Jason pulled the trigger without warning.
BANG!
The gunshot shattered the noise of the marketplace, and the bullet pierced Ash's chest on the left side. His body staggered half a step back, then Ash cried out once, short and sharp, before his knees hit the ground. Blood poured heavily from the wound, falling onto the cobblestones beneath him, and the color was not red.
It was bright purple.
Jason stood still. Bruno beside him did not move either. Both of them stared at the puddle forming slowly beneath Ash's knees, a color that made no sense, too vivid to be called blood. The puddle spread for a few seconds before the ground absorbed it entirely.
Bruno swallowed hard. "Boss ..."
Jason did not answer. His eyes did not move from the figure kneeling before him.
Ash coughed, once, twice. His hands pressed the wound on his chest, then slowly he lifted his head. His breathing was still rough, but his body began to move. Not like someone who had just been shot, but like someone who had just taken a bad fall, slow, but certain.
Something pushed out from inside the wound.
The lead bullet emerged slowly at the surface of the skin, pushed from within like a foreign object being rejected, then fell to the ground with a small sound. The wound closed within seconds.
Jason stared at the bullet lying on the ground, then looked back at Ash who was standing upright. His expression changed. Not fear, not awe either. More like someone who had just discovered a problem far more complicated than he had expected. His fingers moved along the side of his weapon, pressing something, turning something. A mechanical sound followed, a series of precise clicks and movements that stopped abruptly as if a mechanism had locked into a new position.
The elf woman, who was still standing inside the iron cage a few meters behind Ash, leaned against the bars. "Hey. Are you alright?"
Ash did not answer.
He suddenly ran. "That hurt, damn it!"
The shout came together with a swing of his axe aimed straight at Jason's head. The air hissed sharply as the blade passed through, but Jason was no longer there. He ducked just in time, his knees almost brushing the ground, then in the same motion his weapon rose upward and fired.
A bright blue light shot out from the barrel, not like a bullet, but like a pillar stretching upward. Blinding and intense, it split the air above Ash's head before detonating up above. Jason rolled to the side, got up, then turned to see the result.
Part of Ash's face was destroyed, burned. It was a blue fire shot.
Ash growled, the blackened and melting skin tissue on the surface, the left cheekbone briefly visible before flesh began growing back to cover it. The expression on the face that was still half in the process of recovering was very easy to read, extremely irritated.
Ash did not wait for his face to finish healing. He attacked again immediately.
His axe swung, right, left, diagonal upward. Jason dodged every strike, stepping back, spinning, moving sideways. The mechanical sound from his weapon rang out again, longer this time, and when Ash swung the axe from above, Jason leapt back three steps and aimed the barrel of his weapon.
Fire.
Not a small spark. A massive gust of orange-white flame shot from the tip of the weapon and struck Ash before he could dodge. The heat swallowed his body instantly, burning his clothes, skin, and hair within seconds. Several onlookers who had been watching from a distance immediately scattered. A small child was quickly pulled by his mother behind a stall.
"Let's see if fire can finish you," said Jason.
Inside the fire, there was movement.
Ash stepped out from the blast of flame with parts of his body still burning, his clothes tattered and blackened, but his feet did not stop. He swung his axe again, and again, and again.
Jason kept dodging, moving backward with measured steps, letting each strike pass a few centimeters from his body without retaliating. It was too easy for him to dodge, and that only made Ash swing harder.
One wide swing that missed left Ash's body open for a moment. Jason took the opportunity. He gripped his weapon with both hands and swung it like a baseball bat, knocking Ash's axe away hard. The weapon flew from Ash's grip and clattered to the ground several meters away.
Ash did not stop, now he came forward with clenched fists.
Jason stepped back again, one step, two steps. But the fourth step never came. His feet stopped suddenly, his body lost balance, and when he looked down, he understood.
His shoelaces, both tied neatly to each other, holding his steps in place.
"WHAT!"
Jason turned his head toward the elf woman inside the iron cage. She was still standing inside, one hand wrapped around a bar, a thin smile visible on her face.
"This is your doing, you damn fairy?!"
Shiva only tilted her head slightly, her smile unchanged.
Ash's fist struck Jason's chest squarely and deep. Jason's body lifted off the ground, flew several meters backward, then slammed into the rear of the tactical vehicle parked along the roadside with a loud sound of crushing metal. The car window cracked from the inside. Jason slid down and fell to the ground, motionless.
From where they had been fighting before, Bruno was still standing frozen, his body trembling with fear. When Ash glanced at him, Bruno immediately ran away in a panic.
Ash stood in the middle of the road. Parts of his body were still smoking. He patted his arm, then his shoulder, putting out the remaining fire still alive on his clothes that could no longer be called intact. The skin that had burned earlier closed back slowly, mixed with thin smoke curling from between the scorched fabric.
His expression remained the same, irritated.
The elf woman clapped twice from inside her cage. "Well done. Now please find me the key to this cage. One of his men was carrying it earlier, the one in ...."
Ash walked toward the cage, but not to look for the key.
He gripped two iron bars with both hands. His muscles tensed, and slowly, the bars began to bend. One to the left, the other to the right, opening a gap wide enough for the elf woman to slip through by bending slightly.
The elf woman looked at the gap, then looked at Ash.
Ash stretched his hand toward Shiva, his palm facing upward. "My wallet."
The elf woman blinked. She stared at the wallet still in her grip, her eyes uncertain, not quite sure whether Ash had fought those people just to get his wallet back. With some hesitation, she handed it over.
Ash took it without saying a word, then walked away.
The elf woman wiped her hands on the side of her pants, stepped out through the gap in the cage, then followed behind Ash with quick steps. "Hey, where are you going?"
Ash did not answer. He walked back into the eatery where he had eaten earlier.
The elf woman stood in front of the door he had left open, waiting. From inside the eatery came the sound of a few brief words, the slight scrape of a table, then footsteps.
Ash came back out, still with the same flat expression as if nothing had happened.
"You came back to pay for your food?" asked the elf woman. "What for? The owner already let it go. I heard it myself just now."
"He let it go because of the situation." Ash started walking again, heading out of the city. "That is not a reason to not pay."
The elf woman walked beside him, one step behind. She studied his back for a moment, the tattered clothes, the edge of the fabric still singed at one corner.
"By the way," she said, "my name is Shiva. What is your name?"
"Ash."
"Ash." Shiva repeated it as if testing how it sounded. "Where are you going, Ash?"
"Ironclad."
"Ironclad is in the eastern region."
"I know."
Shiva slowed her pace slightly, then looked in the direction they were heading before glancing back at the intersection they had just passed. Her eyes narrowed.
"But you are heading north."
***
In a city surrounded by high walls in the Eastern Region, the afternoon sky was filled with the constant movement of flying vehicles weaving between towers and buildings packed together with almost no gap between them. The city stood like a machine that never stopped, every part of it moving, every corner filled with technology working without rest.
A small aircraft cut through the airway above the city center, descending slowly toward one of the buildings in the middle of the district. Not the tallest building, not the most grand, but every person living in this city knew the name of that building and knew what was inside it.
The aircraft landed.
From the open door, Jacker stepped down. His body was upright, his posture trained, but the way he walked this morning carried none of that uprightness at all. Each step was heavy, like feet that knew where they had to go but did not want to arrive. His hands did not swing freely at his sides, instead slightly clenched, relaxed, then clenched again.
He had no other choice.
The large door ahead of him opened from the inside before his hands touched anything. Sweat dampened his forehead and his eyes carried the look of someone seeing a grim future ahead of him.
***