Ash shot to a tree trunk on the left side, his fingers gripping the wood and his body spinning before leaping toward a hovering board passing below him. One strike and the board flipped, its rider thrown into the bushes.
Ash didn't stop, his body had already shot to the next tree trunk before the people near that area could direct their lights toward his position.
Strike from one point, move before anyone responds, strike again from a different point. No readable pattern, no predictable direction.
The panic inside the forest reached a point that could no longer be called a formation. People flew in all directions without coordination, some heading out of the forest without waiting for orders, some still circling in confusion with lights shining everywhere without clear purpose.
Jason decided enough. He spun his board toward the widest gap between trees, pushing toward the outside of the forest at full speed. "Damn it, we can't face him in a place like this. I have to get out!"
His board's light illuminated the path ahead, tree trunks passing on his left and right, and the edge of the forest was already visible several dozen meters ahead.
Then from the right, something shot with impossible speed and struck the side of Jason's board.
CRACK!!
"Argh! What was that?" Not Ash, but the body of one of his own men who had already been thrown from his board, hitting Jason's board like a bullet and sending the entire vehicle spinning out of control.
Jason gripped the handles, forcing his board back straight, his eyes searching for where that had come from while finding his direction.
When his board managed to stabilize, that was when his eyes went wide. Ash shot toward him fast, the orange and red glow from the cracks in his skin burning bright.
"Da-damn it!" Jason realized, that speed was impossible to avoid now. His eyes went wide and his mouth fell open, like watching death coming to claim him.
Ash struck him at high speed. Not from the side and not from below, but from the front, direct and hard, with nothing to dodge or block.
Jason's body was lifted from his board, carried by the momentum of the impact backward, flying out of the forest and continuing to glide through the night air before finally falling and skidding across rocky ground, stopping not far from where Balton stood.
Jason's board fell at an angle several meters beside him, its light still shining toward the sky.
Shiva had just landed on a tree trunk when the sound of that fall was heard followed by a cloud of dust rising into the air in the distance. Shiva was stunned, still unable to believe that Ash in that form had done all of that.
"Terrifying, so savage yet clever. Was he truly out of control in there?" Shiva murmured, observing Ash's figure from her position.
Balton stared at Jason lying unconscious in front of him, then slowly raised his head toward the mouth of the forest.
Ash stood there.
Exactly at the boundary between the darkness of the forest and the rocky ground outside it, his body upright with small fires flowing from every crack in his skin, moving slowly in the air around him. Two red points in his eyes didn't blink, staring directly toward Balton without moving anywhere else.
"You learn fast." Balton didn't move from where he stood, his voice coming out in a calm tone. "Even though you look wild, you're still able to think."
There was no answer, only the fire moving calmly across the surface of Ash's skin.
Balton raised his iron baton from his side, gripping it with one hand in front of his body. His feet shifted slightly to a lower position, his weight moving forward, his eyes not leaving the figure standing at the mouth of the forest.
Neither of them moved.
Wind passed between them, carrying with it thin dust and one or two dry leaves falling from the trees behind Ash. The fire on Ash's body swayed following the direction of that wind, then stood straight again.
Ash shot forward first.
His body struck the air like a thrown stone, his claws aimed at Balton's chest, but the large man tilted his body half a step and his iron baton swung to meet him from below. Ash caught the baton's shaft with one hand, his momentum stopped, and the two pushed against each other for two seconds before Ash leapt back onto the rocks.
"Good." Balton straightened his posture, his right shoulder rotating once. "You don't attack twice from the same direction."
Ash wasn't listening, his eyes had already locked onto the next position.
Balton reached to the side of his belt with his left hand, three objects the size of a fist appeared between his fingers, then were thrown in three different directions at once. The objects struck the ground around Ash and exploded not with fire, but with intensely bright white light and a deafening sound.
Ash flinched, his head turned away from the light, and that was when Balton's iron baton struck his left side with full force. The sound of the impact vibrated through the air, and Ash's body was thrown sideways, slamming into a large rock before falling to the ground.
He got up.
Balton had already thrown two more bombs, this time one to the left and one directly at Ash's face. Ash closed his eyes and leapt backward, but Balton was already moving around him, his hovering board carrying him to a position behind Ash in very little time, and the baton struck Ash's back from above.
Ash fell to his knees, his hands pressing into the ground. The fire from the cracks in his skin licked longer than before, the ground beneath his palms blackening from the heat.
Up in a tree in the distance, Shiva gripped the branch in front of her. Her breath caught watching Ash take two consecutive hits.
Ash rose more slowly than before, but stood fully. His blazing red eyes moved from Balton to the ground around him, to the rocks scattered on the left and right sides. Something inside his head that still functioned as a human brain began to move.
***