Just Where Did They All Go?

The next day, Rainbow arrived at each of their houses, and drove them to Cloudsdale. Scootaloo soon saw why her mentor told her not to laugh, her car was a beige, ugly, decrepit 1974 Ford Galaxie. The car had a terrible exhaust leak, the interior was damp and moldy, and the horn stuck on when you opened the driver side door. You wouldn't think of the world's greatest pony to drive the heap.

Eventually, they made it over Hillard Bridge, a highway connecter to Cloudsdale made uniquely out of a mixture of steel beams, clouds and stone, and into Cloudsdale. When they arrived to the Cloudsdale Medical Center, they were shocked to find that White Flash had never set foot THERE.

"What are you talking about?" Dash argued, pointing to a black Cadillac ambulance parked at the Emergency Drop-off zone, which was visible out the glass doors, "One of YOUR ambulances picked him up!"

"We have no record of ANY of our ambulances going anywhere NEAR Ponyville!" a doctor insisted stubbornly, "Perhaps you saw a RETIRED ambulance, or maybe a hearse!"

"I think I'd KNOW if White Flash had died." Scootaloo paused for a moment to facehoof. "It had emergency lights, Nurse Redheart was driving!" she raged, pounding her hoof, "You're all MAD!"

The doctor's eyes lit up at the mention of the white earth pony. "Ponyville hospital employs her, or used to."

"What do you mean, USED TO?"

"She was fired a month ago."

"Something fishy's going on here..." Sweetie muttered as they left, "and I think we might just find out what if we look around that ambulance over there." She gestured to the black Cadillac in the Emergency lane, which was now unsupervised. "Wait, that might be the same one as YESTERDAY!"

Images of yesterday's ambulance flashed through Scootaloo's mind: A black Cadillac with a normal-height roof, and lollipop-style emergency lights. This ambulance had barlights, a raised roof, and no rear windows.

"No," she concluded, "This isn't the same one. Let's go try to find it around town anyway. Where's the place where a pony's most likely to get injured?"

"How about the skatepark?" Sweetie Belle proposed, "Ponies are always faceplanting there!"

"Good thing I brought my scooter!" the little orange filly chuckled.

A quick drive brought them to the Saint Calais Skatepark, which was jammed with all sorts of ponies, who all were trying their hand at jumps, railgrinds, and empty swimming pools. Scootaloo, having quite a lot of experience with her scooter, was far more successful than most of them, doing near-impossible tricks, and wowing the spectators, but that wasn't why she was here.

Eventually, their bait for the strange ambulance had come. Featherweight, a pony whom she recognized from school, attempte the trick. He hopped onto the ledge of a pool on his skateboard, used his wings to propel himself into high into the air, flipping over and over.

"I'M HIGHER THAN THE EQUINE STATE BUILDING!" He laughed carefreely, "FEATHERWEIGHT PEGASUS HAS ACHIEVED TAKEOFF!"

He had managed to get himself as high as he could when he realized he had no idea how to land correctly. The pegasus let out a high-pitched scream as he began to fall rapidly toward the cloud-ground mesh. He attempted to steer himself into the clouds across the road from the skatepark, but failed to, and landed in the middle of hard, concrete Cadence Avenue, head first.

After what seemed like half an hour, the Miller-Meteor in question arrived.

"There it is!" Scoot whispered to them, "I'm gonna follow it!"

"Be careful," Rainbow warned, "I don't want you to be hurt like rocketman in the road over there."

After what used to be Featherweight was loaded into the ambulance, it took off down the road, doing about 60 Miles per Hour. Scootaloo floored it to catch up. The little scooter responded with a loud buzz of it's engine, a dirtbike-grade 2-cylinder she had found in Mel's Junkyard in Ponyville. She was an even match for the much more powerful, yet extremely heavy ambulance, which was driving increasingly irratically. It swerved in and out of traffic, siren blaring, sometimes dodging onto sidestreets, almost as if Redheart had noticed her. As they raced past the old Pegastopolis capitol building, Redheart checked her speedometer: 80 MPH.

Soon, the Cadillac slowed as it approached the gates of the Weather Factory. Scootaloo watched it rumble slowly up the narrow road that led to the main building, and disappear through the gates of a warehouse. She was about to jump the fence, when she heard the blaring of a car horn behind her. She turned to see Rainbow Dash quickly slamming her car door to silence the noise, which alerted their position to some guards.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!" Scootaloo yelled, "And now your car's stupid quirk's ALERTED THE GUARDS!"

"I just wanted to see if you were safe!" Rainbow confessed, "You're like, my PRODIGY!"

Scootaloo gasped in awe. "I am?"

"Yeah, now let's get out of here!"

They narrowly avoided being shot  by the guards, barely missed hitting a garbage truck on the way out of the complex, and escaped onto the nearby freeway, heading toward the Hillard Bridge. There was a silence, until Apple Bloom broke it with a question that everypony in the car had.

"Whaddya think they're gonna do with an injured pegasus colt?"

"I don't know..." Rainbow Dash's eyes lit up for a moment. "Actually, once, I heard this rumour once....That rainbows are made of ponies...But I think that's just a rumour."

"Well, WHAT ELSE would they do with an injured pony there?" Scootaloo fired back.

Everypony went silent again, thinking of the horrible process that Featherweight would have to go through if this were true.

In the Weather Factory, many ponies milled about, checking that every machine was in tip-top condition. While many forms of weather were churned out in the main building, everything was silent in the Rainbow building, as two identical scrawny, white stallions with maroon manes, waited patiently for a 'special shipment'.

They heard 3 honks from a car horn, the secret signal, and opened a garage door at the end of the building. In came the Cadillac hearse, containing the ingredient they were missing.

"Well, it's about time, Redheart," one droned. They both had slightly disturbing monotone voices. "We've been waiting all day."

"Well, don't blame me," she sneered, pointing to her partner, "Red Cross here got the directions to the last target wrong!"

"Well, you're here, that's what matters," the other mused. "Now, shall we commence the process?"

Featherweight awoke from his coma to find himself tied up. He was being held by somepony behind him in front of a chute. At the bottom was a stretch of whirring blades and gears.

"What....Where am I?!" he panicked, "WHO ARE YOU?!"

"My name is Miller, and this is my brother, Meteor," he heard a voice behind him call out, "And now, you're going to be fed to that crusher down there, and converted into a liquid called "Eldarius Solicifius", otherwise known as Rainbows."

"Wait," he interrupted, "Is this like that book 'Rainbow Factory'?"

"Correct," Meteor answered, clapping, "You're a smart one."

"Oh, Celestia, PLEASE, HAVE MERCY!" Featherweight began to weep as a factory worker pushed him closer to the chute. "DON'T KILL ME! I WANTED TO BE A WEATHER PONY TOO!"

"Don't worry," Miller reassured, letting out an malevolent chuckle. "Nopony will miss you!"

Featherweight let out a scream when the worker threw him down the chute. He reached the crushers in no time, and began to wince in pain as they knawed off his rear legs, blood spitting everywhere, as if the machine was a hungry predator, begging for more. Eventually, his shoulders were all that was left above the crusher. His vision turned red as he disappeared below the gears. The last sounds he heard were Miller and Meteor's crazed laughter as blood splattered all across the walls.

After the end of the process, Redheart approached the twins, who were wiping the blood off their suits with handkerchiefs.

"Uh, sirs?"

"Yes?"

"I have some unfortunate news."

"Well, what is it?"

"Somepony knows."

The two twins exchanged worried glances.

"Are you SURE they saw the ambulance enter the compound?" Miller asked her frantically.

"I'm sure. Her name is Scootaloo Sanders, she lives in Ponyville, but nobody knows exactly where."

"Then," Meteor concluded sinisterly, licking the blood-soaked rag slowly, "She must be ELIMINATED at all costs."

The two interrupted in more hellish laughter, which bounced off the walls, and was echoed by the whir of the ambulance's siren starting up as Redheart and Red Cross backed it out of the building.