Jericho found themselves slammed about, asphyxiating at first and then abruptly able to breathe once more. The sound of battle was fading from their hearing, and a quiet- in insistent- pounding was echoing against their mind. The Hunt kept calling out to them from some unknown distance, and their vision and focus was disoriented. It felt as if they were pushing through mud, but the mud was existence, and their body just wasn't right. It was a vaguely familiar sensation, as if they were dreaming... Their flesh shifted, swirling yet again with ink before a maw filled with tombstone shaped teeth formed on the patch of skin that held a strange device. Some sort of power was being emitted from it, and the cicada scream from their EMP generator was doing nothing.
So they crunched it. The abrupt opening and closing of a jaw with the strength twice that of a hippo flattened and destroyed the object attached to them.
The world was still blurry, and their vision was suddenly filled with Alex's! face.
A gentle pat across the 'unarmored' part of Jericho's ribs brought them further back to reality, farther away from the siren call of the Hunt. They knew he was talking to them, and they understood the words, but the meaning behind them just wasn't computing. Their mind was foggy and sluggish, the rush of combat was only just bleeding out of their system.
The sound of Alex's voice was filtering in, and the calm-panic in his tone shook Jericho to the odd core.
The first friend they had ever had, and they sounded fearful, but of what? Of them? Of the battle? They needed protection didn't they, shit. "Nrh. Hold on. Will protect you. Make you safe." They grunted out, their voice distorted and mixed together with the sounds of a tiger growl and a boar's grunt. They shifted then, dropping the combative form and instead switching to the shape of a large, amorphous metallic... Blob. Jericho swooped upward, surrounding Alex and cocooning the other super in a protective shell. They extended upward from there, forming a small, humanoid torso on top of the metallic sphere. The torso had no eyes, no mouth, no nose... But it did have a multitude of arms that were lined with jagged blades. The torso swayed back and forth, and was turned towards the squabbling group of Supers.
'Protect.' Said Jericho's instincts. So Jericho positioned themselves to protect.