Genie

Genie (Spirit) is one of Ash Crimson's Special Moves in The King of Fighters series.

Description
Ash blows a kiss that makes a green flame appear with its distance varying on the button pressed, exploding on impact. The version from  places the flame between the  and  versions whilst from  tracks down the opponent's position, with both of them have faster startups.

Strategy
Ash places a flame on screen which explodes when the opponent walks near it. A unique trap-like projectile that can give Ash a lot of block or hit advantage if it works. Placing one somewhere on screen while throwing Ventoses can make for a difficult to navigate maze of hitboxes. However, the explosion is not very large and not very damaging, so the threat is minimal, especially against aggressive opponents that will likely just run past it. However it can be useful to keep turtling opponents stuck, as well as an oki option against unaware opponents.

The version from  is designed to be placed specifically where your opponent would be pushed back if cancelled from a heavy normal. This leads to some of Ash's strongest combos as it causes a launch. It's also safe on block making it non-committal, aside from the meter usage. Because this only combos from heavy normals, and Ash doesn't have any multi-hitting heavies or cancellable command normals, knowing when Ash gets a guaranteed heavy normal punish can vastly improve your overall damage.

The version from  on the other hand, tracks the opponent's position, allowing you to tag opponents from anywhere. This is a fantastic anti-zoning tool as you don't have to worry about clashing fireballs. The start up is slower than version so you can't combo into this, but it recovers faster leading to much more block and hit advantage.

Stating with the KOF XV Patch ver. 2.10, Ash can create a second Genie while one is already on-screen. Doing so will cause the first Genie to explode, which can create interesting traps and setups.