After more than three months of waiting, E:JF has finally returned! My writer's block seems to have generally subsided, so I took the opportunity and got writing. The final product is here for your reading pleasure. So read it. >)

Fun fact!: For the entire time that I was writing this chapter, I thought it was Chapter 26. It completely slipped my mind that I had skipped a number. ^^;

Chapter 25: A Double-Edged Sword

It wasn’t long until Electrik felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, and his glowing effect abruptly stopped as a feeling of sickening dizziness passed through him. He groaned as he leaned against the wall, and shook his head to try to dispatch the sudden affliction, only succeeding in making it worse.
Lori was alerted once by the lack of light, then again by the moan of disconcerted nausea behind her, and she turned to help Electrik. The blue rabbit collapsed into her arms as she moved to support him, and she strained for a moment before steadying herself.
“I’m not going to ask if you’re okay, because you’re not,” Lori muttered to the half-conscious Electrik. “What’s wrong?”
“Urgh…” Electrik groaned. “I… burned out…”
“Oh jeez,” Lori sighed, as she helped the weakened Electrik to a sitting position against the metal wall. “You going to be alright?”
Electrik nodded slowly. “Yeah… I’ll be fine… just need a few minutes to rest…”
“Alright,” Lori said, leaning against the wall.
“No… you get going… destroy the reactor, I’ll catch up later…”
The yellow-furred Jackrabbit sister looked down at Electrik. “You sure?”
“Yeah… I’ll be right behind you, don’t worry about me…”
“Um… alright, if you say so…” Lori quickly checked her weapon, then headed off at a moderate gait, down the corridor of the Moebius arm. Electrik watched her go, then slowly produced a small ebonite rod from in his belt. He gently laid it to the back of his hand, and started rubbing it back and forth…

Lori frowned, checking the integrity of her blaster, as the lizard she had just pistol-whipped collapsed limply to the floor. She prodded it with her foot, then scoffed. “That’s what you get for dropping down right in front of me. It’s not nice to scare people like that, y’know.”
Despite her original misgivings, Lori was able to stay levelheaded as she moved at a rapid pace through the Moebius arm. Even in the dark, Lori’s eyesight proved to be an invaluable asset, as she saw Buster’s cold-blooded minions, who had either avoided Electrik’s shockwave or come to replace the ones who hadn’t, hovering around her, almost begging to be shot. As always, Lori was not one to refuse a request.
Up ahead, she saw the end of the seemingly endless corridors, marked by a door covered in cautions and warnings. Most importantly, she saw the two words she had been waiting for, stencilled in big red letters across the door: Reactor Chamber.
Moving swiftly and silently to the thick metal door, Lori searched for a lock or a keypad of some sort. It didn’t take long to find it, as it was the only thing glowing with a number of different LEDs.
However, she ran into problems when she went to open the door. The keys on the pad were not letters, numbers, or any sort of symbols she recognized. After a few seconds of guessing what the buttons could mean, and aggravated cursing as one idea after another failed to explain the indecipherable markings, she shrugged, and pushed as many of them as she could with the palm of her hand.
To her amazement, the thick metal door slid open, with a loud grinding noise. She stood still for a few moments, somewhat bewildered that her brute-force method actually worked. As it occurred to her that it didn’t matter at this point, she silently ducked into the reactor chamber, gun at the ready.

Wizard was following Gecko’s lead into the heart of the satellite, generally silent, but there was one thing that continued to nag at his mind. There was something wrong with the way Gecko was leading him around. Finally, it got to a point where he knew something was up. “Um, Gecko?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you know where you’re going? You’ve been leading me into a lot of dead ends around here…”
“Of course I know where I’m going. I know this whole station like the back of my hand.”
Wizard glanced at a sign on the wall. “But I could swear I’ve seen this sign at least twice already… Are you sure we’re not just going around in circles?”
Gecko stopped, and looked about silently. Wizard barely had time to duck as the lizard spun around, pulling and firing his laser blaster. The rabbit could only frantically dash away down the corridor as streaking bursts of energy narrowly missed him.
A pinpoint turn around a corner ran Wizard smack into the front of a heavily muscled Schwartzenguard, and he recoiled, startled, before turning around to run as fast as he could in the opposite direction. He didn’t get far that way, either; the hallway was blocked off by the burly forms of two more turtles. The rabbit found himself trapped between Buster’s minions, and he spun around again, a cross of both fear and anger in his eyes, to face the smugly sneering Gecko.
“What are you doing?!” Wizard was practically in hysterics. “What happened to joining our side?”
“Changed my mind,” Gecko snickered. “I’ve decided to help Tank take out your home world, after all. I’ve never seen a whole planet explode before.”
“You traitorous scum-sucker!” Wizard’s fists were clenched painfully tight as he swore. Gecko only laughed.
“Don’t worry, you won’t have to watch. You’re the first to go.” The lizard snickered again, and nodded to the two turtle guards standing behind Wizard, who promptly grabbed his arms, immobilizing the struggling rabbit. Gecko sneered as he lifted his laser blaster once more, levelling it toward Wizard. “It’s curtains for you, rabbit…”
Suddenly, one of the guards’ grip loosened, and he gurgled as he fell to the ground. The other one was not long in following suit, and then a white, roaring blur rampaged past Wizard, knocking Gecko against the wall and flattening the remaining Schwartzenguard. The lizard yelped loudly as he bounced off the unyielding metal wall, and collapsed to his knees, doubled over in pain.
Seizing the opportunity as soon as it arose, Wizard leapt forward, and gave Gecko a solid kick to the face. The treacherous reptile was launched straight up by the power of the kick, and backflipped completely, landing hard on his belly. He made no effort to cushion his fall.
Wizard nudged the motionless form with his foot, then smirked, and spat derisively. “I’ll find the Megalith reactor myself, then.”
With that, he was off, crusading alone through the dark tunnels of the Eschaton.

Derby: Acronym clearance.