View Full Version : boing, boing, boing, boing...
4I Falcon
May 15, 2002, 06:40 PM
okies. i'm writing a story... here... about my characters' (Jack Flash, my friend Captain Firefox, and a few others, like Headcheese and Wizard of Odds) origin. I was planning on using a few names here and there... y'know, like your character names... but i decided it might not be such a smooth idea if anyone found out and gave me heck about it.
So now i'm actually asking first. if there's anyone who wants to have a small cameo... possibly larger, depending on how much you pay me :D j/k... please say so here. is of great help.
thanx.
KRSplat
May 16, 2002, 01:49 PM
Sure. Use me. ;)
But I have a question, is this a JJ2-related story and be posted in the War Tavern? Or not? ;)
If so, this is my desc.:
Male
Rabbit
Green fur with a silver gun. (For duels, he uses a grey gun.)
Clothes: Well, I'm still making this up, but: White T-shirt (made of polyester, I like that stuff ;p), arm-band on upper part of the lower arm, jeans. Also has a watch. More on it in the next section.
The watch is not only a clock, but it also tracks movement. It can show you where you are on the planet (and what planet you're on) by means of sattelite.
If not, do whatever. I don't care, since I won't be seeing it ;p
4I Falcon
May 16, 2002, 03:32 PM
If clan names are part of your name, please specify if you just want the name part (i.e. Splat instead of KRSplat). If not, I'll use the clan name as the character's initials (i.e. K.R. Splat).
K?
K.
:D
Violet CLM
May 16, 2002, 07:52 PM
I actually think the KR is just a part of his name. Like Electric IR. (Of course, I could be wrong about both of them. It's a wonderful feeling.)
KRSplat
May 17, 2002, 01:06 PM
KR is part of my name. It's not a clan (but if you want it to be, it stands for kRaZy Rat.)
My clan is Not a Clan, with the tag NC. You might not want to type it every time you say my name, but if you want something about it, use it. ;)
4I Falcon
May 29, 2002, 08:06 AM
um... ok.
I'm using Haze's concept of the Royal Order of Armed Rabbits (R.O.A.R.) in my story... if anyone (especially Haze) has a problem with this, plz notify me immediately, and I'll change it.
Once again, I'm not trying to plagiarize or steal ideas... i'm just a poor n00b hiding in the background... :D
JediGrath
Jun 14, 2002, 07:58 AM
Can I join?
Profile:
Name: Grath
Age: Doesnt matter
Powers: Force. Push, Pull, Lift, Shoot blue lightning
Weapons: Lightsaber, standard blaster pistol
Appearance: Pure black rabbit with bright blue eyes
Clothes: Red headband, White robe, Black belt with holster for pistol and lightsaber
Ducky
Jun 14, 2002, 11:06 AM
So, "Newbie" ...You know your way around too well and you use the lingo too fluently..I'm suspicious. ^_^
Anyway. to bring to your attention a comment of Defalcons', is this story in any way related to Jazz2?
As far as i know furry stories are fine...there certainly have been enough of them around in the past...
Actually wait. Scratch that; if you've got joiners from the game & board then you're cool. Never mind. Thx ^.^
...and while I'm at it...can I have a tiny part?
*grin* I haven't joined a story in too long.
4I Falcon
Jun 14, 2002, 07:21 PM
I'm going to start posting chapters of Enter: Jack Flash on the War Tavern, but I'm also going to leave it in Word format and submit it to LC when I'm done. Add any criticism you like... just make sure it's helpful, and not a hindrance. I HATE when ppl do that. :r
Just so ya know. :D
Anyway, here goes:
Enter: Jack Flash
Part 1: The Tank Campaign
Prologue: Almost a Year
It had been almost a year since Jazz Jackrabbit had defeated Devan Shell for the second time, and mangled his plot to turn Carrotus’ history upside-down. Jazz and Princess Eva Earlong were now husband and wife, and the green super-rabbit had finally gained the respect of the Queen. Even Spaz and Lori had official titles now.
But all was not over for the turtle empire. A new mastermind has risen in place of Devan… one even smarter and more devious then Devan himself. And now he poses yet another new threat to Carrotus… one that won’t simply change the rabbit planet, but instead, wipe it out forever…
It was a beautiful, cloudless morning over Carrotus City and its surroundings. The sun shined warmly over the green grass and its gigantic bounty over Carrotus’ famed giant supercarrots, well-known throughout the entire system of planets of which Carrotus was a part. The grass shined gently, drops of dew twinkling from the new light of the day’s sunrise. But all of this beauty was lost upon the planet’s green-furred hero, one Jazz Jackrabbit. Jazz continued to run after his spaced-out little brother, Spaz, through the growth of Carrotus, with the planet’s bounty of super-carrots zooming past him as his long legs carried him at super-high speeds. Jazz had opted for an early morning run; for the past few months, he came to enjoy them more and more, and it helped him get his mind off of his arch-enemy, Devan Shell, and most recently, Devan’s brother Shellion. Now, however, he was exhausted from the run, and Spaz, with his seemingly infinite supply of energy, led him on a merry chase, weaving between the large carrots like it was an obstacle course. Jazz followed him doggedly around yet another super-carrot, when they both heard a sound that stopped them in their tracks:
“JAZZ!”
It was the Queen, and by the sounds of it, she was flipping out already. Rather than get her angrier by not showing up promptly, Jazz called to his brother. “C’mon, Spaz. We better get back to the castle, before the Queen decides to throw us in the dungeon again.” He grinned, but on the inside he shuddered. That had not been a good experience at all for him.
In any case, Spaz nodded, and they both took off in the direction of Carrotus City…
4I Falcon
Jun 14, 2002, 07:24 PM
Chapter 1: Introductions
“JAZZ!”
The loud, resounding scream of Queen Earlong’s high-pitched voice pierced the late morning air as Jazz and Spaz made their way to Carrotus Castle. Jazz ripped some grass out from the ground beneath him and stuffed it into his ears. Running relatively slowly towards the looming castle in which he unfondly recalled being a prisoner, he became slowly aware that Spaz was not with him any longer. Keeping his wits about him, he quickly turned around, hand on his gun, ready to shoot up some shell… and saw Spaz, happily blasting away at one of Carrotus’ famous giant super-carrots, which promptly fell on him. One of his hands poked out from under the huge carrot, and the hand began to frantically wave back and forth.
“Hoo boy… not this again…” Weary from the long run he had taken with his little brother, Jazz tried, to no avail, to pull the giant carrot off of Spaz. He leaned against the carrot, becoming more and more tired. He took a bite off of the carrot, which revitalized him slightly, as any size carrots will do to any rabbit. He grabbed the small, madly waving hand, and pulled hard.
Almost immediately, Spaz popped out from under the carrot. Lying on his back, he emitted his trademark giggle, hopped to his feet, and dashed off in a quick run. Jazz leaned against the fallen carrot again, massaging his aching feet. When he was ready to go, about five seconds later, he wound up his legs and took off like a bullet.
The world turned into a blur of the blue sky, the orange carrots, and the green of everything else. Jazz easily passed Spaz a good distance from the castle, then skidded to a halt and watched, laughing inwardly, as Spaz crashed headlong into the wall, then fell, unconscious, to the floor. Happens every time, he thought to himself. You’d almost think he enjoys running into things.
“Ahem.” Jazz looked up to see Eva standing on a low balcony. “You coming in, or not?”
Tapping the spread-eagled figure of Spaz with his foot, Jazz called back up, “Yup… just let me get doofus-brain here up and running again.” He gave Spaz an extra-hard nudge with his foot, which woke him up. Spaz giggled again, jumped to his feet, said, simply, “Oops,” and sped inside the castle.
Jazz shot a withering glance up to Eva. “See what I have to deal with all the time?”
Eva rolled her eyes and went inside.
On entry to the castle, Jazz found Spaz, Lori, Eva, and Queen Earlong waiting for him. Jazz looked quizzically at the Queen, who gave him a tired look, and said, “Follow me.”
Indeed they did follow, with the Queen and Eva in the lead, and the Jackrabbit siblings close behind.
“So, does anyone know what this is about yet?” Jazz whispered to Spaz and Lori.
Spaz gave him a dumbfounded look (which is the way he looked most of the time anyway), and Lori shrugged. “We don’t know yet. But the Queen says it’s important. It might have to do with Devan, but that’s left to be found out.”
Jazz gave Lori a puzzled look, and replied, “But we destroyed Devan, remember? The time machine? BANG?” He looked to Spaz, who was nodding so fast Jazz wondered why his head didn’t just pop off.
However, Lori knew what she was getting at. “But he still had his goons. They may have started a lizard revolution, and you know how the Queen feels about that.”
“Right.” By this time, they had entered the castle’s base of commands, where Queen Earlong issued orders to her Legions, the renowned name for the main branch of the Carrotus Army. In the middle of this room, there was a small table. Not a long, banquet-esque table, just a small, round table. Jazz wondered how Queen Earlong could possibly get her entire army into this small room, and his eyes strayed to the pictures on the walls. Several of them sprang out at him. Apart from his own, Spaz’s, and Lori’s, Rico, James, Adren and Aline, and K.R. Splat were familiar names to him. It occurred to him that those five had all been Captains in the Queen’s Legions. The Captains were the only Legions members to come into this room. Having figured this out, he turned his attention back to the Queen. Luckily, he hadn’t missed much; she had just finished her rant about how this new threat had to be eliminated as soon as possible. She was just getting on to exactly what this new threat was. They sat down at the table.
“Intelligence reports have brought back to us that one of Devan’s followers, Buster Tank” – here Lori nudged Jazz in the side, and whispered “Told you.” – “has built a super-satellite, one as large as Carrotus City itself. He intends to use it to spy on Carrotus, mainly to clue himself in on our battle plans and strategies.”
Lori piped up. “So? We’ve destroyed satellites before, and a spy satellite isn’t anything new, even one this big. This’ll be easy,” she said, turning to Jazz and winking.
“Lori, I know what you’re thinking, but let me finish,” the Queen interrupted.
Jazz cocked an eyebrow. The Queen wasn’t this nice to him, why was she acting so peachy towards Lori? Hopefully it wasn’t just because they were both female… Jazz had no way of rectifying that.
The Queen continued. “This satellite is also equipped with some heavy weaponry. He’s armed the satellite with a beam cannon strong enough to destroy a planet. Which means, eventually, when Tank gets tired of us and our species, he presses a button, and Carrotus explodes.”
“Ouch. I take it that would not be good,” Jazz said under his breath.
“I heard that. And no, it would not be good at all.” The Queen frowned in Jazz’s direction. “As you might have guessed, we need to find a way to get up to the satellite, destroy or neutralize the beam cannon, and take out Tank. I presume this will be no hard task, considering you have destroyed Devan already?”
She cast a sidelong glance at Jazz. “Twice?” The green-furred rabbit grinned sheepishly.
A voice came from the door to the room. “I can help you get to the satellite.”
Immediately the Jackrabbits were up from their seats, blasters trained on the speaker, a modestly built, completely black rabbit. He even had shades on to block out his eyes. If the room had been any darker, they might not have seen him. As it was, there were a few seconds of silence, and then he raised his hands, showing them his empty palms.
Queen Earlong was about to explode at this unwelcome intruder, but the assurance that he was not carrying any weaponry (or, at least, didn’t have any immediately at hand) mollified her a little. Still, she was fuming at this newcomer, who still had his palms open.
“Relax. I’m not here as a spy, certainly not for Tank. My name is Blaze Blackrabbit. I can help you out, to get rid of Tank. That’s if you don’t blast me to oblivion first.” He grinned.
At this, the Queen did relax, and said to the Jackrabbits, “Lower your guns. This one means no harm.” Lori and her brothers did so.
Blaze lowered his hands back to his sides, but not before removing the shades. His eyes glinted a bright yellow tint. “Right. Now, as I was saying, I can help you get to the satellite. Not only that, but I can get you a way in.”
Lori looked at Blaze, with a puzzled look on her face. “What do you mean?”
The smile on Blaze’s face spread even wider. “I’ll give you a clue: Blueprints tell you everything.”
Jazz only had to hear the word “blueprints” before he rushed forward to Blaze. He put his hands none too gently on the black rabbit’s shoulders. “You have blueprints? To the satellite? How?”
Blaze’s grin dissipated slightly, but his face still beamed. If it could, considering his fur was as black as obsidian. “Well, not me exactly. However, I can get access to them relatively easily, seeing as my superior has them in his possession at the moment.”
“Your superior?”
“Yes. Jack Flash.”
“Who?”
“Jack Flash. The finest gunner in all of Ouistreham.”
“Never heard of him.”
Blaze sighed. “Well then, you’re going to have to meet him. He’s a good leader, as far as I know.”
Lori was next to fit a question in edgeways. “And how are we going to meet this… Jack Flash? How will we know who he is?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll meet him soon enough. He has a tendency to be exactly in the right spot at the right time. As for knowing who he is—” at this point Blaze flipped his shades back on “—you’ll be able to take one look at him and know that it’s him. It’s just something he has, or does, or something.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. It’s happened before. Now, before I bid you all adieu, I must say good luck, and I’ll probably see you again sooner than you might think. But whether or not you see me is an entirely different story.”
That last statement was more than just a little ominous, Jazz thought to himself, exchanging a glance with his brother and sister. When he looked back to Blaze again, he was gone.
4I Falcon
Jun 14, 2002, 07:27 PM
Chapter 2: Onward to Ouistreham
“Where’d he go?!” They looked all around the room, but Blaze was nowhere to be found. “He just… disappeared! But how?”
“Guards!” called the queen. “Search the castle for a black rabbit with sunglasses. I don’t want to let him get away.”
“Don’t bother, mum,” Eva muttered. “If he’s so quick so that he got away from Jazz, Spaz, and Lori, he must be pretty fast. And what are we going to do after we catch him? It looks like we already have all the information we need out of him.”
“Such as where to find Jack Flash?” Queen Earlong’s blue fur was turning a slight shade of red.
“He said that too, mum. He’s the best shot in Ouistreham, right? So that’s most likely where we can find him.”
The Queen stared at Eva. “You know, sometimes you’re so smart it amazes me. It really does. I’m glad you’re my daughter.”
Eva shrugged. “It’s not necessarily smart, mum. It’s paying attention to details.”
“So when are we going to go to Ouistreham to find Jack Flash?” asked Jazz. “I mean, is there any particular reason why we can’t go now?”
“None at all.”
“Well then, let’s go! C’mon already! What are we waiting for?!” With that, Jazz wound up, and was about to take off, when Eva placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Jazz…”
“Mmm?”
Eva pointed a thumb over her shoulder, indicating the opposite direction. “Ouistreham’s that way.”
Jazz pasted an embarrassed grin on his face, and said, quietly, “Right. That way.” Then he launched himself in the indicated direction.
Lori shrugged. “Mneh.” Then she was off, as well. Spaz followed close behind, all at considerably high speeds.
The Queen and her daughter watched them until they were little specks in the distance, then went back inside.
Once again, the world turned into a blur of blue, orange, and green as Jazz raced along the flat ground of Carrotus. The wind whipped through his ears, filling his head with a loud howling noise. Jazz had become used to this, so he simply ignored it and focused on not hitting anything. Lori and Spaz caught up to him with some difficulty, so he slowed down a bit to allow them to run in a straight line.
“How far to Ouistreham, Lori?”
“About two and a half clicks from Carrotus City. It’s not very big. Last time a census was taken… well, they almost forgot it was there altogether. Nevertheless, it was a pretty small village. Just barely bordering on town status.”
“How small?”
“Last report said about 400 rabbits there. A few lizards, but they’ve proven to be benign.”
“I’m not planning on taking any chances. Besides, I like having my gun ready.”
“…”
Spaz was the first of the three to see the tops of the buildings of Ouistreham. “Look guys, we’re almost there!”
Jazz stared upwards at the rapidly advancing “village.” “Are those skyscrapers I see? Lori, how big did you say this place was?”
“About 400 rabbits.”
“What would 400 rabbits need to do with skyscrapers?”
“Beats me. Something caused this place to grow. Fast.”
They were into the outskirts of Ouistreham as Spaz read the sign that whizzed by. “Ouistreham. Population: 250000.”
“Whatinna…” Jazz almost fell over himself. “Lori, how long ago was this census of yours taken, anyway?”
“‘Bout ten years ago, would be my guess.”
“And this city has grown by… 625 times in ten years?!”
“I don’t know either.”
They were nearing the centre of the city. One particularly tall skyscraper loomed over the rest. Lori put her eyes to the test, reading the lettering at the top of the skyscraper. “‘R.O.A.R. Outpost 12.’ This is an outpost? Isn’t it a bit big?”
“Yeah, but the Royal Order of Armed Rabbits is a huge agency. They’ve got outposts bigger than this scattered around the planet. This one isn’t that big, if you’ve seen the others. We might as well take a look around anyway.”
“‘Kay.”
They were closing in on the R.O.A.R. building. Jazz signalled for Lori and Spaz to stop far enough away from the building so as to avoid crashing into it. Lori and Jazz slowed to a halt in front of the main doors, but Spaz, per usual, ran straight into the side of the tower. He backpedalled a few steps, looking and moving rather dazed. Jazz and Lori exchanged glances as Spaz toppled over.
“Sometimes I wonder whether or not he does that on purpose,” Jazz chuckled. Lori rolled her eyes.
The main doors of the R.O.A.R. tower swung open. Blaze stepped through them. “Well, you’re here. Welcome to the R.O.A.R. outpost at Ouistreham. Follow me.”
After Jazz and Lori helped Spaz get back up, they entered the building. It looked even more like a government agency on the inside than the intimidating, towering outside. Blaze walked on, and continued, “I take it you’ll be wanting to see Jack Flash then.”
“Jack Flash is a part of R.O.A.R.?” Jazz asked of the black rabbit.
“A very crucial part. Jack is one of the main reasons why we even have an outpost out here. This used to be a small village, barely even recognized, until Jack Flash was born here.
“The rumour is, that he had amazing targeting skills at a very young age. One day, he got hold of a blaster, and started shooting wildly – wildly, but incredibly accurately. Each of his shots hit something dead-on. Although his mother wasn’t too pleased about this, his father was intrigued.”
They stepped into an elevator, and Blaze pushed the button for the twenty-fifth, and top, floor.
“He started training Jack soon after that day, and Jack’s done nothing but get better at it. After his father died, he started training himself, just like his father trained him. And that’s where R.O.A.R. comes in.
“A R.O.A.R. agent just happened to see Jack shooting at a bullseye target one day. He took a closer look at the target… and the only hole was dead centre, shot through at least two dozen times. Like Jack’s father, he was incredibly intrigued. He asked Jack (even though he was still young) if he would join R.O.A.R. And the rest is history.”
“But why ask him to come to R.O.A.R. when he was so young?”
“This was about ten years ago. R.O.A.R. was a small system, not a quarter of the size it is today. They – we – needed all the help we could get.”
“And so you hired a leveret for your army?”
“Yes and no. He showed a particular interest for R.O.A.R., according to his mother – God rest her soul. When we asked her if young Jack would be part of R.O.A.R., she said yes, at least his gunmanship skills would be put to use there.”
The elevator stopped, and the doors opened. Jazz, Spaz, and Lori immediately noticed that this floor held no furniture. It was, essentially, a short, wide, nondescript hallway, that led to what looked like another of the same type of hall, going perpendicular to the one they were standing in. The Jackrabbits began to wonder if Blaze had pushed the wrong button, as they stepped out of the elevator.
Then, suddenly, as if on cue by the elevator doors opening, three blaster shots flew by, down the hall in front of them. Spaz jumped back a few steps, almost falling backwards into the elevator, and squeaked out something that sounded like “Wozzat?!”
More blaster shots flew down the hall, and this time the distinct sound of a clichéd ricochet was heard. Jazz crept forwards, and peered down the hallway. He found himself staring at a white-furred rabbit, complete with a blue bandanna, and a red blaster that looked like a perfect copy of his own, minus the colour difference.
Blaze was right, Jazz thought to himself. I’ve never seen this rabbit before… but I already know he’s Jack Flash…
Meanwhile, the rabbit spotted Jazz peeking out from behind the corner, and flipped his blaster over his shoulder into a large holster on his back. He ran easily towards Jazz, greeting him whole-heartedly. “Hi! Jazz Jackrabbit, right?”
“Yeah. I take it you’re Jack Flash?”
“That would be me.” As Jack approached Jazz, he noticed Lori and Spaz standing not a metre away. “And your brother and sister?”
“Yup. We came here from Carrotus City, after hearing about you through Blaze Blackrabbit. We need to enlist your help.”
“Why?”
Jazz explained the situation, about Buster Tank, the satellite, and the super beam cannon strong enough to turn Carrotus into a space cloud of carrot-dust.
“Whoa. What a mind job.”
“Yeah, now you understand why we’re here. And why we need to ask for your help.”
“My help? Just me?”
“Why? Do you have someone else in mind?”
“Quite a few, actually.” He pulled a walkie-talkie seemingly out of nowhere, clicked it on, and spoke into it. “Firefox?”
A voice, slightly deeper than Jack’s own, came back through. “Yes?”
“I need to see you in the level 14 conference room. Get Wizard of Odds, too. We may have a situation on our hands.”
“Gotcha.”
“Oh, and Firefox?”
“Yo.”
“Bring Splat.”
“‘K.”
Jack switched the walkie-talkie off, then said, “Right. Now we go back down to level 14. I take it you haven’t met Firefox or Wizard of Odds?”
“Nope,” Lori and Spaz intoned together.
“You and Blaze are the only two we’ve met of your squad, so far,” Lori added.
“So far,” Jack said. “Well, there’s more to R.O.A.R. than just me and Blaze. Or at least our part of R.O.A.R., anyway.”
“Your part of R.O.A.R.? What do you mean?”
“Well, we like to call ourselves the Elite Task Force. Actually, everyone does.”
4I Falcon
Jun 14, 2002, 07:29 PM
Chapter 3: The R.O.A.R. Elite Task Force
As they were riding back down to level 14 in the elevator, Jazz asked, “So I take it those names were from people in your Elite Task Force?”
“Yes. Myself, Blaze Blackrabbit, J. Firefox, Headcheese, Wizard of Odds, and K.R. Splat.”
Jazz’s eyes snapped open. “K.R. Splat?! He’s supposed to be dead! Well, he’s not supposed to be dead… but everyone thinks he is! He’s a part of the Elite Task Force?”
“Yeah, why?”
“He used to be a Commander in the Queen’s Legions, but he was supposedly killed in battle. And now he’s alive again…!”
“He’s been a member of R.O.A.R. since four years ago. He’s only been part of the Elite for about three months.”
The elevator doors slid open, and the party stepped out. Right in front of them, down a short hallway, was a large room with a long table. Five rabbits were already waiting inside, one of which was Blaze; another was K.R. Splat, the ex-Captain in the Queen’s Legions. The other three were not immediately recognized by the Jackrabbits.
One rabbit had dark red fur, and a green blaster slung in a holster along his back. He also wore an unbuttoned, floor-length black trench coat. He was muscular, and slightly taller than Jack. He had a fiery look to his eyes, and seemed to be glaring angrily at everything, but Jazz could tell the red-furred rabbit was glad to see them, mostly by his amicable grin. Another rabbit had purple-ish fur, and wore a small set of glasses. Lori could just narrowly make out a small yellow blaster, similar to her own, hanging from his belt. Jazz saw the other one in a small holster on the opposite side of his belt. He looked like one that would be intelligent in all matters, but didn’t look outwardly like a nerd type, possibly because he was packing heat. The one other rabbit that the siblings didn’t already know had the same sort of body structure as Spaz, and would have been a dead ringer for him had her fur not been blue. As they walked into the room, all three of them could see her discreetly hide a small object behind herself.
Jack introduced them all. “You’ve already met Blaze Blackrabbit, and, according to Jazz, K.R. Splat is a well-known name to you.” The green rabbit grinned sheepishly, and said, quietly, “Hi, Jazz.” Jazz wasn’t exactly ecstatic to see Splat, but he managed to hide his feelings within his mind.
Jack gestured to the red-furred, muscular rabbit. “Meet Captain J. Firefox, one of the best troopers the Elite Task Force has to offer.” Firefox shot them a smart salute.
“Wizard of Odds, the brains of our outfit. Our own resident genius.” The purple-furred rabbit gave them a quick nod, essentially greeting them all with that one small gesture.
“And Headcheese. Psychopath extraordinaire. Also, unfortunately, my younger sister.” At this, the smaller, blue-furred rabbit grinned, and yelled, “HEWWO!”
Lori chuckled, and whispered to Jazz, “I’m willing to bet Headcheese and our own younger brother like each other already.”
She was right. Spaz was staring, wide-eyed, at Headcheese, apparently having thought there was no one else like him on the entire planet. And now he’d met a girl rabbit just like himself…!
Jazz had to restrain his brother from running full speed towards Headcheese. “Jeez, Spaz! You’re gonna kill someone here!”
Jack chuckled. “Well, he does bear a striking resemblance to Headcheese, among other things. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had everything in common. Apart from gender, of course.”
“Of course.” Lori gave a small smile. “Now, as for why we’re here…?”
“Right.” Jack sat down at the table, now dead serious.
“The Jackrabbits have told me about a new threat to our planet. His name is Buster Tank, a follower of Devan Shell. Now, according to these three esteemed warriors, Tank has built a super-satellite the size of Carrotus City, armed with a beam cannon strong enough to take out the planet.
“So, before I start going on about this, I’ll just put it this way: If Tank isn’t stopped, every rabbit on this planet will make the supreme sacrifice.”
Blaze cut in. “If the beam cannon is that strong, it’s going to need a lot of energy to power it. Where’s he planning on getting all that energy?”
“I’m willing to bet he’s modified one of Devan’s generators. Possibly, and probably, the one from the time machine itself.”
Firefox was next to speak. “Where’s Tank now? We might have a chance to stop him before he can use the beam cannon.”
Jack turned to Wizard of Odds. “Wizard?”
The bespectacled rabbit produced a small computer from seemingly out of nowhere, and typed something on the keypad. After a few seconds, he looked up. “He’s on the move, going north at a steady pace, just east of Kamarg City. Pretty fast for a turtle.”
“Then what are we waiting for? If he’s still on the surface, we’ve got a better chance of taking him out than after he leaves the planet.”
“Possibly because he’s not on the surface. He’s in the air. I just did a further scan of his area, and the readings say that he’s flying in a giant airship.”
“Armed?”
“Most likely.”
“Well, we have a solution for that,” Jack said, standing up. “Follow me.”
As they left the room, Jazz glanced at Headcheese’s chair, and saw the hidden object still lying on the seat.
It was a mallet.
Jazz followed Jack and the others into the elevator, holding the small mallet behind his back. He made sure to discreetly hand the mallet back to Headcheese, who hugged it like it was a lost friend.
Jack saw his sister’s affectionate display towards the little thing, and smiled. He leaned over to Jazz, and said, “Where’d you find that?”
“It was on her chair.”
“In the conference room?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, thanks for finding it. She probably would have gone bonkers if she found out she didn’t have it on her.”
“Why?”
“She loves the thing. I haven’t a clue why.”
“Oh. Okay.”
The elevator stopped again, and the doors opened. The only light on the entire floor was supplied by the elevator, and even then, it did not reveal much. Only a section of uncovered cement floor was illuminated by the elevator’s light. It was only when Blaze stepped out of the elevator and flipped a switch that they could see what was on that floor.
The basement was apparently a supply floor; doors with labels on them branched off of the main hall. Most of the labels were legible, but one or two appeared to be in some sort of symbol code. Blaze led them down the hall a short way, then stopped in front of a door marked “Airboards.” He opened the door, and they went inside.
Jazz, Spaz, and Lori looked around the room. There were airboards of virtually every size, colour, and power rating imaginable. Jack selected a bright blue one, and said, “Go ahead, take your pick. There’s enough airboards here to supply the entire planet.” He grinned again.
Jazz picked out a purple airboard, Lori decided on a navy blue airboard with yellow trim, and Spaz chose a red and blue one with four boosters instead of three. Splat, Blaze and Headcheese settled on an airboard each. Firefox took a while before he found one that he liked, and hopped onto it, hovering in the air.
Lori noticed that Wizard was still standing by the doorway, watching them each select a different airboard. “Aren’t you getting an airboard for yourself, Wizard?”
“Nah. I’m going to stay here and monitor operations… y’know, keep you posted.”
“You’re not coming with us?”
“Nope.”
“‘K, if you say so.”
At this point, Spaz was beginning to fly faster and faster around the room, holding on for dear life to the edge of his airboard, which itself was flying unmanned, so they decided, finally, to head out. Jazz grabbed Spaz by the leg as he flew by, and as the airboard zipped out from his hand, Lori caught it easily with one hand. Jack watched this perfectly coordinated act with great interest. These three must be even closer than I thought they were, he thought to himself. I wish I had a brother or si… well, there’s Headcheese, but she’s a nutcase.
He stopped, and grinned to himself. One would be able to make the same statement on behalf of Spaz. Go figure.
They left the airboard room, and Blaze led them farther up the long hall, towards a pair of doors set at the end of it. The black rabbit opened the door, and suddenly they were staring into the bright blue sky above. The doors led straight from the basement to the surface of Carrotus. Jack went outside, and hopped onto his airboard. Hovering in the air, he said to the others, “Well, we know where Tank is right now. What’s to stop us from going after him and teaching him never to mess with Carrotus ever again?”
“Wait a sec,” Wizard replied, reaching into a small green backpack. “You might need these.”
And with that, he rapidly tossed a small headset-intercom to each of the rabbits in succession. “This is how we’re going to stay in touch. I’ll keep you informed on Tank’s status, and notify you of events back here. All good?”
“All good.” Firefox quickly donned his headset, and bounded onto his own airboard. Blaze, Headcheese, Splat, and the Jackrabbits quickly followed suit.
“And now, without further ado,” Jack proclaimed, putting on his headset in a swift movement, “we take down Tank!”
With a roar of agreement, they took off, dust kicking up from the spot where their jet boosters had propelled them from. Wizard flipped out his pocket computer, and watched as eight dots moved together away from the center of the screen. After a few seconds, he looked back up, but the eight figures which the dots signified were nowhere in sight. Wizard of Odds sighed, flipped his computer back into his hand, and went back into the R.O.A.R. Outpost.
4I Falcon
Jun 14, 2002, 07:32 PM
Chapter 4: Assault on the Shellnaught
It was a few minutes until they received word from Wizard. His voice crackled through static on their headsets.
“Are y-- ---re? D- --- ---y?”
“What?!” Jazz shouted back into his headset. There was silence from the other end for a few seconds, then Jazz heard a shrill BEEP. Another second of radio silence ensued, and then Wizard spoke again, this time not affected by static.
“Are you there? Everything OK?”
“We’re all right, Wizard,” Jazz heard Firefox’s voice on his earpiece. “What news do you have for us?”
“Well, you’re going in the right direction, for starters.”
“That’s usually a good thing,” mumbled Jack sarcastically. It didn’t matter anyway, since the mouthpiece picked it up, and the entire group heard it.
“I heard that. Are you trying to insult my varied navigation skills?”
“Jeez, Wizard, it was a joke.”
“Then that’s OK. Now, Tank’s airship, the Shellnaught, is about 20 clicks ahead of you. He’s armed to the teeth on that thing, so keep on your toes. Be especially careful around the sonic wave cannons; they’re devastating to the ears.”
“Gotcha,” Firefox answered. “C’mon, boys—” he saw Headcheese glaring at him “—and girls… Let’s get moving!” He grabbed the tail of his airboard, pulled it up so the jets were facing behind him, and started flying at twice his original speed. Jack rolled his eyes, and followed suit, as did the others.
Jack looked down upon the planet, and its bounty of bright orange carrots seemed to beckon him from his airboard. All of a sudden he wondered why he hadn’t brought a small snack along for the ride. His stomach rumbled in agreement.
Before long, the looming hulk of the Shellnaught was in sight. It looked like a huge, flying, metal boat, and, as Wizard said, it was bristling with artillery. As the rabbits saw more and more of that artillery, they all became visibly nervous about flying straight at a floating battleship.
Wizard came through on the headsets again. “Can you guys see the Shellnaught yet?”
Jazz responded. “We’re right behind it, Wizard. Got any points of advice for us?”
“None that I haven’t told you already. Just be careful, stay low, and don’t get dead. OK?”
“We’ll try our best.”
Blaze indicated for them to slow down. All of the rabbits promptly let go of their airboards, allowing them to float back underneath their feet, and, cruising relatively slowly, readied their respective blasters. No one spoke a word. They coasted silently towards the huge metal base, ready to fire at any signal.
Just as Firefox was ready to loose a few shots on the supposedly unsuspecting warship, one by one, the guns started to turn and fire on the advancing group of rabbits. Dodging the blasts flying at her from seemingly all directions, Lori yelled out, “So much for the stealth approach, guys! Start shooting!”
Jazz grabbed Spaz’s arm to keep him from doing a quick 180 and flying away, and started shooting at a gatling gun atop the warship that seemed particularly interested in shooting him down. Spaz suddenly had a change of heart, and returned fire with his small green blaster. Soon enough, all eight rabbits were firing at different parts of the attacking warship.
A stray bullet grazed Jazz’s arm, and as he looked down to check that he wasn’t bleeding badly, he noticed Headcheese beginning to break off from the group. The guns hadn’t noticed yet, and he was glad for that. She seemed to be flying to the underside of the armed airship. Jazz glided over towards Jack, all the while firing at a small cannon on the side of the Shellnaught.
“Um, Jack?”
“Yo.”
“Have you noticed where your sister is going?”
“Yeah, under the airship. I told her to check if there are any ways we can get in, and hack this thing apart from the inside. I doubt we’re going to get anywhere by staying behind the airship and shooting at it; it seems to be well enough protected by its armour, and we aren’t getting any healthier dodging bullets left, right, and centre.”
“OK then,” Jazz said to the white rabbit, as the latter dropped a few feet in altitude to make sure Headcheese was okay. He glanced at her, and, assured that she was fine, he turned to head back up to blow some more guns off of the ship.
Just as he was turning away, however, he caught a gatling gun extracting itself from the underside of the ship out of the corner of his eye. “Oh sh... Headcheese! Get out of there!”
Headcheese turned around, only to be shot in the waist, stomach, and ribs by the gatling gun. She stood on her airboard for a few seconds, with three red marks in the fur up her right side, apparently in shock from the bullets hitting her. Then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she toppled off of her airboard. Without a pilot, the airboard quickly began to fall to the ground alongside her.
“Oh god…” Thinking quickly, Jack put an extreme version of Firefox’s quick acceleration into use. He flipped completely upside down, so that his airboard’s jets were right above him, facing up. With gravity and the jets going in the same direction, Jack began to increase speed in a steep drop. Headcheese’s was steeper, however, as gravity did its work and she accelerated in freefall.
He was quickly faced with another problem, as the gatling gun that shot down Headcheese turned and began firing at him. If any of those bullets hit his airboard… He shuddered to think, and concentrated on his dive towards his unconscious sister. At least I’ll be shielded by my airboard, Jack thought optimistically.
There were less than a hundred metres left between Headcheese and the ground when Jack’s hand finally clasped around Headcheese’s wrist. As soon as it did, Jack flipped himself back over, but it was a fraction of a second too late: The airboard smashed into the ground, and at that speed, it obviously shattered into several blue pieces. Headcheese was unscathed, other than her previous injuries, but Jack felt a sudden, immense pain in his right leg, and fell to the ground. Getting woozier by the second, he fired two flares into the air, and fell onto his back. He tried to sit up again, and then he blacked out…
Jack regained consciousness an indeterminate time later, and it took him a few seconds to realize that he had indeed regained consciousness. As he began to get some of the feeling back in his body, he realized that the immense pain in his leg had faded to a dull throb. He opened his eyes, and found himself lying on a small bed in a hospital room. Headcheese was lying not far away, and she was still asleep. Bandages covered the three spots where the bullets hit her. A young, gold-furred female nurse sat forlornly on the bed at her feet, with her back to Jack.
Jack sat up, and the pain in his leg flared slightly. He looked at it, and saw, instead of his own white fur, a plaster cast encircling his lower leg. As he stared at his incapacitated leg, he saw Firefox sitting on a chair on the other side of the room, engrossed in a magazine. Apparently, the red-furred rabbit saw Jack sit up, as he glanced at him, put down his magazine, and strode quickly over to the bed beside Jack’s own. Jack waited until Firefox sat down on the bed before he spoke.
“Where am I? What happened?”
“You’re in the hospital at Ouistreham. You gave a good shot to your leg, and passed out, from what I know. No one filled me in otherwise.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Firefox said, “It’s tomorrow, man. You and Headcheese have been out for a full day.”
“What about Tank?”
“That doesn’t matter at the moment. How’re you doing?”
“Well, my leg still hurts, but that’ll fade. What happened, anyway?”
“We didn’t manage to catch up to Tank. After seeing your flares, I dove down to see if you were OK. You and Headcheese were both lying on the ground, unconscious. Headcheese was bleeding, and your leg looked like it was badly damaged. Your airboard was in pieces, and Headcheese’s was buried half its length into the ground.
“That was when Wizard called us. He said Tank was readying all of the remaining guns on the ship for a huge last-stand attack. He told us to break off the attack, at least for now. So I called Blaze to my location, and we carried you and Headcheese back here.”
“How’s she doing?”
Firefox asked the gold-furred nurse. “Hey, Emmi… how is she?”
Emmi turned around. “She’ll recover. Although, those were some nasty hits that she took in the first place.”
“Indeed.”
Emmi glanced at the now upright Jack. “Well, you’re awake. How are you feeling?”
Jack smiled at the nurse rabbit. He winced slightly as another stab of pain hit his leg, and said, “I’ll be fine. Thanks.”
“What in the world did you do to get your leg like that?”
“Like what?”
“Both of your fibula and tibia were dislocated from your knee and ankle. Basically, your lower leg had three unconnected sections. You must have hit hard on whatever you landed on.”
“Is it still out?”
“No, we fixed it while you were still snoozing.”
Jazz pondered over this for a second, then turned to Firefox and said, “What’s Tank’s position as of now?”
Firefox was about to tell him, but Emmi put up a hand to stop him. “You’re not going anywhere in your current state. You can’t put exertion on your legs for at least two weeks.”
“Two weeks?! But how are we going to catch up to Tank?”
“You’re not. R.O.A.R. sent me a message; they’re sending Lieutenant Indigo and Splitter in your and Headcheese’s place. I’m sorry.”
4I Falcon
Jun 14, 2002, 07:37 PM
Such is the first four chapters of Enter: Jack Flash. Constructive criticism, ideas, donations of money (:D) would be graciously accepted.
Ducky and Grath, I'm trying to find you both a part in the story. I'm not quite sure where I'm going to put you yet. But I'll try to fit you in edgeways... somewhere... :D
JediGrath
Jun 15, 2002, 10:19 AM
Thanks. Also, I can sense what's happening somewhere else.
4I Falcon
Jun 15, 2002, 06:18 PM
Or can you?! BWAHAHAHAHA-- *trips and kills himself*
4I Falcon
Jun 24, 2002, 07:54 PM
Chapter 5: Viewpoints
“What…?!” Firefox half yelled, half whispered. “You can’t send Indigo! He’s not even part of the Task Force!”
“That’s what R.O.A.R. said. Don’t ask me.” Emmi shrugged. “Indigo may be inexperienced, but he’s a worthy fighter. That makes him a worthy ally.”
“And what about Splitter? He’s the youngest—” Before continuing, Jack glanced over at his unconscious, bandaged sister. “—well, second youngest member of R.O.A.R. He won’t stand a chance, especially alongside Indigo.”
“Relax, Jack, I’ll handle it.” Firefox rested a hand on Jack’s shoulder. He turned to Emmi. “I’m heading back to R.O.A.R. HQ. I need to… discuss this with the Jedi Master.” The Jedi Master was R.O.A.R. troopers’ nickname for General Grath, the highest ranking officer in Outpost 12. The reason he was nicknamed that, and also why he was a general, was because he was rumoured to be able to use what some rabbits knew as the Force to move things with his mind. However, only his immediate comrades had seen him do it before, which is why it was, indeed, a rumour.
Jack lied back down. “You sure he’ll take? He’s not really pleased by lower officers giving him orders. It’s kind of unorthodox, don’t you think?”
“Well, I can only hope he’ll understand what I’m telling him.”
Firefox began to walk towards the door, then stopped and turned around. “Jack, if I’m not able to persuade the good general not to send Indigo and Splitter… wish me luck. I’m probably going to need it. And Emmi?”
“Yes?”
“Make sure these two get better while I’m away. I’d like to see Jack up and running sooner rather than later.”
“Don’t worry. They’re in good hands.”
“I wouldn’t doubt that for a second, Emmi.”
As Firefox left the room, another figure appeared in the doorway. It was Wizard of Odds, and he had a grey pack slung over his arm. Jack sat up again, expectantly.
“Feeling better yet, Jack?”
“A bit. Thanks to Emmi, of course.” Emmi allowed a small, almost shy, smile to pass her lips.
“That’s good to hear,” Wizard replied. “Jack, I have a little thing here that might just get you out of here in less than two weeks.”
“What? You can’t do that! His leg has to be properly healed first!”
“Don’t worry, Emmi. This mechanism—” he held up the grey pack “—allows rabbits to walk, run—even fly—with a damaged leg. The thing is, if Jack uses this, he’ll still be able to fight Tank, and it won’t affect his leg at all.”
“Are you sure about this? I mean, you are the brains of the outfit, but still…”
“Absolutely positive. I know everything there is to know about this.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Emmi sighed. “I’m probably not supposed to say this, but… go ahead. If your procedure can take less time than mine, then I’m all for it.”
“Great. Thanks, Emmi.”
Wizard turned back to Jack. “Firstly, we have to take off this cast.” He flipped a tiny, grey knife, not more than five inches long, into his hand. As he was about to make an incision into Jack’s cast, Emmi stayed his hand, saying, “What are you doing?”
“I need to get rid of the cast first to put the mech on properly.”
“There’s an easier way to do that.” Emmi went to the sole of the cast, and pressed down on the heel. Suddenly, the plaster spontaneously dissolved. However, the inside of the cast was not white, like plaster. It was, instead, a luminous red.
“We started using Diamondan rubicon to make casts a few weeks ago. It dissolves by electrical impulse. Rubicon casts are a lot easier to get rid of then normal plaster.”
“Righto,” Wizard replied. Emmi didn’t catch whatever he said under his breath as she left the room.
Jack took the pack from Wizard, and slid it over his arms. He began to swing his legs over the side of the bed, but a sudden twang of pain kept him from continuing. “You said this mechanism wouldn’t affect my leg, right, Wizard?”
“Right. Now, lay on your… um, what leg did you kill yourself on?”
“My right.”
“Well then, flip onto your left. Hold your right leg straight out.”
As Jack did so, Wizard pushed a small button on a remote that had suddenly appeared in his hand. A hiss came from the pack on Jack’s back, and suddenly a flat metal rod whipped out of the bottom of the pack and extended itself down the back of his leg. A metal plate, shaped perfectly to Jack’s foot, flipped impossibly quickly onto his footpad.
Jack winced as the plate struck the bottom of his foot. “Ow…?!”
“What?”
“Was that supposed to happen?”
“Yeah. It’s all fine, I assure you.”
Sides seemed to grow out of the edges of the plate, so that the plate turned into a metal shoe. Jack took a look at it, inspecting it carefully. As he glanced over the bottom, he noticed a pair of holes, a smaller one at the heel, and a slightly larger one at the base of his toes. Jack looked inquiringly to Wizard. “What are…”
“Jets.”
“That small?”
“Very small jets. Powerful enough to propel a large hare, though. You’ll have no problem with them.”
“Spiffin’.”
“You like?”
“Indeed.”
“Goody. Now flip onto your right. I’ll put the other one on.”
Jack held his left leg out, and another metal rod zoomed out of the pack. A second metal plate smacked onto his footpad, Jack flinched a second time as the plate struck, and the plate formed a shoe on his left foot.
Jack grinned. “Nifty. Now then, how do I control these jets?”
“OK. Remember those yo-yos that you used to love when you were a leveret?”
“Yeah.”
“Flip your hand out like you have one of those yo-yos in your hand.”
Jack flicked his hand forward as he was told, and spontaneously a control stick, mounted on a rod that fitted itself along his arm, erupted from the pack and flipped into the palm of his hand. It had a small, red button atop it, and another red button where his index finger would be. “Neato. What’s it do?”
“Before you ask, flip the other one.”
Jack followed the same procedure with his other hand, and the pack emitted a second stick into the palm of his hand. Before Jack was able to ask what the buttons did, Wizard answered.
“The button on the front controls the jets. You’ll need to practice with them to get used to longer, jet-propelled dashes.”
“And the top buttons…?”
“Well, push them and see. You’re going to enjoy this.”
“Won’t I… fly into something? Or something?”
“No, don’t worry. Those aren’t the ‘fly-into-something’ mode buttons.” He chuckled.
“OK, I’m taking your word for it.” Jack pushed the small, round button atop the control stick. His heart missed a beat as a long, grey blast cannon swung itself quickly over his shoulder and came within two inches of his head.
“Whoa.”
“Now push the other one. And keep your head out of the way.”
As the second gun whipped itself into place, Jack’s trademark grin appeared on his face. “You don’t know how much I’ve wanted something like this before, Wizard. I get the feeling I’m going to enjoy kicking some shiny Buster behind with this.”
“I knew you’d like it.”
Jack stood up, and he was slightly surprised that the pain in his leg didn’t flare up again. The rod running up the back of his leg apparently was taking all of the pressure, so that his leg might heal properly. “Ingenious.”
“What?”
“Everything. I’m amazed you can fit this much into this tiny little pack.”
“Scientific ingenuity. Works wonders, doesn’t it.”
As they left the room, Firefox met them in the hallway. “I couldn’t convince the Master to keep the two… rookies… back. They’re coming with us.” Jack noticed a hint of contempt in Firefox’s voice when he said the word “rookies”.
He paused, looking Jack over. “So this is the famous BIAS, eh?”
Jack was puzzled. “BIAS?”
“Bypass-Injury Auxiliary Support Unit. Best name I could think of for it.”
“And too true. Now I want one.”
“Then break your leg. That’s the only way I got mine.”
“You didn’t break your leg, you just dislocated it!”
“Your point?”
“Guys, hold up a sec,” Wizard interrupted, just before Firefox smacked Jack upside the head with the side of his blaster. “Arguing is getting us nowhere. Let’s head back to the R.O.A.R. outpost, meet up with Indigo and Splitter, and find out if there’s any other information we need.”
“Sounds like a plan. Let’s go.”
Just as they left the hospital, Emmi came back into Jack and Headcheese’s room, and sat, once again, forlornly at the small rabbit’s feet. An almost imperceptible tear rolled out of her eye, but it was absorbed by her fur. The gold-furred nurse sighed, and waited for Headcheese to wake up, and resume her part of the fight against Buster Tank.
...yarr! :D
4I Falcon
Jul 28, 2002, 12:00 PM
Chapter 6: Lightning Round
The small group left the hospital, and walked a short distance to a large, grassy field surrounded by trees. No rabbits were in sight in the field, which was about a square mile in size.
Wizard turned to Jack. “OK, let’s see if you have a quick reaction time to match your flying feet. Or potentially flying, anyway. Hit the jet buttons.”
Jack did as he was told, pushing down upon the small round buttons atop the control stick, and he suddenly felt a propulsion under his feet. The jets were more powerful than he had previously anticipated, as they flipped him head over heels, and he landed painfully on his belly.
Firefox stifled a laugh with his hand, but Wizard chuckled. “Looks like you’re going to need to practice with that thing, Jack, unless you want to embarrass yourself while fighting Tank. And while falling on your face is amusing, it’s not the best battle strategy, if I do say so myself.”
“Don’t worry yourself. I’m a quick learner.”
And so he was. Within fifteen minutes, he had mastered the jet-propelled dash, along with becoming adept with the twin blast cannons in an additional ten. He had apparently transferred his amazing marksmanship from his hand-held blasters to the monstrous guns over his shoulders. Wizard applauded his most recent trial of his new weaponry.
“Despite the fact that you almost took out the whole tree with those guns, you’re getting better. At this rate, Tank’s already dead.”
“I sure hope so. I’d like Tank to be gone sooner rather than later. Hey, where’s Firefox gotten to?”
Wizard looked around. Jack was right: Firefox was nowhere to be found in the large field.
As the purple-furred rabbit shrugged, they both heard a familiar voice from somewhere above them. “Did I miss much?”
Firefox landed lightly next to them, closely followed by Jazz, Spaz, Lori, Blaze, Splat, and two other rabbits, all carrying their airboards. Despite his name, Lt. Indigo had tawny fur, and was slightly taller than Jack, but shorter than Firefox. Splitter had neon green fur; that which was atop his head, spiked out wildly in all directions. He was only an inch taller than Spaz and Headcheese. In any case, the two newcomers brought the posse to numbering ten in total.
Jazz looked Jack over. “How’s your leg, Jack?”
“Better, thanks. Where’d you guys go?”
Lori answered on behalf of all three Jackrabbits. “My brothers and I headed back to Carrotus City to reload and power-up. By the looks of it, we’re going to need as much firepower as we can possibly get to fight Tank.”
“Good idea.”
Firefox spoke next. “The rest of us headed back to the Outpost, as we mentioned before, to pick up Indigo and Splitter. They were already set and raring to go, so it didn’t take long to get back out again. The only reason we took so long is because we couldn’t find you.”
“That’s OK. You ended up finding us anyway.”
“Yep.”
Blaze couldn’t help but notice the BIAS on Jack’s back, considering the large machine guns were still mounted over his shoulders. “Got some new weaponry while we were away, Jack?”
Jack grinned again. “I just consider it a ‘get-well’ present from a certain resident genius.”
At this, Wizard scratched idly at his long incisors, apparently lost for words. However, not two seconds later, his eyes bugged, and, reaching for one of his blasters with one hand, he pointed nervously over Jack’s shoulder with the other. “Uh… guys…?”
Jack saw the reflection in Wizard’s glasses. A yellow-scaled lizard was sneaking up behind him. Quickly Jack spun around and laid the unfortunate lizard low with a single shot.
Then his jaw dropped as he saw exactly what Wizard was pointing at. Dozens, even hundreds of lizards, similar to the one Jack had just shot out, were marching out of the tree cover at the edge of the field. The one Jack had just let daylight into was only an adventurous one who had broken off from the main group.
Firing madly into the massed ranks of the yellow lizards like the others, Jack shouted at the top of his lungs. “Retreat! Retreat and keep firing!”
Backing into the trees on the opposite side of the field, Jack kept the other rabbits under cover with his monstrous machine guns. Only when he was assured that they were all hidden safely behind large trees did he dive for cover himself. He turned to Lori.
“You said you loaded and powered-up in Carrotus City, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
Jack nodded to Firefox, and the Captain spoke calmly. “Switch your main weapon to RF rockets, and your secondary to flamers. We’re going to barrel straight through the lizards, burn a hole through them. On my mark, we go out there and fire as fast as we can…” But Firefox found himself talking to empty air. The Jackrabbits were already gone and burning holes, as he had put it.
“What about us?” asked Blaze hastily. “I mean, we don’t have rockets or flamers loaded in our guns.”
“That’s what I’m here for.” Wizard pulled off his pack, and rummaged about inside it for a few seconds until he found what he was looking for: a set of gun clips. Each clip had an insignia of a white arrowheaded laser on it. He flicked a clip out of the holder for each of the R.O.A.R. rabbits; however, as Jack reached to take one, Wizard’s hand stopped his own.
“You have enough firepower already, bud. Load one of these into that hulking machine –” he gestured to the BIAS “–and the whole thing will explode. It’s not meant to handle that kind of heat.”
Jack hesitated, then drew his hand away. “Then whose clip is that?”
“Mine.” A young female voice had said the word. Soon enough, the rabbit the voice belonged to appeared in the group.
It was Headcheese.
Jack cocked an eyebrow at his sister. “Then load it, and let’s get –”
He stopped, and looked his sister in the eye.
“You just spoke.”
Headcheese was unfazed. “I did.”
“You’ve never spoken before.”
“Right.”
“Because…?”
“Because you never gave me a blimpin’ chance to. Besides, I have spoken before.”
“Intelligibly?”
“Eh…”
Then Jazz’s voice rang out clearly. “If you all don’t mind, a little help would be greatly appreciated!”
“Aie!” The yelp was identifiably Spaz’s. “Like, now would be nice!”
“You heard ‘em.” Firefox was smiling devilishly. “Let’s out and roast us some cold-blooded cronies!”
He cocked his blastgun. No one dared to argue.
Jazz was fighting back-to-back with Spaz. They were holding their ground bravely around Lori, who was out cold from a vicious double-handed smash to the back of her head. Both brothers had run out of rockets and toasters, and were blasting away with any other weapons they had. But no matter how many lizards were roasted by the two valiant rabbits, more came to fill their place. The Jackrabbits were rapidly losing ground.
Just as Jazz and Spaz were about to fall to the crushing weight of numbers, a white beam of light cut through the ranks of lizards closest to Jazz, reducing them to embers. A similar laser ripped through those lizards only inches away from Spaz, and then Indigo was on his way in, charging, yelling, punching, whipping with the side of his blaster, and lashing out with his long legs. Before long, the Lieutenant stood beside the Jackrabbits.
“Nice weather, huh?” he laughed. “A veritable hailstorm of lizards!” He smacked another yellow reptile upside the head with the side of his blaster. Jazz nodded, and shot out yet another lizard as it leaped over its comrades’ heads to get at them.
Jack, Firefox, and Splat moved to cut off the seemingly infinite flow of the yellow lizards, leaving Splitter, Wizard, and Headcheese to attack the mad mob from the outside. With their supply of numbers blocked off, the lizard army soon began to dissipate. Apparently, the lizards realized this, as some of them tried to break off and flee. They were easily sniped off by Blaze.
After the last of the lizards were toasted, all of the rabbits excepting Jazz, Spaz, and Wizard fanned out to scour the surrounding forest for any renegade lizards or other potential enemies. The remaining trio crouched near the unconscious Lori.
Jazz was noticeably unnerved as he looked to Wizard. “Is she…?”
Wizard dropped to one knee, and placed two fingers against the side of Lori’s neck. He felt a strong, regular pulse. “Alive and well, despite the fact that she’s unconscious. That must have been one smart hit to lay a Jackrabbit flat.”
He stood up, scratching one of his long ears. “Do either of you have any freezer ammo left?”
Jazz had none, but Spaz had three left. Following Wizard’s instructions, he unloaded one shot from his blaster, and handed the small ice cube to Wizard. Slightly warming the ice in his hands, Wizard applied it to the small bump on the back of Lori’s skull, while Jazz coaxed his sister back to consciousness. She came around within a few seconds.
Jazz smiled. “Welcome back.”
Wizard stood, and offered a hand to help Lori up. She took his hand, and he pulled her upright. Other than her being slightly woozy, she was fine. “What happened?”
“You got laid out, is what happened,” Jazz replied. “One of the lizards got too close, and gave you a good shot to the back of your head. I shot him back.” He chuckled.
She frowned. “And I was dropped… just like that? By a single punch?”
“It was a pretty strong hit. No one could have stayed standing from something like that.”
“B…pfft. I’ll take your word for it.”
Just then, Wizard heard a faint ringing from his pack. He swung it off his back, opened it, and produced a small cell phone with a headset. Wizard positioned the headset on his head, then pushed a button on the phone. “Yeh?”
“Wizard of Odds?”
“That’s me.”
“This is Colonel Defalcon. Gather the others and get back to the Outpost as fast as you can. We’re being attacked!”
Sixth chapter, finished at camp. I spent at least 24 hours (not 24 hours straight, silly!) working on this up at camp. That's a lot longer than I usually work on chapters. Then again, I had to hand-write this one. (nooooo!)
Updated on August 27.
defalcon
Jul 29, 2002, 12:47 AM
Originally posted by Ducky
So, "Newbie" ...You know your way around too well and you use the lingo too fluently..I'm suspicious. ^_^
Anyway. to bring to your attention a comment of Defalcons', is this story in any way related to Jazz2?
Hm...does seem a little suspicious...
I am NOT 4I Falcon Duckeh, the names are quite different actually...you sure you're properly awake? :p
I want a part, lol. Check 'Everyone's Characters' thread for my updated profile.
Yuh, Ducky, haven't joined a story in a while. n.n
acid
Jul 31, 2002, 12:39 PM
More! More! More! More!
MORE!!!!!
heh, :p
Oh, and if there's any room, I would like to be in the story! Check my post in everyone's characters.
4I Falcon
Aug 27, 2002, 07:35 PM
Well, I managed to accidentally leave it idle again, but this time only for a month. I needed some inspiration to get me going, and eventually I got some. Everything after "Welcome back." in Chapter 6 is new.
Chapter 7 is on its way, and it will be finished soon this time! Trust me on this one!
Ducky
Aug 30, 2002, 10:26 AM
I think I was...um..referrring to something you said, Defalc...I wouldn't confuse you with someone. But now that I look I don't think you said it at all. Prolly one of my weird days.
Duuude. Continue ^_^ Groovular tale.
4I Falcon
Sep 4, 2002, 05:53 PM
Well, like I said, Chapter 7 would be finished soon. And here it is, as promised.
Jeez, eight or nine months and I'm only up to chapter 7? What have I been doing with my life?! EH EH?!!
Anyway, here you go. Chapter 7 follows...
Chapter 7: Distraction to Retaliation
“Jack! Firefox! Everyone, get back here!” Wizard was screaming at the top of his lungs. In a few seconds, he had rallied the rest of them to him, including Indigo and Splitter. It was obvious how distraught he was.
Spaz was puzzled, worried, and confused. “So… what was that all about?”
Wizard turned to him. “That was one of the higher officers at R.O.A.R. That previous reptilian assault was just a diversion. They’ve changed targets. The Outpost is under attack!”
Jack’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “What?! All that was just a distraction?”
“It was!” A booming voice rang out through the clearing. All the rabbits looked upwards, and there, looming above them, was Tank’s airborne battleship. The voice laughed.
“I suppose you know me. I am Buster Tank, the destroyer of your planet!”
“Getting a bit ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?” Jack said, under his breath. He continued to talk back in a normal tone. “So you’re Buster Tank, huh? Devan’s great soldier of doom? I’m willing to bet that was most of your army we just took to pieces, eh?”
“Those lizards that I threw at you? Did you really think I intended to stop you with them? They were WORTHLESS!”
“Yeah, and I’m sure if they were still alive, they’d thank you heartily for the compliment,” Jack added quietly.
“And now you have a choice. Save your precious Outpost… or save yourselves?”
Firefox shielded his eyes against the sun above, to focus on the airship. “What do you mean, save ourselves?”
The voice laughed again. “Exactly what you think I mean.”
Blaze’s ears, being the most finely tuned from being a spy, picked up the faintest whirr from above. But they all could see the gauss gun pointing towards them from the bottom of the airship. “Everyone out of the way! Duck and cover!”
Craters as wide as the fleeing rabbits were tall suddenly appeared in the ground where they had stood moments ago. Tank was still laughing as Jazz pointed his blaster at the hovering warship, and fired several times. Spaz had stumbled in his mad rush to find cover, and Jazz had intended to provide it. But all of his bullets were lost upon the thick armour of the flying battleship.
Suddenly, a red beam shot out of the bottom of the airship, and struck Spaz as he got up. The small red rabbit gasped, and his eyes were wide as the very space around him seemed to shimmer. He slowly began to glow brighter and brighter, then, with a flash, he disappeared.
“Looks like your little red friend didn’t have the sense in him to save himself. And now he’s mine. Unless, of course, you can stop me, which, if your tactics are any indication of your fighting skills, you obviously can’t.”
“No!” Jazz was about to run out from his cover, but Firefox held him back.
“Let me go! Spaz…! That monster took Spaz!” he screamed, thrashing against Firefox’s hold.
“Hold up, Jazz. If you were to go out there, you’d just be rabbit-napped as well. And then we’d have two lost Jackrabbits to worry about.”
But Jazz was not to be stopped that easily. He continued to batter at Firefox, even though the taller of the two was not about to let go. Finally, Firefox decided that there was nothing else for it. He raised his blaster, and was about to swing it downwards in a knockout smash to Jazz’s skull.
Then, for no apparent reason, Jazz stopped thrashing, and swatted at the side of his neck. “Aie! What was that? Something just stung me!”
Firefox looked to Wizard, and saw him wink back. The purple rabbit made a slapping motion to his own neck, then pointed to Jazz. Firefox caught on quickly.
“One second…” Jazz watched as Firefox moved his hand slowly towards the side of his neck. Then he pretended to swat the imaginary gnat biting Jazz. “Got it!”
Jazz turned around to see exactly what it was that he had “got,” but Firefox made a distasteful flicking motion, as if he had tossed the crushed gnat away. The red rabbit simply shrugged.
Jack held a quick discussion with Wizard, Blaze, Lori, and Indigo, then called the others over. “Obviously, we have two targets to deal with: the ship above our heads, and the R.O.A.R. Outpost that’s going to pieces as we speak. So, here’s what we do.
“Firefox, Wizard, Splat, Headcheese, and myself are going to go back to the Outpost to serve as outer defense. The Outpost has defenses already, but they’re not sufficient to stand up to an army even the size of what we just destroyed. We need to bolster our own defenses until we’re sure that the threat is gone.
“Splitter, Indigo, Blaze, Jazz, and Lori are going to head up to the flying battleship to get Spaz back. If nothing else, we can also try to get information about the satellite… that is, if it’s not more than a rumour. Then again, I thought Tank didn’t exist until now.”
“But I thought you had blueprints for the satellite?” Jazz interrupted.
“Well, Tank seems to be very fond of diversions. Those blueprints could very well have been fake. I’m not ready to trust any turtles of any kind on anything anymore. Anyway.”
He paused. “Wait a sec. How did you know about my having blueprints to the satellite?”
“Blaze told us when he found us at Carrotus Castle.”
“Oh?” Jack looked to Blaze, and the latter nodded significantly.
Jack continued. “So, everyone good with my plan? Any questions?”
“Yeah,” Lori managed to slide in sideways. “How are we going to get up to the airship? We don’t even have any airboards with us.”
“Don’t we?” With that, Jack nodded to Wizard, who instantly pulled five airboards from his pack. He handed one to each of the rabbits who were to take to the air. Lori and Jazz were both still awed by Wizard’s apparent ability to pull anything out of his pack.
As each of the sky-rabbits took, and mounted, their airboards, Jack whispered to Wizard, “So what was that ‘gnat’ Jazz got stung by?”
“A really small anti-hyperadrenaline dart. Jazz was getting a bit ballistic, so I slowed him down a bit.”
“Ah.”
Nothing was said for a few moments, and then Blaze spoke. “Good luck to you, Jack. Come back to us in one piece.”
“Same with you, Blaze. We need a dark, mysterious rabbit on our team, and you’re the only one we’ve got. Like our resident genius said, just don’t get dead, k?”
“Okies.”
With that, the two groups went their separate ways, with Jack leading the posse towards the besieged Outpost 12, and Jazz leading his airborne group to get his brother back.
Colonel Defalcon was pacing back and forth behind one of his base defense gunners. He was obviously extremely worried. He was second-in-command of the Outpost only to General Grath, and the mysterious General had disappeared recently. Which meant that now, he was the ranking officer at Outpost 12, and he had to do everything in his power to protect it. And the showers of NapalmPineapples from the HyperTanketyTankTanks below, coupled with the lightning blasts from the electrically charged turtle Shellshockers, didn’t help his plight.
Suddenly, he barked at the gunner. “Have those miscreants Jack Flash and Captain Firefox shown up yet?”
“Not yet, sir. But we just got word that their on their way.”
“They better be.”
Then, from out of nowhere, a rocket blasted one of the HyperTanketys to oblivion. The gunner called Defalcon back nervously. “Uh, sir?”
“What?”
Defalcon reached the window just in time to see Jack literally fly out of the distance and hurl himself, guns blazing, onto his opposition. Firefox, Wizard, Headcheese, and Splat weren’t far behind him, and they began tearing into the HyperTanketys and Shellshockers for all they were worth.
“Well, they were on their way, alright. Thank goodness they’re here.”
The gunner resumed firing his Concielian Cannon down at the hordes of Buster’s army, careful not to hit any of their new saviours. “Yes, sir.”
Meanwhile, the Shellshockers, being the only sentient beings there, had to turn their attention away from attacking the Outpost towards defending themselves against the new offence on the Outpost’s side. They were being bombarded from both sides now, and there was nowhere to run to. Yet some of the turtles broke off from the group and tried to run anyplace, just as long as they got away from certain death. They didn’t get far.
The HyperTanketys, on the other hand, were completely oblivious to the attackers at their rear. They continuously pounded away at the shaken Outpost, only to be completely destroyed by Jack and his cohorts. Firefox ended up grabbing a flying axle from out of the air and swinging about madly with it, putting good-sized dents in the HyperTanketys and completely destroying the ShellShockers, even though he got zapped a few times through their electro-charged hides.
After all of the turtles had either fallen or fled, and the HyperTanketys were reduced to smouldering embers, Jack, Firefox, Wizard, Headcheese, and Splat entered the R.O.A.R. Outpost.
It was a shambles. Everything was either scorched or simply completely destroyed. Countless rabbits lay dead on the floor. Jack and Firefox, being the two senior fighters of the group, recognized many of them almost immediately. Jack knelt beside his once dear friend Hauc, now lying burned and lifeless on the floor.
Even after all of his hard years of brutal warfare, even after innumerable victories and defeats, Jack Flash still knew how to weep for lost comrades.
But he did not weep.
He stood up, dry-eyed, and through grinding teeth, growled, “Buster Tank and all of his criminal scum will pay for this, I swear it on my life!”
Woo, melodramatic ending. Don't you just LOVE the suspense???
:p
4I Falcon
Sep 23, 2002, 01:45 PM
Well, it's been a while, and it looks like this thread hasn't been getting much attention, but the story's slowly been coming along, as always. Here ya go, Chapter 8...
Chapter 8: Changing Hands
The red beam had taken Spaz straight up into the airship. He had been on all fours on the soft Carrotan ground, looking to Jazz pleadingly, with the expression on his face screaming “Help me!” Then everything turned a bright, shimmering red.
The next thing he knew, he was on his knees, on a small raised platform in a dark, metallic-looking room. As he lifted his head, he saw, standing in front of him on the slightly lower floor, the demonic Buster Tank, flanked by a few tough-looking turtles. The large turtle had an evil grin hovering about his lips, and his eyes were as cold as chips of ice, despite the fact that they burned red with almost primeval hatred for the helpless being on the platform. Buster jumped easily onto the raised dais, and glared downwards at the small red rabbit.
“You’ll do, you scrawny specimen of rabbit,” Buster laughed. Spaz searched frantically for his blaster, but he couldn’t find it anywhere on him. He looked to the sinister-looking, heavily muscled turtles behind Buster, and saw one of them twirling his beloved green blaster around his finger. The turtle noticed Spaz staring desperately at the spinning blaster, dropped it from his finger into his palm, and crushed it with his hand. Spaz gasped miserably.
Buster had been watching this act approvingly, and laughed mockingly at Spaz. Then, he reached down and picked Spaz up cruelly by the neck. Spaz resisted valiantly, but he couldn’t break Buster’s grip on his neck. He stopped struggling, and Buster snickered again at the sight of Spaz, dangling helplessly at arm’s length, making small, pitiful choking sounds. As Spaz hung there, his vision was slowly fading. Everything had almost turned black when Buster dropped him back onto the floor, just as cruelly as he had picked him up. Spaz coughed a few times as Buster muttered to his cohorts, “Take him to a cell.”
One of the tough turtles replied dumbly, “Uh, which one, sir?”
“Any one! I don’t care!”
“H’okay.”
Spaz was still gulping down air thankfully as the guards hefted him bodily and carried him to his cell. They threw him inside maliciously, and slammed the barred door before he could stand again. Spaz rushed to the bars, and cried out, “Let me out! Let me go!”
Realizing that no help was forthcoming, he hung his head in despair, thinking, This is it, this is how I’m going to die…
But there was indeed help on the way. Jazz had just blown a hole into the side of the airship; conveniently, right into the ship’s armoury. For some strange reason, the breach alarm hadn’t gone off yet, and Jazz thanked his luck so far. He, along with his companions, flew silently into the armoury, and left their airboards lying on the floor. They loaded up quickly, filling their respective guns with every type of ammo in the room.
Nodding silently to Blaze, Jazz kicked the armoury door open. It must have been a stronger kick than expected, as the door was ripped right off its hinges and flew off down the hallway. One of Buster’s crew didn’t even have time to react as the door hurtled into him. And yet, the guards still didn’t have the sense to pull the alarm.
Jazz emerged from the armoury, fully loaded and confident. Lori, Splitter, Blaze, and Indigo followed him. A sign was posted a short distance ahead, with an arrow pointing right at the rabbits, indicating the location of the armoury. Two other arrows pointed left and right, indicating “Aerodynamics” and…
“Cells!” Jazz said. “Spaz must be in one of the cell blocks! That’s where any criminal mastermind would keep their prisoners!”
Indigo looked puzzled. “Eh?”
“Because they’ve got too much on their mind – what with world domination and/or destruction on their hands – to know any better than to hide them somewhere else.”
Lori was amazed. “Jazz, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that much logic in two sentences. I’m astonished.”
“Is that an insult or a compliment?”
“Never mind.”
They walked slowly down a few metres of corridor towards the sign, and, satisfied that they weren’t being watched, they then took off at a dead run towards the cell blocks in which Spaz was being held captive…
One of Buster’s minions, his brother Slicer, was observing them on a television screen. “Heh. They think they’re not being watched, do they? Well, I’ll show them who’s what now.”
He rubbed his hands together like a naughty little child. “And what of the little scrawny rabbit, eh? Well, they’ll soon see each other… but not as they had ultimately hoped. Ho yes, Jazz Jackrabbit, this will be your last fleet-footed day on Carrotus, I’ll see to that…”
He pressed a button, and the great Jazz Jackrabbit fell.
Jazz’s mind had gone into hyperdrive, with a million thoughts flying through his head. He had been running a few steps in front of Lori, who was a few steps in front of Blaze. Then, abruptly, the floor disappeared from underneath his feet. He was falling, sliding through a narrow shaft, only a few inches wider than he was. He could hear Lori falling behind him, by the sound of her occasional “Oof!” as she bumped along the tunnel walls.
Then, just as abruptly as he began to fall, he hit the floor with a loud whump. He rubbed his sore rear as Lori fell out of the tube on top of him. Pinned to the ground by his own sister, and not even on purpose. This time, anyway.
“Lori, would you mind getting off of my head?”
“I’m not on your head.”
“Well, get off me anyway.”
“Yeah, fine.”
As Jazz got up and dusted himself off, he took stock of where they were. A room with iron walls and bars along one side, where they could see out, but not escape.
A jail cell.
As soon as those words passed through his mind, he jumped up, an excited smile on his face. “The cells! And we’re actually in one! How convenient of them!”
A voice crackled through on a speaker near their cell. It was Buster Tank. “Hahahahahaha! I finally have you exac—”
Lori cut the transmission off with a simple “Shut up.” and a shot from her blaster. Jazz was still smiling excitedly as the pieces of the destroyed speaker fell to the ground.
“And the idiots never thought to disarm us before putting us in a cell. Oh well, all the better for us!” He pointed his blaster towards the barred door, and blew the lock off of it. The door swung open with a slight creaking noise, as if it hadn’t been oiled too well.
Just as the door opened, Blaze, Indigo, and Splitter fell out of the pipe above them. Once again, Jazz was at the bottom of the pile of rabbits. He sighed in exasperation.
“OK, the weight of one rabbit is enough…” He glared at Lori, who simply shrugged. “Now would you four get off me?!”
They quickly hopped off, and Jazz stood up and dusted himself off again. Blaze was about to say something, when they heard an overly familiar voice.
“Jazz? Is that you?”
“Spaz?” Jazz was incredulous. Not only had Tank put them in the jail cells, right where they wanted to be… he had also placed them right next to who they wanted to find! Jazz slipped out from the open cell door, turned around – and there was Spaz, sitting alone in the cell next to the one he had just came out of. Spaz’s eyes brightened, and he rushed to the bars.
“Jazz! I knew you’d come find me!”
“What, you thought I’d leave you up here alone? Is that my style?”
“Well, no, but I was beginning to…”
Jazz cut him off. “…wonder what was taking me so long? We kinda had a bit of turbulence on the way up.”
Spaz raised an eyebrow. Then he understood what Jazz was getting across. “Ah. Where’s Lori?”
“Right here, bro!” By now, the others had left the cell that they had fallen into, and Lori was smiling as she presented herself.
Blaze went to work at the lock that held Spaz’s cell door closed. He had his ear up to the lock, listening for minute ticks as the tumblers in the lock moved about. Then Jazz pushed him away.
“There’s a far easier way to do that, Blaze,” he said, pointing his blaster at the lock. With one pull of the trigger, the lock was blown open, and the cell door swung away from the rest of the bars. Spaz rushed out, and, per usual, skidded and smacked headfirst into the opposite wall.
“Even in the face of evil, he still manages to run into things,” Indigo said, apparently amused by Spaz’s complete oblivion to what was happening around him as, yet again, he toppled over. He only lay flat for a second, however, as Jazz said, “Lie there like that, Spaz, and we’ll leave you here.”
The small red rabbit was up and off like a bullet. Lori glanced at Jazz. “You didn’t mean that, right?”
“What… that has to be… I can’t… no!” Jazz stammered. Lori rolled her eyes.
That was when the crew decided to pull the alarm. A loud, whining siren cut through the insides of the ship. Indigo was already ready to go.
“C’mon, before we’re found here! Let’s get moving already!”
They took off, bowling over several guards on their way to where they just were. They had to run as fast as possible to avoid being targets for more than a tenth of a second. With all the rush, it wasn’t a surprise that no one had noticed that Blaze wasn’t with them…
More suspense. I love suspense. Anyway. The next chapter is going back to checking on Jack Flash and the others, and how they're coping with, and fighting back against, Buster Tank's reign of terror...
acid
Sep 23, 2002, 02:44 PM
Originally posted by 4I Falcon
...One of the tough turtles replied dumbly, “Uh, which one, sir?”
“Any one! I don’t care!”
“H’okay.”...
...Nodding silently to Blaze, Jazz kicked the armoury door open. It must have been a stronger kick than expected, as the door was ripped right off its hinges and flew off down the hallway. One of Buster’s crew didn’t even have time to react as the door hurtled into him...
...Lori was amazed. “Jazz, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that much logic in two sentences. I’m astonished.”
“Is that an insult or a compliment?”...
...Pinned to the ground by his own sister, and not even on purpose. This time, anyway.
“Lori, would you mind getting off of my head?”
“I’m not on your head.”
“Well, get off me anyway.”...
...A voice crackled through on a speaker near their cell. It was Buster Tank. “Hahahahahaha! I finally have you exac—”
Lori cut the transmission off with a simple “Shut up.” and a shot from her blaster. Jazz was still smiling excitedly as the pieces of the destroyed speaker fell to the ground...
...Just as the door opened, Blaze, Indigo, and Splitter fell out of the pipe above them. Once again, Jazz was at the bottom of the pile of rabbits. He sighed in exasperation.
“OK, the weight of one rabbit is enough…” He glared at Lori, who simply shrugged. “Now would you four get off me?!”...
...Spaz rushed out, and, per usual, skidded and smacked headfirst into the opposite wall...
... I thought you said you were incapable of writing funny stories! You're confusing me...:confused:
4I Falcon
Sep 23, 2002, 04:54 PM
Quite.
Where did I say that? I'll show me a thing or two about funny stories! *punches himself* :lol:
4I Falcon
Oct 6, 2002, 08:38 AM
here it is, the next chapter. Chapter 9. The ninth chapter. Chapter of Nineness. The Niney-- *is shot*
Whatever.
Chapter 9: Serious Actions
Jack had disappeared into the remains of the R.O.A.R. Outpost quite a while ago, and Firefox was beginning to wonder where he went. He, Wizard, Splat, and the rest of their fellow soldiers had been holding a mass ceremony to commemorate the ones who died to the assault on the Outpost. But whenever Firefox looked around to try to spot Jack, the white, BIAS-carrying rabbit was nowhere to be found.
Firefox already knew where Jack would be found: on the top floor, blasting away at some target in his firing range. He wasn’t surprised that when he reached the top of the stairs, after forgoing the probably dangerous elevator, that loud, rapid bangs erupted from behind the stairway door. He opened it, and immediately wished he hadn’t.
There was Jack, blasting away madly at a hole-riddled target. He didn’t seem to care that he was slowly drilling a hole through the wall with his ammunition. Firefox didn’t even see him bat an eye when he entered. All he seemed to be focused on was utterly taking the target in front of him to pieces.
However, what Firefox saw Jack doing was completely different from what Jack pictured himself doing. Jack saw a particularly large turtle with a metal shell, surrounded by a red haze, laughing at him. Jack was firing hundreds of rounds at the impudent turtle, but none of them seemed to hit their target, despite Jack’s amazing marksmanship. This seemed to amuse the turtle further, and as the laughing continued, Jack howled in anger. He still hadn’t noticed that Firefox was watching.
When a hand descended onto his shoulder, it broke him out of his maddened trance, and, without thinking, he whirled around, his fist about to connect with the intruder’s face. Luckily, Firefox knew Jack’s instinctive attacks, and his open hand easily flew up beside his own face, quickly blocking Jack’s swift fist. Even though the block was only an inch from his face, Firefox didn’t flinch. But he was alarmed immediately by what he saw in Jack’s face.
Jack was breathing heavily, and he was sweating slightly. But that wasn’t what was scaring Firefox.
Jack’s eyes had changed, from their normal aqua-blue to a dangerous blood-red. Firefox had only seen Jack like this once before, when his sister Headcheese had come very close to death, and most of his troop had fallen, against one of Devan Shell’s cronies, a sinister, black-red-and-gold warbot. Jack had turned into a brutal killing machine, and completely destroyed everything around him. Firefox was wise enough to motion to the remainder of their troop to stay well back from the rampant rabbit, as Jack tore into Devan’s subordinate and its own underlings. By the time Jack was finished, the robotic minion was nothing but a heap of scrap metal on the ground, and the underlings were piles of dust around it. Jack finally collapsed onto the ground, and lapsed into unconsciousness.
And now it was happening again. Jack had gone into a mad rage, and he could – and would – destroy anything he needed to destroy to gain vengeance upon Buster Tank. Firefox backed off slightly, asking apprehensively, “Jack… are you OK?”
Jack’s right eye began to twitch, and he advanced one step towards Firefox. “OK? Hah! I’ve never felt better in my entire life!” he roared. Both of his BIAS’ jet boosters fired, propelling him into the air. Laughing madly, he hovered there for about two seconds, then he turned around and plowed through the hole he had put into the side of the building. Firefox ran to the now enlarged hole, and was only rewarded with the sight of Jack flying away at close to the speed of sound.
“Oh… crotch. This is very not good.”
Headcheese, Wizard, and Splat were listening to the touching conclusion of Colonel Defalcon’s eulogy for all those who had died in the onslaught upon Outpost 12, when Firefox came up behind them. “We have a problem.”
Wizard was the first to see him, in the reflection in his glasses. He turned around. “What is it?”
“Jack’s just left. He’s heading away at mach.”
“With the BIAS?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. I didn’t think I engineered it that well.”
Firefox shot him a warning look, and Wizard hurriedly continued. “But I digress. Which way was he going?”
Firefox pointed out a general direction between south and east, and Wizard pulled out his pocket computer. He pressed a few buttons on the screen, then stared at it with disbelief stamped on his face.
Firefox was obviously vexed. “What is it?”
Wizard pointed to a specific part of the screen, where the tag %NEG was displayed. “That means the computer can’t find him. I’m willing to bet that Jack’s wearing my GPS signal scrambler. Nothing computerized can trace him at all. Which basically means we won’t be able to catch up to him.”
Wizard’s expression went from disbelief to a cross of shock and worry. “He’s putting his faith in himself to the test. The best we can do is hope that he comes back in one piece, let alone unharmed.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. If I know Jack, then we’d best be worrying about what happens to Tank.” He pasted a grin on his face, as if he was totally confident in Jack’s skills, even in his unaforementioned berserk state. Which he wasn’t.
Wizard could tell. He flipped his computer back into his hand, and gave a long sigh.
Then, for no apparent reason, Headcheese turned around and bolted back towards the Outpost at top speed. Firefox blinked a few times, then shrugged and sped away after her.
Firefox had an extremely difficult time following Headcheese through the floors of the Outpost. One second, she was three floors up, retrieving something; but as soon as she was in Firefox’s field of vision, she disappeared again, and there was a loud BANGBANGBANG as she made her own way down to the basement by buttstomping the floor. Firefox had no choice but to follow her down the hole she made, or risk losing track of her.
However, the chase ended when Headcheese decided to move through rooms quickly by simply charging through the walls. Firefox made an attempt to follow her, but didn’t duck fast enough, and banged his head on the wall. He sat there for a moment, rubbing his forehead ruefully, wondering how Headcheese could possibly get the idea that she could just kick her way through a wall to get through rooms faster. Headcheese was obviously long gone by now, and he berated himself mentally for it. He stood up, still rubbing his forehead, and dropped through one of the various holes Headcheese had made to the main floor.
Wizard watched as Firefox emerged from the Outpost, shrugging as if nothing happened. “She’s small, but she’s really fast. She outmaneuvered me inside.”
“Where is she now?”
A moment later, they both heard a small bursting sound, and Firefox turned around in time to abruptly dodge to one side as Headcheese flew by, full speed, on an airboard. “Hoi! How about right there?”
Wizard had also hastily dodged the flying rabbit, but had stumbled backwards and tripped over a tree root. He sat up hurriedly, and pointed in the general direction that Headcheese had flown away in. “Quickly! Follow her!”
But Wizard found himself talking to thin air. Firefox had already left as Wizard was falling over the tree root. Wizard quickly took off his backpack, and dug into it, searching for… something… something fast.
Firefox caught sight of Headcheese, quite a distance from where she had passed him and Wizard, and he augmented his speed so that he could catch up. They were already moving at upwards of 50 km/h, so Firefox had to put all his effort into his speed boost. He slowly closed in on Headcheese, and was about to come up beside her, when she put on an extraordinary turn of speed, and zoomed away again. Firefox struggled a while longer to keep up with Headcheese, then finally slowed to a halt.
Firefox then proceeded to come dangerously close to jumping out of his own skin as a slick, metallic-blue, futuristic-looking motorbike skidded to a stop next to him. A panel on the top opened, and Wizard spoke two words. “Get in.”
Firefox hopped into the seat behind Wizard, and the panel closed again. “Nice wheels. Please tell me you didn’t pull this out of your magic backpack.”
“What would you say if I told you I did?” Wizard asked with a grin, as the superbike accelerated rapidly.
“I’d say your scientific genius doesn’t run that far.”
“Well then, you’re probably right. There was nothing in my backpack that would allow me to catch up to you as fast as I did, so I had to head back into R.O.A.R.’s vehicle hangar. I decided on this one. Functional, fast, and also a high ranking in the aesthetics department. Plus, blue is a nice colour.” He chuckled to himself.
“Well, let’s hope your little toy does the trick, Wizard, ‘cause I’m trusting you to help me get to the bottom of whatever’s going on with Jack and Headcheese.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’m the resident genius, remember?”
“Only because you won’t let me forget. Now then, onward, and don’t hit anything!”
Metal rubber alloy tore the soft ground apart as the superbike, with its two lepine passengers, roared away at top speed.
YEE, this is one of my spooniest chapters yet. And considering spoony has no definition as of yet... therefore, it be good.
:D
4I Falcon
Oct 11, 2002, 05:54 PM
Yeehee, here's the next installment of Enter: Jack Flash. I did most of this chapter at school on my Palm (yay! ^_^) during my boring physics class (blah! ~_~). So, read on, and enjoy.
Acid's finally in! Woowoo! *dances*
Chapter 10: Jailbreak
Luckily, Spaz hadn’t gotten far after he dashed off from Jazz and the others. Two of Tank’s tough turtle guards had seen him, stopped him in his tracks, and grabbed him by the arms, and were bringing him back to his cell when Jazz and Lori turned the corner and ran smack into the turtles. They all fell backwards, but the turtles were at a loss a second later, struggling to get up off of their shells. Indigo and Splitter quickly dispatched them with a few shots each.
Jazz hauled Lori upright, and they continued onward again at the same rapid pace. Spaz made sure to stay a little behind his brother and sister, to make sure he didn’t get lost, or get the rest of them lost by following him. Unfortunately, even without Spaz’s mad dashing throughout the airship’s myriad of hallways, the group did come to dead ends, and had to fight off Tank’s goons on their tail as they doubled back.
Amazingly, it was Spaz who pointed out the sign with the word “Armoury” written on it, and an arrow indicating the right direction. They took off in that direction, and it wasn’t long before they were back in the armoury. They immediately picked up their airboards and kicked off, zooming to the ground below.
It wasn’t until several hundred feet later that Lori said, “Where’s Blaze?”
Jazz was nonplussed. “He was right behind us! Where could he have gotten to?”
Then he noticed what Spaz had with him. “Oh no!”
It was Spaz’s turn to be confused. “What? What is it? What did I do?”
“You’re using Blaze’s airboard! We left Blaze back in the airship!”
They touched down on ground, then made an attempt to turn around and go back up again. However, the airboards wouldn’t cooperate. They simply flickered a few times, then sputtered, and finally, the boosters went completely dark. Jazz was spastic, Lori was beside herself, and Spaz was simply befuddled.
“We’re out of fuel! We can’t go back up!”
“Then how are we going to get Blaze back?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know! You come up with something!”
“Guys, shut up for a sec!” Indigo’s brusque remark came at the perfect time, and did what it was supposed to do. Both Jackrabbits lapsed into silence.
“Listen. I’ve learned a lot from Jack Flash, even though this is my first mission with him. We’ve got to keep a level head when something like this hits. What I suggest we all do now is head back to somewhere where we can refuel and reload. We’re doing no good standing about here.”
“He’s right,” Splitter added.” We’re not going back up to the airship with no fuel, so we might as well live with it, and head back to refuel somewhere nearby. That way, we won’t be wasting any time to get back up there to find Blaze. Agreed?”
Before anyone could reply, he answered his own question. “Agreed. Let’s go.”
He was about to bolt from the landing zone when Indigo put a hand on his shoulder. “Splitter…”
“What?”
“You’re looking for the nearest place to refuel, right?” Indigo cocked an eyebrow.
“Yeah, why?”
Indigo pointed a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the opposite direction. “Well, Aevias is that way.”
Splitter chuckled half-heartedly, then mumbled, “Right. That way.” Then he took off in the specified direction.
As they wound up to go, Lori mentioned to Jazz, “Gee, doesn’t that make you feel a certain sense of déj(-) vu?”
“Shut up.”
When the Jackrabbits, along with Indigo and Splitter, had made a run for it from the prison cells aboard Buster Tank’s airship, Blaze had escaped in the exact opposite direction, down the long hallway. It had occurred to him that may be other prisoners on the airship, and he had always felt it necessary to save as many lives as possible whenever possible. This was no exception.
Running down the hall, he hurriedly looked into each cell for any signs of life. Blaze decided that Tank apparently was not very good at taking prisoners, owing to the large amount of empty cells.
Suddenly, something whizzed by that was definitely not an empty cell. Blaze stopped, backtracked a few steps, and there, sitting alone in the cell, was a green rabbit. The captive rabbit had not yet seen Blaze, thanks to his obsidian fur. Blaze inched closer to the cell, to try to identify the prisoner. He bonked his head on the bars, which was completely atypical to his extreme care to not be noticed, as he edged forward. The rabbit looked up to the small sound.
“Blaze?” the rabbit exclaimed, temporarily forgetting himself. He instantly clapped a hand over his own mouth, as if he had said something that he shouldn’t have.
“Acid?” Blaze recognized the imprisoned rabbit immediately. “How’d you get here?”
Removing his hand from his mouth, Acid muttered, “I honestly don’t know. I was doing a few field tests on some of my newest work, then all of a sudden everything turns red, I’m knocked unconscious, I wake up, and I’m in jail. What are you doing here?”
“Helping rescue Jazz’s brother.”
“Jazz? As in Jazz Jackrabbit?”
“Do you know any other rabbits by the name of Jazz?”
“Well, no…” Acid admitted, as Blaze went to work on the lock.
As Blaze went for his lock picking tools, he heard Jazz’s voice in the back of his mind. The voice said, “There’s a far easier way to do that, Blaze.” The black rabbit pondered this momentarily, then left his lockpicks alone, reaching for his trusty silenced Dhareinger instead. He raised the weapon, and pointed it steadily at the lock on the cell door. With a single pull of the trigger, he put a hole through the lock, and it was no difficult task to simply pull open the lock.
As Acid exited the cell, he felt compelled to ask one more question. “So, how did you get in here, sir saviour?”
“Blew a hole in the armoury wall and flew in.”
Acid was slightly taken aback. “An armoury? In a jail building? What would that be good for, considering Carrotus has automated security for its prisons?
Here, Blaze began to look uneasy. “Because this is not a Carrotan prison. We’re in the cellblocks of an enemy airship, miles above Carrotus’ surface. Buster Tank put you here.”
Acid was totally stunned, but he quickly recomposed himself. “An airship. That’s like cheating.”
Then something crossed his mind. “Hey, while you were in the armoury, did you happen to notice a rocket launcher? A red one?”
Blaze thought back to the armoury, but he couldn’t remember seeing a rocket launcher fitting Acid’s description, even a description as simple as “red.” “No, not that I can recall. Why don’t we just go check?”
“Not a bad idea.”
As they left the general area, a lizard poked its reptilian head at the door, and, satisfied that they didn’t know it was there, slithered out and began creeping up on them. Unfortunately for the lizard, Blaze saw its reflection in the insides of his shades. The last thing Blaze liked to see is a backstabber, even an enemy backstabber.
The last thing the lizard saw was a black gun appearing over the black rabbit’s shoulder, and firing once.
Just once.
Blaze didn’t even turn around as the lizard fell to the floor.
After searching the rest of the cell block, without finding any other prisoners, Blaze and Acid were much more careful in making their way back to the armoury than Jazz’s group was. Although they had to face off against a few squads of turtle guards along the way, they generally did a better job at keeping themselves hidden. Blaze had donated his silenced blaster to Acid for the time being, so that Acid wouldn’t be weaponless. After all, Blaze could simply use his amazing disappearing act to sneak around or up on enemies, so he didn’t really need his gun.
It wasn’t long before they found the kicked-off door from the armoury, and not far from that, the doorless armoury itself. Acid headed in, and almost immediately spotted his prized red rocket launcher. Blaze wasn’t long in following Acid into the armoury, and as he did, he read the small inscription along the side of Acid’s massive weapon, and made a wild guess as to what it meant.
“RaCO. Radium hypocarbonite?”
“Yep. Radium hypocarbonite fusion rocket launcher. My most trusted and faithful weapon to date. The ammunition has a splash effect equivalent to that of a small nuclear bomb.” He smiled proudly, handing the small black blaster back to Blaze. The spy rabbit suddenly felt inadequate as he reclaimed his weapon.
Just then, more of Tank’s airship guards, now armed, appeared down the hallway in front of the armoury. Blaze dove towards a corner of the open doorway, and Acid dodged to the side wall, narrowly missing three blaster shots flying past him. As Blaze peeked out from the doorway, grimly sniped off a few of the approaching guards, then ducked back again, Acid quickly checked the contents of his newly found rocket launcher. Satisfied by what he saw, he propped his weapon onto his shoulder, sprang out into the open, and aimed at the oncoming targets.
Blaze suddenly realized what was happening. He only had time to yell, “Acid! No!” as the rabbit in question pulled the trigger.
The blast from the rocket, while completely vaporizing the armed guards, propelled Blaze and Acid out of the hole in the hull around the armoury, and into the air outside. Once outside, they quickly began to plummet to the ground far below…
Heh, this is one of my favourite chapters. I'm getting the feeling that that "It's that way." joke is going to turn into a running gag...
Ah well. I just hope I didn't miss much in physics... :D
acid
Oct 11, 2002, 06:31 PM
*is speechless*
This is a GREAT story! Even if you had someone different, it would <s>suck</s> still be great!!!
You used my character very well!
I'M IN A STORY!!!
*Does a little jig, bonks his toe that got operated on yesterday on his desk and hops around the room cursing for a while*
:D
acid
Oct 11, 2002, 06:36 PM
Originally posted by 4I Falcon
...Blaze thought back to the armoury, but he couldn’t remember seeing a rocket launcher fitting Blaze’s description, even a description as simple as “red.” “No, not that I can recall. Why don’t we just go check?”...
Notice anything about the two marked names?:D
It's okay, I was just pointing it out. Nobody's perfect. I have millions of typos in my story probably...:p
4I Falcon
Oct 11, 2002, 08:44 PM
Nice catch there, Acid. Fixed that, thanks.
Working on Chapter 11!
Ducky
Oct 13, 2002, 08:50 AM
*frolics* Yeeeee ..rock on :)
4I Falcon
Oct 18, 2002, 03:45 PM
It's mah birthday, lalalalala... ^_^
Chapter 11: The Fall of the Shellnaught
On the way to Aevias, the Jackrabbits were forced to run slightly slower than usual, to allow Lt. Indigo and Splitter to keep up. However, even at their slightly decreased speed, they reached Aevias’ Ground Point, a single, small building, in a moderately short time.
Jazz looked up. There, hovering above them, was the majestic floating city Aevias. From below, it looked like a round, dark grey disk, striped around the sides and through the center by black anti-grav strips. From the side, it would look like a large platform, with hundreds of buildings resting on top. There was also an invisible air shield surrounding the city, to keep its residents unaffected by the low-pressure air around the city. Aevias rivaled two other cities in size; namely, Carrotus City and the Myriad Metropolis. However, anyone who had never seen Aevias before would swear that it was the largest city on the planet. Or rather, off the planet.
Jazz pondered this as he followed the others into the small building that was the Ground Point. Inside was a single room, and at the center of the room was a large teleportal, shimmering with light. Jazz had seen the portal before, but it never ceased to amaze him. Numerous control panels ringed the outside of the room, but the rabbits didn’t bother with them; they weren’t teleporting anything out of the ordinary up to the city. Nevertheless, Jazz watched Spaz, then Splitter, run full speed into the portal, leaving ripples in the iridescent surface. As he followed suit, charging into the portal, he felt the signature pull on his center of gravity as he blinked out of existence…
Jazz reappeared on all fours in a larger room. The faint hum from below indicated that he had indeed reached Aevias, and was listening to the anti-gravity generators beneath him. As he stood up and dusted himself off, he noticed Spaz watching Splitter rummaging through some filing cabinets on the other side of the room. He was about to say something, when Lori fell out of the teleportal, right on top of him.
Jazz was not impressed. “Das-blammit, Lori, would you stop doing that?!”
“Um… oops?” Lori grinned awkwardly. Spaz tried as hard as he could to keep from laughing, and was about to pop when Splitter pulled a small device out of the filing cabinet, and held it up triumphantly.
Spaz was first to ask what it was. “What is it?”
Lori hopped off of her brother, and Jazz stood up, only to be flattened again as Indigo chose that exact moment to come through the portal. Jazz simply lay on the ground, shaking his head resignedly.
Spaz repeated his question. “So what is it?”
“This is an input/output carrier signal disruptor. Used to pinpoint anyone’s exact location on the planet.”
At this point, Jazz, still pinned under Indigo, brightened up. “Ooo, like the one they used in the Matrix?”
“Yes, except this one’s hardware, not software,” Splitter replied, as he pressed a few keys on the device. He stared at the results in awe.
“I don’t believe it. She’s still here.”
“Who is? Who’s still here?”
But Splitter had already left, running at top speed, chunnering away to himself. Spaz glanced at Indigo, then tore away after Splitter. Jazz was immediately up on his feet, and he and Lori were gone before Indigo even hit the floor. Which left the Lieutenant sitting on the floor, scratching his head blankly.
Elsewhere, Jack was flying as fast as his BIAS could, and had been doing so for the last half hour. He was heading towards Tank’s battleship, or where it was before, and he was intent on taking the imposing juggernaut out of the sky for good.
Meanwhile, Blaze and Acid were in freefall after being blown out of the side of the airship, and were falling dangerously rapidly toward the ground.
There seemed to be a red haze around Jack’s airborne self, and his peripheral vision was clouded in redness. It took him a few seconds to notice the pair of falling bodies before and below him.
As soon as he did, his mission changed. Instead of continuing towards the airship, he dove downwards to the two falling rabbits. He didn’t notice it, but the red haze around his field of vision had disappeared.
At first, Blaze had seen a fiery streak crossing the sky above, and had mistaken it for a guided missile, headed for the airship. However, when the fiery streak turned in his and Acid’s direction, Blaze knew there was something very wrong. He instantly did the first and only thing he could think to do.
He opened fire.
Luckily, Jack’s outstanding skill with his BIAS paid off. Also, fortunately for Jack, Blaze had lost his shades, and the black rabbit’s gold-coloured eyes were having mild difficulty adjusting to the flare from the BIAS’s boosters against the dark dusk sky. Jack rapidly dodged side to side, avoiding Blaze’s blaster shots. As he got closer, Blaze recognized his target, and would have kicked himself for shooting at his own comrade had he not been in a more precarious situation.
Jack flew into a steep drop alongside Blaze, and released the BIAS’s boosters. They were now face-to-face, upside-down, and falling fast. Jack’s blue eyes seemed to bore deep into Blaze, and the spy rabbit couldn’t tear his gaze away.
Suddenly, after staring Blaze in the eye for a while, Jack broke into a fit of laughter. Blaze looked at Jack strangely, and when the latter’s mirth generally subsided, asked, “What’s so funny?”
Still smiling, as if it were some private joke, Jack admitted, “I don’t know. What I do know is that if you and that other rabbit don’t get out of this freefall soon, you’ll be rabbit pancakes. So…”
He spun around, so that he was still upside down, but facing away from Blaze. “Grab on.”
Blaze did obediently as he was told, holding on tight to Jack’s shoulders, and was immediately rewarded with not falling off as Jack gunned the jets and flew over towards Acid.
The green rabbit was flipping backwards as he fell through the air, and he was still unconscious from the blast of his own missile. Jack had to time his approach just right, or risk accidentally getting Acid’s foot in his face. All at once, he slowed down for a moment, then sped up again to perfect his timing.
The speed drop worked perfectly, and Jack was able to grab Acid’s limp form by the wrists. Once he had a good grip on Acid’s wrists, he reverted himself in a quick forward roll. As Jack slowed their descent, there was a resounding boom overhead. Jack and Blaze looked upwards simultaneously, and watched as Tank’s airship tipped forward, a spiral of smoke trailing from its tail end. An enormous explosion rocked the airship, and Jack smiled, red eyes gleaming, as it completely lost its stern end.
Suddenly, a bright white beam shot out of the top of what remained of the airship. The beam shot away into space, almost directly above the airborne rabbits. A few seconds later, the beam faded from view, and as it did, the remainder of the great Shellnaught exploded in a gigantic fireball.
Jack, Blaze, and Acid landed amid a cloud of dust. Jack peered up into the sky, and said calmly, “Well, that takes care of that.”
From her high-speed airboard, Headcheese had seen the bright flare streaking across the sky, turning, going out, and returning again, but going much slower. She had also seen the Shellnaught lose its back half, and then emit the bright beam into space. Then the final, gargantuan explosion ripped through the dark sky. Headcheese had to shield her eyes, and as she did, she lost control of her airboard. The unsteady airboard wobbled back and forth behind her, propelling her side-to-side crazily. She knew a crash at that speed would be fatal.
If it wasn’t one thing, it was another thing popping up in front of her, and she had to frantically waver sideways to avoid smashing head on into one of the things while just as frantically try as best she could to slow down. It wasn’t working.
Finally, the nose of her airboard hit a rock. While the airboard stopped, Headcheese didn’t, and she dove forward, now completely unable to stop herself from crashing into anything. She shut her eyes, and braced for impact with something… anything…
Surprisingly, the impact wasn’t as lethal as she had thought it to be. While her obstacle wasn’t the softest thing around, it was definitely enough to stop her without killing her. In fact, she felt it give almost before she had made full contact with it. When she stopped, and opened her eyes, one saw white fur, and the other saw night sky.
“Um… Headcheese…?”
Headcheese looked up. There, above her, was her brother’s face, staring back down at her. It took her a second to realize that she was sitting on top of Jack. She scrambled off of him, and he stood up and brushed himself off. Blaze was sitting nearby, chuckling. Amazingly, Acid was still out cold.
Just then, Wizard and Firefox skidded to a halt nearby in the blue superbike. The top panel slid open, and Firefox hopped out. He turned around, and yelled back into it, “I still think it’s fort-ay!”
He turned back, and, noticing Headcheese, simply said to Jack, “Heya. I guess she found you before we did.”
“Guess so. I kinda noticed when she crashed into me.” Jack smiled, rubbing his midriff ruefully.
There was a short silence, then Firefox continued. “Well, I see that you’ve taken care of the airship well enough…”
“That was Acid,” Blaze said. “Not intentional, but it worked.” He smiled.
“Acid?” Wizard's head poked out from the open top of the bike. “As in the Acid that this belongs to?”
As soon as Wizard produced the rocket launcher from the bike, Acid was on his feet, and he reclaimed it at about the speed of sound. Firefox was lost for words as Acid hugged his weapon like a child who had just found his favourite toy.
“Okay…”
Got me upgraded computer! Woowoo!
Best of all... JJ2 runs at 70FPS! YAAAAAAAAAAA! *trips and falls down the stairs* :D
4I Falcon
Oct 22, 2002, 05:27 PM
You wouldn't believe how much editing was required to get that chapter under 10000 characters. It started out at 10300-something, and it was verra hard to get rid of certain stuff. Y'know, like descriptors.
I've got way too many words ending with "ly" in my story.
BTW, just so ya know, my updated Chapter 11 post is exactly 10000 characters long. ^_^
SNEFT! :D
acid
Oct 22, 2002, 07:19 PM
I find it hard to believe this is still only on 1 page... My story only has 10 chapters and is spread out across 4 pages!
Anyways, great story! Do continue...
BTW, you doing any work on system of turbulence?
4I Falcon
Oct 23, 2002, 04:32 AM
Yeah, some... I've just been so hung up with E:JF and school that I haven't done much with it lately...
...but it IS progressing! Slowly, but it IS!
Why do you ask?
acid
Nov 3, 2002, 06:41 PM
Just curious, and there is a certain part you said you would include... :D
BTW, is this the last chapter, close to the last chapter, or is there going to be a major plot twist?
4I Falcon
Nov 4, 2002, 03:20 PM
I'm about at the halfway point in the story. I'm also adding yet another character in chapter 12. I'll give you a clue: it's the one we all know and love, and it's not the local censorhorse. Sorry, Derby.
Yes, acid, I've included you and your coffee maker in Chapter 2 of SoT. No need to worry.
SPAMTASTIC. :D
4I Falcon
Nov 26, 2002, 02:29 PM
Well, my Palm's Documents To Go is being, frankly, retarded. It's not letting me transfer my stories from desktop to Palm, or vice versa.
What does this mean? It means that there might not be any new chapters of E:JF, or SoT, for quite a while.
I'm trying to work my way around the problem (namely, by uninstalling and reinstalling Documents to Go), so I'll have my newest chapters up on the JCF ASAP. I might even have them up before I fix my Palm, as I can just work on them at home... but for the time being, the stories will have to wait.
Sorry.
Edit: I claim the second page.
acid
Nov 26, 2002, 02:43 PM
NOOOOOOOO!
Now why does this sound familiar?:p
*whistles*
4I Falcon
Nov 26, 2002, 03:01 PM
Well, that was unbelievably easy. Fixed my Palm, got Documents to Go up and running again, and have fiinished the twelfth chapter of E:JF.
Here ya go. Enjoy.
Chapter 12: Ducky Hunt
Splitter led the Jackrabbits on a wild chase through the congested streets of Aevias, and the passers-by looked simply bewildered as the green rabbit, then the three others, sped by. Some of the said passers-by were literally swept off their feet.
Splitter was still watching his small device’s screen as it constantly changed. There was a small blip on the corner of the screen, and the blip was slowly approaching the center of the display. He was making hazardous stop-on-a-dime ninety-degree turns, and the Jackrabbits, especially Spaz, were having an extremely difficult time skidding to a stop and taking off again. Spaz was often not as successful as his brother and sister at slowing down, and many bystanders had gotten injuries, fortunately minor, to prove it.
Splitter finally seemed to find the place he was looking for, and bolted inside. Jazz and Lori stopped in front of the building, but Spaz, as usual, tripped over his socks, and flew headfirst into a nearby spectator.
Lori recognized the unintentional obstacle as soon as he got up. “Indigo? How’d you get here so fast?”
Rubbing his torso, Indigo mumbled, “It’s called a shortcut. I figured Splitter would end up here.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Let’s just say he well-knows someone here, and he hasn’t seen her in a long time. Maybe a bit too long.”
“Her? A girl?”
“Would you happen to know any guys referred to as ‘her’?”
“Very funny.” Lori looked up to the building Splitter had rushed into. “ARMOR?”
“Aevian Reconaissance/Military Objectives Recovery. Basically, Aevias’ Secret Service.”
“Sounds like fun,” Jazz remarked, as they went inside.
Once inside, they found Splitter nearby, looking frantically at the building’s floor plan, then to his input/output device, then back to the floor plan. He was mumbling something that sounded vaguely like “She’s here, so where is she?”
An elevator opened a short distance down the hall to their right, and Splitter turned hopefully towards the sound. A lone rabbit, with dark gray fur, stepped out of the elevator. She was greeted with the sound of Splitter screaming, “DUCKY!”
Splitter came at her like a small train, complete with the sound effects: “duckyduckyduckyduckyduckyduckyGWAR!” He launched himself at the gray-furred rabbit. As the flying rabbit approached, she neatly sidestepped, and chuckled as Splitter did a headlong swan-dive into the floor. She then seemed to notice Indigo and the Jackrabbits standing in close proximity for the first time, and greeted them whole-heartedly. “Indigo, right? Sergeant Indigo?”
Indigo beamed widely. “Actually, Lieutenant Indigo by now. Somehow, I managed to get myself promoted.”
His smile then turned to a look of mock disappointment. “And then I got myself stuck with these crazy characters.”
“Aw, too bad,” Ducky replied, with a coy smile on her face. She then turned her attention to the other three rabbits. “And what good inhabitant of Carrotus with half a brain wouldn’t be able to recognize the Jackrabbit family?”
“Are you implying that you have half a brain?” Jazz inquired.
“Still more than certain people,” she replied with a grin, nodding behind her to the half-upright Splitter. As the small rabbit got up, he noticed Ducky still standing close by, with her back to him. He launched himself at her again from his half-standing position, and almost bowled her over as he landed on her back. He clung onto her back like a parasite, and there were both laughing giddily and rotating around crazily until Ducky skillfully crouched down, somersaulting Splitter over her head, and tickled him around the ribs for a second or two. That left him convulsing on the floor in laughter for a few minutes.
As Splitter laid on the floor, recovering from his mirth, Jazz said to Ducky, “So, I take it you two already know each other. And well, by the looks of it,” he added.
“You’re right there. I’ve known the little goony since he was naught but a fuzzy little fuzzball.” Ducky chuckled. “He used to be so cute…”
“Hey!” Splitter was now on his feet again, and was glaring at Ducky. “I’m not cute! What are you talking about?”
Ducky rolled her eyes, and put her face into her hand, shaking her head bemusedly. “Some people are just too much to understand.”
“You got that right,” Indigo replied. “Imagine having to be his partner for a full… no , make that a year and a half by now. I think I’ve gone mildly insane.”
Now Splitter wheeled on Indigo. He raised his finger as if he were about to say something critical, but then lowered it again as he realized that he had forgotten what the critical something was.
Then, Jazz remembered what they had come to Aevias for in the first place. “Ducky, do you know of any place where we can refuel?”
“Refuel what?”
“Er, our airboards.”
“What airboards?”
Something resurfaced from the back of Jazz’s mind. “Oh, poo gas! We left our airboards back at the teleportal!”
Ducky, however, was unfazed. “Don’t worry about it. We can supply you with new ones.”
“We?”
“ARMOR. We’ve got enough to spare.”
“‘Roight then,” Jazz said, suddenly acquiring an outlandish accent. He quickly dropped it again when he received puzzled glances from the others. He continued. “Lead on to the airboards, esteemed Ducky.”
“Oooyay, I’m esteemed,” Ducky giggled, as she led them down the hall.
While ARMOR didn’t have as extensive a stockade of airboards as Outpost 12, the supply was impressive enough for all five of them, excluding Ducky, to find a satisfactory board. After they had all found a suitable board, Spaz once again began to fly uncontrollably around the room, gripping for dear life on to the nose of his airboard as it propelled him about wildly. Splitter made the unwise, and unexpected, mistake of floating in the path of the rampant airboard, and he unwillingly stopped both board and rider with his forehead. As Spaz and his airboard crashed into the wall, Splitter fell backwards off his own board, sending it careening into a high shelf, which dislodged an open, empty crate resting on the shelf. The crate landed, open side down, on top of Lori, trapping her inside. The loud WHUMP of the box landing startled Indigo slightly, but enough to make him lose his balance atop his airboard. His board zipped out from under his feet, directly at Jazz, who was practicing his expertise at performing airboard flip-tricks. As he was halfway through a varial kickflip, Indigo’s board collided with his own, sending it spiraling away from him. As Jazz hit hard on the floor, having no board to cushion his landing, Ducky was still laughing at the amazing chain of events as both airboards caught her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her.
As Lori peeped out from the box that had landed on her, she couldn’t help but chuckle at the state of everyone else. Spaz was upside-down and almost buried in the wall; Splitter was ruefully rubbing his neck, having landed on the back of his head, cracking two of his neck vertebrae; Indigo had whacked his head on another shelf, and was completely unconscious; Jazz was massaging a sore knee after landing on it, instead of landing on his airboard, as planned; and Ducky was still trying to regain her breath after being railed by two airboards, right in the stomach.
Lori pushed the box off herself, then went to help Jazz up. After Jazz had recovered, they set to work on prying Spaz out of the wall. After a few seconds of strain on Lori and Jazz’s part, Spaz popped out of the wall, flying across the room and right into the open box that Lori had left. As Lori peered into the crate, Spaz grinned sheepishly back at her. Lori rolled her eyes, chuckled, then tipped the box backwards with her foot, so that Spaz fell out onto the floor.
Spaz got up and scratched his head for a second. He then seemed to notice, for the first time, the hole he had put in the wall. As he went to retrieve his airboard from beneath the rabbit-shaped crater, Jazz laid his foot on top of it. “Best stay off your airboard for the time being, Spaz. You wouldn’t want to–”
At that point, the airboard’s AI assumed it had a rider on it, and rose into the air accordingly. Unfortunately for Jazz, he only had one foot, and roughly half his weight, on the airboard, which meant it rose twice as fast. Jazz fell backwards, twisting he uninjured knee, and landed hard on his back. Meanwhile, the board flipped once through the air, before clattering to the ground again. Ducky, who had quickly taken a crouching position with Splitter behind the open crate, sighed in relief that it had not set off another chain reaction.
Lori looked down at her fallen brother, laughing. “Maybe it’s you who should stay off your airboard for a while, eh, Jazz?”
The indignant Jazz narrowed his eyes at his sister, but remained silent.
Eet works! EET WORKS! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ^_^
Ducky
Nov 27, 2002, 06:40 PM
W00tness! I haven't been repyling here have I....but very cool.
Glad you got everything working. Carry on :)
4I Falcon
Jan 8, 2003, 12:39 PM
W00p, lucky thirteen. Yes, I realize it's been more than a month since I've last updated, but since no one's really been paying attention anyway, I doubt that affects anything.
Anyway. Enjoy. Comments and details are in the next post.
Chapter 13: The Eschaton
The enormous pull on Buster’s center of gravity faded, as he rested on hands and knees where he landed on the metal floor. He was breathing heavily, and was gasping and coughing, as if he had gotten the wind knocked out of him. Buster’s metal, spiked shell reflected the white lights above him as he eventually stood up, his previously laboured breaths slowly returning to normal. Looking around the small room for signs of life or anything of interest, he stepped off the small dais on which he stood. As soon as his foot touched the lower floor, his brother, flanked by a single yellow lizard, entered the room.
Slicer opened his arms in a greeting gesture. “Ah, welcome, brother! You made it!”
Buster scratched his head. “Where am I?”
“Why, you don’t recognize it already? This is your brainchild, your ambition! Your greatest masterpiece to date!”
“Slicer, stop talking in circles or I’ll cave in your skull.”
Slicer gulped visibly, and fell silent, staring at the floor. Which was another bad idea, as Buster was still waiting for an answer to his previous question. “Well? Where am I?”
Slicer looked back up to Buster’s toneless eyes. “This is your super-weapon, the satellite Eschaton. Ready to begin charging, as you requested.”
Buster smiled maliciously. “Good. Those rabbits have interfered with my plans long enough. They’ve foiled my capture of their little friend, destroyed my airship, and generally gotten on my nerves. Slicer, have the weapon ready to fire as soon after it finishes charging as possible. I will not tolerate the rabbits’ meddling any longer.”
Slicer nodded, then turned to the lizard beside him. The lizard quickly saluted to the turtles, then left.
Slicer turned back to his brother. “I suppose I’ll give you the grand tour. Follow me.”
“One question, first. Why did you refer to this satellite as ‘my ambition’ earlier?”
Slicer hesitated. “Remember when we were soldiers under Devan Shell’s rule?”
Buster winced, and rubbed the back of his neck. There were several ridge-like welts there, a direct result of a clash between Buster’s and Devan’s unyielding dispositions, just after Buster’s older brother Ripper’s defeat at the Jackrabbits’ hands, with Devan’s superiority emerging the victor. Buster was punished brutally for insubordination, and Devan stood by, advising Buster that he was lucky to still have his life, let alone his original rank in Devan’s army.
Slicer lowered his eyes to the ground again when he saw his brother examining the welts Devan had administered to him, more than a year ago. “I… I’m sorry…”
Buster dropped his hand from the back of his neck calmly. “Never mind. It’s long past, and Devan’s dead, so I don’t have to worry about it ever happening again. Now, if you would continue…?”
Slicer’s head rose level again. “I recall you telling me that if and when Devan died, you’d take over his army and wipe the rabbits out forever. Where he had failed, you would succeed. I simply took your ambitions and turned them into a physical reality: this satellite.”
“And you did all this because…?”
“Because I’m a better brother, and a better soldier, than that blunt idiot Ripper was. I’m smarter than him, more quick-thinking than him, and most importantly, I’m far more loyal to my superiors. Who is, at the moment, you.”
“So you did this all for me?”
“I wanted to get rid of Devan as bad as you did. Your viewpoint only fueled my will to do something about his overconfidence. When you took command of his army, I set to work on the Eschaton. So, yes, in a way I did do this for you. In another, I did it for myself.”
“In any case, you did it. And it’s readying to destroy Carrotus, I presume.”
“If Tokivi has gotten to the control panel to activate the charging, yes, it’s readying to destroy Carrotus.”
“Tokivi?”
“The lizard I sent on his way.”
“Excellent. Now you can show me around if you wish.”
There seemed to be strips of patterns of lights lining the walls of the long corridors within the Eschaton; here was blue, green, red, and somewhere else was yellow, yellow, green, and somewhere else again would be blue, green, blue, yellow, red, green… Buster lost track of the patterns after the fourth glowing light. He shook his head bemusedly, amazed at what he still didn’t know about what was, apparently, the embodiment of his own ambitions.
After a few turns left and right, Buster began to notice the constant appearance of a blue-blue-red pattern. He was about to finally ask Slicer where they were going, when Slicer spoke first.
“I take it you’ve noticed those patterns of lights along the walls?”
Buster nodded, then realizing Slicer could not hear him nodding, nor see him nodding from behind, replied, “Yes. And they are…?”
“Designed to aid our crew in getting from one place in the satellite to another. Each pattern corresponds to a particular location in the Eschaton. This blue-red-blue one that we’re following leads to the command center on the bridge deck.”
“Ah. Okay then.”
About one half kilometer of walking and a short elevator ride later, Buster and Slicer arrived at the command center. Monitors, keyboards, and all matter of technological paraphernalia occupied the periphery of the room that was the command center, and at each terminal was a turtle or reptile soldier, who suddenly started doing whatever they had been doing before just a bit faster on the Tanks’ arrival. At the center of the room, there was a metallic pillar, and a holographic image floated inside a gap in the pillar. The image appeared to be a multi-hued object, resembling a long, edged staff, with a navy blue ball, with what appeared to be short pipes sticking out in all directions, at one end, and a brightly glowing, neon yellow nub at the other. Five arrowhead-shaped protrusions, each about two thirds as long as the object itself, extended in a star shape from the main part of the object, a short distance downward from the ball top. Buster examined the image for a short while, enthralled with the hologram. Trying to identify the various parts of the mystery object, he walked slowly around the pillar.
Suddenly, the ball at the top of the image turned from navy-blue to grayish-white. Several numbers and values appeared, hovering in front of the image, detailing hull interity, surrounding shield strength, approximate energy usage, and other things so complex Buster knew to ignore them. While the numbers appeared, a computerized voice spoke from somewhere above Buster’s head. “Launch bay.”
Buster saw his brother’s grinning face on the other side of the pillar, and circled around towards him. Slicer stepped away, indicating with a gesture the pad of buttons attached to the pillar with which he had highlighted the launch bay.
Buster began studying the layout and aspects of the satellite at the holographic pillar, while Slicer went about to some of the turtles and lizards at the consoles, checking up on the progress of several issues regarding the satellite.
To one turtle, he asked, “Has your crew finished building the Megalith reactor?”
“Yes, sir. We completed construction just after your brother arrived. It will be up and running full power in about three and a half hours.”
“Good.”
He progressed to a lizard who had just sat down in his chair. “How much has the MEW charged yet, Tokivi?”
“Surprisingly little, sir; only about three percent. I don’t understand why.”
Slicer watched over Tokivi’s shoulder as the lizard tapped away at the keypad in front of him. A screen came up, detailing the amount the MEW had charged, along with an approximation of the time left until it was fully charged. The large red progress bar displayed 4%, and the smaller text below it said, “Time Remaining: 15:59:24”
Tokivi turned around to face Slicer. “Okay, four percent. Nevertheless, sixteen hours is a long time to spend waiting.”
“Well, don’t tell me this! Can you fix the problem?”
“It depends on what the problem is. Let me check something.”
After a moment of searching, the solution came up on the screen, in the form of a reactor diagnostic.
“There’s the problem! Only two of the reactors are actually running!”
“What?!”
“Well, the Caduceus reactor is still undergoing repairs from that burnout, and whoever was assigned to power up the other four only activated the Titan and Moebius reactors. The Colossus and Apollo reactors are still inactive.”
“Holy drat!” Slicer exclaimed quietly. “Is it exceedingly difficult to get those two reactors running again?”
Tokivi picked up a handheld intercom and spoke into it. “Rodar.”
A harsh voice spoke back. “Sir?”
“Are you anywhere near either the Colossus or Apollo reactors’ control units?”
“Me’n Garnas are on the war down to the branch hub anyway, sir. D’you want we should turn ‘em on?”
“Please.”
“Will do, sir.”
A minute or so later, the status for the two reactors switched from Inactive to Active, and several numbers began showing approximate values for efficiency and total output, among others.
Tokivi switched back to the MEW’s charge meter. The progress bar had increased to 5%, and the text below displayed “Time Remaining: 3:57:18”
Slicer nodded. “Much better.”
Tokivi smiled slightly. “Indeed. Twelve hours worth of charging, accomplished in about half as many minutes.”
Buster, after deciding he had learned enough from the holograms, was now standing behind Slicer and Tokivi. He rubbed his hands with malicious glee. “Good. At this rate, the weapon should be fully charged just after this Megalith reactor is running at full, correct?”
“Correct, sir.”
Buster grinned evilly. “Excellent. Today is a dark day for Carrotus and its inhabitants… for today is the day of the Eschaton!”
4I Falcon
Jan 8, 2003, 12:49 PM
I honestly didn't think I'd get this chapter done 'til god knows when. I accidentally corrupted my own registry on my computer, so I couldn't simply synchronize my Palm to my comp and copy from there, as my comp was over at my dad's friend's house, being fixed. Bleh.
For those of you who don't know, the Eschaton is a term for the end of the world. An apt name for a planet-destroying satellite.
I have a K'NEX model of the satellite Eschaton in my room. I feel special. ^_^
If anyone can tell me where the names Titan, Apollo, Moebius, Colossus, and Caduceus come from, I'll give them a cookie!
I have no idea what I'm going to do for Chapter 14, but I'll try to not let it slide for a month. Hopefully, this thread won't fall off the thirty-day page. >_>
BTW, I devoted all of my time to E:JF after finishing Chapter 4 of SoT, so the next chapter of SoT may not be up for a while.
Moygl.
4I Falcon
Jan 27, 2003, 08:04 PM
Well, I certainly hope someone actually gets around to reading this chapter. Unlike the warm acceptance Chapter 13 found amongst you. *glares*
Anyway. For those of you who still care, enjoy.
Chapter 14: Contact
When Ducky, Indigo, Splitter, and the Jackrabbits had finally quit ARMOR’s airboard room without being injured further, Ducky inquired, “So where are you all flying off to next, anyway?”
“We have to go re-rescue a friend of ours, who is currently stranded on a giant flying fortress,” Jazz replied.
“Re-rescue?”
“Well, the reason he’s stranded on a giant flying fortress is because someone–” here Jazz shot a biting glance at Spaz, who grinned meekly “–used his airboard to exit said giant flying fortress after being imprisoned there for a relatively short period of time.”
“Ah.” Ducky thought for a few moments, then added, “Can I come? The tedium of ARMOR’s everyday schedule is just that, tedious. It would be a nice change for me to bust some machine.”
“Yeah please can she come please please can she please?” Splitter was babbling so fast his words were almost indistinguishable from one another. Indigo rolled his eyes, then swatted Splitter across the back of his head. Not hard enough to cause much pain, but enough to shut him up.
The Lieutenant hesitated in giving a straight answer. “I don’t know... it’s just a quick S&R, anyway...”
“PLEEEEEEEEZ?” Splitter begged. This time it was Ducky who swatted Splitter across the head, with a terse “Enough!”
The gray rabbit looked back up to the others. “If I’m not coming, at least let me help you find this flying fortress. Being a floating city, Aevias keeps a watch over airspace for this side of the planet. I’m sure I can find something as obtuse as a fortress in the air.”
As the posse headed for one of ARMOR’s numerous radar satellite console stations, Ducky asked, “Is there anything you can tell me, measurement-wise, about what I’m looking for?”
“Does ‘really flippin’ huge’ help at all?” Indigo replied.
“Actually, yes, it does. Now I can disregard any medium-sized craft in the search. I assume that by ‘really flippin’ huge’ you mean something that is about the size of an airborne aircraft carrier, right?”
“About that size, yes. Perhaps a bit smaller, but definitely not classifiable as a medium-sized craft,” Lori said. “After all, it is a fortress. Kind of.”
“’Kind of’?” Ducky narrowed her eyes at Lori. “What do you mean, ‘kind of’?”
“Well, it’s more of a gunship – well, not even that, probably a flying battleship.” Lori narrowed her eyes back at Ducky, with a smile on her face, denoting that she meant nothing of it. “Why do you ask?”
Ducky un-narrowed her eyes, and answered, “I was just checking that you weren’t looking for something that resembles, say, a smaller version of Aevias with more weapon on it, which would most likely be one of Aevias’ or Velo City’s airborne battle stations.”
“Well, it definitely did not look like that.”
“Okay then.”
They entered a room, with a sign above blaring “Radar Console Area 7-3” in bright red letters. The room itself was not very large, but it contained at least a dozen, maybe two, control stations. As soon as they walked in the door, Ducky went for the console third from the door. Which itself was somewhat strange; as there was no one else in the room, she could have gone to the one nearest the door, but apparently chose not to.
“Can you tell me approximately where this battleship of yours is?”
“A while north – maybe ten or twelve klicks,” Indigo said, indicating with a pointed finger the direction.
Ducky looked at Indigo’s hand. “That’s west, Lieutenant.”
“No it’s not. It’s north.”
“It’s west.”
Indigo dropped his hand, and looked upwards; he wasn’t quite rolling his eyes, but he appeared to be thinking in depth. He pointed west again, then pointed in a direction perpendicular to west. He seemed to be mouthing something, but no sound came from his mouth. After a few seconds of Indigo’s pointing in random directions and talking silently to himself in his mind, he turned back to Ducky, stating simply, “You’re right. That is west.”
“I know. That’s what I said.”
Indigo pointed west again. “Well, the gunship was in that direction then. Whatever direction that is now.”
“That’s west.”
“Okay then.”
“Alright, so it’s west… how far away did you say it was?”
“Maybe 10 kilometers.”
“Okie-dokie then.” With that, she began tapping away madly at the keyboard connected to the computer in front of which she sat. Screens flashed by, numbers quickly and rapidly appeared and disappeared, and small message boxes only showed themselves for less than a split second as Ducky entered every bit of information she had so fast her hands were a blur. The rabbits behind her struggled to focus on even one thing, failing miserably as words blipped on and off of the screen faster than their eyes could follow them.
Suddenly, Ducky stopped typing. She turned around, so she was facing the others. She had a worried look upon her face.
“You said you have a comrade still in the airship, right?”
“Yes, one Blaze Blackrabbit still upstairs in the airship,” Lori answered, now getting anxious herself when she saw Ducky’s expression. “Why? What’s wrong?”
Ducky blinked once. “Well, I didn’t find a gigantic airship, but I did find lots of… much smaller airships… in generally the same area…”
“What?” Jazz said. “Where did all of those smaller ships come… from…” His eyes widened as he realized what had actually happened. “Oh no…”
“And Blaze?” Splitter asked tentatively.
“No sign of him, I’m afraid. He may have taken a turn for the worse,” Ducky said, with an uneasy tone in her voice. “We may have lost him.”
Jazz seemed to deflate slightly at this statement, then he brightened up again as he remembered something. Hastily taking off his backpack, he drove his hand inside, mumbling to himself slightly. He appeared to have much more inside his backpack than it looked able to carry.
Suddenly, he found what he was looking for. He pulled it out of the pack, with a grandiose “Aha!”
In his hand, he held the small headset Wizard had given him, as he did with all of the others, before they had left the R.O.A.R. Outpost. He flipped it onto his head, pressing the power button on the left earphone as he did so, and adjusted it so it rested snugly atop his furry head. Lowering the mic so it was next to his mouth, Jazz spoke into the headset. “Jack? Firefox? Can anyone hear me?”
Wizard’s voice came back, clear as a bell. “We hear you, Jazz. What’s up?”
“We’re worried about Blaze. We left him up in the Shellnaught when we made our hasty escape, and now the airship has gone and blown up. With Blaze inside it. There’s no sign of anything where the ship used to be, and that includes any lagomorphic entities.”
There was a short pause on the other end, then Wizard’s voice returned. “What are you talking about? Did you just realize that the Shellnaught’s been destroyed just now?”
“Well, yeah… so? Blaze could have been taken out of existence along with the Shellnaught. I don’t understand how you can be so positive about this! A Task Force member’s life is in danger! He could be dead already!”
“Jazz. Calm down.”
“How can I–”
“Blaze is sitting right next to me.”
“…buh?”
“Jack caught Blaze and another rabbit, goes by the name of Acid, in free-fall before the Shellnaught even went down. They had apparently blown themselves out of the ship with a mini-nuke. Jack, Firefox, Blaze, Headcheese, Acid, and myself are still together and in one piece.”
“Well, that’s good to hear. As long as he’s still alive. How are the rest of you doing?”
“Well, Jack’s got a bruise on his waist from Headcheese plowing into him, and Blaze and Acid are a bit burnt from the nuke blast, but overall we’re fine. You?”
“Not too bad. Indigo and Splitter are still with us, as is Spaz. We’ve met one of Splitter’s friends, a female rabbit by the name of Ducky, during our stay at Aevias. God, I almost sound like a travel agent. Anyway, we came here to refuel our airboards, and ended up getting new ones.”
“Sounds like you’ve been keeping yourselves busy.”
“We have.”
“Alright then, we’ll rendezvous with you at Aevias in twenty.”
“Sounds good. We’ll be ready.”
“Righty. Wizard of Odds out.”
Jazz took off the headset, and was immediately greeted with the inquisitive stares of his siblings, the Lieutenant and his partner, and Ducky, who was still sitting at the radar terminal. They were all expectant of an answer, which Jazz provided.
“Blaze is fine; apparently, he and another rabbit, Acid, blew up the airship with a small nuke. Jack found them in free-fall, and they’re all back at ground level, safe and sound. They’ll be here to pick us up in twenty minutes.”
Ducky rested her chin in her hand, smiling slightly. “Well, I’m glad I could be of service.”
“Yes, thank you, Ducky, for your assistance in finding the Shellnaught, or lack thereof. In the meantime, we must be going if we’re going to meet up with the others,” Lori answered.
“Alright then, I’ll see you all later. If you need anything, I’ll be here, just drop by.”
“Will do, Ducky, will do,” Jazz acknowledged, with a nod of approval.
As they were leaving, Ducky couldn’t help but chuckle at Splitter’s several attempts to get the others to allow her to come. “So can she come? Can she? Please please please pleeeeeeease?”
Indigo’s voice always seemed to follow Splitter’s. “No! For the hundred and sixth time, stop asking!”
“Yeah, but can she come?”
“Argh!”
I suppose I should start working on SoT again... it appears to have slipped off of the 30-day page... :( ah well, I have a general idea for what I'm doing in Chapter 5, so this shouldn't be too difficult.
I'm going to sleep now. G'night all.
~_~ .zzZ
scatman
Jan 28, 2003, 11:02 AM
i like it iand i am stil reading this so dont quit writing on!
have you got a digital camera?
if yes can you post a picture of the sattelite you made from k'nex
4I Falcon
Jan 28, 2003, 11:47 AM
yes and maybe. i could take a pic of the satellite, but i'd need a host site to send it to, then to put it up here.
besides, it's not quite perfect. the model has eight of what there is only five of in the story.
note how i'm being very vague. i'm trying not to let anything slip.
THANK YOU, SCATMAN, FOR READING THIS! I honestly thought no one cared about my story anymore... ;_;
acid
Jan 28, 2003, 07:35 PM
OY!!! THIS IS A GREAT STORY!!!
I didn't reply to the last chapter because i'm too lazy. Feel free to bludgeon me with the steel pipe of dishonor.
scatman
Jan 29, 2003, 10:20 AM
ok
but when it is perfect (may be never, you choise) i can host it for you
if you want
Ducky
Jan 30, 2003, 01:32 PM
...W00t?
*has to go through and reply to all the topics*
Am v. busy. Sorry. But I think they're great continuations.
4I Falcon
Feb 13, 2003, 04:40 PM
Chapter 15: Innovations and Strategies
True to their word, Wizard and the others were at Aevias’ Ground Point in a few seconds shy of twenty minutes. Jazz, Spaz, and Lori were waiting at the Ground Point for them, and they watched as the sleek superbike slowed to a halt in front of the small building. Jack, with Blaze still on his back, was not too far behind the bike, and he was closing fast. He stopped as an ice-skater would, turning sideways and firing his BIAS’ jets once, causing him to stop abruptly beside the bike.
Blaze hopped off of Jack’s back. Jack bent backwards, and a painful series of cracks sounded from his spine as he forced his vertebrae back into place.
“Holy toast, that’s the last time I carry a passenger on my back.” Standing straight up again, a few more cracks were audible from Jack’s back. “Ow. I think I’m getting too old for this kind of stuff.”
The top of the bike slid open, and Firefox hopped out. “What’s this? The greatest marksrabbit on this side of Carrotus is getting too old for his trade?”
Jack laughed. “You shut up. You’re still older than I am.”
“And I’m going to hold that against you for the rest of your life, I am,” Firefox shot back, grinning.
While Jack and Firefox bantered back and forth, Jazz couldn’t help but admire the blue bike. Wizard noticed him ogling the set of wheels, and smiled to himself. After Acid and Headcheese had exited the bike, Jazz asked Wizard, “Is this yours?”
Wizard shook his head. “I only wish. This is one of R.O.A.R.’s prized speed vehicles, the XG Neon. Personally, my weapon of choice.”
“Not a bad choice, if I do say so myself.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Do I dare to ask if this Neon packs any armament?”
Wizard glanced at Jazz as if the answer was obvious. He smiled knowingly. “I would never go anywhere in a vehicle without any armament.”
With that, he pushed a small, yellow button on the front panel in the cockpit. Jazz jumped backwards, as a pair of wing-like protrusions extended themselves from the sides of the bike. A small pod-like object appeared on each wingtip, with the same sleek blue appearance as the rest of the bike. Finally, two small sections of each pod, one on the front and another on the further side, opened to reveal a six-barreled minigun.
With another push of a button, Wizard opened the cockpit of the pod nearer to Jazz. “Hop in.”
Jazz did so, and the top closed again. He immediately faced a single control stick with a button atop it. He hesitantly wrapped his hand around the stick; then, assured that nothing had exploded, he slowly moved the stick left to right. The minigun responded by moving right to left in front of the pod.
“As you probably may have guessed, the button fires the minigun,” Wizard said over the intercom. “Don’t press it unless you have something to aim at.”
“I figured that much,” Jazz replied drolly. “Are the rear guns automated, or what?”
“No, someone else would be sitting behind you to pilot the rear guns.”
“Ah. And to pop the top so I can get out...?”
“There’s a small handle on your right. Pull it.”
The top of the pod opened again, and Jazz got out. He examined the miniguns from the outside, nodding in awe. “Can you use the miniguns from inside the main bike?”
“I could, but I rarely need to. I don’t often venture into battle with the Neon, so I’ve gotten used to piloting it without the side pods. Besides, with the pods I can’t do that stylin’ sideways skid I just did a few minutes ago.”
“Of course,” Jazz replied with a grin.
Lori and Spaz were discussing plans with Acid, Indigo, Splitter, and Blaze. Acid had just told them of a spacecraft he had constructed a while ago, but had never required, which was stored in an underground hangar not far from where he had been abducted in the middle of his field-testing. His ship, the Hybrid Corsair, was specially built for a perfect intermediation of speed, armour, and weaponry; in addition, the Corsair sported a ventrally mounted ‘bot hangar with three ‘bots inside. Considering Blaze, Jack, and the others had rescued him from the rank cells of the airship Shellnaught, Acid said he would be more than happy to lend his services to them. The underground hangar in which the Corsair rested was relatively close to Aevias’ Ground Point; it was maybe a fifteen-minute run to the south.
Just as they were about to say their thank-yous to Acid for his generosity, a high-powered energy blast ripped into the Ground Point, struck Indigo in the torso, and sent him flying across the small building, where he smashed painfully into the back wall. Every rabbit inside the Ground Point building turned around to face the entrance, weapons ready.
Outside, and closing fast, was a horde of yellow lizards, just like the one Jack, Jazz, and the others had defeated before splitting up earlier. However, there were two differences between this mob and the last: there were some Tuf Turtles interspersed with the throngs of lizards, and each and every one of them was armed with some kind of weapon. Every weapon was poised to fire. Some, generally the ones at the forefront of the advancing pack of lizards and turtles, already were.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jack muttered, as another blast narrowly missed Firefox’s ear. “Haven’t we already gone through this?”
“Probably, but whatever, blowing stuff up is great fun!” Firefox exclaimed, cocking his blastgun. He let a few shots loose into the crowd of lizards and turtles, then ducked as yet another energy blast narrowly missed his head and took out the wall behind him.
Wizard opened both pods on either side of the Neon, and yelled out, “Get in!” before closing the sliding panel on the main bike. Four bullets pinged off of the panel just after it closed. Spaz and Lori jumped into the pod on the left wing; Headcheese and Blaze were already in the pod on the right side. Acid, Jazz, Jack, and Firefox quickly ducked behind the bike as both pods closed, and all four miniguns blazed away at the advancing lizards and turtles.
Splitter was tending to Indigo at the far side of the Ground Point. After being hit by a burning energy blast on the left side of his chest and stomach, Indigo’s normally well-groomed tan fur was not surprisingly charred to black and brown, and there were severe burn marks on the skin underneath. Blood issued from one side of Indigo’s mouth, creating a red line in his tawny fur, and he was only half-conscious. Splitter frantically tried his best to remember what he had learned in the medical aid course he had taken before he came to R.O.A.R.; then, finally giving up, he helped Indigo up by his right arm, and, using himself as a crutch, supported Indigo back to the portal to Aevias. Before they entered the iridescent portal, Splitter made sure to pound a large red button near the portal’s rim, setting off an emergency alarm at the floating city. Jack watched them go into the shimmering portal, then turned around and kept firing at the slowly thinning horde.
Jazz had switched his main weapon to RF rockets, and now was taking out three lizards at a time as the rockets exploded in the reptilian ranks; Jack was blasting away at everything that moved with this twin BIAS blasters, roasting several lizards every second; Firefox took short, quick shots with his blastgun, and managed to weaken the lizards’ forces well enough; and Acid, after loading a nuke into his rocket launcher, popped up, fired the nuke, and ducked back down again, guiding the nuke from a small screen on the side of the launcher. When a nuke exploded, it left a considerably large hole in the offensive ranks of the turtles and lizards.
After the crowd had been dispelled, which took a good ten to twelve minutes of non-stop, rapid-fire blasting (and three or four nukes from Acid’s launcher), Jazz was the only one who had taken any sort of injury; a bullet had grazed his shoulder, but it had not drawn blood, nor fazed him at all. Jack sniped off one hastily retreating lizard as Firefox looked around the room for the other two rabbits. “Hey, where did Indigo and Splitter go?”
Considering Jack was the only one who had witnessed Splitter aiding Indigo to the portal, he was the only one of them who knew where they were. After quickly scanning the horizon, he answered Firefox’s question. “Splitter took care of Indigo. He hit the panic button, and then they went back up to Aevias to get to a hospital. I can only hope the Lieutenant will be okay.”
Firefox nodded approvingly, the lowered his head. “It’s a shame, a real shame. Those two were some good fighters… I did underestimate them before, back at HQ, didn’t I?”
Without warning, Firefox stamped once, venting his spleen on no one in particular. “Random expletive! We can’t let Tank and his goons make casualties out of any more rabbits! We have to act now!”
Acid piped up first. “Well then, what are we waiting for? Like I said, it will probably only take about fifteen minutes to get to the Corsair’s hangar. We could be off the planet within half an hour, if we go now.”
“Thank you!” Firefox was breathing heavily, as if he had just finished doing something very stressful. “At least someone around here knows the value of time!”
Jack was going to follow with a stinging comeback, but kept it to himself.
“Well then, let’s be off.” Wizard slid back the main panel of the Neon. “Firefox, Acid, and Jazz, get in. Jack, do you still have enough fuel in that BIAS of yours to get to the Corsair?”
Quickly checking a gauge on one of the shoulder straps, Jack grinned. “I’ve hardly used any yet, Wizard. I could get there and back a hundred times if I wanted.”
“Well, we only need you to make the trip once,” Wizard replied, as Jazz, Firefox, and Acid hopped into the three seats behind him. “We need to get up to that satellite ASAP, and, like Firefox said, kill Tank before he kills us. And the planet.”
“Alright. Lead the way.”
4I Falcon
Feb 13, 2003, 04:45 PM
This chapter was actually sitting in wait for about a week, as I was contemplating whether or not to add something to it. It used to be a lot shorter than it is now, as I added some stuff to bring it closer to the 10000 character limit. Hey, what good is a chapter if it's not long enough?
The only cameo in here is the name Neon, which, along with the bike to which it belongs, I took from the game Extreme-G. The pods and the miniguns were my own idea.
Chapter 16 has kinda-sorta been started, as I took off the end of Chapter 15 and turned it into the start of Chapter 16. That means that number sixteen will take maybe a few days less than usual to get up here.
BLEE
acid
Feb 13, 2003, 07:25 PM
Very good! Can't wait for next chapter!
I can't help but pointing out that Acid's weapon is a little stronger than I originally intended, but a mini nuke launcher is okay! :D
4I Falcon
Feb 14, 2003, 08:08 AM
Glad you like it. I enjoy seeing things explode.
JSYK, I was on a chemistry binge when I made up the name RaCO. "Radium hypocarbonite" sounds like a good combination of highly sophisticated and extremely volatile.
I've got the first half-page of Chapter 16 done! Whee!
acid
Feb 26, 2003, 07:16 PM
I was just wondering, is it too late or could you spare at least a small cameo for Foo/Electrik/Phish?
4I Falcon
Feb 28, 2003, 01:13 PM
I'm not quite sure where I'd be able to put them, Acid. The spots seem to have pretty well filled up. If I do find an opening, I'll be sure to put Electrik there. I'm not sure how in the name of cheese I'd be able to use Foo, and I don't know enough about Phish to be able to use him properly.
In any case, here's Chapter 16 for you. Enjoy.
Chapter 16: Countdown
Considering the Neon moved at least twice as fast as any rabbit could run, they reached the hidden hangar in about seven minutes, roughly half of Acid’s predicted time. Wizard actually passed the entrance to the hangar before Acid told him to stop, whereupon Wizard slowed the Neon to a standstill, quickly forestalling himself from attempting a sideways slide. Acid reached up to his left ear, where he pressed down on one of his two ear studs.
Suddenly, a large portion of the ground shifted, near to the Neon. As the grassy area where the ground used to be moved to one side, a large, square tunnel replaced it, which appeared to channel deep into the ground. The tunnel immediately lit up as Wizard dove into it, and Jack, closely following the Neon, didn’t need to look back to know that the secret entrance had closed behind him.
The tunnel seemed to continue underground for at least a mile before they reached a larger, open area. Wizard slowed the Neon to a stop again, and took a look around. They were in a relatively small, dome-shaped cavern, with metal walls curving upwards towards the apex of the dome. A few vehicles lined the far wall, opposite the entrance from the tunnel, which included a few ATVs, a heavily armed truck, a superbike (or a combination of three bikes, which is what it appeared to be), and even a medium-sized, armed flying machine. Apparently, Acid had constructed considerably more than just the Hybrid Corsair, as the contents of the main room showed.
Wizard slid the top panel back, and opened the pods on either side of the Neon’s main body, allowing the other rabbits to get out. As soon as he had vaulted out of the slightly confined space in the Neon, Acid walked over to the far right of the room, and pressed in a few buttons on a keypad on the wall, as Wizard deftly moved the Neon into a parked position alongside the other vehicles in the hangar.
As Acid hit one last button, with an air of finality, a section of the curved wall receded sideways, disappearing from view. Where it had opened, the rabbits could see a passageway extending for a short distance, then making a sharp turn to the left. Acid stepped one pace backwards, and gestured that they should enter. As they did, the mouth of the entrance tunnel slid shut, and quickly became just another part of the curved dome wall.
Acid quickly consulted a map of the base on the left wall of the passageway, seemingly assuring himself that he knew where he was going. He traced a path on the map, nodded once to himself, and then pointed in the direction they were going.
A short distance and a few twists and turns later, they came to what appeared to be a control room. It was small and rectangular, only allowing just enough room for all nine rabbits to crowd in, and a panel of controls lined the side of the room opposite to the doorway. After scanning the long panel, Acid came to what he was looking for, and pressed two buttons rapidly in sequence.
A large part of the wall in front of the control panel seemed to open, revealing a window into the room behind the wall. Two doors on either side of the panel opened as well, permitting access to yet another two passageways, which obviously led to the opposite room.
The space on the other side of the wall was obviously not just another room. It was a huge hangar, in which a large black ship rested, with its starboard side facing them. Along the side of the nose of the ship were the words “Hybrid Corsair” written in silvery, stencil-esque typeface. It was enormous, almost fifty metres long, and half again as wide. Two tubular pipes led from the lower half of the ship to the upper half. The entire ship sported at least ten proportionally massive cannons interspersed around the ship’s body, from small pairs of minicannons on each long wingtip, to four wider pulse cannons along the middle of the ship: two near the nose, and another two between the wings. There were four, possibly more, engines on the back of the ship, accompanied by a strange, snub claw-like object protruding from the high center of the back of the ship.
Jack’s jaw dropped in awe at the enormity of the ship. Firefox was simply lost for words. Neither of them could believe that this one rabbit had created so much. Wizard stared at the ship, then to Acid, and back to the ship. “You... you made this? All of it?”
“With a little help, yes,” Acid replied. Before any of the others had time to ask him what he meant by this statement, he ushered them through the two tunnels. “Come on, let’s go! I want to try this thing!”
Jack stopped in his tracks. He slowly turned around to face Acid. “You mean you’ve… never flown this ship before?”
“Bah, how hard can it be? I built it, remember? It shouldn’t be all that hard to recall where I put what… um, anyway, get on in!”
Jack, although not appeased by Acid’s oblique lack of knowledge as to his own ship, made his way through one of the tunnels connecting the control room to the Hybrid Corsair.
Once inside, Jack looked around, noticing the others in a similar state of awe. The inside of the Corsair looked even larger than its outside, and everything seemed to be made of metal: the floors, the walls, the ceilings, the doors, and the various controls dotting the walls. A small light, next to the door Jack had just entered, switched from red to green as the door closed behind him.
The hallway that Jack, Firefox, Lori, and Spaz had entered, after they had all taken the same tunnel, only went two ways: left and right. Jack looked both ways, trying to decide which direction to take down the hall, when Firefox tapped him on the shoulder. Jack turned around, and Firefox pointed down the hall to his right, indicating Lori and Spaz’s retreating backs. They both immediately took to a jog after the two Jackrabbits, hailing them to wait up.
When the four had regrouped a short way down the hall, Firefox couldn’t help but wonder how Lori knew where she was going. “So how do you know we’re going the right way?”
“Well, Acid never told us where to go upon entering the ship. I’m guessing we go to the cockpit, because that’s most likely where we can find him. Like he said, he built this ship, so he knows his way around better than all of us put together.”
Jack mumbled something under his breath, but none of the others caught it. He grinned.
They continued at a relatively rapid pace toward the nose of the ship. Jack was almost sure they were slowly going in circles, but they soon ended up in an area that befit the designation of cockpit. Acid had already taken the pilot’s seat at the front side of the cockpit, and Jazz, Headcheese, Blaze, and Wizard occupied four other seats around the periphery of the room.
Acid spun around in his pilot’s chair, nearly falling out in the process, and glanced at them. “Ah, good, you’re here. Now then, if you would, please find a chair for each of yourselves...”
Jack plunked himself down in a chair near the back of the room; Spaz immediately pulled up a chair next to Headcheese; Firefox sat down near the front, not far from Acid; Lori chose a seat in the middle of the room, facing what appeared to be a holographic projection table.
Acid spun around again, so he was facing forward, and manipulated controls all over the panel in front of him. Various sounds emitted from the ship as its numerous parts moved to prepare for takeoff. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the Hybrid Corsair. I’ll be your pilot for this evening, and it’ll be a nonstop flight from this hangar to that big satellite thingy in space that wants to kill us. We ask that you now take note of your nearest emergency exit, and observe that the No Smoking sign has been turned on. Now then, please buckle your seatbelt, keep your arms and legs inside the craft at all times, and enjoy your flight.”
There was one more click as Acid pushed a final button in front of him, and then a quiet roar sounded from below them. The seats vibrated slightly as the engine ignited beneath and behind them. Acid smiled as his ship’s engine burst to life. “OK, we will have liftoff in T-minus thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven...”
He looked down at a screen in front of him, squinting, as if he had found something there that he was not expecting. “Hm. My watch is wrong.”
Everyone in the cockpit felt a sense of vertigo as the Corsair began to float upward, toward the slowly opening roof of the hangar. Light flooded into the cockpit as the ship rose above the Carrotan surface. The feeling of slightly increased gravity on the occupants of the ship disappeared as the Corsair stopped rising, and hovered still, about ten feet above the ground.
Acid glanced over his shoulder, at the eight rabbits behind him. Turning back again, he looked out at the sky above, all ready to put his great ship into orbit. He smiled devilishly.
“Hold on to your arses, arse-holders, ‘cause it’s go-time! Hoo-ha!”
The rabbits inside scarcely had time to blink before the Corsair blasted its engines, sending it flying with at least twice the speed of sound behind their backs, and sending it on its way to begin the final stage of assault against Buster Tank and the Eschaton.
For some reason I didn't like how I put this chapter together as much as the other chapters.
Chapter 17 will be updated sometime. And by "updated sometime" I don't mean "ignored indefinitely", so you can expect an update probably within the next two months.
Kaboo.
acid
Mar 13, 2003, 07:13 PM
I suddenly realised nobody had replied to this thread in a LONG TIME. Don't worry, I'm still here.
And eagerly anticipating the next chappie. *COUGH COUGH*
EDIT: in reply to the last chapter, I just wanted to ask, have you ever read "The Physics of Star Trek" for two reasons:
1. It's a funny book that explains how messed up Star Trek really is!
2. If you had read it, you would know that accelerating from almost still to mach 2 would most likely be lethal.
4I Falcon
Mar 13, 2003, 07:20 PM
1. Star Trek is screwed up, and I'm proud of it.
2. The Corsair has lateral gravitational restabilizers to make up for the mammoth G-force exerted on our lagomorphic protagonists. And to think I just made that up.
I'll have to read that book sometime, Acid. Sounds like fun.
BTW, thank you for proving that this story is not slowly getting dead. I was losing hope...
acid
Mar 13, 2003, 07:48 PM
The Corsair has lateral gravitational restabilizers to make up for the mammoth G-force exerted on our lagomorphic protagonists. And to think I just made that up.
Well, I guess if Star Trek has inertial dampers, you can have lateral gravitational restabilizers. :p
4I Falcon
Mar 14, 2003, 06:17 AM
Originally posted by acid
Well, I guess if Star Trek has inertial dampers, you can have lateral gravitational restabilizers. :p
I don't watch Star Trek enough to know what inertial dampers are, but I'm willing to bet that they do roughly the same thing as LGRs. (Acronyms rule.)
Oh, and by the way... Electrik's in.
Edit: So are Foo and Phish.
4I Falcon
Mar 25, 2003, 12:29 PM
Chapter 17: Family Ties
The Hybrid Corsair flew impossibly fast through the Carrotan air, skimming the tops of trees, and narrowly missing the tops of buildings. The occupants had felt but a split-second of immense pressure on their bodies as the G-forces caused by the ship’s acceleration forced them backwards (or sideways, depending on where they sat) into their seats. Their inertia quickly caught up with them, and they pulled themselves upright again. As they sat up straight again, Acid gradually began to pull the ship into an upward curve, and the Corsair began to slowly, then rapidly, gain altitude, until they felt that indescribable transition from the gravitational forces of the planet below to the impression of zero gravity in the vacuum of space.
Most of the eight passengers had never felt the sensation of zero-G, and thought it quite entertaining. Headcheese and Spaz, for example, floated more than a foot out of their chairs, finding the apparent absence of gravity highly amusing. Acid quickly advised them to stay in their seats, as the artificial gravity was either going to hold them down into their seats again, or smash them into the ground. Deciding to abstain from an ungainly faceplant into the floor, the two hovering rabbits quickly grabbed their respective chairs, pulling themselves back down into them. They heard a beep from Acid’s direction, and then the gravity returned, settling them back into their seats.
Then, from behind the cockpit, there was a loud WHUMP, followed by an “Ow!” Acid looked to each of them, and they returned his glance, puzzledly. The pilot stood up slowly, and exited the cockpit. Not three seconds had passed before they heard an argument brewing in the corridor behind them.
“Elec…?! What in the name of all that’s holy are you doing here?”
“Well, you didn’t think you were just going to leave me behind, did you? Strand me on Carrotus while you go off on some adventure to save the world and whatnot?”
“Um, let me think about this. Yes?”
There was a loud ZAP, and then Acid seemed to have changed his mind. “Okay, okay, fine! You can stay!”
“I thought you’d see it my way. Oh, by the way, there’s someone here to see you.”
“HEWWO ASHID!”
“Dear God. Why is he here?”
“It’s not like I asked him to come. He followed me here. Believe me, I want him here as little as you do.”
“I’m going to take a wild guess, and say that Phish is here too.”
“He’s around, yeah.”
“Remind me to kill you for this someday.”
“‘Kay.”
Acid re-entered the cockpit, followed by a blue-furred rabbit with a headband, surrounded by small arcs of electricity swarming around his body. A few seconds later, a lanky, tan-furred rabbit wearing a lopsided helmet meandered in driftily. The other occupants immediately realized that there was definitely something strange about this tan rabbit, as he seemed to be wandering about aimlessly, entranced in his own little world. The Jackrabbits’ doubts about this rabbit’s intelligence – or rather, sanity – were immediately confirmed as he suddenly cried out in surprise at nothing in particular, backpedalled a few steps, stumbled, then fell sprawling over the table at which Lori sat.
Acid put his face into his hands, embarrassed at the lanky rabbit’s antics. The blue rabbit simply laughed, and as he did, a particularly large spark of electricity was emitted from his left ankle, spiraled around his body, and sent itself back into his opposite shoulder. He didn’t even flinch.
Firefox quietly tapped Acid on the shoulder, causing the latter to look up. “Do you... know these two?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Acid chuckled. “The blue one with the out-of-control static charge is my brother Electrik, and the idiot who just performed a backwards faceplant over the holo-table is my cousin, Foo.”
“Foo?”
“Yes. Foo.”
Upon hearing his name, Foo looked upwards from the floor at Firefox, with a mighty “HEWWO MISHTER GUY!” at the top of his lungs.
Firefox’s eyebrow seemed to climb up his forehead. “Now I understand.”
“Yes.”
Jack watched Electrik as another arc of electricity encircled the tips of his long ears. Without taking his eyes off of the supercharged rabbit, he asked Acid, “So who’s Phish?”
“Phish is my other cousin, and Foo’s brother. They share pretty well no similarities... well, excepting species and gender, of course. I’m willing to bet that Phish probably has what Foo lacks in brains.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t mind, though,” Electrik chuckled.
“Who? Phish or Foo?”
“Either of them,” the blue rabbit replied with a wide grin. Acid laughed a bit at this inside joke, but everyone else felt they had missed whatever it was that was funny.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Acid started. “I don’t think you’ve met Jack Flash or any of these other rabbits.”
“No, I don’t believe I have...” As Electrik’s eyes scanned the room, he saw no one he knew, other than his brother and cousin.
Then his eyes landed on Jazz. His eyebrows raised themselves for a split second; then, with one more look around the room, he noticed Lori, and finally Spaz. He finished his earlier sentence.
“...except, of course, the Jackrabbits. I mean, what good inhabitant of Carrotus with half a brain wouldn’t be able to recognize the Jackrabbit family?”
Jazz was about to say something witty, but stopped himself. That’s weird, he thought to himself. That’s the exact same thing that Ducky said, back at Aevias. Could they be connected somehow? Jazz scratched his head, then banished the thought from his mind for the moment.
At that moment, an orange-furred rabbit stuck his head in the door. Nodding to Electrik, he declared, “Fixed it.”
Electrik returned the nod. “Good job.”
Acid turned around to look at the two. “Wait, wait, wait. What’s fixed? What did you ‘fix’ this time, Phish?!”
“Oh. Your Maxim-Circe burst laser. Wires got pulled, and the sentinel wasn’t working properly, or at least not nearly as fast as it should have been. In any case, I repaired it; now you shouldn’t have any problems with protecting the rear.”
Phish looked around the room, with a puzzled expression on his face. “I thought this ship was a destroyer, not a passenger transport. Would someone mind telling me who we’re hosting here?”
“I was about to, when you dropped in,” Acid replied. “As you’ve probably noticed, the Jackrabbits decided to come with; these others that you probably wouldn’t recognize are known as R.O.A.R.’s Elite Task Force.”
He slowly began to turn in his chair, indicating the five rabbits in question. “The young one, next to Spaz, is Headcheese; that black one behind you is Blaze Blackrabbit; Big Red here, next to me, calls himself Capt. Firefox; the bespectacled one on the other side of the room is Wizard of Odds; and the white one with the artillery is Jack Flash. Everyone else, this is Phish.”
“Hi.”
There was a short silence as Phish found a chair next to Wizard, and then Blaze spoke up. “I meant to ask you something earlier, Acid...”
“Yes?” Acid turned around, wearing an amusingly unassuming expression on his face.
“Would there be any possibility that we could get the details on the ‘bots in the hangar before we delve too far into this mission?”
“Absolutely,” Acid replied. “Electrik, would you mind taking the controls?”
Electrik exchanged places with Acid, and the latter moved to the holo-table, sitting opposite Lori. He entered a few commands, and the table hummed to life, sending a bright green, semi-transparent image into the air.
The image was that of a large robot. The ‘bot itself looked fearsome enough in and of itself, but there was nothing particularly striking about its appearance, excepting what appeared to be a line of blade-like projections running down its back.
“This is the first ‘bot I built for the Corsair, called the Razorback. It’s probably the most heavily armoured of the three, but it comes at a cost of speed and maneuverability. Nevertheless, it’s a good thing to have around if you’re about to fly into a warzone.”
The image began to shift, move, and mutate for a few seconds after Acid had finished his description. When it had completed its shapeshifting, a new robot stood in the place of the Razorback. This one was slightly smaller than the first, but it appeared to have more power behind it. Four vent-looking rockets extended like small wings from its shoulders and ankles, and two tubes, similar to the ones adorning the sides of the Corsair, ran from the ‘bot’s shoulders up to the back of its head.
“The Pegasus is like the exact opposite of the Razorback, being lightly armoured but very fast and agile. It can only carry light weapons, but it can deal death just as quickly and efficiently as any other ‘bot you’ll ever find. An experienced Pegasus pilot would literally be able to fly circles around an enemy.”
The image began to metamorphose again, and in the place of the Pegasus there appeared the third robot. It had almost the same proportions of any Carrotan inhabitant, but instead of long rabbit ears there was what appeared to be a spoiler atop its head, and its extremities were widened by metal armour.
“The Nightmare, in my opinion, is the perfect intermediation between speed and strength. It’s fast enough to get into a battlefield, and has enough armour on it to keep it from being blown away while it’s delivering the punch. This ‘bot is a worthy adversary and a worthwhile ally.”
Almost immediately after Acid had finished, a loud beep sounded from Electrik’s direction, and his voice wasn’t far behind it. “Uh, Acid...?”
“Yeh?”
“Could you come here for a sec?”
Acid turned around, deactivating the holo-table in a smooth movement, and strode over to where Electrik sat. “What is it?”
“What’s this green dot on the screen for?”
There was an awkward silence, and then Acid spoke again. “Well, that’s not good.”
“What’s not good?” Jack asked from the back of the room.
“Someone’s following us.”
4I Falcon
Mar 25, 2003, 12:31 PM
See? Progress.
No really important things to say here. Well, excepting that I got Electrik, Foo, and Phish in. I'm sure Acid's pleased. :D
Now, to actually do something with SoT...
acid
Mar 25, 2003, 05:02 PM
Yay! 4I updated his story!
Heh, bringing the whole family along, huh? ;)
BTW, is it just me, or am I the only one who reads this story anymore?
scatman
Mar 29, 2003, 10:59 PM
i am still reading this.
go on this way!
-Scatman WRF
4I Falcon
Apr 4, 2003, 10:07 PM
Chapter 18: Approach
“What?!” Jack almost fell out of his chair as he stood up. “What do you mean, someone’s following us?”
“What do you think I mean by someone’s following us? Someone’s following us!”
“Well, who is it then?”
“I don’t know! Some big huge ship!”
“What would a big huge ship want with us? We didn’t even do anything!”
“Guys, shut up! Listen to this!” Wizard’s voice rang out above Acid’s and Jack’s, and the two arguing rabbits fell silent. Wizard turned a dial on the console in front of him, and a voice was loudly and clearly heard, as if the speaker was in the cockpit with them.
“I repeat, this is General Grath, of the CAF Fortuna. Identify yourself and your destination.”
Acid made his way quickly to where Wizard sat, picked up a small microphone, and held down a small white button as he spoke into the mic. “This is Commander Acid of the Hybrid Corsair. What’s up, Fortuna?”
“What’s your destination, Corsair?”
Acid replied coolly. “We’re on our way to disable and/or destroy Buster Tank’s satellite, before it disables and/or destroys Carrotus.”
A short silence ensued, during which Grath was apparently relaying information to his other crewmembers. The silence was broken as the general responded.
“We’re going the same way. Judging by the fact that you’re broadcasting on a secure Carrotan frequency, we’re making the assumption that you’re friendly. Therefore, you have docking clearance if you need it.”
“Thank you, Fortuna, but I think we’re okay for now. Your gracious hospitality has been noted. Acid out.”
As Acid replaced the mic, Firefox glanced at him, with a questioning look on his face. “Commander Acid? Did I miss the promotion ceremony or something?”
“Well, I have to make myself sound like I’m worthy of having a spacecraft, especially towards someone as esteemed as a general,” Acid replied. “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to fake my way to the top of the Carrotan military.”
Acid took the controls back from Electrik, who promptly exited the cockpit. Foo attempted to follow him, but walked into the door on his way out. Blaze watched this with extreme interest, and he smiled. “Well, at least with Foo around, this should be a very interesting flight.”
“I should hope so,” Acid replied. “There’s still two and a half hours left until we reach the satellite.”
“Oh.”
To pass the time, the rabbits inhabiting the Hybrid Corsair had a lengthy discussion for about an hour and a bit, of which the topic veered unpredictably from piloting to politics, and had almost reached a heated argument regarding genetically altered carrots when another transmission was heard across the intercom.
“Hybrid Corsair, this is the Fortuna,” the voice said. It was not General Grath’s voice; while it was that of a male, it was not as deep as Grath’s tone. “We’re approaching a Carrotan spatial mine field. If you’ll allow us to lead the way, we can repel the mines before we head through. Just stay close enough, and we’ll get you across without any damage.”
Wizard was still sitting at the intercom when the message came through. Forestalling a direct response, he looked to Acid, who nodded back to him. Wizard picked up the mic, and held the white button down as he replied. “Acknowledged, Fortuna. Lead the way.”
The Fortuna drifted along as the Corsair slowed to a halt, and for the first time they got a chance to see what the larger ship looked like as it floated in front of them. It was a kilometer-long behemoth, bristling with turrets of every kind, and defended by glistening armour. It resembled a giant sword as it flew by, of which the crosshilt must have been a hundred meters long, twice the length of the entire Corsair.
As the Fortuna continued forward towards the minefield, Acid piloted the Corsair skilfully to within a few meters of the underside of the great ship. Jazz watched as a mine floated silently past the side of the Corsair.
Suddenly, a bright flash erupted from the starboard side of the Fortuna’s hull. and another from the lower port side. Acid quickly gestured to Phish to take the controls, dashed over to where Wizard sat, and picked up the mic from the console, leaning onto the white button. “Fortuna? Whatever happened to the idea of repelling the mines before plowing through?”
“This isn’t a Carrotan mine field! Our repulsors have no effect on the mines!”
Before Acid could respond, another voice spoke. It was high and drawling, and its tone made it impossible to tell whether it was male or female.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here? A command ship and a destroyer, wandered right into our minefield. What a delightful intrusion. Heeheehee, this should be fun...”
The Fortuna’s crewmember was obviously not pleased with this newcomer, who was so bluntly acting as if he (or she, as the voice did not betray the speaker’s gender) was in total control. “Who are you, and what do you want with us?”
“Oh, we’re not about to tell you who we are; that would defeat the purpose. We will, however, tell you what we want. We want your ships.”
“What?!” Whoever was speaking on behalf of the Fortuna was stunned with shock. “You can’t be serious!”
“Oh, we’re serious all right,” the voice continued. “Dead serious. Tell you what, we’ll even make it easy on you. Give up your ships without a fight, and we won’t kill you.”
The speaker on the Fortuna suddenly lowered his voice to a whisper, speaking only to the crew of the Corsair. “Get into the docking bay ASAP. Let us know when you’re safe inside. We won’t have two ships exposed if we only need one.”
“Ten-four,” Acid replied, knowing that only the Fortuna could hear him. “We’re moving now.”
As Phish piloted the Corsair towards the opening door of the Fortuna’s docking bay, Blaze caught a glimpse of their captors’ ship. It was small and sleek, as dark a grey as the mines it controlled. It had four short, curved wings in an X position. He decided that the ship must be an interceptor. Blaze was considering suggesting to Acid that he could just ice the ship and be done with it, when he realized the distinct possibility that there could be more than one of them. A command ship and a destroyer would have no chance trying to dodge mines and interceptors at the same time; they’d be taken apart in no time before they could get away.
As soon as the Corsair was inside the docking bay, the door began to slide closed again. Blaze took the microphone from Acid. “Do you have any super-wave weapons you could use?”
“We’re already one step ahead of you there. We’re charging our EMP, and we’re only going to need a few more seconds before we can use it.”
“Excellent. Fire at will; we’re into the docking bay, snug as a bug in a rug.”
At that moment, the high, drawling voice was heard again. “Well? Are you going to hand your ships over peacefully, or are we going to do this the hard way?”
“No, I think it’s you who’s going to have things the hard way this time,” was the snapped-back reply. Two seconds later, the EMP fired, causing the whole length of the Fortuna to shake as the massive shockwave was released. Everything, including the impudent interceptor, was struck by the expanding blast. There was some static over the intercom, and then there was silence for a disconcerting few seconds. The whole ordeal had lasted four minutes.
Finally, a friendly voice, not the harsh one of their now-incapacitated captors, came through for them. “Everything OK down there?”
Acid was the one to reply. “We’re all good down here. Did the EMP work?”
“Perfectly. We’re now free to go.”
“Good.”
There was a rumbling as the Fortuna’s engines ignited, and a few clunks were heard as the deactivated mines bumped off of the ship’s hull. The clunks eventually began to fade, and a few minutes later they had stopped completely. They had escaped the minefield.
Another hour passed with no great event. The minutes ticked by like hours themselves, and the crew of the Corsair tried to find something that they could busy themselves with to make the time go by faster. Nothing seemed to work, and they ended up in a large card game with a few crewmembers from the Fortuna.
It was General Grath that found them. He narrowed his eyes at his crewmembers setting up their individual hands, then simply stated, “We’ve found the satellite. We need all hands on deck.”
The rabbits immediately departed the table, and rushed up to the Fortuna’s command deck. When they got there, they couldn’t help but notice, through the semicircular viewport, the hundreds of ships poised and locked to fire upon the command ship. Behind the armada was Buster Tank’s devastating satellite, but the swarm of ships barred the Fortuna’s path.
It was then that they heard an overly familiar voice.
“You know, that stunt you pulled back at the minefield wasn’t very nice,” came the sickeningly drawn-out voice. “It looks as if we’ll have to teach you a lesson.”
The flotilla of fighters and interceptors began to close in. The Fortuna had fallen into a trap, and there was no way out but to fight.
Grath glanced at Acid. “Does your ship have enough firepower on it to handle this kind of fleet?”
“Of course,” Acid replied, with a smile on his face.
“Then get yourselves ready to wreak some havoc. Everything we’ve got is needed.”
“Consider it done.”
As the crew of the Corsair was hurrying back towards the docking bay, Acid brought up the topic of his ship’s awesome cargo. “Do you guys remember the three ‘bots I was telling you about earlier?”
“Yeah,” Lori replied.
“Well, this is the time to use them.”
“Wheefun,” Lori grinned, and she, along with Jazz and Spaz, tore off down the hallway to the docking bay.
4I Falcon
Apr 4, 2003, 10:09 PM
Well, this chapter was done relatively fast. And look at all the italics! Whee!
Due to lack of readers, I'm going to stop posting chapters of either of my stories up on the JCF. It just doesn't seem worth my time anymore. If five people can prove me wrong, I'll consider otherwise. If not, then this is the last chapter of E:JF that's being uploaded.
It's your choice now. Choose wisely.
[/serious]
Evaluator
Apr 5, 2003, 03:23 AM
Well, I just forgot to reply after the last chappie :(
Anyway: Awesome chappies! :eek:
*wants more chappies*
Eval
scatman
Apr 5, 2003, 07:20 AM
go on on both stories, i like them
your one of my story-writing heroes!(i can't write)
-Scatman
acid
Apr 5, 2003, 08:58 AM
This is very good!
*raises up two hands*
okay, one more person needed!
:)
Coppertop
Apr 8, 2003, 01:13 PM
I can fill that post.
Coppertop
Apr 9, 2003, 12:18 PM
I gotta say it again?
4I Falcon
Apr 9, 2003, 12:52 PM
Uh...
Well, we've got one from Scatman, one from Eval, and two from Acid and Coppertop. That totals... um, four. Sorry, guys, but multiples don't count.
Coppertop
Apr 10, 2003, 12:11 PM
*growlz*
acid
Apr 10, 2003, 04:11 PM
*Loads his rocket launcher and aims in the vicinity of one who goes by the name of Jack Flash*
4I Falcon
Apr 10, 2003, 06:53 PM
That wouldn't be the wisest course of action, Acid. I'm very sure Jack isn't very fond of friendly fire. And by "isn't very fond of" I mean "will take apart - piece by piece - anyone who causes". }>
As for Coppertop... uh... *growlz back* rar
All seriousness aside, I'm sticking to my word. I'm not posting another chapter of my stories unless I get a fifth poster to reply in favour of my continuing.
acid
Apr 11, 2003, 02:56 PM
O O YEDS PLWEADSZE COINKUTIMBUWR TEHJ DTYOIRYU!!!11!!1!1!1!!!
BY TEGH QWAT, TIHS ISN'TH AFDIC. i JUDSTY HAX0R3D HISA CCOUNT!11!!!1!1 LOL
4I Falcon
Apr 12, 2003, 01:36 PM
Well, you can all relax now. Turns out I got the fifth and final vote from Firefox, who is currently in Texas, to continue my stories. Therefore, as soon as I get the next chapter(s) done, I'll post them up here. Unless, of course, it's within the next week, as I will be in Regina, with no access to my computer. But, as soon as I get back, it'll go up if it's finished.
Thanks to all of you who took the time to reply in favour of staying. I won't forget it.
Coppertop
Apr 14, 2003, 01:23 PM
Three cheerz for Firefox!:D
Grath AR
May 3, 2003, 11:02 AM
Sorry I haven't been here recently, and yes this is 'JediGrath' from ages ago. Since you haven't described Grath, can I make a few changes? Ninja's sword on his back, no jedi powers, and a couple ninja jutsus?
Bushin no Jutsu - Body divide technique, other body's an illusion.
Kawarimi no jutsu - Replace body with a log, used to block attacks.
Kunai Shinkuu no Jutsu - Kunai Vaccume Technique (five ninja knives shoot at the person this is used on)
Kuchiyose no Jutsu - Summon an animal
Hiryu no Jutsu - Turns a normal bit of fire into a dragon
Gyoshin Hebi no Jutsu - Striking Snake technique (I strike out quickly with my sword)
Oh, and: I CLAIM THIRD PAGE! MUHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Ninja
May 3, 2003, 11:21 AM
Grath! long time no see! :O
4I Falcon
May 3, 2003, 09:54 PM
I don't know what Jutsus are, but I will modify your place in the story accordingly, so that you might be able to utilize these tricks of the trade.
And, good to see you're back.
Grath AR
May 5, 2003, 06:36 AM
Basically, I'm being a ninja.
Jutsu = Ninja technique.
In legends, ninja were able to use their powers to do amazing things.
4I Falcon
May 14, 2003, 01:39 PM
Chapter 19: Heroes Under Fire
The first of the blasts fired by the closing army hit the Fortuna’s thick hull as the rabbits made it to the expansive docking bay. Jazz, Spaz, and Lori were already waiting for them, standing beside the Hybrid Corsair’s door hatch, eager to raise some hell with the three awaiting ‘bots, as well as with the Corsair’s extensive weapons array. Acid pressed down on his ear stud again, and the hatch popped open with a pneumatic hiss. They dashed in, and the door closed again, with the same quiet hiss.
Acid glanced at Jazz, Jack, and Firefox. “You three head down to the hangar. You’ll find the controls for the ‘bots in the piloting chamber. I’ll light the way for you.” He flipped open a panel on the wall, keyed in the location, and pressed a small yellow button. Immediately, a line of yellow lights lit up, creating a path leading to the hangar.
As the three indicated rabbits bolted, following the line of yellow, circular lights that shone through the metal grate floor, Lori’s expression changed from eager expectation to disappointed indignation. “Huh? What about us? What do we get to do?”
“Wizard, Electrik, you two take the flight controls. Phish, you’ll be needed at the manual shield stuff. The rest of you get to help me with the main guns. I need more than myself up there, y’know.”
Lori’s face immediately broke into a wide grin. She was the first one behind Acid as they were off to the Corsair’s weapons bay.
Jack, Jazz, and Firefox had no hard time following the blazing yellow lights; they were really the only luminescent objects bigger than an LED in the lengthy metal corridors of the Hybrid Corsair. It didn’t take long for them to find the hangar, with the three enormous robots inside. They truly were intimidating in their height; Firefox, the tallest of the three, only stood about halfway to one’s knee. Jack made his way to the other side of the hangar, where there was another door, and called them over. They progressed through the door and up a small, winding flight of stairs to the piloting chamber.
The chamber was hexagonal, and there was what appeared to be a cross between a joystick and a handpad on a pedestal near to every other wall, each accompanied by a pair of red goggles with a headset microphone extending from the right side of the eyepiece. Marked on each pedestal was the name of the robot to which the respective control points belonged: the Nightmare’s controls stood on the opposite side of the room, and those for the Pegasus and Razorback were to their left and right, respectively. Firefox darted to the controls of the Razorback, and Jack and Jazz exchanged glances before the green-furred rabbit strode to the Nightmare’s pedestal, leaving the Pegasus to Jack.
On further examination, the joystick proved to have two trigger buttons, one above the other, as well as three thumb buttons and a mini D-stick atop the main silver-coloured shaft. The handpad was connected to the left side of the joystick’s base. It held three buttons, positioned for the user’s middle three fingers, accompanied by another mini D-stick and a wheel where one’s left thumb would be. Jack wondered if he’d ever figure all of them out before getting himself blown up, as he pulled the goggles down from the ceiling of the piloting chamber.
As he fitted the goggles’ strap around his head, Firefox saw what would be the Pegasus’ eyes flare to life, a burning orange to contrast the shining blue of its metal body. Jack could now see through the giant robot’s eyes; although he did not yet know how to turn the ‘bot’s head, he could see himself, through the window of the piloting chamber, wearing a pair of goggles with a bundle of wires running up to the ceiling. He hesitated to touch the controls, for fear of accidentally destroying something.
Without any prompt, a picture of the two-handed controls popped up in the goggles. Each button, wheel, or stick on the device was labeled clearly, as the short descriptions were connected to their respective parts by thin, angular lines. Some of the labels Jack knew to ignore, such as the conspicuous “Energy Discharge” button, but others caught his eye immediately.
“EMP?” Jack asked quizzically. “You can do that from inside a ‘bot?”
“That’s the next thing to suicide, Jack,” Acid’s voice came through from the side of the goggles. “And since suicide, to a robot, means self-destruction, I’d like if you didn’t touch that button.”
“Why?”
“You know what an EMP does, right?”
“Sure I do. It knocks out all electronic systems within the weapon’s blast radius. An extremely effective anti-machine weapon.”
“Well, the ‘bot is within the blast radius, correct? It’s right at the centre, in fact. Therefore, you’ll knock out your own systems as well. And I don’t want you to do that, especially not inside the Corsair.”
“Wait a second.” Jack replied. “If that’s true, then why didn’t the Fortuna get knocked silly when it used its EMP?”
“It did. For about two minutes. The crew got it running again so quickly purely because of its size. The bigger the machine, the easier it is to recover from an EMP. As you can probably tell, those ‘bots aren’t big enough to handle it that well.”
“Then what about the Corsair? Wasn’t it affected by the pulse?”
“Yep. Phish had to spend a whole hour here, ‘rebooting’ the Corsair, as it were. However, it’s a lot more difficult to reboot a robot than it is to reboot a ship.”
Jack thought about this for a second. Something didn’t click. “But how were we able to use the intercom if the ship didn’t work?”
“You do ask a lot of questions, don’t you? The communications system of any ship runs off of a different power supply than the rest of the ship. It’s also less susceptible to being affected by an EMP, for reasons unknown to me. Now, no more questions! Just don’t touch that button!”
Jack fell silent. Bypassing the now forbidden EMP, he began to experiment with the different movement control sticks. The one underneath his left thumb moved the head around; the one atop the main shaft aimed the gun that the Pegasus carried, a silvery, six-meter-long monster of a shock rifle. He was about to try to take a look at what his melee weapon was, when the display of the joystick disappeared from the lens of the goggles, and the words “Auto-launch sequence initiated...” followed by a countdown, took its place. There was ten seconds on the clock, and the seconds seemed to tick by faster than usual as the countdown started.
“I really hope you learned something from that little diagram, kiddies, because there’s going to be a test on it. A field test.”
Zero. There was a roar, and a brilliant flash of orange-gold light, as all three ‘bots’ engines ignited, and a light breeze from the portal of the chamber as an airtight door closed over the entrance. The huge airlock began to open painstakingly slowly, and they felt the adrenaline of excited anticipation. The three ‘bots hovered inside the hangar, still under the influence of the ship’s artificial gravity, as the airlock neared the end of its rails.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, the door stopped. There was a second flash, not as bright as the first, as the Pegasus, closest to the open airlock door, boosted its wing-like engines and flew outside the hangar. The Nightmare and the Razorback were not far behind.
The rigidity of the control sticks vanished as the autopilot relinquished the controls of the robots to the three rabbits inside the piloting chamber. Dozens of red dots, each representing an enemy fighter, glowed menacingly inside each of their goggles.
As the three robots regrouped just outside the hangar, Jack chuckled. “Wow. I’d say that this battle is almost… one-sided.”
After a few seconds, both of the other two rabbits laughed, realizing what Jack meant.
As the first shots came towards them, Jack neatly moved the Pegasus to the left, and dispatched the shooter with a single blast from the shock rifle. The battle had begun.
“Bring it on!”
Acid already had Lori and Blaze seated on either side of him, each of them charged with one of the ship’s two missile launchers, and they were performing beautifully. He himself managed the ship’s main weapon, the SSL, which was a zigzagging bolt of energy with the impact force of a large rocket. He had already destroyed nearly a dozen enemy ships, and Lori and Blaze had five each. The Corsair’s shield had taken a few hits from enemy fire, but as of yet the hull of the ship had not yet been touched.
Headcheese, Spaz, and Foo took on the ship’s various other weapons, with Spaz at the controls of the ship’s particle beam, and the other two using the two mini-gauss guns at the end of each wing. The particle beam simply razed through smaller ships like a hot knife through butter, and the gauss weapons did considerable damage to whatever it hit.
Then, Wizard’s voice came through on the intercom. “We’re going to need to kick it up a few notches, guys, because I think the satellite is planning something!”
Acid had only to glance at the viewscreen above where he sat to see that it was true. The five arms, attached to the main shaft of the satellite by a circular hub, began to rotate. At first, the movement was extremely slow, but it was very gradually becoming faster.
Acid was wearing an earpiece, and he spoke into it, without taking his eyes off of the screen. “Did you three hear that?”
“We did,” Firefox’s voice replied. “What to do about it?”
“Just keep wrecking them. We need to get through these fighters and interceptors before we can get anywhere near the satellite.”
“Consider it done, then.”
“Good.” Acid took off the earpiece, leaving it dangling around his neck, and anxiously watched the screen above him as the arms of the satellite began to move faster and faster…
4I Falcon
May 14, 2003, 01:40 PM
Well, after almost a month, Chapter 19 of E:JF is up. I had to tone it down significantly to meet character limits, but I think I left most of the good stuff in.
Nothing else of interest to say here.
acid
May 14, 2003, 02:25 PM
ZZZZAAAAPPPP BOOMBOOMBOOM WHEEFUN
^
|
My impression of me with the SSL >=)
4I Falcon
Jun 13, 2003, 08:20 PM
Chapter 20: The Leviathan
Jack, after hearing the order to step it up a bit, went about doing so with a vengeance. The Pegasus was everywhere, ripping holes into the enemy forces with the formidable shock rifle, and whenever something got too close to be effectively dispatched by a supercharged energy blast, it was quickly dismembered by the giant robot’s beam sword. Jack was in his element, destroying anything and everything that posed a threat.
Firefox, like Jack, was quite simply ripping his way through the enemy fighters, sending ships flying with his shot cannon, or easily cutting them open with the glowing diamond blade that the Razorback was built to wield. Unlike Jack, however, he went at it more methodically, looking for chain reactions he could set off, formations that were too predictable to miss, or just clusters of ships packed too tightly for their own good.
Jazz took the battle strategically. He flew the Nightmare from cluster to cluster of enemy interceptors, and was able to destroy at least half of each group with his two laser pistols before they could even react; even after they did, the rest were quickly disposed of. He was obviously pulling off maneuvers that they had never even seen before, because his acrobatic spins, lightning-fast direction changes, and seemingly kamikaze dives into the heart of the enemy broke up their heavily set formations like eggs. Confusion tilted the scales in Jazz’s favour, and his spree of destruction caused some of the other groups to turn their attention towards the rampaging Nightmare. Of course, doing so meant turning their attention away from Jack and Firefox, which was a costly mistake; the price was their lives.
Suddenly, a giant metal object flew past the Razorback, coming within inches of the robot’s left side. Firefox had obviously seen it, and was obviously staggered by its sudden appearance. “Holy buh! What the heck was that?”
Jack turned the Pegasus towards Firefox’s Razorback, and immediately saw what had surprised him. An enormous metal object, almost as long as the robot was tall, was drifting along innocently through space. It didn’t seem to be a ship, as there were no discernible engines or anything... and yet, it couldn’t be debris; only a ship the size of the Fortuna could generate debris of that magnitude. As of yet, the Fortuna was the only ship present that was bigger than the Corsair, and it was still intact.
“Ignore it for now, Firefox. Whatever it is, it doesn’t appear to be hostile. Shoot it when it turns around and shoots at you first.”
“Aw... why can’t I waste it now?”
“Because you have more pressing matters to attend to,” Jack replied, quickly taking out a small enemy probe that was getting too close to Firefox’s back for his liking. “Now shut up and keep firing; we’re almost through to the satellite. Only a few more groups to go.”
The battle raged on. The three robots were nigh on untouchable, as they flew about the battle faster than the pilots of the interceptors could react. Even the most sluggish of the three robots was able to pull off skilful maneuvers under the control of the quick-thinking Firefox. They spared no mercy upon the enemy, and before long there were only a sparse few fighters left, whose pilots were obviously not brave enough to fight the Carrotan strike force without backup.
Jack whooped into the helmet radio, laughing out loud. “Whoo-ha! That was the most fun I’ve had in a long, long time!”
Acid chuckled. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. Battle in null-o is the greatest thrill I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ll have to agree with you there. Oh, Firefox... go find that big thingy you saw earlier. You can go waste it now.”
“Wheeheeheehee!” Firefox’s giggle of delight prompted an amused smile from the occupants of the Corsair, as he took off in the direction in which the metal thing had been moving. The Razorback was soon lost to sight in the blackness of space.
As Acid dispatched a few last fighters with the SSL, he issued one more command to them. “Jazz and Jack, press that dark blue button, beneath your left ring finger. It’ll activate the autopilot, and bring the ‘bots back into the hangar. Firefox—”
Before Jazz and Jack could press down on the aforementioned button, Firefox let out a yelp of surprise. “Random expletive! I could use a little bit of help here!”
Forgoing the autopilot return button, Jazz and Jack immediately spun their respective robots around, and followed Firefox’s signal on their radar. There was also another small signal near his, and it was slowly getting larger.
Jack was nonplussed. “What the heck is that?”
Firefox’s voice replied in a frenetic tone. “Remember that big thing I wanted to destroy before? The thing that you said isn’t hostile?”
“Er, yeah. What about it?”
“Well, it’s gotten pretty hostile now, bucko,” Firefox retorted. “It’s the friggin’ forearm of a giant robot!”
“Wh—?!” Jack was lost for words. He had originally thought that it was just a harmless piece of debris, nothing to worry about… and definitely not an integral part of a super-huge weapon of mass destruction.
Jazz was about as shocked as Jack was. “The forearm? That huge thing was just a forearm?”
“The whole robot... it must be the size of the Corsair!” Acid exclaimed. “Where the heck could it have come from?”
“I don’t know, but I do know that I might need a bit of assistance taking it apart!” Firefox replied. The sounds of Acid, Lori, Blaze, and the others exchanging distraught words could be heard in the background. They were obviously not pleased.
Jack gunned the boosters of the Pegasus. “Hold the fort, Firefox, we’re on our way.”
They were immediately off in the direction of Firefox’s signal, with the slower Corsair and Fortuna behind them.
The two ‘bots were first to the Razorback’s position, being a good amount faster than the two ships following. They actually saw the supergiant before they found the Razorback, which wasn’t too difficult of a feat; as Acid had assumed, the robot was almost the size of the Corsair. Jazz gasped in pure horror at the size of their adversary; Jack was also not thrilled with the sudden appearance of this new enemy, but he kept it more discreet.
Jack risked taking his hands off the controls of the Pegasus for long enough to crack his knuckles, and he spoke nonchalantly. “Well, this should be entertaining. What is this thing, anyway?”
“This would be a secret project I’ve heard about before. They call it the Leviathan.”
“Ah. Unfortunately, they are going to be sorely disappointed when I – er, we – get through with this Leviathan.”
“You might want to avoid that gun. I did a quick scan of it, and it’s capable of at least two modes of fire: a charge shot, and rapid-fire energy dispersal. None of the preceding are particularly helpful for a ‘bot’s armour, so… yeah.”
“Don’t worry, Acid, I won’t get your precious ‘bots scratched. Just leave it to me and my squad here,” Jack chuckled. “Right, guys?”
“Sure, why not,” Firefox replied.
“I’m all for it,” Jazz added.
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s tear this thing apart!” Jack throttled the boosters again, sending him flying at the Leviathan’s back.
Jack sent two blasts from the shock rifle at the Leviathan's midriff before it could even react, before quickly veering away. The blasts slammed squarely into the thick armour of the giant, but they hardly even fazed it, apart from causing it to turn its attention toward the Pegasus. Jack piloted his robot in a zigzagging path, away from the mechanical monster, as the latter readied its weapon, poising the murderous gun to fire upon his rapidly retreating ‘bot.
A hail of red energy blasts flew past the Pegasus, and Jack had to fly backwards to know when to dodge, and where to. Luckily, Jazz and Firefox took up where he had left off, hammering away at the Leviathan’s heavy armour. It quickly became obvious that the computer driving the Leviathan was not designed to handle defending against three assailants simultaneously.
Blasts of energy flew everywhere as the supergiant flailed about, helpless against the three smaller robots as they peppered it with attacks. They were easily more agile and maneuverable than the Leviathan, and compared to them, it was almost moving in slow motion.
Then, the giant ‘bot launched a blast of red energy, slightly resembling a bolt of lightning, at Jack. He dodged it with ease, but it turned behind him, and smashed itself into the Pegasus’s back. The white rabbit was obviously not impressed, and after a long string of obscenities he managed to get his phrases into complete sentences. “What in the name of all that’s holy was that?”
Acid was also flummoxed by the apparent second try the blast was granted. “I don’t know. It looks like energy, it acts like a homing rocket… So what the heck is it?!”
Jack snarled angrily. “That’s called bending the rules, Acid, and I don’t like cheaters. Firefox knows what I do with cheaters.”
Firefox chuckled. “Indeed I do. And I’d say it’s about time to do some gutting, if I do say so myself.”
“Which you just did,” Jack laughed. “I guess I’ll get right to it, then.”
There was a curse from Acid’s end. “You’ve gotta be effin’ kidding me.”
“What?”
“Check your radar.”
Jack immediately saw the problem. Clustered at the top of his radar screen was a mass of small, red dots. Each was an enemy. “For the love of…”
Firefox was still clued out. “What? What is it?”
“We now have a time limit set on killing this thing, Firefox,” Jack growled. “A bazillion enemy ships are coming our way.”
Firefox was lost for words as the Pegasus dove headlong towards the Leviathan, intent on brutally taking it apart limb from limb.
Woo, italics all over the place. Great fun. ><
acid
Jun 13, 2003, 08:33 PM
J00 BETTER NOT HARM MY BOTS, JACK!!!
Um, where is the Corsair at the moment? If it was near the Levethian, it would be ripping it apart with that SSL and Particle beam. So it's not there yet.
Anyways, great chappie!
4I Falcon
Jun 13, 2003, 08:44 PM
Originally posted by acid
Um, where is the Corsair at the moment? If it was near the Leviathan, it would be ripping it apart with that SSL and Particle beam. So it's not there yet.
It's rapidly catching up. As I said, the bots are vastly more swift than the ships.
Dun' worry, I'll make sure the Corsair has a hand in destroying the Leviathan.
4I Falcon
Jul 10, 2003, 09:41 AM
*kicks the topic back up to the top of the page*
I've decided to follow Coppertop's example, and try to make a trilogy out of this story. As a result, this saga is Part 1. Take a look at the prologue to find the changes. :D
*is actually making progress on both stories at work... but don't tell anyone... ;)*
Grath
Jul 15, 2003, 05:25 AM
*trips and bumps the topic to the top*
4I Falcon
Jul 15, 2003, 08:42 AM
Mah topic has been bumped.
I feel special.
acid
Jul 15, 2003, 07:48 PM
*waits for the next chapter not-so-patiently*
4I Falcon
Jul 16, 2003, 04:36 AM
If it makes you feel any better, ace, I know exactly how I'm going to lay out the chapter, so it's just putting the layout into words that I have to do.
But that's not why I'm posting this. I'm posting this to explain why I keep taking so long per chapter.
The reason I take such a long time to write each chapter is because I try to have as much content per chapter as I can fit in. That's three Word pages, 10000 characters, per chapter. So pardon my lethargy in getting new and exciting stuff up, but if you prefer I'll write six-line-long chapters that don't advance the plot at all, make little to no sense, and simply leave you just as confused as you were by the end of the last chapter. Not only would this not look good on the hard copy of my story, but it probably wouldn't do wonders for the readers here, either. (Despite the fact that I have a grand total of two.)
I'm working fervently on Chapter 21 at work, so enjoy what you have now. I'll have the chapter up soon.
acid
Jul 16, 2003, 08:46 AM
*blink*
maybe I should take a different approach. I wasn't saying you shouldn't make the large chapters that you do, (in fact, I envy your ability to do so. I'm rarely able to make it over 1 page.) I was just saying I eagerly anticipated the next chapter. The "not-so-patiently" was a joke.
4I Falcon
Jul 16, 2003, 04:19 PM
Good. Then you'll enjoy this.
Chapter 21: Mistakes
“Why is it that all these crazy evil geniuses have to be the same?” Jack snarled into his helmet radio. “Every time we get two steps forward, they pull something new out of thin air and send us a step back! It bugs me!”
“Which makes you wonder, why is it always an evil genius?” Firefox mused. “Once, just once, I’d like to fight an evil idiot.”
His last comment set everyone to laughing, and it was able to briefly allay Jack’s anger. “True. Good one, Firefox.”
Jack swerved the Pegasus around another electric blast as Lori donated her opinion. “My guess is that the throngs of lizardy minions are the designated idiots, and the smart and/or strong ones just naturally rise to the top.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Jazz retorted, piloting the Nightmare in closer to provide some cover for the Pegasus. “Devan didn’t have either of those qualities to work with. I think he got to the top by sheer luck.”
“Either that, or they were all scared by those specs of his,” Firefox replied, sending a few high-powered shells from the Razorback’s shotcannon at the head of the Leviathan. “Corsair, Fortuna, how far are you behind?”
“Five clicks and closing fast,” Acid responded. “Just hold that monstrosity at bay for a few more minutes, and we’ll take it from there.”
“We’re a bit farther behind, about seven, seven and a half kays,” the speaker of the Fortuna added. “We could use one of our long-range beams, but you three would have to move a good distance out of the way, or risk being cremated…”
“I think we’ll pass on that, thanks,” Jack quickly responded.
“Yes, you will,” Acid confirmed. “I won’t have any of my ‘bots vaped by friendly fire, thank you very much.”
“I think they get the point, ace,” Jack chuckled, sending another high-powered shock blast slamming into the thick armour of the Leviathan. “Updates on distance?”
“Four and change. We’re incoming pretty quick, so keep an eye out for us.”
“We will.”
The battle continued. The Leviathan was noticably beginning to wear down from the immense beating it was taking, but it valiantly fought on. Its weapon was capable of launching any number of low- to medium-strength bursts of energy, and so the trio had to be ready for anything, as it always had something different up its sleeve. Firefox focused his high-powered shotcannon on the head of the giant robot; Jazz attacked its back, where there appeared to be a holding for a power generator protruding from the otherwise seamless armour; Jack busied himself with the weapon of the machine, and so had to dodge back and forth repeatedly as the massive energy cannon shot forth its destructive payload. Fortunately for him, the Pegasus was built for rapid evasive maneuvers, so he had little trouble evading the searing blasts of the Leviathan’s titanic weapon.
Suddenly, there was an eruption of flame from behind the giant robot, and a whoop of excitement from Jazz. “The battery pack has been destroyed!”
Jack grinned devilishly. “Good job, Jazz. Now it shouldn’t be too hard a task to get rid of the rest of the Leviathan.”
“You can leave that to us, Jack,” Acid spoke calmly, obviously relieved that the majority of the threat posed by the imposing Leviathan had passed. “We’re less than three kays away now, and we’ll be where you are in about… seven minutes. We’ll finish the Leviathan off with our weapons. Go fry some more fighters with your teammates.”
“Will do. Moving out now.”
Jack led the other two out of range out of the dying Leviathan, as the supergiant tried feebly to aim at them. The blast from the weapon was at least twenty meters off course, and Jack laughed as it weakly tried again, with the same dismal results. They quickly disappeared from view, into the vast, black reaches of space, as the Hybrid Corsair approached its weakened, disabled prey…
It wasn’t even three minutes before Jack’s radar told him that the approaching fleet of fighters was less than five hundred meters away, and closing fast. He signaled to the other two to slow down, and keenly readied the charge on his shock rifle for eradication.
The three of them watched, with bated breath, as the distance monitor followed the advance of the fighters, and they cocked their weapons in excited preparation. 300 meters… 250… 200… 150…
Suddenly, a blur of light shot past the three ‘bots at a rapid pace, narrowly missing the Nightmare’s head. It was a long, spiraling cylinder of energy, roughly three meters across and ten meters long, and generally transparent except for several dozen glowing dots, somewhat reminiscent of fireflies back on Carrotus.
The Nightmare was thrown slightly askew as the cylinder flew by, and Jazz was knocked for six by the sheer force of the beam in its rapidity. “Holy cheesecake! What was that?”
Acid was slightly perplexed. “What was what?”
Jack, also taken aback, reacted quickly. He gunned the boosters of the Pegasus, and flew after the beam. “It looks like… a tunnel, see-through, full of little bright dots of light. They’re spinning around like they’re in a tornado, or something.”
“Buh? Can you give me a visual?”
“How do I do that?”
“Never mind. I’ll get it.”
There were a few seconds of silence, as Acid saw what the beam looked like from the point of view of the Pegasus. Jack gradually came to notice that the dots on his radar corresponded with the glowing specks of light swirling about inside the tunnel, and for a second he subliminally felt like a fool as he kept pace with it.
Finally, the long silence was broken as Acid spoke again. “I recognize it.”
“Well, don’t hold us in suspense,” Firefox replied. “What is it?”
“It’s referred to as a cyclone charger. It’s used to supercharge a damaged or depleted battery remotely. At the moment, it’s heading straight for the Leviathan. I’d say less than a minute to contact.”
Jazz grimaced. “Oh, is that all?” he asked. His voice was dripping with sarcasm.
“You haven’t even heard the worst of it yet. By coming from that angle, they’ve basically checkmated us. If we destroy the Leviathan before the cyclone charger reaches it, the beam will continue on and hit the satellite, which will give it enough power to fire its planetkiller and obliterate Carrotus. If we don’t destroy the Leviathan, the charger will bring it back to full power, and it will annihilate the Corsair, wiping us all out. Meanwhile, the satellite will charge up, fire its beam cannon, and obliterate Carrotus. It’s a lose-lose situation.”
Unbeknownst to the rest of them, Jack had a plan already forming in his head. It was risky, true, and Acid probably wouldn’t be too thrilled with him even if it did work. But, at the moment, it was the only idea he, or anyone else, had. He stayed silent as he put his plan into action.
However, he forgot that Acid still had the Pegasus’ point of view up on visual. He instantly noticed when Jack turned the ‘bot away from the cyclone charger. “Jack… what are you doing?”
There was no response from the white rabbit as he put all of his concentration into the Pegasus, and the mighty robot rewarded him by slowly pulling ahead of the massive beam. Acid was now yelling hysterically at him, but Jack simply blocked out the frenzied rabbit’s furious shouting as he gradually gained space on the charger.
Suddenly, less than a hundred meters from the Leviathan, Jack slammed the control stick to the side, jerking the Pegasus to the side, directly into the path of the charger. He brought the ‘bot to an abrupt halt, right in front of the oncoming beam, and immediately jammed his finger into the almost-forgotten Energy Discharge button. The Pegasus glowed a bright green as its energy was drained through its shields, and Jack gasped as the charger plowed into the robot’s midriff.
The controls of the Pegasus vibrated violently under Jack’s hands as the massive amount of energy was imbued into the body of the robot. The small bar at the right side of Jack’s field of vision, the indicator of the ‘bot’s battery power, fluctuated madly as he counteracted the supercharge with the surprisingly potent Energy Discharge, and he had to keep a careful eye on it to make sure the battery didn’t either die completely, or explode from overcharging. Meanwhile, Acid had stopped frantically screaming at him, and was simply watching in stunned awe as Jack formed an effective barrier against the charger with the Pegasus.
Finally, the vibrating slowed to a halt. The charger had run its course, and the robot had dispelled its power beautifully. There were a few seconds of gauche silence; then, as if by cue, a zigzagging bolt of golden light was emitted from the Corsair, and smashed into the Leviathan. The huge robot helplessly fell back a few meters, before a colossal blast ripped through it, engulfing the supergiant in a ball of fire.
The crew of the Corsair erupted into cheers as the three pilots set their ‘bots on autopilot return. Laughter, congratulations, and whoops of triumphant excitement flew back and forth on the intercom, and Jazz had to take his helmet off because all the joviality was giving a headache.
Suddenly, Grath’s voice overtook the laughter over the radios. “What’s everyone celebrating for? There’s still a world-ending satellite poised above Carrotus, getting ready to fire, and thus wipe out the planet, at a moment’s notice!”
Jack lifted his helmet off his head, cracked his neck, and dropped the helmet back down. “He’s right, guys. Tank’s already been menacing Carrotus for far too long. I say we bust into the satellite, and start crackin’ skulls!”
There was an emphatic roar of agreement, and another roar as the Corsair’s engines fired. The last phase of the retaliation against Buster Tank had begun.
4I Falcon
Jul 16, 2003, 04:21 PM
Well, to Acid's extreme delight, a new chapter is now here. I have nothing important to say, so enjoy.
acid
Jul 16, 2003, 04:31 PM
OMG YAYAYAYAY^^ RAWR
Heeh. I saw Jack's plan a mile away. Ah well, excellent chapter.
Coppertop
Jul 17, 2003, 08:35 AM
Wow, I finally have time to reply to this :O Which allows me to say:
4I, why on earth did you say you wished you could write as good as me? Man, I wish I could write as good as YOU!
BTW, nice chappie :D
Coppertop
Jul 17, 2003, 08:43 AM
I claim 100th reply on 4I awesome story!
4I Falcon
Jul 17, 2003, 11:44 AM
4I, why on earth did you say you wished you could write as good as me? Man, I wish I could write as good as YOU!
You're good with the mind-bending amounts of detail you put into your stories. I prefer action over description. *shrug*
Coppertop
Jul 18, 2003, 08:27 AM
Detail tends to be boring. Action = excitement:D
Grath
Jul 18, 2003, 10:12 AM
Roxxoring Boxxors as usual, 4-Is Falcon *shot* (Four-eyes falcon)
Gecko
Jul 19, 2003, 06:02 PM
hey felcon i say keep going i just looked here today on this and its great :7 ! Now do me a favor and add me in the next chapter and on plz, plz, plz.
Heres my profile:
Gecko
Species: Gecko (duh :p )
Gender: Male
Height: A little higher than Jazz
Fur: hes a Gecko but hes black with Thick, Green Lines on his back, with Silver eyes ,When angry they turn Black for some reason, has blue Wristbands, Blue Backpack, and an Orange Headband, and sometimes has Red Sun glasses.
Likes: Blowing up mining mechs, Blowing up mining mechs, blowing up anything annoying to him (gee, i bet this guys trigger-happy :D )
DisLikes: anything annoying to him
Born in: Unknown
Current Age: around 17 in human years
Now lives in: Either Carottus or in The Media Deimension with his twin brother, Gex.
Description: This guys pretty much the only Gecko who lives on Carrottus in all Rabbit history! obviously we know that this guy's 99.8% trigger-happy and short tempered and has a medium-high sense of humor. This guy pretty though, trigger-happy is quite average in accuracy. Behaving like a mercenary execpt that doesnt really doesn't do things for money. this guy carries 3 weapons instead of 1 or 2. each weapon is used at a certain range. Theres the Laser which is his most balanced of them all it but cant be used at long range though. then theres the Super Laser which is very powerful but should only be used at long range because of its long reload time. and then theres the flamethrower which is only used at short range, but still very powerful and very short reload time. He also has a Pyro-GX modifesd to have his weapons in it as well as AW-5 Argon Laser and AR-3 Avenger Conncusion missiles, although it is slightly slower than a normal Pyro-GX.
4I Falcon
Jul 20, 2003, 06:54 PM
Unbelievably, I might actually be able to fit you into the next chapter. And to think I thought I wouldn't be able to fit in any more joiners.
Woo.
I'll see what I can do.
Gecko
Jul 21, 2003, 05:37 AM
Excuse me i thinking you werent so i changed the post
Yay :) ! *hopes*
Can i play the neutral role like as in shoot against both sides and help either sides either sides if wanted to?
4I Falcon
Jul 21, 2003, 02:31 PM
No.
Already I've said too much.
Coppertop
Jul 22, 2003, 05:33 AM
Yes. You have.
Gecko
Jul 24, 2003, 07:13 AM
"Shame on myself! Boooooooo to me :(!"
[Yes, shame on Mr. Gecko thinking of shooting everything up, wait i like blowing things up. booooooo to falcon!-Trigger-Happy Gecko]
[although, the idea would be very original-WriterGecko]
[Although i dont care as long as it has lots of errors in grammer and spelling.- EditorGecko]
[Join the Bad side! Join the bad side!- EvilGecko]
[Dont Listen to EvilGecko, join the Good side-GoodGecko]
[No, join the bad side-EvilGecko]
[No, join the good side- GoodGecko]
[No, join the bad side-EvilGecko]
[No, join the good side- GoodGecko]
[No, join the bad side-EvilGecko]
[No, join the good side- GoodGecko]
[No, join the bad side-EvilGecko]
[No, join the good side- GoodGecko]
"QUIET!"
*Crickets*
"Thank you."
"Now where was I? oh yes,
Excuse me i thinking you werent so i changed the post: Yay!*hopes* Can i play the neutral role like as in shoot against both sides and help either sides either sides if wanted to?
Now I should sue myself because I overlooked what you said, so I said too much as well Period."
Coppertop
Jul 24, 2003, 07:44 AM
:confused:
We wait for 4I.
Gecko
Jul 24, 2003, 07:57 AM
"Shame on myself! Boooooooo to me :(!"
[Yes, shame on Mr. Gecko thinking of shooting everything up, wait i like blowing things up. booooooo to falcon!-Trigger-Happy Gecko]
[although, the idea would be very original-WriterGecko]
[Although i dont care as long as it has lots of errors in grammer and spelling.- EditorGecko]
[Join the Bad side! Join the bad side!- EvilGecko]
[Dont Listen to EvilGecko, join the Good side-GoodGecko]
[No, join the bad side-EvilGecko]
[No, join the good side- GoodGecko]
[No, join the bad side-EvilGecko]
[No, join the good side- GoodGecko]
[No, join the bad side-EvilGecko]
[No, join the good side- GoodGecko]
[No, join the bad side-EvilGecko]
[No, join the good side- GoodGecko]
"QUIET!"
*Crickets*
"Thank you."
"Now where was I? oh yes,
Now I should sue myself because I overlooked what you said, so I said too much as well Period."
Translation from Myself:
Being neutral to me is Primary to my concerns
Good side is Secondary
Bad side is Triary
acid
Jul 24, 2003, 08:16 AM
[Yes, shame on Mr. Gecko thinking of shooting everything up, wait i like blowing things up. booooooo to falcon!-Trigger-Happy Gecko]
ahh... 4I Falcon is a big fan of combustion, I belive. :roll:
4I Falcon
Jul 24, 2003, 10:39 AM
Combust me and I'll kill you all.
No, even better... I'll stop writing my stories.
}>
acid
Jul 24, 2003, 10:55 AM
No, thats not what I meant! I meant you liked blowing things up, hence triggerhappygecko should not be saying boo falcon.
now, if you would PLEASE stop treatening dropping that palm pilot into the fire, I would appriciate it greatly.
Gecko
Jul 24, 2003, 10:56 AM
Combust me and I'll kill you all.
No, even better... I'll stop writing my stories.
}>
Geez I was just kiding with the "multiple personalitie talk"
Coppertop
Jul 25, 2003, 08:03 AM
We knew that. I think.
*watches clock ticking*
*crickets*
4I Falcon
Jul 25, 2003, 10:35 AM
No, thats not what I meant! I meant you liked blowing things up, hence triggerhappygecko should not be saying boo falcon.
now, if you would PLEASE stop treatening dropping that palm pilot into the fire, I would appriciate it greatly.
I'm not going to drop my Palm into the fire. I need it for other stuff.
Documents to Go, however, is a different thing altogether. }>
I'm kidding you. Of course I'll continue on my stories; it would be too much work gone to waste to tank them now.
Gecko
Jul 25, 2003, 11:06 AM
good, otherwise id go coco
[so would I-WriterGecko]
Can you be quiet?
[ok-WriterGecko]
Thank you.
4I Falcon
Jul 25, 2003, 12:35 PM
I pre-claim page 4, simply because I know the next post will be on page 4. I also know that if I don't post this now, I'm going to miss it, and someone else is going to claim it. >_<
So nyar.
acid
Jul 25, 2003, 01:31 PM
I claim page four! *gives new page to 4I Falcon because his story Ruxxors*
Keep up the good work!
Gecko
Jul 25, 2003, 03:26 PM
darn you i wanted 4th page!
4I Falcon
Jul 25, 2003, 06:13 PM
I had it before both of you even tried. Although, Acid, it was awfully nice of you to hand it over like that.
Fwarble. :D
acid
Jul 25, 2003, 06:48 PM
You had a pre-claim, which could easily be overrided. I got the real claim and gave you the page.
Coppertop
Jul 29, 2003, 04:19 AM
Either way, 4I has the fourth page. YaY 4I! :)
4I Falcon
Jul 29, 2003, 05:28 AM
HOO HA
Chapter 22 is being worked on even as we speak. Your patience will be well rewarded.
acid
Jul 29, 2003, 06:42 AM
*waits*
*goes off somewhere else to do other stuff in the meantime*
Blade Nightflame
Jul 29, 2003, 09:33 AM
*waits and goes to read the rest of the chapters*
Coppertop
Jul 30, 2003, 09:51 AM
You mean you haven't read them yet? man, you don't know what you're missing
I'm with Acid.
Gecko
Aug 3, 2003, 12:56 PM
While im waiting ill update my profile
Gecko
Species: Gecko (Duh)
Gender: Male
Height: about the height of Lori
His Appearence:Black with thick, green stripes on his Back, A blue Wristband and Backpack, Orange headband, and Orange eyes, black when he gets real angry, ie rage.
Skills/Powers: He has no powers, but he is a balanced person. His speical skill merly handling weapons better than most people, even if it's his first time using it.
Description: Behaving like a Mercenary but without the money thing, he is Merly Nuetral sided. He has a good sense of humor as long as it makes sense to him. he usally chooses the good side if nuetral is no choice. Although, he would make a good teamate.
Weapons/Ships: 3 Weapons and 1 Ship:
Laser
Its got to be his all-time favorite weapon.
this weapon is the perfect, well rounded weapon.
works at any range, but its harder to aim the farther the target is. best used in Medium-Short range battles that are at medium intesity.
Super Laser
The Perfect sniper weapon, that is for him.
Shorter reload time, about 1 second, but weaker damage makes a good trade-off. works at any range but it is best to use it at a distance. best used in stealth situations, where long range is key.
Flamethrower
This is just the same as jazz's toaster, but it has a longer range and is slightly stronger, but this comes at a cost of a little more ammo usage. can only be used at short range. this weapon is not seperate gun and is linked inside his Laser. Best used in Close and intense combat situations
Maxium Ammo: 150.0
Pyro GX
This is his ship. only used in airborn and space situations.
This ship is modified to carry only his and 3 missile types:
Concussion, Homing, and Mega in order of power. also slightly slower and a little stronger but nothing noticable about that.
Now that im done im off,
Toodles.
4I Falcon
Aug 3, 2003, 02:59 PM
Whee, profile. Have you posted this in the "Everyone's characters" thread as well?
If not, do so.
If yes, then SAMWISE HAMFEST IS THE SNACKFOOD FOR YOU
Gecko
Aug 3, 2003, 03:13 PM
why dont you people tell me anything
4I Falcon
Aug 3, 2003, 03:14 PM
Because that's just the way this quirky little community works. ^^
Gecko
Aug 3, 2003, 03:15 PM
........very funny :rolleyes:
4I Falcon
Aug 3, 2003, 03:37 PM
When are they going to fix that d'freggin' smiley?
Coppertop
Aug 4, 2003, 05:31 AM
Probably never. *sighs*
Now, WORK ON STORY NOW!
4I Falcon
Aug 16, 2003, 12:14 PM
Chapter 22: An Unlikely Comrade
“Phish, I’m going to need a scan of that satellite PDQ. Find us a nice place to break and enter, preferably as discreetly as possible, please.” Acid spoke through the intercom as the others left the gunners’ chamber. “How much time?”
“Scan’s running. I’d give it three, five minutes before we reach.”
“Good. I don’t want to give this egomaniacal freak any more time than we need.”
“Egomaniacal freak? You sound like—”
“I have to use all of my self-constraint to keep myself from screaming a good succession of expletives at the top of my lungs about this… this…”
“Egomaniacal freak will do.”
“Thank you.” Acid left the mic on its hook, and headed off after the others, who were already a distance down the corridor.
Lori turned as Acid padded up behind her. “So what’s up?”
“About five minutes until we reach the satellite. Phish is scanning for somewhere to start. Have your blaster ready?”
Lori grinned, and flipped the weapon about her finger nonchalantly. “Always do.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
It wasn’t long before most of the crew were in the control room. Acid had disappeared from the group unnoticed; Phish was keeping an eye on the scan, elsewhere; and Jazz, Jack, and Firefox were on their way up from the ‘bot hangar.
The visage of the massive satellite grew larger by the second as the Hybrid Corsair continued to approach. They could easily identify its single, immensely powerful weapon, perched on the end of the main body of the satellite and poised in a deadly position facing Carrotus, and the five arms, still rotating discomfortingly rapidly. Jazz, Jack, and Firefox entered quietly, following the trail of lights that had been lit up for them, like before. They remained silent, and watched as the distance between them and the satellite drew nearer to zero with every passing second.
There was a sound of metallic scraping from behind the cockpit door, and before they could react the door slid open. Acid limped through, lugging a large, metal case behind him.
Firefox cast a puzzled glance at the green-furred rabbit as he entered.. “What’s in the… that?”
Acid looked at Firefox, with a smirk on his face. “See for yourself.”
With that, he flipped the latch on the case, springing its cover wide open on its hinges. Inside, resting in black foam padding, were several large weapons, guns just more than half as long as the rabbits were tall.
Firefox whistled admirably as he studied the large weapons, but Jazz blinked a few times, slightly puzzled. “What do we need these guns for? Won’t the blasters we already have suffice?”
Acid shot a glance at Jazz. “Have you ever tried to take on Devan’s generators? They’re not exactly easy pickings, if you’ll recall.”
Jazz returned the glance. “Of course I’ve had to destroy generators for Devan’s stuff in the past. I mean, I destroyed the Twin Mega Battleships, didn’t I? There were two generators, one for each ship.”
“That was a long time ago. Things have changed.”
“A year isn’t that long, Acid. Besides, how do you know that Buster’s using better generators than the ones I had to deal with on the Battleships?”
“Because I’ve been hunted down by what’s left of Devan’s robot troops for the last year, probably because of my ‘dealings’ with the CSA Weapons Division?”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. It’s okay, ‘cause the robots are pansies, but their generators are a pain to take apart. So… there.”
“I’m going to take a wild guess, and assume that the generators in these guns are the same ones from the robot troops?”
“But of course. I’m not going to just destroy a good energy-producing device like these when I can actually use them for stuff, like these guns.”
At that point, they heard Phish’s voice over the intercom, and he didn’t sound pleased. “Durnit, Acid, where the smark are you?!”
Leaving the others to the weapons he had brought in, Acid strode over to the mic, picking it up and leaning onto the control console casually. “Nyes?”
“Scan’s been done for a while now. I’ve set the ship to connect to a vent of some sort, near the axial hub. About twenty seconds ‘til we dock. Be ready.”
Roughly twenty seconds later, the Corsair came to rest against the indicated vent. Something beeped loudly from Acid’s direction, and there was a low hum for a few seconds. He stood still, listening to the deep hum, and nodding in satisfaction when it ended.
Acid grinned as he reached up to his ear studs. “Hey, Jack, remember what you were saying earlier, about cracking some skulls?”
“Yeah.”
He gestured to the door as it opened with a quiet hiss, revealing the reflective tunnel of a venting duct on its other side. “Now’s your chance, bud.”
Jack said nothing, but simply smiled wickedly as he exited the ship. The others, each now armed with one of Acid’s monstrous mega-blasters, were not far behind.
Acid picked up the mic one last time. “You okay with staying, Phish?”
“Yeah, I’m cool. I’ll be waiting for you when you get back. Now get gone, and kill something for me.”
“Will do.”
Then Acid was gone, and the door closed behind him.
A few dozen meters away from the Corsair, Jack found an exit from the venting duct. It was only a fan, blowing hot air from a machine room into the duct, but it was a way in. He pointed one of his two cannons at the rotating blades, and with one blast the fan was blown off its moorings, and sent spinning into the room. Jack quickly dropped through.
He was immediately faced with a throng of lizards and turtles, apparently having been lying in wait for him to enter through the duct. Being the first one out of the Corsair and into the satellite, the others were still behind him. Which meant that he was alone, facing off against a hundred or more of Tank’s henchgoons.
A smile crept across the white rabbit’s face. A crowd of reptilian minions, all to himself? He almost pitied the poor, luckless fools for being in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
Namely, on the business end of his twin blast cannons, at any time other than never.
Jack squeezed the BIAS’ trigger buttons down hard. His deadly weapons responded by immediately beginning to churn out their devastating ammunition, and before the reptilian masses could react their numbers were already thinning. However, even his massive guns couldn’t hold their own against such a monstrous mob of minions, and he came to realize that they were slowly cornering him.
Electrik and Lori, the next two to have left the relative safety of the Corsair, could hear the sound of Jack’s guns ripping through the lizards unfortunate enough to have stood in his way. They easily found the hole in the duct, where the fan had been before, and below was the swarm of goons. A small spark zapped between Electrik’s ears, and he quietly gestured to Lori to stay a short distance away. After she moved a few inches from him, the blue rabbit extended his open palm toward the hole. Two arcs circled down his arm from his shoulder, and when they hit his hand it glowed a bright yellow before loosing a powerful bolt of lightning into the reptilian masses. It struck at least three lizards, who promptly exploded like overinflated balloons. Electrik was quickly through and wreaking havoc, while Lori was death from above as the others approached.
The mass of lizards and turtles began to realize that they were even less than unsuccessful; while their numbers were rapidly decreasing, there were actually more rabbits than there had been to start with. Jack, having been rescued from the crushing weight of numbers, became a blazing death machine, loosing rounds at a group of turtles before flying headlong into another. Headcheese, Spaz, and Foo were demonic pinballs, literally bouncing off the walls and blasting away madly. Jazz paired up with Lori, as did Firefox with Wizard and Acid with Blaze, and stood back to back with her to protect her six, while she reciprocated. Electrik simply fried anything that got close.
Before long, the numbers of reptiles were cut down to nothing. As quick congratulations were given, Firefox noted one last lizard hanging around, trying to act innocuous. The crimson-furred rabbit coolly aimed his blaster and fired, but the lizard hastily dodged out of the way. “‘Ey! Don’t shoot me, I’m on your side!”
The indignant yelp got Jack’s attention, and the white rabbit examined the renegade reptile as Firefox prepared his blastgun for a second try. Jack quickly forestalled his friend from laying the lizard low, then looked him over scrutinously.
The creature in question looked around fervently, taking stock of his surroundings, before speaking again. “Before you kill me, hear me out. I want to help you guys destroy this satellite.”
Acid was skeptical. “Oh? What’s your story?”
“Name’s Gecko. High-level technician on the Eschaton. I know my way around this place better than most, and I’m willing to help you blow the whole thing to smithereens, free of charge.”
Wizard blinked. “Why? What have you got against Tank?”
Gecko sighed. “Tank treats us – his own soldiers – like air. Anything that goes wrong ends up being our fault. I’ve had enough, and I’ve decided that switching sides will probably turn out to be in my favour.”
Acid was still suspicious of the lizard. “How do we know we can trust you?”
In response, Gecko turned, whipping a blaster out of nowhere, and put a few dozen holes into a machine on the other side of the room. Sparks flew as the thin metal casing was perforated, and after a few seconds it simply exploded.
Gecko turned to them, with a smug grin on his face. “The pressure in the launch bay is going to be unpleasantly low for a while.”
Acid chuckled. “You’ve won me over. Anyone else have any objections?”
There was a general shaking of heads, and Acid nodded approvingly before turning to Gecko. “Then it’s settled. Welcome to the good team.”
“It’s a pleasure. What say we get started?”
“You’re the high-level technician. Lead the way.”
4I Falcon
Aug 16, 2003, 12:15 PM
I worked on this chapter during my vacation. Therefore, it is good.
*pounces Coppertop, for sheer lack of something better to do*
acid
Aug 16, 2003, 01:12 PM
YAY^_^
Nice idea for getting Gecko in there, Is his Pyro GX going to show up any time in there? (sorry if I sound like a nitpicker, I'm a Descent fan as well. :D)
I guess I'd better start on the next chapter of The 4th Wall. If I don't, I think I'll need to deal with a certain someone's BIAS in the near future...
4I Falcon
Aug 16, 2003, 01:30 PM
Firstly, no. At least, not in this story. Maybe he'll stumble across it between E:JF and E:JF2, and thus he has a ship.
Secondly, Jack is going to drop the BIAS before the end of the story. So you'll just have to deal with a sniping blaster.
Gecko
Aug 16, 2003, 05:26 PM
oh boy oh boy i'm finnally in yay!!!!!!
OMG OMG you're taking my Pyro GX away, you're not nice, although its inside the station so i'd know why, it'll problally be when the space station goes BOOM! You're taking my Laser thats my best weapon i have i want it otherwise i'm either playing like Grit or Max (Advance wars COs Grit is keen in indirect combat, max is the opposite). also i have to say i'm not a lizard i'm a Gecko! Geckos and Lizards are different. And 1 more thing i forgot to add another skill which is: can climb some walls because of his sucktion cup hands and feet (if i put in the other topic it would go unoticed). i am now done!
4I Falcon
Aug 16, 2003, 05:54 PM
Actually, I didn't have the benefit of your profile when I was writing this chapter, seeing as how I was in a cabin which lacked a phone, let alone internet access. Besides, when you said laser I thought you meant a laser burst pistol, not a straight-beam laser. Dun' worry, I'll fix all that up in the next chapter. Somehow.
And the Pyro GX will be safely removed from the satellite before everything explodes. I don't treat joiners as harshly as I treat my own characters. (What do I mean by this? The answer awaits in Chapter 23!) ^^
Gecko
Aug 16, 2003, 06:04 PM
no the Laser is like the blaster but is shaped like the Descent Laser shots are the same as a normal laser but are green. and they dont use fast fires
4I Falcon
Aug 16, 2003, 06:23 PM
Then all is good. I'm not going to drop any more hints about the next chapter quite yet. Maybe to some privileged readers (*cough*), but as of yet, nothing to tell anyone.
By the way, I did some work on SoT over the two weeks I was away. I you thought Vaper was dangerous... think again...!
acid
Aug 16, 2003, 06:41 PM
Gecko, you're scaring me. We both like Advance wars, and we both like Descent. What's next? Tyrian? Starcraft?
Radium
Aug 16, 2003, 06:48 PM
Acid does everything, which is why he always seems just like somebody.
Oh, and this story... I'll read it sometime. Really. Maybe if it's in a nice text file. In size 18 print. Yeah, that would work. Sometime.
4I Falcon
Aug 17, 2003, 05:17 AM
Does Word in size 12 work for you?
Radium
Aug 17, 2003, 06:45 AM
Does Word in size 12 work for you?
I'd prefer it saved as plain text so I could import it into a speaking program. Word's quotes and "..." symbols aren't readable by most things.
Coppertop
Aug 20, 2003, 11:23 AM
I worked on this chapter during my vacation. Therefore, it is good.
*pounces Coppertop, for sheer lack of something better to do*
What did I do to deserve that?
Anyway, excellent as always, 4I. I'd post on mine but my computer is still packed. *sighs*
Radium ... lazy.
Radium
Aug 20, 2003, 11:29 AM
Yay! CT's back!... sort of.
For a while I thought that XP virus got you.
Coppertop
Aug 20, 2003, 11:40 AM
I TOLD you I was moving. I still am.
Radium
Aug 20, 2003, 12:17 PM
I TOLD you I was moving. I still am.
Yes, but you said you'd be back in about a week and... evidently I can't count to seven.
Coppertop
Aug 20, 2003, 12:25 PM
Evidently. It's BEEN a week.
Radium
Aug 20, 2003, 12:44 PM
Evidently. It's BEEN a week.
Unless the date on your leaving thread mysteriously changed, you left the fith. It's now the 20th. That's more than two weeks.
<s>BWAHAH! BEAT THOSE LEET MATH SKILLS!!!</s>
Coppertop
Aug 20, 2003, 12:45 PM
It mysteriously changed, although I've been gone a little more than a week. I left the 11th.
Radium
Aug 20, 2003, 12:48 PM
Well... at least I was <i>half</i> of right.
Anyway, back on topic and talk about this story I plan to read someday.
Coppertop
Aug 20, 2003, 01:23 PM
Read it NOW.
4I Falcon
Aug 20, 2003, 01:35 PM
What did I do to deserve that?
<s>Nothing. I did that because I love you like a fat kid loves cake. I thought you'd know that by now, CT. For shame.</s> :lol:
Hurr. I don't know... I believe I was in a pounce-happy mood when I did that. *cough*Esper*cough*
Never mind.
Grath
Aug 21, 2003, 04:49 AM
Whuddabout me? *glares*
If you can fit it in:
I've got a landspeeder (It's a motorcycle-like thing, with hovercraft-like propulsion)
The Spy Runner:
Pure black, with a fin on the back with Spy Runner on it in red, two things on the bottom, spaced where the motorcycle's wheels would be, look like large magnets, and provide the hovering aspect: These magnet things can alter gravity, making it so he can even flip upside down and do barrel rolls.
It has two forward-facing guns which are machineguns, and on the sides, right infront of the handlebars, two long outrigger-like things are, each one with a missile launcher facing backwards (Very limited ammo).
The front of the landspeeder's longer than a motorcycle, and streamlined.
There's a special suit for using the speeder, which consists of a helmet, gloves, and boots, which make it feel like he's always right-side up, and the boots clip onto the bottom of the speeder so he doesn't fall out. (Speeder is unfit for space use besides people in spacesuits/can breathe in space for riders)
4I Falcon
Aug 22, 2003, 11:27 AM
Probably not. Maybe in E:JF2, but not in this one. The end draws nigh, and there isn't a very good chance there's going to be enough room.
Sorry.
4I Falcon
Aug 22, 2003, 11:27 AM
Page claim in the name of CT, fat kids, and cake. ^^
Gecko
Aug 23, 2003, 10:21 AM
:eek: hmph why not claim it for me?
4I Falcon
Aug 23, 2003, 09:29 PM
Because I'm efil.
Nyar.
Coppertop
Aug 26, 2003, 06:53 AM
He is. I'm back again.
Coppertop
Aug 26, 2003, 08:48 AM
<s>Nothing. I did that because I love you like a fat kid loves cake. I thought you'd know that by now, CT. For shame.</s> :lol:
I knew it. I just forgot it briefly.
4I Falcon
Aug 26, 2003, 09:53 AM
*snickers*
Gecko
Aug 26, 2003, 01:09 PM
*speaks a boring lecture because Falcon is being mean*
acid
Aug 26, 2003, 04:24 PM
That should be in the "ebarrasing announcements of love" thread. =P
4I Falcon
Aug 26, 2003, 04:29 PM
There is such a thread? *goes off looking for it*
Radium
Aug 26, 2003, 04:30 PM
There is such a thread? *goes off looking for it*
Of course there is, I think I made it. Go revive it, now.
4I Falcon
Aug 27, 2003, 04:01 AM
If you want me to revive it so badly, give me the link. I'm too lazy to go searching through the whole JCF for it myself.
Derby: Severe filter bypass removal. This has resulted in a subwarning.
4IF: What is the world coming to? That wasn't supposed to be a filter bypass, Derby, and you know it! If I had wanted it to be a filter bypass I would have bloody well made it obvious!
Gecko
Aug 28, 2003, 07:24 AM
:O naughty falcon you have been a nasty boy because Derby says you made a severe filter bypass *spanks Falcon*. PS Derby, could you leave us alone, please?
4I Falcon
Aug 28, 2003, 10:26 AM
:O naughty falcon you have been a nasty boy because Derby says you made a severe filter bypass *spanks Falcon*.
Oh.
Derby: Personal attack removal.
4IF: How is that a personal attack? Meh, it doesn't matter. I was grumpy at the time. So nyeh.
Gecko
Aug 31, 2003, 01:28 PM
you just may want to stop that or other-wise we wont be seeing anymore E: JF anymore............
Coppertop
Sep 2, 2003, 05:17 AM
He has a point.
OMG 4I FALCON HAS A SUB-WARNING!!! *dies*
Gecko
Sep 5, 2003, 05:26 PM
SHHHHHH! we dont need him going off again!
4I Falcon
Sep 6, 2003, 05:12 AM
*buzzes madly, about to let off a whole string of expletives*
*explodes*
(-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-)!
...Whoo. Now I feel better.
Radium
Sep 6, 2003, 05:26 AM
(-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-) (-)!
Here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/images/200/coffee.jpg
You need it.
4I Falcon
Sep 6, 2003, 06:01 AM
mmm... caffeine...
...Jos. Louis + Jolt = HAPPYHYPERFALCONWHEEEEEEEE! *crashes into a wall, falls down the stairs, and promptly explodes.*
Gecko
Sep 6, 2003, 06:08 PM
*gasp*:eek: Hes dead!
acid
Sep 6, 2003, 06:42 PM
Don't worry, that happens all the time.
4I Falcon
Sep 7, 2003, 01:21 PM
You dare to mock death? One day I'll die and stay dead, that'll show you all!
But for now, I'm perfectly content just dying and coming back, only to ultimately die, and come back again. The cycle continues, and it's great fun.
Gecko
Sep 7, 2003, 01:51 PM
Falcon hows chapter 24 going or is it 23.........
4I Falcon
Sep 7, 2003, 03:25 PM
That would be Chapter 23. And I have about half a paragraph done.
Gecko
Sep 7, 2003, 05:35 PM
That would be Chapter 23. And I have about half a paragraph done.
Ouch! only a half a paragraph...although it takes a lot of thought though so i'd see why and school as well.
Coppertop
Sep 15, 2003, 09:44 AM
Half a paragraph? I have half the STORY done, man! Of course, I've also been writing every day for about a month...
4I Falcon
Sep 16, 2003, 11:29 AM
Indeed. I, on the other hand, have one of the most important years of my life to tend to. However, the story is progressing.
Radium
Sep 16, 2003, 11:44 AM
I, on the other hand, have one of the most important years of my life to tend to.
Theoretically the most important years of your life are before age twelve. That's really when your mind is still shaping and you learn at a much higher rate. Especially foreign languages.
Err.. yeah. I still plan on reading this story. Eventually.
VashTheStampede
Sep 16, 2003, 12:21 PM
you learn about 1/2 of everything you ever will by the age of 3, you know, right and wrong, reading, writing, speaking, walking, etc...
Gecko
Sep 16, 2003, 01:44 PM
yea yeah yeah we heard you.........
acid
Oct 1, 2003, 06:38 PM
OMGNEWCHAPTERKPLZTHXBYE!!!!!!!11!11!!11!!1!
But seriously, I finished my chapter. I expect to see yours in the near future.
4I Falcon
Oct 1, 2003, 06:44 PM
I'm actually having an easier time writing SoT than E:JF, so expect to see Chpater 12 of SoT up before Chapter 23 of E:JF.
*puds off to go read Chappie 2 of The 4th Wall*
Gecko
Oct 7, 2003, 03:54 PM
khdsgfkfklfhlg But I guess SOT is not getting much attention so things must be done sooner or later........
*Ponders how long will it be for the next chapter of E:JF*
4I Falcon
Oct 15, 2003, 01:18 PM
Yes, I know it's been a while, again, but you know the issues. Failing two classes, maybe even three by now, but still keeping work progressing nicely on my stories. I hope you enjoy this, because personally I'm not exactly thrilled at how well I wrote it... but that's neither here nor there.
Chapter 23: Blood, Sweat, and Tears
Gecko stuck his head out through the machine room door, furtively glancing up and down the corridor outside, then gave the all-clear signal, indicating to the rabbits behind him to follow. They quickly cleared out of the room, and progressed stealthily through the innards of the satellite, eventually arriving at the hub of the rotating arms without being noticed.
The entrance to the hub was only marked by a nondescript metal ladder leading up into a hole in the ceiling, and an arrow, marked “Reactor Arms Hub”, pointing up at the hole.
Gecko hopped onto the ladder, and climbed up and through the hole rapidly. Jazz was right behind him, and the other rabbits were not long in following the lizard and the green-furred hero up the ladder.
Once inside, Gecko quickly organized the group around him. “Okay. There are six reactors, and twelve of us, so ten of you will take out the reactors in groups of two. The other one comes with me. Makes sense, right? Math skills. Partner up.”
Jack blinked. “Wait a sec. Six? But there are only five arms on the satellite…”
Gecko frowned. “There’s a sixth one, smack-dab in the middle of this floating death wish. Now, less talking, more destroying. Time is crucial, if you hadn’t figured that out already.”
Headcheese was immediately taken by Spaz, leaving Jazz to partner up with Lori. Electrik chose Firefox, Blaze appeared next to Jack, and Acid rolled his eyes as he found himself partnered with Foo.
Gecko nodded as Wizard moved to him. “Good. Now you get to take a ride on the evil moving floor.”
It was Jazz’s turn to be puzzled. “The what?”
Gecko leaned backwards, pushing a button on the wall with his shoulder, and a door slid open to one side of him. Beyond the door, the metal floor was stable for a few feet, but past those few feet the floor rushed past them, its small, indented rivets glinting as they practically flew by.
Firefox stared at the moving floor in disbelief. “You expect us to— We can hardly even get on that thing!”
“Oh, sure you can,” Gecko retorted. “Just only on your butt. You try to land on your feet, and you’ll end up on your face. Land on your butt, and you’ll be fine.”
Firefox was not placated by the lizard’s words. “It sounds too easy. I want to see you do it.”
Gecko sighed in exasperation, then jumped onto the moving floor. As soon as he touched the metal rivets, his feet were pulled underneath him, and he was thrown head-over-heels onto his stomach. Firefox winced as the lizard made a thwack on the metal flooring, but Gecko got up quickly, and he flashed a thumbs up at the group before the moving floor carried him away.
Roughly three seconds passed, and Gecko reappeared. He leapt off of the moving floor, landing feet forward on the small ledge. He fell forward again, sprawling on his front before the rabbits, and got to his feet, dusting himself off. “See? Easy.”
Firefox frowned, but Headcheese took a running jump over the moving floor, landing butt first on it as Gecko had done. She fell forward onto her chest, but she was up on her feet again in an instant. Gecko gestured indicatively at her as she disappeared from view.
Not about to be outdone, Spaz followed Headcheese’s example, and he was on the moving floor before anyone could stop him, had they wanted to. He was somersaulted end over end upon landing, and he landed hard on his back, to his siblings’ great amusement.
Before long, all of the rabbits except for Wizard of Odds had made the jump, and Gecko snickered as he watched the group whiz by roughly every three seconds, before turning to Wizard. “Come with me. We’ve got us a reactor to destroy too.”
The rabbit nodded, and followed the lizard back out of the arms, on the way to the unseen sixth reactor.
Jack saw the other groups off to the entrances to their respective target reactors before leading Blaze to their own, stopping in front of the door marked “Moebius”. It didn’t take long for Blaze to bypass the keycard lock holding the door closed, and Jack was practically on tenterhooks waiting for it to open. As soon as the gap was wide enough for a lagomorphic body to get through it, Jack squeezed his BIAS-laden form between the doors, and was about to bolt headlong down the corridor when Blaze stopped him short with a hand on his shoulder.
Jack turned around. “What?”
“Don’t just dash in, Jack; not yet, anyway. We have the element of surprise already. Let’s not lose it, ‘kay?”
“Elem—” Jack caught himself, and lowered his voice to an indignant whisper. “Element of surprise? If we had the element of surprise, how did all those reptiles know we were coming?”
“Listen. If Tank was going to send any of his goons after us, he would have done so by now. He doesn’t know we’re here.”
“I am not being paranoid.”
“Did I say you were being paranoid?”
“Wh— well, no… I just want to get all this over and done with. I really don’t like this place.”
“That’s why we’re taking it apart. Now then, let’s do that, instead of sitting here like easy targets.”
“Right.”
Blaze stepped past Jack, and peered around a corner, flattening his ears back along his head to avoid being seen. After a few seconds, he waved the white rabbit forward, and together they delved deeper into the arm housing the Moebius reactor.
“He’s in the Moebius arm, sir, and he’s with the spy. Not very far in, and moving warily.”
“Release Rager.”
“Done.”
“Good. Now all we do is wait. They’ll be sorry they ever crossed Buster Tank once their leader is dead.”
As Jack and Blaze progressed further, they noticed more and more guards paying little attention to their task. As a result, it was not difficult for Jack to pick them off with a well-placed blaster shot when he saw them. Blaze always alerted him to guards that he had missed, and he quickly dispatched them before they could get far.
It was becoming more difficult by the second to stay covert with so many guards around, and they both knew it. Blaze was continually pointing out more targets that Jack had missed, and it didn’t bother the white rabbit as much that he was doing this as it did that said targets were missed in the first place. Against his conscious will, Jack was subliminally convincing himself that he was slowly beginning to break down.
“We’re just losing lizards in there, aren’t we?”
“Well, yes, sir.”
“I don’t know why I care about those weak-minded idiots, but pull them out nonetheless. They may be brainless, but they’re loyal.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where’s Rager?”
“Closing in on the rabbits, sir.”
“Perfect.”
4I Falcon
Oct 15, 2003, 01:20 PM
“Is it just me, or is it suddenly getting easier to move in here?”
Blaze nodded. “You’re right. I’ve noticed it too. It’s like all the lizards have just disappeared.”
Jack frowned. “It’s not making me any less nervous about this place…”
Firefox snickered through the headset, which Jack had forgotten was still perched on his ears, and the shaken rabbit had to take a few seconds for his heart to stop racing. “Come on, Jack. Fewer targets means fewer things making you a target.”
Jack snarled into the mic. “I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that we could be wandering into a trap, has it?”
There was no response from Firefox’s end.
“The MEW is almost fully charged, sir, and the Megalith reactor is running.”
“Excellent. That is the kind of news I like to hear.”
“However, all of the rabbit teams, save for the rabbit following the traitor Gecko, are within two hundred meters of their respective targets.”
“That, on the other hand, is not. At least tell me the sentries are online.”
“They are, sir.”
“Well, at least we have a shot at stopping them, then.”
Jack and Blaze were faced with a long corridor, and the latter halted the former, quickly scanning the walls and ceiling for potential traps. Once assured that it was safe to proceed, he dropped behind Jack, and was close in tow as they moved forward.
Roughly halfway down the corridor was a doorway with a window through it. Jack peered through the window, flattening his ears to the back of his head. When he was assured that there was no threat on the other side of the door, he ducked down, and crept past silently.
Blaze was compelled to take a look through the small window for himself, and so he did. As he had expected, it was naught but yet another metallic hallway, with pipes and wires lining the walls and ceiling.
As he turned to look away, something dark went by the window. When Blaze looked back through the window to see what it was, it was gone.
The black rabbit’s mouth formed the words “What the…?” as the door slid open silently. Without a word, he stepped through, leaving Jack behind.
“The spy is onto Rager, and he’s broken off from the white one to track it down.”
“Hm… Kill him off. With any luck, it’ll draw the leader to Rager. If nothing else, it’ll weaken their forces by that much.”
Jack peered around the corner at the end of the hallway, and sighted a lone lizard, looking somewhat lost. He took out the unfortunate straggler with one well-placed shot. As the reptile fell to the ground, the rabbit couldn’t help but notice that his hand was shaking slightly, and he consciously stopped it, grinning awkwardly. “Well, that’s not something that happens often, now is it, Blaze?”
His grin quickly faded as he failed to receive an answer from his comrade, and he turned around, looking about uneasily. “Blaze?!”
Blaze’s frantic voice suddenly burst through on Jack’s headset. “Jack! Help me!”
Jack veritably flew back to the door, left open since Blaze had quietly disappeared through it, and darted through. He didn’t even have time to gasp in horror at the sight of the robot holding the struggling Blaze by his long ears and pressing the barrel of his silenced pistol to his forehead, before there was a dulled bang. Blaze stopped struggling. The robot dropped the dead rabbit to the floor silently, and the lifeless body of Jack’s friend crumbled into a black, furry heap.
Time seemed to freeze as Jack stared at Blaze’s crumpled body. He could feel his blood boiling, and his hands began to shake again, more violently than before. His eyes shone red as he glared up at Rager.
The robot’s hand went to a holster on its waist to draw out a short gun, but Jack needed no time to decimate Rager with his twin cannons. Even as it fell to the ground, Jack kept blasting away at it, screaming at the top of his lungs, and didn’t stop until it exploded, sending jagged plates of armour and debris flying in all directions.
With another outcry of boundless rage, Jack flew back out the door, now on the hunt not for the Moebius reactor, but for vengeance upon the one who had become the sole cause for his agony.
Buster Tank’s time had come, and nothing was going to stop Jack this time.
This chapter is a bit longer than the rest of them, 3½ pages as compared to the 3 pages of all the others, so it was considerably more difficult to get it within the 10000-character limit range, which I didn't even bother doing this time anyway.
acid
Oct 15, 2003, 02:14 PM
Jeez, this chapter is giving me lots of mixed feelings...
At first, it was humorous, mainly from me going with Foo. Unfortunately, you didn't tell us what happened with anyone but Jack and Blaze. >_<
The moving floor part was confusing, and I want to see where it figures into the satellite. Also, how come everyone was the same distance from the reactors if one was in the center, and the rest were in the arms?
And, at the end, poor Blaze =(
However, I'm sure that Jack will dismantle the satellite piece by piece, and do the same to Buster in revenge.
And, I need to write another chapter of T4W, don't I? >_<
4I Falcon
Oct 15, 2003, 05:29 PM
Chapter 24 involves what everyone else is doing.
And, if you'll notice, I mentioned that everyone is within 200 meters of their respective targets, except for Wizard and Gecko, who were going for the Megalith reactor, the one in the middle of the satellite.
Okay. Picture a staff, all metal and evilly and satellite-looking. Five arms, almost as long as the staff is tall, extend outward from the main body about a fifth of the way down from the top. The arms hub is where all five of those arms join the body of the satellite, and the switch from stationary floor to moving floor is where the ring, to which all five arms are attached, connects to the staff. I hope that makes the idea simpler for you.
In the end, the Eschaton goes kablooie. And, Gecko, if you're listening, your Pyro GX makes it out safely. I won't reveal what happens to Buster, because if I did it would ruin the suspense.
Yes, you have to go write another chapter of T4W. I love these acronyms, with punctuation and numbers and lowercase letters thrown in all over the place... *snickers*
acid
Oct 15, 2003, 05:48 PM
Wait, I think I might get it now.
If this is terribly-made ASCII Eschaton
..ARM............ARM..
....\____________/....
..../..________..\....
.../../..____..\..\...
A_/../../MIDD\..\..\_A
..\..\..\____/../../..
...\..\________/../...
....\____________/<-This outer ring would be moving floor, moving in a circle around the satellite?
..........||..........
.........ARM..........
Horray for ASCII Drawing!
4I Falcon
Oct 15, 2003, 05:51 PM
Yes.
Coppertop
Oct 16, 2003, 06:24 AM
Blaze! *cries*
ANOTHER two-page part? Wow. :O
4I Falcon
Oct 16, 2003, 12:04 PM
Stupid vB character limits.
Actually, this chapter wouldn't have fit even without vB's faulty character-limit check. It's 11000-something characters long, and since 11000 is bigger than 10000, I'd have to shave off even more precious words and letters and punctuation. I decided that if I were to do so, I would deprive all of my loyal readers of the detail they deserve.
So nyar.
4I Falcon
Oct 16, 2003, 12:05 PM
Page claim in memory of Blaze Blackrabbit.
Gecko
Oct 16, 2003, 03:58 PM
*Wipes sweat off his face* Whew and I thought my beautiful ship wouldn't make it, otherwise I would have to *Pulls out his Laser*.
Not that I really care about being with wizard, thats mearly a good thing, because if theres puzzles around, don't be looking at me.
I understand how it would feel to be with foo. I'd be so........*falls asleep* :Z
acid
Oct 16, 2003, 04:40 PM
I understand how it would feel to be with foo. I'd be so........*falls asleep* :Z
*blink*
You can fall asleep within a 1-mile vicinity of Foo? Man, you're a sound sleeper.
Coppertop
Oct 17, 2003, 06:57 AM
*snickers* Read Foo's prof, Gecko. Then you'll understand.
A worthy pageclaim, 4I. *sniff*
Gecko
Oct 18, 2003, 05:04 PM
*Wakes up*
*Pulls out laser and Shoots Copper a bit*
*Ponders how to drop Coppertop off Mt everist*
*goes back to sleep*
Radium
Oct 18, 2003, 05:07 PM
*jumps in front of all Gecko's lasers*
*saves CT*
Gecko
Oct 18, 2003, 05:17 PM
*Wakes up to see that Rad is shot*
*Grabs Rad and throws him down Angel Falls*
*Falls asleep*
acid
Oct 18, 2003, 06:09 PM
*dies*
4I Falcon
Oct 19, 2003, 09:53 AM
Heehee... CT's got a throng of guys all ready to sacrifice themselves to save her... *grins evilly*
*looks around, and is somewhat annoyed with this sudden spree of death, so revives Acid and Radium before smackaging Gecko around some with a bucket of liquid nitrogen*
Radium
Oct 19, 2003, 10:09 AM
Heehee... CT's got a throng of guys all ready to sacrifice themselves to save her... *grins evilly*
Actually, I think I was the only one. Acid just spontaneously died of natural causes.
4I Falcon
Oct 19, 2003, 05:17 PM
Actually, I think I was the only one.
Cough.
You obviously haven't been paying attention.
Gecko
Oct 19, 2003, 05:48 PM
*Wakes up*
*Grabs Falcon by the legs Spins him around and lets go*
*Falcon is sent flying*
*Snickers and falls asleep*
*Falcon Comes running back and kicks Gecko of Angel Falls*
*Wakes up*
*Gecko gets a full body Fracture*
Hyper Upgrade!
*Becomes fully healed*
*Snickers and falls asleep*
Radium
Oct 19, 2003, 05:49 PM
Amazing how you can fall asleep twice without waking up.
Gecko
Oct 19, 2003, 05:51 PM
Amazing how you can fall asleep twice without waking up.
*Wakes up*
Not anymore!
*Foo comes by*
Oh no...... :Z
*Falls asleep*
acid
Oct 20, 2003, 04:39 PM
OMB THE NEW FORUM KILLED IT >(((
edit: Okay, it's back. The new stuff on the forum is really freaky, though.
4I Falcon
Oct 21, 2003, 05:23 AM
If this nonsense doesn't end pronto, the delay for Chapter 24 will be two, maybe even three months!
Ha! How's that for threatening! *bonk*
Coppertop
Oct 22, 2003, 05:51 AM
Heehee... CT's got a throng of guys all ready to sacrifice themselves to save her... *grins evilly*
You know the worst part? I don't even know why ..
I think that's the worst threat you could make, 4I. :eek:
Gecko
Nov 1, 2003, 09:22 AM
*Wakes Up*
Ok *Cough* I'll stop *Cough*
*Ponders how Acid and Foo will behave together*
Atleast I get the guy who has the brains!
*Falls asleep for no reason*
4I Falcon
Nov 1, 2003, 12:10 PM
I think that's the worst threat you could make, 4I. :eek:
It wasn't an idle threat, either. It's already been two weeks and I haven't even started Chappie 24.
acid
Nov 1, 2003, 01:22 PM
Except the nonsense Did stop, so you should be writing!
Come to think of it, so should I...
4I Falcon
Nov 2, 2003, 09:53 AM
I'm in the throes of a writer's block, and on top of that I'm desperately trying to keep all my marks above 50% in time for the report card.
I hope that's reason enough for you.
Coppertop
Nov 3, 2003, 04:05 AM
It is. Forget the story for now, work on your marks!
4I Falcon
Nov 3, 2003, 12:22 PM
Good news, poples. I managed to raise my English mark by roughly 15% over the last week, so there's no lack of hard work put in there. I'm currently doing a bit of math junk, but I'm also seeding in a bit of writing here and there, so rest assured the stories have not dragged to a standstill.
Well, sorta.
But mostly not.
Gecko
Nov 28, 2003, 02:47 PM
Goodie goodie. You should raise those grades first then work on the thing. And remember "The high the grades you have, the more time you have"
4I Falcon
Nov 28, 2003, 04:23 PM
I meant to also tell you, but I think I forgot. I dropped calculus on the 18th, so I'll have that much more free time. E:JF and SoT are both coming along slowly, but you'll definitely enjoy the new chapters.
Thank you, Gecko, for proving that my stories were not forgotten.
Coppertop
Nov 29, 2003, 10:03 AM
YaY! *does cartwheels*
4I Falcon
Nov 29, 2003, 06:31 PM
o_O
This is different...
Coppertop
Dec 1, 2003, 05:45 AM
Eh?
*hugs 4I*
4I Falcon
Dec 1, 2003, 01:47 PM
*smiles, and hugs back*
...
*eats his school network due to sux*
Gecko
Dec 9, 2003, 03:55 PM
I meant to also tell you, but I think I forgot. I dropped calculus on the 18th, so I'll have that much more free time. E:JF and SoT are both coming along slowly, but you'll definitely enjoy the new chapters.
Thank you, Gecko, for proving that my stories were not forgotten.
Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.........Thank you.........thank you.......thank you.
And that was taken from Space quest 6!
4I Falcon
Dec 18, 2003, 03:35 PM
So glad you enjoy my stories, Gecko.
Chapter 24: Pressure
“Jack! What the—?!” Firefox bellowed into his headset mic, causing Electrik to stop dead in his tracks. “What in hell is going on?”
He was not yet aware of Blaze’s untimely demise. None of the rabbits were. They had only heard the black rabbit’s desperate cry for help, a short pause, and then Jack’s enraged roaring. This understandably left the others in the dark, unknowing of what had set the volatile white rabbit off.
There was no discernible answer to Firefox’s belligerent inquiry from Jack’s end, other than a loud snarl and the sounds of him exacting vengeance on a few hapless crewlizards. Firefox frowned, and there was an audible expletive from one of the other rabbits, probably Jazz.
Electrik dealt a small zap to Firefox’s shoulder to get his attention, and gave him a “What’s taking you?” look. In response, Firefox removed his headset, and tossed it to Electrik. A bright spark of electricity leapt from his hand to the microphone as he caught it, and another one burst from the base of his left ear as he fitted the headphones onto his ears.
A few seconds passed, and then Electrik’s eyes went wide in shock as he heard Jack roaring, sounding almost bestial in his rage. He slowly removed the earphones from his ears, and handed them back to Firefox, his eyes still wide with fright. “Was that… is that Jack?”
The crimson rabbit nodded solemnly. “Yes, it is. I haven’t the slightest what would set him off like that, but I get a sinking feeling that it has to do with Blaze.”
Electrik fell silent, and looked at his feet as Firefox placed the headset on his head again. The headphones fitted into his ears in time for him to hear Jack launch into another outburst.
“…the reactor, I’m coming after you, Tank! You killed Blaze, and it all comes full circle now, you’ll be dead at my hands before the day is—”
Firefox turned the headset off, and removed it from his ears, nodding sadly. “Blaze is dead.”
“Oh no…” Electrik moaned. “Blaze? Your spy?”
Firefox silently nodded again, and Electrik resumed staring at the floor. “That’s what set Jack off, isn’t it?”
“Yep,” Firefox affirmed quietly. “Now he’s going right after the source—”
Electrik’s head rose, and an arc of electricity ran upward between his ears as he understood. “Tank.”
“Bingo. The thing is, he’s probably on the way out of the Moebius arm…”
Electrik shot a glance at him. “You’re going to ask me to switch over to the Moebius reactor arm to take Jack’s place.”
“You catch on fast.”
“Are you going to be okay, continuing on your own?”
In response, Firefox hefted the megablaster he had chosen back on the Hybrid Corsair, and it clicked as he activated it. He grinned as it hummed to life. “I think I’ll be fine.”
Electrik looked over the gun once more, then nodded to Firefox, and disappeared down the corridor, back to the hub. There was a loud yelp as he electrocuted an eavesdropping lizard, and then Firefox was alone.
With a furtive glance around him, the crimson rabbit nervously cocked the megablaster. “Yeah… yeah, I’ll be fine…”
The normally stolid Captain felt a lot less sure of his words than he sounded, and he silently continued to make his way toward the Colossus reactor, his gun always ready.
Electrik was almost surprised to find Lori, on the way from the Titan reactor arm, for the same purpose that he had left the Colossus arm. Jack was nowhere to be seen, and Electrik was unsure whether or not this was a good thing.
“Electrik?” Lori was apparently as surprised as Electrik, judging by the pitch of her voice. “What are you doing here?”
“Probably the same thing you’re doing here, Lori,” Electrik stated calmly, with a nod of his head toward the entrance of the Moebius reactor.
“Oh. Firefox sent you?”
“Yup.”
“Ah. I had the privilege of hearing Jack snap first-hand. Does he do that often?”
“I have no idea; this is the first time I’ve ever been on the same mission with any of these people, excluding my cousins, of course.”
“Oh. Well, if it helps any, my brothers and I hadn’t heard of them either, before this mission.”
“It doesn’t.”
Lori shrugged, then turned, and disappeared into the Moebius arm. Electrik, as always, was not far behind.
“Well, that went swimmingly.”
“Sir?”
“That was sarcasm, you twit.”
“Oh.”
“I suppose it is a good thing that there are only eight left in the reactor arms. Two less to worry about.”
“Um, sir…?”
“I could release the Shockbots on them… but judging by the way that blue one uses electricity, they’d be useless…”
“S-sir?”
“The Attacknids might work, as long as they can see in the dark. Wait, of course they can; they have IR, so it’s a given they can see in the dark.”
“Sir!”
“Wha— hurkk!”
Jack threw the body of the slain lizard captain to one side, and destroyed another with a devastating kick to its scrawny chest. He quickly and efficiently dispatched any lizard that so much as dared to move from its seat, and then those that didn’t, with powerful blasts from the twin cannons over his shoulders.
The white-furred destroyer, eyes reddened by bloodlust, breathed heavily as the carcass of the last lizard fell to the ground, and a drop of sweat fell into his eyes as he furiously looked about the ceiling for a security camera. Failing that, he made do with his reflection, on the polished metal next to the hole he put into the wall.
“Start running, Tank. I’m coming after you.”
With that, he tore another door out of the room, and was gone again, leaving a trail of slaughter in his wake.
Electrik functioned as an improvisational nightlight as he and Lori made their way into the unnaturally dark Moebius arm. Lori had her weapon ready, perched on her shoulder at all times; Electrik was his own weapon, and kept a respectably dense charge in one hand, just in case.
A few minutes into the arm, Lori accidentally bumped into Electrik, and was immediately rewarded with a high-powered jolt. Electrik turned around to see a very stunned Jackrabbit whose yellow fur stood on end, giving her an appearance that would have been amusing had they been somewhere that was less ominous than a reactor corridor.
Dispersing the electric charge from his other hand, Electrik held it out to Lori to help her off the floor, where she had suddenly decided to make herself uncomfortable. Lori came to her feet with no great problem, and scratched the back of her head, grinning sheepishly at Electrik. “Sorry ‘bout that…”
The blue rabbit shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s alright. You should keep your distance, though, or you might g— mff!”
Electrik’s sentence was cut off as a dark figure dropped from the ceiling and wrapped itself around his head. Lori instictively pulled out her blaster, and was able to fire off two shots at the dark form before a similar one dropped onto her, blinding and smothering her with its body.
Fortunately, Electrik was able to dislodge the dark-scaled lizard clinging to his head with a strong zap, and he watched in disgust as it fell to the ground. He quickly dispatched the reptile wrapping its tail tightly around Lori’s neck, then pried it off of her and threw it down the hall. He turned back to her as she coughed a few times, and looked around fervently.
“There are lizards all over the place. Dark-scaled buggers. Too many for us to fight individually…”
“So what do we do?” Lori asked quietly as Electrik’s voice trailed off.
The blue rabbit glanced up at the ceiling, and frowned. “I have half a mind to cheat, and just electrocute ‘em all… mmm, yeah, that sounds like a very attractive option right about now. When I give you the word, jump.”
Lori nodded silently, looking around the room edgily. There were a lot more of the black-scaled lizards than she had expected, and she kept her trigger finger taut, waiting for one of them to make a wrong move so she could put a hole through it.
After a few seconds, she heard Electrik speak one word. “Now.”
Without hesitation, Lori jumped almost the entire height of the corridor, and her ears narrowly avoided touching the ceiling as Electrik sent out a massive electric shockwave through the metal floor and walls. Dozens of bright flashes came and went as the black lizards were suddenly and harshly electrocuted. As Lori landed neatly on the ground, numerous loud thuds were heard around them as the lizards fell to the floor, all dead. Electrik was not one to leave a job half-done, and he had just proven it.
“Come on, Lori. We need to move quickly. There will be more of them, I’m sure of it.”
“I bet you’re right. Let’s go.”
Then they were off at a dead sprint toward the end of the arm, toward their target: the Moebius reactor, one of the six that had to be destroyed for any hope to be restored to the fate of Carrotus.
4I Falcon
Dec 18, 2003, 03:36 PM
I plan on redoing this chapter sometime. I'm not quite thrilled with the way it turned out on this run-through. Ah well.
acid
Dec 18, 2003, 03:50 PM
Yaychappie. However, the switch from past tense to present tense for Jack's part is confusing and sort of ugly. Other than that, absolutely excellent chapter.
4I Falcon
Dec 18, 2003, 04:09 PM
I've seen it done before, and it looked sorta cool, so I decided to try it myself. *shrug*
I think I'll get rid of it. It does look somewhat ugly from my POV as well, anyway.
Risp_old
Dec 18, 2003, 05:16 PM
The good guys seem a bit overpowered here. (Kaazap! Lizard barbecue!)
4I Falcon
Dec 18, 2003, 07:23 PM
I could say something here, but it will spoil the plot. So, I'll just say that the good guys, and Electrik in particular, won't be overpowered for long...
Coppertop
Dec 19, 2003, 05:54 AM
Shockbots, eh? =P
Well done as always, 4I *hugs* especially with Electrik.
4I Falcon
Dec 19, 2003, 09:02 AM
Shockbots, eh? =P
I like to think of it as an unsolicited collaborative effort.
Basically, that's just a nice way of saying I stole your idea.
Coppertop
Dec 19, 2003, 11:42 AM
*shrugs* I don't mind, since I stole the idea from your Shellshockers =D Collaborative effort it is, then!
Gecko
Dec 19, 2003, 02:27 PM
Hmmmmmm that one wasn't as good as the others, but didn't suck. Let's just hope I wasn't in the same tunnel or i'm up for quite a shock...........
Page Claim muahahahahahaah!
acid
Dec 19, 2003, 03:29 PM
Y'know, here in the WT, it's a tradition to give the new pages to the storywriters. I think. Right, guys?
4I Falcon
Dec 19, 2003, 08:08 PM
Give, nothing. The storywriters just get them. *snatches the page*
Coppertop
Dec 20, 2003, 08:01 AM
It seems to be a tradition with my stories, since Radium and 4I and Acid and Defalcon keep giving them to me, and Kaz steals them all :)
Radium
Dec 20, 2003, 08:03 AM
Kaz is a bad person, but there's only been one story where he was a badguy.
Coppertop
Dec 20, 2003, 08:10 AM
KaZ is not a bad person. Kaz is cynical and overly picked on. *hugs Kaz*
Gecko
Dec 20, 2003, 09:19 AM
Hey that page claim is mine! *Snachets it back*
ahahahahaha whoooooooooooooooowwwwww *Trips over*
*page claim is caught by electrik*
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! *both Gecko and Falcon are turned into ash*
4I Falcon
Dec 20, 2003, 12:52 PM
*is not affected by Gecko's nonsense*
*takes the slightly burnt page*
Gecko
Dec 24, 2003, 11:11 AM
*Steals Falcon's Nonsense sheild*
*Falcon is burnt to a crisp*
*Page claim is destoried*
4I Falcon
Dec 24, 2003, 12:12 PM
*respawns, and reclaims the page, while giving Gecko a nice, solid boot to the arse*
Any more of this uber-suxness and I'll have you toasted in the story as well. Don't mess with me. I control your literary future.
Moo ha ha.
acid
Dec 25, 2003, 06:54 AM
*Cue orchestra hit*
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