Justice

The kids all huddled a few feet away from me, glancing fearfully between me and my sword, which was slung over my shoulder. Being 17, and the orphanage sending kids away at 18, I was, at the moment, the oldest. The lawyer spoke aloud to the kids, saying in his smooth, greasy, voice,

“This is Ty, he will be staying with you all for awhile. So don’t be shy, come on and greet him!”

The head of the orphanage, a fat toady old lady, looked at the kids and brusquely gestured them come forward, while leaning towards the lawyers face and whispering, as if I couldn’t hear,

“You sure it was a good idea to let him bring that sword?”

The lawyer replied, “He was pretty adamant about it, all hell would’ve broken loose had we tried to take it away.” “Well your responsible for any damages he causes.” “He wont be a problem, wont you?”

He says while glaring at me. I just growl in response. He was lucky I was able to control myself, otherwise he would have been dead the second I learned he took my inheritance away. And to add insult to injury, the only way he was able to keep it was if I belonged to the state, instead of living with my relatives. So now I was stuck here, with a bunch of kids between ages five and twelve. The lawyer laughs at my response and says,

“We has spunk, but he wont be any trouble,” Looking at me and giving his cruel smile, he then says, “Have fun.”

And walks out. The old hag looks at the children and says,

“Meet and greet or whatever you do, just be ready in thirty minutes for dinner!” She too leaves.

I’m all alone with these kids, and the awkward silence is palpable. Then one guy, about twelve, steps forward and says,

“Well, welcome… I guess. My name is John.”

He holds out his hand.

I ignore it.

He awkwardly brings his hand back and says, “Soooo…. Do you want me to show you to your bed?”

“No.” Was my simple reply. “All I want is for you to get me a backpack, and show me the kitchen.” “Umm… alright.”

He runs to a bed, reaches under it, and pulls out an old backpack. “Will this do?”

“Just fine.”

“Alright, the kitchen is over here.”

“Go in there, fill the backpack up with food and water, and bring it back.”

“Okay…” John leaves for a few minutes.

While he is gone, a little girl, probably about six, walks up and asks,

“What is that thing on your back?”

“Its a sword,” I reply, not really interested in what she said, just impatient for John to hurry up.

“What does it do?”

“It kills people.” Was my not-very-sensitive answer.

She looked at it in wonder and then said, “Have you ever killed anyone?”

The other kids gasp, and another girl, this one about ten, stepped forward and grabbed the little girls arm saying, “That’s not a question you ask people.”

She pulled her back towards the crowd of kids. John comes back with the backpack full of food, and gives it to me.

“Why do you need all of this?” He asks.

I reply, “You’d be crazy to think Id be staying here.”

I walk to a wall with a window, push a bed against it, and climb up. I wrap a blanket around my hand, and break the window. The blanket protects my hand and muffles the sound, and the bed catches the glass shards before they hit the floor and make noise. I unwrap my hand and look back at John.

“Are you the leader of these kids?”

He looks around at the faces that turn to him.

“Well, I guess so.” I beckon him over.

I reach my hand in my pocket and pull out my pocket knife.

“Here, every good leader needs a weapon, which is a tool and his symbol of power.”

He hesitantly takes the knife. “….thank you.” He finally says, and I see him smile. I nod, and as I climb out through the window, I look back at the six year old girl, and say,

“Yes.“

And then I’m gone.

I awoke from my long dream, sore, stiff and tired. It had been mid-afternoon when I had escaped yesterday, so I decided to build a small shelter in the forest and spend the night. I get up and stretched, reflecting on my dream. It was better than the previous few, but still not a happy memory.

“Alright,” I say aloud, “Now that I have a little time before the sun rises, I need to make a plan.”

Easier said than done.

“So,” I begin out loud, “First things first, I go into the armory and get my sword. If its even there. Alright, say I get my sword, then what do I do? Easy, I…I… I have no idea what to do. Well, I guess I should try to get back home. How the heck am I going to do that? And why do I even want to go back? I mean, there is no chance of getting killed by angry ponies, but the rest of it still sucks! …No, I will never go back. No matter what, I have to try and take my chances here. Alright then, that means a new problem. Survival. How am I going to survive? So, lets think logically here, the problem is that the evil sun ruler wants to incinerate me. How do I solve this problem? Well… yeah I’m screwed. The only way Celestia wouldn’t burn me to a crisp would be if I killed Discord. If I do that all the ponies should be better, cause she said it was Discord who was making them act this way.  But then there is the problem of his grayscale guardian thingys. I have a feeling that a hydra and a dragon will be much harder to kill than that manticore, and just doing that almost killed me. With the manticore I just got a lucky throw, even with escaping from Celestia I just got lucky that she was too pissed off to just levitate me and kill me. Oh, and of course there is the hidden element thing I gotta find to kill Discord. Perfect. As if this wasn’t impossible enough. I have to kill a dragon and a hydra, find a hidden element, find some way to protect myself from magic, kill an ancient spirit of chaos, and do all this before Celestia finds me and cremates me alive……. I really am screwed.”

I sigh, ending my verbal rant, “Who knew planning could be so depressing?” “But like I said, first things first, and I gotta get my sword.”

I slowly creep through the bushes and trees, and I circle my way through the forest until I am behind the town, and just ten feet away from the back door to the armory. The armory was a surprisingly big building, made out of stone blocks with a simple thatched roof. It looked very new.

“Must’ve been built in response to Discords third awakening.” I thought.

As I prepare to creep forward, I hear my stomach grumble. I had forgotten that my last meal was at the zebra’s place two days ago, and I’m starving.

“Okay, after I get my sword I’ll sneak into a bakery or something and grab some food.” I whispered to myself.

Just as I prepare to dash across the open ground to the armory, I hear a crashing sound in the treetops. I look to my right, and I see a gray and yellow bundle crash into me. I untangle myself from the creature, and scoot backwards on my butt a few feet. The creature, now that I can tell it’s a pegasus,  gets up, turns to me, and exclaims, “I’m so sorry mister, are you alright?”

The first thing I notice are the eyes, they were looking in opposite directions.

“She can’t really see me! With me sitting on the ground, she must think I’m a pony!” I mentally exclaimed.

I quickly say, “Yeah, I’m alright. Here, let me help you!”

The pony was carrying a big bag of letters, which of course flew everywhere upon impact. After a few seconds we gathered them up, and I handed them to her, being careful that she doesn’t touch my hand. “Thanks mister, here, have a muffin for your trouble!”

She digs into here bag and pulls out a perfect muffin, not even slight squished. I gingerly take the muffin, and say,

“Uh, thanks.”

“Your welcome,” she smiles back, but then suddenly narrows her eyes and leans closer, as if trying to focus on me. My pulse skyrockets as I remain perfectly still, sweat beading on my brow. After a few seconds, she giggles, “You look funny, hehe, anyway, I’m off, cya!”

“Cya…” I hesitantly reply.

She flies up with her bag around her, crashes into a couple of trees, and eventually soars off. After a few seconds, I say,

“Well that was weird, but at least the food problem solved itself.”

I quickly scarf down the muffin, and then I run across the open ground to the armory. Once there, I enter through the back door.

I wait a second for my eyes to adjust to the dim light, and when I do, I see a pony reading a magazine behind a counter. I sneak up behind him, and put him in a chokehold. After a few minutes, he passes out, and I release before I kill him. I put the pony behind the counter, and I look around the room. I see a mirror mounted on a wall, for ponies to look at themselves with the armor on. I walk over to it, and look at my reflection. It had been days since I had seen myself, and I was glad I looked the same. Brown hair, greenish blue eyes, and still tall. That much at least hadn’t changed. I looked around at the rest of the armory. The armory was divided into two sections. A front and back, with the back being for actual armor. I couldn’t see the front, but on a sign by the far wall, it pointed towards an archway into the next room and read “Weapons”.  I walked towards it, passing rows of armor on my left.

“Are you sure he will come?”

“I’m positive Rainbow, the way he fought with his sword, I know he wouldn’t go for long without it. He has to come here and look for it!”

“Well Twilight dear, I really don’t like the way we are doing this, its kind of behind the Princess’s back, and I’m slightly worried.”

“You heard the way she talked about us Rarity, capturing the human on our own is the only way we can redeem ourselves.”

“Ah think Rarity might have a point for once sugarcube, maybe he should’ve gotten some backup.” *CRASH*

“Pinkie! Stop playing with things! He’ll know we are here!”

“Sorry…”

I heard a crash come from the other room, and then hushed voices. I stopped walking immediately, and listened. Nothing. I desperately looked around, but this was the armor section, not a weapon in sight. I grabbed a helmet that had armor plating for a horn, at the very least I could use it as a club by holding the horn and using the actual helmet as the club. I carefully resume my advance.

/Fluttershy’s POV/

I watched all my friends hiding in the darkness and bickering amongst each other. They never would have done this before… why couldn’t they see that the human wasn’t a threat? He saved me… I glance at the pile of swords that Pinkie Pie had knocked down, and in the middle of the pony swords, I saw the sword the human had. I know what I have to do. They don’t trust him, but I do. I just have to prove it. I bend down and pick up the weapon in my mouth. I sit behind my friends so they don’t see what I have, and I wait.

/Ty’s POV/

With my back against the wall, and the doorway just to my left, I listen intently. I hear the faint sounds of breathing just on the other side. I wasn’t sure how many, but more than two for sure.

“Great, there is a whole posse here just waiting for me, I should’ve known there would be a trap for me here. But I cant give up, I have to get my sword back.”

I breathe in, and quickly round the corner, while swinging the helmet to hit the first thing that got in my way. As soon as I rounded the corner however, I was enveloped in a purple mist, and was levitated two feet off the ground. The same mist yanked the helmet out of may hands, which fell to the floor with a clatter. I looked up in frustration, and I saw five of the ponies that were in the throne room, minus Fluttershy.

“Damn it!” I curse aloud. How could I have forgotten about magic? I glare at the purple one that was levitating me, and she says,

“HA! I caught you, that wasn’t so hard.”

She has a very smug look on her face as she continues,

“Now we can take him back to Celestia, and be restored of our honor.”

An orange pony trots up, “Well ah guess your plan did work, ah must admit I did have mah doubts.” She states with a southern drawl.

“Of course Applejack, when do my plans not work? Anyway, human,”

She said the last word with a sneer,

“Allow me to introduce you to myself and my friends, I am Twilight, and this is Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie.” She points to the orange pony with the cowboy hat, the white one with a  fancy mane, the rainbow one I kicked in the face, and a pink pony that was jumping up and down in excitement. Twilight looked around, “Where is Fluttershy?”

Just then Fluttershy trotted out from behind a weapon rack with my kilij held in her mouth. All the ponies gasp in surprise when they see what she has, and so do I. Twilight was so surprised she let the mist around me fall, and I drop back to the ground.

“Fluttershy! What are you doing?” Twilight demands.

Fluttershy says nothing and locks eyes with me. She slowly trots forwards, and her friends part to let her through. Once she was three feet away from me, with the other five behind her,  she stretches her neck out, as if presenting the sword to me.

Her eyes stayed on mine the whole time.

Twilight again asks, “What are you doing!?” This time with a bit more urgency.

Fluttershy again ignores her.

I slowly reach out, and grab my sword. She lets go, and then just watches me. I look my sword over for any scratches on the scabbard, and then I unsheathe it. The five gasp, and take a step back, even the hyperactive pink one looked scared.

I look back at Fluttershy and she speaks. “I know nopony trusts you, but I do. You saved my life, a fact they seem to ignore. I gave you your sword to show my trust in you, even after seeing what your capable of with it…”

The silence is deafening.

I realize that she probably does trust me, but there was only one way I could know for sure it was real, and not some elaborate trap.

I quickly lock eyes with her again.

I give my most savage snarl, and I raise my sword.

The five cry out, and rush forward.

But they don’t make it.

I slash downwards at Fluttershy with all of my strength.

*SWISH*

………………………………......

The sword blade hovered just an inch above Fluttershy’s face, and she didn’t even flinch.

She had kept her eyes locked on mine the entire time.

I took a step back as I sheathed my sword.

In a voice mingled with reverence and awe, I ask, “You…you really do trust me… why?”

She smiles, and says, “Because you trusted me. When you first came here, you didn’t know me, but you trusted that I was worth saving, and you risked your life for mine. I trust you with my life.”

I slowly smile, it looked as if I wasn’t really alone here after all.

Fluttershy spoke, “We should get going, somepony could have heard all the commotion, and guards could be on their way.”

“We?” I ask.

She smiles and says, “If that’s alright with you.”

I think for second, and then reply, “Fine by me, lets go.”

Together we run out the back door of the armory, and retreat deep into the woods, her five friends watching us completely dumbstruck as to what had just happened…