Crossover Escape: Gotta be more than Lucky to survive

2.14 Deadly Dodge

Luca was fairly used to angering people into chasing him. It was a very useful tactic since irrational and angry people were predictable and easily dealt with. He just didn’t tend to make people in tanks mad. Unfortunately that was a pretty good synonym for his current situation. At least the dinosaur didn’t have ranged attack.

Smoke suddenly slid out of the sides of its mouth. Luca’s eyes widened and he dove to the side in a quick cartwheel. The fireball hit a tree and incinerated instantly. For a water creature that was an absolute foul.

“Well since I’m being bait you lot better come up with a solution fast.” Luca called out as he dove again rolling towards the dinosaurs back. While that put him in the position of needing to dodge the tail it was better than dodging the teeth and fireball. Not to mention he didn’t actually have any choice but to go in circles because with the wilds on one side and the river on the other the only clear area was along the riverbank. No sane person would try to outrun on a straight rode something with ten times the stride length.

Luca was sure it was an entertaining sight. One person diving, rolling, running and jumping around in a circle with a dinosaur snapping at his heals. In the meantime a chaotic mess of people tried to attack the dinosaur. Unsuccessfully. Luca was entirely relying on his improved stamina to keep up. Even with that though he was growing tired. When the next chomp grazed his hair Luca ran out of patience.

Though apparently, he wasn’t the only one that had ran out of endurance. From the corner of his eye Luca noticed Declan racing up with a pulsing white orb. It didn’t take a magic expect to identify the meaning of the increased frequency in the pulsations. Luca made a split-second decision and paused half a beat in his next step giving Declan a clear chance to toss the white ball into the dinosaur’s mouth.

As the orb left Declan’s hand Luca tackled him to the ground. They avoided the dinosaurs initial bite but where then unable to get out of the way as the creature continued forward and the orb exploded. Luca felt a sharp pain in his back and along his arms before a cool still air settled over him and a resounding thump sounded from his right. Luca waited for a moment to see if there would be anything more but when silence continued he slowly lifted his head.

Declan was frozen in place below him with a shocked and somewhat horrified expression. Luca twisted his head about expecting to see a set of jaws looming behind him. Instead he spotted the dinosaur keeled over on the beach and a faint green dome over the top of them. By the look of the dinosaur the dome had protected them from getting flattened.

As he watched the done flickered twice and vanished. Immediately after Luca was inundated with noise. It was for the most part calls of concern as they various people raced towards them. Luca rolled to his back in relief so that Declan could move. That was a mistake. Luca lost his breath completely from the excruciating pain and failed to be able to gather his strength to sit up or roll onto his stomach.

Thankfully that’s what friends were for. Help arrived first but they were unable to move Luca. When Ghost and Tails arrived seconds Later Declan had recovered from his trance and the three of them carefully rolled Luca onto his stomach. While that put a constriction on his lungs it alleviated the pain stealing his breath. Drawing a bit of oxygen into his lungs Luca whispered, “Ouch, that hurt.”

“Your back looks like confetti at a children’s birthday. With someone spilling tomato sauce on top.” Rӓv’s description was its own kind of horrifying but Luca refrained from commenting he didn’t want to be lectured for the rest of the day.

“Should we use the WIC’s –” Cowboy’s suggestion was ruthless cut of by a chorus of voices.

“NO.”

“Those psycho’s set us up to end up here I don’t believe they didn’t know there was something up with that cube.” Holly shook his head vehemently. It was a little funny since he’d been the most sceptical about WIC having a secret plot.

“With how suspicious this whole thing was I’d be more likely to try there medicine out as a chemical weapon than eat it.” Rӓv sneered even as she started to work carefully on Luca’s back.

“You knew something was wrong and still came?” Luca rolled his eyes at the disbelief in the tone before he responded, it seemed only fair that he answered Cowboy’s confusion.

“Someone made a promise and even the end of the world will not be stopping us from holding them to it. I’m not inclined to jump to lethal force but after this other means are looking more appealing.” Luca bit off his sentence as Rӓv cleaned another would.

“I have taken away all of the ice magic but I’m not sure what to do about the lacerations.” Declan was on the wrong side for Luca to see him, but he could hear the helplessness in his tone.

“I have morphine to ease the pain?” one of the two sorcerers asked. Luca really should remember their names but with the magic thing and now they pain they just kept slipping away from him.

“Would that it could be so easy. It has no affect on him. Literally no different than water.” Tails responded as he seemed to rock back on his heels in Luca’s limited view. “Ah, out hosts are back. I think Shade can you handle that?” Luca heard a faint splashing and combined with the comment from Tails assumed that the sirens had returned from wherever they’d disappeared to.

“I will, I can’t help with this anyway so I will deal with that.” There was a darkness to the tone that Luca felt seemed misplaced. It wasn’t like he’d been in any real danger Luca had assured that and Tails had maintained it after they’d pulled him ashore. At one point Luca had noticed that Shade had been prepared to rush into the fight but had been held back by Tails. Whatever Tails had said to him had stilled Shade, but his tone made it clear that he wasn’t happy with how things had gone down. The conversation started behind him, and Luca tried to focus on it to distract himself from Rӓv’s work.

“They terror on your pod I dead, safe harbour is payment,” Shade stated plainly. Immediately afterwards an uproar of protests or cheers came from the sirens Luca couldn’t tell. He had found a flaw in the translation magic, system, technology or whatever. When enough voice spoke at once like yelling in a crowd it was impossible to pick out a clear sentence as to what was being said. Luca waited for Shade to say something else but instead her Help.

“I think I can do something to help but we’ll have to stay here for the night.”

“If you can speed the healing safely, do it.” Rӓv paused in her ministrations as she responded.

“We wouldn’t be going into the Wilds this late anyway we wouldn’t cover enough ground for it to be worthwhile.” Luca clarified with a wince as Rӓv started working again. He didn’t think his healing would be that much improved by one night, but he’d never planned on them rushing in this afternoon given the time lost just to cross the river

“If we start at dawn tomorrow, we will only need to spend one night in there and that is a better plan.” Tails stated as Help began to sing and then the world went mercifully black.