Crossover Escape: Gotta be more than Lucky to survive

2.36 Scare Benifits

Luca waited just below the surface to see if he would feel some form of discomfort. Nothing. Luca allowed himself a moment of panic over what he was becoming and then pushed it aside. His mind was still the same and he needed to get back to his friends they needed him.

Luca surfaced completely and took a deep breathe. That felt normal enough. Then Luca noticed the rest of that cavern. Yeah, okay, breathing normally here was stranger than the underwater issue. Aside from the small pond that was the exit to the water tunnel the rest of the cave was magma rock and lava. Hot should not have been even close to describing it. Luca should have been boiled alive just getting there. Baring that his one deep breathes should have been lethal.

Luca considered that he felt fine. Continuing with the process of ignoring what he couldn’t do anything about. Luca tentatively touched the edge of the pool. Didn’t immediately scorch his fingers. With no better option Luca climbed out of the pool. The water visibly evaporated from his clothes, but Luca just felt it was a little warm. Given the change in the water Luca doubted it was because fantasy world lava was not as hot. The lava at least produced light, so Luca didn’t feel being able to see was so strange. Still it was unfortunate that the seeing didn’t actually help him find the exit.

”Kuh ki Kuh, Kyuh. Kyu.” Luca looked around and then up to find where Lil’ Miss was calling from.in the right side of cavern three quarters of the way up the wall. Luca looked down at his six remaining step knifes and winced. This was going to be unfortunate.

Luca hopped and jumped and flipped his way across the rocky islands so that he avoided testing the effect of stepping on the lava. Luca stood at the bottom of the wall and looked up. Yeah, he was good but he couldn’t get up there without some sort of spring. The walls of the room while not smooth had nothing but curves, there was literally no way to step or climb with just the rock face. Luca considered using his hook wing. As a test he pulled out one of the handles from the step knives he’d dismantled. He’d kept them in case he’d needed to bribe Lil’ Miss.

Now he touched the end of one of them to the wall and waited a few minutes. Pulling it back he looked at the warping as the mental had started to melt. That took his hook wing off the table. He’d have to use step knives and they’d be consumables. There would be no way to recover them with them still being usable.

Luca considered the wall and determined that the absolute minimum he could get away with would be two. With his heart bleeding Luca tossed the handle up. Lil’ Miss swooped out and caught it deftly. Luca smiled slightly at that action it somewhat reminded him of having a pet. Shaking his head Luca reached for one of his step knives when Lil’ Miss’s reaction triggered a thought. Changing his mind Luca released his step knife and shifted his hand to his glow sticks.

They were not a really strong material and he definitely wouldn’t try to get others use them as foot holds but they would be sufficient for his needs. Moreover while the grasp on the glow stick would; be done in, if they were removed fast enough the stick itself would likely remain intact. Luca looked up at Lil’ Miss, he figured that it would be removed pretty fast, he’d just have to hope he got to use them first.

Luca stepped back a bit from the wall and pulled out two glow sticks. He cracked them. Lil’ Miss’s head swung around instantly as she focused on the glowing tubes. The red puffball also zeroed its attention on the glowsticks. Luca looked between the two and then slid a leg back and tossed them both hard at the different heights on the wall. Once they left his hand Luca started running. He managed to jump off the first one easily but as he stepped on the second the red bird swooped on it. Luca couldn’t change his trajectory and ended up stepping on the bird. Reflexively he continued his jump catching the tunnel ledge and swinging onto it.

Immediately Luca turned to look for the bird. He was met with the bird in his face with the glowstick in its claws. “Chirp, cheep. Chirp, Chirp.” The undisguised excitement in the tone took Luca aback. It was like the bird hadn’t even noticed let alone cared that Luca had been stepped on. Still feeling a little bad about it Luca pulled out another handle and gave it to the bird in exchange for the glowstick. Once that exchange happened Lil’ Miss dove forward and used her tail to flick the bird away before she passed over her own glow stick. Thankfully she was happy with the handle she already had because Luca would not have enough handles otherwise.

“Thanks.” Luca took a quick glance at the end of the sticks. Yep. Dead. Still they were still useable in some situations. Unlike the step knives that would have just been dead. Putting the two damaged glowsticks away, he didn’t need them to see and wanted to have his hands free, before he continued along the tunnel. When Luca noticed an end to the tunnel, he mentally braced himself for what he would find.

The answer to that question was a gaping hole of nothingness. Luca looked down at the blackness before him and then over at the next tunnel. Directly opposite him. On the other side of the thirty-meter-wide gaping pit. If Luca even found whoever got him down here, he would quite happily dice them up and serve them as up as pig food.

Luca pulled out the two damaged glowsticks. Waving one in the air for a bit he then tossed it into the pit. The other he touched to the wall. Lil’ Miss and the red bird dove after the stick while Luca counted falling time. Luca did wonder how the red bird intended to grab the stick if it reached it first given that it still had the handle clasped in both claws. Still that was a problem for it to manage, by the time Lil’ Miss knocked the red bird out of the way and snagged the glowstick Luca had established two things. One he wasn’t coming back up if he fell down that hole. Two the walls weren’t hot anymore. Which meant that he could use his hook wing. He just had to stick the landing. No problem.

Not giving himself time to sit around and ponder how many ways things could go wrong. Luca took two steps back and accepted the returned glowstick. Putting that away Luca took a slow deep breathe readied his hook wing and then sprinted forward. He jumped out over empty space as he launched the wing then swung all the way to the peak distance and released it. as the wing retracted Luca sailed across the gap. When he fell below the point of the hole the wing was only half retracted.