Chapter Text
Locomotion loved his job. He wasn't even sure if it could be called a job, as he didn't get paid. But kidnapping children and turning them into parts of his train was extremely rewarding, and it wasn't even very difficult. Once he captured somebody, he would shut the train doors and ride away into the astral plane, where time passed in unusual ways and nobody ever found him. Not anymore, anyway. He used to allow creatures to find him, to pick up supernatural companions when things got lonely, but after the incident…
…Never again. Now he was a lone wolf, content with the company of himself and of the children before they turned. Not that he spoke much with them. He spent most of his time in his locomotive form, where communication with people was difficult, and he only turned to his more human form for the occasional check-ups of his passengers or when he was in the mortal realm, finding new ones.
When he did try to find new children, he normally had a concrete plan for where and when he was going to do it. Sometimes, however, he liked to just see where he ended up. Today was one of those days.
The wind whistled past his sleek design, land and water becoming a familiar blur of colours and lights. His wheels clattered along the silver train tracks that appeared and disappeared as he needed. He hardly noticed the clear-blue day morphing into the pitch-black night.
After a while of travelling, he decided he was at a good place to stop and slowed himself to a halt, waiting for the motion blur to die down before looking out the window.
He was in a large, uneven desert wasteland, with reddish soil and fog so thick he could hardly see. He made out vague, monster-looking shapes moving around him, but it was impossible to tell what they were. There were tall rocks that seemed to be crumbling and cracked with age, and trees with greying bark and no leaves. The night sky above him was stained red.
He turned on the train lights and the fog retreated back, allowing him to see a little clearer, but still only a few metres ahead. He frowned. If he was in a thick patch of fog, people might struggle to see the Silver Line, and he couldn't have that.
He slowly drove forward, but the fog was unrelenting, clinging to the side of the carriages and spreading over the windows. He gave up, and stopped on a flat stretch of land near a collection of boulders. Lightning struck in the distance and the fog parted, as if it was conscious, for him to see it, before returning to smother his vision. Interesting.
He wasn't surprised he was in a supernatural environment — he seemed to be drawn to them, after all. He just hoped that it was inhabited and the children were gullible enough to board his train.
In the back of his mind he thought he recognised the place, but in his millennia of existence he'd been to most places, so it didn't help to narrow it down.
He shifted effortlessly into his humanoid form, and did a walk through his many carriages. Not as many as he'd had previously, after that idiotic child and his father took it upon themselves to free everybody (a catastrophe that left a bitter taste in his mouth even thinking about it), but since then he'd been slowly but surely building his train back up. Now he had thirty four carriages, thirty five if you included his one.
He reached the final carriage, where the girl he currently looked after was sleeping. She had only arrived a few days ago — although time meant little to him, he still tried to keep track of it — and she was already starting to turn into a ticket machine. He smiled approvingly. Letting the children subconsciously choose what they became often backfired, but sometimes it had marvellous results.
Locomotion walked back to the front of his train, into his room, the engine room made of pure grey steel. When he got there, he took a moment to check his clocks to see what time he was in. It was January 16th, 2026, and precisely 1:08am. That would help him to formulate today's strategy.
He opened his filing cabinet and looked through the collection of trinkets he had accumulated to help to lure people onto the Silver Line. He saw the love potion, and grimaced. That one hadn't ended well last time.
He saw his illusionary matches, which sent a whirlwind of imaginary smoke into the air, and scoffed. In the time period he was currently in, when people thought there was a fire, they called in the professionals to put it out instead of trying to deal with it themselves. Cowards.
He saw his metallic whistle, and smiled, picking it up in his pale, bony fingers. He turned it all around, inspecting it, and then nodded once, satisfied with its quality. He took a big breath in, and blew sharply on the mouthpiece.
The sound of someone screaming and crying filled the air, swirling around him and travelling like echoes in a cave. He placed the whistle gently back into the drawer and shut it. The premise of the whistle was simple yet effective: take advantage of children's desire to help those in need and make them think somebody needed saving.
He turned on the train lights, and then stepped outside and struck a contained fire a few metres away to try and make himself more visible in the thick fog.
Locomotion went back inside and adjusted his suit. If everything went according to plan, he would soon have an aspiring knight in shining armour running to try and help the damsel in distress, and falling right into his arms.
Now all he had to do was wait.