Yeehee, here's the next installment of Enter: Jack Flash. I did most of this chapter at school on my Palm (yay! ^_^) during my boring physics class (blah! ~_~). So, read on, and enjoy.
Acid's finally in! Woowoo! *dances*
Chapter 10: Jailbreak
Luckily, Spaz hadn’t gotten far after he dashed off from Jazz and the others. Two of Tank’s tough turtle guards had seen him, stopped him in his tracks, and grabbed him by the arms, and were bringing him back to his cell when Jazz and Lori turned the corner and ran smack into the turtles. They all fell backwards, but the turtles were at a loss a second later, struggling to get up off of their shells. Indigo and Splitter quickly dispatched them with a few shots each.
Jazz hauled Lori upright, and they continued onward again at the same rapid pace. Spaz made sure to stay a little behind his brother and sister, to make sure he didn’t get lost, or get the rest of them lost by following him. Unfortunately, even without Spaz’s mad dashing throughout the airship’s myriad of hallways, the group did come to dead ends, and had to fight off Tank’s goons on their tail as they doubled back.
Amazingly, it was Spaz who pointed out the sign with the word “Armoury” written on it, and an arrow indicating the right direction. They took off in that direction, and it wasn’t long before they were back in the armoury. They immediately picked up their airboards and kicked off, zooming to the ground below.
It wasn’t until several hundred feet later that Lori said, “Where’s Blaze?”
Jazz was nonplussed. “He was right behind us! Where could he have gotten to?”
Then he noticed what Spaz had with him. “Oh no!”
It was Spaz’s turn to be confused. “What? What is it? What did I do?”
“You’re using Blaze’s airboard! We left Blaze back in the airship!”
They touched down on ground, then made an attempt to turn around and go back up again. However, the airboards wouldn’t cooperate. They simply flickered a few times, then sputtered, and finally, the boosters went completely dark. Jazz was spastic, Lori was beside herself, and Spaz was simply befuddled.
“We’re out of fuel! We can’t go back up!”
“Then how are we going to get Blaze back?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know! You come up with something!”
“Guys, shut up for a sec!” Indigo’s brusque remark came at the perfect time, and did what it was supposed to do. Both Jackrabbits lapsed into silence.
“Listen. I’ve learned a lot from Jack Flash, even though this is my first mission with him. We’ve got to keep a level head when something like this hits. What I suggest we all do now is head back to somewhere where we can refuel and reload. We’re doing no good standing about here.”
“He’s right,” Splitter added.” We’re not going back up to the airship with no fuel, so we might as well live with it, and head back to refuel somewhere nearby. That way, we won’t be wasting any time to get back up there to find Blaze. Agreed?”
Before anyone could reply, he answered his own question. “Agreed. Let’s go.”
He was about to bolt from the landing zone when Indigo put a hand on his shoulder. “Splitter…”
“What?”
“You’re looking for the nearest place to refuel, right?” Indigo cocked an eyebrow.
“Yeah, why?”
Indigo pointed a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the opposite direction. “Well, Aevias is
that way.”
Splitter chuckled half-heartedly, then mumbled, “Right.
That way.” Then he took off in the specified direction.
As they wound up to go, Lori mentioned to Jazz, “Gee, doesn’t that make you feel a certain sense of
déj(-) vu?”
“Shut up.”
When the Jackrabbits, along with Indigo and Splitter, had made a run for it from the prison cells aboard Buster Tank’s airship, Blaze had escaped in the exact opposite direction, down the long hallway. It had occurred to him that may be other prisoners on the airship, and he had always felt it necessary to save as many lives as possible whenever possible. This was no exception.
Running down the hall, he hurriedly looked into each cell for any signs of life. Blaze decided that Tank apparently was not very good at taking prisoners, owing to the large amount of empty cells.
Suddenly, something whizzed by that was definitely not an empty cell. Blaze stopped, backtracked a few steps, and there, sitting alone in the cell, was a green rabbit. The captive rabbit had not yet seen Blaze, thanks to his obsidian fur. Blaze inched closer to the cell, to try to identify the prisoner. He bonked his head on the bars, which was completely atypical to his extreme care to not be noticed, as he edged forward. The rabbit looked up to the small sound.
“Blaze?” the rabbit exclaimed, temporarily forgetting himself. He instantly clapped a hand over his own mouth, as if he had said something that he shouldn’t have.
“Acid?” Blaze recognized the imprisoned rabbit immediately. “How’d you get here?”
Removing his hand from his mouth, Acid muttered, “I honestly don’t know. I was doing a few field tests on some of my newest work, then all of a sudden everything turns red, I’m knocked unconscious, I wake up, and I’m in jail. What are you doing here?”
“Helping rescue Jazz’s brother.”
“Jazz? As in Jazz Jackrabbit?”
“Do you know any other rabbits by the name of Jazz?”
“Well, no…” Acid admitted, as Blaze went to work on the lock.
As Blaze went for his lock picking tools, he heard Jazz’s voice in the back of his mind. The voice said, “There’s a far easier way to do that, Blaze.” The black rabbit pondered this momentarily, then left his lockpicks alone, reaching for his trusty silenced Dhareinger instead. He raised the weapon, and pointed it steadily at the lock on the cell door. With a single pull of the trigger, he put a hole through the lock, and it was no difficult task to simply pull open the lock.
As Acid exited the cell, he felt compelled to ask one more question. “So, how did you get in here, sir saviour?”
“Blew a hole in the armoury wall and flew in.”
Acid was slightly taken aback. “An armoury? In a jail building? What would that be good for, considering Carrotus has automated security for its prisons?
Here, Blaze began to look uneasy. “Because this is not a Carrotan prison. We’re in the cellblocks of an enemy airship, miles above Carrotus’ surface. Buster Tank put you here.”
Acid was totally stunned, but he quickly recomposed himself. “An airship. That’s like cheating.”
Then something crossed his mind. “Hey, while you were in the armoury, did you happen to notice a rocket launcher? A red one?”
Blaze thought back to the armoury, but he couldn’t remember seeing a rocket launcher fitting Acid’s description, even a description as simple as “red.” “No, not that I can recall. Why don’t we just go check?”
“Not a bad idea.”
As they left the general area, a lizard poked its reptilian head at the door, and, satisfied that they didn’t know it was there, slithered out and began creeping up on them. Unfortunately for the lizard, Blaze saw its reflection in the insides of his shades. The last thing Blaze liked to see is a backstabber, even an enemy backstabber.
The last thing the lizard saw was a black gun appearing over the black rabbit’s shoulder, and firing once.
Just once.
Blaze didn’t even turn around as the lizard fell to the floor.
After searching the rest of the cell block, without finding any other prisoners, Blaze and Acid were much more careful in making their way back to the armoury than Jazz’s group was. Although they had to face off against a few squads of turtle guards along the way, they generally did a better job at keeping themselves hidden. Blaze had donated his silenced blaster to Acid for the time being, so that Acid wouldn’t be weaponless. After all, Blaze could simply use his amazing disappearing act to sneak around or up on enemies, so he didn’t really need his gun.
It wasn’t long before they found the kicked-off door from the armoury, and not far from that, the doorless armoury itself. Acid headed in, and almost immediately spotted his prized red rocket launcher. Blaze wasn’t long in following Acid into the armoury, and as he did, he read the small inscription along the side of Acid’s massive weapon, and made a wild guess as to what it meant.
“RaCO. Radium hypocarbonite?”
“Yep. Radium hypocarbonite fusion rocket launcher. My most trusted and faithful weapon to date. The ammunition has a splash effect equivalent to that of a small nuclear bomb.” He smiled proudly, handing the small black blaster back to Blaze. The spy rabbit suddenly felt inadequate as he reclaimed his weapon.
Just then, more of Tank’s airship guards, now armed, appeared down the hallway in front of the armoury. Blaze dove towards a corner of the open doorway, and Acid dodged to the side wall, narrowly missing three blaster shots flying past him. As Blaze peeked out from the doorway, grimly sniped off a few of the approaching guards, then ducked back again, Acid quickly checked the contents of his newly found rocket launcher. Satisfied by what he saw, he propped his weapon onto his shoulder, sprang out into the open, and aimed at the oncoming targets.
Blaze suddenly realized what was happening. He only had time to yell, “Acid! No!” as the rabbit in question pulled the trigger.
The blast from the rocket, while completely vaporizing the armed guards, propelled Blaze and Acid out of the hole in the hull around the armoury, and into the air outside. Once outside, they quickly began to plummet to the ground far below…
Heh, this is one of my favourite chapters. I'm getting the feeling that that "It's
that way." joke is going to turn into a running gag...
Ah well. I just hope I didn't miss much in physics...
