"Lina!" Gourry yelled, throwing a large piece of rubble out of his way. "Lina, where are you?!"

"Zelgadis?" Ameria blew dust and smaller debris from the ruins, clearing a path with her magic. "Zelgadis, are you all right?"

"Lina! Zel!" Frantically, they searched for their lost friends.

Three feet below the collapsed building's roof, Lina Inverse stirred. Her gaze was blurred by a ruddy mess, more blood than her own scarlet hair. She groaned, and wondered why it was so dark. Then she remembered the cave in. All that rock and dirt collapsing on them... how did she survive?

"Lina?" The soft and strained voice of her chimeric friend whispered, so close she could feel his gentle breath on her neck. "Are you okay? Can... you hear me?"

"Zel?" She opened her eyes and rubbed the blood from her sight. "Good, you're alive." He grunted from some kind of exhertion, and then she could see. His stone body sheltered hers like a living dome; he was on hands and knees with his sleeves and the pants legs about his shins ripped with Mazoku/human colored blood staining the off white cloth. The chisled muscles in his body were rigid as his back supported a chunk of rubble that could easily have been nine or ten times his own weight.

"Zelgadis... you... saved my life..." Lina murmured, eyes wide in fright. "Thank you..."

"Call for help." He replied cooly. "I can't hold this weight forever."

"All right." She manuvered herself out from under him as best she could so as not to yell in his ear, then loudly cried out the names of her topside companions. "Ameria!? Gourry!? We're down here! Hurry up and get us out of here! C'mon, Ameria!" Her temper began to rise. If it weren't that time of the month, I could just Diem Wind or Raywing my may out of here. But no, it had to be That time of the month...

There was an audiable crack, and the chimera faultered in pain.

"Ameria! Gourry!" She shouted, then drew a sharp breath when Zel's arms almost gave out. With the boulder situated firmly across his shoulders and only inches seperating the two spell casters, doom seemed fairly impending.

"Zel? Lina?" Gourry's voice was close, probably just on the other side of the earthen barrier. "Are you down there?"

"Yes we're down here, Jelly-fish for brains!" Lina screamed. "Get us outta here, right now!"

"Lina, I... can't... hold this... much longer..."

"We're coming Lina!" She could hear the sound of her friends scrambling to remove the rocks. "Just hang on!"

"Lina. Come... here." Zelgadis did his best to motion her to come. She complied silently, then turned to see what had caused him to give such an order. A large, black and red serpent slithered out from a crack in the broken walls.

Now, on a note to those who may not have realized it, Lina Inverse did not take well to being in an enclosed space during that time of the month with a very fast and very poisonous creature. The fact was that the farthest distance from said reptile was directly underneath Zelgadis, curled up against his smooth stone chest and between his arms.

A second crack alerted her to his brief wince, one of his bones had shattered under the pressure. It was in his left arm, too; the one closest to the snake and in the worst shape.

Gourry and Ameria were closer now, all they had to do was get rid the slab that pinned them below the surface. They were working fast... but the serpent was faster than they. Fangs dripping with hot venom, it lunged for the tender flesh of her neck...