The young Jackrabbit sprang at the turtle with a feral roar, his long incisors suddenly accompanied by a row of sharp, gleaming, if not irregular, teeth. His eyes glowed with primal rage, shining furiously as he closed in on the murderer of his brother and sister.
One of Devan’s hands shot forward, and caught Spaz by the face, almost sizeable enough to wrap around the rabbit’s entire head. The turtle snickered as he listened to Spaz’s muffled screaming, and watched his squirming, thrashing body attached to the bottom of his fist. A particularly loud cry of agony escaped the rabbit as Devan gradually began to crush his skull in the iron grip of his bone-white hand. Devan smirked darkly, and drew back one other arm, readying it to throw a punch to Spaz’s midsection strong enough to all but rip the one remaining Jackrabbit’s head right off of his body.
However, he never got the chance to throw the punch at all; there was a loud crunching noise from Devan’s hand, and the turtle yelled in pain, throwing Spaz away like the rabbit had just stung him. In a way, that wasn’t far from the truth; Devan stared at his hand in shocked anger, as his blood began to flow from the fresh wound right in the center of his palm.
Spaz got up slowly, growling audibly, and wiped his mouth with one arm. His large front teeth were stained with Devan’s blood, after he had sank them deep into the softer scales of the turtle’s hand. Spitting disdainfully, he glared vituperatively at the angered turtle before launching his second attack.
Devan swung a massive arm at Spaz as the latter approached, in an attempt to smack the young rabbit away. There was a noise that sounded like a brick hitting ground as the turtle’s forearm collided with the rabbit full force, but Spaz did not go hurtling across the cavern, as Devan had expected. The Jackrabbit clung to the thick arm like a magnet, his arms and legs wrapped tightly around the pale extremity. The expression on Spaz’s face was nearly as comparatively frightening as the rows upon rows of needle-sharp teeth that made up Devan’s furious scowl, and the turtle caught a glimpse of Spaz’s enraged, bloodshot eyes as he shook his arm in frustration, trying to dislodge the aggravating rabbit. Spaz could feel the sharp spikes on Devan’s arm raking across his fur and skin, but they didn’t seem to hurt; instead, they only infuriated him further.
Suddenly, Spaz sprung upright, and planted his feet onto Devan’s closed hand, using the leverage from the flailing limb to virtually catapult him high into the air. Time seemed almost to slow down as Spaz ascended nearly to the ceiling of the cavern, then swiftly resumed its original pace as he began to plummet rapidly back to the ground in a rear-first dive.
However, Devan was ready. A steely fist came up to intercept the rabbit as he approached the hard stone ground, and Spaz let out a grunt of pain as he felt his entire body rattling from the formidable strike. The sheer force of the punch sent him backflipping to the ground, and he landed heavily on his belly as all the air in his lungs left him in a single rush.
Taking only a moment to catch his breath and stem the sudden feeling of nausea building within him, Spaz propped himself up on his hands and knees, and sprang forward, aiming his signature flying kick directly at the cracked midsection of Devan’s shell. The turtle’s four hands were only a fraction of a second too late to stop the rabbit, and the sound of Spaz’s heel cracking the hard shell even further was not dissimilar to a rifle going off.
As Devan powerlessly toppled backwards onto his spike-covered back, Spaz turned to face Vaper, his breath coming in onerous pants through tightly gritted teeth. “What are you waiting for? Aren’t you going to help at all?!”
Vaper chuckled darkly, his crimson eyes glinting ominously. “Oh, you have no idea…”
Spaz raised an eyebrow, not entirely understanding what Vaper meant by this statement, before turning back to look down upon the fallen Devan. However, he didn’t even get a full step before he was shot forward by a vicious strike to the vulnerable small of his back.
As he flew headlong across the cavern, Spaz clearly saw Vaper, standing directly behind where the Jackrabbit had been only a second before, his leg still outstretched despite already having long since laid the single, devious attack.
Spaz crashed to the ground, and rolled uncontrollably into the hard rock wall with a loud thud. With a pained groan, he rose arduously to his knees, and tentatively checked the shoulder he had landed on, which felt as if it had wrenched itself out of place when he had hit the floor. He grimaced clearly as it snapped back into its socket, and a wave of tingling numbness rolled up and down the entire length of his arm. Slowly, laboriously, he got up, and glanced at Vaper, who was now helping the previously incapacitated Devan off of his shell and back to his feet.
Vaper sneered at Spaz. “You look surprised. My, but your brood is so exceptionally gullible. Somehow I’m not astonished that two of you are already dead.”
“But… but how could you?” Spaz stammered. “What happened to that whole ‘detaching yourself from Devan’ idea? I thought you were on our side!”
“Well, you obviously thought wrong,” Vaper snickered. “Betrayal seems to be something I’m particularly good at. Your brother and sister had faith in the same idea you did, and look where they ended up.”
“You… you backstabbing, double-crossing rat scumbag!” Spaz screamed.
Vaper only smirked, and wagged a finger at Spaz, as if reprimanding a naughty child. “Now, now. If my count is accurate, I believe I’m a triple-crosser by this point.”
With that remark, he turned to Devan, and bowed his head respectfully. “What shall you have me do… my lord?”
Devan’s needle-sharp teeth glimmered wickedly as his mouth split into a wide, evil grin. “What shall I have you do? …Simple. I shall have you destroy Spaz Jackrabbit, once and for all. And I shall have the pleasure of watching you remove his head.”
Leering at Spaz, he added, “Whether it is before or after he dies is your choice.”
Spaz backed up slightly, but found himself pressed against the solid rock wall. He could only hold his ground, now, as the stalwart Turbulent moved in for the kill…


Now that the holidays are over, I get to go back to work on things that are actually somewhat sort of partially perhaps kind of important, I guess. Hooray.

Dork.