeah, what d'you want?" The British man asked into the phone, putting it on speaker and placing it onto the utterly destroyed carpet.

"The White Death says to get off at next stop holding briefcase, or he will kill everyone on that train," a deep Russian voice spoke.

Tangerine sighed, shaking his head in exasperation. "Okay, yeah, 8 can make it, but... Lemon, he's a bit tied up right now."

"No, both of you. With case, or everyone dies."

And the line cut.

Tangerine let out a long groan, his normally icy blue eyes tired and dull. "Fuckin' paranoid, this lot." He looked over at Ladybug, who looked equally as dishevelled. "You don't happen to have the case on you, do you?"

Ladybug shrugged, running a hand through his mousey hair. "Nope. Sorry, man."

"Fucking fantastic."

Lips tugged into a thin, scornful line, Tangerine met his eyes with Estela. "Don't think we're gonna reach Lemon in time, anyway."

The woman shook her head solemnly in response.

A speaker chimed up overhead, and a female Japanese voice began to speak. Their arrival to Kakegawa station was fast approaching.

"Well, game's fuckin' up," Tangerine announced, brandishing his beat-up hands with a flourish. He turned his attention over to Ladybug. "For what it's worth, you seem like a right fuckin' asshole and I'm glad you're gonna fuckin' die with us."

Ladybug nodded, a sigh racking his body. "Thanks, very nice of you to say," he spoke sarcastically, though not with much enthusiasm.

From beside the bug, Black Cat, using the stability of the counter that had once been her enemy, pulled herself back up to her feet, her vertigo finally beginning to cease.

"Just curious, guys," the man spoke up, causing both cat and fruit to look in his direction. "Do they even know what Lemon looks like?"