MUAHAHAHAHA!

disclaimer: with all my mighty imagined powers of...magical...ness, I could not hope to own these characters. A genius Stroud may be, but he STILL TRIED TO KILL NAT! So this is my rebuttal. Hope you like it!

His eyelids fluttered slowly open, only to be met with a darkness equal to that of his previous unconscious state. He attempted to raise a hand to his face, but his muscles would not obey his brain, opting to pin his limbs to his body with no thought to freedom of movement. Every twitch brought pain, and suddenly his head was pounding, as though there were thousands of demons trying to escape from within his skull. He moaned, and his voice was pitifully weak to his ears, bouncing back to him off of an unseen surface. Lying on his back, he had no idea where he was, what was going on, or what had happened over the past few days. He couldn't move, and when he tried to call out for help, all that came out was a raspy moan. He recognized a feeling of hunger, and his mouth was so dry it felt as though it were made of delicate parchment. A scraping sound above him caught his attention, and a single disjointed thought skittered through his mind.

What could that be…?

"Kitty! The imps have found something!"

Kitty looked up from her scrying glass, eyes dull. Her own imp had been searching for three days now, and had found absolutely nothing, along with about fifty other demons of different classifications. There was a group of twelve imps that clustered together, using their combined magic to throw up a shield to protect themselves from the burning aura of the iron from the collapsed building. All of them were searching for one thing: A certain magician that had been caught inside when the place imploded. None of the demons wanted to be there, and all had the same reasons. One, they were looking for a magician. Two, the pile of debris was full of iron, and three, labour of any kind put them in a bad mood.

Kitty had promised herself not to give up, not until they found something, even if it was a corpse. She was quickly losing hope though, and her tired mind could only just believe that this was anything but another false alarm. She dragged herself out of one of the many chairs set up around the site, and plodded over to the woman who had called to her previously. She took a deep breath, ready to bear whatever it was that she had to tell her.

"What have they found, Piper?"

"I don't know, but you'd better take a look. They say it's important-"

Kitty was already stumbling over to the group of imps, her exhausted limbs ready to give in and let her tumble to the ground. When she reached them, they all had looks of excitement on their faces, one that said they believed their job was almost done.

"Alright, what did you find?" Kitty demanded, face flushed from the walk.

"We think we found him, miss!" Jabbered a little blue imp, rocking back and forth happily on his squat legs.

"We heard a small moaning noise, and thought we'd check it out," put in a spiny yellow imp that looked like a cross between a porcupine and a toad. "We dug down, but we were thrown back when we hit some kind of magical barrier. We can't see inside, but the moaning's gotten louder."

"Where did you see this?" Kitty almost shrieked. If he was there, if he was alive, if there was even the smallest possibility that she could see him again, then they had to look. They would find him. She squared her shoulders and waited for an answer.

"It was over here, lady!" Piped a tiny green demon. It nudged the others to follow it, and together they shuffled to where, supposedly, this magical barrier lay. Kitty followed eagerly. Her search might be at an end.

A hesitant tapping noise echoed from above his head, and muffled voices reached his ears. He cracked open his right eye, staring up blearily into a light that singed his retina, and saw a fuzzy outline of a face. He felt that somehow he should be relieved, this shape could be his rescuer. By now he had figured out that he was trapped under a large amount of heavy materials, mainly something that looked to be glass, overlain with the darker shapes of something more opaque, but he seemed to be lying in a pocket of air that had not been touched by the falling…whatever it was, and was largely unhurt, at least compared to how he should be. His main problem was an aching wound in his side, and the fact that he had no idea what had happened to him. He wasn't highly affected by claustrophobia, so the fact that he was stuck in a small space did not bother him too much. He only wished he could remember, something, anything! He didn't even recall his name. Blurry images of an angry demon flashed through his mind, accompanied by trailing thoughts of ambition and low respect for the government. He couldn't understand how these came together to put him in the mess he was in, but maybe this appearance of help could somehow repair his mind.

Barely recognizing the idea, he tried to wave a hand at the figure, to show he was alive, awake, something to get him out of there. His muscles still did not want to work, so he uttered a small howl of frustration instead. The figure moved. It had worked. Suddenly, a cloud of smoke began to form inside his prison. He gawked at it, until a strangely familiar voice started to speak…

A/N: I'm new here...~looks around~ so plz don't eat me for being stupid! ~hides in a shoe~

oh, and tell me what you think while I work on the next chapter. :)