Bloody Rain
By A Random Guy
You know it's not very fun when it rains. Everypony thinks this at some point in their life.
My point was when one of the scientists forgot to screw back the nozzle of the color extractor back to the grinder. Now there's a gale storm of blood coming down from the factory's cloud and everypony below is going to think Luna went mad again.
Well, when word gets out, she will be mad, and so will Celestia. Too bad they don't share the same views on pegasus society as the factory workers here.
I’m probably going against those views, not supporting the flock and all. In my defense, who wouldn’t want to leave if they knew that the Sun God was coming to smite you? I’ve heard she could shoot flames out of her eyes. I don’t want to be here when she starts shooting flames out of her eyes!
Any moron could see that the bloody rain is just a drizzle compared to the sun storm that’s coming. That’s why I’m jumping ship. Sure, I’m probably going to be labeled a deserter by my coworkers, but I don’t care what those freaks think of me. I have my own life to think about!
They’re too distracted with repairing everything to notice what I’ve been doing. The moment I heard the news, I made a bull-rush for my dorm. I’m sure it would have been smarter to just leave the factory now, but there’s just too much sentimental stuff in my room to leave behind.
I managed to get the raggedy suitcase on my way up. It was a suitcase that was hanging off a pipe in the main corridor for some reason. Apparently, some pegasus thought it would be funny to hang it up there a while ago. Nopony cared enough to take it down, though.
I got my suitcase, now to pack up the essentials. The door slammed against the metal wall when I finally entered my residence. I flung the suitcase across the room, where I aimed for the bed. It did make a rough landing, but apparently I put too much force in my wind up, and the suitcase skidded across the bed sheets, ramming into my only book shelf.
My blood stream is too chock-full of adrenaline to care about all the knickknacks crashing across the floor. Not that I could hear it anyways. Having a room on the upper most level on the factory had an interesting perk. I could hear the jet planes pass over the factory every two minutes. You’d think the hurricane generator a few levels down was loud, but these jets just snuff that noise out! The jet turbines they had made it impossible to get any good sleep.
I was definitely not going to miss that sound when I leave. Though, if I didn’t get packing fast enough, I was going to be missing all my knickknacks! I threw myself against the floor next to the pile. My forelegs went crazy as I started pulling smaller piles out of the big pile and chucked them into the suit case.
I watched as my precious belongings arced through the air. Sprockets from broken machinery, broken pipes from some of the biggest spills of the ages, an ancient picture frame of my parents. I wonder if they’re still alive. Heck, even my lucky wrench made it in. I never used that wrench. I only kept it since it’s the first one I dodged that got thrown at me.
Now the suitcase is to full to throw anything into there. Things roll off from the pile that’s forming in it. Can’t have that now, can I? I need everything to fit in that raggedy thing. I changed my strategy from throwing to shoving.
It sort of works, I can’t pack as fast, but crushing all my junk into a smaller space is the only way I’m going to leave with all of it. I ignore the clanging and the shattering that I keep on hearing within it. Some may say I’m breaking things in the process. I say it’s just things fitting closer into place, that’s all.
“Fit, damn it!” I’m yelling at my luggage as some of the more protrusive knickknacks start ripping through the suitcase fabric. “For Luna’s sake, fit in the damn case!”
“What in Tatarus are you doing?” a voice behind me says.
I freeze when I recognize the signature rasp in that somewhat feminine voice. I had gotten so worked up over my knickknacks that I could hear my blood pumping hard through my own body. Though the boom of another passing jet plane droned out that sound.
“I asked you a question, and I demand an answer,” the voice says.
I turned my head to look where the voice had come from, which was from the archway of the doorway. My mouth took a big gulp when I saw her, the boss mare of the factory. The coat as blue as the sky that none of us ever saw, the mane as colorful as what the rainbows we produced, and the eyes as gory as the machines that made those rainbows. In all honesty, she could be the perfect poster girl for the factory. Heck, we could even put her on the company swimsuit calendar if we made those.
“Well, boss, I-I’m… um,” I stutter as I try to find a way out of my current predicament, “I’m rearranging my stuff! My shelf was getting to small for everything, so I was just organizing it all in this suitcase I found.” I pointed at the suitcase, which was buried under a pile of scrap.
Usually, the boss’s expression was hard to figure out. It was permanently glued into a constant scowl, so it was safe to assume that she was always moments away from ripping out your throat. Right now, I assume she wasn’t buying what I said.
I think I’m right, since she managed to give me a deadpan look with that scowl of hers. “You could’ve managed to escape if you weren’t such a packrat.”
“I wasn’t trying to escape, I was”- I was out-yelled by another jet, which shook the walls as it rushed on by. That must have flown in quite close.
“Stop lying,” she yells at me, hitting me with the force of her voice. “The suitcase in the main hall is gone. There’s a reason I put it up there.”
“Okay, so I may have been packing up all my belongings.” There wasn’t a point in lying anymore. She usually threw the liars in the grinder with the rest of the frail flock. “But Celestia’s going to come! Why wouldn’t she after all that blood rained down?”
“Don’t worry about it. She’ll come to Cloudsdale, but she won’t come here.” There was something unsettling about how she said that, like there was something new in her voice that wasn’t there before. Is she talking softer?
“But the blood, and the spill, and the clouds, and the rain, and the nozzle, and everypony on the ground that saw all that!” She knows that all happened, why isn’t she worried about it?
“Just calm down, go back to your job.” I swear her voice is getting softer. Why was she doing that? We have a crisis on our hands.
“Since you’re so sure that we’re not going to get blasted out of the sky, why don’t you do my job for me?! How do you know that we’re not going to die by solar flare?!”
“There’s been a contingency plan in place long before our time in the event that an incident, like the one we had today, happens.” Calm, that’s the word. Her voice is calm. Her eyes still want to rip me a new one, but her voice is rather soothing.
“What is it? Throw enough money at them till they look away?”
“Jet planes.” She’s rather sure of herself.
“Er, how do they”-
“The company invented them decades ago for this sole purpose. Yes, the earth-bound ponies use them all the time to travel places, but they serve an ulterior motive.”
“I still don’t”-
“Everything in their design is deliberate, especially their engines. They’re like giant grinders moving like trains through the air. Things get messy when an oblivious pegasus gets caught in their turbines.”
One of those jet planes passed over before I could say something, shaking my dorm by its foundation. “So that’s why they pass right over us?”
“Yes, it’s an obvious culprit to blame for all the blood. As a bonus, if somepony asks where some kids went, we can say they were playing in front of jet traffic.”
“Then is there a reason I have to sleep near their travel paths?”
Weird, I never seen her shrug before. “You just drew the shortest straw.” The roughness in her voice returned as she was walking out the door. “If I were you, I wouldn’t expect moving after this stunt you almost pulled off.”
Well, she left me in my room, alone, with the jet planes. I wouldn’t mind this gig if it weren’t for the damn planes. Those things keep me up at night.
And my room’s trashed now. It’s going to take me forever to build a new shelf. At least I can keep things in the suitcase. It’s a nice suitcase, too. A bit ragged, but still usable. It brings a bit of character to the room. I think I’ll hang it on the wall once I get that shelf built.
“Oh, I do need you to do something,” I looked behind once more to see the boss poking her head through the doorway. “I need you to hang that suitcase back where you found it before your next shift, which I think is in three minutes. So get working.”
Celestia damn it!
