Interstellar Clouds

It took a couple of minutes, but ZephyrMan entered NAXA in a beam of blue light. He looked around, then noticed something odd. Was it just him, or did the ground look closer than usual?

"Um, ZephyrMan! Look down!"

The Navi did so, and realized why he had such a skewed perspective: his lower whirlwind was both less intense than usual, and about a foot shorter than it normally was. No wonder he felt shorter...he actually WAS shorter. "Ah, I see. To give the area a more space-like theme, the cyber air in NAXA Area is a bit thinner than other parts of the Net. Because of that, I'm not drawing in as much air, which dampens my whirlwinds' power. Not to worry, however! I'll simply need to increase their speed...like...this!" And just like that, he gained 12 inches, and now everything looked proper. "It shouldn't be too much trouble to maintain myself like this. I just need to get used to it."

"Or you could just not be in tornado form."

"Perish the thought! I wouldn't know what to do with my legs at this point!" Fortunately, regardless of how his lower body looked, he could hover along as he initiated his search. He needed to stay extra alert, though...he'd heard that this was a pretty dangerous place for a Navi to be. Throwing caution to the wind was definitely a bad idea here.

(Searching for Battle #1)
The limitless starry skies of NAXA Net greeted ZephyrMan as he jacked in, a field of stellar majesty that stretched on and on in every direction. A little to the right and down below, the curve of the planet seemed to bend away, and all in all, it was quite dazzling.

The thinner air and slightly lower gravity also came hadn in hand with slightly sparser terrain, with only an assortment of panel chunks drifting in the void. Some were large, others were smaller. Some glowed softly, while others were the cold, dead tone of solid metal. A couple of long, thin strips of panels even looked more like live circuitry than anything else, and they all seemed to tip and tilt slowly in the air. All together, they did form a traceable pathway, of sorts, but it was one that would still require a bit of careful leaping, no matter which way a navi went.

Amongst the space-scape, one particular planet looked quite a bit closer than the rest. It was large, a pale grey colour, and seemed to be circled by two separate bands of smaller asteroids. One thing that marked it apart from other stellar bodies in the area was eyes. A pair of large, mostly closed. sleepy-looking eyes, situated about two thirds up towards the planetoid's uppermost pole. Without opening any more than a crack, they slid ponderously over to look in ZephyrMan's direction. It was probably safe to say that that was no moon.

Further out in the depths of space, a pair of streaking lights stood out from the other sights. At first they seemed to be shooting stars, but as they screamed closer, it became quite clear that they were, in fact, a pair of highly charged Eleballs, rocketing towards ZephyrMan at collision speeds.

Fortunately, their angle of approach took them right past the nearby BigBang, and they slowed, then halted with a drag that would have made anyone else's eyes bulge, before being reeled back in to begin orbiting slowly around the bigger virus.

-=Not-Exactly-Constellations=-

BigBang: 120Hp [Floating free][Immobile][Off to the left and about halfway down the field in terms of the amount of visible space junk. It is not in melee range of any platform currently]
EleBallA: 80Hp [Orbiting BigBang]
EleBallB: 80Hp [Orbiting BigBang - opposite side to EleBallA]

-=Not-Exactly-An-Astronaut=-

ZephyrMan.exe: 150Hp [Solar]

-=Not-Exactly-Stable Terrain=-

60% Missing [There's a whole lot of empty space here]
10% Magnet [Two long, narrow strips floating slightly up to the right, and slightly down to the left, respectively, of ZephyrMan's platform.]
10% Solar [One small mostly square platform where ZephyrMan is, and a second, more rectangular one, directly ahead and down a fair distance.]
20% Metal [Various scattered smaller chunks of panels, floating in between the others, and one larger, slightly curved platform, a fair distance away from ZephyrMan's platform, but at more or less the same level.]

Space Debris: Floating terrain drifts slowly and will tip and tilt to a certain extent when contacted with or landed on. With effort, it could also be moved.

-=Battle 1, Start!=-
It didn't take long for ZephyrMan to locate his latest foes. And they definitely didn't seem very friendly...indeed, he'd have to fight. He focused on the planetoid, that was commanding the involuntary attention of various space junk and space viruses. He didn't need to be a scientist Navi to know what was the cause of that. "I can feel that gravitational pull all the way over here! I imagine it'd be best to keep my distance..."

"Yeah, you don't wanna mess with gravity..." As both a pilot and as a busty woman, Ariel could unironically call gravity her biggest enemy. It really made her want to remove the BigBang as fast as possible. Just looking at it irked her. "Any ideas on how to beat it?"

Hmm. If it could manipulate gravity, then it would make sense to use something that wasn't affected by gravity. And as he recalled from his operator's high school days, light fit that. And if light was a type of energy...then energy based attacks would be best. And he happened to have one of those that, with a little help, could wipe everything out in one fell swoop. "I do! SideGun should do nicely! And make sure to give it some extra oomph!"

Extra oomph...oh, right. That. Two chips, grabbed and in. "All right, here! BattleChip, SideGun! BattleChip, Attack+10! Double slot in!"

A buster shaped gun appeared on the Navi's right arm, with a black tip and stripe covering the middle. He pointed it over at the gravity based virus, and waited. He just needed the EleBall pair to line up...though, on second thought, were they truly trying to attack him earlier? If they were moving straight from that distance, they either had incredible eyesight, or they were just trying to move along through the Net. And even if they did have harmful intent, perhaps they'd show some gratitude if he freed them from their invisible prison. It was worth a try. With his objective changed somewhat, he shifted his focus to getting a perfect bead on the BigBang, with no debris separating him and it. Just had to be patient...wait for that perfect chance...there! A single energy shot fired forth from the end of the gun, careening straight ahead. If his aim was true, the powered up attack would rend the virus into junk data...and barring extreme misfortune (or fortune, depending on what their intentions were), the other two would be unharmed, and regain their ability to move on their own.

And, just in case he missed, or EleBall turned out to be an ungrateful sort of virus, he was ready to move aside in case of electrical or non-electrical spheres. Couldn't be too careful, after all.

[Order of Turn:
1-Wait for there to be no debris between ZephyrMan and BigBang
2-SideGun chip attack on BigBang (110+10, A, Spread 2) (Spread Targets: EleBallA, EleBallB)
3-Attack+10 chip on SideGun (10, S, adds 10 to all hits of connected attack)
4-Dodge]
As ZephyrMan weighs up his options, the BigBang makes a deep, ponderous sound, and flings one of the EleBalls bodily at him. It shoots past, missing him by a hair, then begins to turn and come back. It's hard to tell whether it's attacking of its own accord, or being pulled back in towards the gravitationally gifted virus. Either way, it shoots back again over Zephyr's other shoulder, still failing to connect.

ZephyrMan has the answer for everyone's gravity-caused woes, and it comes in the form of violence. The BigBang is very large, and very stationary, and this makes it very hard to miss: his shot punches clean through its centre, causing the rocks circling it to begin drifting away as the virus slowly breaks up and disintegrates.

The two EleBalls, free of the gravity pull, zip together and circle around each other once, then begin shooting towards ZephyrMan again. No, wait, not quite. They zip by over his head by a fair way, and appear to be content to keep going.

-=Not-Exactly-Constellations=-

BigBang: BigBoom
EleBallA: 80Hp [Fleeing - 1 Action]
EleBallB: 80Hp [Fleeing - 1 Action]

-=Not-Exactly-An-Astronaut=-

ZephyrMan.exe: 150Hp [Solar]

-=Not-Exactly-Stable Terrain=-

60% Missing [There's a whole lot of empty space here]
10% Magnet [Two long, narrow strips floating slightly up to the right, and slightly down to the left, respectively, of ZephyrMan's platform.]
10% Solar [One small mostly square platform where ZephyrMan is, and a second, more rectangular one, directly ahead and down a fair distance.]
20% Metal [Various scattered smaller chunks of panels, floating in between the others, and one larger, slightly curved platform, a fair distance away from ZephyrMan's platform, but at more or less the same level.]

Space Debris: Floating terrain drifts slowly and will tip and tilt to a certain extent when contacted with or landed on. With effort, it could also be moved.
Now that he could truthfully say he blew up a planet, ZephyrMan watched the pair of EleBall fly over his head, continuing their journey. Sure, he COULD stop them and destroy them, but he was ZephyrMan, not JerkMan. Since they had no plans to attack him, he had no plans to attack them. It was that simple.

"Gonna let 'em get away?"

"Indeed. They were victims of circumstance, and they appear to have no intentions to fight. So I shan't force it." Instead, with the only true villain gone, he was content to watch the other fly into the vastness of cyberspace space.

[Order of Turn:
1-4: Let EleBall escape]
As the two EleBall dwindle into little twinkles far away amidst the starry sky, some of the crumbling remnants of the destroyed BigBang drift towards the nearby magnet panels, pulled by the new strongest force in the area. Or maybe not quite; the strip of magnets also gets dragged towards the collapsing chunk the closer it gets. Eventually it comes to rest, giving off a rhythmic fluctuation of gentle pulling, then gentle pushing. It's not zenny, certainly, but it may well be useful.

-=Not-Exactly-Constellations=-

BigBang: BigBoom
EleBallA: Fled
EleBallB: Fled

-=Not-Exactly-An-Astronaut=-

ZephyrMan.exe: 150Hp [Solar]

-=Not-Exactly-Stable Terrain=-

60% Missing [There's a whole lot of empty space here]
10% Magnet [Two long, narrow strips floating slightly up to the right, and slightly down to the left, respectively, of ZephyrMan's platform.]
10% Solar [One small mostly square platform where ZephyrMan is, and a second, more rectangular one, directly ahead and down a fair distance.]
20% Metal [Various scattered smaller chunks of panels, floating in between the others, and one larger, slightly curved platform, a fair distance away from ZephyrMan's platform, but at more or less the same level.]

Space Debris: Floating terrain drifts slowly and will tip and tilt to a certain extent when contacted with or landed on. With effort, it could also be moved.

-=Battle 1 Victory!=-

Spoils: G-Force1

Quote ()

Damage: (Gravity + Blast 3) + (40 damage + Microburst + Blast 1)
Accuracy: C
Description: A bomb that pulls everything into range before exploding violently.
Duration: Once
Element: Null


Satisfied that the EleBalls had chosen flight over fight, ZephyrMan looked over where the BigBang had previously been. Only bits and pieces remained...not even any money for his troubles. Although, hmm. He raised his arms, and stirred up some wind to bring the chunks closer to him. Now, if he could just alter the format, like so...bingo! "Aha! It didn't seem like anything useful, but with a couple of tweaks, the remnants can be changed into BattleChip data! I'm sending it over now...tell me what it does!"

"That's...actually kind of a cool way to get a chip. Neat!" Now, to see what the creation did. "The chip is called G-Force. You fling a bomb at enemies..."

"Not especially interesting..."

"No, but I'm not done yet! Once it lands, it emits a gravitational force that sucks lots of enemies in, then explodes! It's not much of an explosion, though...and it's not very strong."

"Hmm...on its own, it doesn't sound too interesting. But I imagine it's quite good at getting all of your enemies near each other for a combo attack...at any rate, it's not exactly what the virus did, is it?"

"Yeah, that's not exactly flinging things at you. Weird. Well, it's a chip, at any rate. Better than nothing at all, right?"

"Quite right! Hmm, where to head next..." The Navi looked around, before eventually locating another platform floating by. "I suppose that's as good a place as any. Away!" With some help from his lower tornado, as well as the reduced gravity, the windy Navi jumped the distance to the next platform. And from there, he'd continue looking around.

(Ready for Battle #2)
Moving carefully from floating platform to floating platform, ZephyrMan makes his way along what honestly begins to look like a trail of littered wreckage, more than anything else. the various platforms continue to come in odd shapes and varied sizes, and comprised of various different types of panels, though the mostly form a very rough trail that curves away forward. There's nothing else but empty space all around, so following the space junk seems the only real course of action at this point.

He'd only gone a short distance when a peculiar humming sound came into earshot, and grew. Every so often it was interspersed with a high-pitched electronic ping, or a variety of other beeps. It wasn't too hard to find the source of the sound: what could only really be described as a little alien spaceship, all decked out in red. It hummed and pinged its way up close to Zephyr, circled him, then immediately began to prepare some sort of tractor beam. Before it could actually do anything, a floating chunk of space debris jostled the little craft, and sent it spinning away again. The next series of beeps and pings sounded very disgruntled indeed.

Above and to the left, on a small chunk of floating panels that rotated and spun slowly in space, a miniature satellite clung to one side. As the chunk twisted, the other side was revealed to have an identical satellite on the opposite side as well. How odd. Closer, on a slightly more stable ledge made entirely of Solar panels, a little way off to Zephyr's right, a third satellite scanned the area, and above him, on the underside of a chunk that looked to be mostly cracked and in danger of disintegrating altogether, a fourth. Small lights lit up as it began to scan as well, while the little red UFO shook itself off and began to return to ZephyrMan.

-=Sentient Space-Junk=-

SatelliteA: 100Hp [Metal]
SatelliteB: 100Hp [Metal]
SatelliteC: 100Hp [Solar]
SatelliteD: 100Hp [Cracked]

RedUFO: 80hp [Flying Free]

-=Sentient Space-Explorer=-

ZephyrMan.Exe: 150Hp [Metal]

-=Terrain=-

PlatformA: Metal, L-shaped section, Where ZephyrMan is currently
PlatformB: Solar, Mostly Square section, Forward and a little right of PlatformA (SatelliteC is here)
PlatformC: Metal, Uneven zigzag of panels, rotating slowly, forward, left and a small distance up of PlatformA (Satellites A and B are here, on opposite sides)
PlatformD: Magnet, Long curved chunk of high-tech-looking wreckage, directly ahead of PlatformA
PlatformE: Cracked, oval-shaped chunk of damaged panels, floating a fair distance above PlatformD (SatelliteD is here, on the underside)

All platforms are roughly the same size as one another, with the cracked section being a little smaller, and the magnetic chunk being a fair bit larger and longer. Elsewise, terrain is Missing.

-=Battle 2, Start!=-
Well, this was a fine how do you do. Not only had some viruses shown up, but they were blocking the way forward, and left him stuck on a relatively small chunk of metal. And to make matters worse, the viruses were unhampered by the floating terrain. This...was going to be tricky. But he could always...go back...? A look behind him revealed that there was, in fact, nothing behind him. No safe way forward, no way backward period...and the situation was quite against him. Hmm...

"ZephyrMan? Isn't this where you usually come up with a plan?"

"Yes, well...ah, I've got it! Ariel, I'll need you...to do absolutely nothing." The windy Navi reached down, and grasped a couple of edges of the platform he was on. He made sure he was doing so near the middle. That was important. Now, he needed to change the direction he was facing, so he gave the metal piece a bit of a push, to flip it over just enough so that the side he was on was facing the viruses. And after that, he just needed to point his tornado towards them...and...

WHOOOOSH!

While the air was thinner in NAXA Area, it wasn't completely gone. His whirlwind spun with enough force to drive him into lower orbit from the surface...but since he was already there, he'd settle for pushing him away from the enemies. If he wasn't mistaken, the Satellites wouldn't pursue him, and he could handle a lone RedUFO, even if it made the foolish mistake of following him. With any luck, he could just casually look back and watch as the viruses grew smaller and smaller as he increased the distance between them...

[Order of Turn:
1-Grab the platform, and turn it so that ZephyrMan is facing towards the viruses
2-'Jump' away from enemies, with Airstep help
2a-Airstep subtype ability (grants High Altitude status with a jump)
3+4-Hastily float away from virus formation]
In a move of tactical genius, Brave Sir ZephyrMan took his small chunk of space debris, and set off to explore the stars with it! Or, at the very least, scoot rapidly away from the cluster of satellites in this area, zipping further along the trail of broken space junk and destroyed parts until they were more or less out of sight. He did get tagged by one of the tracer beams as he fled, but by the time the targeting satellite had armed itself and launched free of its platform, ZephyrMan was well out of range. The UFO did, indeed follow the unexpectedly mobile section of panels, but once the satellites were left behind it kept its distance. Apparently it didn't want to chance getting too close to the navi unless there were other viruses about to distract him.

-=Escape successful!=-
Luckily for ZephyrMan, his assessment proved correct, and soon found that he was all by his lonesome. He didn't let go of the chunk of metal, though, and kept sailing right along.

"Um, do you really need that metal piece now?"

"It keeps my movement steady, so yes, I do. Though, I must say...as breathtaking as this area is, both visually and literally...one would think NAXA would've made the pathways a bit more accessible to the average Navi. It's hard to believe this area can be traveled by a NormalNavi..."

"Yeah, you about need a space shuttle to get around in there. I don't think we've even seen a regular pathway. You'd think NAXA of all people would've gone with a more efficient design..."

"Indeed..." Well, talking about it wasn't going to change that he was floating around in a void-like area. He just needed to keep going and find someplace a little more solid. Those had to exist somewhere, didn't they?

(Re-searching for Battle #2)
Scooting along on his chunk of space-wreckage, ZephyrMan followed the trail of broken debris until he came upon what looked like a much larger chunk; it seemed like fully half of a wrecked space craft, of some description, with several frayed edges sill sparking. One might be forgiven for thinking a very large bite had been taken out of it, and the rest left to drift, but surely that would be a silly thing to suppose.

Getting closer, the rent half of the craft exposed open passages and chambers that almost begged a closer inspection, with the added bonus of it being somewhat of a more contained space than the, well, space all around. The easiest way to get purchase on the craft would simply be to manoeuvre his little platform into what looked like the exposed cargo bay of the craft, and begin exploring on 'foot' from there, but there was a slight problem with that idea: the craft didn't seem entirely dead just yet. If zephyr decided to get into the damaged craft, he'd probably need to take care of what remained of the bays internal defences: a pair of Cannonguards were stationed either side of the ramp that presumably led up to the rest of the craft, pointing in towards the rest of the cargo bay, and thus now out into the gaping hole and space beyond. that seemed to be all at first, until a chunk of the damage edge broke free, in the form of a small high-tech looking sphere that probably served some important function once, but now appeared to have taken on a life of its own as it began to zip around the empty-looking hold, sparking madly. The UFO hummed closer, still following ZephyrMan, and eager to see if the navi would engage.

The odd question that might present itself to one really thinking, might be... 'Why would any ship have its defences pointed towards the inside of its own cargo bay?' One way or another though, it hadn't been sufficient to protect this particular craft.

-=Remaining Defences=-

CannonGuardA: 60Hp [Metal]
CannonGuardB: 60Hp [Metal]
Sparky: 100Hp [Metal]
RedUFO: 80hp [Flying Free]

-=Space-Junk Skimmer=-

ZephyrMan.Exe: 150Hp [Metal][Still on his little 'L'-shaped floating chunk, movable to within step-off distance of the damaged hole for free, if desired]

-=Terrain=-

80% Metal [Entrance and Cargo Hold of damaged craft considered to be the majority of the stage]
20% Missing [Space beyond the damaged hole]

-=Maybe Battle 2!=-