Indiana Jones and the Daring Daughter

A young man stalked through the Panamanian rainforest, clothes torn up by days of journey through thicket and growth. The harsh buzz of insects filled the air, the cry of the macaws shrilled from the dense canopy, and the constant sound of life bustling between the undergrowth overwhelmed the senses. An oppressive atmosphere of humidity and darkness enclosed all around the weary man as he stepped over roots and found his footing unsteadily between furrowed terrain and clumps of rotting plant matter. The only light in the jungle came from slats of orange, rising sunlight peeking through the gaps in the canopy.

Indiana Jones sighed as he stopped, his threadbare socks chafing against his feet in his boots as he leaned against a nearby tree.

He ached all over, his frame was bruised from where Montechello's gang had laid a beatdown on him, and he itched at mosquito bites that covered his skin. He was covered head to toe in mud and grime, almost every article of clothing clung to his body in shredded rags. Even his fedora was sagging.

Reaching a quivering hand into his bag, he once again found his flask of water dreadfully missing. He had lost his canteen the previous night when running from some sort of jungle predator, and hadn't had a solid meal since leaving Panama City four days ago. Blinking the blurriness from his eyes, he rooted around at the bottom, past the paltry set of tools that had seemed so useful when he bought them, but had turned out to be no match for the forest. Finally, he pulled out a small strip of cloth, marked with faded paint.

He passed his swollen, painfully dry tongue across his chapped lips. He had passed the river marked on the first part of the manuscript - unfortunately it was too filthy to dare drink from. In all honesty, Indiana wished he could muster the courage to turn around and quench his thirsts anyway, he was probably going to die from jungle fever if he ever got out of the rainforest. The next part of the ancient, cloth map hinted at the presence of some sort of pyramid, not too far from here.

Indiana curled up the cloth once again, placing it back in his bag. He looked up at the sky. The sun still pointed him in the right direction - due west of the first landmark. He had to be going in the right direction. Who knew, maybe the Clock had some sort of magical powers that would heal him on touch.

Against the protests of his blistering feet, aching legs, and burning throat, Indiana pushed himself off the tree he had leaned against and marched onwards. Every few minutes, he looked back up at the sun, trying to stay on course as it rose in the sky. He knew he had a dominant foot, and would generally wander to the right subconsciously, knocking him off course. His positively delirious brain would do him no favors, but he attempted to power through nonetheless.

Indiana's mind went back to the Somme; to the mud sucking around his feet, to the screams of the men, to the blasts of artillery shells and the rats wallowing in the dugouts. He thought he'd die then. He wasn't going to die now.

...If only he believed that kind of lie. The trees were blending in with each other around him. He was so far out of his depth... he dipped his head in frustration and plodded forward, wishing he'd stayed in Chicago. His eyes were directly downwards, focused on stepping over roots and avoiding dips in the uneven ground. Consumed by his thoughts, he failed to look up at the rock face he was quickly approaching.

Indiana stubbed his toe.

He couldn't even muster the energy to shout, and cringed in pain as he fell over backwards. The delicate embrace of a wooden patch of thornbushes graced his head as he fell, and blood trickled from several burning points along his back and neck.

"Ow, ow! Damn!" Indiana swore as he rolled over, shakily steadying himself as he shuffled over to escape the thorns and sat upright in a patch of less-thorny underbrush. Though, as he looked towards what he had run into, his eyes widened with hope.

Before him, a giant disruption in the generally flat nature of the rainforest around him towered into the sky. A large escarpment of stone, triangular in shape, around fifty yards or so in every direction. A few, distant rainforest trees escaped the canopy by sitting on top of the escarpment, and their giant, tangled roots shot downwards around the stone to the ground below for water and nutrients. He could see the lines of bricks underneath the overgrowth. It had to be a pyramid of some kind, artificially made. Without the map's vague directions, a passerby may have even just walked by it, assuming it to be an odd hill.

Breathless, Indiana Jones pulled out the cloth again. Its final symbol presented itself to Indiana: an image of a lunar symbol - or perhaps a swirl of some kind, with a star on its tail. He knew what he had to look for next.

Scrambling to his feet, Indiana Jones clutched the cloth in his left hand as he began to walk around the escarpment in a clockwise rotation. His eyes scanned the wall, only occasionally looking downwards to watch his step through the undergrowth. He was almost around to the opposite side of the pyramid from where he originally bumped into it when he found a gap in the roots.

A small cave lead inwards, only just large enough for him to get inside if he crouched. Something metallic glinted in the back of the cave in the light of the morning sun. A swirl with a star was engraved upon the metallic circle. Indiana unfurled the cloth once again, comparing the symbol with the metal: an exact match.

Getting down onto his knees, Indiana crawled inside, going towards the medallion. The cave floor was unusually dry when compared to the moisture of the rainforest soil outside. There were streaks of water he could make out in the shadows, all flowing towards the symbol, despite the fact that the floor was flat.

Shuffling forward, the sleeves on his beige shirt became stained and dirty from the muck on the floor. He stared up at the symbol engraved into the wall. The metal sparkled as he admired it. That yellowish glow... the lack of corrosion... was it gold?

Greedily, he shot his hand forward, scrabbling at the outer edges of the mark, trying to pry it from the wall. However, rather than gain purchase, he felt the mark - no, the button - depress under his fingers.

With a shout, he scrabbled for purchase as the floor gave way beneath him. The trapdoor obscured just below the symbol folded away, and Indiana hit the sloped floor below it with a grunt as he began to slide down deeper into the earth.

As he slid on his belly, trying and failing to grab onto the mud-covered, dim passage he was hurtling down, he paused as he saw what lay at the end of the chute. A vicious pit of spikes lay out before him, gleaming. With a shout, Indiana's life began to flash before his eyes.

His hand shot for his belt.

Indiana's body shot over the edge of the chute, but before he could plunge into the pit, the sound of a whip's crack filled the cave. Indiana's authentic kangaroo leather bullwhip snapped itself around a root clinging to the ceiling of the chute, and he desperately clung onto its handle with his mud-streaked hands as he dangled off the edge.

"Ha... ha... ha...!" Indiana panted as he looked down, his legs flailing over the pit. The wall in front of him was lined with bricks, and he kicked at them with his feet. Some of the bricks gave way, aging mortar unable to keep them secured into the wall. In their place, Indiana found convenient, dry footholds for his feet to go.

Removing only one hand at a time from his whip, he carved out some hand holds for himself, and assessed the situation around him. On the far side of the spike pit, there was flat ground, illuminated by light cast down the slope he slid down. As soon as he felt secure with his hand and footholds, he unravelled his whip and tossed it over the cavern to the safe side.

His muscles roared with pain and exertion as Indiana Jones slowly and cautiously made his way around the cavern via the walls. Finally, he had scaled around to the right side of the wall over the pit, and as soon as the safe surface was in sight, he jumped for it.

Kicking up a cloud of dust and pulling a muscle, Indiana hit the ground and collapsed into a heap. His lungs heaved for air as he sat up to get away from the cloud of dust. Something twinged in his back and his arms and legs ached from the climbing. His fall, he was sure, was going to bring up a new set of bruises along his side.

Lethargically reaching for his whip, Indiana turned around away from the shaft and the pit. It seemed like the passage made a turn up ahead. A promising, warm orange glow shone around the corner. Exhausted, Indiana half-crawled half-stumbled towards the passage.

He could vaguely make out some sort of carvings on the walls. As stuffy as his professor Ravenwood was, Indiana at least appreciated his knowledge - he wished he had somebody like him to decipher the carvings around him. On second thought, perhaps a more experienced man would have thought to bring supplies and a guide with him as well.

As he rounded the corner, the glow became stronger. The passage lead out into some sort of antechamber. The ceiling was tall, and made out of almost completely smoothed stone. Four pillars granted support, each with some sort of statue built into it. Indiana had almost no time nor brainpower to take in the details as his eyes transfixed onto the center of the room.

It was a basin. Above it, a huge glowing rock of some kind cast light into the room, and was dripping with moisture. Said moisture was gathering into the basin below. Clear, fresh-looking water beckoned Indiana forward.

Speed-crawling, he lifted himself painfully up over the edge of the basin, plunging his face into the water. He took large gulps, disregarding the consequences. The water tasted normal, even better than the canteen water he'd drunk yesterday. It was like it was freshly bottled, or perhaps from a recent rainshower.

Coming up from the pool to breathe deeply, puffing and panting. His recent exhaustion stacked neatly with holding his breath, forcing him to lean for a moment on the lip of the pool. He let his right arm hang into the basin, soaking his hand in the water. Retrieving it, he mopped his burning forehead with the cool moisture, before taking another scoop of water from the basin and raising it to his mouth. He repeated it multiple times, hydrating himself.

Indiana's eyelids felt heavy, and he was sorely tempted to pass out right there and then. However, not only was falling asleep in strange surroundings like this probably a bad idea, but the strangest sound met his ears. It sounded like a wail... a baby's cry? Or maybe wind moving through some kind of passage further on?

It took a lot of effort to pick himself off the ground, but he stood shakily, the quenching of his burning thirst giving him some extra will. His right hand shot to his back as he stood, the muscle that had strained when he jumped earlier twinging and twitching crazily. His breath hissed through his teeth, and his hand remained clamped to his back as he stumbled forward.

The walls of the cave, as he had noticed earlier, were no longer walled by brick and mortar. Instead, they were made out of completely smooth, grey stone. The ceiling was irregularly low, and as Indiana approached the sides, where it dipped in slightly, he had to bend his neck to not bump his head. Four pillars once again reinforced the ceiling, and each was adorned with the strangest carved stone statue.

They were horses, but they were very... oddly proportioned. Their heads were too large, their muzzles were too short, and their eyes were massive. Already, the equine sculptures were nothing like any horse Indiana had ever seen, but the long, spiraling unicorn horns on their heads and Pegasus's wings along their sides made them mythical. He was pretty sure Unicorns and the Pegasus were Mediterranean myths... and that there were never horses in Panama before the Europeans arrived.

The cry echoed through the cavern ahead, beckoning Indiana forward. The smoothened stone continued through a small tunnel, one that he'd need to crouch to walk through. His whip was coiled and ready once again. It gave him some confidence as he stalked off towards the tiny entrance. He crouched oh so slowly and carefully, trying not to aggravate his pulled back muscle.

The rim of his fedora brushed against the top of the tunnel. Indiana's breaths came in quick, short pants as the muscle in his back continued to twitch and pulse. More golden light spilled down through the end of the cavern. The crying grew louder. It definitely wasn't wind, or something artificial. Indiana instinctively knew the sounds of a baby's cry.

The height of the corridor began to stretch out ahead, allowing Indiana to stand again.

More of those stones glowed along the walls of the chamber ahead. There were six of them in total, three on the left and three on the right. They stood at the head of yet more pillars of similar design to those before. The stones, rather than dripping moisture like the one positioned above the basin in the last room, were instead perfectly dry. They, in fact, seemed more like finely cut decorative gemstones.

At the far end of the chamber, a staircase spiralled upwards towards the ceiling. More engravings, murals, and sculptures adorned the walls. However, Indiana neither possessed the ability to decipher them, nor the focus to even attempt to do so. At the moment, his eyes were immediately drawn to the center of the room.

The first thing that caught the treasure hunter's eyes was the altar-like object in the middle of the room. Carved from stone, with some elements of timber and bone decoration, the table held a single item, caked in dust and cobwebs. It looked almost like an old pendulum clock, except it was encased in gold. It had three hands, two with the same length and one that was wider and shorter. The one that was wider and shorter was currently in between the other two.

The second thing to catch his eye was the thing making the noise. Lying in the center of the chamber, shivering, wet, and bawling with all the fury of a newborn separated from its mother, was a small furry creature. It had a golden pelt, with a strangely pigmented mane and tail of black and grey colors.

He approached both the creature and the altar, shoes thumping on the stone and echoing throughout the chamber. For a single moment, the tiny creature stopped its wailing and stared up at him. Haunting, rose-colored eyes met his. Indiana froze in place as, for a split second, they shared eye contact.

There was something different in that look. He had a dog growing up, he'd looked into his eyes more than once. He'd ridden horses, and he'd looked at them while feeding them. He even had a black-hooded rat at one point which liked to look at him. But no, the colorful creature's stare did not compare to that of an animal. Instead, the subconscious sense in the back of Indiana's mind gave him the sense of looking into another human's eyes.

The animal went back to crying again.

Instantly, Indiana glanced back and forth between the artefact on the pedestal and the creature lying before it. The creature was clearly helpless. A quick glance around the room showed no evidence of a big mommy colorful rat-horse around to protect its child. What he was looking at was clearly some sort of fascinating, undiscovered species of animal in Panama. If he brought it back with him...

He rubbed his chin as he stalked forward towards the wailing infant. For a moment, he envisioned the Lincoln Park Zoo back home in Chicago. Oh, how much might they pay for something so interesting and unknown as this?

Perhaps he should upgrade his expectations for what exactly he was buying with all the cash he was going to be rolling around in after he got out of here. His hands went to his bag. He could carry the inanimate treasure in his arms. The little squirming brute would probably need to be encaged in his cloth bag for a while.

He dumped out the useless possessions inside. A few papers he had been keeping notes on, an empty bottle of citronella oil, and a shaving kit all clattered to the floor. He only kept the box of matches and the cloth guiding him to the site inside, leaving enough space for him to carefully kneel next to the creature.

Holding out his hand towards the rat-horse, he tested the waters slightly. He waggled his fingers in front of its mouth, ready to pull back at the slightest sign of movement. The creature continued crying, tears streaking down its cheeks, and leaned forward, opening a mouth without teeth. It sniffed his hand, pausing its screaming as it did so. After, assumedly, finding out that Indiana's fingers were not its mother's teat, it went right back to its misery.

Grinning, Indiana crouched down, expression shattering with pain as his back twinged again. Working his left hand underneath the infant's midsection, he lifted it up and into the open top of his bag. Dumping it unceremoniously inside, his sack began to wriggle with its new occupant. His right hand simply closed the top, tying off the strap to the button halfway down.

The muffled screaming continued from inside the bag as Indiana stood back up, approaching the second part of his prize. As he reached for it, his ears twinged as he heard something from behind him. The sound of wood falling over, followed by faint, echoing voices. He caught a few words of Spanish through the distortions of the hallways behind him.

Panicked, Indiana grabbed the treasure from the pedestal. For the first time, he felt the ticking of clockwork and the pulsing of an unnatural warmth inside. The crying continued from his bag as tiny kicks and squirms made the it knock against his torso. Regardless, as the adrenaline rush put temporary pain out of Indiana's mind, he took off towards the exit.

His shoes clicked against the stairs as he heard the voices from the antechamber once again. There really could only be two explanations: this particular treasury had some native guardians, or those gangsters from Panama had figured out where he was going. He'd gotten shot at by them. He'd rather not feel the sensation of being shot at again.

As he clambered up the stairs, back twinging like crazy, Indiana had a bad feeling that this was less than likely.

Shouts were heard from below him as he reached his fourth spiral of stairs. Above him, shafts of natural sunlight shone down. As he reached the climax of the spiral, he found himself at the top of the pyramid. Below him, he saw bushes - fortunately for him not of the thorny kind.

Considering the living and probably delicate contents of his bag, and also considering the somehow still-working clockwork inside the treasure he held, Indiana resisted the urge to jump into the bushes. Instead, planting his heels into the crumbling side of the escarpment, he turned to begin climbing down.

However, as he did so, his back twinged again. With a painful scream, Indiana Jones fell backwards down the escarpment. The clock flew out of his arms as he did so, and his bag floated above him as he went through airtime.

Fortunately, the drop wasn't that far. Only a few feet. Branches crackled around him as he fell into the sharp, wooden mass at the bottom of the cliff. His bag bounced off of his chest, and the slam of the clock hitting the ground next to him made him wince.

Indiana Jones lay panting on the ground, praying silently that his back wasn't broken, then praying that the clock wasn't broken, then praying he hadn't accidentally killed his live cargo. Sniffles followed by continued screaming assured him that his last prayer was answered, and the fact that he could wiggle his toes and slowly sit up from his landing place confirmed the first. He scooped up the clock, still ticking, thanking whatever guardian angel was looking over his bastard soul.

Using his legs, Indiana propelled himself backwards further into the undergrowth, dragging the clock along with him. Shouts in Spanish came from the top of the ridge. Thinking fast, Indiana Jones took his bag and unclasped the top of it. The screams of the child within would attract the attention. If he could throw it far enough away from himself and laid low, perhaps he could make a break back into the jungle while the thugs were distracted.

However, something in his heart broke as he looked at the infant's bruised face poking from the top of his bag and saw the river of tears streaming from its face. For a second, his world melted away around him...

Artillery shells slammed the surface above Private Jones's dugout. Rats crawled around near his feet, but Henry Walton Jones Jr. had been all but desensitized to their presence at this point. His helmet rattled on the table next to him as the small kerosine lantern shook with the quaking of the guns. The noises were too loud for him to talk to his comrades, who were all crowded around.

He had been in that hole in the ground for months, fighting over the same piece of dirt. He had to have seen hundreds die already. How many did a normal 17 year old kid see die in a single day? None? Maybe they'd see someone die once in their lives, hopefully after saying their goodbyes on the edge of a hospital bed before they passed peacefully into their sleep.

Tears streamed down Jones's face. He'd seen five day today. Not even by enemy fire, not by the gas, not by the shells. One choked to death on his own fluids as he died of septic shock on the side of the trench. Three were drowned in the mud. Another's broken body was pulled from a collapsed dugout.

Jones remembered the child that volunteered to go to Europe not 4 months ago. God, had it been that long? How he wanted to fight the hun, avenge the babies from Belgium...

Now, he just wanted to go home. But what was home going to give him? He desperately wished he could look forward to seeing his mother, and for her to hold him and to tell him it was all going to be alright. He'd even tried to write a letter to his dad... but he never got a response.

His fellow soldiers stared into the lamp as another shell shook the earth. Jones raised his hands to his head and began to weep.

His hand froze over the infant's face. The creature continued to cry, its tear-stained squinted eyes staring desperately into his. A single tear rolled down his own cheek.

The sound of something sliding down the cliff face nearby brought Indiana out of his reverie. He looked as a man, stuffed into a grey pinstripe suit and followed by several muscular natives wielding tommyguns and rifles. Clearly listening for the sounds of the cries, it wasn't long before their eyes were attracted to the suspiciously human-shaped lump hiding beneath nearby bushes.

Their guns levelled towards Indiana in an instant.

"Come out!" the suited man spat through a thick Spanish accent. It was Santina's son, the one that had watched while they beat the location of the Clock from Indiana back in Panama, "We can see you there! No point in hiding!"

Letting the live cargo drop to his side in his bag, Indiana slowly stood up, back complaining all the way. His right hand raised above his head. His left hand, still clutching the clock, hung by his side.

"What is making that infernal noise?" the man asked, before shaking his head, "No matter! Mr. Jones, I'm impressed. You've managed to give us a headache! The fun's over now. Hand over the Clockwork Compass of Christophine!"

That was Indiana's first time hearing its full name. Regardless, he wasn't in much of a position to be asking questions. Despite the fact that he knew they were just gonna execute him anyways afterwards, Indiana threw the artefact towards them.

The clock clattered across the jungle floor, rolling towards them. Immediately, every last one of the gangster's eyes, and guns, went towards their prize. Once again, Indiana's personal angel blessed his threadbare soul as he reacted, almost on instinct to the opportunity provided to him.

Willing all of his energy and adrenaline into his back to not give out again, Indiana turned on heel and sprinted into the forest.

"HEY! ¡DETENER!" a voice shouted from behind Indiana. Unwilling to risk ducking with his back, Indiana took a hard left, banking between the trees.

Bullets scattered through the vines and undergrowth around him. Something shot past his right arm, and he felt stinging pain throughout the region as it grazed his forearm. Sucking down the last of his energy reserves, Indiana sprinted as if the finish line was right in front of him, bobbing and weaving as he attempted to disappear himself into the underbrush.

Fortunately, as the gangsters' shots turned out to be less than spectacular, especially as they attempted to run n gun. Bullets impacted the trees and bushes around him, but never found their way to his fleshy center mass. The sound of water rushing came from up ahead, and soon enough Indiana found himself bowling through riverside vegetation as he emerged on a riverbank.

Murky brown water flowed downstream to his left. Indiana had crossed this river, or at least a tributary of it, while following the clues to the Cl- no, Compass. He knew for a fact it was piranha infested, and had to use a fallen log to cross it. There was no swimming, especially not with his bleeding arm and breaking back.

However, as his vision swept to the right, he saw salvation waiting for him, tied to a tree by the river. A yellow bi-wing seaplane. It must've been how the gangsters arrived here. With any luck, it was his ticket back to civilization. Indiana was no pilot, but he'd gotten the vague gist of it back while working in reconnaissance...

With angry, shouted Spanish closing in from behind him, Indiana took off running down the gravel riverside towards the plane. Reaching up to the place where the plane was tied to the shore, Indiana's gnarled, raw hands undid the knot. Shakily, he stepped onto the left pontoon of the plane, beginning to climb aboard as it moved away from the shore, carried away by the current.

Tossing his live cargo into the pilot's side window, Indiana began to mount the short ladder leading up to the door. He hissed as his back gave way once again, causing himself to fall back onto the pontoon. Losing his balance, Indiana's arms flailed as he began to lose balance and leaned away from the plane and towards the swarming waters below him. However, at the last moment, his left hand caught one of the struts between the wings.

On the shoreside behind him, gangsters charged from the trees. Eyes bulging at the sight of them raising their weapons, Indiana lifted himself up with the wing and dove into the plane's cabin. Fortunately, he paused his leg just before he stepped on the squirming bag that had ended up on the floor, hurriedly pulling the door closed behind him.

Bullets hit the fuselage of the plane, punching holes in the cabin around Indiana. Ducking out of sight of the windows, he reached for the engine's ignition, gunning it as the plane's propeller spun to life. By now, the mobster's guns were hitting the back of the plane, shattering windows and creating holes in the fuselage.

Indiana's head hesitantly raised as the gunfire stopped, either because they were getting too far away or because they had to reload. Hurriedly, he looked at the controls in front of him. He recognized the yoke, the instruments, he saw a bunch of levers, there were pedals on the floor below him-

He heard something shuffle behind him and his brow furrowed. Why exactly would the gangsters leave their plane completely unattended...

The feeling of rope cinching around his neck answered his questions almost immediately. Two dark skinned hands held a cable around his neck, and he felt his lungs panic and strain as his airway was closed. Choking, he beat against the person who was no doubt in the seat behind him.

It was no use, his grip was tight, and the man himself was smart enough to duck around Indiana's own seat back to avoid his struggling limbs. Eyes bulging, Indiana scanned the cabin for any last measure weapons as darkness closed around his vision.

The window to his left had been shattered by multiple gunshots. A jagged piece of glass reflected Indiana's face.

Ignoring the pain, Indiana grabbed the jagged glass, ripping it free of the window. Despite the blood streaming down his hands, he jabbed it backwards, stabbing his strangler.

A Spanish swear was screamed as the grip was released, and air filled Indiana's lungs as he pulled himself forward towards the yoke. For some reason, Indiana felt the plane accelerating despite its engine not being throttled up. He had no time to think much further as he spun around in his chair, facing the man behind him.

A cursory glance pegged him as the original pilot of the aircraft, if his helmet and goggles were anything to go off of. The man nursed his hand, impaled by a blood-stained shard of glass, for just long enough for Indiana to wind up a right hook straight to his jaw.

In retaliation, the pilot kicked Indiana's seat. Some mechanism inside caused the seat to slide forward, and Indiana's behind firmly pressed the yoke down. Using the extra space the pilot reached for his belt, drawing a knife from a sheath. Indiana raised his hands, catching the knife-bearing hand just in time before it came down on his face.

The pilot pushed his body weight onto the knife, inching it closer towards Indiana as his weak arms failed against the man who had probably eaten in the past four days. The pilot laughed manically as Indiana's arms began to fail under the pressure.

The box for the plane's flaregun gleamed in the corner of Indiana's eye.

At that very moment, the crying from beneath Indiana's seat picked up again, filling the cabin with incessant screeching, louder than even the rushing water outside. For a moment, the pilot must have questioned what the noise actually was, and Indiana once again knew when to take his moments.

Pushing all of his strength into one desperate shove, Indiana backed the knife's handle all the way into the man's nose, causing him to recoil away. Before the pilot could finish him off with another stab, Indiana's right hand plunged into the flaregun box, ripped the gun from its mounting, and squeezed the trigger directly into the pilot's face.

The pilot screamed and flailed as the flare scalded his face, bouncing up into the ceiling of the cabin as he fell backwards. It fell back down on top of his chest, his clothes igniting. Immolated, the man stood unsteadily in the rocking cabin of the plane. With little choice, he dove for the rear door sitting next to him, flying out over the pontoon into the water. The blood trickling from the glass in his hand sealed his fate moments later as the water boiled with piranhas.

Chuckling in relief, Indiana reached down to the lever controlling the positioning of the seat. Squeaking, the pilot's seat moved back into its original position. Indiana's cloth bag, which was still undone from when he was hiding in the bushes, was empty, and the infant had crawled out. They were covered in bruises and scratches, and its cries had died down... probably because it had become hoarse over the past who-knows-how-long of desperate crying.

Indiana frowned, feeling bad. He reached out a hand to try and pick up the creature and perhaps comfort it, but he paused as he saw out the front windshield with his peripheral vision.

The reason the plane had been accelerating was because they were in a stretch of rapids.

At the end of the rapids, not more than eighty yards away or so, the rapids ended in a waterfall.

"...Shit," Indiana whispered.

At once, his eyes diverted back down to the controls in front of him. Levers... yes, the throttle lever! When he was assisting on that movie set, he'd seen the pilots do that before! Hoping against hope, he threw all three of the levers on the right side of the pilot's seat all the way forward. With a bang of an engine's backfire, the propellor began to speed up. Then, with nothing else to do, Indiana pulled the yoke all the way back as the plane began to speed up towards the edge.

Rocks parting the current passed the plane on both sides. Spray from the water splashed up around the plane, shooting through the shattered windows. Bloodied right hand and gnarled left hand gripping the flight yoke, Indiana held on for dear life as the plane reached the edge. For a moment, he could see the rainforest all around him. In the distance, he even thought he could see the ocean.

His view shot downwards towards the rocks at the base of the falls as the plane nosedived off of it. He felt a grip on his leg as the rat-horse had the good sense to hang on for dear life. He braced his feet against the floor of the cabin, using the pressure to pull back on the yoke despite the loss of gravity from the fall.

Slowly, the plane responded. Its nose climbed as the drop gave it speed. Indiana's rear end slammed back into the seat as the plane levelled out, the worst pain of his life coming from his back and causing him to yell. The plane continued to climb, and Indiana unsteadily evened out the yoke, allowing it to level itself after climbing clear above the treeline.

Panting heavily, eyes squinted nearly shut from the pain in his back, Indiana finally relaxed his grip on the yoke. Literally everything on his body hurt. Fluid dripped from the cut on his arm. His right hand was completely bloodied by the glass shard. His back screamed in pain. His toes were numb and tingly. His head pounded and his throat burned. His vision swam as the adrenaline finally wore off, and Indiana struggled to keep the plane straight as he looked around through the windows for civilization.

The sight of buildings lining a coast nearby was good enough for him. He pulled the yoke left, allowing the plane to lazily turn towards civilization.

Groggily, he looked down at the creature still clinging to his leg. It had stopped crying, perhaps out of exhaustion. Instead, it just sniffled and whimpered pathetically, staring up at him with flooded, quivering eyes. Grumbling, Indiana reached down to the sliver between the seat and the right side door, retrieving his fedora, "Bud, I know you're a baby and all. But cut me some slack, I've just been through some tough shit too."

The infant's ear flicked, and another heart-wrenching whimper escaped its lips. Indiana didn't care. Not because he was particularly unmotivated by the creature's emotional state, but because he was struggling to not pass out as he piloted towards civilization.

The last thing Indiana recalled was pulling back on the throttle, feeling like he was trying to drag 200 pound weights through the mud with a single arm, and descending towards the sea next to civilization...