> Bird Paws > by Gryphon Gaming > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Chapter One : Defeat of the Gryphon Kingdom > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "You must go!" The king demanded to his young son. "But father..." The son bean to tear up, feeling heavily confused and worried. The king interrupted him,"NO! I'm sorry but it is the only way to keep you safe!" The king tried to reason. The doors to the palace began to bend in ward as the attackers on the other side rammed the giant doors. One knight, who was next to the king's throne, guided the young gryphon away from his dad, the king. They stared at each other as the distance between them grew. The knight looked down at the young gryphon who was struggling against him, trying every possible way to break free. He sat down in front of him on his rump. The young gryphon looked up at the knight. The young gryphon examined the knight. He wore silver armor that covered most of his dark brown fur and had heavy gauntlets on his talons. Large metal shoes were nailed in to the leggings of the armor. The knight lifted off his shinning helmet. He had mostly white feathers with a few black ones on top of his head. His beak was an autumn orange with a brown tip. He spoke gently for being twice the young gryphon's size. "We have to go! I'll protect you but you need to trust me!" The knight looked at the king and then back at the young gryphon,"You'll see your father again someday." With these words the young gryphon hesitated, but then slightly smiled and nodded. The knight smiled back and slid his helmet back on, grasping the young gryphons talons in a firm grip. The two were about to exit the stronghold when the doors busted open, a golden dust illuminating off of them, large burn marks in the middle of the thick, oak doors. The knight got in front of the Gryphon as they slowly made their way to the exit on the side of the throne. Luckily, the shadows hid them from sight since large marble pillars filled the sides of the room. A long, velvet, red carpet lead from the doors to the king's throne. The gryphon guards all aimed their crossbows at the invaders. The unicorns put up magic shields as the earth ponies drew their swords. One unicorn with different shades of blue for his mane and a pure white coat walked forward, a shield on his flank that had magenta sparkles diagonally placed from the top corner to the bottom on each side f his flank. "Gryphon king!" He shouted, the bowmen gryphons slowly getting taken out as they tried their best to return fire. The king just stared down at him,"You are charged with plotting against Equestria and the princesses that control it!" The stallion took another step forward, taking his spear and facing the point at the king. He wore a fearless expression. "Oh my, is that why you crippled my kingdom, killing my guards and citizens and destroying my economy and infrastructure just because some filly heard me saying how I was jealous of the princesses?" The king narrowed his eyes. The stallion spoke again, still defending his actions"That is not a valid plea, gryphon king! Your crimes are punisha-" "My crimes?! You ruined the lives of hundreds of my loyal subjects just because you believed I said something you didn't like and yet you see yourself as the 'bringers of justice'?" The king kept composed even though he knew he would die nonetheless. He rolled his eyes,"Stupid ponies get more brain dead each generation..." The stallion jumped at the king, seeing how he was only trying to delay the inevitable by talking. The knight shielded the young gryphon's eyes. However, he could see through a small crack in his gauntlets. The stallion's spear made contact in the king's stomach. The king cringed in pain, the stallion stepped away. The young gryphon fluttered his wings. "NOOOOO!" He shot away from the petrified knight and hugged the king, bawling his eyes out as the spear had penetrated the king and went inside the throne chair. the king looked at the young gryphon, now incredibly weak. "Son.... No..... Run...!" The young gryphon seemed to block everything out at his ears began to ring. The knight dived in to get the young gryphon. The stallion held a hoof to his mouth and backed away, seeing how he just ruined another family and saw the effects first hoof. The young gryphon hugged very hard as the king tried to push him away but ended up just grabbing his arm. The young gryphon opened his eyes and looked into his father's hazel eyes. He rested his talons in his father's grip. "I love you dad, please don't leave me!" he wailed. "Son....you..have to...go...!" The king became weaker. Suddenly the grip began to weaken even more, the bright color in the king's eyes fading. The grip faltered and his talon hit the chair. His eyes went dull as he stared off into the blankness of the room. The young gryphon was now bawling out every tear he had in himself. The knight finally pulled him away, his armor deflecting a few arrows the guards were shooting at him. "WE HAVE TO GO!" Echoed in the young gryphon's ears from the knight's beak.His vision began to only focus on his now dead father. The knight busted down the door to the outside, the guards in pursuit. His wings exploded apart from his sides and he caught an updraft of air. The young gryphon saw the stallion who did the deed and focused his eyes on him until they were out of sight. He cried into the knight's cold, hard chest plates as they and hundreds of other gryphons fled from the now burning and destroyed kingdom. He was scared and confused. The young gryphon looked up at the knight who also had a tear forming in his eye. "I wanna go back!" The young one said. "No... we can't... we have to find a new home now..." "But I wanna see my father!" "It's too late! I wish I could see him again but we need to make sure everygryphon else is safe too!" The knight sighed. He looked around the sky, all the gryphons both male and female, old and young had scattered and were just dots in the sky. "This is ridiculous..." The knight began,"I bet they just wanted the Gryphon Kingdom to be demolished since they were scared of us!" "Where will we go now?" The small gryphon asked. "We should....find a place to camp...we need to rest up after what just happened." The small gryphon nodded and held on to the knight tight,"Will things go back to normal?" The knight hesitated to answer,"I-I can not say for sure, little Golden Talon, I-I just don't know..." > Chapter Two : The Hunter and the hunted > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Do you have my cell number just incase?" "Yeah, mom I'll be fine! Why are you worrying over me?" "Well, I don't know what kind of things seventeen year olds are capable of doing these days!" "Calm down, go enjoy yourself, I'll probably just play Battlefield or Call of Duty or something." His mom hesitated,"Fine, but if I come home and something is different in a bad way-" "Mom! I'll be fine! Just go to Olive Garden or where ever you're going..." "I already told you, it's Applebees with my boyfriend!" "Oh yeah." He scowled,"Tim..." "Why do you hate him?" His mom got out her car keys to her grey minivan. "I think you dating him is like kissing a black recluse spider..." His mom leaned down and kissed him,"Please try to accept him, Danny. It's hard enough that your father and I had a... you know..." "Divorce?" "Yes." "Fine... Just go to Applebees." Danny pouted, walking away. His mom exited through the front door and right before she closed it said, "Make sure all the doors and windows are locked! The AC is on!" Danny sighed, closed and locked the backyard door and side door. Then he grumbled his way to the second floor of the house and made sure all the windows were shut, even though air conditioning could never bring the oven of an upstairs below ninety degrees fahrenheit. He smiled, finally free for the next few hours, free of chores his mom forced him to do like dishes, vacuuming, or even yard work. Yard work would usually include raking leaves or mowing the grass, but his yard was humungous, being nearly four square acres large. He only had one neighbor who lived across the street and Danny absolutely hated them. He had no real reason why. He just felt uncomfortable around them. They lived deep in the forest, only a dirt road from the paved street to their house. Danny never felt safe on the dirt road, even when someone was with him. Danny laid in his room, pondering what to do as the fan on his ceiling slowly went in circles. He stared at one blade as it chased the other blades. With nothing to do, he logged on to his Windows 7 laptop, checking his AOL mail. "Spam....Spam.... Spam.... Fake.....Unimportant." Was how he summed it up. He went and typed in YouTube.com on the search bar in the Google Chrome window. He was lead to the homepage. "Wonder how long Mom will spend at Applebees with that prick..." Danny giggled, opening a new tab and going to a much more mature site... Golden Talon looked around, staying by the knight's side as they walked in the woods. "Where are we going?" Gold asked "To get food..." the knight responded. "Ooh, is the castle's chef here?" Gold seemed hopeful, smiling. "No, we have to get our food manually, little Golden Talon!" Knight had a hungry grin. Seemed like he could eat a horse... or so he wished. The two stayed very quiet as the knight set up simple rope traps. Gold played with butterflies that flew just above his head. He could almost reach the low lying branches that the knight was growing tired with since they kept whacking him in his face. "What do we do now?" Gold whispered as knight hid in some dark green brush. "We wait for an animal to crawl into the traps." "Then what?" Gold asked with a curious expression. "Erm, you'll see." the knight spared him the details. Danny sighed happily, throwing away some tissues he used to clean up his 'work station'. He stared at his watch, only 4 o'clock. "Well that burnt some time." Danny chuckled. He zippered his pants back up and cruised into his kitchen, getting out some Beef flavored Ramen Noodle Soup. He whistled a merry jingle as he turned on his stove top, taking out a small pot and filling it to an imaginary line his mind setup. He then turned the knob on the stove to a seven. He turned returned to his computer. There was a message on the screen, more of a one question survey, actually. He read it aloud,"What rhymes with 'orange'?". There were then multiple answer choices. A was Door Hinge, B was Core Tinge, and the last choice, C, We'll be here for a while,"What do they mean 'we'?" Danny asked himself. He shook his head and clicked A, Door Hinge. His computer shorted out. After furiously trying to press the power button, Danny gave up and went back to the stove and just waited for the water to boil. "Queen! Queen!" A little changeling yelled out, running to the Queen of Changelings, Chrysalis who waited on a sofa, pissed as her minions tried to pass the riddle that Twilight set up against them after Twilight took them down again in their own base of operations. She waited for her minions to actually solve the magic riddle, of what rhymes with orange. "What is it?" She hissed, still having a head ache after being defeated. "The answer is door hinge!" "Then try it..." Chrysalis was relatively quiet yet sounded pissed. "Yes, my queen." He bowed and then rushed to the magical being wearing the giant Pinkie Pie costume. "Door Hinge!" He yelled. The being then exploded, sending the changeling flying through the air and crashing him into a wall, but there was now an exit way. All, including the queen, exited in a rushing wave of black shells, and furious shape shifting magic. Danny finally finished cooking his soup and put in the flavoring, spreading it through out the water with his fork, turning it into a broth to bath the noodles in. He sat in the wooden chair at the table and twirled the fork around, gathering noodles as he gulped up half the noodles in one gulp. He immediately spit it back into the bowl, both from having too much in his mouth and how it was too hot. "Dammit!" He exclaimed, wiping his mouth. He shook his head and turned on the kitchen's TV. He flicked through multiple channels, not finding one thing to watch that he liked,"Ain't this a bitch?" he sighed. Silently, he ate at a few noodles at a time. Finishing, he wiped his mouth and put his dishes in the sink. He strolled back into his room. The computer still out. He laid down, rubbing his head. Suddenly he felt a tremor, then a hologram-like imagine showed up right in front of him. There were two horses, one large and one small. The small one was purple and the tall one black. The small one had a horn and it looked like it was discharging a bright glow. Danny was behind the giant one. Suddenly the horn let go a large blast, it zoomed past the tall pony and seemed to engulf Danny. His entire vision began to glow. The floor beneath him gave out. He felt weightless. In front of him, the light ceased. He blinked a few times, his vision shaking and his hands and legs trembling. He colappsed onto the ground, his vision blacking out. He landed on cold, castle brick. His left hand landed into a small pile of green goop, a pair of hoof steps in front of him. "Get the Queen..." Gold woke up softly, the blaze from the campfire shining off the knight's armor. Gold looked around as the knight poked the fire with a twig. "I'm hungry...." The young gryphon complained. "I'm sorry Golden, but we didn't catch anything." The knight sighed,shifting the wood in the fire until the twig broke. Gold was about to close his eyes when suddenly he heard a twig break. The knight was on his paws in seconds, his large dagger out in seconds towards the noise. They could see a pair of blue eyes staring at them, illuminated by the fire. Then another appeared. Another followed by another and even more pairs. Then there was a pair of eyes that were white with green irises. They all came closer as it became very obvious what was going on. "Umm, what is going on?!" Golden jumped over to the knight, hiding behind him. "Changelings..." The knight gasped and picked up the young gryphon. The one with green irises stepped forward "Ahh yes, gryphons... I never would expect a knight to be so far from home~" Chrysalis teased. "That's because the 'majestic justice system' that Celestia has screwed us over." The knight sighed angrily. "Awww, what did little celly do to you, Birdy Paws?" she cooed. "Why is she talking to you like that?" Golden asked in a whisper. "She sent her guards and killed the gryphon king and now the entire kingdom is cursed to damnation." The knight stayed stone faced. He blushed when Chrysalis got closed and brushed her mane into his face. He brushed it away. "D'awww, I could help you if you can do me a favor~" Chrysalis grinned. Golden looked up at him, noticing the blush. "And that is?" he asked, raising a brow. "We get back together~" Gold was dumbfounded as he looked up at the knight. His blushed had completely taken over his cheeks. "W-what are you talking about?" The knight asked, acting as if he didn't know. "What is she talking about?" Golden asked, confused. Chrysalis stoked the knight's beak getting real close,"Come one, Mr. Paws~. Don't you want to give me all your love?~" "Erm..." The knight covered Gold's ears,"Why should I?" "Why~? It seems we fight for the same cause, to bring Celestia to her tyrant knees~." She came close to his face,"Plus, how can we deny true love~?" Golden Talon looked in horror. He climbed down and slowly backed away, bumping into a changeling who all looked to hear the answer. Chrysalis grinned and stared into the knight's eyes. He took off his gauntlets and unhooked his chest plate. He opened his arms to her. She went into his embrace and hugged him. "Y-yes..." he was still very unsure, but seemed like he was thinking things long term. Gold looked on and just when he thought this couldn't get worse, his beak met her lips, and they kissed.