Page claim.

Well, after three and a half months, I've finally finished another chapter of System of Turbulence. It was a harrowing experience, due to the massive writer's block I've been suffering for the last long while, but I think this one's a lot more satisfactory than some of the other crapajoe I've been writing recently.

Enjoy.

Chapter 13: Playing the Odds

Proteus snickered at the five rabbits as they stared at him in disbelief. “Dun’ tell me you weren’t expecting this. Did you honestly think Lord Devan would jus’ let you waltz right in and try to screw him over again?”
Jazz grinned. “Try, nothing,” he whispered to Spaz and Lori. “Lord Idiot-brain does a pretty good job of screwing himself over without our help.”
They snickered.
Canadian acted as voice for the group, in a fair imitation of the Turbulent Tuf Turtle’s mild, albeit unplaceable, accent. “An’ I s’pose you’ll be the one to try to stop us, right?”
Proteus sneered, as he mimicked Jazz’s speech. “Try, nothin’. You twerps are as good as dead, right here, right now.”
Jazz curled his lip in irritation, and lifted his weapon, apparently having forgotten that it was home to a dead weapon battery. Undauntedly, Spaz and Lori did similarly, and Acid simply smirked at Proteus as his fingers traced along the length of Coppertop’s blaster. “You have to catch us first before you can kill us, you do know that, right?”
“Watch me.”
With that, Proteus disappeared from view, and all five of the rabbits instinctively took a step back. Unfortunately for Acid, the Turbulent appeared directly before the green-furred rabbit, capturing him in a crushing bodylock as he backed up. Acid quickly threw a punch backwards at Proteus, but as soon as it hit, he felt like had just tried to put a dent into a brick wall. He stifled a groan of pain as his knuckles cracked simultaneously, and his fist bounced harmlessly off of Proteus’ steely shell.
By now, more than a few bullets had bounced similarly off of Proteus’ back, but it wasn’t for lack of trying; Jazz’s pulse gun’s battery was long dead, and Spaz’s shotcannon had decided to take that moment to jam, but Lori and Canadian valiantly let fly from their respective blasters, and countless pings rang out through the stone corridor as their bullets ricocheted in every direction off of the metallic shell. Proteus laughed uproariously as they repeatedly failed to even dent his tempered shell, and roughly grabbed Acid’s neck. The struggling rabbit emitted a strangled squeak as Proteus’ fingers closed around his throat, and then a gurgle of pain as the silver turtle lifted him up by the neck and flipped him over an armoured shoulder. Acid’s eyes widened in horror as the tip of the blade fused to Proteus’ shell narrowly missed his crotch, and he quickly stopped struggling, hanging pendulously over Proteus’ murderous blade and clinging for dear life to the hand around his neck.
The rabbits were immediately faced with a stalemate. Judging by the glint off of Proteus’ shell blade from even the limited light within the stone corridor, if any one of them made a wrong move, the Turbulent would not hesitate to split Acid in half. But there was no way to free Acid from his perilous position that they could see.
Proteus smirked darkly at the other four rabbits, backing away slowly from him. “Heh, all outta ideas?” He grinned even more widely as he received no answer from the group.
After a brief, harrowing interval, Lori moved subtly to Jazz, and she spoke so quietly he was forced to tilt one ear toward her to hear what she was saying. “Give me your gun.”
“What? But—”
Lori shot her brother a no-nonsense look, and he went silent. “Give me your gun. Now.”
Jazz, subconsciously trying to convince himself that Lori knew what she was doing, silently handed the pulse gun to her. She took it by the handle atop its length, looked it over, then flipped it into her hand, swinging her arm back and forth once to test its weight as she looked up at Proteus.
The turtle watched Lori carefully, trying to decide whether or not what she was doing was a threat. There was a pained gasp from behind his head as Acid wrenched Proteus’ grip open far enough to take in as much of a breath as he could; then the fingers snapped closed again, like a steel trap, around the green rabbit’s throat.
Then Lori went into action. Pulling her arm back and sighting at Proteus with her other hand, she winged the gun at the large turtle as if it were a boomerang. As she had predicted, Proteus ducked, letting go of Acid to drop him onto his shell blade. However, the flying pulse gun turned out to have a different target; just before Acid was undone right up the middle, the gun hit him in the shoulder, with enough force to knock him askance and cause him to fall over sideways, away from the blade.
Acid landed heavily on his back, rolled, and got to his feet closer to the others as Proteus roared in frustration. The green rabbit was no sooner on his feet than Coppertop’s gun was aimed directly at Proteus’ head. He was breathing heavily, still in the throes of a flood of adrenaline, and his eye twitched as he glared at Proteus.
Proteus crushed the dead pulse gun underfoot with a loud snarl. “Lucky y’got yer friends around t’save yer sorry behind, rabbit, but your luck’s run out this time.”
The reptile clenched his powerful fists, and sneered. “Lord Devan will be mighty pleased with me when I tell him I snapped all of yer necks, one by one.”
Acid pulled the trigger first, out of tension, and the bullet burst out of the barrel with a dull blast. Proteus showed a split second of surprise as the gun flared, and then one steely arm swung up, batting the bullet aside with such force that a small cloud of dust exploded outward from the wall a short distance away as the bullet buried itself in it.
Proteus smirked, as Acid tried furiously to mask the sudden feeling of anxious fear that fell onto him. “Looks like you missed.”
Acid’s fist tightened so greatly around the handle of Coppertop’s blaster that the tendons on his hand showed easily through his fur. His eyes flicked about as he frantically searched for a weak point of any sort, but his attention was drawn away as the Turbulent stepped forward, the superior, victorious grin still on his face.
With each step forth that the giant turtle took, the rabbits moved back just as far. All of their respective minds raced, but nothing came to their desperate minds to destroy Proteus.
Then fortune finally decided to turn to the rabbits, and it bestowed upon them a miracle, in the form of a very familiar voice.
“Hoi! Buckethead!” The taunt rang out from behind the Turbulent, and he stopped in mid-stride. He still had his smug sneer on his face as he pivoted overconfidently on one foot, but the sneer was quickly lost as he found himself faced with Coppertop, holding Acid’s rocket launcher, poised to fire upon Proteus.
The mercenary smirked as Proteus’ expression changed, and his powerful front quickly dissolved upon sight of the weapon. Acid, Canadian, and the Jackrabbits quickly backpedalled to the wall, and Coppertop glanced at them, nodding once before turning her attention back to the turtle.
“Get this.”