Well, the sun hasn't exploded yet, and here's my latest instalment of System.

Enjoy.

Chapter 4: Snare

Lori, true to her word, had taken off in the direction of the Rockius Mountains, leaving her brothers to ponder their fate when having to face Queen Earlong on their return to Carrotus Castle. She could just imagine the Queen going hysterical at Jazz – again – and her poor brother cowering before Her Rotundity as she rants at him for hours on end. She laughed at the thought.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Spaz, still behind her, but slowly gaining ground. So they did decide to get up off their butts, eh? she thought to herself. I suppose I should somehow be proud of them...
Nah.
At that moment, Spaz launched himself at Lori’s back, emitting a cross between a playful growl and a small roar as he flew through the air. Without any warning, Lori dropped to the ground, stopping almost instantaneously, and watched as Spaz sailed over her head and did an ungainly faceplant into the ground. He actually skidded across the ground on his face for a short distance, then slowed to a halt.
Jazz was not far behind Spaz, and he stopped next to Lori. His jaw dropped so greatly in stunned amazement at the valley-like trail Spaz left with his nose that he almost fell over it.
Spaz got up, and wiped his nose calmly. He hardly appeared to be fazed, let alone injured, by his ungraceful nosedive into the ground. Spaz looked at his speechless brother, and blinked once. “What? What is it?”
Jazz shook his head quickly, as if pulling himself out of a trance, and said, “Nothing. C’mon, let’s go.”
Lori glanced at Jazz incredulously, then smirked. “You for real? Don’t you have a carrot to finish a while back?”
Jazz glared at her. “You’re not helping, y’know that?”
But Lori’s attention had shifted, from Jazz to something far away, over Spaz’s shoulder. She appeared to be trying to focus on something, and considering she had the best eyesight of the three siblings, Jazz trusted her to identify whatever it was she was looking at. Jazz squinted in the general direction, trying to be able to distinguish anything of interest. All he could see was a large dust cloud, which itself was not a profound sight.
“It’s a rabbit,” Lori said, after a few seconds of silence. “Dark grey. Male, I think. Looks like he’s being followed... by something huge. Or a lot of small things. I can’t tell from here.”
“Should we go help him?”
Lori shot a withering glance at Jazz, as if the answer was obvious, then bolted towards the rabbit. Jazz and Spaz quickly followed.
Spaz caught up to Lori and ran alongside her, while Jazz sped ahead a few metres. The green rabbit could now easily discern the figure of the approaching gray rabbit as they pounded their ways toward each other. However, what Jazz saw the other rabbit do next took him completely by surprise.
With a vicious snarl, the approaching rabbit lifted his right arm, the lower part of which somehow didn’t resemble a normal forearm, but instead a bulky, angular machine. He grabbed a handle on the side of the machine with his other, biological hand, and looked down the length of the machine. The end of the machine on his arm flashed thrice, and Jazz just barely had enough time to quickly spin around and begin a hasty retreat as three missiles slammed into the ground where he had been a split second earlier, exploding on contact and putting three large craters in the ground where they had hit.
Lori and Spaz were a few metres behind Jazz, and had stopped when they saw the weapon on the gray rabbit’s arm firing on Jazz. Even before the missiles hit the ground, both immediately readied their blasters, aimed, and fired on the attacking rabbit, to either damage the weapon or its holder, or simply to provide a distraction in order to allow Jazz to make good his escape.
They didn’t manage to injure the attacker, but Jazz did escape, and Lori and Spaz continued firing on the rabbit as Jazz ran for the cover of gunfire. The gray rabbit continued advancing intimidatingly rapidly, apparently oblivious to the hail of gunfire, and three more missiles ripped the ground to pieces as the three rabbits dashed away in the opposite direction.
By now, whatever had been creating the dust cloud behind the rabbit came to view. An assortment of
vehicles, everything from armed and armoured dirt buggies to large ‘Mechs bristling with gun-power, each and all of the machines piloted by turtle soldiers, was right on his heels, and were ready to open fire at any signal.
Lori looked back to the advancing rabbit, and immediately regretted it. He now had at least fifty vehicles behind him, all with guns aimed at the three retreating Jackrabbits. Lori, now running on autopilot, raised her blaster over her shoulder, and without slowing down, sprayed bullets randomly into the horde. She was rewarded with the sight of several of the machines exploding in flames, and the turtle pilots flying through the air a short distance before crashing back down to the ground, and invariably getting run over or trampled by those still intact vehicles behind them.
Jazz and Spaz followed their sister’s example, and fired shots in every direction at the enormous numbers of enemy forces, quickly beginning to pick away at those numbers. Machine parts flew everywhere, accompanied by their former pilots. Explosions threw more than their own vehicles up and away, as more and more tumbled over sideways from the innumerable blasts around them. Chaos began to spread through the ranks, as several pilots made an attempt to turn around and escape, only to crash head-on into the more courageous pilots behind them. The horde’s strength in numbers was quickly fading.
As the vehicles began to fire back at them in retaliation, the three Jackrabbits were too busy dodging various projectiles and shooting back with everything they had to notice that the rabbit who had originally attacked Jazz had disappeared from the front of the ranks.
Jazz didn’t even have enough time to react as he reappeared, in midair, and laid a crushing smash to the green-furred rabbit’s skull with the missile machine.
He was instantly knocked out cold.
Lori caught Jazz in mid-fall, hoisted him onto her back, and ran full bore forwards, leaving Spaz slightly behind her to kill the rabbit who had rendered Jazz unconscious. Spaz aimed and fired several times, but the rabbit simply deflected the shots off of the missile machine’s heavy armoured plating. Before Spaz could aim to compensate for the rabbit’s impromptu shielding, he landed a second knockout smash upon the red rabbit’s head, flattening him.
Lori slowed to a stop as Spaz fell to the ground, and lowered Jazz off of her back. Neglecting to wipe the beads of sweat from her furry forehead, she began blasting madly at the killer rabbit, still standing over Spaz’s limp body, in an almost blind rage. But a split-second before any of her shots struck the gray rabbit, he looked up, then simply disappeared into thin air.
Lori lowered her blaster. She felt so useless; after she had allowed that rabbit to defeat her brothers so rapidly, she had allowed him to get away unscathed. If only she had been faster in helping Spaz, or even Jazz, before they had been knocked flat out...
Lori had almost completely forgotten about the approaching remnants of the vehicle horde, but the growling sounds of their advancing engines quickly reminded her of their presence. She turned on a pivot toward the source of the engine noise, but all she saw was the heavily muscled arm of one turtle pilot, outstretched, in front of her face, and coming in fast.
There was a fraction of a second of immense pain.
And then everything went black.

“...Did you get ‘er?”
“Yep. Clotheslined ‘er right across the eyes, and at top speed, too. Laid ‘er out flat.”
“Good job. Load ‘em into the back of Drachoon’s carrier; Devan’ll be pleased with us when we get back.”
“Yeppers.”
“Oh, one other thing. Make sure you... disarm them first, before you put ‘em in.”
“I was going to do that.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“Hey, where’d Vaper go?”
“Who knows? Who cares? Pers’nally, I couldn’t care less about ‘im. The little creep’s been around for two, three hours, and ‘e already acts like ‘e’s so much better than the rest of us.”
“That’s prolly ‘cause ‘e is, last I checked.”
“How d’you figure that?”
“Well, did you see how fast ‘e was movin’ around? I bet you couldn’t move that fast.”
“Durr. He’s a rabbit, we’re turtles, you moron! Of course ‘e moves faster’n we do!”
“Well, he sure moves a lot faster’n any rabbit I’ve ever seen. A whole lot faster’n that Jazz, too, by the way ‘e just up’n’crushed ‘im. Just like that.”
“Yeh, well, I still say he’s gettin’ too high’n’mighty for his own good. Next thing ya know, ‘e’ll be plottin’ to kick Devan out from his high seat, an’ he’ll take over. I can’t even picture myself bein’ led onwards by that... that... rabbit. I might as well leave now, while I still have the chance.”
“Shut up, before someone hears you!”
“What’s it matter, anyway?”
“Don’t you remember what happened to the last guy who said somethin’ like that? Remember what Devan did to ‘im?”
“Ooh, right... ‘e got... punished. Yeah, I remember.”
“Right. An’ I’m pretty sure you don’t want that happenin’ to you as well, now do ya?”
“Not really, no.”
“‘Xactly. C’mon, let’s go. The rabbits are all loaded into Drachoon’s carrier, an’ I don’t want to end up stickin’ around here waitin’ for who knows what, an’ then have to deal with reinforcements.”
“When was the last time you ever had to deal with reinforcements?”
“Well... never, but, y’know, there’s a first time for everything.”
“Y’know what?”
“What?”
“Shut up.”
“‘Kay.”


I seems to be doing much on my Palm. Which is why it's such a great investment.

Go get a Palm. *puts on spiral-y glasses* Goooooo geeeet Paaaaaaalm noooooow... @_@