Chapter 7: Into the Fray

Eva paced back and forth inside her room. She was mumbling to herself, and looking frantically around the room, looking for something that wasn’t there. The princess was obviously in a state of disorder over worrying about her absent husband-to-be, and had been for the past fifteen minutes. She had not yet noticed her mother, standing in the doorway, and observing her bemusedly.
“How long have you been doing that?”
Eva jumped, startled. She glared at her mother, with an expression of righteous indignation stamped upon her face. “Mum! How long have you been standing there?!”
The Queen smiled. “About ten minutes, why?”
“You were watching me for ten minutes?”
“You really weren’t doing anything interesting. What’s all the pacing for?”
Eva’s indignance died down. She looked off to one side, as if she was avoiding looking into her mother’s eyes; then she looked out the window forlornly. “I’m worried about Jazz.”
The Queen chuckled. “That rabbit reprobate? I’m sure he’s fine, Eva. He’s gotten out of tougher scrapes than this, and he’s always managed to come back and pester me to no end. Don’t worry about him; he’ll be back in no time.”
Eva continued to look out the window, waiting for an uplifting sight. “I don’t know. I feel like something really... bad has just happened. Something really bad. But I can’t put my finger on it. It’s like a premonition that I can’t explain.”
She sat down heavily on her bed. “I can’t shake it, mum. I can’t help but fear the worst.”
Queen Earlong sat down gently on the bed, next to her daughter, and laid a tender arm about her shoulders. She tried to pick her words carefully, so that she didn’t accidentally prod Eva’s distress further. “Eva, I know you love Jazz. I know why you love Jazz, and I’m not downplaying that at all. But at the moment, we can’t do anything. We have to trust him to get back himself.”
As Eva took a deep breath, her mother mentally smacked herself in the forehead. She obviously realized she had said something completely wrong, as she felt Eva’s shoulders shudder in silent, broken sobs. Her mind raced as she frantically searched for something to say to make up for her accidental ignorance.
The Queen decided to try a different path. “Remember the first time Jazz had to... uh, get rid of Devan? When he rescued you from that cage on Acidius?”
Eva looked to her mother. Her sobs had lessened in magnitude, and she waited for the Queen to continue. After hesitating momentarily, she did.
“Jazz had to fight his way through twenty-five – twenty-five! – planets, full of Devan’s little goonies, to find you. I’d say if he can get through that, he can get through pretty much anything.”
The Queen embraced her daughter gently. “Don’t worry about Jazz, Eva. He’s come back before, and he’ll come back again, I’m sure of it. Jazz will be back before you know it, safe and–”
At this moment, Acid, the castle’s resident technobrat, and the only rabbit in the castle with an exploding coffee maker, burst into the room. He was panting slightly, but he did not forget to bow in the presence of the Queen. “Your Majesty, thank goodness I found you. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. We have a problem.”
Queen Earlong stood up quickly. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
Acid hesitated. He looked to Eva, then back to the Queen. He took a deep breath, and relayed the bad news. “We’ve lost the Jackrabbits.”
“What?!” Queen Earlong was suddenly hysterical. “What do you mean, we’ve lost the Jackrabbits?”
“They were... incapacitated at the field of engagement. All of them.” He stuttered, trying to find words that could convey his point, without worrying the already anxious Princess further. No words came from his mouth as he scratched the back of his head, trying to think of something to say. He quickly gave up, and turned around. He simply said, “Follow me.” before leaving the room.
The Queen stood, glanced at her daughter apologetically, then went after Acid outside, leaving Eva sitting on her bed, staring blankly at the open door, sobbing and alone.

Queen Earlong caught up to Acid a short way down the hall. The latter could easily tell that the former was not impressed with him.
“You know, you could not have picked a worse time to say that. I was right in the middle of telling Eva that that idiot rabbit would come back.”
“I apologize, your Majesty, but I had to find you ASAP, wherever you were. That’s how it works in matters of global emergency.”
“Jazz? Cause for global emergency?” The Queen scoffed, but Acid remained dead serious.
“Jazz and his brother and sister are everything we have to defend against Devan Shell. No one can even compare to them in speed, accuracy, and whatnot. With all due respect, if I were you, I’d be pretty worried if the only viable defense Carrotus has suddenly went MIA.”
Queen Earlong took Acid’s words into consideration as they continued down the hallway towards the younger’s area of expertise: the castle’s technology wing. Her brow was furrowed, and her expression had changed from a look of sarcasm to one of worry. “I don’t want to admit it, but I think you’re right. They’ve been working around the clock to stop that tyrannical turtle in his tracks. I’d hate to lose them now.”
“Agreed. They’re the best of the best, and the only shot we’ve got.”
Out of nowhere, the Queen smiled. “That was pretty good. Be sure to write that down somewhere.”
“Um... okay...”
A few minutes later, they entered the technology wing, a single, enormous room, filled with technological paraphernalia from wall to wall. Several rabbits occupied stations and computers in various places around the room, and there were a few active terminals with no one sitting at them. As Acid progressed to one, he called out, “No one’s touched my compy, right?”
There was a resounding chorus of “Right”s, and Acid fell carelessly into a chair in front of one of the active terminals. The Queen stood behind him, waiting to see what he had to show her.
“I sent a little bug out after them, to make sure they didn’t get themselves killed or something. It stored a vid of the battle, and it managed to get itself back to us to deliver the vid. This is how it turned out...”
A video popped up on-screen, starting with the Jackrabbits tearing across the flat plains, unaware that they were being viewed from a distance by Acid’s “bug.” Jazz was a few metres ahead of his brother and sister, and as the point of view shifted, they could see what the three were running towards: a grey rabbit, being followed by a huge dust cloud. The two rabbits seemed to be on a collision course as they veritably flew toward each other. As the Jackrabbits sprinted along the flatlands, the bug, and therefore the viewpoint, changed, moving forward with the three heroes.
Suddenly, the grey rabbit lifted his arm, and grabbed a hold of the machine that seemed to be attached to the lower half of his arm. He looked down the length of the machine, poising himself to fire on Jazz.
Just before he fired, however, the vid stopped. Acid pointed to the weapon displayed on the screen. “Do you recognize this weapon?”
The Queen looked at him puzzledly. “Should I?”
“Well, you probably should, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t.”
“I don’t.”
“Well, that answers my question. That appears to be a new version of the Hercules, a portable multi-missile launcher I helped engineer a few years back, after getting the go-ahead from your good self. Devan must have gotten hold of the prototype and retrofitted it for use by his own forces. In any case...”
The vid resumed playing, and the scene was, to put it mildly, not uplifting. The dust cloud behind the grey rabbit appeared to clear away, and now dozens of armed vehicles showed themselves. The Jackrabbits were forced to bolt as three missiles plowed into the ground where they had been not even a full second ago. Lori had turned around, and fired several bullets randomly into the mechanical masses. Jazz and Spaz quickly followed their sister’s example, firing blast after blast into the horde, picking away at their numbers.
Then, from out of nowhere, the grey rabbit appeared above Jazz. He hadn’t jumped, or ran, but simply appeared. Before Jazz could react, he clubbed the green rabbit down with a single smash of the Hercules. Lori caught her brother in mid-fall, but didn’t get far, as Spaz was decimated not fifteen seconds after Jazz.
Lori set Jazz back on the ground again after Spaz was smacked down, and turned to fire at least a dozen more bullets at the grey rabbit; but before any of them made contact, he disappeared.
Lori looked at the ground, devastated by her loss. She only looked up in time to be clotheslined across the face by an approaching pilot.
There was nothing more to the video worth watching, as Acid closed the vidwindow. He turned to the Queen. “Now you know.”
Queen Earlong was stupefied. “But… so… where are they now?”
“We’ve traced them to the Rockius Mountains, and Mount Whitespire to be even more precise. My first priority, after seeing the vid, was to come find you; my second was to get going and find them.”
The Queen stared at him, but Acid knew that she was really looking off into space, once again, deep in thought. Her eyes snapped back to his, and she nodded. “Go then.”
Suddenly, a dark grey-furred rabbit stood from her chair. She glanced at Acid, shouldering his pack and readying himself to be gone, then said to the Queen, “I’m going too.”
“So am I.” A red-furred rabbit had also risen from his seat. “We’re not about to sit back here and be tortured by the knowledge that the Jackrabbits have been captured by Devan Shell. We’re going to help.”
Acid looked from the grey rabbit Coppertop, to the red-furred Iam Canadian, then back to Coppertop. “But…”
“No buts, Acid. We’re coming with you whether you want us to or not.”
Acid grinned. “So be it. Get yourselves moving; we’re heading out in ten minutes.”