"What are you waiting for? Are we still in the tunnel?"

The questions brought Dylon back to reality as he slowly turned around to look at the crowd, "No, we're not in the tunnel anymore but...I also don't think we're in Edmonton anymore either..."

Whispers of confusion spread through the crowd before a young man, who looked like he was in his early twenties, wearing a dark blue hoodie lifted his head and said: "What kind of stupid shit are you talking about?"

"YEAH! How the fuck would we leave the city in a five-minute train ride?"

"If you are too scared to get off the train than move aside and stop blocking the door so the rest of us can leave, FATASS!" The duo beside the man in the blue hoodie chimed in after their friend spoke.

'Wannabe gangsta bitches. Take a look outside before you open your stupid mouthes' Dylon thought to himself. Dylon had always been "The Big Kid" throughout his school years, which meant every wannabe tough kid would come kicking his heels whenever they felt that they had something to prove. Having such an experience growing up wasn't all bad though, it actually let him learn a couple things earlier than most. He had never been bad at fighting, so whenever some punk came barking at him he would answer with his fist and let that be the end of it, at least he did before one of them pulled out a pocket knife and stabbed him in the arm. Gaining a healthy fear of fighting was the first lesson he got, he learned his second as he was trying to avoid fighting after being stabbed. The stabbing incident had resulted in the expulsion of the other kid while he, despite breaking the kid's arm, nose and three of his ribs, was let off with a cautious warning about fighting. However, his parents still insisted on transferring him to a "safer" school, a school where no one knew him as "The kid who hospitalized the last person to pull a knife on him" anymore and everyone knew him as "The Big Kid" once more. He became far more cautious in his new school by avoiding any challenges to fight to him the threw at him. He knew better than to risk being stabbed again offer such meaningless quarrels, but they saw it as weakness. One nasty boy, in particular, took to bullying him as a show of power and Dylon just put up with it as it wasn't worth the risk that accompanied the fight. The boy, feeling unrestrained, kept escalating his act of torment until one day he lit Dylon's backpack on fire as he was walking through the hallway. That was when Dylon learned the second lesson, that if you don't show that you're willing to fight for anything then they'll take everything. Upon realizing this, Dylon set forth to prove he wasn't anyone's bitch and proceeded to beat the boy, and his three cronies, until they were little more than bloody, whimpering sacks on the ground. When the school investigated, they found out about the bullying and watched the security tape of the backpack being lit on fire so the four perpetrators were expelled and Dylon was, fortunately, let off with a warning not to fight again. These lessons taught Dylon to avoid as many fights as possible without rolling over and barking whenever someone growls at him. So, with a firm face, Dylon stared at the trio and responded "As far as I know, there are any forests in the middle of Edmonton but if you lot don't believe me then go ahead and have a look yourself. There's more than one door on this train so you don't have to wait on my behalf if you wanna get off."

"Tch...let the fatass stay inside if he wants. Open that door, and let's go." The man in the hoodie spoke to his friends and together they opened the door closest to them and climbed out. As if the flood barricade had been broken when the first people got off, the rest of the crowd started opening doors and pouring outside until there were only ones left in the car was Dylon, the man in the suit, a handful of elderly passengers, a teenager with a small cut on his head, a middle-aged man with his arm bent the wrong way, and the two passengers who claimed to know first aid trying to help the two injured people. 

"*sigh* I didn't really mean for everyone to rush out as soon as the door was open before we even know what's outside, I guess everyone really was feeling cramped." The man in the suit walked towards the open door next to Dylon and looked outside at the treeline, "Do you recognize those trees?"

Dylon followed suit and looked outside at the forest as well. "No, but I can still see that they're huge. The bigger trees must be at least 30m in circumference, not to mentions hundreds of meters tall. Even some of the shrubs between the trees and taller than a person. If there were trees that big anywhere near Edmonton then it would be a famous attraction but I've never heard anything about it. You?"

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"No." The man in the suit leaned his head out the door and looked towards the front and back of the train, "No tracks too, or at least none that I see. How in the hell did the train get to the middle of a forest? And where did all of this dirt come from?" He asked as he ran his finger along the outside of the train.

"No clue. What do we do now?"

"I don't hear any screaming so I guess there's nothing outside eating everybody, well not right now anyway." he laughed heartily at his own joke "Might as well go have a look around. Micheal."

"Dylon. Somehow I don't find that too reassuring, you first."

"You really that scared?"

"Cautious. I'm really that cautious. In every good light novel, it's the cautious ones that live long enough to become badass main characters. Everyone else usually dies so I prefer the odds that come with being cautious."

"Hahaha, makes sense, follow me then." the still laughing Micheal climbed out and Dylon followed him while looking around.

----------------------------------------

"Where the hell have you taken us!"

"This is kidnapping! I'm SO going to sue you for this! Just wait until my daddy finds out."

Outside, most of the passengers had climbed off the train; some were taking pictures of themselves, the train, the surroundings, or a combination of them; while others were exploring their strange new environment. A crowd had formed near the front of the train around a man in an ETS uniform and the people were hurling questions, threats, and insults at the poor operator who didn't seem to know how to pacify the situation.

'Damn! There must be around a thousand people here. No wonder the train felt so packed.' Dylon thought to himself as he looked around outside.

Seeing the man in trouble, Micheal walked over, "EVERYONE LISTEN UP!" When he saw that the crowd had focused on him he continued "I'm sure everyone is feeling a little confused, scared and frustrated. We all are but taking out your fear and frustration on the ETS operator won't help any of us"

Seeing a lifeline the operator grabbed onto it, "Yeah! The system stopped responding, so I had no control over bringing the train here to the middle of nowhe...", seeing the pointed stares of the crowd the operator stopped mid-sentence.

"*Ahem* As I was saying, the most important thing to do now is to try and find out where we are and also ensure we can survive long enough to be rescued."  

"What do you mean 'survive'? Are you saying we're gonna die?"

"No, I'm not! What I am saying is that we don't know where we are. If we are a 5-minute walk back to town then great, but if we're somewhere that's going to take days to be reached by our rescuers than we'll need to find food, water, and shelter so they have someone to rescue when they find."

"He's right! We have to figure out our situation and take precautions until we're rescued" someone echoed Micheal and the crowd began to murmur their agreements. 

'Wow, he must be one of those naturally born leaders, first, he took charge on the train and now here too. Note to self, don't run against him for office, hehe'. Dylon, who had followed Micheal over, laughed to himself while watched Micheal rally the people.

"Now, I'm not sure how we can figure out our location yet-"

"We could check the star constellations!" an eager female university student interrupted Micheal

"...uh...yes but we would need stars for that and the sun hasn't set yet so we'll put that on the back burner for now..."

Giggles came from the crowd and the student blushed beet red while looking down.

"So where was I? Oh yeah! Until we figure out where we are, we're gonna need to secure our living essentials and priority number one should be water. First things first, we should take inventory of-"

"Danny, where are you going!?" Micheal stopped once more when he heard a woman's shout.

Everyone looked over to see a teenager walking towards the forest, "Fuck off! I'm just going to look around the trees a bit, chill the fuck out for once!"

"Come back here! We don't know how dangerous it is here yet." The boy's mother called out as she walked over to her son who was already several dozen meters ahead.

The teenage stopped in front of shrub that dwarfed him by more than twice his height, picked up a rock that was by his feet and hurled it into the bush. Seeing no reaction the boy turned back to look at his mom, " What did I tell you, it's just a stupid fucking bus-"

*CHOMP*