Jazz got his bearings in the now weightless space as across from him the great beast wavered. It was perched on the inside edge of the slowly reforming prism, and after fixing Jazz with a glare that it was struggling to keep focused, the beast launched itself back towards him, a fresh meteor of electricity, blazing through the empty space between. Jazz met Riccio head on, striking back as they crossed paths in the centre of the hollow space; a crunch of impact as his attack struck while Riccio failed to connect in turn.
By the time Jazz touched down on the far side, the metal under his feet was shifting into new shapes. It wasn't simply recovering and filling in the wire-frame shape of the asteroid, but each facet now seemed to be growing inward in uniform steps of black metal blocks, led my golden circuit lines. Each section was forming inward-facing spires as the view of space and starlight grew smaller and smaller. Across from him, Riccio drifted slightly, scrabbling to catch his magnetic landing point with faltering claws as his reflexes seemed to slow further. Where his steps faltered, the network of golden threads laced across the gap to support the beast, but even so, he was definitely slowing.
Step by step, the inward-facing spires blotted out the stars, gradually returning the space where the pair battled to a contrast of darkness and glowing light. Jazz kicked off again and riccio responded, leaping back at him with another reverberating roar. The beast was slow, slower than Jazz, and though he crossed by the hare in another violent explosion of force and energy, he seemed to have forgotten that Jazz's shadowed form was still difficult to harm. The pillow crashed in a third time, scattering a minefield of wooden shrapnel across the centre of the asteroid's interior space, and as the navigator touched down on one of the opposite pyramid shapes, Riccio turned over in the air, floating off course and failing to correct. The beast had curled in on himself slightly as he lost momentum, drifting now just near the inner edge without landing properly.
The darkness became more complete, lit only now by Riccio's own soft electric glow, and the golden circuit light that laced the metal without throwing off any illumination of its own. In the network of line,s Jazz could see that every facet had sealed in, forming stepped pyramids that pressed into the internal space of the asteroid. Each one was extending a further pointed spire of metal that in turn began to branch out in symmetrical directions, stretching to meet up with others; the amount of open space was rapidly disappearing as the forest of magnetic spines grew and filled the space from every side. Around Riccio, a mass of the same golden circuit wires formed up then rose, beginning to create an angular prism about him, almost like a cocoon. The beast was momentarily asleep.
Before the shell could form completely, however, Jazz capitalised on the creature's vulnerability, splitting into a variety of clones that each threw attacks at the dozing beast. Each hit, digging in deeply all around Riccio's body, and he awoke again with a roar that echoed off the nest of metal spines and seemed to amplify to a painful screech of static noise. His quills bristled as the last of the internal space became obstructed by the inward-piercing mesh of magnetic spines. They began to spark, leaving Jazz with nowhere safe to stand amidst it all, and precious little space to move, despite his small size. He had one more weapon, but even as he readied it to fire, the clinging threads of gold that remained with him responded, reaching through the machine gun and casting a backlash through Jazz's mind; it wasn't painful, not exactly, but as he began to fire the gun, there was a sense of knowing, and of oneness to everything that was happening.
He felt, more than saw, Riccio leap forward trough the forest of spines; felt them fold back for him and snap back into place behind. Riccio was the creature, but it was also the lightning, and the circuits; it was the magnets and the metal, and the asteroid itself; it was Jazz, in this moment, and Jazz was it. Jazz felt, more than saw, the beast land across from him, supported amongst the spines of gold and black, and saw them open in an unfolding spiral to allow the two of them to see one another clearly. They roared, and a cavalcade of lightning bolts launched themselves through the chamber, diving and jumping, reflecting and ricocheting in every direction. They fired their weapon too; a drowning burst of golden threads, flecked with a green energy that empowered them further, darting through the space in tandem. Jazz felt the lightning strike him, multiple times, from different angles, scoring in where his shadows had begun to fail. He felt the golden threads imbued with that painful green energy striking in as well, rattling across his spines and through the rest of his body.
Then, silence. They took a long breath and exhaled it in a sigh and staticy growl; their eyes were locked, and try as he might, Jazz couldn't avert them; the empty black darkness of Riccio's gaze was still shot through with intermittent lightning flares, somewhere within the void of his being. But as the two creatures were held for a moment in the centre of the asteroid, the long sigh became a sense of relaxing. Golden circuit lines covered the hare's body and began to sink in, disappearing from sight. As they did, the body of the beast, still watching him with a gaze that was hard to break, collapsed into the holding embrace of the black magnet, and swiftly sank into it, dissolving away.
The asteroid trembled, and the claustrophobia of the space he was locked in became all the more pointed as the spines began to shift and branch and grow further, filling in what little room to manoeuvre remained. In a second, his arms and legs were pinned, held still by extensions of solid black magnet; there was no where to move, nothing to breath, no space at all; the asteroid was absorbing him. And then a sense of piercing; spines thudded into him across his body, and grew through. It should have hurt; it wasn't comfortable, but it should have hurt, and it didn't. The sense of Riccio's being swelled up underneath his own senses, and Jazz felt himself blacking out.
-=Beast-hunting Hare =-Jazz.Exe: 65Hp [Magnet][ProseCross Lvl2][Imbue Wood: 1 Charge]
-=The Solitary Thunder=-Riccio: DEFEATED
-=Lost Asteroid=-100% Black
Magnet- Non-Elec Elementals get -30% Evasion, and 50% (+/- 25% RP) chance to fail movement off the panel.
- Only Elec Elementals can burrow.
- Wood attacks: Change terrain hit to Normal.
- PanelShot: Imbue Elec + Seeking.
Jazz finds himself back on the smooth surface of the asteroid.
-=Battle Victory!=-Spoils: Riccio BeastOut, 20FXP with his own inner traumas.
Sense returned. Cold harness, a flat surface. Once he opened his eyes again, Jazz would find himself on a smooth plane of black magnet, with the stars of open space wheeling overhead slowly. He was on the surface of the asteroid, reformed and looking just as it had when he first approached, only something was different now.
The sense of life and power was here, but he could feel it, close and connected to his being. Faintly, he could sense the whole structure, and every tunnel and passageway that ran through it. Riccio, the great beast, the solitary thunder, was not here... but he was as well. He was here, and he always would be; that much came to jazz as a certainty, almost like a voice in the back of his mind telling him, but without words. He could feel a thread of the creature's power within him, responding to the land mass beneath him even as it strained to rework Jazz's body to its own preference, but the spark was answered by a greater presence that existed within the very metal and circuitry of the asteroid itself. This was his Home; This was absolute, and eternal. Riccio was not here right now, but he was always here, always would be, and Jazz was no longer welcome.