Shanan kicked... and kicked... and kicked... The plane continued to sink below her, causing a swirling vortex of water that pulled at her. For a painfully long minute, she couldn't determine which way was up. Fighting back a swelling panic, she watched a wiggling trail of bubbles float past her from left to right and she knew that to her right was the surface. Righting herself, she began to kick furiously to the surface.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">This is taking too long...</span>she thought to herself, her lungs screaming for oxygen.<br/><br/>Her body was becoming sluggish and slow to respond, her vision beginning to go black. As she was nearing the surface, the hint of light above her encouraging her to keep pushing, she struck heavily against something that was not solid. The rest of her oxygen was expelled from her lungs as she cried out in surprise. Then the worst happened. She instinctively tried to gasp in a breath, drawing in a lung full of sea water.<br/><br/>The surface was so close... Desperately, she kicked past the thing she'd run into, rushing for the surface. When she finally burst through the surface with an explosion of water, she coughed and choked and gagged. Never before had she enjoyed anything more than she did that deep breath of air. As her panic began to ease, she took several deep breaths, then felt her stomach gripped by a new horror.<br/><br/>The thing she'd bumped into... it had been a person! Crying out, she dove back under the surface the short few feet to the sinking body. The body was limp and unresponsive as she hooked her arms around the chest of the limp figure and kicked back to the surface. She didn't hear a breath from the figure she clutched as she reached the surface and flipped it on its back. Not bothering to spare a thought for the itentity of the person, she thought of them only as the body. She assigned no gender or identity to it. This was simply a body that needed medical attention. Desperate, without thinking, she slammed her fist into the stomach of the person she clung to, trying to force the water from its lungs and get it to draw a breath.<br/><br/>"Breathe, damnit!" She screamed into the night, "BREATHE!"<br/><br/>Spotting a floating bit of debris near by, she began swimming toward it, dragging the body with her. She still did not pause to determine who it is or whether it was male of female. When she reached the floating debris, she found a hand-hold and clung to it with one hand, keeping her other arm hooked around the unconscious figure's chest.<br/><br/>Looking down, she saw that the head currently resting on her shoulder was male. She couldn't see his face in the darkness, with his back resting against her. All she could see was the top of his head. As the chaos died to utter silence around them, she simply floated, clinging to dead hope as she clung to the remnants of the plane and a companion who very well might be dead... and waited.