The Invention: Part 1
The Invention: Part 2
"Very clever, Devan," said Jazz. "Obviously you wanted me to come and try to destroy your machine."
"Of course, after all, I knew you would come and try to put this to a- what should I say?- premature end." Devan said, with an evil smile. "Don’t copy the author, Devan," said Jazz. "It makes the story look bad." "Well, excuuuuussse me!" said Devan. He walked up to the machine and typed i n "INITIATE SCANNING PROCESS". Then he pressed the EXECUTE button. A beam fr om inside the sphere overlayed Jazz with a virtual square grid. "What are you doing to me?!" said Jazz, scared out of his wits. "It’s simple, really," said Devan, pushing up his glasses on his nose- whoop s, sorry- beak. "I’m scanning all your habits and traits into the computer h ere." Unreadable amounts of information filled the computer screen. "What are you gonna do?" said Jazz. "Make a clone of me?" "Close, but no carrot," said Devan, snickering. Finally, it was done. The fo rce-field sphere ceased to exist, and Jazz dropped to the ground, slightly d izzy.
"Huh? Wha? You’re letting me go?" said Jazz, confused. "Yes," said Devan. "That is my mercy on you. But hear this, this will be the last time I show you mercy. Now go."
Jazz looked at Devan, then at the machine.
"Don’t even think about it," said Devan. "This invention is made of a new me tal that none of your ammo can damage."
"Well, I can at least do THIS!" Jazz yelled, firing two RF missiles at the o rdinary glass computer screen.
WHA-BOOOOOOMMM!
"AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!" yelled Devan in anger. "DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY MONTHS IT TOOK ME TO PERFECT THAT INVENTION!"
"Oops, guess I’ll be going now." Jazz Jackrabbit ran off, back to Carrotus C astle. The turtles and lizards began to pursue him.
"Don’t bother," said Devan, regaining control of himself. He pulled a CD fro m the wreckage. "At least we have this."
"Uh, boss," said one of the lizards. "What good is that going to be?" "If everything goes like I want it to, this will be the key to Jazz Jackrabb it’s humiliation and destruction!"
Devan Shell laughed, an evil laugh that echoed throughout the forest, all th e way to Jazz’s ears and to Carrotus Castle.
To be continued...
The Invention: Part 3
It is a week later. Nothing has been heard from Devan in that time, but the Jackrabbit brothers (Jazz & Spaz) kept watching out for him-or whatever his latest scheme might be. Jazz had also told the rabbit king, queen, and his w ife Princess Eva about what had happened.
"You sure it’s not a clone, bro?" said Spaz, while they were out patrolling for the umpteenth time.
"For the fourteenth time, Spaz, I told you he said close but no carrot." sai d Jazz, a little irritated.
Then a bright thought struck Spaz. It wasn’t often this happened, since Spaz was slightly retarded.
"Maybe," said Spaz, "maybe he’s putting your traits and his traits together to make a whole new...uh, living...er...thing."
Jazz turned to his brother. "You know," he said, "I hadn’t thought of that. But wouldn’t he need some organic-I mean, living or used-to-be-living materi al to,uh, put the traits in?"
Spaz shrugged. "Maybe that’s why we didn’t heard from Devan in a while. Gues s he’s still looking—" "HEEELLLLP!" screamed a female voice about a half-mile away. "OH NO!" yelled Spaz, who immediately tore off in the direction of the screa m. Jazz followed, wondering why Spaz was so panicked, and heard him yell "No t her! Not my girlfriend!"
"Girlfriend?" said Jazz, just catching up with Spaz.
"You remember the yellow bunny I met at your second wedding?" said Spaz. "Oh yeah, I think so," said Jazz thoughtfully. "Lemme guess, that was her screaming, right?"
Spaz didn’t have to answer. The two soon stopped in a field of flowers, and just above them was a heli-lizard, holding a yellow lop-eared bunny with buc k teeth and freckles. She looked at them with hope and fear in her eyes. Spaz growled. "Put her down," he said.
"Yeah, Devan doesn’t need to use my brother’s girlfriend in his sick twisted experiments," added Jazz.
"Oh, this is your girlfriend?" said the lizard, looking at Spaz, who just nodded. "I’m sorry, but, orders are orders." The lizard dropped a bomb right in front of Jazz and Spaz, who got blown back- hard- into a big rock nearby . As they lost conciousness, they could the yellow bunny screaming,20 "Spaz! Jazz! Help meeeee..."
To be continued...
The Invention: Part 4
Jazz slowly came to. Everything was blurry, but he could tell that he was in the hospital. Also, something blue with brown hair was looking at him. Jazz smiled as his view of the blue bunny got clearer. "Hey Eva," he mumbled , smiling.
"What are you talking about?"said the bunny. Then Jazz realized it was a nur se, not Eva.
"Silly, I’m right here," said an all-too-familiar voice. Jazz looked beyond the nurse and saw the real Eva smiling at him. Jazz smiled back, then asked, "How long have I been out?"
"A few hours since you came in here," said the nurse.
Jazz thought about replying with a sarcastic remark, then decided against it . Instead, he changed the subject.
"Where’s Spaz?" asked Jazz.
"Right next to you," said a male voice. Jazz tweaked his head to his left an d saw Spaz, looking all right.
"Hi bro. Feel better?" said Spaz.
"I dunno," said Jazz. "You didn’t get hurt?"
"Oh, I got hurt," said Spaz. He turned around to reveal a mass of bandages o n his back and tail. "Ya see, you knock your head on a lump in the smooth pa rt of that big rock. I hit rough part. But I managed to stop an ambulance. Y ou proud of me, bro?"
Jazz just nodded. "So, I just got a—" suddenly, he felt pain in his head. " Never mind, I do have a headache."
"What happened, anyway?" asked Eva.
Spaz lifted his head up. His face grew deadly serious—or as serious as it e ver got, anyway. "A lizard grabbed my girlfriend and bombed us. But we live. Right, bro?"
"Right," said Jazz.
"Oh dear," said Eva. "What would he want with her?" "It probably has something to do with Devan’s scanning of me a week ago. He probably needed a test subject or something."
"WHAT? OH NO!" Spaz attempted to run off to save his girlfriend, but the nur se grabbed him.
"I don’t think so, buster!" she said. "You still need a day to recover from your,er,um,ouchies."
"Tomorrow I can go then?" asked Spaz.
"Yes," said the nurse. Tomorrow, I promise."
To be continued...
The Invention: Part 5
Sure enough, the next day Jazz and Spaz were well enough to start searching for Devan and Spaz’s girlfriend. The two decided to check out Devan’s old la b first. When they got there, they saw a few turtles walking around aimlessl y in front of the entrance.
"So, now what?" said Spaz. "Do you think Devan’s in there?" Jazz shrugged. "If he was, he’d probably have schwartzenguards patrolling th e door, not ordinary turtles."
"Trying to throw us off track?" asked Spaz.
"Yeah, probably," said Jazz.
"Why don’t we ask them, then?" said Spaz.
Jazz turned to look at his brother, and grinned mischieviously. "You just ga ve me an idea, Spaz..."
The turtles weren’t expecting much to happen today. They had this boring job of guarding a lab that wasn’t even occupied. But the monotony would soon be broken...
"CHARGE!" yelled Spaz, leaping out of the bushes; Jazz following suit. The turtles panicked and ran, but one leapt forward, foolishly trying to be a hero.
Spaz grabbed him easily and turned him upside down, holding him by his legs. "Help..." said the turtle. Jazz leapt in front of him. He cocked his gun and pointed it at the turtle.
"Alright, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way," said Jazz. "Where i s your boss?"
"I don’t know," said the turtle.
Jazz switched to his toaster and fired it.
"YYEEEOOOWW!" yelled the turtle.
"The hard way, then...every time you lie, I’ll burn you," said Jazz simply. "Now where’s Devan?"
"Um, he’s in the lab. EEEYYOOOOWWWW!"
"Care to try again?" said Jazz.
The turtle named several other places, but Jazz saw through each and every o ne. Finally, the turtle couldn’t stand the burning anymore. "ALL RIGHT! ALL RIGHT!" yelled the turtle. "He’s in the deep inferno, where you fought him the last time!"
Jazz nodded. "Spaz, release," he said. Spaz dropped the turtle, who immediat ely ran off to douse his third degree burns.
"So, the hot heck place?" asked Spaz.
"Yep," said Jazz. "We’d better get going, so we can save your girlfriend fro m Devan’s latest scheme." Spaz gulped at the thought of it. And so off to the deep inferno they went, at a fairly fast pace.
To be continued...
The Invention: Part 6
The deep inferno (a.k.a. Damnation) hadn’t really changed much since Jazz an d Spaz had last visited it. They got through most of it without much trouble . But soon...
"Aw, great!" said Jazz. "We’re lost in a maze!"
"So let’s find our way out," said Spaz. "It can’t be that hard." Jazz was about to reply with a sarcastic remark, when a scream resounded fro m one of the corridors.
"OH NO!" yelled Spaz. He ran off down the corridor. Jazz followed. They ran around in the maze, following the screams until...
"WAUUGGGHHH!" yelled Spaz as he suddenly flew out of the maze and fell off a cliff-and ended up landing on top of a weird looking machine. Still slightl y dazed, he got to his feet and immediately saw-"DEVAN!" Spaz leaped off the machine and landed on top of the turtle nerd, p inning him to the ground.
"Eep!" yelped Devan as he saw Spaz draw his gun and hold at point-blank rang e.
"WHERE IS SHE?" yelled Spaz, eyes burning red with anger.
"R-r-right b-behind you, i-i-in th-the m-machine," said Devan. Spaz leapt off Devan, and ran to the machine’s only window, and sure enough, there was his girlfriend, face pressed against the glass. Her face immediat ely brightened, however, when she saw Spaz.
At the same moment, Jazz leapt off the cliff at the end of the maze and knoc ked Devan to the ground. (He had been about to activate the machine when Spa z wasn’t looking.)
"What have you got to say now, Devan?" said Jazz, pointing his LFG-2000 at h is arch nemesis.
Devan thought fast, then he smiled. "Tell me Jazz, do you remember your _sis ter_?"
Jazz’s face went pale. "H-how did you know about that?" "Sister? We don’t have a sister," said Spaz, looking at Jazz and Devan confu sedly.
Jazz took a deep breath. "Yes, we do. You were too young to remember, but ou r mom and dad did have a baby girl. She was absolute cutest thing I’d seen at that point. But she was kidnapped one night, we never found her again, a nd eventually we forgot her completely."
Then, for Spaz, it all began to come together. "Wait a sec, the only reason Devan would mention our sister is if my girlfriend is actually our sister! R ight?" He looked at Devan, who could only nod.
"That’s why you kidnapped her, then! You wanted to put my bro’s traits and y our traits in her so Jazz would get humiliated and killed by his own sister! " said Spaz, not really knowing what he was saying.
The realization hit Jazz like a brick, and he turned to Devan, VERY angry. " You... despicable... bastard..." he almost whispered. Jazz grabbed Devan by the neck, and threw him against the computer screen. He picked up Devan. "I want you to delete every single file in this computer, ONE AT A TIME. You tr y anything, and I’ll kill you."
Devan grumbled and reluctantly set about deleting his own files first. Meanwhile, Spaz had spotted two large buttons on the machine. One was red, t he other green. Spaz knew one was probably to turn on the machine, and the o ther was probably to open the hatch. The question was: red or green? Now, to Spaz, red meant "stop" and green meant "go". So, naturally, Spaz pressed th e red button.
Meanwhile, Devan had finished deleting his own trait files and was about to start deleting Jazz’s, when suddenly a scream of fear, pain, and agony emitt ed from the machine.
"NOOOOOO!" yelled Spaz, disbelieving. He had activated the machine! "LORI! N OOOOO!" he yelled, speaking his girlfriend’s name for the first time in this story. Spaz leapt over to the window in the door, but it was too bright to see inside.
Jazz realized what had happened, and ran over and pulled Spaz off the machin e. "You can’t save her now!" yelled Jazz.
All the two could do was watch and wait for the process to finish. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, it was done. The hatch opened, and out s tepped Lori. By this time Devan had joined the Jackrabbit brothers to see th e results of his botched experiment.
Suddenly, Jazz’s mouth fell open in shock. So did Spaz’s and Devan’s. Lori h ad changed completely. She was no longer lop-eared, nor did she have buck te eth or freckles. She looked a lot more grown up, especially now that her pur ple dress had changed into a tight-fitting sleeveless shirt that didn’t cove r the belly, and tight-fitting purple shorts to match. She also carried a pi nk blaster in one hand.
Devan was the first to speak. "Y-y-you’ve changed!"
"You’ve... g-grown up!" said Spaz.
"You’re a... BABE!" said Jazz.
"Huh?" said Lori, who looked down at herself. "Eeek!" She recoiled in horror , and looked at Devan. "What have you done to me?" she said. "Um, uh, I, er," stuttered Devan, still awestuck by Lori’s beauty. "Well, I’m making sure it never happens again!" Lori leapt out of the mach ine, turned around, and good use of her new blaster.
KRA-KA-KA-BOOOOM!!!!!
"NOOOOOOO! MY MACHINE! WAAHHHHH!" yelled Devan, who fell to the ground cryin g. "THAT’S THE SECOND TIME THIS MONTH!"
Lori snickered. "Awww, did I break poor baby’s toy!" she said. Jazz looked around, and saw a tunnel marked EXIT. "C’mon, Spaz, Lori, let’s blow this pop stand!" he called.
"I already did," said Lori, grinning and pointing to the machine wreckage wi th her blaster. Spaz burst out laughing.20 None of them saw Devan stop crying, pull out a miniature teleporter device, activate it, and vanish into thin air...
The Invention: Epilogue
Soon, Jazz, Spaz, and Lori had returned to Carrottown, which was the closest town to the castle where you-know-who lived.
"Hey!" said Eva. "I resent that!"
Oh come on, lighten up...Shouldn’t you be waiting for your husband? "Whoops!" Eva ran off, thankful that she was wearing a short dress, and so c ould go faster. She stopped short in front of Jazz and Spaz. "Hi," said Eva, a little out of breath. "So, did you save your girlfriend, S paz?"
"She not my girlfriend anymore," said Spaz, shaking his head. "She’s my sist er!"
"Say what?" said Eva. Then she saw Lori. "Oh no, you’re joking, right?"
"Nope," said Jazz and Spaz. With that, they proceeded to explain what had ha
ppened in the previous chapter. Then Jazz said, "I’d have to check with Mom
and Dad to be sure if she’s my sister, but I wouldn’t have a doubt otherwise
."
"Why don’t you go check, then?" said Eva. "Besides, I don’t think you’ve see n your parents since your time travel adventure."
"We sure haven’t. C’mon Spaz, I’ll race you there." They ran off. Lori howev er, hesitated. "You know," she said, speaking to Eva for the first time sinc e she had arrived there, "If I am their sister, and since you’re married t o Jazz, that would make us sisters-in-law." Lori then left to catch up with Jazz and Spaz, leaving Eva with her mouth open.
Soon, at an ordinary two-floor wooden house with an ordinary couple...
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!
"Who is that, James?" said the female.
"Don’t know, Selena," said James Jackrabbit, who went to the door. The momen t he opened it though, he smiled.
"Jazz! Spaz! What a surprise! What are you boys doing here?"
"Hi Dad," said Jazz. "Is Mom home?"
"She sure is," said James, stepping aside.
Selena looked up from her knitting. "Hi there boys," she said. "Hi Mom," said Jazz and Spaz in stereo. Then Spaz cleared his throat. "Uh, M om, Dad," he began. "We got somebunny to introduce ya to." He and Jazz stepp ed aside. "This is Lori."
Selena gasped suddenly, and then fell to the ground crying. James was confus ed about his wife’s actions, until Selena lifted her head up and said, "My b aby’s alive! My little baby girl’s alive!" James began to cry too, realizing this was their daughter which they thought they had lost so long ago. Lori stepped into the house. "Mom? Dad?" she said quietly. "I never thought I’d see you..." She went and hugged her parents, tear in her eyes as well. T hey remianed that way for about a minute, until they felt tapping on their s houlders.
"Is this a private hug session?" said Jazz and Spaz simultaneously.20 James and Selena welcomed the brothers into their embrace as well. They were all happy...family again after 10 years.
Meanwhile, on the roof of the house across from the one earlier mentioned, a nerdy tortoise with oversized glasses watched the reunion. "How disgusting," said Devan.
Not as disgusting as you are.
"Shut up," said Devan. "You can’t do anything to me anyway."
Oh no? How about this...
Suddenly Devan fell off the roof into a garbage can below.
"AAAAAAHHHHHH!!"
SPLAT!
Devan climbed out of the can, covered with trash.
"How dare you!" said Devan, picking off the garbage.
Need a little washing off?
Suddenly, a little thundercloud appeared overhead Devan, and began raining.. .water balloons?
SPLISH! SPLASH! SPLOOSH!
"AAUUUGGGHHH!" Devan ran away, with the little cloud chasing him. "I’LL GET YOU FOR THIS!" yelled Devan as he ran back to the lab. "I SWEAR, I’LL GET YO U!!!"
Yeah, whatever, Shell.