If the couple didn't have their seatbelts on, their appalling demise would have been surely inevitable judging by the sheer power of... whatever the fuck it was that hit their car.           

                    "Ngghhh…"

                    Danicka's vision was blurry, worsened by the glowing tears flowing out of her eyes on their own, the overwhelming pain taking over. Her body was exceedingly painful, she could barely muster the strength to scream. Her skull even more so, implying a head injury. The small amounts of blood running down her long icy-colored hair, hung down by gravity, confirmed her assumption. The liquid stained several of her locks as it dripped down the car ceiling… said car ceiling basically now acting as the floor of the upside down mustang.

                     Another source of excruciation was her right arm. It was completely bruised around the elbow area and the shoulder, accompanied by countless shards of glass puncturing the skin like a pincushion. She could barely move any muscle on her arm without sending a wave of pure pain all over her body. The fact that she and Preston were stuck in their seats upside down, only firmly held by the seatbelts to stay that way meant both of her arms were being pulled down by gravity alongside her hair. Every abrupt movement she made caused her injured limb to sway; the slightest sway would force Danicka's body to receive more excruciation than it was already experiencing. A sway harder than that could cause either her hand or forearm to rub against the car ceiling. While that may sound painful enough, consider the fact that rubbing an arm pierced by an indefinite amount of glass splinters up against a hard surface… would guarantee you a much, much better way in experiencing a taste of hell's nine circles.

                     Panic should have conquered her body at this point if not for Preston's help earlier. Still, it was present, deep within… completely drowned out by an instinctive, primal clarity, giving Danicka a sufficient amount of determination to do the best she can to survive. 

                     Slowly, but surely, lest she might hurt her right arm more out of sudden motions, Danicka pulled her left arm (which had a few shards sticking into it as well but was otherwise okay) into her face to carefully wipe the tears hindering the function of her eyes. Upon successfully doing so, she slowly, yet urgently, turned her head to Preston. 

                      Her lover was very much unconscious, his raven-haired head visibly sporting a larger head injury than the one she had. It bled twice as much. He had less splinters and injuries on him considering he was on the left side of the mustang. Yet the injury on his head, specifically in the right temple, was very, very concerning. 

                       "Preston!" Danicka called his name, worryingly alerted by the sight of her lover. With a loud grunt of agony, she reached for him with a trembling left hand as fast as she could-- fuck the pain. Seeing him like this forced her imagination to go wild-- to expect the worst, urging her breathing rate to rise once again, albeit not drastically. 

                       Danicka reached for Preston's head to touch his potentially fatal injury. As she did, frost formed. It spread out like ripples on water's surface until it covered the large wound like a bandage, eventually and effectively stopping the bleeding.

                       A mere second and a half later, she hastily grabbed his wrist. She searched for a pulse, gritting her teeth to endure the pain as her right hand rubbed against the ceiling several times. Tears involuntarily soaked her eyes yet again, and her breaths were shaking. Repeatedly blinking to clear her vision, he placed a thumb on where the wrist pulse should be located. 

                       "Please, be okay, please be okay…" she anxiously mumbled under her breath.

                      "Preston, I-I fucking swear to God... i-if you're not with me…!"

                      Thankfully, he still was.

                      She sighed in relief, before finally, and voluntarily letting her tears flow out. The tears were not of fear and panic, however. It was of pure comfort and relief. She knew how much Preston truly meant to her, and losing him would kill a part of her as well. 

                     "Thank… God… I was afraid you were a goner…" she managed to say between her heavy sobs. "Stay with me, love… help should be on the way, whether or not my call was interrupted. It'll… it'll be easy to locate us thanks to the heroes." She suspected her smartphone must've landed somewhere outside during the crash. After spending thirty more seconds sniffing, she finally managed to calm herself down, and began searching for the phone with her eyes only. 

                      THUD!

                      While looking around to at least try to find where it ended up, a loud and violent thud from above them was heard, causing the whole vehicle to slightly shake, yet again inflicting agony all over her body. Was this the same thing responsible for crashing their mustang? Was this the same dark entity she had witnessed earlier?

                        Danicka's peripheral caught a glimpse of a thick liquid, right outside her window, dripping from above the vehicle and down to the snow, forming a puddle. It produced a strong smell. "Is… is that…! Oh, oh fuck."

                       Gasoline leak.

                       Danicka knew that at this point, the probability of the mustang catching fire was extremely high, at least, if any decent source of heat would be nearby. Fortunately, this was not the case, thanks to the winter. The engine parts of the car could trigger an ignition if heated enough… except they luckily weren't; it had been motionlessly parked in here within a few hours before Preston held the wheel again for their failed escape. Unlike in the movies, cars do not explode or catch fire very easily. 

                        However, the risk was always present, and it was up to the Cryomancer to prevent that risk. Gasoline emits vapor. The liquid of the gasoline is not flammable; its vapor is. All she had to do was to freeze it until it reached its flash point: the exact temperature where it'd stop producing vapor. She would then gather all these traces of flammable vapor in the air to be solidified.

                     There was a problem accompanying this idea, however: firstly, gasoline is leagues tougher to freeze than plain water due to its compound nature. It would take more time for her to freeze the fuel, and required both of her hands to do the trick, but it'd be worth it. She had to make sure they were safe from any danger, in case it got lit up… unexpectedly. 

                       But first, Danicka had to get herself and Preston off their seats; their seatbelts may have saved their lives earlier, but they've kept the couple's bodies upside down for quite a while now. Staying in this position too long could potentially be dangerous for them, especially when their head injuries were taken into consideration. 

                      Still using her left arm, she slowly reached for the buckle button. As soon as it was pushed, the straps wrapping around her lap and torso instantly retracted back to the pillar loop on her seat's right side, letting her drop headfirst down the supposedly car ceiling. Within the last second, however, she managed to guard her head with an arm from the drop's impact. Regardless, Danicka's suffering merely added tenfold. The drop worsened the bleeding of her glass splinter injuries, and her right arm, completely unprotected and vulnerable, hit the hard surface horribly, her right lower leg impaled by one of the larger shards of the upside down windshield as she fell. Her sight grew dim, as she felt some of the glass shards on her arm being pushed deeper into her flesh during the impact. Some came off violently, leaving deep gashes that leaked concerning amounts of red stuff like sink faucets. 

                     This was more than enough of a reason to scream in hellish agony, and Danicka did. As much as she could, subconsciously holding out hope that someone nearby might hear her. 

                      "Oh, God…" she cried, her eyes, freely letting tears flow like a waterfall, focused on her heavily damaged right arm, before doing so on her leg. Taking a very, very deep breath, she pushed herself up, and proceeded to crawl closer into Preston, no matter how painful every inch took. Breathing through her teeth, she knelt (despite the condition of her leg) exactly underneath Preston's upside down body, turned to face the passenger side of the vehicle, reached up for his legs with her left arm, pulled it a few inches down by wrapping her left arm around one of the legs' knee pit, slightly slouched her back, and…

                      "Move…"

                      She ordered her bloodsoaked right hand. It only twitched and trembled. 

                      "Move…"

                      "Move!" demanded Danicka with a grunt. 

                      She managed to raise it by an inch, but in return, it stung like hell, and bled much more.  

                      "Aaagh!"

                      Still, she carried on. She logically decided to cover every existing wound she could find and feel in her body, with decently thick layers of frost, before blood loss could lead to her passing out and away. She, for obvious reasons, did not bother removing the shards. The process might have felt uncomfortable, if not dangerous (frostbite), had Danicka not been completely immune to the cold and ice in general. After she was done, she wasted no time trying again. Inch by inch, the arm was raised up, to the point where the middle finger finally managed to reach the driver seat's buckle button. 

                      "P-push!"

                      Despite the trembling and unbearable pain, it successfully did the job, unlocking the straps and letting Preston's body drop down Danicka's back, just as she planned. While Preston's limp and unconscious body sent her another wave of agony, she fortunately managed to do the fireman's carry, a lifting method wherein the body is placed across her shoulders. 

                      Danicka knee-walked as she carried her lover until she reached a position where it was conveniently easy for her to place him in the backseat's ceiling temporarily. Every knee-step of the knee-walk required to rub her legs on the ceiling, and the large shard impaling her leg accompanied by Preston's weight above her made this brutally agonizing. As the glass continuously rubbed against the surface, the leg wound grew larger, the frost gradually failing to stop the bleeding, little by little, knee-step by knee-step. But slowly, but carefully, she was able to successfully and properly lay him down the backseat horizontally, grunting and huffing as she did. 

                      Unlike her, Preston would not survive the winter's harsh temperature if he was to be exposed to it within an extended amount of time. Considering this risk, she made the move to wrap herself around him in order to absorb any coldness in his body, trying to minimize her pain as she did.

                      Seconds after doing the job, her eye spotted Preston's Glock lying three inches away from his left foot. It somehow ended up in the backseat during the crash. And her katana… automatically disintegrated into nothing after her concentration was destroyed by her physical injuries. While deciding to wield the Glock as a substitute to her ice weapons to save her energy was the most rational at the moment, she still refused picking it up… for now. Albeit unsure about it, she still feared it might be an ignition hazard to the gasoline vapor (and she really wasn't a fan of guns).

                      When all was said and done, she began the process to render the gasoline as harmless as possible.

                      Danicka was aware it was probably a stupid decision to free Preston from the seatbelt first before actually "neutralizing" the gasoline, yet she simply couldn't stand letting her lover suffer much longer, thus her instincts kicked in to prioritize her beloved boyfriend. This probably is what everyone meant about how everyone does stupid shit for love. Or something.

                      After crawling her way to the front passenger seat, she stretched her left arm out until it was merely two inches away from the dangerous puddle. The gasoline stopped dripping several seconds ago, fortunately. She was about to freeze it when a better idea came across her pain-stricken head. 

                      I'm so dumb. I don't have to freeze the gasoline! I'll just have to bury it with snow! The vapor emission can be stopped that way all the same.

                      And thus, she did, conveniently saving both her time and energy. Right after, however, her poor right arm still had to be used to gather every emitted flammable vapor to be solidified and neutralized, as her left wouldn't be able to do it alone. And thus, she did. 

                      Danicka took the deepest of breaths her lungs could handle, mustered as much strength as she could to both her arms as she raised them on chest level, and gestured her hands in a way they would look like they were each clasping an invisible ball. And slowly, but surely, the flammable vapors were pulled into the empty spaces within those hands to solidify. Once every vapor was successfully gathered, brought her hands together to combine both solidified vapors, and contained them within a ball-shaped ice as hard as steel, in which she never hesitated to throw about more than ten meters away from the mustang. 

                      Now… 

                      What now?

                      She was aware that whether or not they stayed in the car, the fact remains that they were at the mercy of this entity. Judging by its terrifying strength, it most likely would've murdered them much earlier if it so desired, so why not? And based on the thud, it could be staying above them, probably waiting for either her or Preston to crawl out of the broken car. But why wait? It no doubt had enough power to drag the couple out of the vehicle. For all intents and purposes, why would it even attack them? What in the actual fuck does it want?

                      Well, whatever. As long as it doesn't attack, I'll just stay here and wait for help instead. 

                      Yet Danicka knew she could not let her guard down no matter what. The unpredictability of the circumstances still very much exists. That being said, she wasted no time grabbing the Glock before keeping watch of her surroundings, seeing it was safe now to wield it. As much as she hated holding the weapon, she never had that much of a choice to begin with; she might just pass out tiring herself by creating another ice katana. 

                      There was one way, of course, that she could do to potentially hasten the arrival of their rescuers: firing the Glock. Its noise could reveal their exact location if by chance 911 failed to track her phone, which Danicka hoped was not the case. Yet she knew… that just like fabrics and curtains, the snow would absorb a portion of the sound. She might be able to manipulate snow, but one could never manipulate physics… reality warpers excluded. Well, Danicka didn't know how much volume of the gunshot the snow could take, but she was aware that she had to make it as loud as possible in order to ensure their survival. To pull that off, its barrel would have to be pointed at the sky before letting it fire off like what one does with a flare gun. Assuming if she did pull it off, the risk of the entity getting provoked into attacking them yet again was undoubtedly present. Should she give it a shot… literally?

                      Before Danicka even had the opportunity to ponder on how she could safely pull this off, or if she should even do this in the first place…

                      Flap.

                      Flap. 

                      Flap. 

                      Flap.              

                      It's that damn flapping again, right outside the Mustang's front part. Getting closer. This… naturally alerted Danicka, urging her to firmly grasp the Glock's handle in a way she could fire it the most conveniently if anything unexpected happened. 

                       Danicka's breathing slightly increased in pace, her exhales audibly shaking. The trembling of her hands, caused by the pain she tried as hard as she could to hold in, were visibly intensifying. 

                       Flap. 

                       Flap.

                       The flapping halted. 

                       Her eyes were tightly glued to the windshield, the direction where the crunching was heard. Glowing tears yet again filled her eye sockets, as paranoia finally began taking over her body. Anything could literally happen at this point, and she doubted she would be able to do anything about it. Regardless, she had to try her best to--

                       SLAM!

                       It was the violent sound of one of the backseat doors getting torn off its hinges and then thrown dozens of meters away. This was more than enough to fetch the terrified Cryomancer's attention. Instinctively looking back to check out what the fuck that was... the very discovery by her eyes was enough to utterly annihilate her dwindling composure, and possibly every psychological strength left within her which she heavily relied on.

                        "PRESTON!!!" 

                        The unconscious Preston who was peacefully and safely laid down in the back seat nowhere to be found.