It happened all too quickly. I held onto Lydia's hands with a vice-like grip the whole time. I could vaguely see the other half of the plane fall behind a ridge, a smoke trail straying not too far behind it. From the angle we were falling at I had very little hope for survival until an angel in a veil of blue and grey appeared upon the table in front me and took hold of my arm, slowly I was yanked out into the veil only to be spat out beside the plane. There was no time to process anything because I was submerged into the icy depths. When my head surfaced a crash of water slammed into me before I could even catch a breath. The water then began to have a tug of war with my body, my arms trying to pull me to the surface while an undertow pulled me down, but my arm strength prevailed. The second I broke the surface and crawled for air. It took some time before my breathing was steady and my sight became somewhat clear enough to see. My glasses were unsurprisingly gone but I could see well enough to see half of our plane sinking before my eyes. I brushed the hair out of my face as I waded the freezing water with my other looking around in circles until it dawned on me that Lydia's hand was no longer in mine.

"Lydia!" I shouted out repeatedly.

"Juan!" Another voice called out from the opposite direction of the plane, I turned and saw Ellie swimming towards me. "Juan, are you okay?" Her words coming out as if through a fan.

"Where's Lydia?" seemed to be the only words that I would even speak.

"I don't know. I teleported to where you two were sitting and I grabbed a hand teleported out as fast as I could." She said with panic, we both immediately looked towards the plane. Only the back fin was visible.

I didn't even say a word to Ellie before swimming towards the plane sinking plane, no concern over myself whatsoever. I didn't waste a single second, the moment I was close enough to the plane I dove beneath the water, the darkness of the chilling depths surrounded the plane with it only getting darker the further down I looked, the only things to guide me were my determination and the pull of the plane as it sunk further and further down. I used the sides of the plane as a grip to climb down into the cabin, my line of sight getting darker as we got closer to the floor, the rigid cold slowing my movements. I clung onto the roof the cabin, making my way closer to our seats, a mist of red emanated from in front of me and I forced myself to move faster. When I got to our seats, Lydia sat motionless in her seat surrounded in a shroud of gold and wine. I rushed to unfasten her seatbelt that kept her strapped to the seat, slowly losing focus as the air inside me began to beat at my chest. I felt the click between fingers and grabbed her in my arms, I kicked off the seat for a boost and zoomed out of the plane.

We were gliding upwards when my leg caught a snag against the metal of the plane, the fabric of my jeans became intertwined with the plane. Just like that, I was being mercilessly dragged further and down, with Lydia paying the price. From above a figure crawled towards us, I let go Lydia immediately knowing Ellie would take her to the surface. I struggled trying to untangle myself from the plane, I yanked, struggled and fiddled with nothing working. Maybe it was the overpowering attack happening in my lungs or the stiffening cold and once the plane hit the floor of the lake, it knocked some of the air I was so desperately holding onto left my lips. I had to bite my lips down to keep the rest in. I was running out of ideas when I saw silver glint from within the cabin, I had no options, so I swung my body around and tried to reach for it. My eyes got darker, but I continued to stay focused on grabbing what was in front of me. Once it was in my reach, I used it against the base of my jeans, trying to cut through the fabric. More air slipped out of my clamped lips as I sawed faster with the silverware knife, with my vision slipping. For a second, I was going to let go but in my head, I could almost hear Lydia's voice shouting a simple word into my head, No. Finally, the fabric gave way just enough to let me rip my leg free of the grasp of the plane. My arms and leg flailed at insane speed even with the freezing temperature, concentrating on just trying to make it up to the air. The surface tension hadn't even broken when I took a gasp for air, I forced out water trapped in me with bursts of coughs, violently ripping up my throat. My head spun wildly looking for anything to support me as I caught my breath, my eyes caught sight of a seat bobbing above the waves in dragged my body to it. The heaving began to slow down as I rested on the seat and took in my surroundings, from all around land surrounded me. A coast closest to me seemed maybe five hundred meters away. There were chunks of debris surrounding me but too blurry to make out properly and on top of a chunk the wing was Ellie with Lydia on her lap, her briefcase still chained to her arm causing bruising around the wrist. Ellie used her scarf to dab the girls head as she looked around. I forgot about the seat I was using for support and swam towards them. She notices me get close and reached out her hand to pull me, but I reject it and grabbed hold onto the side of the wing.

"Is she breathing?" I asked with bated breath and stuttered lips.

"Yes, but barely." She said as she looked at me worried, most of the colour in her face was gone and the tips of her fingers were darkening, symptoms of frostbite. "She's bleeding a lot from her head. It doesn't feel like her skull is fractured but still, she hit her head pretty hard. She isn't shaking at all which I'm sure isn't good."

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"My arm is a bit shot and it's freaking freezing but I'm fine." She spoke calmly. "We should get to that coast over there." She pointed at where I was looking at.

"It's about a ten-minute swim, we can alternate carrying Lydia. Hopefully, she regains consciousness before we reach the coast, that would make looking for the others easier."

"Do you think they are okay?" She asked as she slowly slid Lydia into the water and into my arms. Her honey gold hair like dijon in the water.

"It's Stephy were talking about. Of course, she fine." I tried hard to convince myself of that more than trying to convince the girl who was hopping into the water beside me.

She skimmed over my face to find the worry I was hiding. "For now, let's just focus on getting back to land then finding them."

"Right. One problem at a time." I said as I swam away from the wreckage.

Swimming to shore took more time then I estimated, with rotations on pulling Lydia to shore it took about twenty minutes, moving was the only way to keep our bodies from freezing. It wasn't a sand-covered shore, but dirt and limestone covered inlet with drying shrubs patched in between crevasses and snow filling the cracks. We hauled Lydia, who was still out, onto the stone slumped onto our asses from exhaustion. My arms were crying out, I hadn't done this much of an intensive workout in ages and my body was having a hard time keeping up with the taxing energy needed. Water trickled off our bodies and sizzled as they hit the heated stone, the sun beating on our skins.

"We can't stay around too long," Ellie stuttered as she sat upright. "Stephy and Willstock could need us, their crash could have been really bad. She could be injured."

"She's a healer," I said, not to show distaste but the show her aimless worrying. "We need to think about us for a bit or we'll die of hypothermia before we can help her.

"You know what I mean." She said exasperatedly, pushing herself off the ground, shaking her body as much as she could to keep the blood flowing in her.

"I'm worried too but we just hit the shore, Lydia is still out and probably has a concussion and we are both reasonably exhausted and probably have frostbite. We can catch our breath for a second. She is more resourceful than you give her credit for."

"I know she's capable, but we were in a plane crash."

"Apparently 97% of people survive a plane crash," I said casually as my teeth chattered.

"Juan, this isn't funny. She could be dead."

"She can't be!" I shouted at her. "Sorry. I didn't mean to shout, but there is no chance I'm letting another Stark die on my watch. She's probably fine and trying to find us with Wilstock and Fisher right now. Hold out some hope."

She looked anxious but complied with me. "Fine, but that doesn't change that we should move soon. The guy in the plane, may not have been working alone."

"We'll work towards their crash site, through that cove and hopefully find Stephy and the others." I was ready to stand up when I felt a low rumble under my body. Soft and constant, getting stronger as time passed. "A car is coming," I announced to her.

"There, at 7 O'clock." She pointed out at the dust cloud chasing after a black dune buggy with an open cage revealing only two riders. "They could be civilians; we can act dumb and maybe they could help."

"We try as long as we can," I said as I got off the floor.

"Be ready." She pulled one of her fans from her back strap of her pants and handed it over to me.

The buggy drifted to a halt and the two riders, a hulking man and a more petite woman, hoped out. Clearly not civilians, one began to glow an orange aura that incased his burly body and the woman nails grew out to the length of rulers. The whole situation looked extremely sketchy, an unconscious girl and two other kids that were soaking wet coming from a sinking plane. Playing dumb seemed, well dumb. "Hello there," I said simply shivering to my core.

"Should we call Magnisos first before killing them or after?" The woman asked the man beside her.

"Does it matter?" He replied as he took a step towards us.

"Yes, it does." Ellie interrupted the man. "Magnisos said he wanted us alive in the plane. I bet he'd be glad to see that we survived.

"He'll probably want to kill us himself," I added.

"I doubt he'd mind us taking the liberty of doing it ourselves." The man took another step forward.

"Astro, Magnisos killed someone because he came back early from scooting before told them to. We should call him. If this guy is even remotely telling the truth, then we shouldn't take the chance."

Astro looked at me reluctantly and eagerly at the same time. "You call him up Pin needle, I'll keep an eye on them." His astral form dissipated only to remain around his arms. "Get her to her feet." He pointed at Lydia

"I don't know if you can tell but she's unconscious, but I need to check if she's still breathing," I said as the girl ran to the buggy and rummaged through the buggy, she scurried through it trying to find something. I knelt beside Lydia to check on her, which made Astro become very twitchy. I raised my hands to show I was unarmed; I continued to check her and placed the back of my hands under her nose and felt the soft breeze leave her nose. Internally I was relieved to see that she was still breathing, but that wasn't the act I put up. My hand lingered under her nose longer and showed a face of uncertainty and worry. Continuing the act, I placed my head against her chest, my face towards the Vortex goons so they could see my visible terror.

"What's going on?" Astro asked as he hesitantly walked forward.

"She's not breathing, and her heart, it... stopped." I forced my voice to tremble. I started doing chest compressions, my fingers struggling to interlock. "You told me she was okay!" I shouted to Ellie.

Ellie's eyes filled with worry, Pin needle who had been checking in the car had stopped and began to watch me and Astro ever so slowly moved closer, his defences dropping. "She was when we hit the shore," Ellie replied with panic knitted into her words.

I continued the compressions, losing my tempo and panicking for a moment than trying to continue. I made tapping noises with my tongue in the form as if it was the beat of how I was compressing but I was trying to send a message to Ellie through Morse code telling her 'She's fine. Get ready'. Only hope she gets it and that the goons don't. "I need help!" I shouted to Astro. I caught him off guard, but he took the bait too easily,

The moment he came knelt down and his aura was gone I grabbed his head and forced down onto my knee before he could even imagine what was happening. Ellie turned into a cloud of smoke and reappeared around the girl with the nails, throwing blows at her then vanishing again, throwing punches and kicks. Astro was disgruntled, his orange aura flicker around him but couldn't fully form around him and stumbled backwards. I hopped onto him and brought my fist down on him, I got a few hits in before the aura took form around him, my fist felt like they were slamming against concrete. Astro's face grew with anger, before he could grab me in its astral form, I roll off him. Astro grew to a 20-meter tall orange giant without a face on its face which was the more disconcerting about it, I backed up slowly until I was back to back with Ellie.

"Pass a fan, please. Also, care to switch?" I asked the girl behind me, my eyes still on the giant in front of me.

She turned her head in my direction then snapped back to her opponent. She passed one of her steel fans over her shoulder, it was in its crescent form instead of its ring form. Either worked, but how I would take this guy down was dependent on me. "I'll stick to her, thanks. Roll!" she replied before shouting. I rolled out of the way as nails shoot at our previous position. Before I was out of the roll, Astro tried to kick at me. At his height his movements were sluggish, but he still managed to clip the back of my leg causing me to roll further. As I got up, the full-fledged giant came barreling towards me, for a brief second, I saw the aura flicker. Before I took another step, I checked where Lydia was in relation to everything and made my main objective to keep everything away from her. I played keep-away with the giant, learning his pattern and how often the flicker occurred and for how long its last while at the same time dodging its attacks. He swung and kicked but his speed impaired with his height, still, it was hard to stay one step ahead. After a minute of being attacked, I was the pattern and saw how much time I had from when he flickers to get a good opening, I roll out of his kick and flick the fan into a ring. On cue, Astro's aura began to flicker, at that moment I switched the fans form and threw the disk as hard as I could. The aura tried to block the ring with its hand, but its aura dissipated long enough for the ring to go through where the hand was and into Astro's head. The aura completely disappeared and Astro fell from the centre of the giant to the ground and somehow managed to stand up. He tried to form the aura again with no avail, he stared me down with anger and came towards me. Clearly, the only trick he had was growing in size because he couldn't fight. His punches were sloppy and left his body and face wide open in his strikes. There was no need to even analysis his moves, I countered each hit easily. With his final jab, I weave past him and deck him in the nose, then bring my left into his neck before bringing my right down into his gut. He grabbed his abdomen leaving his head open for me to bring I into my knee again and finishing him off with a right hook that knocks him out cold, a move I learned from watching Oliver. I turned around to find Ellie who had already taken down Pin Needle and was tying her up as she squirmed, most of her nail snapped off.

"Took you long enough." She said as she finished the last knot.

"Did you see how big he was?" I asked as I picked up Astro and brought him over to Ellie.

"Also, you need to work on your Morse. I almost didn't get it." She said again, helping me tie the man up.

"I haven't used Morse code in years, okay. Either way, you got the message." I looked over to the squirming girl. "Question time. Where's Magnisos?"

"Before you answer snarkily as most bad guys do, think about how we just owned you and how that is only the start," Ellie said.

Pin Needle looked at the both of us first with anger then sighed. "We have a camp in that cove over there. He's there with the rest of our group and your friends."

"They survived." Ellie sighed relief.

"Not for long, he's going to kill them soon. That's at least what he said when he called."

"I'll get Lydia, you start the car," I said to Ellie, panic setting back in again. I ran to Lydia, grabbing Ellie's fan on the way, and picked her up in my arms. Her head readjusts self and she let out a soft moan when I lifted her which meant she was slowly coming to. "Thank you for not making this difficult," I said to the girl.

"I don't even like working for Vortex, but I don't have a choice. Just stop Magnisos, he's a psychopath." She told us as I placed Lydia in the back seat, cranked the heat to in the buggy to as high I could.