A Different Kind of Paradise

Chapter XI: King Takes Bishop

“Gabe, this is the greatest date ever.”  A light-skinned girl with purple bangs said as she held Gabe’s hands and took in the sights.  Currently she and Gabriel were riding a gondola down a canal in Venice with a lovely picnic spread in between them.  The buildings surrounding the canal had beautiful lights decorating them, and their reflection on the water was awe inspiring.

Gabe took the girl’s hands in her own and replied “you know I would do anything to make you happy right?”

“And that’s why I love you.”  The girl responded as she embraced Gabe and gently nuzzled him “Gabey.”  She finished.  That’s when she noticed a change in Gabe’s behavior.

Gabe heartlessly pushed his lover away, and then stood up on the boat and at the top of his lungs yelled “JUSTICE!”  He started turning in every direction.  “Where are you?!  I’m sick of your mind games!”

Sure enough the ice-cold voice ran through the air.  “You’re no fun Gabriel.”   Justice had appeared at the bow of the gondola and took the place of the rower.

Gabe just glared.

“Isn’t this what you want Gabriel?”  Justice asked; motioning towards the surroundings, and then the girl.  “And the best part is that it’s only a fragment of what I offer, I can make you the king of this world; after I’m done with it of course.”

“I don’t care about what you offer” Gabe snapped back “I just want you to leave me alone!”

Justice just chuckled and shook his head.  “Humans” he began “always thinking about what they want; or more precisely, what they think they want.”

Gabe was somewhat taken back by this.  “What do you mean?”

“I am mostly referring to the fact that you continue to lie: lie to your friends and worse yet lie to yourself.”

“Wrong.”  Gabe was offended by Justice’s last quip and wouldn’t take it lying down.  “I don’t lie.  Not because I’m afraid of the consequences, but because I don’t need to lie to get ahead!  I have what I have and I will continue to get what I want by playing it strait.  You claim to have figured out humanity, but you only see its dark side because that’s all you want to see; to justify your anger and hatred.  And that is why I will never help you!”

Justice just laughed.  After he finished he countered Gabe’s speech with his own.  “Can you see me?”

“See you?”   That remark confused Gabe more than anything Danny or Pinkie Pie could say any day.

“From on top your high horse of course!  You don’t care about right or wrong, you just want to make yourself look noble; or is it not a matter of looking the part?  Perhaps you’re trying to feel noble, like you’re above the influence of the darkness of the real world.”

“I’m not trying to prove anything Justice, not to my friends or to myself?”  Gabe lashed back.

Justice loved this argument, and to play the part kept it going.  “Your “friends?”  Are you referring to that obnoxious, self-absorbed heretic that for some reason you’re choosing over a kingdom at your feet?  What exactly do you see in Daniel; and more importantly, why are you working so hard to protect him?”

Gabe had officially had it with Justice.  “Danny is my friend!  And that’s all I could ask from him, I don’t care if he’s flawed because he’s a good person.  Unlike you!  Who keeps trying to trick and tempt me into your little deals, unable to get it through his thick skull that his goals are insane and that you’re an ass!  You’re wrong: about me, about Danny, about everything.  And maybe instead of telling others how they feel and what they want you should just back the fuck off and realize that you’re never getting free.”  After he finished Gabe fell back into his seat and started panting.

After listening to Gabe go on Justice just looked back at him with a satisfied smirk on his face.  “I suppose you’re right my friend.”  He began to draw the long pole used for rowing out of the water, to reveal a wicked spear tip on the end.  “But don’t worry.”  He menacingly brought the point up, Gabe recoiling in fear.   “When you do change your mind and come back to me.”  He brought the spear down; not into Gabe, but rather the gondola itself.  Water then began to pour into the hull and take the boat down, starting with Justice’s end.  “I won’t hold any of this against you.”  With that he laughed his usual maniacal laugh as he was pulled into the water.

Gabe was next, he looked around but there were no docks in sight.  He had no choice but to hold his breath as the murky water that housed Justice pulled him in.

Like all the other times Justice had interfered with his dreams he woke with a start; but after a few deep breaths Gabe was able to calm himself quite easily.  He thought it was strange that Justice would just take everything Gabe said to him; he wasn’t quite sure if that was a good or bad thing.  Mostly he was just glad that after this nightmare there was nothing to be worried about; all of his friends were happy, and more importantly safe.  He turned and opened the curtains on his window; as he gazed to the moon he wondered if he could recreate that date Justice made, it did seem like the kind of thing Twilight would enjoy.

Spike tried in vain to shut out all of the noise Twilight was making downstairs, but it seemed each time he covered his head with his pillow it only got louder.  After a while he groaned audibly and stormed over to the edge.  “TWILIGHT!”  He yelled, hoping it would be enough to get her attention.

“Shoot!”  The frustrated purple mare said, before responding to her friend.  “What is it?  I almost had it that time.”

“You almost had it 8 times ago!”  The sleep-deprived dragon snapped.  “Can’t you just wait until morning?”

“And lose all of the progress I made so far?”  Twilight asked, horrified that Spike would ever make such a suggestion.  “No.  Not while I have so much going for me.”  She turned back to her experiments, working even harder to make up for the time spent talking with Spike.

“Well is one of those things a set of earmuffs?”  Spike asked sarcastically.  Sure enough a few seconds later a set of earphones flew at Spike; clapping over his ears, and the bar that was connecting the two covering his eyes.  “Oh ha, ha” Spike sarcastically chuckled as he adjusted the earphones.  It might have been a little unorthodox, but he was glad to be able to shut out Twilight’s manic mechanizations.

Twilight didn’t look back to see if Spike took her earphones and went to bed, she just listened and hoped for the absence of whining.   Not that anything Spike could say could actually get her to stop.  She was so close to understanding Danny’s spell and being able to break down how to use it herself, but there was only one thing stopping her; one last aspect of the enchantment seemed to be actively resisting her experiments, as if it didn’t want to be poked.  She assumed this to be the direct link to Danny’s thought process that was trying to reject outside influence, but Twilight’d show it.

Twilight was about to tap into this bizarre mental current and break it free from Danny and make it raw so as to make it a basic spell that any unicorn could cast, so to do that she was going to use an extremely powerful spell that was originally designed to counter mind control.  She applied the needed focus, which in this case was a charmed ring, to her horn and began to focus on this segment of magic.  She almost lost the focus when she was tempted to jump up and down giggling when she saw that it was working.  “Just… a little… more.  Please o please o please.”  She chanted as the magic began to break down.  All of a sudden something gave away and the spell ceased, the backlash caused Twilight to recoil, and give a look of horror when she saw she had lost all of her progress.  “NO!”  She stomped her hoof at her failure and prepared to try again, but something interrupted her.

Twilight hadn’t noticed before but the entire floor was covered in an odd blue mist.  “What the…?  That’s not supposed to happen.”  Suddenly a chill ran up her spine, as something called her to turn around.

When Twilight looked behind her she was terrified.  The mist began to rise up in a column.

This even odder shape slowly rose out of the mist, and eventually stopped when it was about nine feet tall.  Then two large flaps unwrapped from around the mass and took a position behind it, as if to resemble a pair of massive wings.  Then two more appendages slowly separated from the shape and made themselves to look like a pair of arms.  Then the entire lower half seemed to spread apart and flow.   Finally a shape took form in between its shoulders; the head seemed somewhat wolf shaped and where its eyes would be two glowing blue circles gazed out.  The entire thing began to stretch and groan as if it had just awoken from a deep sleep, its voice low and cold.

Twilight just stood there and stared at what just formed in front of her in a mix of fear and curiosity, when the shape’s blue eyes met hers she brought herself to speak.  “Wh-wha-what are you?”

Even though the shape’s face was a barely defined mass of mist, Twilight knew that it gave a devilish grin.  After chuckling to itself, the figure began to stride towards Twilight.  Twilight was unable to do anything but stare back, frozen in fear.  The shape bent downwards, almost eye level with Twilight; and in its cold cruel voice answered her.  “My name” it paused to give a terrifying leer at the petrified unicorn.  “Is Justice. and you” it wrapped its incorporeal hand around Twilight’s horn.  “Are going to help me.”

Twilight felt a painful sensation unlike anything else flow through her horn, and into her very mind.  In response to this she gave out a blood-curdling scream that was surpassed any, even Fluttershy, before it.

The cry of pain and fear even pierced the earphones secured around Spike’s head and shook him from his state of sleep.  Horrified by what he just heard he tore out of bed and dashed downstairs, just to see his worst fear confirmed: Twilight was lying on the floor unconscious.   Scared beyond imagining he went over and kneeled by his guardian’s side.

“T-T-Twilight?”  He said, in tears, trying to shake Twilight awake.  “Twilight this isn’t funny wake up!”

Nothing.

Spike stood up and then reeled in shock, tears pouring down his face.  He then bolted for the door and ran outside and started screaming “HELP!! PLEASE, SOMEPONY HELP! HELP!”

Gabe was in the kitchen making eating some of the muffins Danny brought home, hoping something in his belly would help him get to sleep when he heard a familiar voice from outside.  “Is that?”  He approached the window and listened closer, trying to put a face to the voice.  “It is!”  He opened the door and ran towards it, and just as he suspected it was Spike, running around franticly, crying.  “Spike what’s wrong?!”  He asked as he stopped short of the dragon.

“Gabe, you have to help me!”  Spike fell to the ground and clung to Gabe’s leg.

Gabe was becoming more and more frightened.  “What is it?  What happened?”

Spike could barely sob out the words.  “I-it’s Twilight!”

“TWILIGHT!?!”  Gabe gasped as his eyes widened in fear.