And here you are, Chapter 2. Hopefully this is slightly surprising, as I intended it to be; I'm trying to stray from the obvious in this fic, so not everything may be as you'd expect.

Kurosawa Minamo shifted uncomfortably in the driver's seat of an overturned wreck that was once a minivan. Her seatbelt was cutting quite literally into her shoulder, and at the moment finding a way to get the damn thing to release was her top priority.

Once the device finally decided to heed its master, she dropped the few inches to the roof-now-floor and righted herself properly. Almost shamefully she recalled vividly her final thoughts before blacking out, just after she'd jerked the steering wheel to avoid the cat that had unexpectedly darted into the road and the vehicle flew over a small cliff.

Gods, here I am, about to die in a car accident and Yukari is nowhere around.

Of course that wasn't exactly true; the English teacher was currently driving herself and herself alone to Chiyo's family's house, following the riot that had erupted when they discovered that the last minute addition of Kaorin meant that only one person wouldn't fit in the car Chiyo insisted on renting. Unanimously, everyone voted that Yukari embark on the trek alone, and once the screeching had died down, it seemed that the trip would be pleasant enough.

If only.

Minamo snorted and began to check herself for injuries: it appeared that besides several lacerations resulting from broken windshield shards, she was mostly unhurt. At least, that was how it appeared until she attempted to move. Her left knee buckled beneath her weight while the right ankle rolled at an unnatural angle, but Minamo gratefully noted that these were the extent of her wounds. Things could have been much, much worse, after all.

All at once the P.E. teacher remembered her charges and whirled behind her to check on the girls, only to be met with debris and impenetrable darkness. It was snowing harder now, clouds having wrested control of the sky from the moon, severing the previous illumination. Minamo held her breath and listened instead for any labored breaths or shifting, yet couldn't make out a sound.

Sighing, she turned and looked to the side, where the passenger seat and Kagura should've been, but again her vision was impaired—this time by a curtain of nasty looking wires. Minamo assumed they were electrical in nature, and decided not to test this particular theory lest it prove true.

Swallowing in an attempt to moisten her throat, Minamo addressed the wires.

"Kagura? You awake in there?" Her query was met with a pained and not altogether coherent groan which, at the very least, meant the girl was alive. This discovery settled the churning in the teacher's stomach slightly; if at least one of her former students had survived the crash, she could at least try to redeem herself for letting this happen. That, and the guilt wouldn't be quite so utterly crushing.

"Listen, Kagura. Since I'm not too badly hurt, I'm going to climb out the window and try to find help. I don't know how quickly I can get it, but maybe I can get ahold of Yukari somehow," the details of this plan remained hazy and indistinct at best, but voicing it still made Minamo feel slightly more prepared and proactive, "I want you to hold on as long as you can, ok? And if anyone else wakes up, try to let them know what's going on and to not leave the van."

The teacher paused, and took the following grunts as affirmation that her once star student understood the instructions. Fleetingly, Minamo wondered how she was managing to remain so calm, unless of course blood loss and shock had dazed Kagura's senses beyond the point of even being afraid or panicked.

She was almost jealous.

Turning back to the task at hand, the woman studied the glass riddled window cavity that had apparently been crushed down to half its normal size during the accident. Testing the sharp fragments still clinging to the window's edge, Minamo managed to pry several loose, though exit remained a daunting venture. Sighing deeply in resolve, the gym teacher eased her battered body onto its stomach, and began to use her arms to pull herself toward the opening.

Now that she was actually passing through it, the space seemed even smaller, as if the car were attempting to bite down and devour her. Glass shards too stubborn to abandon their previous post sliced at her shoulders and back, creating less than attractive rips not only in Minamo's jacket but her flesh as well.

Gritting her teeth and picturing Chiyo trapped under a destroyed seat, she managed to free herself from the vehicle, stand, and hobble to a nearby tree. Though still dark, once the teacher's eyes adjusted, she could make out the silhouette of the crumpled van, various pieces of its machinery jutting out at random angles. Apparently, it had been a telephone pole that had ceased their earlier tumbling; although electrical and cable wires seemed to have been attached to the structure as well. The point of impact had been on the right side of the car (or what would've been the right side had it been upright), just behind the driver's seat.

Minamo shuddered; several centimeters more, and her body would have slammed into that pole as well. The worst damage seemed to be toward the backseat, however, where the giant stake had fallen on the van itself. Who had been sitting there? Kaorin.

Mentally, Minamo ran a profile on the girl: she had been in Yukari's homeroom for two years and Kimura's one; like Osaka, disliked her nickname; decent enough student both in the classroom and in P.E.; a tad melodramatic; ended up at the same university as Sakaki, whom Kaorin seemed oddly fixated on. The teacher was a touch ashamed that she couldn't come up with more for the poor young woman—corpse, now, surely—but Kaorin hadn't ever been truly considered part of "the group" and both she and Yukari regarded her as a bit of an outsider.

Good luck to whoever ended up breaking the news to Kimura.

Disgusted with herself for thinking such a thing, Minamo instead turned to the incline they'd rolled down a few hours ago. Though it didn't appear too steep, it was snowing, and the teacher's legs weren't in any condition for extended hiking. Besides, she wasn't even sure how far it was to a road; yet if these power lines were any indication, they at least hadn't crashed in the middle of uninhabited forest.

She nodded curtly, and slowly began to edge her way around the tree trunk so that she was facing the slope. Extending her arm as far as possible, she caught hold of a branch belonging to a nearby tree slightly further up, and pulled herself up to it. Her knee threatened to give out again and her ankle burned, but the teacher refused to pay attention. Getting to the road this way would take ages, but at least it was progress. Minamo couldn't bear the thought of sitting around waiting for help that may never arrive, costing possibly everyone in the car their lives. At least this way, even if not every girl made it, knowledge that she'd done something would alleviate later guilt.

All she had to do was make it to the road; then she could hitch a ride or use someone's cell phone to call for help. Who knew? Maybe she'd even run into Yukari on her way to the Mihama house.

On second thought, Minamo decided that that might not be such good fortune.

Short notes: Chose to refer to her a "Minamo" vs. "Nyamo" because it's a third person type thing right now. It may change later on. Also, I'm not focusing on romance in this fic as it's supposed to have other themes (notice that romance is not one of the genre tags), but a bit of shoujo ai may pop up here or there. Going to try and avoid expectable couples, and with the exception of Sakaki/Kagura (which I can't stand for whatever reason), just about any pairing could possibly show up. Sorry this was shorter than the other chapter-- less dialogue, you see.