Oh, he knew it would happen? Okay.

Page claim in the name of waking up five minutes ago. =D

w00t cool new chappy! I knew it, lizzards are always bad..
won't you leave one reactor to power an electronic warp drive v2.1 to get em back?
nice to see you back!

Alex

Originally Posted by scatman

won't you leave one reactor to power an electronic warp drive v2.1 to get em back?

Originally Posted by 4I Falcon

No.

Already I've said too much.

Twice.

Lizards are NOT always bad. *cough*Justiar*cough*

Well, 4I, once again you prove yourself the better writer =D Not that I expected otherwise. Writer's block hasn't affected your work in the least.

Again, I missed CT's reply by almost a week. Except this time it was more than a week. >((((((

Anyway. True, lizards are not always bad. But Gecko is not one of those lizards that aren't bad. So... so there.

BTW, now that I'm finished that chapter, I'm completely stuck again. And it gets better: now I don't only have writer's block to contend with, but also composer's block. This is one of those times where I'm glad I'm not an artist, or else I'd have artist's block, too. >(((((((((

I have artist's block >( But not writer's. I got over that.

Yay for the thinking person's CT. Wort.

Eh?

If it makes you feel any better, I don't know what I was on when I posted that, either.

Nothing really to say about this chapter, excepting that I'm mighty sorry it took me more than three months to write it. Enjoy.

Chapter 26: Consequences

There was a bright flash of light from above the Hybrid Corsair as the end of one of the reactor arms exploded, and Phish smirked, flipping a small switch on the control panel. “Quite the light show. What’s going on up there?”
Electrik’s voice came back over the surprisingly strong connection. “Two down, four to go. No… cancel last. Three down.”
“Good. What’s up with Jack? Anyone seen him?”
“Yeah,” came Wizard’s voice. “And not a moment too soon, either. Gecko decided to do a bit of triple-crossing after I called his bluff on leading me around in circles in the satellite. He was a little too close – ack! Get away from me!”
Phish winced as the sound of gunfire replaced Wizard’s voice for a few moments, then stopped.
“Sorry about that… effing lizard dropped right in front of me. Anyway, that backstabber Gecko was a little bit too close to ventilating my forehead when Jack caught up.”
“Sounds absolutely delightful,” Phish muttered sarcastically. “Any idea where he is now?”
“None,” Wizard replied. “Probably tearing this whole satellite apart looking for Tank. The most we can do for now is hope that we’ve taken out enough of the power supply for this thing in time to keep it from being able to fire at Carrotus.”
As if to emphasize Wizard’s statement, another bright flash from above the Corsair illuminated the ship’s cockpit. Phish grinned.
“Four down.”

Jack hauled the scrawny form of a yellow lizard up to its feet by its neck, and his crimson eyes shone dangerously as he glared at the reptile. “Where is he? Where is Tank?!”
The reptile couldn’t make any sound other than a strangled gurgle, and it pried weakly at the hand closed around its throat. His patience already gone, Jack threw the lizard against a wall, and there was a loud crack as the creature’s head slammed into the unyielding metal. It slowly slumped to the floor in a lifeless heap.
“Jack? Where are you?” his headset yelped from inside his unclosed backpack. He had shoved it in there after he had gotten tired of the others trying to get him to stop in one place for more than ten seconds, and hadn’t thought to close the bag afterward. “Come on, answer me!”
He ignored it. He couldn’t be bothered to answer the pleading calls from the headset. There was only one thing he could possibly think about now, and that was killing Tank once and for all.
Jack howled, his feral anger gaining more and more control over his body by the second. Clutching the twin controls for his BIAS in his hands, he riddled the control panels and computers around him with holes, and only grinned madly as they exploded into flame.
His lip was bleeding from having bit into it himself, and he wiped the blood away from his mouth with a furiously shaking hand. Pivoting on one foot, he blew the door to the room he had entered off of its hinges, and took one last look around the devastated chamber before he was back on the hunt for Tank.

“He’s still not responding,” Firefox muttered to himself as he retraced his steps on his way out of the Colossus reactor. “I can hear him, but he can’t hear me…”
“The rest of us still can, Firefox,” Wizard responded curtly. “You can stop talking to yourself now. Where are you?”
“On my way out of the Colossus arm, why?”
“Blast. Too far away from me to follow Jack. Anyone other than me somewhere near the center of the satellite?”
After a few seconds of radio silence, the sound of a loud explosion filled the rabbits’ ears, followed by the sound of screeching metal. The entire group could feel the satellite rumbling, even slightly, and then Phish was screaming.
“They’ve launched fighters! Dozens of them! I need backup! The Corsair is under attack!”

Phish sped as fast as he could to the weapons chamber, and quickly took a seat before the controls of the SSL, risking a glance at the radar. He hadn’t been exaggerating; there were indeed dozens of fighters swarming around the Corsair. As he flipped a number of switches next to him, the numerous turrets on the ship hummed and whirred to life, being controlled by the ship itself.
“S’not sentience, but it’ll have to do,” Phish muttered to himself as the guns almost immediately opened fire on the enemy fighters. “This ‘superweapon’ of Acid’s better be good…”
He took aim at one fighter in front of the Corsair, and pulled the trigger. The screen in front of him instantly lit up as the jagged bolt of energy tore out of the SSL, and the targeted fighter spun away uncontrollably upon impact, spiraling into another fighter and bursting into a ball of flame.
Phish stared in awe at the trigger under his finger, and grinned. “Man, I so need to get me one of these…”
He aimed at another fighter, and fired again.

“Knowing any villain with any given massive death-ray satellite, Tank wouldn’t have put any real defensive weapons on this thing, right?” Spaz asked. “Like, nothing we could defend the Corsair with?”
“Doubtful,” Acid replied. “I didn’t see the satellite actually firing at us while we were coming toward it. Then again, between the minefield, the fighters, and the Leviathan, I wasn’t really paying much attention to the satellite on our way in.”
“True,” Jazz said. “I don’t blame you. It’s a little distracting to have—”
At that moment, the lights flickered, then shut off completely, shrouding the satellite in darkness. None of the rabbits spoke a word for several dozen seconds, but the silence was broken by the voice of Wizard of Odds.
“Megalith reactor’s finally down… how many are there left? None, I hope?”
“Judging by the fact that I can’t see my feet, I’d say there’s none left that we have to worry about,” Lori answered. “Now what?”
“Well, I’m all for hauling tail back to the Corsair,” Electrik stated. “If she’s under attack, we need to help Phish hold off the assault until we can get the heck out of here.”
Firefox swore under his breath, muttering something about Jack being a royal pain in the neck sometimes. Foo was heard screaming nonsense in the background, Acid was desperately trying to shut him up, and Spaz and Headcheese were conferring quietly, barely loudly enough to be heard over the headsets.
Then the lights returned.
“Well, that’s helpful,” Spaz said, not yet grasping that this was actually a problem.
But Jazz was one step ahead of his brother. “What the frill are the lights doing on again? Is there another generator we have to find?”
“I hope not,” Lori replied quickly. “Do we even have time to find it?”
“We’d better,” Firefox answered.
“For the sake of Carrotus, we’d better.”

The Corsair shook as the shields finally gave out, and Phish spun the SSL turret around to pick off another few fighters behind the ship. There were now literally swarms of enemies surrounding the destroyer, and they were attacking from every direction, searching for the Corsair’s weakest spot. A violent explosion ripped off part of the ship’s wing, taking an ion cannon with it, and Phish gritted his teeth tightly as a warning light went off. He quickly flipped a switch, and cracked his knuckles in aggravation.
“Man… if there was ever a time when I needed a miracle to save my miserable butt, this would be it…” Phish bit his tongue as the ship jerked, recoiling from a missile hit, and muttered as he tasted blood. “Right now would be great…”
All at once, as if answering his plea, several dots on the radar screen disappeared. Phish blinked in surprise, and squinted at the radar in disbelief. “What the…?”
Another set of dots went out, and Phish raised an eyebrow, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. It was only when a large shape appeared on the screen that he was able to piece it together.
He looked upward, and grinned. “Somebody up there likes me.”
Quickly taking up the controls of the SSL, he picked off one last fighter before the turret was blown off of the ship by a precise shot on the part of one of the fighters. He wasted no time in getting back to the cockpit of the Corsair as quickly as possible.
Despite the fact that he was safe for the moment, time was still a factor, and Phish could not waste any factors now.

“It worked, sir,” Tokivi said to Buster’s back, staring at a point a few inches above the back of the turtle’s head. “The rabbits are on the run. They think we have a seventh generator powering the Eschaton.”
“Well, that’s all well and good, but the matter at hand is how the frick do we get out of the Eschaton? It’s useless without the generators, and the MEW isn’t anywhere near fully charged, so we can’t use it either.”
“There are escape ships attached to the satellite, sir, so it shouldn’t be too hard to escape if and when it is needed. It will be harder for the rabbits, though; I did a scan of the destroyer that they used to enter the Eschaton, and by the looks of it the fighters won’t be long in relieving the rabbits of their method of escape.”
“Excellent. Ready one of the escape ships. If the Eschaton is of no further use to me, then I don’t want to be on it when it detonates,” Buster said gruffly, opening the door to leave.
There, standing in the doorway, was the berserk Jack Flash. His eyes were practically radiating crimson, and his lips were flecked with blood and spittle, but he was still leering madly, his mouth twisted into a maniacal grin.
“Well, well, well. Buster Tank.” Jack sneered. “We meet at last.”

Jeez, you left so many cliffhangers in there. Excellent chapter as always.

Oi! *collapses*

Acid: They'll be de-cliff-hung in either the next chapter or the chapter after next. THE BIG FINAL CLIMACTIC BATTLE DRAWS NEAR!

Coppertop: Wjit?

* Anticipation *

I know it's been an obscenely overlong five months, ish. Just shut up and enjoy it. Like you occasionally hopefully never are consistently told to always do.

Chapter 27: Draw Nigh

Buster stumbled backward two steps, his face an expression of shock. “Wh… You!”
Jack leered viciously, his massive twin machine-guns trained on Buster’s head. “You’re surprised to see me?”
In spite of the monstrous guns, Buster did his best to keep his strongest poker face up, but he couldn’t get any of his strongest words forth. Jack snickered as he watched the turtle’s mouth open and close silently.
“The great Bluster Tank finally runs out of steam. Shame, too, I was expecting to be able to kill you before you had said all you had to say.”
Buster suddenly brandished a powerful blaster, and pointed it at Jack’s face. It was shaking slightly, but Buster still managed to keep a menacing scowl. “All I have to say is that I’m not afraid to pull this trigger and paste your miserable furry face to the opposite wall.”
“Like this?” Jack turned one of his guns to one side, and fired it once. Tokivi grunted quietly, and slumped to the floor, dead from the single shot that had all but severed his lower jaw. There was a fresh bullet hole in the wall behind where the fallen lizard had stood, accompanied by small, but easily visible, crimson stains marking the silvery metal.
Jack turned back to the turtle, sneering darkly, but Buster had taken the opportunity to make good his escape during the second in which Jack was occupied with dispatching the loyal lizard. The rabbit fired three shots at the turtle’s rapidly retreating back, which ricocheted wildly off of the metal surface of his shell. As Buster hastily vacated the room, Jack sighed, rolling his eyes, and mentally counted off a three-second head start before tearing off after his enemy.

The lights flickered once, and an enormous explosion shook the Eschaton to its core. Acid only barely had time to duck as a jet of flame from a half-destroyed fuel canister singed his eartips. “We don’t have enough time to find any seventh generator! This thing’s going to take itself out, and us with it if we don’t get moving now!”
Firefox was not in good shape; having been standing too close to a similar canister when it suddenly exploded, his entire right side was scorched from the fire. “Urrrgh… so what do you suggest, Cap’n Acid? The Corsair’s only under attack, remember? We can’t go back if Phish isn’t waiting for us!”
“That would be a problem, wouldn’t it?” Phish replied. “I’ve just gotten the Corsair redocked. Looks to be Deck 8. Shouldn’t be too hard to find me. Oh sh—!”
“Phish! What happened?!” Acid yelled. “Come on, respond!”
“Yeah…” Phish’s voice returned. It sounded like he had almost had a heart attack. “The Fortuna is covering me. One of her wave lasers came a little too close for comfort. Everything’s still intact, for the moment.”
Another monstrous, reverberating explosion rocked the satellite. Phish said something under his breath that easily could have been a curse in another language. “What are you all waiting for? Get back to the Corsair! Now, if not sooner!”
“Copy,” Firefox grunted through gritted teeth. “But what about Jack?”
“Well, he’d better haul his crazy tail back here too, or it won’t be long until he ends up occupying several orbits around Carrotus!”

Buster panted heavily as he dodged around a corner, and muttered something about how turtles were not built to escape rabbits under his breath. There were a number of loud pings behind him as bullets ricocheted off of the unforgiving metal walls, and he redoubled his efforts to stay as far away from Jack as he could. The rabbit’s roaring echoed back at the runaway turtle from all directions, and he felt a cold tingle run through him as he realized that he would not be able to evade his nemesis forever; he would eventually run himself into a corner, and then…
Buster gritted his teeth tightly. He could not allow himself to be trapped inside his own satellite. He had to find a way out.
The Eschaton rumbled dangerously, and a loud screech of metal on metal rang out from somewhere nearby. The turtle forced his legs to start working again, and ran as fast as he could down the dark corridor. He didn’t know where he was supposed to run; as long as it was far away from the one-rabbit siege on his heels. There was a series of yelps and screams from a distance behind him, as Jack tore through a group of reptiles unwise enough to put themselves in his path.
A sign flew past the turtle as he rounded another corner, but he couldn’t stop to read what it said, not without allowing his arch-enemy that much time to catch up. He pounded a bright red button on the wall as he ran past it, and looked back, sighing in comparative relief, as a thick, metal failsafe door slammed closed behind him. Slowing his frenzied sprint to a slow, controlled run, he quietly snickered to himself as he continued his getaway unhindered, jogging down the corridor with a wide smirk on his face.
After about five seconds, there was a noise that sounded like a body crashing against the sturdy failsafe door. Buster stopped, and turned around, wondering if the bloodthirsty rabbit had, in his rage, unthinkingly smashed himself headlong into the door. There didn’t appear to be any signs of damage on his side of the door, so there couldn’t have been very much…
Then another thought entered his mind, after a few seconds of relative silence. What if the rabbit’s rage had wound up ending him completely? What if he had inadvertently killed his opponent by simply putting a door in the way?
Buster’s snicker turned into a full-out laugh, as he rolled the probability about in his head. He smirked darkly as he turned to depart. “Stupid rabbit.”
However, the turtle’s malicious grin vanished as the reverberating sound rang through the corridor a second time, and then a third, and a fourth. Buster found himself unable to move from his position, as the unyielding failsafe door began to shake visibly with every gradually more powerful crash. The turtle couldn’t imagine anymore what could possibly be happening on the other side of the door; all he knew was that he didn’t want to find out.
Buster finally came out of his trance as a metallic screech brought him back to his senses, and he started to back up, step by step, watching the growing deformation in the once-strong metal. The noises began to become more and more resemblant of explosive detonations, and with each blast the door became further warped. It wasn’t long before a sliver of light, accompanied by a small burst of flame, penetrated the weakened failsafe door. There was one final blast, and the egg-like protrusion exploded outward in a ball of fire and a shower of sparks and jagged shards of paper-thin metal, as well as the top half of what used to be a bomber lizard.
Buster’s jaw dropped as he saw his adversary on the other side of the remnants of the metal door. The rabbit was panting laboriously, and bleeding copiously from a dozen wounds, but the expression on his face was nothing short of a maniacally triumphant leer. In either hand was a pair of lit bombs, whose fuses hissed ominously.
“What do I have to do to kill you?!” Buster shrieked. “Why won’t you die?!”
“Come here and kill me yourself then, you coward!” Jack shouted back, hurling the bombs in his hands at the retreating turtle. The fiery blasts missed Buster by mere inches, as did the fusillade of bullets Jack let loose through the flame and smoke. With a bestial snarl, the rabbit plunged through the clouds of ashen smoke, only to find that the turtle had once again vanished.
“You weakling! Stop running and fight me!” Jack roared, as he took off again, once more on the hunt.

Firefox stumbled, almost falling headlong, into the Corsair, panting as he regained his balance. He supported himself against a nearby metal wall, coughing a few times, and glanced around the cockpit fervently. “Everyone make it back?”
Acid followed the Captain’s example, scanning the cockpit quickly. “Ten heads here, Firefox. How many did we get here with?”
“Twelve,” Wizard responded. “Aside from Blaze, who I regretfully believe is not making the return trip with us…”
“We’re missing one,” Firefox finished, again looking over the faces around him. “Wait a minute, where’s Jack?”
“I don’t think he’s gotten back yet,” Phish replied, giving a quick look to one of the monitors nearby. “Wherever he is, he’d better grow some wings, ‘cause I wouldn’t give the satellite more than six, seven minutes to detonation…”
Firefox caught a glimpse of the same monitor, and started to rapidly lose his composure. “Son of a… Does he even know where we are?”
Without waiting for a response, he raced out the still-open door leading back to the collapsing innards of the dying Eschaton.
“Aw, craaaaap,” Headcheese groaned, sitting heavily in a chair behind her. “I can see this getting really bad, really fast, really soon.”

Excellent chapter! By the way, is this a typo or an insult from Jack?

Originally Posted by 4I Falcon

“The great Bluster Tank finally runs out of steam...

That's intentional. Good catch, though.

Mmm. Excellent as always.

Thank yer.

I'm not going to say anything about the four months this thing has been idle. Other than the fact that it has been exactly four months. February 1 to June 1. Funny how that works.

Chapter 28: T-Minus

It wasn’t long before Firefox found Jack’s trail; several dozen bullet holes dotting the metal walls, accompanied by what appeared to be the remains of a squad of reptiles sprawled lifelessly on the floor, made it obvious. Quickly making sure he was going the right way by scanning the corridor in both directions, he took off after Jack, only able to hope that he would be able to find his friend before time ran out.

Buster veered around another corner, wincing slightly as a section of his hole-riddled, dented metal shell dug into his neck. A fuel canister exploded into flame almost right behind him, covering the metal walls and floor with burning fluid and instantly giving the silvery surfaces around him a somewhat eerie, orange glow, flickering and dancing wildly. A loud, though somewhat suppressed ping followed the explosion as a shard of the canister’s casing embedded itself into the metal ceiling, severing an overhead cable and sending a cascade of sparks falling to the floor, igniting whatever fuel had not been ignited. Buster allowed a grin to cross his face at his outright luck, but he didn’t make the mistake of stopping again to leer at his enemy. He sprinted onward, as fast as his small legs could take him.
However, Jack reacted to the sudden inferno ahead of him with supernatural quickness, and sprung sideways, in an attempt to propel himself off the wall and around the corner that Buster had just hidden himself behind. However, one of his feet did not land on flat metal wall, and his ankle was painfully twisted as his foot was caught between two pipes. The rabbit let out an agonized howl as the pain shot up his leg, and there was a noise like a mix of a crack and a metallic ping as his foot came loose from the pipes. His uncontrolled, flailing dive barely carried him over the flames, and he crashed heavily to the floor, sliding at an angle into the far wall.
Getting up slowly, tentatively holding the shoulder that had been crushed between the wall and his body, he looked forth along the corridor to find his enemy. He pounded his fist against the floor in his rage as he realized that his foe had once again managed to make good his escape, before propping himself up on his feet again to continue his frenzied pursuit.

Firefox’s ears twitched as Jack’s cry of pain echoed back to him, as he came to the destroyed failsafe door. The hole through the thick metal was easily large enough for him to fit through, but he was still compelled to slide through it sideways, partially due to the razor-sharp protrusions jutting out at random angles from what remained of the door. Once through, he spent only a moment surveying the impressive amount of damage that Jack had inflicted with the bomber lizard’s armament, before he was off again.
“Turn around, Jack,” he prayed silently as he ran. “Please, for your own sake, turn around…”

Buster looked back quickly to ensure that he still had enough lead over his adversary; while Jack was still a generous distance behind him, the distance was rapidly shrinking, as the rabbit was obviously much faster than he was. Fortunately, his pursuer was not visible, hopefully owing to the fact that he was too far behind to see, rather than to the choking grey smoke that was slowly beginning to fill the corridor, if not the whole satellite.
Looking forward again, he had to stop quickly in order to keep from running head-on into a door. He coughed a few times as a cloud of airborne ash suddenly filled his lungs, and squinted through the burning smoke to read the blood-red lettering across the door: Escape Shuttle 4.
Without a word, though with a victorious grin on his face, Buster turned, and ripped the cover off of the keypad next to the door, sending the useless plastic flying away down the corridor. It took him only a second to punch in the required code, and the large, metal door opened slowly, a loud whirring noise coming from above and below him as they pulled out of the way. Buster leapt into the pod as soon as the gap was wide enough to allow him through, and the shuttle door closed behind him with a quiet hiss, sealing him off from the satellite.
Less than a second after the door slid shut, Jack slammed into it. Though the turtle couldn’t hear it, he could see the rabbit roaring furiously, pounding on the firm door with his fists. Buster only laughed triumphantly, and impudently wagged his finger at the bloodthirsty rabbit on the other side of the thin, but sturdy and airtight door. He recoiled once as Jack smashed his fist into the viewport before him, but the single, vicious strike wasn’t powerful enough even to leave a crack in the tempered glass of the small window.
As the pod hummed to life, indicated by the lights around the turtle glowing their individual colours, Jack seemed to finally remember the pair of cannons over his shoulders, and took the two control sticks in his hands, aiming the deadly weapons directly at Buster’s face through the viewport. Buster hurriedly pulled the release handle, throwing his half-activated shuttle out into space as Jack’s guns blazed, spewing white-hot blasts at the tiny pod.
The propulsion that shot Buster’s craft outward seemed to set off an explosion nearby, which in turn shook the floor beneath Jack’s feet, and that was enough to throw off the rabbit’s aim. Bullets ricocheted wildly off of the metal exterior as he rained ammunition upon the turtle’s shuttle. A single blast suddenly cracked the viewport, giving Buster a start, but the glass proved strong enough to halt the bullet before it broke through into the pod. The projectile slowly dulled to a smoky black ember, sitting at the center of the spiderlike web of cracks it had suddenly created in the viewport.
Jack began to find it extremely hard to breathe as the air in the corridor was sucked out into the vacuum of space, and struggled to keep his footing as he was pulled along with it. There was a screech as the metal of the BIAS’ heels were dragged along the metal of the floor of the corridor, though it was barely audible in the lack of air, and even the high-powered thrusters built into its feet couldn’t hold him in place. He spun around, into a sprinting position, and put as much fuel into the boosters as he could; however, even at full power, it was only barely enough to keep him from slowly being pulled outward into the void. Coupled with the fact that the air around him was now too thin to breathe, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to last very long.
Suddenly, the single airlock door slammed shut. Jack was only able to let out a surprised yelp before crashing into the opposite wall with near enough force to drive him right through it. There was a sickening crunch as his nose, which was the first point of contact, immediately shattered, ejecting a spray of blood from his nostrils and marking the metal wall with scarlet spatters. He fell to the ground weakly, like a beached fish, as the BIAS’ boosters flickered out with little more than a hiss.
“Ffff…” Firefox, who had arrived just in time to close the door, quickly knelt beside the fallen Jack, whose hands were clamped over his nose in a futile attempt to stifle the river of blood. The white rabbit’s frantic gasps for air were strangled by the viscous fluid flooding his destroyed nose, and a fit of agonized coughing escaped him as he struggled to fill his lungs with precious air. For a split second, Jack’s hands left his nose, revealing a hideously bloodied mess at the end of his muzzle.
“Well, my first question is pretty much moot,” Firefox muttered, as he witnessed what was once his friend’s nose. Without any hesitation, he grabbed the younger rabbit by the forearm, and hauled him to his feet. Jack glanced at his comrade once as he stood wearily, and then turned his head, sneezing once. A large, crimson stain suddenly marked the wall as Jack screamed in pain, his maimed nose freshly antagonized by the sudden outburst. Firefox could only watch, his long incisors digging a hole into his lower lip.
“Jack, we have to get moving,” he spoke quietly, as the rabbit in question covered his nose again with blood-soaked hands. “The whole satellite is critical. It could blow—”
“I know, I know!” Jack snarled, sounding understandably congested, as a few droplets of red essence fell onto his feet. He looked down at the scarlet spots on his white fur, and sighed.
“How much time do we have, Captain?” Jack asked quietly.
Firefox looked back down the tunnel he had come from, and tried to mentally retrace his steps. “At this point…? To put it bluntly, we’d be lucky to get back at all.”
“Bull,” Jack retorted. “I’m not going to die here.”
“I hate to say it, but we can’t move fast enough to get back to the Corsair, and get away from this ticking timebomb fast enough to keep from being incinerated,” Firefox said. “I’m going to tell the others to vamoose, while they still have the chance. As for us… I think this is it, Jack.”
“The heck it is,” Jack growled to himself, as he stood to his full height. His reddened hands grasped the twin control sticks as Firefox slipped the headset microphone onto his ears.
“Cors— aack!” Firefox yelled in surprise as Jack plowed into him, snatching the Captain by the arm and spinning him sideways to lay prone atop the BIAS’ backpack-like main portion. The headset flew off of Firefox’s ears as he was suddenly yanked away, and fell to the ground as the pair of rabbits dashed away down the corridor, leaving only a pair of blackened trails in their wake.
“Firefox?” Acid’s voice came through on the earpiece as it hit the floor. “Is that you? Where are you? Hello?”

Chapter 29: Outrun

Acid bit his lip, looking at his feet, and the other rabbits in the cockpit stared at him expectantly as he flicked the comm switch off. “Well, um…”
“Um what?” Headcheese suddenly shouted. “Are they coming back or not?”
“I… don’t know, really…” Acid replied quietly, the worry evident in his voice. He was silent for a few moments, and then looked up again. “Electrik?”
“Yee-uh?”
“Time check?”
“Not great, cap’n,” Electrik responded worriedly, turning around to glance at a monitor behind him. “Probably not much more than sixty seconds, and that’s being generous.”
Acid sighed, and laid his hand on the throttle lever, his gaze returning guiltily to the floor.
“We can’t just leave them here!” Headcheese protested, shifting her glare from Acid to Electrik for a moment, then back to Acid again. “They’ve gotta be on their way back! They have to be!”
“Headcheese, we have to go, now,” Acid responded. “They’ve taken too long. If we don’t get out of here—”
“Fire in the hooooooole!”
A glance through the still-open cockpit airlock door showed Jack, with Firefox riding on his back, closing the distance to the Corsair at an alarmingly rapid pace. Headcheese jumped out of her chair so quickly in excitement that she fell over, but even her being sprawled on the floor couldn’t hide her ecstatic smile. “I told you they’d make it!”
The heavy airlock closed as soon as Jack and Firefox were inside the ship, and Acid maxed out the throttle even before the Captain had the chance to call out, “Punch it, Acid!”
The engines roared, vibrating the entire ship, and there was a piercing grinding sound as the destroyer peeled away from the dying satellite. Acid spun the Corsair around, and with a lurch he put it into top gear, piloting it directly away from the Eschaton to put as much distance between them as possible, as quickly as possible.
Electrik glanced at the duo as they slowed to a halt on the opposite side of the cockpit from the door through which they had careened. “Well, I don’t think you could have cut it any what the smeg happened to you, Jack?”
The entire end of the white rabbit’s muzzle was now smeared with his blood, as well as some of his neck and chest, and it was dripping in copious amounts to the cockpit floor. He stood for a moment, wavering slightly, before he collapsed onto all fours, and he only had enough strength left in him to look up at Electrik despairingly, before simply keeling over sideways, without a sound.
“Jack!” Headcheese shrieked, dashing to her brother’s side. She had to brace herself for the sight of Jack’s face, and despite her fear for his safety she couldn’t help but look away in disgust as she saw the mangled mass of flesh and blood at the end of the white rabbit’s muzzle. Closing her eyes, she grabbed Jack’s forearms, and pulled as hard as she could, letting out a strained groan as she hauled desperately.
Acid glanced back at Headcheese for a moment as he heard her groan, but the glance was fleeting, as he quickly turned back to the viewport and the assorted screens before him. Without turning around again, he addressed the Captain. “Firefox, help her out. Get Jack to the infirmary. Phish will show you where it is.”
Firefox nodded, and moved to where Headcheese was, wrapping his hands around Jack’s forearms and lifting him into a standing position. He then ducked slightly as the limp body slumped onto him, and picked him up by the waist, laying him over his shoulder like a rolled carpet. He strode carefully, with as little movement as possible, to the door at which Phish was now waiting, with Headcheese close in tow. They were gone in short order, to the infirmary deep in the bowels of the ship.
“Twenty seconds, Acid,” Electrik stated quietly. “Are we out far enough?”
“I sure hope so,” Acid replied. “Failing that, this is going to be one heck of an escape—”
“Holy carp!” Lori suddenly exclaimed. “It’s gone! The satellite! It blew up!”
It was true. The only indication that the Eschaton had ever occupied an orbit around Carrotus was an enormous ball of flames expanding outward into space, searing orange where the majority of the satellite had once been, and a bright, electric blue nearest to the planet, where the apocalyptic weapon was last.
“…uh-oh,” Lori continued. “Shockwave, heading our way, fast!”
Acid muttered quietly to himself, one hand wrapped so tightly around the controls that his knuckles were white even through his green fur, the other forcing the throttle as far forward as it would go, threatening to snap it in half with the pressure.
“It’s gaining on us, Acid,” Electrik warned. “We’re going as fast as we can, right?”
“Of course we are,” Acid answered, too preoccupied with escaping the blast to be irritated with Electrik’s ignorance. “This thing has a top speed, and right now we’re at it.”
“Thirty seconds until it catches up to us,” Electrik intoned. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to be very forgiving.”
“Phish?”
Electrik raised an eyebrow. “Uh, he left with Firefox and Headcheese a few minutes ago, like you told him to.”
“Oh yeah. Darnit.”
“Twenty seconds, by the way.”
“What’s the status on the shields?”
“What shields?”
Acid winced at Electrik’s comment. “Urgh. That bad, huh?”
“They’ve been dead since Phish had to hold the fort against those fighters from the satellite. There’s also some serious hull damage that I’m sure you don’t want to hear about right now. Ten seconds.”
Acid took a deep breath. “Well, if ever there was a moment of truth, this is it. If you ain’t holding onto your seat, cross your fingers, because we’re going to need as much luck as we can get.”
“Four… three…”
A deep rumbling suddenly drowned out Electrik’s voice, rattling the entire ship as the shockwave struck. Acid closed his eyes tightly, praying silently that his Corsair would hold together for just a few moments longer, as the rumbling continued to intensify by the second. The controls quaked fiercely in Acid’s hands, and he held them steady as best he could as a loud crunch was heard from the rear of the ship.
Then, as gradually as it had started, the thunderous noise began to taper off. Acid could see the edges of the fiery ring on either side of the wide viewport, a blistering white-blue, leaving licks of bright orange flame trailing along behind it. He slowly, numbly, released his hold on the controls, weakly leaning back in his seat, as the rumbling finally gave way to an obtuse silence.
There was no cheering, no celebration, no victorious laughter, and hardly a sound at all. The crew of the Hybrid Corsair knew that, though they had succeeded in their mission, it was only barely so, and they were far from unscathed; indeed, they could only breathe a mass sigh of unmitigated relief as they realized that they were lucky to have escaped with their lives.
Acid tentatively broke the silence. “Well… good job, everyone… we did it, we saved Carrotus…”
Jazz looked up at the pilot, both voice and expression lacking their natural collected calmness. “So… that’s it? We won?”
“We won,” Acid confirmed quietly, slowly sitting up to take the controls in his hands again.
“Let’s go home.”

As the rumbling diminished, Jack, laying on an examining table in the infirmary, opened his eyes slowly. He felt weak, numb in some places. He paid no attention to, or could not feel, the numerous splints holding his nose together, nor the restraint-like pillows Phish had put underneath his head to keep him from rolling over onto his damaged snout. He saw Firefox and Headcheese hovering over him, worry stamped on their faces, and Phish on the other side of the room out of the corner of his eye.
“Jack?” Firefox started. “…How’re you feeling?”
Jack looked up at his scarlet-furred companion, his blue eyes clouded slightly by whatever drug Phish had given him to dull the pain of his wrecked muzzle. There was silence for a few seconds, and then the white rabbit spoke.
“…He’s not coming back this time, is he.”
Firefox bit his lip, and lowered his head sadly, without a word. Jack sighed, knowing what the answer to his question was, and laid back again, staring at the metal ceiling for only a moment before his eyes closed again.

Double chapter post's awesomeness defies words.

yayness! nice writing! please speed up again in writing, because 4 monts is long time (too long for me )

Originally Posted by Alex

yayness! nice writing! please speed up again in writing, because 4 monts is long time (too long for me )

I find it amusing that this is the last post in this thread before it dies for about... a year.

Anyway, yeah. I'm back! After a year of university and consequently hardly even remembering this story exists, I had a sudden burst of inspiration and not only wrote two thirds of Chapter 30 in just shy of three hours, but I've also already started Chapter 31.

Since I can see just how much you all missed me (THAT WAS SARCASM YOU MAROONS), I'll skip any further formalities and get right to the literature.

Chapter 30: Never Again

An hour had passed since the Hybrid Corsair had escaped the fantastic eruption of fire borne from within the doomed Eschaton in its dying moments, and an uncomfortable silence had fallen over the destroyer and its occupants. A lot of the conversation amongst them seemed forced at best, as if they had come to realize that none of the words they could possibly say would mean anything in the big picture. Despite this, of course, two of the rabbits would inevitably come within proximity of one another from time to time, and it was even more difficult to say nothing, and wallow in the heavy silence, than to speak.
Acid, hunched over a worktable deep in the innards of the Corsair, looked up, but did not turn around, as a knock from the door behind him reached his ears. “Yes?”
The door opened, accompanied by a rather loud squeal of protest from its hinges, to reveal Firefox standing on the other side. “Hey, Acid. Mind if I come in?”
Acid grinned, as he recognized the voice, and turned his attention back to the worktable. “Not at all, Cap’n. Come on in. How’re your burns?”
“Mm? Oh, the burns. I’ll live,” Firefox replied, stepping in quietly. He glanced idly around the green rabbit’s impromptu workspace, which appeared to be little more than a large supply closet, cleared out and turned into a makeshift laboratory. Taking in what there was to see around him, he made his way to stand behind his comrade, and peered over Acid’s shoulder to see what project he was working on.
Acid answered the question that Firefox had yet to ask, without batting an eye. “It’s a beta-particle electro-potential augmentation cell.”
Noting the dumbstruck look on the Captain’s face with a quick glance, Acid snickered, and tried again in terms his fellow rabbit would understand. “A damage amp.”
Firefox’s features lit up almost instantly, like a child who had just been presented with a new toy. “Oh, cool! Can I try it out sometime?”
Acid grinned as he saw the abject excitement on his friend’s face. “Sure, when it’s done.”
“Awesome.”
Acid’s eyes flicked toward Firefox again. “How’s Jack faring?”
The Captain bit his lip slightly. “Still in that room brooding, last I saw him. He’s awake, and recovered a little, but… well, he’s in a state. He doesn’t look to be taking Blaze’s death very well.”
Acid looked back to his work with a quiet sigh. “I don’t blame him. Blaze was a good friend, and a good sort of guy all around. He’ll surely be missed. I know I do.”
“So do I, to be sure,” Firefox agreed, drawing a thumbclaw quietly against his long incisors. “But here’s the kicker: He’s blaming himself for it. He’s dead-set on the idea that it’s his fault that Blaze died.”
Acid paused. While his head didn’t turn to look at Firefox, his ears did, with a sort of inquisitiveness to their movement. “Why?”
“He said he wasn’t fast enough to save Blaze in time. Holds the whole thing against himself.” Firefox rubbed at his nose with two fingers, as if to dislodge some foreign irritation that had attached itself to his snout. “As much as I tried to tell him that there really wasn’t a whole lot he could have done to change things, he refused to believe me. It’s like he’s trying to pin this on himself.”
Acid’s ears bowed slightly. “You’re right, though. What happened happened the way it happened, and there was really nothing he could have done to stop it from happening the way it did.” Here, his ears laid themselves against the back of his head; their frequent movements gave them an almost restless appearance. “And, with all due respect to our incapacitated companion, there’s nothing he can make better by baselessly beating himself up about it.”
Firefox nodded in agreement, and stared absently at the opposite wall for a few moments as Acid resumed working on the damage amp. His mind was elsewhere, and it was obvious to both of them; the question at hand was to where the Captain’s thoughts had wandered.
A few minutes passed with no words spoken on the part of either rabbit, while Acid worked on his damage amp and Firefox stared absently into space, before the Captain mumbled a short string of unintelligible syllables. As the red rabbit meandered quietly toward the door, Acid muttered an inattentive “okay” in the direction of where Firefox had just been standing.
Suddenly, about a foot from the door, Firefox snapped his fingers, as he recalled the original reason he had sought Acid. “Oh, now I remember!”
“Remember what?” Acid inquired nonchalantly, the majority of his concentration obviously still on his work.
Firefox turned to face Acid again. “I wanted to ask you something; where do you get the funding for all this research and techno-sciency stuff?”
“Robbed a bank,” Acid responded calmly, without so much as looking up from his project.
Firefox stared at the back of Acid’s head, his expression one of shocked disbelief. It took him a few seconds before he was able to get his voice to work again. “…What?!”
Without a word, Acid coolly reached under the workbench, and produced a small, silver object with the rough size and shape of a cigarette lighter. Turning around and leaning back against the worktable, an incongruously cavalier air about him, he flicked it open…
The next thing Firefox knew, he was blinking furiously, trying to clear his suddenly and inexplicably foggy vision. As he was gradually able to focus again, he saw the green rabbit standing before him, leaning casually against a workbench. Behind Acid was a strange-looking device that the Captain didn’t recall having ever seen before.
“Oh, hey, Acid,” Firefox greeted him, apparently not remembering that he had already done so only a short time ago. “I wanted to ask you something, but I forgot what it was.”
“Dandy,” Acid chuckled, watching Firefox wander aimlessly out the door, and returned to his work.

Electrik hardly batted an eye as Firefox returned to the cockpit; his attention, limited as though it was at the moment, was focused on the ebonite rod he was toying with between his fingers. The blue rabbit had been alone in the cockpit prior to the Captain’s entrance; Jazz and Lori had disappeared to some corner of the ship to get some rest, while Spaz had taken off in the direction of the infirmary to check on Headcheese and whoever it was she was watching over, and Wizard and Phish were working in tandem elsewhere in the ship to keep it generally intact after the violent beating it had taken up to that point. Foo, the only one of the group left unaccounted for, had presumably become entranced by one of the many blinking lights about the ship, as there had been neither sign nor sight of him for a long while.
As he proceeded to one of the many seats about the large flight deck, Firefox glanced out the viewport to look upon his beautiful homeworld; the sweet, verdant continents, surrounded by the cool, peaceful azure of the oceans, belied the ceaseless activity of the planet. The inhabitants of Carrotus were probably going about their daily business, blissfully unaware of the apocalypse they had narrowly avoided.
The Captain collapsed into his chosen seat, his emerald eyes staring exhaustedly out through the viewport as he let out a long sigh. “What do you think they’re doing down there?”
“Probably the same sort of stuff they do every day,” Electrik replied. “They don’t even know we’re up here, risking life and limb saving the world; they’re too busy with their laundry, and their piano lessons, and their… f… cheffery.”
He paused. “What day is it?”
“What, on Carrotus? …the sixth or something, isn’t it?”
“No, the day of the week. The sixth would be a… uh… a what?”
“Thursday? No.” Another pause, as the crimson-furred Captain leaned forward in his chair, resting his chin in his hands and thinking out loud. “How many days are in Ferris?”
“Eighteen. Nineteen? Nineteen.” Here, Electrik stopped, and gave Firefox a puzzled look. “Nineteen?”
Firefox returned Electrik’s confused glance with a “you-should-know-this” expression. “Twenty-three. Elris has nineteen. Which would make today, if it is the sixth of Styris, a… Tuesday.”
Electrik raised an eyebrow. “But the first was a Monday, wasn’t—”
“Sixth. Styris. Tuesday. Drop it.” The Captain’s sharp words were like orders as he slumped back into his chair, and almost without thinking Electrik lapsed into silence. The lull lasted only for a moment, though, before the blue rabbit delivered a small, but certainly indignant, zap of electricity to the Captain’s left arm. The crimson fur on Firefox’s arm stood up for a moment, and he shot an irritated glare at Electrik as he brushed the fur flat again, before staring out the viewport once more.
A few minutes passed before the cockpit door opened again, and Lori quietly slipped through, greeted only by a wordless glance on the part of the other two occupants. Her long, golden hair, lacking the purple hair elastic that traditionally held it in her trademark ponytail, trailed down along her back, hanging and drifting back and forth languidly as she moved; the aforementioned elastic was wound about her fingers, and she toyed with it idly, wrapping and unwrapping it around her digits. Her overall appearance betrayed that she had just roused herself from an apparently none-too-restful nap, and, despite her efforts, a small yawn escaped her as she waved to Firefox and Electrik.
“Hey, Lori,” Electrik greeted her, with a wave in response. “I thought you were off visiting the astral plane?”
“Pfuh,” Lori grunted tersely, making her way to a seat a short distance away from her blue-furred comrade and running one hand through her long hair. She dropped into the chair heavily, and glanced down at it as it squeaked in apparent surprise. “I challenge you to catch anything even remotely close to forty winks when Jazz is snoring like a freaking wildebeest eight feet away. I’m surprised I can’t hear him from here.” She yawned again, and leaned back, fidgeting with the hair elastic. “Did I miss much?”
Electrik snickered. “Nah, not outstandingly much. We’ve still got quite a while before we’re anywhere near Carrotan ground, so sit back and relax.”
“Mm. Could use that right now.”
A short time later, Electrik cast a glance at the Jackrabbit sister, and couldn’t help a quiet smile as he saw her dozing, her head rolled back over the top of the chair and her hands folded neatly, almost demurely, in her lap. With a grin and a bemused shake of his head, he kicked his feet up onto the control panel lazily, leaning back in his own chair and laying his head back on his arms.
A few more hours, he thought to himself, and then…
Home.

Wow... excellent chapter!
I actually had to reread most of the chapters to get back into the story. Awesomeness!

WB, 4I. Nice to see someone revive the WT (finally).

Awesome chapter. Maybe not "worth the wait" in the sense of eager anticipation throughout the downtime, but certainly fun to come back to after it. Here's hoping we see more by you in the future.

no more? oh well..

Gah! No topic revivals, please! If the topic is going to die, let it die with dignity.

Originally Posted by Coppertop

If the topic is going to die, let it die with dignity.

And die with dignity it appears to have very well done. Again.

Somehow, between university life swallowing my very soul, and GTA:SA and UT2K4 stealing all of my precious procrastination hours, I managed to get chapter 31 finished. Like last time, I had a burst of inspiration over the last week, and wrote roughly two thirds of the chapter on a veritable wordage spree.

Anyway. That's all I have to say for now. Read the following series of words; a near full year of effort, compressed into just more than three days, went into them. So if you don't like it, then (content deleted due to tactlessness).

Chapter 31: No Rest for the Weary

Wizard watched over Phish’s shoulder as the last few pages of damage reports flicked by on the screen before them. Despite its impressive durability and seemingly redundant layers of defense, the Hybrid Corsair had only barely survived an unimaginable beating. It was a wonder that the main hull was still in one piece; as it was, there were countless numbers of dents, holes, scars, and in many cases components that had been shorn off, blown away, or incinerated by the relentless onslaught. The defenseless and nearly crippled destroyer was lucky to be limping its way home.
Phish sighed, rubbing his temples with thumb and middle finger. “Whoof. Acid is not going to be pleased with this. His baby’s maiden voyage, and we’re barely able to bring it back in one chunk.”
Wizard smirked mirthlessly. “Well, that tends to be what happens when you pit a destroyer against a fleet of interceptors. It’s like trying to attack a swarm of flies with a jackhammer. Besides, we did what we came up here to do, and that’s really all that’s going to matter in the long run.”
“I really hope you’re right,” Phish replied, flicking the screen in front of him off. He turned around, and leaned against the control panel, loosing a quiet sigh. “Carrotus has had more than its fair share of villainy and evil plots to contend with.”
“No argument here,” Wizard agreed. “I think I speak for the entire population of our bruised and battered homeworld when I say I wish the war would just be over.”
Phish nodded once, and stared off into space for a few moments, lost in his own thoughts. It was only Firefox sticking his head through the door some feet away that brought him back to reality.
“We’re entering the atmosphere. Electrik says we’ll be on the ground within the hour,” the Captain stated calmly. His eyes shifted from Phish, to Wizard, and back again. “We’re going to… y’know… survive re-entry, right?”
“Yeah, we’ll hold together,” Phish responded. “It’ll be a rough ride, but we’ll make it all the way down. Whether or not Acid’s going to be able to get it flying again is a whole different story altogether.”
“I figured as such, unfortunately,” Firefox mused. “A shame, too… this is a good ship. A real shame.”
“Is there anything else we can do here, Phish?” Wizard inquired, looking at the control panel behind the orange rabbit.
“Not unless you can perform a bit of your wizardry and get us a new shield generator, no. For the moment, all we can do is to wait until we’re on land again; Acid will have to put his ship back together again then.”
Wizard frowned, scratching absently at his incisors for a few moments. He inhaled slightly, as if he was about to say something, but fell silent again, his eyes wandering as he tried to find something to occupy his mind. Firefox departed quietly, and after a few moments the purple rabbit followed suit.
Phish took one more look at the control panel in front of him, and sighed to himself. A real shame, indeed.

At first, the loud, rumbling boom emanating from the back of the ship was ignored by the great majority of its occupants; the damage reports had already told them of a hundred points where the Corsair was critically wounded, and the sounds of explosions had almost become common fare to its passengers. The exception, as in many cases, was Foo, who took the noise as an opportunity to slam himself headfirst into the ceiling. However, Electrik’s attention was drawn to a light flashing between his feet, that, even among all of the other lights glaring for his attention, he hadn’t expected even to be active.
The shield warning light.
Electrik raised an eyebrow slightly, and grunted as he pulled his feet off of the control panel, sitting up again to look in puzzlement at the glowing light. It only lit up to alert the pilot of damage taken to the shields from the outside. And yet, he could swear that the shields had been effectively reduced to nothing by the onslaught that the Corsair had sustained at the hands of two fleets of fighters.
Electrik thought back for a moment. He remembered Phish relating to Acid the toll of the brutal assault upon the latter’s precious masterwork. Among the first things Phish mentioned was the shield generator system, dispatched at the first opportunity by a well-placed blast on the part of one of the satellite’s fighters. There was only the thick hull of the destroyer left to keep the ship in one piece; realistically, though, that would be like trying to stop a bullet with a turtle shell, and the Jackrabbit family’s impressive kill count proved that such a defense was somewhat less than effective.
As Electrik pondered this, a second light sparked to life not far away from the one that had originally caught his notice. He only had to glance at it, and his eyes went wide in horror. The combination of the shield damage indicator and the proximity alarm could only mean one thing: the Corsair was once again under attack. With the state the ship was in, it was lucky to have gotten this far; it was no longer going to withstand any sort of aggression.
Electrik almost fell over himself in his rush to get up, and he tore out of the cockpit at full speed.
“Aciiiiiiiiiiiiid!”

Electrik found Acid unconscious and on his back on the floor of his makeshift lab, bleeding both from his jaw and from a long gash along the back of his head. Lying on the table on which he had been working, on its side amidst a mess of broken beakers and a pool of various liquids, was the chair that had incapacitated him, launched into the air by the force of the most recent explosion.
Electrik cursed, and moved swiftly to the green rabbit’s side, wrapping his arms under those of his brother and dragging him away from the slowly expanding puddle of potentially volatile chemicals on his desk.
Another blast rocked the ship, and Electrik felt himself lose his balance; however, as if on cue, Jazz suddenly appeared behind him, stopping his fall. The blue rabbit quickly got to his feet again, and pulled Acid the rest of the way out of the lab, closing the heavy door as far as it would allow.
Jazz stayed out of the way as Electrik laid Acid against the far wall, but spoke swiftly. “We’re—”
“Under attack again, yes,” Electrik interrupted brusquely. “Go tell Firefox to round up his crew, and find Spaz. I’ll get Lori and my cousins, and then come back and grab Acid. We have to get everyone to the escape ship, assuming it hasn’t already been destroyed too.”
Jazz nodded sharply, and was off like a shot. Electrik gave one last check to his brother, and then took off in the other direction as the Corsair continued to rumble and shake threateningly around him. For a second, he couldn’t help but wonder where Acid picked up the penchant for endangering himself – and others, by association – on such a regular basis.

It didn’t take Jazz very long to find his brother, making his way down the hallway under the weight of Headcheese, who was using Spaz as a crutch to keep her weight off of a badly wounded left leg. The younger Jackrabbit looked up to the older, with a withering expression.
Jazz grimaced slightly at the condition of the young blue rabbit before he spoke. “Do you two know how to get to the escape ship from here?”
“That’s where we’re headed right now, Jazz,” Headcheese replied, as Spaz nodded in agreement. “Phish already told us to get moving. The ship isn’t going to make it all the way down in one piece.”
“More spectacular news,” Jazz muttered. Upon a second glance at Headcheese’s injury, he crouched slightly, removing his headband in one swift motion. Slipping the loop of fabric under her foot, he pulled it tight around her leg, where her blue fur had become stained red. Headcheese winced visibly, waiting a few seconds for the lancing pain to die off again before experimentally testing the integrity of her leg; upon her decision that it was still usable, she nodded gratefully to Jazz as he stood back up again.
“Get going, guys,” Jazz instructed the young duo as he continued on his way down the corridor. “I’ve still got to find Firefox and Wizard yet, make sure they’re on the move too.”
“They’re already on their way to the escape ship, Jazz!” Headcheese called after him. “Phish has already let them know!”
Jazz slowed to a halt again, momentarily going through the list of the Corsair’s occupants in his mind. He was fast in the realization that everyone was already making their escape, and turned around to escort Spaz and Headcheese to the escape ship. A sudden, roaring explosion erupted from what sounded and felt like directly outside the ship, shaking the corridor to such an extent that all three rabbits were thrown off their feet. Spaz and Headcheese were only knocked off balance, but Jazz was hurled sideways, and he slammed into the unforgiving steel wall of the hallway with a loud thud, accompanied by a surprised grunt of pain as the air rushed out of his lungs.
A second blast rang out in quick succession to the first, and the unyielding metal that Jazz had been tossed into quivered threateningly. The green rabbit didn’t even have time to get his footing before a substantial chunk of the wall suddenly gave way, shearing loose with an ear-splitting screech and flying away into the open air outside of the uncontrollably descending Corsair. With the newly freed slab of metal went the Jackrabbit hero, with only a strangled yelp as he was sucked out through the hole in the ship’s hull.
“Jazz!” Spaz cried, frantically trying to get up again from his suddenly prone position on the cold metal floor, and tripping over his own socks in his frenzied actions. Before he brought himself to his feet, however, a table from the opposite side of the hallway, up-ended earlier from the numerous explosions throwing the ship to and fro, crashed into the gaping breach in the wall that his older brother had just been pulled through, effectively sealing it closed again.
Spaz stood there in shock, his eye twitching slightly and his breathing short and shallow, as the bleak comprehension of what had just happened hit him like a tidal wave. It was only Headcheese grabbing him by the wrist, tugging him in the direction in which they had been previously progressing, and calling his name repeatedly that snapped him back to reality. He fell back a few paces, before he turned around again to follow his cohort’s lead, loping off at a good clip toward their means of escape. Just as they were about to round the corner, Spaz looked back over his shoulder one last time, his green eyes glinting once with a tear for his brother, taken so suddenly and without warning.
“Jazz…”

This is one of the only WT stories I've read where Jazz is killed, I do believe.

Excellent writing as always, 4I.

Awesome writing, 4I. Nice to see the story is still alive