Fuck! Where is he!?
Ajax feels goosebumps as a chill goes down his spine, one that seems to be originating solely from his mind. Letting Orin get away is not something he’s willing to let happen. If his opponent flees, then he's only given him an opportunity to create ambushes and to buy time to think of their own counters to his own abilities.
In the worst case, Orin might be trying to find an actual hostage.
Just like that woman…
There was also the more insidious possibility that Orin actually leaves the area and licks his wounds in preparation for another terrorist attack where Ajax isn’t there to stop him. If he gets away and attacks another group of demihumans in another city or province, Ajax would feel self-hatred enough to want to kill himself. That kind of negligence…
Ajax sprints through the hallway, extinguishing the white flames still in his path as he reaches the stairwell. The fires leave a trail that leads upstairs making Ajax sigh a breath of relief in the fact that his opponent didn't do the smart thing and run away. Orin hasn't abandoned his mission to collapse this building.
Nevertheless, Ajax grits his teeth at having let Orin go like this.
Mistakes like that will only lead to people getting killed… I need to kill him now… now… now…
He clutches his face in both hands and groans. He combs his hair back with his fingers and starts following the flame trails with a superhuman sprint. He would really like to cry right now. His mind is only facing constant pressure.
For a moment, he contemplates why he is the one who was forced to handle this burden. He knows that he is not a hero, that he's not meant to be one. He's not someone who can go far enough to do what needs to be done, he is sure of that.
He knows people who deserve his powers more than he does. Prisca is someone like that. Shaula is someone like that.
If only she were here… she wouldn't be messing up like I am. She would have killed this guy before he drank the vial. She would have already dealt with the third group of terrorists by now.
Ajax can only peer into the depths of his inadequacy. He wants to be better than he is. He wants to save everyone who he can see, but he doesn't believe he would act further than that unless Shaula herself asked that of him.
In truth, he's not someone who would seek out people to save. He's not someone with the will to become a vigilante, let alone a superhero. If he had not come to the festival of Gwasila today, he might not have gotten involved in any of this. In the best case, Shaula would have talked him into coming out here and he would have let her handle the most difficult stuff.
But right before his eyes, he saw the possibility of terrorists killing hundreds of innocent people, demihumans who were only trying to live their lives. People like that woman and her daughter who he had helped save earlier from the retribution of the mob. If he wasn't here today, she might have surely died and her child would be orphaned.
But if Shaula was here instead of me… No. No! I'm here right now. I'm the only one here! She's not going to pull me out of this mess. I'm going to stop him. I'm the only one right now who can stop him! The only one…
Ajax reaches a charred wooden stairwell entrance that Orin had broken through. This is the fourth floor. He enters the doorway and sees the enemy standing there right in the middle of the hallway. Orin didn't just run away. He didn't even try to spread the fire to other floors. If he had thrown his flames into different floors, his objective of destroying this building would have been achieved much faster.
At the very least he would have slowed Ajax down considerably. However, Ajax had listened into the stairwell doors leading into the hallways of the floors below that Orin had passed. He had heard no sound of flames crackling within them.
Is he not going to suicide bomb this entire place? Does he… want to live? Ajax wonders to himself. Why else wouldn't he just do what he came here to do? Realistically, I'm just one person, and with his speed he could easily outmaneuver me to destroy as much of the building as he wants to. Unless he doesn't want it to collapse on top of him too.
The burning opponent is just waiting here. However, he looks different to Ajax. It seems to him that his blind throwing had done some damage.
Orin is still healing his injuries right now. The burning man stares at Ajax with a pained expression, his jaw clenched. After he was hit in his left side and started running, Ajax had gotten three more successful hits. He was hit in the back under his left scapula by a small pellet that broke a rib. He was also hit in his right hamstring as well as his hip extremely close to his lower vertebrae.
If Ajax was just a bit more accurate, he might have paralyzed Orin from the waist down or even castrated him. He had been trying to repair what damage he could and used healing magic to close his blood vessels while also restoring his torn muscles. A hit to his lower spinal nerves or genitals is something that he would not have the expertise to heal.
He isn't bleeding anymore and he has successfully numbed his pain, bringing himself back into the fight. Still, his body had been brought to the brink of stability thanks to the projectiles that Ajax had thrown at him. He feels fear at how quickly the boy had devised a strategy like that. Even though he has no fighting prowess, he's cunning.
He finally understood the danger that Ajax posed to his plans, to his entire organization in general. Which is why he's decided not to fight a battle of attrition and is now seeking to finish his opponent off with his full power through offensive combat.
His entire body erupts with white fire.
