The roar echoed through the cavern as the rocket barreled out of the mouth of its launcher, and Proteus was only able to get a few strides before it struck him in the back. The ensuing blast blew all of the rabbits backward, and their eyes and ears were assaulted with the effects of the explosion.
After what seemed like twenty minutes crammed into twenty seconds, the explosion slowly died off, and there was a deathly silence as the rabbits slowly picked themselves up off the stone floor of the cavernous passage. Jazz and Canadian were both slightly dizzy from cracking skulls on the way down, and Spaz was pinned under a slab of rock that had fallen from the wall he had just collided with. It took both Acid and Lori to haul the large stone chunk off of Spaz’s thin body, at which point he realized that he could still move his legs, albeit not without pain.
Coppertop let the rocket launcher slowly drop to the floor, and fell back herself, landing heavily on her tail end and rubbing her forehead ruefully. She found herself fighting off a sudden wave of nausea, which was unusual for her at a time like this. “Urgh… that went well…”
Canadian, who was closest to Coppertop at the moment, nodded to the mercenary, with a dizzy, but comically sage grin on his face. “Indeed. Thermonuclear missiles tend to do a good job on generally anything.”
With a little help from Lori and Acid, Spaz came to his feet, and leaned slightly on his sister for balance as the pain in his legs flared, then faded again. Jazz relied on the wall he had almost slid into as he gradually brought hmself to a standing position, and gingerly rubbed a finger across a patch of missing fur on his shoulder.
A moan of pain was heard from a short distance along the corridor, and Jazz immediately turned his head to look for the source. Cautiously taking one pace in the direction of the sound, he blinked as his hand failed to find his blaster in its usual place. His fingers grabbed helplessly at the air where his gun handle should have been, and he felt himself becoming very edgy, feeling powerless without blaster in hand.
It turned out, soon enough, that it didn’t matter whether he had his blaster ready or not. He found Proteus, on his back and weakly struggling to flip himself over, with his razor-edged shell blade broken off a few feet away. The incapacitated turtle saw Jazz at about the same time, and his expression was one of defeated agony.
Jazz felt his anxiety easily slip away, being replaced with his normal collected coolness as he advanced toward the doomed turtle. The pitiful reptile made one last effort to flip himself over, then looked at Jazz pleadingly. “Please… have mercy… spare me…”
The green-furred hero frowned disdainfully at Proteus. “Show you mercy, just after you were going to try to kill us? What do you think the chances are that I’m just going to let you go?”
Proteus’ eyes filled with fear, and his voice became little more then a terrified squeak. “…Slim to nil?”
Jazz sneered a sneer more evil than he actually wanted, but he was satisfied with the state of the helpless ex-Turbulent. “Bingo.”
Proteus whimpered as Jazz lifted his foot, and made one last sob as the rabbit brought it down onto his neck, crushing his throat and ending his battle-hardened life for good.
Lori slowly made her way over as Jazz removed his foot from the remains of Proteus’ ruined neck, and blinked. “What the eff happened here?”
Jazz shrugged nonchalantly. “Just another routine reptile dispatch. Is everyone ready to go?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Good. Considering that I don’t have a weapon, feel free to lead the way.”
“Righty.”
Before long, the group was on the move once more, two steps closer to ultimately finding and stopping Devan Shell and his Turbulent army before he became too powerful to challenge.
It meant that they were almost out of time.