Justice

I kept my gaze focused forward as I walked across the burned grass. It made an odd crunching noise under my feet. The air smelled of smoke. I walked up the soot stained concrete steps to where the front door used to be. I stepped through the front door because it wasn’t there. All that was left was a burned doorframe and some blackened hinges. The inside of my house was a jumble of fallen beams that had been turned to charcoal. As I walked through the house, the ashes were stirred up by my feet, and they floated around me.

I was in shock.

I couldn’t believe this was my house.

More specifically, I couldn’t believe my parents had been inside while it burned.

I had been at a friends house, I saw the wildfire spread from there. I had been told it would miss my house, and my parents would be fine.

But it didn’t, and they weren’t.

It came up out of nowhere, the wind blew it right towards them and the house was engulfed before they could get out. It had been late, my parents were asleep when it happened. I walked towards where the master bedroom used to be. All that was left of it was an unusually large heap of ashes marking where the bed was.

This was where they died.

I fell to my knees and wept.

“Why did I have to leave… if I was here I could have woken them up in time. Then they wouldn’t be dead, I could have saved them… Its my fault they died.” I thought.

I looked up around me, noting how open the house felt with no walls or roof. I looked back at the remnants of the bed, and spoke aloud, “I swear to you, I will find the person responsible for this, and I will kill him.” The police said it was lightning that started the fire. But someone had used the lightning as cover to start another fire. The second fire, that was the one that did this. After a few moments, I rose to my feet and began walking out of the house. The social worker was getting impatient. I didn’t even realize I had walked through my own room until I tripped. A large cloud of ashes poofed around me upon landing. I coughed to get rid of the ashes that went in my throat, and I looked around to see what tripped me.

A gleam of metal caught my eye.

Hardly daring to believe it, I scramble around and pick up the metal object from underneath the ash.

Its my kilij.

My sword.

“When the house burned down, something must have fell over it and protected it.” I spoke aloud. I unsheathe it, and examine the blade.

“Not even a scratch….“

I stood up, and walked out of the house while attaching the sheath to my belt. I then got in the car with the social worker, all the while ignoring his disapproving stare of what I had found. He turns the car on, and we drive away. I look back at the smoldering remains of my rapidly disappearing house, and say, “I will find the one who did this, I promise…”

I awake with a start to a small white rabbit bouncing up and down on my face. It holds up a watch, which reads 9:30, and glares at me. It then hops off and disappears. I slowly sit up straight, super sore and tired from all the walking of the past few days.

My first thought is, “ It’s great to finally sleep somewhere else other than on a forest floor or dungeon cell.” My second thought is, “Did a bunny with a pocket watch really just act as my alarm clock?”

I shrug, “Fluttershy has a lot of animals, makes sense they do odd jobs for her.”

I slowly stand up, much to the protest of my creaking joints. I look around, and I am quite surprised at what I see.  There are a lot of bird houses and places for animals to sleep. But the most interesting thing is how normal it looks. A fireplace, pots and pans hanging on the walls, a table, and chairs.

It looks like a normal home.

“Well what did you expect? A barn?” I asked myself out loud.

And the surprising answer was, yeah, I did expect something like that.

“I need to remember these ponies are like people here. I’ll probably get myself in a lot of trouble if I forget that.” I wandered around the house, careful not to step on any animals that were running around. After a few minutes of exploring, I decided to sit down at the table and wait for Fluttershy to wake up. My stomach growled, and I dreaded the vegetarian meal which was sure to come.

“I need to get some meat, but I don’t think Fluttershy would appreciate me killing one of her animals.” I mutter aloud.

All the animals that were running through the cottage stopped dead in their tracks.

“Whoops.”

They scatter faster than lightning.

“At least I don’t have to deal with them…” I think.

I look out the window next to the table, and I see Ponyville in the distance. It looked so peaceful it was hard to believe that everypony in that town wanted my head on a spike. I shook off the thought and I got more comfortable in the chair. The morning sun was streaming through the windows and in the warmth I began to doze off.

On the road just a few miles from Ponyville…

Rainbow Dash was soaring through the clouds in the light of morning. She looked around and saw the ground thousands of feet below her. She was happy. She did a barrel roll through the clouds, but was alarmed when the sun suddenly started to move closer to her. The scent of burning hair filled her nostrils. Her head whipped around in surprise to see her tail had been set on fire. The dream dissolves like smoke around her, and she found herself lying on the ground. She remembers with a rush why she was there, and then realizes her tail really is on fire. Rainbow rolls on the ground in desperation trying to put the fire out, and she finally succeeds. Panting from exhaustion and shock, she looks up to see Twilight glaring down at her.

“Did you set my tail on fire?!?” Rainbow shouts at her.

“Just a little trick Celestia taught me,” Twilight smugly replies. “Besides, you were taking forever to wake up, so I just helped you along.”

Applejack was rolling on the ground laughing while Pinkie glared at her.

“Why do I even hang with these guys…” Rainbow thought.

Twilight spoke then, saying, “Alright, now that everypony is awake, lets head out to Ponyville. Rainbow, you should be able to get us to Ponyville in around four hours, correct?”

“What makes you think I will even take you there after what you just did?!? Besides, why don’t you just teleport yourself there!?” Rainbow Dash shouted at her.

Twilight rolls her eyes and says, “I can’t teleport all of us to Ponyville because my magic is weakened thanks to Discord. You should have remembered that from last time. I can only do short range teleports, and they take a lot of energy. Small things like setting your tail on fire are easy, and I could do that all day. That’s why I think your going to take us anyway.” She finished the last two sentences with a hint of malice. Rainbow just glared at her, and started trotting towards the carriage.

“That’s what I thought” Twilight said.

After a bit of arguing over who would sit where, the four climbed into the carriage while Rainbow Dash got the harness on. After all that was done, Rainbow reluctantly took off and they were on their way to Ponyville.

Back in the cottage…

I awoke to the smell of scrambled eggs.

It was like heaven.

I opened my eyes and saw Fluttershy holding  a pan of eggs over a fire in the fireplace. As I got up out of the chair, she turned around and noticed I had woken up.

She smiles and says, “Good morning, I’m glad to see your awake. I’m sorry I wasn’t down when you woke up the first time. I was busy talking to the animals in my room and asking them if they had seen anypony.” “Good morning. Did the animals spot anything?”

“Nope, all clear.”

“That’s good…um… why are you cooking eggs?”

She gives me a worried look, “Oh… I thought you would like eggs because you have just been eating apples and stuff… I’m sorry, I didn’t know you that you didn’t like them…” She finished sadly.

“No no, its not that!” I quickly reassure her, “I love scrambled eggs, I just thought all you ponies were vegetarians.”

“No, we are omnivores like you, but we mostly stick to eggs and apples.”

“Alright.”

Fluttershy inspects the eggs which are still over the fire.

“It looks like the eggs are done, sit down at the table and I’ll prepare breakfast for you.”

“Okay, thank you.”

I walk back over to the table and sit down. The sound of plates clanking and a general bustle of activity emanated from the kitchen.

I call out, “Are you sure you don’t want any help?”

I hear a plate crash against the floor and break.

“No thank you, I got this.”

“Okay then…” I mutter to myself.

After a few moments, Fluttershy comes out carrying two plates of food. She sets them down on the table and retreats back to the kitchen. She returns carrying two glasses of what I presume is orange juice. She sets them down as well, and sits in the chair next to me.

“Does it look okay?” She worriedly asks me.

“Its looks great! Thank you.” I smile at her.

She looks down and blushes, then starts to eat.

I get a slight blush as well when I realize why she wanted to make me breakfast. I decide not to say anything, and instead focus on eating.

Once we are done, Fluttershy asks me, “Well, what should we do now? What are your plans?”

I lean back in the chair and think.

After a few seconds, I say, “Overall, there are three things we need to do. Find the 7th element, kill the hydra, and kill the dragon. Do you know exactly where the dragon and hydra are?”

Fluttershy looks at me and says, “The hydra is in Froggy Bottom Bog, which is about half a days journey from here. The dragon lives farther away, up in a cave on the side of a mountain.”

“Alright, where should we look for the element?”

Fluttershy thinks for a moment, then says, “We should probably go to the ruins the original six were found in. That would be our best bet for finding it.”

“How far away is that?”

“Only a few hours away.”

“Since that is the closest, we’ll go there first.”

Fluttershy frowns and says, “Now? I’m still really tired from the long journey here… could we take the day off and go tomorrow?”

I shake my head, “It is dangerous for us to stay in one place for too long. We can rest for a few more hours, then we should leave.”

“Alright…” Fluttershy says despondently.

I almost give in, but I remember this is to protect her just as much as it is to protect me.

“Do you know anypony in Ponyville who could help us?” I ask.

“Well, he is not a pony, but Spike could help us.”

“Who is Spike?”

“He is a baby dragon who lives with Twilight.” Fluttershy happily replies.

I stare at her in disbelief.

“A baby dragon? How exactly could a baby dragon help us?”

“He can send things by burning them, and because he is not a pony, Discord has no influence over him.” “Huh, that could be useful… Alright, how do we contact him?”

Fluttershy smiles, “I’ll just ask one of my birds to tell him to come over here.”

Fluttershy trots over to a bird house, and whispers to a blue jay that was resting within. A few seconds pass, and the blue jay comes out of the house. It spreads its wings, and flies through an open window.

“Alright, He’ll be here soon.”

I say, ”Okay, what do you want to do while we are waiting for him?”

She asks, “I heard a little bit about your world from what you said in the throne room, but I know almost nothing about you. Could you tell me about yourself?”

I sigh, “Sure, if you want. But recent events haven’t been all that great, and it’s a bit of a sad story. Sure you want to hear?”

Fluttershy looks down and frowns. After a moment, she looks back up and nods. “Yes I do.”

I sigh again, “Alright then. Lets move to the couch, it’s a long story so you might as well get comfortable.” Fluttershy and I move to the couch and sit down. I then tell her about my life, explaining things like cars and microwaves as I went along. I told her about my friends and my parents. Eventually, I got to the fire. “About a week ago… my parents were killed.”

Fluttershy gasped in horror. “They were killed?! I‘m so sorry…”

She quickly moved to my side and gave me a hug. I put my arm around her and hugged back. Fluttershy made no indication she was going to move, so I just continued to hold her and kept going.

“They died in a fire. An arsonist had set the forest bordering our house on fire. The wind helped the fire jump from the forest to my house.”

She looked up in shock. “Somepony did it on purpose?!? And your parents were burned to death?!?”

She looked distraught and tears were freely falling. She buried her head in my chest and began sobbing. “Geez, shes taking worse than I did.” I thought.

I quickly reassure her, “They weren’t burned to death. They were asleep at the time so they probably died of toxic fumes and smoke inhalation. Most likely they didn’t even wake up.”

She chokes out, “But somepony still did set the fire on purpose, didn’t they?”

“Someone,” I correct, “But yeah, someone did start it.”

She is slowly regaining control of herself, “Did you ever *sniff* find the person who did it?”

I break the eye contact.

“No. I was looking for whoever set it when I came here.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t find whoever did it… will you ever go back and try to find the arsonist?”

She made eye contact with me again, and I could tell there was a lot more behind this question. She wanted to know if I would ever leave her.

I shake my head, “I did promise my parents I would find their killer, obviously I can’t stay and do that. But they wouldn’t want me to waste my life searching for revenge like that anyway. So no, I wont be leaving.” Fluttershy let out an almost imperceptible sigh of relief. She gave me a sad smile and said, “I’m sorry you wont be able to keep that promise with your parents but, your right, they probably wouldn’t want you looking for revenge. And… I’m glad your staying too.”

She looked to the side and blushed.

Before I could say anything, I heard the door to the cottage open and a small purple dragon walked in. He stopped in surprise at seeing Fluttershy snuggled up to me blushing. Fluttershy quickly got off of me and trotted over to him, all the while trying to hide her embarrassment. “Um, Ty, this is Spike. Spike, Ty.” She hastily introduced us. Spike walked forward and gasped in amazement,

“Wow, so your that human that everypony is talking about!”

“Uh… yeah.” I awkwardly reply.

He holds out his hand, “Well, its nice to meet you.” I bend down and shake his hand.

“Likewise.”

I sit back down on the couch and Fluttershy sits down beside me. Together we explain what has happened so far, skipping things like the grayscale guardians because he already knew about them.

Once we finished he whistled, “Whew, you really are in trouble huh?”

I grimly nod my head. “Yeah, and it will only get worse when they find out we’re not in Appleoosa.”

“Well, how do you want me to help?”

I think for a minute. “Fluttershy told me you live with Twilight, is that true?”

“Yep.”

“Alright, you can be our inside man.”

He stares blankly at me. “Inside man? What does that mean?”

“Its like a spy, you listen in on what those five and the Princesses are planning, and you tell us. You can send messages right?”

“Yeah, I can do that!”

“Can you send food and other supplies?”

“Sure can!”

“Perfect, while Fluttershy and I are out killing the guardians or finding the hidden element, you can give us support and updates on whats happening.”

“Alright, when are you going to leave?”

I look at Fluttershy, “We should be heading out soon, are you feeling up to it?”

She nods, “I’m feeling fine.”

Spike looks at me, “Yeah, its probably good your going to leave soon, Twilight and her friends should be in town any minute.”

I look at Spike in shock.

“What?!? They are on their way right now?”

“Uh, yeah. Twilight sent me a telepathic message this morning that she was going to be here a little after 1:00.”

The little white bunny from this morning suddenly hopped up on my lap and waved its watch in my face. The watch reads 1:06.

“Fluttershy! We need to go, now!”

I quickly stand up and run to the nearest window. I look around franticly but I don’t see anything.

In a panicked voice, Fluttershy asks me, “What should I pack??”

“Theres no time,” I quickly reply, “Spike, try and throw them off our trail. If they are coming here they must have found our tracks. Fluttershy, lets go!”

“Alright!” She rushes to the front door.

I run after her, and I call out to Spike over my shoulder, “We are heading to the ruins to find the hidden element, we should be back by tomorrow. Send some food and a tent latter tonight okay?”

“Will do!” He calls out to me just as I run out the door.

Out in the yard, I run up to Fluttershy who is staring at the sky, and ask, “Which way are the ruins?”

She doesn’t move, but continues staring.

I follow her gaze to see the rainbow colored pony pulling a chariot looking thing with the other four inside. Suddenly the chariot swerves, and is heading directly towards us.

“The spotted us! Fluttershy run! Lead the way to the ruins!”

This snaps her out of her trance, and she begins galloping towards the Everfree forest. Once we get into the forest, we keep running but we have to slow down a bit to dodge trees.

“Fluttershy! If I have to fight your friends, I need you to tell me about them so I can figure out their weaknesses!” I yell to her as we run.

Out of the corner of my eye I see her nod, “Okay, but promise me you wont kill them? I know they are corrupted, but if we beat Discord they should return to normal.”

“Well that makes my job a million times harder,” I think to myself.

I hear a crashing sound come from behind us.

I say out loud, “Alright, fine, just hurry! I can hear them catching up to us!”

“Okay, first off, since Discord has come back, my friends have become the opposites of themselves. Rainbow Dash used to represent loyalty, Rarity was generosity, Applejack was honesty, Pinkie Pie was laughter, and Twilight was magic. Rainbow doesn’t have any loyalty, Applejack is a liar, Rarity is greedy, Pinkie Pie hates laughter, and Twilight is meaner but has her magic weakened.”

“Alright, I can bribe Rarity, maybe talk Rainbow into fighting with her friends, and I can laugh at Pinkie to goad her, but what about Twilight and Applejack? Are there any other facts I should know about your friends?”

Fluttershy is silent for a moment while she thinks. We continue to run.

Eventually she looks back at me and says, “There are a few things, Rarity hates to get dirty, Pinkie isn’t a fighter, but her Pinkie Sense will let her know your every move before you make it. Applejack tends to bite off more than she can chew, Rainbow is fiercely competitive, and Twilight will stop at nothing to please the Princess.”

Now its my turn to think.

I begin formulating plans to fight them.

I smile when I figure out the perfect strategy.

We keep on running until we hit a clearing with just a few trees scattered around. It was much less dense than the forest we were running through. On the ground by  a tree I see a straight stick about six feet long. “Hey Fluttershy, stop! I’m going to make my stand here. This looks like a good place.”

She trots over to me, and I bend down to pick up the stick I saw.

There are three piles of sticks next to it, but I ignore them.

I grab the stick and test its balance.

“This will work great as a Bo staff.” As I turn towards Fluttershy, I hear a growl from behind me. I slowly turn around and see that the piles of sticks were actually wolves. Their entire bodies were made of wood. “Fluttershy… what are those?” I hesitantly ask.

The three wolves advance towards  me. Fluttershy quickly gets between us and starts talking to them. After a few seconds, the wolves turn around and face the direction the five ponies were coming from.

Fluttershy turns back to me and says, “They are Timber Wolves. I talked to them and they are going to help us fight.” She smiles.

My eyes widen in shock. Birds and rabbits are one thing, but wolves?

“Wow, I’m glad your on my side.” I say laughingly.

I suddenly realize something and my smile drops.

“You didn‘t say ‘us‘ right?”

“Yeah I did, I’m going to help you fight this time.”

I give her a stern look, “No your not. Since I won’t kill them, my sword will just get in the way. You take my sword and hide up in one of the trees.”

My expression softens a bit, “I’ll be able to fight better knowing you are safe, and you can be a lookout to make sure nopony sneaks up behind me, okay?”

She smiles and nods her head. “Okay, I can do that.”

I hand her my sword, and she flies up into the nearest tree with it. I turn back to where the sound of the five was coming from, and I stand next to the timber wolves. “Well this fight is going to be interesting.” I mutter to myself. The crashing sound was almost right towards us. I drop into a Bo staff stance, and the wolves beside me bristle in anticipation. Just as I see the five ponies break the tree-line into the clearing, I give a yell and the wolves and I charge.