"Jim! Hey!" Linao pushed through the surging crowd, her voice dying against the deafening announcements. The scent of smoke hung heavily in the air; faces began merging together to form a blur of human waste.

Where was he? A blue-haired kid rammed into her screaming for some girl he'd probably never find again. She felt the crowd surge forward, and she pushed through it like a fish swimming up stream, peering through sleeves and hair and pocketbooks for a brief glimpse of Jim. When she found him, he was going to pay... Even breathing in this place was getting hard.

Linao stopped her search to catch her breath; face after face after face passed her, staring back as the smoke infested her eyes. The stage. He was probably there somewhere, drooling about his favorite band. Pushing through the clusters of people with new purpose, she stopped as she noticed Jim from the corner of her eye. She bit her lip and stepped forward, fragments of conversation floating with the announcer's guttural yells toward her already-throbbing ears.

"… anything at all, really. What are you doing after the concert?"

"I haven't planned anything yet, why?" the girl smiled coyly, her shoulder brushing against the curls of frazzled hair as she tossed it aside.

"Well you don't see too many girls as gorgeous as you around here, I thought we could go somewhere later and….."

And?? And what?! Linao didn't flinch as the plastic ticket she had been holding since she entered this decrepit hole of a club shattered into a million pieces, each one softly clattering to the ground. She took a tentative step forward, until she saw Jim look almost directly at her and smile. That was it. Linao shoved the nearest person so hard he skidded across the floor, storming toward him.

She barely noticed the new voice echoing through her ears. "WELCOME TO THE CAVE! We are cursed to wander, and like many of you we are only trying to make sense of a world that has abandoned reason in favor of hedonism. We're not here to make you feel good or give you warm fuzzies, were here to KICK YOUR ASS!" The music swelled in the club as the crowd screamed for more.