I find it amusing that this is the last post in this thread before it dies for about... a year.

Anyway, yeah. I'm back! After a year of university and consequently hardly even remembering this story exists, I had a sudden burst of inspiration and not only wrote two thirds of Chapter 30 in just shy of three hours, but I've also already started Chapter 31.

Since I can see just how much you all missed me (THAT WAS SARCASM YOU MAROONS), I'll skip any further formalities and get right to the literature.

Chapter 30: Never Again

An hour had passed since the Hybrid Corsair had escaped the fantastic eruption of fire borne from within the doomed Eschaton in its dying moments, and an uncomfortable silence had fallen over the destroyer and its occupants. A lot of the conversation amongst them seemed forced at best, as if they had come to realize that none of the words they could possibly say would mean anything in the big picture. Despite this, of course, two of the rabbits would inevitably come within proximity of one another from time to time, and it was even more difficult to say nothing, and wallow in the heavy silence, than to speak.
Acid, hunched over a worktable deep in the innards of the Corsair, looked up, but did not turn around, as a knock from the door behind him reached his ears. “Yes?”
The door opened, accompanied by a rather loud squeal of protest from its hinges, to reveal Firefox standing on the other side. “Hey, Acid. Mind if I come in?”
Acid grinned, as he recognized the voice, and turned his attention back to the worktable. “Not at all, Cap’n. Come on in. How’re your burns?”
“Mm? Oh, the burns. I’ll live,” Firefox replied, stepping in quietly. He glanced idly around the green rabbit’s impromptu workspace, which appeared to be little more than a large supply closet, cleared out and turned into a makeshift laboratory. Taking in what there was to see around him, he made his way to stand behind his comrade, and peered over Acid’s shoulder to see what project he was working on.
Acid answered the question that Firefox had yet to ask, without batting an eye. “It’s a beta-particle electro-potential augmentation cell.”
Noting the dumbstruck look on the Captain’s face with a quick glance, Acid snickered, and tried again in terms his fellow rabbit would understand. “A damage amp.”
Firefox’s features lit up almost instantly, like a child who had just been presented with a new toy. “Oh, cool! Can I try it out sometime?”
Acid grinned as he saw the abject excitement on his friend’s face. “Sure, when it’s done.”
“Awesome.”
Acid’s eyes flicked toward Firefox again. “How’s Jack faring?”
The Captain bit his lip slightly. “Still in that room brooding, last I saw him. He’s awake, and recovered a little, but… well, he’s in a state. He doesn’t look to be taking Blaze’s death very well.”
Acid looked back to his work with a quiet sigh. “I don’t blame him. Blaze was a good friend, and a good sort of guy all around. He’ll surely be missed. I know I do.”
“So do I, to be sure,” Firefox agreed, drawing a thumbclaw quietly against his long incisors. “But here’s the kicker: He’s blaming himself for it. He’s dead-set on the idea that it’s his fault that Blaze died.”
Acid paused. While his head didn’t turn to look at Firefox, his ears did, with a sort of inquisitiveness to their movement. “Why?”
“He said he wasn’t fast enough to save Blaze in time. Holds the whole thing against himself.” Firefox rubbed at his nose with two fingers, as if to dislodge some foreign irritation that had attached itself to his snout. “As much as I tried to tell him that there really wasn’t a whole lot he could have done to change things, he refused to believe me. It’s like he’s trying to pin this on himself.”
Acid’s ears bowed slightly. “You’re right, though. What happened happened the way it happened, and there was really nothing he could have done to stop it from happening the way it did.” Here, his ears laid themselves against the back of his head; their frequent movements gave them an almost restless appearance. “And, with all due respect to our incapacitated companion, there’s nothing he can make better by baselessly beating himself up about it.”
Firefox nodded in agreement, and stared absently at the opposite wall for a few moments as Acid resumed working on the damage amp. His mind was elsewhere, and it was obvious to both of them; the question at hand was to where the Captain’s thoughts had wandered.
A few minutes passed with no words spoken on the part of either rabbit, while Acid worked on his damage amp and Firefox stared absently into space, before the Captain mumbled a short string of unintelligible syllables. As the red rabbit meandered quietly toward the door, Acid muttered an inattentive “okay” in the direction of where Firefox had just been standing.
Suddenly, about a foot from the door, Firefox snapped his fingers, as he recalled the original reason he had sought Acid. “Oh, now I remember!”
“Remember what?” Acid inquired nonchalantly, the majority of his concentration obviously still on his work.
Firefox turned to face Acid again. “I wanted to ask you something; where do you get the funding for all this research and techno-sciency stuff?”
“Robbed a bank,” Acid responded calmly, without so much as looking up from his project.
Firefox stared at the back of Acid’s head, his expression one of shocked disbelief. It took him a few seconds before he was able to get his voice to work again. “…What?!”
Without a word, Acid coolly reached under the workbench, and produced a small, silver object with the rough size and shape of a cigarette lighter. Turning around and leaning back against the worktable, an incongruously cavalier air about him, he flicked it open…
The next thing Firefox knew, he was blinking furiously, trying to clear his suddenly and inexplicably foggy vision. As he was gradually able to focus again, he saw the green rabbit standing before him, leaning casually against a workbench. Behind Acid was a strange-looking device that the Captain didn’t recall having ever seen before.
“Oh, hey, Acid,” Firefox greeted him, apparently not remembering that he had already done so only a short time ago. “I wanted to ask you something, but I forgot what it was.”
“Dandy,” Acid chuckled, watching Firefox wander aimlessly out the door, and returned to his work.