Rainbow Factory

A Broken Bond

A few official looking Pegasi walked in on the scaffolding, and turned to look down on the group with disgust. One of them stood onto a small podium set up in the center, and began speaking loudly and clearly.

“By now, you’ve all clearly determined that you are not going into exile. There is no deportation. There never was. You are in The Factory. You will never leave The Factory. And while you may be called useless, that’s also not entirely true. You’re worthless to The Flock as a Pony. But you still have purpose!"

"Purpose to all the ponies in this land, far and wide. You get to help us make rainbows! Beautiful, magical rainbows, doesn’t that excite you?” The mysterious announcer grinned ecstatically, taking in all the disgusted looks from every foal on the floor below him.

“I thought so,” he chuckled. “It is just such an honor, you know, it leaves every pony entrusted with the task speechless too! Now, do we have any volunteers?”

Again, everypony below glared with hate. One brave pony, a light pink one from Levitating Acres, walked forward a few steps, then yelled. “How could you ever get away with this? How could Celestia, or even Luna know about this and tolerate it? It’s slavery! It’s torture!”

“I think you’ll find it’s more than that,” a second official pony walked out the shadows and up to the podium. The pony was in a suit, and masked. The first pony walked off the podium and allowed the second to talk. Scootaloo noticed that it was the rose-eyed pony from before. She watched, more intently now. The voice was familiar. “A thousand years ago, when Celestia banished Luna from Equestria and sent her to the moon, she was charged with three tasks. She originally was in charge of raising the sun, and showering the land with rainbows. But, with the moon being an additional task, she had to hand down the responsibility of rainbows. Celestia entrusted the Pegasi of Cloudsdale to make the rainbows for her from them on. For the first dozen years, we were given powerful unicorns to help create Spectra. Spectra is pure pigment, pure color. Everything is full of Spectra, but you can’t just harvest it. You can never separate color from an object. So it was made artificially with magic.”

The masked pony never took her eyes off the brave pink one. “That is, until our top engineers made a breakthrough. They discovered an ingenious way to extract pigment, and it was so beautiful even a simple machine could do it. But it couldn’t be done with just anything. The conditions had to be right.”

“What did those horrible people do?!" the pink pegasus screamed, growing angrier by the minute. The mysterious pony whipped off her mask, unveiling more than her rose eyes.

Her skin was a light cyan, and her mane was a gorgeous rainbow. Several of the fillies gasped; Scootaloo’s knees weakened as it hit her. It was Rainbow Dash. Scootaloo’s thoughts raced through her mind, and the room started spinning. It couldn’t be. An evil twin, maybe. Perhaps some neglected sister. Rainbow Dash couldn’t be this evil. She was her friend, her mentor... her only family, even if not by blood. How... How? How was all she could think.

“It had to be live ponies! Only in ponies, where magic and Spectra ran freely together!” Rainbow Dash threw her head back and laughed maniacally. “Only then could the Spectra be separated! And it was such a beautiful idea, such a wonderfully horrible idea. It worked so well; we could create exponentially more rainbows, of better quality with real Spectra. And it finally gave us a way to prevent Cloudsdale from being tainted by all those horrible pegasus which couldn’t fly! Ahahahah!”

Scootaloo couldn’t take it. While all the other ponies were exclaiming their disgust and fear, running and screaming for where they came in, backing off as suited ponies surrounded them and herded them back into the center of the floor, Scootaloo couldn’t take it any more. “I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME!” She wailed, cutting Rainbow Dash’s laughter short.

“Huh?” She turned, and noticed the amber-orange pegasus. “I thought you loved me! How could you do this to me? I thought you cared for me! After all the help... All my life, you’ve treated me like a little sister! And I treated you like my big sister! You were my big sister, to me! You were the only family I’ve ever had, and you knew it!”

Tears were pouring down her face now, obscuring her vision again. Her throat hurt from the crying and shouting, but she couldn’t stop. “After... after everything... you’re just going to let me die? I tried so hard for you...” She stared at the floor for a moment. Everyone was silent. Then Scootaloo looked up slowly, and while she couldn’t see for the sadness in her eyes, she looked straight at Rainbow Dash. Straight into those rosy eyes, past them, and deep into Rainbow Dash herself. “I thought... you loved me.” Rainbow Dash returned the look. Her eyes revealed no emotion, no love, no care... only apathy. Slowly, however, they glared at Scootaloo.

Pure, seething hate erupted from Rainbow Dash’s mouth, as she screamed in return. “I DID LOVE YOU! I tried so hard for you! I taught you everything I knew, in hopes you would pass your test! You had it in you, kid! I knew... I knew what they did here. Ever since I performed that Sonic Rainboom, and they approached me... They wanted to find more ways to make Spectrum. They thought that if I was capable of making rainbows, I could help them make its components. Well, they couldn’t. But I learned a lot about this place. I’m the manager here now, you know? I worked my way up, in secret, pretending to only be simple weather control. How do you think I could afford that massive house over Ponyville? How do you...” She trailed, shaking her head, remembering her anger suddenly. “I tried, alright! It was up to you to save yourself! You didn’t just fail yourself. You didn’t just fail Cloudsdale. You failed me! And that’s the worst thing you could have done. You aren’t just dead to Cloudsdale, now. You’re dead to me.”