Chapter 6: Switching Sides

Devan’s head popped up from behind the turret, greeting the Jackrabbits with an evil grin. “Well hello! I see you’ve all managed to get yourselves out of my trap! Of course, those idiot henchmen I assigned to put you there could have done a better job, but what the hey, this might actually be something of a challenge!”
Jazz was becoming frantic. Here he was, facing off against his arch-enemy, and he didn’t have a single gun – or any weapon, for that matter – on him. Lori held the only gun between the three of them, and she slowly raised it to eye level, pointing it at Devan. The turtle scoffed.
“Bah! You think, at this point, I’d allow myself to be defeated by a little pipsqueak rabbit with a stupid little gun?” Devan sneered at Lori, then forgot himself. “Er, again?”
Devan pointed accusingly at Jazz. “You! You may have defeated me many times before, Jazz Jackrabbit, but this time the victory will be mine. I will never have to face you again, because, simply put, I will have you. In fact, not only you, but your brother and sister, as well.”
Lori, trying to retain her composure from Devan’s tirade, fired a single shot to the left of Devan’s head, so that it bounced off of the turret’s white metal exterior with a loud ping. However, instead of intimidating him, as it had before, it simply caused him to laugh again. “Oh, you silly little girl, you think you can even hope to dent my beautiful machine with that blaster of yours?”
“I’m willing to bet I could put a better dent in your skull, you stupid, sadistic shellfish…” Lori said, through grinding teeth, reaiming the blaster so it was lined up with Devan’s forehead. However, Devan didn’t look anxious in the least, which simply added to Lori’s frustration. She pulled the trigger, sending a white-hot blast of energy directly at the impertinent turtle’s skull.
Devan grinned evilly. The bullet glanced off of him like it was a piece of dust. Infuriated, Lori sent a dozen more blasts at Devan’s head, and each one bounced off of him like he was made of steel.
Lori blinked. Was it Devan that so easily deflected the bullets? Surely not, as this blaster had taken him down more than once before. She fired one last shot in desperation, and it too, rebounded off of him.
Something white flashed in front of Devan’s face as the bullet approached, ricocheting it away. Devan had some sort of invisible shield around the open part of the turret, deflecting any projectiles so they would do no harm to the driver.
Devan laughed again. “Unbelievable. You rabbits still think you can beat me. I admire your persistence, but, unfortunately for you, nothing can defeat me this time. I have the most ultimate way to destroy you, once and for all… and it’s right under my fist.”
Lori lowered the gun. Her eyes darted from one part of the turret to another, searching for anything that could constitute a weak point. No exposed joints, flimsy plates of armour, or any other weak spots betrayed themselves to her, and she felt a single bead of sweat roll down the back of her head.
Devan grinned widely, baring his teeth in a devilish leer. “Now, I have one last thing to say before I vanquish you…”
He raised his fist, about to bring it crashing down on the red ignition button. “Run, rabbits, run!”
All three of the Jackrabbits backpedaled as the massive turret launched a single, bright red missile. The projectile cut through the air, and the Jackrabbits scattered to avoid being its first target. Spaz was the unlucky one to be traced by the missile, and it seemed to put on an extra boost of power to catch up with the small red rabbit.
A second missile blasted out of the turret, and gyrated in the air before coming back downward again. This time, Jazz was its intended target, and it chased after him like an angry, blood-red wasp. Jazz immediately scarpered as fast as possible, but the missile just kept gaining on him.
The third and last missile was shot out of the massive turret. It seemed to stall in midair, then came plummeting back down again. As if it knew that the other two target rabbits had been taken care of, the missile directed itself at Lori, and charged full-bore at her retreating back.
Without warning, Lori turned around, with Jazz’s blaster raised, and sent a cavalcade of quick shots at the approaching missile. Each one rebounded off of the red metal, but with considerably more effect than they had had on the turret. As the shots hit the projectile, they knocked it temporarily out of control, spinning it wildly from one side to the other. Lori slowly strafed to her left, keeping the hail of gunfire strong, and hoping that she could confuse the onboard computer enough to drive it crazy.
Suddenly, one of the bullets evidently hit a weak spot on the missile, as the blast drove right into its side and plunged out the other, drilling a hole right through it. The missile flipped backwards, like a dead animal, and then erupted into a black fireball as it flew towards Lori. Thinking quickly, the rabbit jumped as high as she could, to avoid the dark fireball as it rushed by.
The edge of the cloud managed to catch the tip of her right foot as she was at the peak of her jump, and when she landed on the stone floor again, her right foot felt abnormally cold. She looked down, and gasped in horror. The fur on the lower half of her right foot had turned to a dark, silver-blue colour, and it was slowly spreading upwards toward her ankle. Lori, suddenly stricken with a wave of panic, looked back and forth, as if to try to find something to stop the silvery tone from spreading across her foot.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the dark tone began to shrink into a smaller and smaller circle upon her foot, with her normal yellow fur replacing it as it shrank. As she watched, the blue part disappeared within a few seconds. She sighed in relief as the wave of panic that had passed over her faded. She had not yet seen that her brothers did not fare as well as she did.
Spaz, being the first to be traced by the missiles, was the first to be put to action. At first, he ran as hard as he could, straight away from the incoming projectile. However, one look behind him proved that, while he was fast, the missile was faster.
Suddenly, Spaz jumped forward a short distance, to set himself up for a jump. Less than a half second after he landed, he sprung again, and performed an unusually graceful backflip up and over the missile. Spinning halfway around in midair, he landed on the ground again, facing away from the missile, and ready to get up and run again. But the half-second Spaz needed to start running was all the missile needed to turn itself around, explode, and send its dark cargo flying at him. Spaz didn’t get a full step forward before the dark essence hit him.
Jazz, on the other hand, trusted his breakneck swiftness to keep him away from the missile that was tailing him. He didn’t look backwards at the red rocket, but instead practically flew along the outside wall. However, the missile almost seemed to realize that there was nowhere for Jazz to escape, and it spun on an axis to face the other way, and rocketed along the outer wall in the opposite direction. Jazz, never having looked behind him, did not realize that the missile had doubled back, and that the two were racing toward each other on a collision course along the curved cavern walls. Not twenty meters along the wall, Jazz saw the rocket speeding towards him. Running on autopilot by this point, he spun around, trying to get away from it again. It caught up to him before he had started in the other direction.
Both Jazz and Spaz were almost immediately trapped in black spheres after the darknesses entered them. Jazz began to rise slowly, as the sphere carried him a few feet above the ground, and it looked like his arms and legs were being pulled to their limits, keeping him spread eagled inside the sphere. Spaz, although not hovering as high up as Jazz, was flipped upside down, and was arched backwards in a certainly painful position. They both appeared to be screaming silently in pain as their bodies were stretched to their limits. Lori was still panting from the close call she had just had with her own missile, and she had her back to her brothers.
A loud crack was made from behind her, and she turned around. Jazz and Spaz were floating in midair, five feet from each other, both imprisoned in dark spheres. Another crack sounded, and a thick, black bolt of electricity, if that was indeed what it was, connected the two spheres for a split second. Lori could only watch in horror as Jazz and Spaz were tormented inside the black orbs, and for the third time that day, she felt powerless to do anything. Her jaw dropped in dread as she realized that this was what Devan, having waited years, had finally achieved: the defeat of Jazz Jackrabbit, even without having caused his gruesome death.
Lori looked on as the two spheres exploded into glass-like shards, and Jazz and Spaz fell to the ground. They both landed on their feet, and they knelt there, in silence. As Lori looked back, she noticed, as Devan had noticed with Vaper, that their fur had radically changed. Jazz’s fur was now jet-black, and scarcely a glint shone off of its pitch-like hue. Spaz’s fur had changed from its normal red to a silver-gray, and he had what appeared to be a light silver stripe running down his back.
Then, as if by some cue, their eyes snapped open. Jazz’s eyes, like Vaper’s, had changed to a deep red. Spaz’s had changed from their normal green to a pale white. They stood up in sync, and waited for a signal.
“Hahahahahaha! Well, two’s better than zero, but I won’t have to worry about that for long! I may not have been able to get you, but I’m sure your brothers will be more than pleased to do the job for me!”
The Turbulents charged.