The cessna's wheels lifted off the ground for the first time and Tom was doing it. Taylor was cheering as Tom began circling around the airport. He flew around for a few minutes before landing perfectly back on the tarmac.

Taylor looked at him in awe as he got out of the plane and asked him, "That's crazy dude! You learned to fly an entire plane in just a week!?"

"Heh, yeah. I think we should be able to leave by tonight. Finally..."

he finished speaking, Taylor jumped at him and embraced him. She held on for a few seconds before letting go and celebrated. He smiled, knowing that they'll be completely safe again. "Alright Tay, we leave tomorrow at 7 am. If we go in a straight line we should make it to Paris by sunset."

"Ahh! What's even better is that we get to go to PARIS! The city of love~!"

"Yeah, I'm looking forward to it."

The two of them spent the rest of the day preparing the plane to fly such a long distance. They successfully managed to modify the fuel tank of the plane and have themselves twice the range a standard tank would do, as well as an easy way to refill while being in the air. As far as they knew, the flight was perfectly planned.

As the morning came, the two woke up and started last-minute preparations. When 7 AM came, Tom began rolling the plane out onto the runway and started the engine. The two of them double-checked they had everything, and then took off from the airport.

From takeoff, it was smooth sailing as they streaked across the purple firmament. They flew for miles and miles, anticipating their arrival in France. However, even though the two of them double-checked everything, they hadn't checked the weather forecast. Without their knowledge, a large thunderstorm had been approaching their flight path. Taylor looked out the window and pointed out to Tom that she could see the shores of Portugal from the air.

As she turned to look at him, she noticed a swarm of indigo clouds rapidly going straight towards them. It didn't take very long for the wall of darkness to devour the plane and began tossing it about in its tropical storm-force winds. The plane began wailing out at Tom as he attempted to steer the plane clear of the winds. Tom battled the strong gusts as the plane began to slowly tear apart under stress. A few minutes later, the tail of the plane ripped off and caused the plane to be flung much easier. Tom and Taylor hung onto each other as what was left of the plane was spiraling towards the ocean.

Taylor woke up to the growing coldness of the Atlantic as she hung onto the right wing of the plane. She crawled up on top of it and began to look around. Spotting Tom, she dove into the water and dragged him to the wing. It didn't take long for Tom to wake up and adjust to his surroundings. "How far out did we land?" Tom asked. Taylor looked out over the horizon and saw that she could still see the coast. Upon further searching, she noticed a container ship heading their direction. "Look! There!" she exclaimed. Tom looked over and saw the ship too. He immediately reached into his pocket and pulled out a flare gun. "Where did you get a flare gun?"

"Oh, I grabbed it from the plane before we started going down," he said before firing the flare up at the sky. Over on the boat, a man came out to smoke a cigarette. As he stared out at the coast he saw a bright red flash come out of the water. The man turned around and yelled at the rest of the crew in Portuguese to stop the ship. The ship gradually began to slow down and stopped just in front of the two of them. "Estranhos, subam!" (Strangers, climb on!) the man said. Taylor swam through the cold waters and reached the ladder. Tom followed her as she scaled the ladder up the ship.

Once Tom reached the top, he saw Taylor conversing with the man in Portuguese. They talked for about a minute until the man walked away. "We're lucky they were at the right place at the right time. We would've been stranded if it weren't for them. Anyway, they agreed to take us to where they were heading," Taylor said to Tom as she turned around. Tom stared at her with a concerned look on his face for a few seconds before she realized. "Ohhh, don't worry. I'll speak for you if needed."

A while later, the ship docked in Porto and the two of them disembarked. Now placed in an unfamiliar city, they both looked around not knowing what to do. "Erm, you do know someone in Portugal? Right??" Tom asked Taylor. She shook her head and began walking forward. Tom followed just behind her to a nearby train station. He stood around waiting for Taylor to finish her conversation with the clerk when she came back up to him. "Okay. I told her about us and asked where we should go, and the clerk told me there's shelters in a few cities for Fazians," she told him.

"Wait, they have shelters?"

"Yeah. There's hundreds of shelters across several countries on the Atlantic. We just happened to land in one of them."

"Well that's surely convenient. What are we waiting for?"

"We need to register ourselves and prove we lived in the area of the impact."

"Dammit. Where do we do that?"

"She said we have to go to Lisbon, so I already bought ourselves train tickets. The train leaves in 30 minutes, so let's go grab a bite and come back."

*     *     *

Tom, exhausted, leaned on Taylors shoulder as the train approached the station. When the train stopped, Tom fell over and woke himself up. The two of them stood up and got out of the train to make their way to the registry building. "Ugh.. Two and a half hour train ride? That was torturous!" Tom said.

"What a drama queen," Taylor giggled, "You didn't seem phased when you flew a plane for almost 10 hours straight," she said lightheartedly. Tom rolled his eyes in annoyance and exhaled. Taylor noticed that Tom began shivering from the cold temperatures of the area. She took off her sweater and gave it to him. He accepted it and smiled at her. Taylor thought to herself, "After all he's been through, it's the least I can do." Tom wrapped his arm around Taylors neck as she finished her thought. She smiled back at Tom, knowing everything was going to be okay from here.

They reached the doors of the building and walked in. The clerk at the front desk greeted them and began jotting down their info. A few minutes later they were assigned to a nearby shelter and went over. They finally settled down and believed that everything was going to be okay. Unfortunately for them, the thunderstorm that swiped them out of the sky finally arrived on the Portuguese coast and wreaked havoc on the nation.

next morning, the damage of the storm showed significantly. Tom and Taylor had survived the storm and learned that much of the shelter's records had been destroyed in the storm. Tom had to sit back as Taylor talked with the owner of the shelter about what to do. She came back to him and sat down.

"So they're allowing us to stay even if the records are destroyed. Not for long though, only a week. But lucky for us, at the end of the week we're gonna get a train ticket to Paris and we can finally settle down."

Tom felt relieved and leaned back into the wall. He sat with Taylor for a few minutes before walking over to the computer. Taylor watched from her seat as Tom stared at the screen for about 20 minutes before coming back. "We have no way of contacting Markus. If he did survive, his internet presence has been completely expunged," he told her.

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