Justice

It was the day after I got the call about my parents.

24 hours since my life was destroyed.

I was sitting on the couch at Nathan’s house, wearing a borrowed tux to go to my parents funeral.

My lawyer called and talked to me yesterday, only a few hours after my house had burned down. He jabbered on about the will, and about how he was planning the funeral for the very next day. He wanted to rush things along so he could take everything.

And it worked.

Still in shock, I was sitting here waiting to go to the funeral. Almost no one would be there because of the short notice. The doorbell rang, and without waiting for someone to open the door, the lawyer strode in. He looked over at me, and grinned. Why would he not smile while looking at his golden goose?  With the grin still plastered on his face, he walked over to me and stuck his hand out for me to shake.

“Glad to see your doing alright, ready to go?”

I gave him an extremely low and menacing growl, something I was quite good at.

He retreated quickly while pulling his hand back, as if I was going to bite it.

At this point, I just might.

He then said, “Well then, shall we be going?” I gave him one last glare and I stalked out the front door. Nathan and his family followed, and Nathan gave the lawyer another glare for me. We got in our cars, and drove towards the church.

I wake up to a large mass of pink air slowly suffocating me.

With my left arm, as my right was still a little stiff, I brush the hair away.

In doing so, Fluttershy wakes up and yawns.

She gives me a sleepy look and smiles, “Good morning, did you sleep well?”

Her eyes were full of love as she said those words, and it made me squirm on the inside.

She had no idea the war that was still raging itself in my mind.

I choke out, “Y- yeah I slept fine. You?”

She closes her eyes and gently lays her head against my chest.

“I slept next to you, of course I slept well.” She softly murmurs.

I close my eyes and think, “Shit. This is worse than I thought, how the hell am I going to fix this now?”

I open my mouth to speak, but Fluttershy interrupts me by getting up and saying, “I’m going to get the fire started for breakfast, Spike should be sending some food soon.”

She gives me one last smile, turns, and ducks out of the shelter. I plop my head back against the ground. “Well I’ve done it now… she is completely in love with me…” I sigh, and crawl out of the shelter.

“I’m going to have to tell her eventually, but not now. I need time to properly think this through.”

When I am out of the shelter, I look up and see the makeshift fire ring Fluttershy built. My sword was laying across the middle of it, and Fluttershy was trying to use my flint to start the fire. It was almost painful watching her try because of how difficult it looked.

“Well I probably couldn’t start a fire holding the flint in my mouth.” I thought.

I walk over, pluck the flint from her mouth, and I start up the fire using the edge of my sword within seconds. Fluttershy gives me a grateful look, and then trots over to a pile of supplies next to our shelter. There were several pots and pans, a jug of water, and some silverware. Spike must have sent all of it. Just as I think that, there is a flash of green light and some smoke next to the fire pit. Once the smoke clears, I see a bag of apples, a carton of eggs, and a letter. Fluttershy trots back over with a pan, and proceeds to crack the eggs into the pan. I grab an apple and I bite into it. While munching on the apple, I reach over and pick up the letter. I unroll it and begin reading.

“Dear Fluttershy and Ty, I am glad to hear Ty is fully recovered. I sent eggs again from Fluttershy’s coop, I hope you don’t mind. It is the only place I can get eggs without suspicion. Rainbow Dash and Rarity have officially disbanded from Twilight, and only Pinkie Pie and Applejack remain loyal to her at this point. Without letting Twilight know, I informed the royal guards that Twilight had fought you on the road to Appleoosa without informing the Princess. The guards sent the message, and now the Princess has ordered Twilight and her remaining friends to return to Canterlot Palace. This will take some of the pressure off of you, and should allow you to find the hidden element and kill the last two guardians in relative peace. As if finding a lost artifact and killing two incredibly powerful creatures could be peaceful.”

I can’t help but smirk at that part.

“I also sent a map on the bottom of this letter for your reference, I hope it helps. I will continue sending you supplies until you inform me not to, and I wish you luck in your quest. Spike”

I glance over the map, and then summarize what Spike wrote to Fluttershy. Once I am done, Fluttershy is finished with cooking the eggs. We discuss how Twilight being gone will help us while we eat.

“I just hope Princess Celestia doesn’t hurt her…” Fluttershy worriedly murmurs.

“I don’t know, it is a possibility.” I reply. At this point I really don’t care about Twilight, in fact, I kind of hate her.

Fluttershy immediately breaks down and starts crying.

“Oh shit! I forgot shes a lot more sensitive now…”

I sit down next to her and I put my arm around her. She snuggles up against me again. I mentally sigh in annoyance, but it doesn’t last long. How can I be annoyed when she is this cute?

“Snap out of it!” I mentally berate myself.

I regain my mental composure just as Fluttershy stops crying.

She sniffs and says, “Thank you… even though my friends are mean now I still don’t want them to get hurt…”

“I understand.” I say simply.

I stand up, and Fluttershy gets up as well.

“Are you ready to go? We have about an hour walk according to the map.”

“Yeah, I guess so… will we be coming back here?”

“Yep, we can go check out the ruins and come back once it starts getting dark. We should try and be back before Spike sends our dinner, we don’t want any animals to get it before we do.”

Fluttershy nods. “Okay.”

I grab my sword, sheathe it onto my belt, and stand up. Fluttershy stands next to me and begins packing a small bag full of apples. While she is doing that, I clean the blood and grime off of my sword. Once she is done packing our food for the trip, I grab the bag and sling it over my shoulder. She starts trotting in the direction of the temple, and I follow. Just a few minutes away from the camp, I spot a small pool of water and I am struck with a thought.

I haven’t seen my reflection in a week.

I’m certainly not the vain type, but with all the scars I must have acquired during the fight, I couldn’t resist. I walk over to the pool and lean over.

I gasp at what I see.

The right side of my face was covered in a large, red, scar.

The scar was a deep red towards my eye, and it lightened up as it radiated away from it. The burn I suffered from the fight had even burned my hairline back an inch.

I didn’t know what to think of it.

My self image I kept in my head was shattered.

It feels like a stranger is looking back at me.

It is then I notice everything else. My clothes are in tatters, my shirt especially. The fabric on my left shoulder is gone, and another ugly red scar  dominated it. The claw marks from the manticore are still visible on the shirt, and glimpses of the scars across my chest are visible as well. Then there was my arm. A single white scar ran from the tip of my middle finger all the way up to my right shoulder, widening as it traveled up. I sit down hard by the edge of the water, and just stare at my reflection.

Fluttershy notices, and trots over with a concerned expression.

She sits down next to me and says nothing, all the while staring into the water at my reflection. Several minutes pass in silence. The wind blows gently through the forest, creating a calming effect. Every now and again a leaf falls out of a tree and lands on the water. The ripples distort the image of Fluttershy and I in the water, but it turns calm again a moment later.

Fluttershy speaks to me in a soft tone, “I know this must be difficult for you… you’ve changed so much… but that is only your physical appearance. You are still the same person as before, whom I love dearly. If anything, you are stronger now because of this. Don’t forget that…”

Another ripple passes over the water, but the cause of this one is a tear.

“Thank you…” I say quietly.

I rise to my feet, and continue walking once again. Fluttershy stays right by my side.

Ten minutes pass in silence before Fluttershy speaks. “Would you like to hear about the history of the ruins we are going to explore?”

I nod my head. “Alright.”

“Okay then, to be honest, not much is known about them. All we really know is that millennia ago a group of things called “The Ancients” built them. Those things used  their power to create the Elements of Harmony, in case those powers were ever to be needed again. Unfortunately, about a thousand years ago, they were. Princess Luna had grown discontent, and she became Nightmare Moon. She threatened to throw the world into eternal night. Her sister, Princess Celestia, used the five elements to banish her to the moon. A thousand years later however, Nightmare Moon escaped. She threatened to finish what she had started, and it took my friends and I finding the sixth Element of Harmony to stop her. We managed to banish the Nightmare side of her, leaving only the good Luna left.”

As she finished, I had a few questions spring to mind.

“Wait, Celestia banished her sister to the moon for a thousand years?”

She nods.

“Doesn’t that seem a little harsh to you?”

“Well… a little. But it was all she could do at the time.”

“Alright, but why is Luna in a ruling position after all that had happened?”

“Well she isn’t really ruling… Celestia still raises the moon and does everything. Luna is just kinda… there…”

“I see…”

I store this information in my mind, something tells me it could be useful.

We keep on walking, and eventually we come to a dilapidated rope bridge. I carefully test my weight against it, and I slowly inch across it. After a few minutes of slow walking, I finally reach the other side. As soon as I step onto the ground, a heavy mist surrounds me, and I can’t see Fluttershy on the other side. I call out,

“Hey Fluttershy! Can you hear me?”

After a few seconds I hear her faint reply. It was garbled from the fog, but I could make out that she didn’t want to cross the bridge.

I yell back while rolling my eyes, “Just fly across!”

I wait a few seconds, and then I see Fluttershy flying out through the mist. She lands, gives me a small embarrassed smile, and keeps trotting forward. I follow. The whole atmosphere seemed to become more and more gloomy as we got closer to the ruins, which I can now see in the distance. Fluttershy shivers at the unnatural darkness, and trots closer to me. A few minutes of walking later, we are at the steps of the ruins. The ruins extend an aura of dilapidation and darkness. Not what you would expect from a place that housed the Elements of Harmony. We carefully go up the stairs, and we stop before to massive doors. The appeared to be made out of oak with iron studs, and looked around 2 feet thick. If they were locked I wasn’t sure how we would get in. I stepped right up to the door, and laid my hand on it. As soon as my hand came in contact with the door, it fell forward with a loud crash.

“Well that was easier than I thought…” I said.

I cautiously step through the gaping entrance and into the dust cloud stirred up by the door. I wave in front of me to hopefully blow the dust away. Once through the cloud, I stop in awe.

The temple is massive. The ceilings are at least fifty feet high, and it was about half as long as a football field. I notice a raised dais in the back, but nothing is on it. On both walls are hundreds of small tiles with symbols on them. Each one was different, and the symbols went all the way to the ceiling. I turn around and ask Fluttershy,

“What are all those symbols for? What do they mean?”

She replies, “Some of them are symbols for the Elements of Harmony. All the rest are fakes to confuse would-be thieves. To reveal the way to obtain one of the elements, you have to press the tile for it. If you press a tile that isn’t an Element, a nasty trap will come out instead. It is to make sure only the true bearers of the Elements can get them. Let me show you.”

Fluttershy walked along the left wall until she stopped about halfway along. She looked up, and flew about three fourths the way up the wall. She stopped in front of a tile that had a picture of a butterfly on it. Once she got near to it, the tile glowed.

“The tiles glow when the bearers are near?” I call up to her.

She replies, “Yes, its another way the true bearers can find their element.”

“Well why don’t you press it?”

“Nothing would happen, my Element has already been taken and stored in Canterlot Castle for safe keeping.”

She flies back down to me.

“Well, if only the true bearers can get their Element, what hope do we have of finding the hidden seventh?” Fluttershy thinks for a moment. “I’m not sure, we just have to try…”

“Alright, you look along the left wall and I will look along the right.”

“Okay.”

I walk to the other side of the massive room, and begin scanning the tiles. Nothing in particular catches my eye until I am at the very back of the room. I look up at the wall, and I see an odd looking symbol. It is an old fashioned balance scale, like those seen in courtrooms. Over the center of it was a shield, with two crossed swords in-between.

For some reason, I instantly liked it.

I called out to Fluttershy,

“Hey Fluttershy, come look at this!”

She quickly trots over. “What is it?”

I point at the symbol that was halfway up the wall.

“See that symbol right there? The one with the scale, shield and swords? I kinda like that one.”

Fluttershy examines it for a minute.

“Can you get up to it? I don’t think I am strong enough to fly you up…”

I look closer at the tiles, and I notice they are protruding from the wall slightly.

“Yeah, I think I can use these tiles to climb up to it. I’ll just have to be careful not to press them by accident.”

She nods and takes a step back. I test my foot against a tile near the floor, and it holds my weight. I slowly begin climbing up the tiles. About a quarter of the way up, my knee accidentally bumps into a tile, and presses it. I hear a whoosh go by my head, followed by and loud thump. I look to my left, and an arrow was buried in the wall an inch from my face. Undaunted, I use the arrow as a handhold and I keep climbing. I finally reach the symbol, and to my great surprise, it glows once I am over it.

I look at it warily and call down to Fluttershy, “Um, what do I do now? Its glowing.”

She calls back up, “Really? Well press it, see what happens!”

I look back over at the symbol, and I carefully press it. A few seconds pass and the tile stops glowing. I worriedly look down at Fluttershy.

“Hey Fluttershy, it stopped glowing! Do you know what-”

I’m suddenly cut off as the tile shoots forward, hits my chest, and knocks me off the wall. I roll when I hit the ground, so I’m not badly hurt. I hear a grinding sound underneath the floor, and  a section of it falls away, leaving a gaping hole. As I get up, Fluttershy comes galloping towards me.

“Are you alright?!?” she frantically asks.

“I’m fine.” I reply.

Just as I’m about to ask her what happened, I hear the screech of metal being scraped on stone. The hairs on my arms stand up and I feel a cold shiver run down my spine. I slowly turn my head to look at the hole in the middle of the temple, and I see a blue glow emanating from it. The glow gets brighter, and the scraping sound closer.

“Fluttershy… get behind me.”

Fluttershy looks between the glow and me, and darts behind me. I draw my sword and fall into my defensive stance. I have no idea what that thing is, and I’m not going to take any chances.

The scraping sound stops.

I raise my sword higher.

What happens next surprises me so much I almost drop my sword.

A glowing blue gauntlet reaches over the edge, and pulls a glowing blue suit of armor over.

The suit of armor stood up, and I notice two things. It’s pieces are connected by a blue aura. And it is made for a human. The visor on the helm has two glowing dots underneath it, and it feels like they are staring into my soul. The suit of armor is made out of a mixture of white and black metal. It’s right side is black and the left is white. It has no shield or sword. The left forearm bracer is missing. The suit walks forward a few steps, and to my amazement, speaks.

“Thou seekest the hidden Element? I am the guardian of  the final Element, the Element of Justice! Prove thy worth! En Garde!”

It holds out it’s hands, and the aura that keeps it together creates a blue shield and sword. Without another word, it dashes forward and attacks.  I raise my sword just in time to block it’s sword, but it hits me with it’s shield and I go flying. As I hit the ground, I see Fluttershy run towards me.

“No! Stop!” I yell at her.

She skids to a stop a few feet away from me.

“Fluttershy, get somewhere safe! I’ll handle him!”

She nods and gallops about twenty feet away.

I quickly get to my feet and I face the suit again.

“What are you?!?” I shout to it.

It slowly walks towards me and says, “I am the guardian of the last Element. Who is thou? Why doust thy forsake the use of  a shield?”

“I don’t need it. My policy is to kill stuff before they kill me.”

“An interesting proposal, but doust thy not protect others?”

I glance back at Fluttershy, and I look back at the armor.

“Yeah, so?”

The armor says, “Thou protects others, but thou cannot protect others if thou dies. Thine shield protects thy from dieing. Therefore, thine shield protects others.”

I think for a moment on what he said.

“Guess you have a point… but without a shield I’m faster than you!”

I lunge forward and I sever the aura that connects the guardian’s right arm to the rest of his suit. The arm falls lifelessly to the ground. I duck under his shield as he swipes at me, and I use a backward reverse slash to sever his left arm. I turn around and so does he. His helmet glances at the fallen arms.

I smirk and say, “Guess that means I’ve won!”

The helmet looks at me and says, “Thou has not proven thyself. This is just a flesh wound.”

I look at the guardian like he is crazy.

“What do you mean ‘just a flesh wound’?!? I chopped both of your arms off!! And besides, how is a it a flesh wound if you have no flesh to wound?”

The guardian seems to be in deep thought for a moment, and then finally says,

“Touché.”

It’s blue aura flares up around it, and the aura reaches out to its arms. The arms glow and reconnect with the rest of the suit.

“Crap…” I mutter.

I start circling around it, looking for a weak spot.

At this point, I’m not even sure it has one.

We had moved closer to where Fluttershy was watching. I lunge forward again, but my sword is easily deflected and I quickly retreat before he can get a counterstrike in.

He starts speaking again, “Why doust thou seeketh the Element of Justice? What doust thou plan on doing with it?”

I reply, “I didn’t even know the hidden Element was Justice, I just knew I had to find it. As for what I am going to do with it, I’m going to use it to kill Discord.”

The guardian stops for a moment and looks at me intently. I feel a slight pain in my head, and then it feels like my brain explodes. I see my memories rush out in front of me, and I realize the guardian was looking through my mind. After a moment of excruciating pain, it finally died down and my vision returned to normal.

I fell to my knees and dropped my sword.

I gasped from the pain.

The guardian spoke again. “Thou hast led an interesting life thus far. Stolen away from thy world and placed in a new one. Yet thou has chosen to protect the inhabitants of this new world. Most interesting…” He looks over to where Fluttershy has hiding in the corner.

“But how far… will thou go?”

He raises his sword to his side, and dashes towards Fluttershy.

“NO!” I scream.

I get up and sprint as fast as I can towards her.

Fluttershy is frozen in fear.

I make it to Flutterhsy just as the guardian does.

Just as the guardian rose his sword for the killing blow, I throw myself over Fluttershy to shield her.

I wince, anticipating the attack.

But it never came. I cautiously look up, and I see the guardian slowly lower his sword to his side.

He takes a step back, and bows.

He spoke then, saying, “Justice is not so much as punishing the evil, as it is protecting the weak. It gladdens me that thou understandeth the true nature of Justice. It has two parts, attack and defense, punishment and protection. Both serve the same purpose. Protecting those who cannot protect themselves. I am not the guardian of the Element of Justice. I am the Element of Justice. And thou has proven thyself worthy to wield me.”

As soon as it is done talking, the pieces fall apart. This reveals a golden bracer with a large sapphire in the shape of the symbol I pressed, all glowing in the blue aura.

It spoke again, and with every word the aura pulsed.

“With wielding me, thou receives two things. The armor I was using will be absorbed into you, and you can summon it whenever you need protection. The armor represents the two sides of Justice. The black right side represents killing those who are wicked, while the white left side represents protecting those who are weak. The right hand is where thou wields thy sword, while the left is where thou wields thy shield. The second thing thou shall receive is a shield. Using me, thou can summon a shield of my energy. If  thou ever loses thy sword, you can summon one through me as well. I have additional powers, but those thy will have to discover on thy own.”

I stand up and walk to the Element of Justice and it’s armor. I reach out to pick up the Element of Justice, but as soon as I touch it, it attaches itself to my left forearm. When it attaches itself to my arm, the blue aura fades back inside of it. I look at the armor, and I realize why the left bracer was missing.

“Huh, the Element of Justice is supposed to be the bracer… interesting.”

I bend down to pick up the armor.

When I touch it, it turns into the blue aura and is absorbed into the Element on my arm. I try and summon the armor, and faster than I can blink, its on.

I turn towards Fluttershy while taking off the helmet,  and I ask, “How do I look?”

She stares at me for a moment and then says, “Amazing… I really didn’t think anypony other than a pony could become a bearer of one of the Elements.”

“It is weird huh? What I want to know is how a suit of armor meant for a human ended up as the Element of Justice.” Yeah…” She says quietly. I realize something else is on her mind. “What is it?” I ask her. She looks down at the ground, and then back up at me. She suddenly flies to me and gives me a huge hug. After a moment, I hug back. She says, “Thank you… thank you for risking your life to protect me.” I get her to look at my face, and I give her a large smile, “Your welcome, you know I would die to protect you.“ She smiles in return and ends the hug.

With a grin, I say “Anyway, we got what we came for. Its time to head back to camp. We have a hydra to kill.”

A/N Hope this chapter didn't kill you with all the "thys" and "thous".