Jojo: Hey guys! Anyways, if you haven't heard from my other story, Im in the hospital right now and I was bored and remembered. I needed to give you guys a present for Christmas! Merry Christmas, guys! Hope you enjoy the story! :)

Trapped Chapter 1/2- Help

((KAI'S POV))

For a moment, there was only silence. After the loud rumble of falling rock, the sudden stillness was disorienting. Debris still rained down from the ceiling, and in the darkness and dusty air, I couldn't see my own hands in front of my face. Rolling to the side, mindful of my bruised body, I brushed off myself and tried to stand. A sudden pain shot up my leg, and I quickly sat back down, coughing in the swirling dust. I remembered the investigation, the crumbling, and the fall.

We had just gotten to the center of the the mountain. We were flying in the Destiny's Bounty, same as always. But we got a distress signal from a mountain nearby. A couple and their daughter had gotten trapped by boulders falling from above and blocking their exit. Of course, we ended up in an enclosed cave with only my backpack filled with a couple waters and a flashlight that soon stopped working. "Cole?" I asked, hoping for a response.

No answer.

"Cole, where are you?!"

Still nothing. I started to panic a bit. How close had he been to me when the ceiling came down? Had he gotten out of the way in time?

"Can you hear me? Answer me, Cole!"

I got to my hands and knees, groping around blindly in the darkness. My left leg protested against the search but I could get around well enough, so it probably wasn't broken.

Even if it had been, at that point I doubt it would have stopped me. My hands brushed against broken stone and plunged into puddles of water and then finally touched cloth. A sleeve. "Cole?" I asked. My fingers slid down to his wrist, feeling for the pulse I prayed was there.

It was.

Relief swept over me, but the moment didn't last. I had no idea how badly Cole was hurt, or if there was a way out. If I'd gotten to the back of the back wall before the ceiling fell, there wasn't an exit. Perfect. The only good part was that Jay had found a crack in the wall, a way to get the family out, when Cole and I were having our near-death experience, which meant the others were safe.

My hand hadn't left Cole's arm, so I felt it when he stirred a little. "Cole?" I asked. "Come on, wake up."

There was a groan, and then a gasp. Cole tensed under my hand and his head shot up "Kai?!" He exclaimed. "Yeah," I said evenly, hoping he would take my cue and calm down. "Where are you hurt?" When he didn't answer me right away, I feared the worst. "Cole?" I asked.

I could hear his breathing getting faster, but at least he responded. "Its nothing. Just my head. Hit it on the ground, I think." That wasn't good...

"Do you feel sick?" I asked, trying to determine whether he had a concussion without actually seeing him. "Yes, but I-I don't think it's from getting to know the ground better" His voice was getting panicky. "Kai, do you have your flashlight?"

"Yea, but it stopped working a while ago." I told him. "Is there . . . a way out?" He asked. I sighed. "I don't think so, but-...are you okay?" I asked, noticing his panicked expression.

"J-Just...a little claustrophobic..." He stuttered. That wasn't good either... "What about you?" He asked, "Huh?" I answered back, not getting his question.

"Are you hurt?" He asked, "My leg hurts, but we gave to find a way out right now." I told him, it was silent for a moment. My eyes widened when I heard it, "what?" Cole asked. I shushed him quickly and put my ear to the rubble. Muffled voices could be heard.

"Cole! Kai! Can you hear us?!" Muffled and faint yells could be heard through the thick slab of rocks. Relief came over both of us. "Yea!" I yelled back, not noticing Cole wince. "When the rocks fell, they knocked come of the boulders down and we freed the family. We're gonna get y'all out!" I heard, it was Jay. This time it was a little louder, "Look for cracks in the walls!"

Cole moved back over to me, and started feeling the walls as they had instructed. As he edged along the wall, he continued to suggest other destinations. Suddenly there was a tremendous splash, and Cole stopped talking. "Cole?" I asked. "Damnit! I just stepped into a hole full of water. I'm wet up to my knees." He exclaimed, obviously annoyed.

But I had stopped listening after "hole full of water," a horrible thought occurring to me. When Cole and I had first stepped into the cave, it was as extremely dry. If Cole had just stepped into knee-deep water. Uh oh..."Kai?" Cole asked, confused by my sudden silence.

I was still too shocked to answer him. How long had it been since the ceiling had fallen? Half an hour? Maybe less? If there was already a foot and a half of water filling the dents in the ground and making puddles on the cave floor ...

Cole and I would drown before the team got close to helping us.

"Kai?" Cole asked again, obviously worried by my continued silence. "What's wrong?" What was I supposed to say? Nothing really. You're on the verge of a panic attack, my leg is on fire, we're trapped in a cave, and, oh, we will probably drown before the team will get us out. But don't worry, we'll be fine.

"K-Kai?" Cole said, splashing over to me. "Are . . . are you okay?"

Cole would know if I lied to him. Cole was smart; he would notice the rising water. Soon.

But I still couldn't bring myself tell him the truth of our situation, because I knew what it would do to Cole. I new he had claustrophobia. I new he was trying to keep that feeling to scream inside. I new he felt like he couldn't breath. I also knew that telling him would trigger a panic attack. So no, telling him was out of the question.

So I decided to tell the truth. About the question he just asked. "My leg hurts." Cole sounded intensely worried. "Is it w-worse than before?" He asked.

Until now, I hadn't thought about it much. "A little," I told him honestly. From the knee down, my left leg was throbbing; sometimes, it went a little numb and then started hurting again. The puddle I was sitting in wasn't helping any.

"How long d-do you think it's been? S-since They tried to move the boulders, I mean." He asked. I answered back, trying to see if there was another way. "Maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes."

"Okay." He was silent for a very long time. "Cole?" I asked. The silence continued. It was my turn to worry. "Cole?" I asked again.

"H-how long do we have?" He stuttered, "What do you mean?" I asked back. "Until Christmas," he said sarcastically "C-come on, Kai! How long until the cave fills up with water?"

I sighed. "I don't know. Not too long." I said, and being the fire ninja, I wasn't too fond of drowning. I heard him splash away again.

I blinked. That was not the response I had expected at all. "You okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine...just f-freaked out..." He muttered, I tried to come up with a way to distract him. "Um...so...wanna talk about something?" I asked, "Like what?"

"I don't know how a-" I broke off when there was a tremendous splash and a gasp from Cole. "Cole?" I asked anxiously.

"Ow," he answered, his voice full of pain. "What happened?" I demanded. I got no answer.

((COLE'S POV))

I didn't really remember falling, but the moment of panic before falling—the feeling that you get when you're walking up the stairs in the dark and think there's one more step than there is. I barely had time to gasp before I found myself on the ground, my head throbbing. I fazed out for a second, sliding away from the pain, and then everything came back, sharp and painful. I groaned and automatically tried to sit up, but gentle hands pushed me back down. Kai.

"Cole, can you hear me?"

"Hnn...," I pathetically moaned, trying to push his hands away. I was dizzy and nauseous, and didn't care very much about answering. "You'll have to do better than that," Kai said, worried.

I swallowed. "Yes, I can hear you. L-let me up." I couldn't quite keep the tremble out of my voice, which I sighed in relief. "Are you all right?" he asked, moving back and allowing me up. It hurt a lot.

"Stupid question," I told him. This was the second time I'd hit my head on the floor, and it hadn't done anything to help my headache. Warm, sticky stuff was sliding down the side of my face, and for the first time I was glad it was dark. Kai would never have let me alone. He had just dragged himself across the wet floor with a broken leg because he heard me gasp; I wondered what he would do if he found out I was bleeding.

"Why did you fall?" He asked.

I blinked. "Um, because I l-lost my balance." Could he hear the "duh" tacked on to the end of that sentence?

"I meant, 'What did you fall over?'," Kai said, correcting himself. "There's another hole by the wall," I told him, dropping my aching head into my hands and trying very hard not to throw up. "Deeper, I think. N-no water."

"No water?" Kai asked, moving away from me. I heard him crawling through a puddle, and then silence as he inspected the ground. "You did it!" "Did what?" I asked, completely nonplussed. "I think this joins with another cave. The water's pouring into it, but it's not filling," Kai explained. Since when was he an expert in geography? Wait, what's it even geography?

"But wouldn't that m-mean we're okay in here, if there's a drain?" I said, not bothering to raise my head.

"Not as fast as the water's rising." He said. "Oh. So it's like when your shower is s-sort of clogged."

"Yeah," Kai said. He was probably rolling his eyes.

"I think this hole might be big enough for us to crawl through. It'll be tight, though." He said, I could hear him feeling the width of the hole. "What else is new?" I said, but in fact, the thought made me nervous.

"I'll go first," he told me. "You'll have to bring our supplies over."

"Okay," I said slowly, thinking this might not be such a bad idea; it was definitely better than waiting around for the cave to fill up.

I could hear Kai crawling through the hole, which I realized now was probably more like a little tunnel. It didn't sound pleasant, from some of the sounds he was making. His leg was probably hurting him.

I was scared, really scared, that Kai was badly hurt. I knew that he would never lie to me, but he might even have convinced himself that he was fine. He was almost stubborn enough to pull that off—I had no doubt that his leg would heal itself and the rocks blocking the passageway would fly back up and attach themselves to the ceiling if only will were involved.

The scraping and struggling sounds stopped, and I could hear Kai breathing hard on the other side. "Okay," he called back. "Send the gear through."

I turned and hefted his soggy backpack into the tunnel. I had to put my knees on the very lip of the hole and stick my head and shoulders in to push the bag to Kai. Feeling even more claustrophobic than I had for the last... however long we'd been in here, I was relieved when I felt him take it and pull it out. I then sat still for a moment, trying to control my breathing.

"You next" Kai called. "It's not so bad."

Wishing I could believe that, I forced myself to stick my head and shoulders back into the hole, and then used my elbows to crawl forward. The tunnel was really tight, and I could feel the walls touching me on all sides. I started breathing harder, trying not to think that I was going to get stuck. Kai kept talking, and I struggled towards his voice.

"You're almost out. Come on."

Twisting to climb out, I bumped my head on the ceiling, where an unfortunate chunk of rock stuck out. I had to stop for a minute as the world spun dizzily and I lost any sense of which way I was going. Panic set in, and I gasped ineffectually, which hurt my head even more.

Kai must have heard my dilemma, because his hand groped around until it found my elbow. His other hand grabbed me and then he pulled me out, still gasping and shaking, onto the floor on the other side.

"You okay, Cole?" Kai asked. "Yeah," I lied. My tongue felt really thick, and my voice hurt my head. "You?"

"Yeah." His answer was firm, but he sounded tired. "It's drier in here, at least. We should be okay for a while."

"How l-long until they get us out?" I asked. The adrenaline was starting to wear off, and my head felt really heavy. "I don't know. What's your guess?" He asked.

Instead of answering, I leaned up against a wall and closed my eyes, feeling suddenly exhausted. I started to drift off almost immediately, which probably should have worried me, but didn't. It worried Kai, though. "Cole? You're not going to sleep, are you?" I distantly heard him ask. "Hey! Stay awake! Cole?!"

The panic in his voice made me fight unconsciousness for a moment, but I couldn't prevent it from coming. The last thing I felt was his hand on my shoulder, and then everything slipped away.

((KAI'S POV))

"Hey! Stay awake! Cole?!" I said loudly. I was concerned when Cole's responses had slackened, his words slurring a little, but now I was in full blown-panic mode. When he didn't answer me, I shifted over a little, groping around until I found his shoulder. I shook him gently. "Cole?"

Nothing. I knew that Cole had hit his head, that he probably had a concussion, but it was obviously worse than I thought. What if the stammering of his words hadn't been purely from fear? What if he was seriously hurt?

What if he had just slipped into a coma? My heart was pounding much too fast. It took a moment, but I managed to come back down to a level of relative calm, meaning that "what-ifs" were out and "what-nows" were in. They were coming; I had absolute faith in that. So what now?

Cole was clearly my first priority, and though there wasn't much I could do for him, I was going to do what I could. Thinking quickly, I groped around in the dark until I found my pack and started digging through it, stopping when I came to feel a flashlight. I sighed, knowing that it wouldn't work.

He was breathing slowly, steadily, and the sound reassured me. He's alive. Everything will work out. Their coming.

I painfully maneuvered myself to sit against the wall, close enough to Cole that our shoulders touched. If anything changed, if he moved, or shivered, or, hopefully, woke up, I would know instantly.

Comforted by that knowledge, I closed my eyes. As the adrenaline in my system began to wear off, all of the little aches and pains—and the larger ones, as well, made themselves known. My hands were scraped, and I was fairly certain that my temple had been grazed by a falling rock; my arm was badly bruised and probably a little cut up, if the tears in my sleeve and the stiffness of the fabric was any indication. And my leg...

My leg was burning, pains stabbing randomly up and down my shin. I was almost positive that I had a broken it. I had gone on enough dangerous expeditions to know what a broken bone felt like. What disturbed me more than the pain was the unpleasant tingling in my foot and ankle, almost like the lower part of my leg was going to sleep. At least it doesn't hurt, I reasoned, relaxing.

I was exhausted, and I found myself drifting off to sleep. I struggled against it for a bit. What was a little more blackness in this dark place?

((COLE'S POV))

The pain came first, splitting my head open and making my eyes water. I gasped a little. For a while, I drifted, trying to escape the pain, trying to go back to sleep, but then I heard Kai's voice, slipping in and out of my comprehension.

"Cole? Are y . . . ake? . . . ole? Come . . . know y . . . can . . . ear me."

And then memory hit. I had the vague idea that I should wake up, to tell Kai not to worry, because he sounded almost panicked. I drifted a little and almost went back to sleep again. Wonderful, perfect, god-like sleep.

In the end, though, the pain would not let me relax. The awful pounding behind my eyes dragged me kicking and screaming into full awareness.

"Cole?" Kai asked. I tried to answer, but all that came out was a sort of moan mixed with gasped mumbling which hurt both my throat and my head.

It must have sounded even worse than I thought, because Kai squeezed my shoulder gently, saying, "Just give it a minute, Cole. Don't try to move or anything, okay?"

Move? I couldn't even open my eyes, and I had absolutely no desire to move any part of my body. The pain was that bad, and it was starting to scare me. Kai kept talking, his hand still resting on my shoulder. "Just stay awake," he said. "You don't have to talk, okay? Just stay with me. The team will be here soon."

((KAI'S POV))

I reassured him again. Then he moved again, and there was another stifled cry of pain. My anxiety spiked. "Stop trying to move," I warned him. There was a moment of quiet, where all I could hear was Cole's ragged breathing, and then he panted, "Something's . . . digging into my shoulder, Kai. It hurts."

I was in motion instantly, touching his shoulder. "If you sit up, I might be able to move it." Cole made a negative sound. "Think it's . . . part of the w-wall."

"Then we'll move you." Another negative sound. "Hurt."

"I know it'll hurt, but you can't keep moving around like you've been doing." I gently grabbed both of Cole's shoulders. "Sit up a little," I told him.

Cole complied, and I helped him drag himself sideways, settling him against the wall a little further down. For a moment, we both sat silently, panting, and then Cole whispered, "Thanks. What . . . w-was that thing, anyway?"

I felt around for it and immediately pulled back when I felt it cut into my palm, "What the..." I mumbled, "What?" Cole asked, attempting to look at me. "Sharp.." I mumbled. Maybe there was still some juice in that flashlight.

I reached over and grabbed my bag, looking for the flashlight. I found it and pulled it out. I was a bit wet, I turned it on. When nothing happened, I sighed and threw it to the side. When it hit the ground it made a rattling sound. My eyes widened.

A quickly grabbed the flashlight, ignoring the pain that shot up my leg. I shook it and it made a rattling sound. I opened it and saw the battery out of its place. "What are...you doing?" Cole asked. I popped the battery back in and a sudden dim light flooded the room.

I shined it at the pointy rock rock and saw it was almost broken. I smashed it down with my hand and it fell immediately. "Oh..." Cole muttered when he realized what I was doing.

When the light fell on Cole, I could see for the first time how badly he was hurt. He was positively white, his pupils much too large in the sudden brightness. Dark blood had matted his hair and was drying on the side of his face, and I could see his chest heaving unevenly with each breath.

Following my gaze, Riley's eyes widened. "Ow?" he said uncertainly, and I realized that I was shining the flashlight in his eyes.

"Sorry" I quickly turned it off. "Hey. You still with me?" I asked. Cole blinked. "What? Oh . . . think . . . so. Th-thanks." I frowned at his response. I sat down beside him again, touching his shoulder. "Don't go to sleep." "Won't. Hurts . . ." He mumbled.

Several hours later found us sitting against the wall in the darkness, we were both exhausted, slipping in and out of sleep. I was getting extremely hungry, but at least Cole wasn't suffering from that particular need; the concussion had taken care of that. I was deeply worried about Cole, who was no longer responding to my voice. Where are you guys?

Almost in answer, I heard a loud crunching noise in the adjacent cavern, and the rush of water. There was a sudden smattering of voices. Hardly daring to believe it, I listened for a moment longer, and then common sense took over. "Here!" I shouted. "Over here!"

"Guys!?" an answering voice called. "Yes! We're over here!" I shouted. "Stay where you are! We're coming for you! Keep talking!"

"There's a cavern adjoining the first one! We're just beyond the wall!" I said helpfully. "I see the opening. We're coming!"

A new voice joined the first, sounding scared. "Kai? Kai, can you hear me?"

"Yes, I hear you!" I shouted. Nya. "Thank God! Are you hurt?" She asked.

"We got a few people, whats going on in there?" Jay. "Were coming" Zane. "Cole? Cole are you okay?" Nya. There was a moment of silence, and then my brain processed her words. Though I had been yelling as loudly as I could, he had not stirred in all this time.

"Cole!?" called again, the panic creeping back into her voice. "Answer me!"

"Cole?" I asked, more softly, jostling his shoulder gently. "Answer me."

Neither of us got a response. Soon, the wall crumbled, and a sudden light washed over us.