It had been very easy to snatch Miranda Spicer from the hospital. Too easy. If this was the care that Jack had with those he loved, Chase was deeply disappointed.

Now she slept under one of Chase's spells, on a luxurious divan near the entrance. Finally.

Chase had waited for almost an hour for her to fall into a deep sleep. It had never happened. She kept getting up to pace around the bare room where she was held, or just sitting in her bed and crying.

As he watched, Chase wondered how his own mother might have reacted in the same circumstances.

She wouldn't have become an alcoholic, for one, so Chase found the whole thing hard to imagine. Very hard. Especially since when he thought of it, he saw her instead sitting next to Miranda's bed, waiting in her usual stony silence. Unmoving. Inexpressive. A stone statue with long, jet black hair who looked down at you with all seeing eyes.

He had snatched her then. Casted a sleeping spell, and stolen her without any of the cameras seeing. Oh, he had let himself be filmed by the cameras in Jack's house after he hadn't found a trace of Wuya's box there, just to send a message. But this time he was nothing but a shadow vanishing under the moonlight.

And it was Jack's turn. He could feel him approaching, and opened the doors to his lair for him.

"Spicer, I expected you sooner," said Chase, lying to press his buttons. He had expected him later. Much later. After his rage had awakened the fighting spirit in him. Instead, he was here, barely hours after he had received Chase's letter. Holding only the metal spear he had from before.

Jack's eyes went right to the sleeping form of his mother near the fountain.

"She is only asleep. As soon as you give me back Wuya, you may take her away, and she won't even know that anything has happened," said Chase.

Jack shot him a furious glare. "Is this your idea of honor?" he asked, walking slowly towards Chase's throne. "Kidnapping defenseless women in the middle of the night?"

Chase stood up. "I have been more than gracious with you."

"You have been a jerk," yelled Jack. "You pushed me away and humiliated me for years, but as soon as I reject you, you purposefully go out of your way to torture me and to mess with the only thing I truly cared about."

"This is not about you."

More lies. It was all about him, but Chase had only just realized it.

"I don't care! I don't care about anything you say anymore. You don't understand how emotions even work. A rock has more empathy than you! And now I'm getting rid of you for good," said Jack, lifting the spear.

Chase readied his stance for fighting. He was ready to fight and dodge the small robots that Jack seemed to be so fond of. But instead, Jack hit the floor with the butt of his spear, sending a sound reverberating all over the lair. Chase's cats screeched, paralyzed in terrified pain as the whole structure of the cave cracked all around them. A hole opened under Jack, the floor crumbling into nothing.

Jack jumped back, and glided in the air with the same grace as he would have while skating on ice. Chase knew there was something on his shoes. Something that glowed dimly with a slight buzz that Chase –somehow- had missed. But Chase didn't have any more time. He jumped, transformed, and tried to claw at anything that he might get his claws on. At the periphery of his vision, he saw Jack pulling up his mother and covering her in his long black coat. And like a stage magician, he shook the coat once, and his mother vanished.

Chase jumped, trying to pounce on Jack, but the redhead glided away, skating over the floor, hitting here and there with the end of his spear. Everywhere he touched with it sent the same maddening shrill noise and caused the ground underneath to ripple and fall apart into dust. Chase had no idea how he was doing it, but Jack had found a way to poke holes and disintegrate matter itself with his spear. Chase looked on in horror as marble and metal equally crumbled wherever Jack touched them. The lair itself would collapse in any moment. And, being inside a volcano, Chase knew if the cracks on the structure went deep enough…

He intercepted Jack, and backslapped him across the face with such force that Jack fell backwards on the floor.

"Fool!" shouted Chase, as pillars fell under the weight of the ceiling all around them. "You will trap us here!"

Jack pushed himself up, and took off his coat. "No. I'm trapping you here," he said, and draped the coat around himself, just as he had covered his mother.

Chase roared, but even as the tips of his claws grazed the fabric of the coat, it melted, dripping down on the ground as a black liquid. It was some kind of portal, proofed so that once Jack was gone, it would self destroy. Once more Spicer proved the best at sneaking away.

Chase's cats yelped, running over the cracked floor and jumping over the widening holes, looking for a way out. Chase ordered that the door opened, but it only shook, held closed by something from the outside. Chase banged on the door, but it wouldn't open, and his cats yowled as the temperature on the lair rose. The cracks on the structure had reached the lava pit below, and it was eating away at everything on its path.

Chase gave a hysterical laugh. Jack had done it.

He had finally bested him in wit, knowing that he could never best him in might. He had turned into a force that destroyed everything in his way. He had become what Chase had always wanted him to become.

And it was going to destroy him.

One of his cats scratched at his leg, bringing him back into focus. Chase centered his mind.

The lair was done for. He needed to get out. The door was sealed with some kind of alloy that his powers couldn't destroy.

Up.

The top of the mountain was simple rock that he could punch through, and the ancient lava conducts would lead him to the point where the dome was thinner. He commanded his cats to climb up. To follow the lava ducts. He just had to grab the Shen Gon Wu he still had, and make a run for it.

His mind went through anything else he had to take with him.

Scrolls, books, weapons… He had no time for anything other than his sword and the Shen Gon Wu, and- His thoughts went to the tunic left in the vault, two levels bellow.

He ran to get it.