Awoken (atmosphere)

Chapter One

What cause have I to feel glad?

I've built my life from judgment and causing pain

I don’t know those eyes I see in the bloodstained chrome

Now everything that I've had

and everything I've known have been thrown away

And with time I've come to find this isn't my home…

Dr. Atmosphere stared at the failures via the camera in the security room. He couldn’t help but feel sadness. More murder, more fillies… more failures. He sighed to himself.

He was loyal to the company, but how much longer could he keep up his act? He had worked in the Rainbow Factory for almost two decades now, and each foal he seen killed over a failed test was just another stab to his heart. With the tests going on every month, he had seen thousands of ponies, loved ones even, be killed by that wretched machine.

He wasn't like Rainbow Dash; no, far from it. Unlike her, he didn't grow a sadistic enjoyment to watching the extraction of spectra via the killing of those who weren't even given the chance to have a life. Quite the opposite: To him, it was intolerable. It was terrible. It was cruel and evil, but was he given a choice? Of course not.

He had helped two escape behind the scenes- it just took a bit of messing around. But he couldn’t do much else. Rainbow would catch on and put him through the Pegasus Device himself.

“Why are we here?”

“What are they gonna do to us?”

“What is this place?

Hide looked at the screen, hearing the same questions he had already heard millions of times in the past. He closed his eyes as the cyanide went off, knocking out the ponies as the guards headed towards them. They broke the wings quickly, and tied them up. Being the only one in the room, he shed a tear at the crimes he watched being committed- the crimes he committed.

He had done everything for this company, things he shouldn’t have done. He had been given the chance to escape, and all. But did he? No. Something possessed him to stay, and he hated it. He could’ve even ratted the whole damned project out to Princess Celestia, but did he? No. He cursed his loyalty silently.

He stepped out of the room, and headed into the third floor main factory. Rainbow Dash greeted him.

“Well, Hide? No trouble this time, I presume?”

Presume. He almost thought she didn’t know that word. She wasn’t an egghead.

“Not this time, no.” The stallion stepped beside the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation Manager, keeping up his act. It always caused him a headache.

“Good. We were short over a month of rainbows thanks to that last fiasco. It cost us a number of bits.”

Rainbows and bits. That’s all she cared about. Rainbows, and bits. Hide hated the dastardly rainbow mare beside him with a deeply engrained passion. What he would give just to put her through the pain those she had killed felt, that he felt, watching and doing nothing. The doctor maintained a pleasantry about him, however and answered.

“I’m aware, Ms. Dash. And it’s Dr. Atmosphere to you. I have a degree, you know.”

She was the only one he made call him that. He hated the formal name. Rainbow ignored the comment, however, and began speaking further.

“I know how aware you are, Hide. It’s just that we've made quite the bit of progress, and it can’t be spoiled by yet another escape and another investigation. Last time I checked, I was allowed to ask, being as my word is law around here.”

Funny how she was the only one who bothered to call him by his first name, and she was the only one he wanted calling him by his formal title.

They arrived by one of the Pegasus devices. A blue pony with a lab coat and tinted goggles, manning the controls of the accursed equipment, nodded to the ponies below, whose powerfully built bodies were threatening to rip the black suits they wore. They pulled a tied up foal with no cutie mark out from the group, and untied him, locking him to the machine. It pulled the struggling foal up to the labcoat pony’s height of view, who began messing with the dials, starting scanners that scanned over the pony’s limbs.

The blades came down, severing the limbs of the pony. They fell into the machine, bones crunching in between the multitudes of gears and bolts. The scream was loud and ear-piercing, but it wasn’t done.

The arm of the machine moved forward. There was a large blade containing a needle on the end of it, and it impaled the pony, spattering blood everywhere. The needle began sucking. The foal died, and in front of the factory ponies, turned a grayish color, as blood continued flow. The Pegasus device began pumping bright yellow and green colors as it dumped the gray body into the gears and levers, crushing it and pouring out even more spectra. An orange colored light emanated after the gears stopped, indicating the foal’s incineration within the built-in furnace.

“Ah, the progress. Don’t you love it, Hide?”

“Indeed I do, Ms. Dash. Indeed I do.” He was lying, he hated it. The spectra finished pumping from the floor wide machine.

“The more efficient spectra, going all the way down to it taking only one foal to produce a rainbow, being able to extract the spectra from everything, even their blood and bones! I love it, Hide. The newest Pegasus Device doesn’t even have to disintegrate the fur!”

“Yeah, it is progress…” He resisted the temptation to buck her into the boiling color pigment. “It’s just harder to maintain.”

“I know what you’re going to say, Hide. And the answer is still no.”

“Ms. Dash! Think! No more murder of innocent foals. We could run it like a blood drive without even revealing anything from the past. We’re talking practically infinite resources here!”

“It would cost more, Hide. We’re down to one unit per rainbow- we’ve hit the peak. And you want to cancel that out for a volunteer basis that could take double the time and twice the money, supposing that your ‘charge for donations’ plan even works?”

She didn’t know much, did she? She was worried about the bits, not about the lives she had taken. If she were half as hesitant to kill ponies as she was that amber-colored mare so many years ago, she wouldn’t even be here, watching ponies get murdered by the machine that had changed in both operation and size. Chances are she would be in her office, not psychotically insane, and Hide’s ideals would be taken to account.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Not likely, at least. Around a year ago, a stallion doctor named Test Tube had been assigned to a project that had found a way to harmlessly extract large amounts of spectra from ponies. No killing, no pain, no screams, no insanity. An end to the madness. It would be a single needle on a small conversion device, not an oversized murder-and-dismember rainbow maker.

He looked down at the Pegasus device- what he could see of the Pegasus Device- and sighed under his breath. He was too old for this.

The Pegasus Device, something once capable of being covered by a tarp, had now become twenty times that size, extending over most of the floor. There were six of them; and such “progress” had taken millions of bits to produce. It wasn’t exactly common for a company to not draw a royal guard investigation when they placed an order for a massive killing machine; they had to piece it together part-by-part.

“Now, Hide. I’m going to my office. I’ve still got a hangover from Cloudsdale’s finest wines. I’ll let you handle it down here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She left, but Dr. Atmosphere had little time to dwell on his own thoughts. He was being approached by a purple Pegasus pony, wearing a lab coat. She had a black mane with spiked bangs, and two strips of color –one pink and one cyan- going up the hair. Her eyes were a much softer magenta than Rainbow’s, but that didn’t make her less psychotic.

“Hide. We need to talk.”

“About what, Dr. Flicker?”

She glared at him. “If you don’t cease calling me that, I’m going to call you Dr. At to the mosphere for the rest of your life here. Just call me Hyper.”

“Sorry, Hyper.”

“Better.”

This was Hyper Flicker, head of the research and development department. She was one of five; but also the most educated. Her work situation as far as employees went was about as bad as Hide’s, though she simply had trouble getting workers, where as he, to keep up his act, had to make more psychotic monsters. Not many Weather Factory workers below had degrees in theoretical chemistry. Her most educated (albeit not the best) worker was an idiot who, despite the place being hardly lit up enough to see through the goggles worn by some of the engineers, wore sunglasses and called himself “Mr. Ponytastic.”

“Anyhow, I need your help. The idiot in the sunglasses just blew up part of the equipment by mixing the spectra incorrectly.”

Another service to the accursed place, but at least not as bad as most were. They entered the third floor laboratory, Hyper tending to the other three as Hide merged with the somewhat broken wreckage to see what he could do. He spotted Ponytastic sitting there, still smiling.

He asked him out of curiosity, “How did you even get this job, anyways?”

“Uh… Well, they were calling for volunteers on the lower part of the floor, so I was the first to raise my hoof. Then Ms. Flicker over there asked if I had a degree in theoretical chemistry. I told her I had a theoretical degree in chemistry. She snatched me right up and took me in here.”

Dr. Atmosphere sighed… and began to work. This would be a long… was it day? He couldn't tell anymore, he had been in here for so long. What he would give to see the sun again…

Hide walked out of the laboratory. A small beep sounded from his pocket as his PDA went off. He pulled it out, and looked. It was the next couple of poor souls who had failed their flight tests…

Blue sat there silently, contemplating what just happened. The pony across from her was far from freaked out for some odd reason, but then again, neither was she. She didn’t really know what to think, and she couldn’t speak to ask what. She was mute; and she didn’t even have an actual name. Ponies just called her blue because her mane was a light cyan, her coat a darker blue color.

“So, good to be gettin’ outta this place, eh?” the tan colored stallion asked her. She didn’t know him.

“Ah. Shy mare. Or disappointed and not in the mood to talk?”

She shook her head at both, the cart moving slowly along.

“Then what’s da matter which ya?”

She opened her mouth, and made a small squeak noise. That was all she could do, nothing else would come out.

The tan colored pony looked surprised for a moment.

“Ah. You’re mute. Well… do you have a name?”

She shook her head.

“Well, do others call you anything?

She pointed to her chest and mane.

“Chestmane?!”

Blue put on an awkward look and shook her head. She motioned to her mane.

“Uh… manegirl? No… Wait! I got it. Blue!”

At the last answer she smiled and nodded.

“Is it Blue?”

She nodded again. He smiled back at her.

“I’m Crestacio. Crestacio Hungwing. So… in all seriousness, where do you think we’re going?”

She shrugged. She thought it would be somewhere far away from Equestria. Cloudsdale can’t have bad fliers poisoning their good name, even if they can’t talk and say they’re from there.

As if knowing what she was thinking, he spoke.

“What gives them right to judge us? I’m just saying, what in the name of Celestia said ‘Go ahead, throw some of your citizens away just because they aren’t the best fliers?’ Seems pretty stupid to me, same as that test. They say it’s so simple, yet there are so many things that can go wrong it’s almost ridiculous.”

Blue nodded. She didn’t really know what to think herself. Just that she failed, but it wasn’t the first time she had come up worthless. Being unable to talk in this city was like already declaring failure to the flight test. Apparently, being mute meant that whatever you would talk about was ridiculous or stupid in the first place.

Crestacio looked out the window, and took note of the scenery.

“Wait a moment… I think we’re in the Weather Factory…”

Blue was confused for a moment, and looked out. Sure enough, they were in the Weather Factory…. But that was impossible, they had been in there for hours.

The back of the cart opened, and they were immediately greeted by two armed pegasi, wearing black suits that were skin tight enough to look like their skin. They were shoved down the ramp quickly and carelessly.

“Move along, worthless things.” One of them retorted to them.

Blue made an offended face. Not that she could do anything, a fight would have been a bit of a no-chance and she hadn’t magically gained the ability to speak. They walked into a small area, which opened a door to a massive room.

Six columns extended up the room, and there were a number of vents in the place. The guards closed the doors behind them. They were left in the room, alone.

Hide observed the room with a certain sadness about him, as usual. Being left in the security camera room alone had its advantages, but he always wished somepony were there with him who understood his pain.

It was a tan pony with a black mane, and small mare with a sharp snout. The mare was blue, and didn’t talk once in the hour that they were in there already. Hide attempted to recall, if he wasn’t mistaken, that the tan pony mentioned she was mute…

She gained even further sympathy from him, he knowing what the city once was like before the whole idea of flight tests and killing innocent ponies. Back then, they used death row criminals- but it was quite quickly nearly discovered. Now though, it was murder of those thought to be worthless by ponies, not gods.

Even then, he thought it was wrong. The device back then, same as now, put the ponies through insufferable amounts of undeserved pain. He watched the ponies carefully… if he didn’t do something, which he probably wouldn’t (despite the torturous guilt), they were both doomed…

It’s alright, she thought. We’re going to get out of here. She thought. She thought, she thought, she thought.

Crestacio looked at her. He knew it was a concerned face.

“It’s alright. They’re probably just preparing us for an actual exile.”

She wished. She hopped up and hugged him. He was a good-hearted stallion, but that didn't calm her concerns. She had heard rumors…

About a year ago, Princess Celestia had come to the factory for an investigation. It was rumored that ponies who failed their flight tests didn't get exiled; they were killed. Their bodies were used to produce rainbows.

She looked at him, worried in the face. His own face was smoothed out, calming and soothing. As of right now, they were all each other had.

But that wouldn't be for long…

The gas flowed into the room the moment the guard ponies shut the door. They had been wearing gas masks, with goggles over their eyes. Blue felt everything go black as her breath went faint…