so here is my next fledgling idea...it's probably gonna be a short one, a threeshot perhaps.

if hiro and tadashi having supplies and knowing how to treat injuries seems a little too convenient, know that i am basing tadashi's knowledge in these matters off my own. i know how to treat injuries in the wilderness, and i bring a huge first aid/survival kit with me wherever i go. i think tadashi would do the same thing, and besides, i didn't want this to turn out too much like Hatchet (which y'all should totally read). however, i don't know how to build a shelter from scratch, so dashi doesn't, either. make sense?

thanks, guys! i hope y'all like this story!

—TADASHI—

The plane glides smoothly through the rainy sky, flying over the Scottish Highlands. I still can't believe a university in Finland wanted a demonstration of Hiro's microbots—they're becoming more and more popular.

I can't sleep on a plane—I can't sleep anywhere but my own bed—but Hiro is passed out beside me, snoring softly. He's exhausted from the long day and from the jet lag, poor little guy. He deserves a break.

What happens next is the farthest thing from a break that I could possibly imagine.

I see a blaze of light, then hear someone scream. I'm confused for a few moments, then a huge rumble of thunder rips through the sky and I realize what must have happened. It's only confirmed when our plane starts to drop.

One of the wings has been struck by lightning.

People start screaming, their shrieks filling the small plane. The pilot's voice comes on the intercom—"Attention, passengers, we are about to execute an emergency crash landing"—but I barely hear him. I'm shaking Hiro awake, knowing that there's no way I'm going to deprive him of the chance to save himself.

Since this is a small plane, we get parachutes for emergencies—and by the looks of it, we're gonna have to skydive.

Hiro comes fully awake, and I shove his parachute at him. "Put that on and grab your bag, Hiro—we're going to crash!"

"What?!" Hiro exclaims. "Are you serious?"

"Yes, I'm serious! Now put on that parachute!"

Hiro does so, then grabs his carry-on bag. I do the same, simultaneously pulling the emergency exit open. I am so glad we picked these seats.

The plane is nearing the ground rapidly, and I know we have to jump soon or we are dead. We'll probably still be dead if we jump, but we have to try.

"Alright, Hiro, you go first," I tell my baby brother. "Just jump and then pull the cord as fast as you can."

Hiro's face is white. "I can't jump, Tadashi! We're up too high!"

"Sorry, buddy. You've got to. If you don't make it, I love you, okay?"

And I shove Hiro out of the plane—but he isn't the only one who drops. He grabs my arm at the last second, and I tumble out after him.

I scream in terror as the wind rushes past me, then remember my cord. I yank it and my parachute billows out, the wind filling it and blowing both me and Hiro—who is clutching me so tightly I can barely breathe— sideways. Rain soaks us in seconds as Hiro inflates his parachute, too. We slow down slightly, and for a second, I believe we're going to make it.

But then I hear a terrible ripping noise, and we're falling.

I glance up to see the parachutes with huge holes in them, destroyed by the powerful wind. We're doomed.

The forest comes up rapidly to meet us, and we break the canopy with a lot of snapping twigs and branches. Both of us are screaming as we race toward the ground, and then we hit it and everything goes dark.

Light rain is falling when I wake up. I remember the lightning, the parachutes, the fall. Then darkness.

I open my eyes—well, one of them, anyway. My left eye is swollen almost all the way shut, and my forehead is also swelling up. I can feel small cuts and scratches all over my mud-streaked face. The rest of my body is probably also filthy, but I'm too exhausted to look now.

Then I hear a tiny whimper, and my protective-big-brother brain goes into overdrive. I sit up—the forest blends into a swirl of colors and stars and I fall back down, groaning and rubbing my forehead. Dang that hurts.

I sit up again, more slowly this time, and look around for Hiro. He's about ten feet away, half covered by his parachute. Blood runs down his cheek from a cut under his eye, and there are twigs and leaves tangled in his hair.

Every muscle in my body protests as I drag myself toward Hiro, needing to make sure that my baby brother isn't dead. I finally reach Hiro and put two fingers on his neck, checking his pulse. I sigh in relief upon finding a heartbeat. The breath sends jolts of pain shooting through my torso, but I don't care. Hiro is alive.

Gently, I shake Hiro's shoulder, wanting to wake him up so he doesn't sleep too long with a concussion—because he obviously has one, since he's unconscious. I definitely have one, too, but I don't think it's serious—I woke up what must have been only a few minutes after we fell, but I was confused and in pain and didn't remember a thing, so I just went back to sleep immediately. Now I'm completely aware of what happened, so it can't be that bad.

Hiro doesn't seem to want to wake up yet, so I turn my attention back to my own body, analyzing my injuries. My entire body is covered with cuts and scratches and bruises, and my ankle is bruised and swelling up—probably sprained. My back throbs and I'm pretty sure something in it is torn. Probably my latissimus dorsi—I hope it's only a small strain. That's a huge muscle that I can't afford to mess up too bad.

I manage to get to my feet, wincing and trying to keep weight off my injured ankle. Somehow, I'm not hurt that badly, considering that I just fell from the sky out of a crashing plane.

Suddenly, I hear a faint moan of pain from somewhere near my feet. I drop to my knees next to Hiro, pulling him into my lap. "Are you okay, buddy?"

"I'm okay," Hiro mumbles. "But my head hurts. And literally everything else."

"Can you sit up?" I ask, the worry evident in my voice.

Hiro pushes himself up slowly and manages to stay in a sitting position. "I—I think so…"

"Where does it hurt?"

Hiro groans. "Like I said, literally everywhere."

"Could I get specifics?"

Hiro tries to stand, but his leg collapses under him and he lets out a yelp of pain. "Ow!"

I lunge forward and grab Hiro before he can hit the ground, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. "What's wrong with your leg?" I ask worriedly.

"I—I don't know," Hiro mumbles, his face pale and his teeth gritted. "I think it's broken—not the femur, but…" He trails off.

I gently ease Hiro back to the ground and pull up his pant leg, examining his shin. Mostly it's just a little scratched and covered with mud, as is the rest of his body, but it's swelling up and bruising badly up near his knee. I brush a finger over it, and Hiro lets out a tiny whimper.

"Yeah, it's broken," I sigh. "But it's a closed fracture, and probably really small—I don't feel any irregularity in the bone. Do you know if the bags fell with us? They might have something in them we can use to splint you."

Hiro looks around, his face lighting up. "There's yours—and yours will probably have more first aid stuff in it."

I glance to the right and discover my bag, torn and filthy but at least there. Getting to my feet, I limp over to it and pull out my first aid supplies. I'm so, so glad I brought these.

I manage to procure two long sticks from the woods around us, and I pull off my jacket to use as padding. I wrap the jacket around Hiro's leg, then place the sticks on either side of it. Finally, I pull the emergency rope out of my kit and bind the whole thing together.

"Test it," I tell Hiro. "I can make you a crutch if you need one, too."

Hiro gingerly gets to his feet. He winces as he puts weight on his leg, but at least he can. "I think I can walk," he says shakily, and takes a few hesitant steps. "Thanks, Dashi."

"Always. Now, let me patch up the rest of you."

I smear bacitracin on the cut under Hiro's eye, then place band-aids over the smaller injuries. Running my hands over his skull to check for injury, I discover a bump on the back of his head. I wrap it in gauze and step back, looking over my work. Poor Hiro—he looks pretty beat up, as well as exhausted. And all we did was jump out of a plane. But I'm exhausted too, and I realize that I probably need to bandage myself. My ankle really hurts and I can't even open my left eye, which is really annoying.

"We'll figure this out after I splint this," I tell Hiro, then proceed to use a scarf I fish out of my bag, two sticks, and more of the emergency rope to splint my ankle. I patch up my cuts and scrapes and hand out ibuprofen.

"Alright," I declare. "We need to assess the situation. Where are we, do our phones work, what supplies do we have, where's the nearest civilization, did anyone else survive the crash, where is the plane, and are there any cats living here?"

Hiro just stares at me. "The last question isn't really necessary for our survival."

"You underestimate the power of cats. What do you think about the other ones?"

Hiro appears to ponder this. "Um. Well, first off, we have no idea where we are. So I guess we should try and figure that out—if our phones have service."

"Good plan," I tell him, then pull out my phone. I'm dismayed but not at all surprised that it doesn't have any service. Hiro's phone is the same. So we have no communications, and all we know about our location is that we're somewhere in the Scottish Highlands.

"Oooookay," Hiro says. "So there's no way of letting anyone know where we are. Awesome. What was next? Supplies?"

We do find Hiro's bag, full of mostly snacks—which is actually really good, since I really don't want to have to forage for food. There's also clothes and basic hygiene supplies, both of which are also in my bag. Mine also contains the first aid kit. So I think we're as well prepared as we can possibly be in this situation. Still, it would be optimal to not be in this situation at all.

Since we don't have anything like Google Maps, we can't figure out where the nearest civilization is, so we opt to look for the plane and see if anyone else made it out of the crash.

After several minutes of limping through the forest, Hiro collapses, panting. "I…I don't think I can walk anymore, Dashi."

"I'll make you a crutch," I say determinedly. "Just hang tight—let me go find a big stick."

I manage to find a large, forked stick on the ground and wind one of my shirts around it. I'm so glad I took that wilderness survival class in junior year.

Hiro can limp around much better with the makeshift crutch, so we continue on our search for the plane, with me carrying both bags while still limping on my injured ankle. It doesn't feel good, but it's better than letting Hiro carry them. Besides, he has to walk on my left side, to tell me if he sees anything over there. Not being able to open your eye is really annoying—and it hurts.

Finally, we come to the still-smoldering wreckage of our plane. I tell Hiro to stay outside while I check if anyone is still alive.

Five minutes later, I step out of the plane, horrified and traumatized.

Not a single person in the plane survived. Most of them died in terrible ways.

Hiro and I are the sole survivors.

I pull Hiro into a hug and then start crying. My baby brother just looks shocked, stunned by the reality of this situation. I wish it wasn't real.

But it is.

And we have to try and beat the odds of nature to live.

Awesome.

—HIRO—

Man, my leg hurts.

I've broken bones before, and my wrist (fourth grade) was probably worse than this. But I have to walk on the broken bone, and it really doesn't feel good. The splint and crutch help, though.

I'm pretty sure I'm still in shock from the crash—I feel like I'm wandering around in a delirium, not totally in control of my body. It really doesn't help that I have a killer headache from cracking my head on a tree branch in our fall. Tadashi bandaged the huge bump on my skull, but it still really hurts when I touch it.

Tadashi, still sniffling a little, proposes that we set up a shelter. It doesn't really work. Dashi ends up trying to cut down a bunch of trees and sort of make a small lean-to that's maybe big enough for Mochi. Maybe Tadashi can put his head under it so the rain doesn't mess up his hair.

Eventually, we just huddle under a tree, the rain pouring steadily down. Dashi hugs me to his chest like he used to when I was little, stroking my damp hair.

I don't know what we're going to do. But I know we have to survive.

And somehow I believe we can.

I must have fallen asleep at some point, because morning is gradually breaking over the woods when I open my eyes. My whole body is damp and covered with dew, which might actually look fairly nice if I wasn't already streaked with dirt and blood.

Tadashi is still asleep, so I worm my way out from under his arm and study our surroundings. It's somehow both misty and warm, with light rain still falling.

It occurs to me to check how my face is looking right now. I pull out my phone and wince at my reflection. The cut under my eye is slightly inflamed, because Tadashi didn't have a ton of gauze and the band-aids weren't big enough. I'm gonna have to put some more bacitracin on it. The bandages wrapped around my head to protect my goose egg are stained with dirt, and so is the rest of my face. I didn't notice before, but my chin is bruised and there are little twigs and leaves tangled in my rats' nest of hair. Yeah, I look amazing.

I gently brush my fingers over the bump on the back of my head, wincing. I think it's swollen up even more, and it feels bruised and tender when I touch it. I'm gonna have to take more Advil if I want the stupid headache to go away.

Pushing myself up on my crutch, I test my broken leg on the soft ground, hobbling around the small clearing. I'm lucky Tadashi knows how to do so much first aid, or I'd be dead by now.

Tadashi wakes up after a few more minutes, massaging his face. "Hey, Hiro. How're you doing?"

I flop down beside my big brother on the grass. "Okay, I guess. How 'bout you?"

Dashi rubs his black eye ruefully. "A little better. The swelling on my eye is going down, so I can see out of it now—but only a little bit. Apart from that, I'm doing okay. How's your leg? Is it swelling any more?"

He kneels on the ground beside me and gently unwraps the hoodie from around my leg. I grit my teeth but don't make a sound.

"It hasn't gotten worse," Tadashi says with a sigh of relief. "Hopefully it'll be okay until we get back to civilization." He wraps the makeshift splint back around my leg, then pulls me up. "Want to start looking for the nearest city?"

"Yeah. Do we have any food?"

We do indeed have food—all the snacks I brought. Gummy bears have never tasted so good. After I finish my snack, I smear bacitracin over my cuts, take ibuprofen, and we set off once my head and my leg start feeling better.

Tadashi says we should go east to civilization, so we start walking. The rain stops and the sun shines through the forest, warming my chilled, damp body.

Soon, however, we come to a river.

Um.

I can't swim.

That's a bit of a problem.

"We could…build a boat," Tadashi suggests.

"Do we have any supplies to build a boat?"

"Well, no…"

"We're just gonna have to swim it," I decide, edging closer to the riverbed. "Do you think—"

But I never get to finish my sentence.

My foot slips on the muddy bank, and I let out a yelp of surprise as I tumble into the river, the cold water shocking my brain.

Dang it.

Because, as I said before, I can't swim.