Luna returned to her body much earlier than she had been anticipating. She had not expected Ryan to send her away like that, especially with the coming moment being so important. She wanted to be able to support him, make sure he came out alright, but clearly this was not meant to be. Luna had her trepidations about leaving, of course. Her powers would have proven useful to Ryan in his last push to end Narendra’s reign of terror. But Ryan had weighed the goods and the evils of what he was about to do. He didn’t want to see another flame of innocence snuffed out by the cold, indifferent wind of life. Deep down, he did have a bit of nobility left in him. He wanted to protect all things clean and innocent, even if it made his life harder.

Maybe that was a part of why he sent Luna away? Without her help, he could be killed. With his death, that would just be one more terrible thing removed from the world. Yet, how could he be terrible if he was trying to protect the things in his world worth preserving? How can a man be evil if his intentions are so noble? But then, Luna had to weigh that desire with his real goal; revenge. His goals conflicted in their humanitarianist values. His actions were far from noble, but because of them, he was going to make the world a better, safer place. Could he be neutral? Is it possible to be neutral, to be neither good nor evil, in a world that forces one to choose?

Luna looked down into the water of her pool longingly, yearning for Ryan to allow her to come back. Alas, he was not about to do that. He was taking in the river and the compound next to it, elaborating with himself on how he would proceed.

“I’ll never abandon my friends, Ryan.” Luna whispered, going prone on the floor. “Never.”

And so she simply laid there, watching as her human friend began his advance into the river.

***********************************************************************************

Through the torrential downpour, Ryan could just see the compound sitting rigid against the riverside. It was coldly gray, uninviting of potential unwanted guests. This wasn’t about to stop Ryan. He briefly considered his options of approach. He was going to have to swim across the river, one way or another. He could go across and onto the other side, approaching from the land. But there probably wouldn’t be any conveniently placed vines like the previous attempt. To do that, it would likely mean going in through the front door. As much as they probably wouldn’t expect that, they would likely be able to cut him down with gunfire right after the doorway. This left him with the option of swimming over to the compound itself and trying to figure something out over there. At the base of the wall, he could see a large pipe leading into the river, oozing out some mildly brown sludge.

“There.” Ryan said emotionlessly.

He pulled out his pistol and started to make his way into the water. He had to be careful; there could be any number of dangerous animals. Or he could find a sudden decline and fall right into the water, soaking his pistol. He held the M1911 up high, wanting to avoid letting it get wet. If the pistol were soaked and filled with water, it would no doubt mess up the firing mechanism or the magazine. Slowly, he trudged through the mud over to the water, his feet making loud sucking noises as they came out of the ground each time. You ever had to walk through knee-high mud? It ain’t easy. His shoes barely stayed on his feet throughout the walk.

“Glad I double knotted.” he thought. The mud was filling any air filled crevices inside his shoes, making them heavier and heavier each time he stepped. When he finally reached the water, he let out a small sigh of relief. “Damn mud.” he said, almost indifferent about the mud really. He was waist high in the river now, holding the gun in his hand above his head.

He stopped in his tracks. Over on the compound, a light was shining around the area. It was a spotlight, and a bright one too. It swung left and right on its stand, bathing whatever it pointed at in bright light. After a moment, it passed over Ryan, temporarily blinding him, and causing him so shield his eyes. It stayed there for a moment, warming Ryan with its powerful rays.

“Please don’t have seen me...” The light moved away, once again leaving Ryan in his cold darkness. “Phew.” He looked back forward at the light source, a scowl appearing on his face. “Guess I’ll need to be on the lookout too.” He waded forward into the water.

The freezing river and rain were sapping Ryan of his body heat, but he did his best to ignore it. Rightnow, he had a goal, and an important one at that. A little bit of cold for a few minutes wasn’t going to kill him, so it wasn’t a problem. Using his left hand and legs to propel himself forward while he held the gun up in his right, Ryan kept an eye on the light.

“It probably didn’t see me from that distance.” he thought. “But as I close in, I’ll need to avoid it.” As if on cue, the light began to swing back Ryan’s way. “Shit!” he whispered loudly as it came closer. Clenching the pistol and keeping it just above the water, Ryan dunked the rest of himself under to avoid being seen. He was already soaking wet, so this didn’t really change anything. And with the water reflecting back most of the light, the odds of his pistol being seen weren’t very high. Painfully, he held his eyes open under the water as the light passed overhead, and he released his breath slowly to avoid making too many bubbles or float back up to the surface. The light passed over him without even taking a second glance.

“Good.” he thought as he shot his head out of the water to catch his breath. He wasn’t worried about the noise; the rain would cover that up.

After the close encounter with the spotlight, Ryan made a beeline for the pipe at the base of the wall. The rain poured on his head as he made his way there, trying to shove him back under the water and keep him there. Not relenting to the weather, Ryan soldiered on, swimming for the pipe. Every time the spotlight went over him, he repeated his first set of actions, diving under except for his gun and continuing forward.

He reached the pipe, grateful for something to hold onto to avoid going back under the water. Swimming wasn’t his greatest attribute, and it tired him rather easily. “Wishing I had done more of that.” he said to himself, somewhat disappointed in his inability to swim that simple distance without difficulty. He observed the pipe. It was huge, at least four feet tall and wide, and was only about half submerged in the water. Though, if this rain kept up, the tunnel would likely not be available again after maybe twenty to thirty more minutes. “Gotta go fast.” Ryan said, carefully avoiding submerging his pistol as he got into the tunnel. It smelled awful. It was raw sewage, almost purely, and he was going upstream in it. Ryan did his best to hold in a gag as he started to make his way down the tunnel.

***********************************************************************************

Luna watched almost disbelievingly as Ryan swam across the river, avoiding the spotlight by dunking himself every time it came around. But she noticed something odd. “Before, it stopped on him for a moment.” She thought about the potential implications. “There’s no way they could have seen him, not at that distance in such massive rain.” she concluded. She kept watching. Ryan was at the wall soon after his first encounter with the light in the water. “Are you..?” He was. Luna watched as Ryan climbed into a sewage pipe and began to awkwardly walk his way down the tunnel. Luna gagged at the sight. “I suppose,” she started, holding in her gag reflex. “One must do what one must in order to move forward.” As disgusted as she was by this choice of travel methods, she was also a bit impressed. “He’s certainly not afraid to go through the worst to do this.” Little did she really know, he already had.

***********************************************************************************

Ryan was in a dark tunnel, the only light coming from the occasional dumping of waste from one of the many holes that lined the top of the pipe. Twice already, Ryan had been struck on the back of the head by falling waste. One time, it was a milk carton. The other, someone had bad diarrhea. Before letting more of it hit him, Ryan moved away from the diarrhea shute. He heard more of it plop into the water behind him. Not looking back, he continued forward, hoping that the tunnel would take him somewhere. There had to be a way out; otherwise, how would any problems down there be fixed, if they couldn’t access it?

He continued forward, not thinking about what he was crawling in. He thought about why. He thought about how. He thought about his next move, what he would do when he got out of the tunnel. He would once again find himself in the belly of the beast, a parasite that it had no idea it had contracted. He would slowly kill it from the inside.

A light shone from another corridor off to his front. It was much brighter than any of the lights that came from the ceiling above him that would always be followed by waste matter. No, this light illuminated the area around it much brighter, and it wasn’t stopping. From that area, Ryan could hear no drops being loosed. He doubled up his pace, intent on getting out of the hellishly smelly and likely bacteria-ridden tunnel. As he made his way forward, he could start to hear voices from the lighted area.

“Khi bạn muốn khi một ngôi sao...” The voice was hard to make out, but Ryan could tell that it was a man, lightly singing some little tune to himself. He retarded his pace as he approached the lighted area. No need to alert him that something was on its way up the pipeline.

Ryan stopped just before he went into the light, eavesdropping on the man and his song. “Nếu trái tim của bạn là trong giấc mơ của bạn, không có yêu cầu là quá cực đoan...” Ryan peeked around the corner, ready to yank his head back if the man saw him. Luckily, the man didn’t see him. He was wearing overalls, denim, and had several tools on a belt around his waist and wrapped over his shoulder. He was facing away from the pipe, looking over some machine about seven feet from the pipe. A number of nails lay about the ground around him, a hammer there to complete the set. Ryan kept watching him for a bit longer, trying to discern just how focused he was on his current task. After he didn't turn around, Ryan figured it was as good a time as any to get moving.

He slowly made his way out of the pipe, holstering his pistol and doing his best to avoid letting the water and waste that was dripping off of him make too much noise as it hit the ground. As he landed, his mud-filled shoes made a big squish as the mud tried to force its way out. Ryan looked forward, terrified that he may have alerted the plumber guy to his presence. He wasn’t turning around. Ryan wiped his forehead, glad that he wasn’t totally screwed. As he did so, he scanned the room, searching for his avenue of entrance to the rest of the building. The only way out was through a door that was just in front of the plumber and his machine. Ryan frowned.

“If I must...” He walked forward, careful not to make too much noise, and looked at the ground. The nails and hammer were just below him. He picked up the hammer and held flipped it around. Holding the wedge end just before touching the man’s head, Ryan took aim. “I’m sorry.” The man started to react, but couldn’t finish as the wedge end of a hammer found its way through the right side of his skull with a resounding whack. He fell to the floor, the temple of his skull collapsed by the hammer. Ryan yanked it back out, pulling blood and brain matter out with it. It was a huge hammer.

Ryan gave a once-over to the hammer. It was big, a foot long from one end to the other, with an enlarged head. It was obviously meant for borderline industrial nails. He looked to the door and, hanging the hammer on a spot on his vest, continued on through.

***********************************************************************************

Luna watched and, though she did her best to steel herself from this, she felt herself vomit a little. She hadn’t expected Ryan to use an everyday tool like that to take a life so brutally and quickly. And then he walked away like it meant nothing.

Luna thought shortly about the implications of this one action brought. If a hammer could be used as a weapon, what other regular tools could be as well? Saws? Almost certainly, with those sharp teeth. Wrenches? They were quite heavy.

“My word, hospitals hold some of the most dangerous potential weapons.” Scalpels, syringes, bone saws, and other medical tools could obviously be very dangerous. Luna shuddered. “I’ll just have to pretend I never saw that.”

Now she understood why Ryan sent her away.

***********************************************************************************

Harris looked across the river at the compound, which he could barely see through all the rain. It was big, with plenty of lights visible on its side. There seemed to be a pipe at the base of a wall on the river, but it was almost totally submerged under the water. It was clearly not an option for entry. Not that it mattered. With all the sludge coming from it, Harris wasn’t intent on going that way anyway.

Discord had forgotten to keep Harris dry, but that didn’t matter. Harris was going to have to swim across the river anyway. Carefully, he began to make his way to the water. The mud sucked off his shoes almost immediately, and he found himself traveling barefoot to the compound.

“Note to self; steal some shoes once I’m inside.” He slipped into the cold river and started swimming for the other side.

Above him, Discord kept a close eye on the compound. The lights weren’t moving, save for one, so there only seemed to be one spotlight. As it moved, Discord would distort the light when it got too close to Harris. Whoever was pointing it around didn’t seem to notice, as the light just kept swinging in its regular intervals. He took a quick look down at Harris. He seemed to be doing fine, keeping his body except for his head below the water. It took him some time to get across the river and over to the other side. During that time, Discord was taking a note of all their surroundings. The river was flowing very slowly, and the water level was rapidly increasing. Now, the pipe was barely visible at all. Whoever was on the spotlight had opted to go inside, probably to get out of the rain. Discord knew that he certainly would.

Harris made it to the other side of the river. Slowly but surely, he was getting his footing on the shallow end of the river, pushing himself forward to the shore. He had to be careful, though, because the mud on the bottom had the ability to grab him and suck him into the murky brown depths. To avoid this, he grabbed anything he could to pull himself forward, mostly vines. Several just came loose and floated on into the river, but Harris was able to get enough that were stable to get himself to land. Once there, he put one foot in front of the other, like a baby taking its first steps, until he made it onto the land. He would constantly look back at the building to make sure that he wasn’t being seen or watched; that would put a quick end to his endeavor. Each time he confirmed that he was safe, he would increase his pace to avoid the risk of being seen. After several minutes, he was back on dry land.

Once on land, Harris took careful observations of his surroundings, looking for any way into the building that he could locate. He spotted vines hanging off the side, but Narendra and his goons must have figured out that that was how they got in last time, and they were all cut down. Off towards the front of the compound, away from the river about eighty feet, there was a makeshift driveway with several cars lined up in it.

“Guess he’s entertaining guests.” Harris said to himself. Discord floated down to him.

“Best watch yourself in there, Harris.” Harris nodded curtly and inched his way over to the wall, the pebbles beneath his feet stabbing at him and rolling under him like the spiked ball on a flail. Trying his best to zone out the pain, he started to crawl his way forward on his hands and knees. When this, too, proved painful, he just started to walk again. By the time he reached the wall, his feet felt like they had been lashed by an oiled whip. He stood against the wall.

“Goddam, I got to get a pair of shoes in there.” he concluded once again.

Discord took his eyes off of Harris, who was leaning against the wall catching his breath, and looked around for an entrance that Harris may have missed. Yes, the vines were cut. Could Harris jump up to the remaining pieces? Probably not. He looked around again. There were no other areas where he could scale the wall, but there was one thing that stood out against the dull, gray wall; a window.

“Harris,” he said, pointing at the window. Harris looked at Discord, then followed where his finger was pointing with his eyes. “There.” Harris saw the window, and if his eyes had glowed any more, he would have been spotted by Narendra’s men from a mile off in this storm. He watched as Harris quickly moved for the window, stepping carefully the whole way there. Human feet shouldn’t be so sensitive if they’re used all the time for walking.

Harris stopped just before the window, trying to listen for any sounds that might come from the other side. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t hear anything over the pouring rain. He decided to risk taking a look, unholstering his pistol the way he thought that Ryan would. As he pulled it out, Discord looked at it.

“Can't have a waterlogged weapon,” he said, using his magic to remove the water. “Now can we?” Harris didn’t hear him as he began to look through the window.

Inside, there were no people in the room, but it was clearly a room of residence. People lived in this room, at least two, since there were two beds and dressers and such in the room. He put his hands on the window slowly and with great care. If there was someone under the window, this could be his last unlucky day. After pushing it for a second, he figured out that it was a window that opened outward, away from the wall. Getting a tiny, but still very strong, grip on the edge, Harris began to pull the window open. When it was an inch or two from the wall, he got his fingers under it and pulled harder, opening it all the way. No doubt, the sounds of the rain were now filling the room, so he had to move fast. He pulled the 3’x5’ window all the way open and dove in.

Apparently, today was not his last unlucky day; it was one of many very lucky days. No one was under the window, there wasn’t even a piece of furniture. Harris rolled in ungracefully, slamming into the floor with a loud thud. He recovered rapidly, though, and shot over to the window, shutting it once more. Automag raised, he stopped and listened for any potential threats from the open doorway that he noticed as he dove in. When he heard none, he shut the door and scanned the room. Shoes. He needed shoes. Like a cat on the prowl, Harris skulked about the room, searching under the beds first, then moving onto the dressers. In the bottom shelf of one, he was able to find a pair of boots.

“Not my preference.” he said to himself. Discord entered the room through the wall. “But they’ll do just fine.” After slipping on the boots and taking a few experimental steps with them, he went back over to the door and pressed his ear against it. No noise. This was too strange. Nonetheless, he put his hand on the knob and began to turn it, cracking the door open. No one was in sight. “Discord, can you tell if anyone is actually in the building?” Harris whispered loudly.

After several moments of silence, Discord responded. “There are a LOT of guys here, Harris. Tread lightly.”

Discord floated right behind Harris as he proceeded through the building. He couldn’t tell where all the hostiles were, just that there were plenty of them to go around. He could also sense that Ryan was somewhere in the building, but he couldn’t say where for him either. He just floated along behind Harris, keeping an eye on his six for him and listening for any noise that Harris might miss. Harris had gone right from the room, back towards the river. At the end of the hall, there was a staircase that winded up in a big, fancy looking spiral. As he got closer to the base, Harris abated his pace, keeping his eyes interminably glued on the staircase and its canopy. On it, there were no enemies.

Voices were heard from the hall behind Harris. Discord looked over there, but no one was in the hall. Whoever owned the voices must have been in another hall in the other direction. By the sound of it, they were getting much closer. “Harris, up the stairs, NOW!” Discord shouted, causing Harris to freak out a little bit. Still, Harris obeyed, and he sprinted to the stairs and ran up, skipping two steps every time he lifted his legs. By the time he was at the top, which was only less than four seconds, he was out of breath and listening intently. He couldn’t hear the voices. Discord, though, at the base of the stairs, could still hear them. But, they weren’t approaching Harris’ location. Rather, they were fading now, and sounded quite elated about something. With his translation spell, Discord only managed to catch, “Yeah, they can never stop us.” “We will always get away to fight another day.” Choosing to disregard this, Discord went up the stairs, not noticing what sounded like a struggle in the distance.

At the top of the stairs, Discord met back up with Harris, who had recovered nicely from his intense physical exertion. He was crouching, on his heels, waiting for Discord rather impatiently. “You’re good.” he told him. Harris looked like he had dropped six twenty pound sandbags at hearing this, and fell onto his rear.

“Thank God.” he said, resting his forearms on his knees. After a moment of this, Discord was the impatient one. He stood up.

“Let’s get moving Harris.” He didn’t even know where they were trying to go; neither did Harris, really. They were just trying to be around for in case Ryan found that which he had likely crawled through hitting the fan.

At the top of the stairs, there was only one way to go. There was a door, a big steel door, that probably led outside. As Harris got closer to it, he tried once again to listen for any noise on the other side. All he got was the staticky sound of rain water pounding the building. Discord’s guess was confirmed as Harris opened the door and water shot inside. The door led out onto the roof.

Harris slowly walked through the door and outside. The rain had let up only slightly, still making it hard to see, but the previous darkness was fading. Now, he could see the guy handling the spotlight which he had seen earlier, lazily sitting next to it, swiveling it about while smoking a big cigar. Harris scrunched his nose; even in this rain, he could still smell the big stick of cancer. Quietly, though not terribly so, because the rain covered up a lot of noise, Harris snuck past the guard and onto another area of the roof. He wasn’t going to kill anyone that he didn’t have to. As he walked past, Discord looked over to the guard.

“No unnecessary risks.” he thought. As Harris turned a corner, Discord snapped his fingers, and an audible snap came from the man’s neck. He slumped over in his chair, the cigar falling from his open maw. Discord blinked twice.

“That was easier than it should have been.” He made a mental note to never do that again.

Harris walked along the second story roof, along a wall that led into a second story set of rooms that he didn’t care about. Under his new boots, the gravel of the roof crunched and shifted around. Combined with the water running under his feet, this made it difficult for Harris to move about. He had to move slowly to avoid losing his footing to the ground beneath him. Over him, Discord chuckled silently to himself that he didn’t have to walk around. Maybe the timing was inappropriate, but a good laugh is always nice, isn’t it?

Harris made his way over to the end of the roof that was away from the water. Once there, he sat against the slightly raised wall, giving himself a moment to break from the tiring excursion which he was willfully undertaking. As he sat there, though, he heard more voices from below. Taking the chance, he looked over the edge, Discord taking a spot doing the same next to him. Below, Harris could easily make out a group of five men, with potentially more underneath the roof. He froze, now wanting to attract attention to himself. From underneath, four more men walked out. At the lead was a smug looking Narendra, saying something in a language that Harris didn’t know. What he saw next surprised him. “What the hell?”

***********************************************************************************

Ryan was about to leave through the door, but when his shoes proved to be quite heavy and noisy, he opted to ditch them first. He wouldn’t need shoes any more anyway.

Ryan began to make his way out of what seemed to be the septic room and took a left down the hall. With no idea as to where he was in relation to the rest of the building, he thought that he might as well just wing it. His knife was attached firmly to its place on his back, his pistol was in its holster, and his new hammer was in its place on his side. He had two morphine syringes left, thankfully capped and uncontaminated by the sewage water, and still had a bottle of water and a bag of Chex Mix. He dropped the Chex and down some of the water, dropping that right after. They would only slow him down, and if he needed more food, he could probably take it from this building.

Ryan pulled his knife silent as the black of night as he went left. He listened hard for any noises that would signify that an enemy was nearby. The only sound that greeted his ears was the steady, rapid tapping of rain from outside that came from the drain pipe. He moved slowly, leaving a water trail all over the floor when he moved about. He looked back at it.

“I hope this doesn’t matter.” he thought.

His jacket was dripping too much and making too much noise, so he pulled it off for a moment and wrung it dry for a minute or two. The muscles of his scarred forearms bulged at the effort, and eventually the jacket was dry enough to wear quietly. His pants were already relatively dry, being shorts, and his vest didn’t seem to absorb water. Before moving on, Ryan decided to put his vest on over his jacket for easy access. It took several precious minutes, but by the end, he was totally ready for whatever Narendra could throw at him.

Knife raised in a reinforced stabbing position, Ryan began to make his way through the hall. Now that he was much drier and more free to move, he sped up significantly, making as little noise as possible as he moved on. In this hall, he passed no rooms. Instead, there were lots of deep indents in the wall that held pumps or electronics. Whatever this place was, exactly, it was the kind of place that always had people living in it.

“Guess that means I’ll find SOMEONE then.” He kept moving, hurriedly trying to get out of the area which he just assumed was the basement. This was the last place he wanted to get made; a dank corridor with no hiding spaces.

About three quarters of the way down the hall, Ryan found a doorway that led into a staircase. Knife ready to stab and slash, he opened the door a centimeter at a time, listening hard for any men that may be nearby. Even the sound of the rain was gone at this point; absolute, deathly silence. Ryan was making no noise. The door made no noise. The rain was no longer audible, and there were no men to be heard. It made Ryan uneasy.

Nevertheless, he went through the door once he had it all the way open. Sure enough, there was no one on the other side of the door, and Ryan shut it soundlessly. He faced the stairs, unease webbing in his mind. Obviously there wouldn’t be security down here, since this was the drainage area, and no one would suspect a person of entering the way Ryan had. But that didn’t help him. There should have been people down there, at least one more than the man he had hammered in the head. After all, Narendra had to know that Ryan was coming. Having chased him down from Indonesia through Thailand, Cambodia, and now Vietnam, how could he not expect Ryan to come after him? He should have beefed up his security, which maybe he had with the spotlight. But there was no way that he could have considered that to be enough. What else awaited Ryan in this building? Cameras? Extra guards, maybe even armored? Who could tell? Ryan shuddered, not enjoying the lack of knowledge of what to expect once he entered the main building. Still, he soldiered on, ignoring his own fears and escalating up the staircase.

At the top, he found another door, of course. He opened it a little bit more quickly this time, not wanting to create suspicion by opening the door so slowly. He wished he had thought of this before.

“I could have been shot through the door, if there had been people.” He made a mental note to just be prepared when he opened doors from then on. As the door came open, just in front of Ryan, there was one man, armed with a Type 77A1 submachine gun, made in China. Before the man could turn around, Ryan held his knife in Icepick grip and brought it around into the side of the man’s neck. He moved back just a bit, causing it to slice into the man’s jugular and plunge into his throat. To compensate for the miss, Ryan swung his other hand around and put it over the man’s mouth, keeping any loud noise from escaping it. He followed that up with a kick to the back of the man’s knee, dropping him to the ground. Before they even got all the way down, the man was quite dead. Ryan looked at his face to determine if this was true; with all the blood cascading from the massive gash in his neck, the man would not be going anywhere.

He dropped his body onto the ground and dragged him back into the staircase, leaving behind a dark trail of blood. From holding the back of the man’s neck, there was blood all over his hands that had trickled down, and he wiped them on the man’s shirt. Before leaving the dead man in the staircase, Ryan removed his shoes and socks and donned them himself. That took care of one thing.

He left the staircase, blood still all over his hands and arms, and took a right. As he went down this new hall, he found that there were residential rooms around. As he passed each one, he looked inside. The first, on the right, contained no one, nor did it have any particular items to speak of. He left it. The second, on the left, had two men inside. He decided that attacking them would not be wise, seeing as both had submachine guns under their pillows. This must have been how Narendra prepared for Ryan’s arrival; he didn’t exactly beef up his security, but he made sure that they were more prepared. That was a big mistake. Ryan kept moving, passing each room and finding nothing.

***********************************************************************************

Luna swallowed hard at the scene which just unfolded before her. She had to look away from it as Ryan cocked his arm back to swing the blade. She had seen him brutally kill the plumber before, she didn’t need to see a potentially much more bloody struggle. From the pool, she heard some movement, then something falling lightly to the floor. She dared a peek; the man was very dead. He had a large gash on his throat, with blood gushing from the wound. Luna turned away to vomit.

When she looked back, Ryan was taking the shoes and socks off of the man’s feet. How could he do that? Just kill a man and take his clothes? Was there no respect for the dead? For certain, there was. But maybe not for all the dead? This man was clearly a bad man, having been working for Narendra. At least, that’s what Luna told herself. She had no way to know; maybe he was like Ryan, neutral? She watched as Ryan donned his new clothes and walked away from the body like it was totally normal. It was, honestly, at this point. This was his thirty-seventh kill and counting. He was desensitized.

Luna was glad that she hadn’t stuck around for all of this. As much as she wanted to help Ryan, she couldn’t have been there for all of this. Just watching was too much. To actually be there, to experience it... she shuddered at the lack of any idea of how bad it would be to be there.

***********************************************************************************

Eventually, at the last room, he looked inside and found some interesting things inside. In it, there were numerous books, a TV, a radio, and a phone. There was also a dresser and a mirror. “Well, what have we here?” Ryan whispered to himself. He walked inside, looking straight at the dresser, sheathing his knife. He walked over, taking a note of the contents on top of it. There were family pictures, tiny mementos, and other things. But they were all Narendra’s. Ryan had found his room, and was looking at his pictures. He picked one up; it was of Narendra standing happily with his wife, presumably, and two little girls. They couldn’t be any older than Joey was. Questions blew through Ryan’s wall of self-assurance.

“What will they do if I kill him?” “What will happen to them?” “Why do they deserve to suffer, after Narendra is gone?” He shook his head and tossed the picture at the wall. Now was not the time to be merciful, just because some weaker people that he didn’t know might suffer.

Opting to ignore the pictures and family oriented items, Ryan went through the dresser. In the left half, there must have been Narendra’s clothes, because they were all men’s, and he was the only man in the family. He was searching for something to keep warmer with, a scarf or something small like that. Finding nothing, he decided to look through the woman’s half, as he predicted it to be. He was right, too. In it, there were lots of adult women’s clothes. Underwear, blouses, traditional women’s outfits of the area. Only at the bottom, did Ryan find what he wanted. It was a scarf; a beautiful one, at that. It had an intricate design of a butterfly on both sides, the butterfly having astonishing blue wings and black and red lines across the wings. Outside of the picture, the scarf was a subdued shade of green. Picking it up, Ryan could feel that it was silk.

A loud gasp resounded from behind him. Clutching the scarf in his left hand and pulling his M1911 with the other, he spun around and guided his pistol to aim at the source.

It was a woman, laying in the bed, eyes agape with fear. Everything went deathly still. Ryan looked at the woman, weapon trained on her, ready to fire. She had long, black hair. Her figure was very dainty, like a hollow glass rod. She was clearly short, her legs didn’t go to the end of her small bed, and she definitely looked Vietnamese. The funny thing? She looked nothing like the woman in the photo.

The two stared at each other for a long time, neither wanting to be the first to make a move. The woman was clutching at her covers, like staying under them could stop a .45 calibre bullet from slamming into her chest. But that was not Ryan’s intent. He very slowly lowered the pistol.

“Sshhhhh.” He brought his fingers up to his lips and began to move away, the scarf in his hand.

The woman looked after him, terror stricken. Right as Ryan was about to put his hand on the door knob, a man could be heard outside. He was not talking to anyone, by the sound of it. Just to himself. The clinking of a machine gun belt was the most prominent noise from the other side of the door.

“Shit.” Ryan said quietly to himself. He looked back at the woman, who looked like she was about to faint from panic. She looked at him. Then, when their eyes locked, Hell broke loose.

The woman did just the opposite of faint; she screamed something to the man outside the door. Frantic shuffling came from outside. Ryan scowled, rage splayed across his face. “Go to hell!” He yelled, pointing the gun at the woman. Before he could fire, the door slammed open, throwing Ryan onto the floor. He rolled on contact with the cold floor, rolling back up. He had dropped his pistol.

The man who burst through the door had two belts for an MG, but no MG to go with them. Odd. Anyhow, the man looked at the woman, then at Ryan, and his eyes widened to the size of baseballs. He grabbed something from his waist and took in a deep breath. “Like hell!” Ryan wasn’t going to let him alert his buddies about this. He lunged forward, whipping out his knife and hammer, and got to swinging. His attack missed the man, who rolled out of the way, but hit his hand on the dresser, knocking his device away. Ryan’s hammered buried itself in the wall. He grunted loudly as he yanked it back out. The man on the ground reached out for his device, but Ryan kicked it away and went to swing the hammer on the man’s head. The man rolled away, standing back up as he did so. Now, both men were standing, ready to go for the kill shot.

***********************************************************************************

Luna could hardly believe what she was seeing. Ryan had raised his weapon, and to the lover of the man he was trying to kill!

She was distracted when, after a loud scream from the woman, a man burst through the door, knocking Ryan back. She observed the following brawl, less disturbed than before about the fighting. When Ryan just killed someone, it seemed much more evil. If he managed to kill this man, at least the man had a fighting chance, right?

The two men began to duke it out, one trying to call for backup, the other trying to simply get the kill. Luna watched in horror and fascination as it all played out before her.

***********************************************************************************

Ryan was not the first to make a move. The man dove forward with a ferocious roar, arms out, like he was going to try to maul Ryan like a bear would. Ryan took advantage of this and threw his weapons forward, still holding them, and both connected with the man’s chest, knocking him down. Before Ryan could follow up, the man rolled away, and stood back up in front of the bed.

Ryan moved forward as the man tried the same tactic as before. “The definition of insanity...” As the man went for the grab, or whatever he was going for, Ryan spun around three hundred-sixty degrees, swinging the hammer around with him, wedge side out. The hammer connected with the man’s armpit as Ryan gave his swing a bit more of an upward momentum, and went in a good two inches, stopping the man in his tracks. He bellowed angrily, the pain excruciating as the lymph nodes in his armpit were smashed to bits. Blood seeped from his wound, wetting the hammer, more blood trickling onto Ryan’s hands. Ryan followed the hammer strike with a stab to the man’s thigh, eliciting more screams of pain from him. The blood was getting all over Ryan now, landing on his arms and even torso as it almost spewed out of his leg and armpit. With one last surge of energy, Ryan ripped the hammer out of the man’s armpit, and, swinging his wrist to be positioned correctly, brought it in one more upward arc, going straight for the man’s face. It connected, and the hammer buried itself in the man’s eye socket. He went stiff as a statue for a moment, then, as he began to grow limp, Ryan pushed him back, holding tightly to his weapons. Both men fell to the bed.

As he lay on top of the body, Ryan realized something. “Where is she?”

The answer was that she was on the floor, by the comms device, speaking into it like she was having a gun pointed at her. Luckily for her, Ryan didn’t have it at the moment, or there would be one pointed at her. He shot off the bed, ripping his tools form the man’s head, and ran over to the woman, who was crouching on the floor. She tried to scream out as she saw Ryan approach, but was cut off by a swift shoe in the mouth. As she hit the floor, she groaned loudly from the new sense of pain from the kick. On all fours, she spit out two teeth onto the floor. Before she could looked at Ryan resentfully, as she wished she could, Ryan’s foot connected with the side of her head, knocking her coldly to the floor.

Ryan looked at his work. The woman was injured, but alive, while her lackey was bleeding from the thigh, armpit, and deeply from his eye socket. One could actually see where the bone of his skull was pierced, almost revealing brain matter. Not proud, but not ashamed, Ryan scanned the floor for his pistol. Upon seeing it, he picked it back up and looked one last time at the woman.

“You got lucky today.” He re-sheathed his knife and hammer and left the room.

***********************************************************************************

Luna could hardly believe the brutality she had just bore witness to. Ryan just hammered and stabbed a man to death, puncturing his eye socket and skull with a tool that she saw her guards and builders use every day. He was about to shoot a woman when she interfered with him, and the only thing that saved her was another, much more dangerous interruption. After that, she watched him assault a defenseless woman, breaking her jaw.

Luna’s whole perception of Ryan was beginning to change, and she didn’t like it. She knew who he was; she had met him on the boat at the beginning. But she couldn’t stand to see what he was becoming, what he already was. It scared her. That someone could be good, yet do such evil things, was beyond her comprehension. No one is perfect, but such flaws were unheard of among any in Equestria, even the bad. This whole thing was changing how Luna saw the world around her.

Life’s not black and white; it’s almost exclusively shades of gray. Everything has a good effect and a bad effect. The thing that defines whether or not something is good is the severity of the darkness of that shade. The results, the motives, and the actions all decide what the shade is. And while Equestria tends to be on the lighter side, Ryan’s world seemed to have places that were extremely one or extremely the other.

It was a strange revelation to the old princess, who really should have known better.

***********************************************************************************

He didn’t look back as he left the room. His main concern was getting the hell out of the area before any more guards had the time to arrive. He decide to go right, maybe that way wouldn’t have anyone. He sprinted down the hall, trying to listen for enemies, but couldn’t hear anything besides his own rapid breathing. He reached the end of the hall in no time.

Turning right at an intersection in the hall, he froze. Also frozen before him was a group of four men, all holding rifles, crowded around a walkie-talkie. They looked at Ryan. Ryan looked at them. Without any extra noise, Ryan turned and ran back the way he came, angry yells coming from behind him.

Just after he turned the corner, bullets started to fly at the spot that he once stood in. The wall practically exploded, sending bits of concrete and lead based paint all over the floor. Ryan sprinted away as fast as he could. Already halfway down the hall, someone yelled out from all the way back. He ripped his pistol from its holster and blindly fired behind him, the gun right next to his ear. The shots were deafeningly loud, and after firing four, Ryan had a painful ring left in his ear. He couldn’t tell if he had hit someone, since he couldn’t really hear anyone yelling out. As he holstered his pistol, more shots rang out from behind, Ryan just barely being able to hear them. Around him, the walls were being torn to shreds. Thankfully, though, none of the rounds hit him.

At the end of the hall, Ryan found a door that led left. He leapt through it and shut it. He felt the door; it was at least a half inch of steel, if not more. There was also a slide lock on it, which Ryan turned gratefully, keeping out the men who just tried to crappily shoot at him. Sliding it closed, Ryan fell against the wall next to the door and sat down. Shortly after, there was banging and yelling at the door. This was proceeded by bullets slamming through the lower half of the door, then more yelling. It sounded like someone was angrily yelling at the men, but Ryan couldn’t tell. He just stood back up and got back on the move, wrapping the scarf around his neck to try to keep warmer in his dampened state.

He ran away from the door, fearing that the men may soon use explosives to open it up. He realized that he was in some kind of greenhouse, where the compound likely got all of its food. Ryan was impressed. “If I ever lived in a place so expensive,” he concluded. “I would make it self sufficient like this.” He looked around, noting all the items that looked useful, should he need them. There was a whole lot of fertilizer, a kind that he knew to be very flammable. There were various garden tools, even kamas for slicing the plants. He walked over to pick them up.

Before he got the chance, a man burst into the greenhouse from the other side of the room. Ryan’s gaze shifted quickly to assess his new opponent, and he got into a ready stance. As much as he would have loved to pick up the kamas, they were actually closer to the new guy than to Ryan. The new guy slowly and dramatically made his way toward Ryan. He was big, at least four inches taller than Ryan, and intensely muscle-bound. Slowly, he pulled out a large knife, probably a Bowie, and held it out in front of himself threateningly, a big, toothy smile splayed across his face. Ryan’s hands moved to his vest.

“Alright, Tiny.” he said. His hand went for the pistol. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Tiny shot forward like a bullet, way faster than anyone would think a man of his size would be capable of. Before Ryan even got the gun out of the holster, the man was right on top of him, swinging away. Ryan had to fall backwards and roll out of the way, taking his hands from the gun and using them to get back up from the floor. To stay on the ground would be certain death.

His hands up, Ryan went for the first weapons they could reach, his knife and hammer. Yanking them from their places, he swung them in his hands for a moment, getting his wrists ready for the momentum of the added weight of the weapons. He got into ready position, waiting for his opponent to make a move. Tiny turned, looking at Ryan with savage delight.

He raised his knife to be just in front of his face and said, “Tôi sẽ để thưởng thức giết chết bạn.” The man bent his knees and got ready to pounce. Ryan did the same.

“I don’t know what you just said,” he began, eying the area for anything useful. The kamas were now very much closer to him than before. “But I do know that I’m gonna kill you.” Tiny lunged, leading with his face, and stabbed forward with his borderline-sword. Ryan ducked and rolled to the side, swinging wildly with his hammer hand as he went. He connected, but rather than the desired effect of knocking the man down, the hammer flew out of Ryan’s hand upon contact. Trying to correct himself, his hand landed on top of the knife with his fingers underneath the handle. Instinctively, he let go of the knife to avoid cutting his fingers off.

He rolled back up, next to the table with the kamas. BeforeTiny could turn; it turned out the hammer did do something; Ryan shot to the table and picked up the kamas, one in each hand, like a dual-wielding Grim Reaper. He took his low stance and waited. As Tiny turned, his eyes drifted to the kamas in Ryan’s hands. At the dojo, his teacher had used them, but Ryan had only ever picked them up and held them. Ignoring his own sense of endangerment, he started to move around his opponent, ready for a potential attack. The man was more wise than he appeared, though, as he waited for Ryan to move, watching the razor-bladed kamas as they moved around him.

Eventually, he grew tired of waiting. He leapt forward, stabbing again with the small sword. Having already seen this once though, Ryan knew what to do. Instead of rolling away, he dropped at the last second and swung his left kama into the man’s calf, slicing it clean open. As the man howled, Ryan whipped it around and brought it into the front of the man’s throat, cutting half of his neck open. As one last move, Ryan brought the other kama around in a massive arc and severed the rest of the man’s neck. As the body crashed to the ground, the head rolled away, leaving a crimson trail of blood in its wake. Before the body hit the ground, it partly landed on Ryan, spilling several pints of blood on him, darkening his previously camo jacket. When it landed, blood continued to pour out for just a moment as it quickly began to coagulate, stopping most of the bleeding. He dropped the kamas, having no desire to continue handling such dangerous instruments while running around.

The noises on the other side of the door were growing more frantic. Not wanting to stick around for their entry, Ryan decided to run off in the other direction, through the only other door, scooping up his weapons and sticking them in their respective spots on his vest. As he approached it, he heard from the other door several men saying something in unison, like a countdown. Odds were that they were about to blow the door open. Ryan rushed away, kicking his door open.

He was promptly met with a brick to the face, knocking him clean off his feet. He was hit with a force that annexed his consciousness for a moment, robbing him of his ability to think. He didn’t even feel himself hit the ground, his head slamming onto the concrete floor. His hands hustled to his face out of instinct to protect what little was really left there. His face was absolutely wrecked by the hit; his nose was crooked and bleeding, he had a massive bruise on his right eyebrow, and the whole of his right cheek was scraped up fiercely. He was down.

Someone grabbed him by the feet as the door on the other side of the room blew open, sending tiny debris everywhere. Whoever had been holding Ryan let go and braced himself, allowing Ryan to take tiny shrapnel to his whole body, scratching him up, but not doing more damage. The man ran over to the dynamically entering intruders, yelling something at them in what was likely Vietnamese. Ryan didn’t get up; the floor was oddly appealing at the moment. The yelling just continued for a few minutes as Ryan lay there on the ground, broken and beaten.

***********************************************************************************

“No!” Luna yelled jumping up from her spot. “No, no, no, no!” She started an almost running pace around the pool. “This is bad, this is bad, this is bad...” Ryan had just beaten that enormous man and even taken his head off, which Luna hadn’t actually watched happen, but now he was on the ground, in a state that may as well have been sleep. “This can’t be happening...” She continued her pace, looking back at the pool every time she completed one full revolution, or maybe half a revolution, around it.

After five times, she forced herself to stop. “Calm down, Luna.” she said to herself, trying to avoid panicking. “Just sit down, and relax.” She lay down in front of the pool, back in her spot, and closed her eyes. She took several deep breaths. “He’ll get out of this, Luna.” she reasoned. “He always does.” In the back of her mind, logic was tearing away at her confidence in Ryan’s ability to get out of this.

***********************************************************************************

Ryan was coming back to the world, albeit slowly. He could feel something wrapped around his wrists, something soft. A hand! It was a hand! Each wrist had two on them. Ryan’s legs dragged behind him, the blood dripping off his jacket and smearing under him, leaving a grotesque trail on the floor.

Eventually, he was able to make himself look up. Sure enough, there were two men, dragging him along the floor. They looked happy; they had just gotten that which had caused them so very much trouble in the recent past. They were moving fast, like they were on a time limit to get Ryan somewhere. It was such that they hadn’t removed Ryan’s vest or any of its contents. Ryan could tell from where the weight was sitting on his vest. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in any kind of position to resist these men and pull his weapons. His mind was still muddled, and his body hurt all over. All he wanted at that moment was blissful sleep.

Not long after coming to, Ryan was dropped on the floor to the sound of a single man clapping slowly, sarcastically. “Thực hiện tốt.” he said. The voice belonged to Narendra. “Bạn có thể đứng lại.” The men walked away, taking positions on the other side of the room. Ryan got on his hands and knees, trying his best to get up. Narendra swiftly jumped from his spot and put his foot on Ryan’s back, stepping down on him. Ryan fell to the floor forcefully. “Ah, ah, ah, Ryan.” he said. “No need to go and do that-” Ryan heard a loud, metallic clink above his head. “Now is there?” Ryan growled, but didn’t move. “Still feisty, even after taking a brick to the face. I’m impressed.” Narendra took his foot off of Ryan and walked back to his spot. “You know, with all of the things I’ve heard you’ve, I would ordinarily offer you a place in my organization.” Ryan’s head shot up and glared at Narendra.

“Kill yourself.” Narendra ignored the comment.

“But with the amount of trouble you’ve caused me, I don’t particularly want you alive any more.” Narendra turned back around. “You’ll be coming with me.” He motioned for his guards to grab Ryan, which they did very aggressively, and then dragged him after Narendra as he walked through a hallway.

They were outside, in the cold rain again. It wasn’t so severe as before, but it was still coming down hard. Narendra had to yell to make sure he was heard. “You’ve had your fun with me, boy!” he shouted above the rain. “Now, it’s my turn to have fun with you!” He motioned over to a van, which was parked not far from the door, and the men holding Ryan dragged him over to it. At the van, Narendra climbed into the back. He looked maliciously at Ryan. “You’ll be riding with me.” Suddenly, from behind, Ryan’s hands were jerked back and cuffed. Shortly after, he was tossed into the back with Narendra, and the doors shut.

***********************************************************************************

Harris watched the display in absolute horror. He hadn’t expected Ryan to be nabbed, let alone taken away from the compound. He was expecting Ryan to pretty much do what he came for, then kill everyone else. From there, Harris was hoping to help out and bring him home.

“If you want God to laugh, tell him your plans.” He looked on as Ryan was tossed into the van, thinking about his next moves.

Discord got down right next to Harris. “You’ll have to follow, Harris.” Harris sighed loudly.

“How?” he asked incredulously. Discord looked at him, his expression saying, “Seriously?”

“I can track them, y’know. They can’t get away from me, and as such, you. Now, let’s get moving.” Harris looked down as the van with Ryan in it started up and began to drive off.

“Here I come, Ryan.”

***********************************************************************************

Ryan sat quietly against the side of the van initially. He had no desire to speak to the demon before him, nor be a part of the collaboration of two demons. There was naught but evil in the van at the moment.

Narendra had been quiet at first, but only because he was observing Ryan. He didn’t understand the boy before him. The boy had given up his morals, his friends, and his chance to go home just to come after him. He didn’t get it. He thought that maybe by observing the boy physically, he might get a glimpse into the complex mind before him. What had driven him to steal, murder, and lie, just to come for a single man? Eventually, he grew tired of trying to decipher it and just asked.

“Why?” he asked. Ryan didn’t answer. Narendra pulled out his .50 pistol and pulled the hammer. “I’ll ask again. Why?” Ryan looked up at the demon.

“Why what?” he asked back curtly.

“Why come after me? Why didn’t you go home, back to the ones you love? You gave up everything, EVERYTHING, just to try to kill me. I want to understand why.” Ryan laughed. As he continued laughing, Narendra grew impatient.

“You see, Narendra,” he began. “You and I are similar. We don’t let emotion tell us what to do. We don’t use moral codes to choose our paths. The difference, though-” He laughed again. “The difference is that I USED to have the emotions that neither of us have. But you- you took them from me. You made me do the most horrible things on this Earth. You killed me, and for my revenge, I aim to kill you.” Narendra pondered this for a moment. Then, he sighed and shrugged.

“I suppose that I understand.”

Now it was Ryan’s turn to ask the questions. “And why do you do what you do?” Narendra looked at him, surprised at the question. “Why enslave and sell people, and murder the rest? I know the Haqqani; you’re an extremist group. But don’t you get that God doesn’t want people to be enslaved? He doesn’t exactly approve of murder, y’know.” Narendra looked at him sternly, then began to laugh. It was only fair; Ryan laughed at his question.

“You-” he tried to control his laughter. “You really think I give a damn about what God wants?” he asked. Ryan’s eyes shot wide. “I don’t care about God, child. That’s just what I use to make these imbeciles do what I want them to.” He leaned forward, putting his hands together. “No, you see, child, there is great money to be had in this business. Religion is just what I, and my good friends, use to make these morons do our bidding. They aren’t literate; they are tools to use for our gain.” Ryan was looking so shocked that Narendra had to try to use reason. “Look back on every group like us that you have seen or heard of. The leaders have rarely believed in what they’re fighting for. Osama, rest his soul, didn’t really believe that extremist nonsense. He had multiple wives, and even pornography! The leaders of Scientology don’t believe in any of their principles, they’re just trying to make money off of the people under them. It’s all about the money, child; nothing else.” As Narendra sat back, Ryan tried to process what he had just heard.

“So he’s just using all those people...” It disgusted Ryan, that anyone could do that, even though he had done terrible things himself. He looked at Narendra. “You’re a sick pile of shit, you know that?” Narendra shrugged.

“Maybe, but I have money and power. And really,” He leaned back forward. “Isn’t that what we all want?”

The van began to slow down to stop. Narendra stood up and moved to the back of the van, kicking the doors open. Outside, two men stood guard, armed with AK variant assault rifles. “Chúng tôi đang ở đây.” one said. Narendra replied and began a small conversation with them. While they were off doing that, Ryan was thinking about where he found himself.

“Here I am. About to be killed.” He looked down and shook his head. “I only wish that I could have killed that sonuvabitch before he got me.” Narendra hopped back into the van and held Ryan’s face up by the chin.

“Let’s go.” he said, a vicious smile splayed out across his face. Ryan wanted for nothing more than to blast that smile off Narendra’s filthy face. He complied, though, and was pushed out of the van and onto the ground. The two armed guards trained their weapons on him, ready to kill if necessary. Ryan didn’t look up at them, just waited for someone to pick him up. “Tốt công việc.Thiên Chúa sẽ thưởng cho bạn.” Narendra’s voice sung. Looking to his right, Ryan could see the feet of the two men retreating back to the van, which then proceeded to drive away. “I sent them to go and get the others to be an audience.”

Ryan turned himself over and faced his oppressor. “Audience?” he asked rhetorically.

“Yes, audience.” Narendra was now holding a large rifle of his own. It looked like an AK, but there were certain features about it that Ryan didn’t recognize. “An audience to watch as I kill you.” After waiting for a moment for more, Ryan figured that it was his turn to speak.

“You really are a sick bastard, you know that?” He leaned forward and sat upright, his hands still cuffed behind his back. “You’re gonna bring your men to watch you shoot some kid to death with some crappy rifle?” Narendra’s foot came straight at Ryan’s face, but he was able to dodge it and roll to the side. He looked back at Narendra, who looked at Ryan frustratedly. “No. I’m inviting them over to watch the death of the one who killed their friends and assaulted my woman. Her mouth isn’t even usable any more.” Ryan looked at him, shaking his head.

“One; she isn’t even your wife you lying sack of trash, so don’t pretend you like her at all. To you, she’s easily replaced. Two; you and your buddies did much worse to me and mine, so why would I care what any of you suffer through? If anything, you all deserve the fate that you’re about to give to me, if not more than me.”

Narendra walked over and held his rifle in the air. “My rifle happens to be very nice, I’ll tell you. It’s an AN-94, custom. Heavy barrel, carbon fiber parts, pistol grip, and more. I like it very much, it’s been through alot with me. So, please, don’t try to say that it isn’t good. In fact,” Narendra pulled something out of his back pocket. “I used it to kill this guy.” He tossed the item over to Ryan. The item was a green beret, with a an insignia and the word Airborne on it. Ryan wasn’t happy with this turn of events. “You see, your special forces can’t always win.” He pursed his lips in thought for a moment. “Why don’t you wear that, while I hunt you down? Bring back the good old days in Iraq?” Not wanting to eat a bullet for refusing, Ryan donned the beret. He felt distinctly out of place wearing it.

“There.” Narendra said. “Now, what had you said..? Ah, I remember.” He paced around Ryan. “That woman is easily replaced, yes. But that will take time, time that I could have spent with her. As for our suffering; If you refuse to care about our suffering, than how are you better than any of us?” He poked the back of Ryan’s head with the barrel of his rifle. “Eh?”

Ryan sighed loudly. The rain was still pounding him, but less so on his head thanks to the beret. “Because I’m killing bad people. When both sides do things for bad reasons, you have to look at what it is that they’re doing. You do terrible things to good people. That makes you bad.” He turned and looked down the barrel of Narendra’s gun. “I’m killing bad people. Do the math.” Narendra pointed his gun back at the ground, then let it fall to his side. He had a sling on it, apparently.

“But are actions not defined by the motives behind them? Your motive is revenge. Mine is money. Yours is emotion. Mine is material. We are both terrible. We will both suffer.” Narendra started monkeying around with the cuffs. “There is no redemption for us, child. Only the cruelty of the world being thrown our way. It’s all about how we choose to handle it.”

The cuffs fell off and Narendra flew back, pulling up his gun. Ryan rubbed his wrists, confused. “What..?” He looked back at Narendra, who looked down the road.

“They’ll get here eventually.” He pointed his gun at Ryan, who stood up to meet his killer head-on. “I’m going to give you a little bit of time to run away into the jungle, child. Then, I’ll chase you down.” He raised the rifle. “You have thirty seconds.”

As he counted down, Ryan turned tail and sprinted off past the treeline.

***********************************************************************************

Harris watched as the van left with several more men in tow, but not with Ryan or Narendra having returned. “What’s going on?” he wondered. At this point, he had gotten off the roof and made his way to the treeline next to the road, if it could be called that, and was travelling down the road. Discord had told him that it wasn’t too far to reach Ryan. The van drove past him, Harris dropped low to avoid detection.

Discord was right next to him, urging him to keep moving. “You gotta move Harris, or Ryan may not live through whatever ordeal he’s about to experience.” Harris walked out onto the road and dashed down it, intent on finding and saving his friend.

***********************************************************************************

Luna was biting her hooves as Ryan ran off into the forest. Narendra clearly had some kind of plan, or else he would never have let Ryan go. It was some kind of sick game to him. But Ryan now had a chance to get away. He was a runner; this was one of the things that he did. With this chance, he could surely escape.

Luna was fidgety all over, from her hind legs to her front hooves. Her eye twitched from the anticipation, and her neck was so tense that a brick could be smashed over it. She hadn’t blinked in several minutes, and her eyes were going bloodshot from the exertion. When she finally blinked, it stung like a wasp, but she ignored it. She didn’t want to risk missing anything.

She wanted to go in there, to pull Ryan away from that dangerous place, and bring him to somewhere that was safe. Alas, she was unable to. Were she to do that, she would have to go in as her full form, not just a spectre. She was too scared of the danger to do that, and she knew that Ryan would be angry if she did that. She had to just sit there and wait for everything to go well, something that she absolutely loathed at the moment. As much as she loathed it, though, all she could do was that. She looked down at the pool.

“You can do this, Ryan.” Her confidence was renewed with this turn of events.

***********************************************************************************

Ryan ran through the forest, hoping to put some distance between him and Narendra before the shooting started. His feet slogged through the mud, slowing him down way too much for him to feel good about his chances. The scarf nearly caught on several branches, as did the jacket, forcing Ryan to be more aware of where he was going. His necklace bounced against his chest, and his vest shifted up and down as he ran, the heavy weight of the hammer, knife, and gun yanking it back down each time. Ryan couldn’t tell if the syringe of morphine was still there, or remember if he had one or two. That wasn’t important at the moment.

Suddenly, a loud series of gunshots rang out from behind. Ryan immediately fell and ducked behind a tree. As far as he could tell, none of the shots had come anywhere near him. Odds were, Narendra just did that to force Ryan to stop running. Angry that it worked, Ryan got up to get back on the move.

More shots rang out, this time, much closer. Ryan just got low this time, not wanting to lose more time. “I know you’re here, child!” Narendra shouted. Ryan couldn’t see him; it was dark and raining. More shots came, but in a much shorter burst. Ryan could see the muzzle flash, which revealed Narendra fairly well.

“I’ll find you, and I’ll kill you! Just you wait!” Ryan wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass on. He pulled out his pistol and aimed at where he saw Narendra.

“I’d rather not!” he shouted loudly, firing one shot. He waited for a moment, but when he heard no scream, he moved away from his spot, fearing that he had missed Narendra.

“THERE YOU ARE!!” Narendra had loaded in a new magazine and started laying waste to the area around Ryan. Ryan dove down, bullets flying past him above his head, slamming into the trees around him. The trees splintered, shooting tiny pieces of wood all over the place. As if Vietnam wasn’t already shot up enough. Ryan stood up and tried to feel his way through the darkness, which was slowly becoming less, crawling away from the source of the noise. Narendra was loading in another magazine.

“You see, child, I was prepared for this.” Ryan looked back, but he didn’t see anything. Suddenly, a green flare blinded him temporarily. “And I have more, too.” Ryan barely heard that last part, seeing as he was too busy hauling ass out of the area. Narendra had seen him though, and was giving chase.

Ryan kept running, figuring that if he was always moving, Narendra would always be moving, and that he couldn’t shoot while moving. Most people can’t. The beret on Ryan’s head was good for keeping the rain out of his eyes, but it was getting heavy. Everything was. Normally, Ryan prided himself on travelling light. But he had clearly collected too many items, which were slowing him down. He kept them, though, thinking that they were causing more good than harm.

Looking back, Ryan saw another flare pop, but it was much farther away. Narendra was having trouble following, it seemed. This was good; it meant that Ryan would be able to regroup ahead and plan his way out of this, maybe even killing Narendra. That would be nice. Wanting to slow down Narendra, who still held the flare, Ryan pointed his gun at him one more time and fired off a shot. It must have landed near him, because the flare moved around frantically, like a terrified man was holding it. Satisfied, Ryan turned around and made his way forward, holding his gun in his left hand in a vice-like grip.

He slowed down his pace, figuring that he could afford to, since he had slowed Narendra down considerably. He was almost walking at a fast pace; jogging, really. The rain was picking up again, so Ryan tried his best to slog through all the mud. While he yanked his feet from the sucking ground, he thought he heard something behind him. He ignored it, deciding that it was probably just Narendra getting closer, something he had been expecting. He looked back; another green flare was lit up.

“WHERE ARE YOU!?!?” Over the rain, Narendra could barely be heard, though, and Ryan knew that he was in a pretty good spot in the situation. He smirked to himself.

“Ah-ha!” More gunfire resounded from behind, and Ryan dropped back to the ground for cover. Looking back, he could see that Narendra was just blindly firing around himself. He was trying to convince Ryan that he knew where he was, but it wasn’t working too well. Ryan’s smirk grew into a smile of malicious delight. But that smile turned to confusion when Narendra stopped and looked around his feet, seemingly looking for something. When he found nothing, he started to look around, probably to find Ryan.

Not wanting to be seen, Ryan forgot about the little spectacle and started moving forward. With Narendra not terribly far off, he had to move faster. He put his arms around his scarf and on his vest to keep them from snagging on things and kept moving forward.

Abruptly, as Ryan stepped on a loose root, an explosion went off right next to him, knocking him off his feet. He screamed out as the pain of force and shrapnel assaulted his right. Dirt and debris flew all over the place, and Ryan fell into the mud, which was very nearly up to his head, which could have drowned him. He gasped for precious air, blundering about, trying to figure out what had happened. Narendra and his men had explosives, that much was known. Did they have grenades, and worse, did Narendra see him? Ryan dragged himself through the mud, in a daze, trying to figure it out.

“Gotta move. Gotta move.” was all he could think.

He grabbed onto the exposed roots of another tree and pulled himself up, examining his leg. He sighed with relief and nearly flopped to the ground when he confirmed that it was still there. The root that he had stepped on had taken most of the blast. There was a bit of shrapnel sticking out of his leg, but it wasn’t serious, just like a bunch of small cuts. When he tried to stand, though, he learned what the real damage was. His shin was broken, as was evident from the fact that it slightly bent where it wasn’t supposed to. Gritting his teeth, Ryan stood up on his good leg and hobbled off.

Behind him, he could hear more gunfire, likely firing at the spot he was just in. Every minute or so, there would be more fire, just a few shots, but they got closer each time. Ryan kept on moving, not really understanding why or where he was trying to go.

He came upon the overflowing banks of the river. He stood there and looked down; he was on a hill that led down to the river, a length of maybe twenty feet and a drop of at least thirty to the surface of the water. Sticking out of the water, were lots of large rocks that one could use to get across. Of course, that was only if one wasn’t being chased and had a broken leg.

Someone yelled out behind Ryan, and more gunfire sounded. Not seeing any other way out, Ryan went for the hill. He was thrown forward, head first, and rolled down the hill toward the water.

***********************************************************************************

Harris had seen the men stopped outside an area of the jungle and waited for them to move. When they hadn’t, he decided that he would go in. “He’s inside the jungle, Harris.” Discord told him. “And he needs help now more than ever before.” Harris went right into the jungle without a thought for his own safety. Except for the landmines. Those, he would watch out for.

***********************************************************************************

Luna was stunned at what she witnessed. She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t even comprehend it. Ryan had just been blown up, basically.

She had been standing, not able to calmly sit and watch, but now, she fell to the floor, losing all the energy she needed to stand. Ryan was in a much worse bind now than before. It took everything she had to not just give up and bawl. Then, she remembered a bit of wisdom from her guard. “We all do the best with what we have.” What he said had multiple meanings, one of which ignited a small flame of hope. Ryan still had some things, even if he lost his ability to walk. He had done more with less as his disposal. He could get home.

Then, her heart sank when she saw him fly forward and roll down a hill, blood following from his jacket.

***********************************************************************************

Ryan landed at the bottom of the hill hard. His head was totally submerged in the water, and he had to push himself up with his left arm to keep from dying there. He tried to use his right arm, but a pain in his chest kept him from using it. As his head exploded out of the water, he shook it hard to get the water out of his eyes and leaned against one of the rocks he had seen. The beret stayed on his head, and the scarf on his neck. I his left hand, he still held his gun. Trying to breathe, but having trouble, Ryan corrected his grip on the pistol, ready to point and fire. He then investigated his chest.

What he saw didn’t shock him. It didn’t make him afraid; in fact, it sapped away his fears. It didn’t even hurt, really. He calmly accepted that there was a hole about an inch wide hole in the right side of his chest cavity.

Blood was coming out of the hole, but not at as fast a rate as Ryan would have thought. The hole was nearly submerged in the river water, the surface of the water just about an inch and a half or two below the bloody mess. Ryan was so distracted by the hole that he didn’t even see Narendra slide down the hill toward him. As Narendra approached, Ryan looked up slowly. His eyes looked beaten and tired, bags under them and very red. “How sad.” Narendra said. Ryan didn’t respond.

Narendra knelt down in the water in front of Ryan, putting his AN-94 behind his back. “How ironic, child.” He reached for a pistol holster and pulled out his .50 calibre pistol. “You tried to make me suffer the fate of knowing that I was about to die, and then make me watch myself do so. Now, you will suffer that fate.” Narendra pulled his pistol and pushed it against Ryan’s wound. He arched his back from the pain, but no noise was made. Blood came out as he coughed harshly, his lungs trying to expel the invading, unwelcome guest.

Narendra stood up. “I’m typically a patient man, Ryan. Even now, I resist the urge to put a bullet in your head, like you did to that girl on the boat.” He stepped back and turned around. Ryan was feeling dizzy. “You know why I picked this area, child?” He faced Ryanagain, elation evident on his face. “I knew about the land mines. This used to be a major VC and NVA travel route. So the French, in an effort to put a stop to this, set up lots of land mines throughout the area. There are hundreds, even thousands, in this area alone. And I knew that you would be too careless to watch your step. It was just a matter of how long it took.” Narendra leaned down and jerked Ryan’s leg out of the water, eliciting a groan of displeasure from him. “You’re lucky, you know. Most of the time, these mines take off legs.” He dropped it back below the water. Ryan was seeing things blurrily now.

“Alright, I’m tired of being patient.” Narendra chambered a round in his pistol and pointed it at Ryan. “Say goodbye kid.”
A loud boom echoed throughout the jungle.

Narendra ducked at the loud noise. He hadn’t fired his gun, so who had? His buddies must have gotten there already.

It was anything but. Another kid, some white boy with a massive gun in his hand, had fired at him. Narendra could hardly believe what he was seeing. Who was this kid? Where did he come from? He could have been with Ryan, but Narendra thought that Ryan was all on his own. Deciding that it didn’t matter, Narendra took aim at the boy at the top of the hill.

Ryan was barely registering that something was, in fact, happening at the moment. He had heard the gunshot, but when he wasn’t dead, he had no idea who it was. Managing to focus just enough to get out of the blur, he saw that Narendra was pointing his gun at someone new up on the hill. Whoever that person was, they were running down the hill.

“RYAN!”

Ryan barely understood, but this person clearly knew him. There was only one person who could possibly know him well enough to help him in this half of the world.

Narendra fired his gun, and Harris’ leg buckled under him, causing him to tumble all the way down the hill. Ryan’s focus began to return to him, the sudden danger that his old friend was in smacking him into consciousness. He looked up at Narendra, then to Harris, who was now at the bottom of the hill. He put all his effort into moving his left arm.

Narendra walked over to the boy who somehow had the stones to shoot at him. As he approached, the boy tried to get up, but was having trouble with all the water around him. He wasn’t in as deep water as Ryan, but it was enough to make him slip around and not take aim at Narendra. That was fine with him. He wanted to watch the boy’s eyes roll back into his head as a bullet slammed through it. As soon as he was in kicking distance, he raised his left leg out of the water, sending the tip of his shoe into Harris’ gut. Harris lost his breath and gasped, laying against the hill, the gun still in his hand. Before he had a chance to raise it, Harris’ right shoulder was stomped on, keeping the gun against the cold, muddy ground.

Harris looked up at Narendra. This was his first time really being close enough to discern his features. The man had the most soulless eyes he had ever seen. Behind them was nothing; no anger, no love, no real emotion of any kind. The man’s face was unscarred, with hardly a blemish to be found. His character flaws were well hidden by his charismatic demeanor as he pointed a gun at Harris’ forehead.

“I don’t know who you are,” he said. Harris just looked up at him, terror defining how he was feeling at the moment. “But I don’t like people who hurt my plans.”

“Hey.” Narendra was surprised to hear anything from behind him, but it didn’t particularly matter. He had what he wanted.

“What, child?” He didn’t turn. Not wanting to take his eyes off of the one who could hurt him, especially when he could hardly hear with all the rain. Behind him, Ryan coughed hard and loud, spitting up blood all the while.

“I don’t like it when people hurt my friends.” Toward the end, his voice was very strained, and Narendra could tell he was dying. He turned to watch the boy die.

Ryan’s hand was lifted out of the water, his M1911 .45 calibre ACP pistol in its grip. Before Narendra could react, Ryan fired off one last bullet, the slide locking back after the trigger was pulled. Narendra hadn’t even seen it coming; he was too full of himself to think of it. His neck blew out from the middle, sideways, whipping Narendra’s head to the side a little bit. He put his hand around his neck, as if that would prevent the massive bleeding from the destruction of his jugular artery. In his last moment, he looked over at Ryan, then fell into the water, dead, and floated downstream to whatever hell he had earned.

Ryan’s hand fell back into the water, having done its job. Harris got up, after realizing that Narendra was gone, and sloshed over to Ryan to make sure he was okay. When he saw the hole in his chest, his heart sank. Blood was flowing from the hole freely into the river, the water running red from all of it.

“No, no, no!” Harris yelled. He put his hands on top of Ryan’s chest. “No! You can’t die, Ryan! You can’t!” He pushed hard against Ryan’s chest. “You can’t...” Tears ran down Harris’ face as his pushing lost its force. “I... I was going to take you home. We were going to go home together, get help. We... we were going to stay friends...” Harris sobbed, his chest bobbing up and down. “I wanted to help you. I thought I could... I’m sorry. I’ve failed...” Ryan coughed up more blood. There was so much he wanted to say, but he didn’t have the time to say it. So he went with the first thing that came to mind.

Raspily, he croaked out, “We’ll, always... be friends...” He coughed up more blood, this time, most of it landing on Harris’ arms. Harris opened his eyes and looked into Ryan’s. Their eyes locked, no more words needed be said. When two people are that close, they don’t need to exchange words. There’s this strange thing about friendship that gives us the ability to just know what the other is trying to say.

Harris cried out, “I don’t want to leave you here!” Ryan looked him dead in the eye.

“Go. Now.” He hacked up more blood. He was close to death. “Forget.. me...” Ryan lowered his head against the rock behind him and closed his eyes.

Harris knelt next to his oldest friend, his own gun still in his hand. He decided to leave it in Ryan’s lap. He didn’t want to see it ever again.

He stood over his still breathing friend. They had done so much together; they met back in the third grade. They went through middle school together. They would always hang out after school and do all sorts of nonsense and shenanigans. And here Harris was, leaving that old friend of his to die, cold and bloody, in a shitty river in Vietnam.

Harris turned around and went back up the hill. Through his mind went everything that the two boys had done together. Their lives leading up to Harris’ moving, their adventures in Australia, then to their recent shared past. He thought about how Ryan had changed. Ryan had always been the nicest kid around. He had always been a fun loving, easy going type of guy. He had noble goals and noble traits. Then all of that died. He freely killed people now, not caring about who they were or what they did. Anyone who got in his way died. Even Harris almost died. He knew that Ryan had gone to shoot him and it was only by the grace of his forgetfulness that a bullet wasn’t chambered. He had forgiven Ryan, though, even if Ryan hadn’t forgiven himself. Because he knew that Ryan needed the help. And even though he tried not to accept it, Harris gave it to him. Because he was his friend. And now, because they were such good friends, Harris was leaving Ryan here to die. But Ryan was gone, and their last memories together were anything but pleasant. Anything that reminded Harris of Ryan would just serve to remind him of everything that had happened here.

Harris was at the top of the hill when he looked back one last time. Ryan’s body was still there, probably dead by now. After taking one last look at his friend, Harris turned back around and went into the jungle, intent on leaving this terrible place, and forgetting about everything that had happened here. This was a place to forget. And Ryan was right.

He was a boy to forget.

***********************************************************************************

Ryan leaned his head back against the rock behind him, too tired to keep his eyes open much longer. His mind drifted in a sea of emptiness, just an inky blackness around his thoughts. There was nothing left to think about, really. He was about to die. That was a fact. Of course, he could think about his life, while he had it.

His accomplishments? He was a highly certified SCUBA Diver, with all sorts of trainings. He had earned his Black Belt in Karate and had been studying for over thirteen years. He always did well in school, and he was physically fit. He thought about his dreams. He had completely forgotten about his hopes of becoming a SEAL, of doing something honorable with his life. All of this, he threw away for some stupid revenge quest that got him killed. Thinking about it, he finally began to question his decision.

“What am I gaining out of this?” he wondered.

He was about to die; there was nothing he could possibly have gained. His revenge didn’t bring back any of the dead that Ryan had left in his own wake. His entire quest, his purpose of being, was all for nothing.

He opened his eyes, and before him, stood Nadine, Joey, and Catherine. They stood in two groups; Nadine and Joey, and a lone Catherine. Ryan looked over at Joey, who was hugging his mother’s leg, crying silently. He looked at Ryan, fear in his eyes, but also a childish sadness. Tears descended from his reddened eyes, adding to the rain which was falling heavily on Ryan, pressing down his chest and making it hard to breathe. Joey buried his face in his mother’s leg and stopped looking at Ryan. Ryan turned his gaze to Nadine, who just watched him bereaved. Their eyes met, Ryan’s making an impossible request.

“Tell me I’ve done well.” he desired. “Tell me I haven’t wasted my life.” Nadine bit her lower lip and put her hand on her son’s shoulder, turning him around and walking off with him.

Ryan looked to Catherine, who was leaning on some invisible surface, smiling mischievously at Ryan. Ryan didn’t understand at first. She stood up and moved to her right. “Karma’s a bitch, huh?” she said, laughing. Ryan blinked, and she was gone, but her laughter remained, forever there to taunt him for his failure. His failure to do the right thing; to do the smart thing; to recognize what was really important; to get what he wanted. That was the greatest pain of all. Not the torture. Not the gunshot. Not even losing his friends. The greatest pain of all was that, even after overcoming all of this, all of these massive obstacles, he had still failed.

Ryan let his head fall back again, looking up to the sky. The rain was oddly not hitting his face any more, though it was landing all around him. In that last moment of consciousness, there was a blinding flash followed by a strange feeling of weightlessness.

***********************************************************************************

Luna’s breath was caught in her chest. She couldn’t breathe in or out. It was like someone had put a tourniquet on her throat, closing off the airway so that nothing could enter or escape.

She didn’t realize that she was crying. From her eyes flowed waterfalls more plentiful than the Santo Angel. Her nose ran, the liquid flowing just as quickly down her face from her nostrils as her eyes. Her eyes had gone bloodshot, unable to handle the hollowness she now felt in her heart. She tried to stand, but her legs trembled under her and gave out twice. Through the power of no more than her own will, she managed to get herself off of the floor.

She kept her eyes on the pool. Harris had walked away from his best friend, leaving him to die in the cold, draining river. Now, only Ryan was visible, bleeding out in the water that was steadily rising to overtake the hole in his chest. Blood from his chest made the river run red. His face grew paler with each passing moment, and his eyes were closed. He lolled his head back and forth a bit, indicating that he still clung to some bit of life. When his eyes opened once again, Luna noticed that he seemed to be looking at something. Whatever he saw, though, was not good. Luna couldn’t keep from gasping in a breath and letting out several sobs at watching Ryan’s expression go from barely conscious to great pain. She turned away from the pool, unable to watch any more.

As she walked away from the pool, tripping and stumbling the whole way to the stairs, she couldn’t see anything. The water in her eyes blurred everything, making her blink excessively in an attempt to get away from the pool.

At the stairs, she couldn’t hold anything in any more. She collapsed, like the mighty titans fell before the Greek Gods. On the stairs, she cried out her pain, her anguish, as if releasing it through noise would launch it away from her. It didn’t work; it was still there.

Her mind turned to the recent past, recounting the events which led to this terrible climax. She had first observed him when he was in his homeland, living happily and peacefully. She saw what Ryan used to be, and she thought that he was a good pony.

“Person.” she silently reminded herself.

He was good, and had skills, and family, and friends. He had everything that a person could want. She saw him being taken by bad ponies, and she was there for his time trying to get away. She was there to see the mighty hero fall to the old ways, to give up everything he once stood for for his own gain. She watched him fight, and she watched him die. All this time, as she watched, she could have done more. Luna buried her head in her forelegs.

“I could have done more...” she said to no one. “If I had done more...” She didn’t need to finish. She knew that if she had done more, than Ryan would have survived, and not been brutally murdered in the middle of nowhere. She could have prevented him from losing himself, but didn’t. She could have gotten him home, but didn’t. All this she could have done, but didn’t.

The pain of it all was unbearable. She hadn’t known him for that long, but the two had become good friends. And now, because of her failure, he was dead. It was the pain of failure, the pain of failing one of the people who trusted her, who needed her the most, that killed. Luna tried to focus on moving up the stairs, but couldn’t. It was almost all her fault that Ryan was dead. The guilt dragged her to the floor, shackles holding her happiness down. The guilt wanted her to suffer, and suffer its wrath she would. It would hold her down forever, never letting her forget her greatest failure.

She knew that that was the only way that she would ever move on. It’s what Ryan would want. He told Harris to do it, no doubt he would say the same to Luna. She had to forget about Ryan, try to move on and learn from what had happened.

Ryan was a colt to forget.