Angry Jasper: Forty-eight

Maury’s spy charged into the open before the others could react. Jazz groaned and climbed to his feet, and started after him but Skull boy, with all his might, knocked him hard to the ground again. Jazz turned and had half a mind to slug the kid, just for good measure. The hell with it, he thought and reeled back to clobber the kid. By now Maury’s spy was half way down the street by now. Jazz doubted he could catch the guy, even if he ten years younger, a time he was in the best shape of his life.

“You let him get away, you little brat.”

“No, look!” Skull boy pointed as a huge plasma bolt cleaved through the street. The spy saw it too, an instant before he disappeared forever, incinerated in the blink of an eye. Hell, there wasn’t even a puff of smoke. Just like that even the myriad atomic particles comprising his body ceased to exist.

“Kid, I don’t know if I should thank you or smack you!”

“Thank you works fine,” said the boy.

Buzz, meantime, had been observing the spectacle and found a certain haphazard pattern to the plasma bolts. They came in pulses, waxing and waning with gaps in between. He made a quick calculation. It was precise or perfect by any stretch, but the littlest robot figured it was the only chance remaining.

“I think we’ve got a few minutes here, if we can reach the ship by then.”

“We’ll see,” Jazz dusted himself off. “No time to lose.”
Jazz went first, moving carefully from the relative safety of the underground into the wide boulevard. Once the street had been dubbed the Magnificent Mile, but there wasn’t anything magnificent about the place now. Stumbling into the open he looked askance at the blinding beam. It left Jazz dazed and rubbing the image burned momentarily into his retina. More that that, the radiant heat from the thing was almost unbearable. It singed at his hair and flesh, and was growing quickly in intensity. Here and there dry brush had begun to smoke.

The sound was just as terrible. A continuous thundering roar was followed by a horrible ripping sound that grew louder and nearer. Together they shook the street so that it was almost impossible for Jazz to keep his feet. Walls collapsed all along the ruined boulevard. He didn’t have much hope that this would turn out good, but he kept his mouth shut and waved for the others to follow.
.
He caught Katy just as she emerged. He tried to throw a hand across her face and keep her from looking at the beam. They struggled a moment before she grabbed his hair with both hands and gave him a violent shake.

“What the hell are you doing?” she shouted above the din.

“The beam, don’t look at it!” he cried.

She batted his hand away, and had half a mind to smack him.

“I’m not stupid,” she shouted above the din. “What kind of idiot would look at the beam?”

Jazz chafed at the remark. “Didn’t want you to look at it?”

“God, no!”

“Not even a little?”

Kate frowned and shook her head. “You looked at it, didn’t you?”

“So what if I did?”

“That’s cause you’re stupid.”

“Maybe we could discuss this later,” said Buzz.

An ear-shattering roar eclipsed the thundering beam as a deep crack tore apart the earth’s crust just to the west. The ground whipped like a snake throwing Jazz, Katy and the others hard to the ground. Steam, dust and spouts of red hot magma unleashed spit a thousand feet into the air. Boulders and stones, from deep inside the planet rained down, some as big as houses.

“What the hell is that?” said Jazz.

“The planet, it’s breaking up,” Buzz announced. “By my calculations we have ten minutes to get off the planet. No more.”

“It’ll take that long to get to my ship.”

“We’d better haul ass then,” said Kate. To the east a new crack opened. Magma flowed into the dry Lake Michigan basin.

“What’s the verdict, Skull boy? Are we going to make it?”

“Depends how fast you can move, old man.”

Jazz raised a hand, but held back at the last minute. “God, I hate this kid.”