Disclaimer: Don't own nothing, so leave me alone.
A/N: For CrapPishh's fanfic challenge, with the theme of Change. Considering what my previous fic was about (Change), I'm guessing it may not turn out very different from the Sentinel fic.
Like the previous one, it'll be set in the universe of The Lone Crusader, but this time it won't revolve around an insignificant sentinel – this time it revolves around Ryden, several years into the war.
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS! I'm going to try to refrain from revealing too much, but reading this will give major hints to what happens in the future of TLC!
A Change
The intruder's footsteps echoed ever so lightly throughout the dim, desolate corridors of the building, a ghost of a sound in the face of the oppressive silence that gripped the entire complex.
All around him, conveyor belts rested still, giant machines lay silent. Several years ago this place, and its workers, had once thrived with life and brightness, bringing joy to the town around it with the toys it manufactured, but now the lights remained dark, and power no longer ran through circuits that once thrummed with it. Posts stood unmanned, levers and panels caked with dust. The intruder passed all these with but a cursory glance – he had no interest in trivial details.
He was headed for the core of this place.
Minutes passed, and the intruder pressed deeper and deeper into the complex, the atmosphere growing darker and more oppressive with every step he took downward. If anybody had been there to watch his passage, they only would have seen a shade of movement, black upon black, slinking through the shadows like a ghost.
As the intruder reached the very bottom level of what remained of Ludibrium's Toy Factory, he suddenly flinched, stopping short as though suddenly burned, and quickly backed up against a nearby pillar, pressing his back to it.
Right at the door just beyond where he hid, stood three guards, ramrod straight at attention and eyes vigilant, their fingers gripping their weapons solidly. The guard closest to the door, a Dragon Knight, held onto his Serpent's Tongue tightly, eyes wide and alert as he watched the darkness ahead for any potential threat. The second guard, standing in front and towards the left of the door was a fire-poison mage, holding on to a Kage staff, his eyes just as alert as the Dragon Knight behind him. The foremost guard, standing only slightly in front of the second guard and towards to right side of the door, was a Ranger, his Olympus held at the ready.
The intruder grinned. Three guards only – this would be too easy.
The katana resting by his side thrummed lightly with anticipation, but the man patted it lightly, assuaging it for now. It would shed the blood it desired, but later.
Now was the time for stealth.
Silently, the intruder formed a few strange hand signs in rapid succession, and whispered the words of power.
Peeking his head out just enough for him to be able to see the eyes of the guards, the intruder's own orbs flashed blood red for an instant, his irises turning coal black with a crimson six-sided star situated in its centre. His eyes met those of the guard standing closest to the door, and immediately the Dragon Knight collapsed, twitching and convulsing while foaming at the mouth.
His two comrades immediately turned towards him, surprise dominating their expressions, and the intruder's grin only widened.
Oh yes, this was going to be so easy.
As his eyes returned to normal, the intruder slinked around the pillar he was hiding without even a whisper of sound, coming up behind the ranger and crushing his throat soundlessly with a gauntlet surrounded by flame.
Before the guard's gurgling body had even hit the floor, the intruder was already moving towards his final victim, the mage who was still staring, shocked, at the twitching form of the Dragon Knight, and had only begun to hear the death rattle of his other comrade.
Before he could turn around, there was the sickening sound of flesh tearing, and the end of a blade emerged from the mage's chest, slick with his own blood. The magician died with only a sigh, and the intruder swiftly withdrew the blade from his victim's body to let it fall to the floor with a dull thud, flicking the blood off the blade and smoothly sheathing the katana.
Raising a hand to his left ear where a tiny black bud nested, he tapped it lightly.
"All clear, Zer."
"Roger that." His partner on this mission replied. "I'm on my way."
Moments later he arrived, coming up next to the intruder with the same lack of noise following his movements, and he stared down at the still twitching form of the prone Dragon Knight distastefully, though the distaste wasn't directed at the incapacitated guard.
"You used the Tsukuyomi again, didn't you Ryden?"
The crusader shrugged. "It was the quickest and most effective way for me to get him out of the way. I used it."
Zeraion glanced again at the convulsing body in front of him, and back to the crusader's nearly-black, dark brown eyes before shuddering inwardly. Those eyes had gotten even darker ever since Zeraion had seen him again when GDI managed to take over Ossyria, and it unnerved him. Before Ryden had disappeared on them, there had been some spark of life in his orbs before, and no matter how hedonistic or wild that spark was, there was still that spark that Zeraion could see clearly.
But when he came back, Ryden's eyes were as still and dead as a graveyard.
Zeraion could only wonder what horrors Ryden had gone through to have his eyes deaden like that, but if there was one thing the ranger knew, it was that for one to be able to inflict unimaginable pain upon others, one would have to have had that pain first inflicted upon oneself.
The shuddering Dragon Knight in front of him was testament to how much Ryden had been changed. Deciding to be merciful, Zeraion lifted up the Abyssal Arund, and put a Soul Arrow through the Necropolis Dragon Knight's head – the twitching abruptly stopped.
"I don't remember you being like this, Ryden." Zeraion commented as the two strode through the door the Necropolis soldiers had been guarding. "Cocky as you were, I never knew you as one to torture opponents until they went insane. You always made it quick and clean if you could."
"I did kill the other two quickly." The crusader responded impassively as the two emerged through the doorway into the Lost Path of Time. "And since when was it your business how I dispose of my enemies?"
The detached, emotionless tone in Ryden's voice cut more deeply into Zeraion than any anger or irritation could have. He wasn't used to Ryden being this cold – the crusader had surely maintained his cockiness, but there was none of the wild abandon and passion that Ryden used to possess in all his actions.
As the two of them began leaping from ledge to ledge, heading deeper and deeper into the time-warped dimension, Zeraion found himself wishing that he'd never brought it up in the first place.
"Never mind then. It's nothing."
The two continued in absolute silence from then on, the only sound Zeraion heard being the wind whistling past them as they journeyed further downwards.
The crusader didn't even need to put any thought into jumping correctly – his legs moved of their own accord, landing and leaping with perfect timing and coordination as he jumped from ledge to ledge, Zeraion following close behind him.
Instead, his mind was wrapped up by Zeraion's latest words to him. The ranger had a point, but what did he know of the pain Ryden had gone through? What did he know of experiencing both physical and mental trauma so intense that it was all he could do not to rip out his heart with his own hands just to put himself out of his misery? He had experienced the full wrath of the Tsukuyomi himself, and at her hands no less… He knew full well the kind of agony he was inflicting upon his enemies now. And they deserved every ounce of mind-shredding pain that they got. Hackers and murderers deserved no less.
It seemed to have been entire lifetimes ago, back when he was still innocent and naïve, not to mention absolutely, disgustingly weak, that he remembered hearing Smith say the words, "I walk the fine line between killer and executioner," – now he understood what the Koaxian had meant. And with that comprehension, came the strength that once only the Koaxian had possessed.
Zeraion and others like the ranger may see him as a cold-blooded, merciless killer, but as he caressed the handle of his Deathbringer, he knew what he truly was.
Like his Deathbringer, he too, was an executioner.
Behind deadened, dark brown eyes, a tiny, repressed part of the crusader's mind recoiled at the destroyer he had become.
A/N: Reviews pl0x. I hope this one wins the fic challenge xD