Scootaloo stood with the other fillies, quiet. Pensive. Aurora and Orion stood beside her as the carriage sped off back towards central Cloudsdale. The words that the Boss had said rang in her ears still.
“You goddamn worthless ponies can hardly call yourself ‘Pegasus’.”
"Do you know why ponies never come back from the Rainbow Factory?" Orion asked as the three approached the large double doors in front of them.
A strong, red pegasus exited the building and hurried towards the three concerned fillies.
"Well don't just stand there! Welcome! Welcome to the Rainbow Factory!" said the pony. "I'm sure all of you are discouraged that you failed your flight exams. But don't worry! We can still make good use of you failures!"
Scootaloo looked right and left.
"Are you guys gonna kill us?" Scootaloo asked outright. "Cause, I mean. I've heard weird deep government conspiracies before, but, like, you really gotta suspend your disbelief to make this one work."
"What?! NO! That would be terrible. Why does everypony think that we'd just murder a bunch of innocent ponies. Who do you think we are, unicorns? No. But we do think that you'll love your new job...." he smiles, looking off into the distance. "To death."
The three fillies remained silent as they looked towards where he was looking, which was just open sky.
"So, uh. When you say things like that," Orion said. "You just make us more worried. Cause it sounds like you're going to kill us."
"Oh!" the labcoated pony continued. "Don't worry, you'll get used to the grind eventually."
"See, you did it again," Scootaloo said.
"No I didn't. You're just imagining things."
"Yes you did."
"Oh, come on. You're killing me."
"I'm scared," Aurora whimpered.
"Well there's no time to waste! My name is Dr. Atmosphere! I'm going to show you guys the tour and then introduce you to your new coworkers."
The doctor held the door open for the three fillies, who each looked at each other in concern.
"If we all die," Scootaloo said to the other two. "I want someone to tell Rainbow Dash that she was the best hero I could have ever had, and I would never expect her to ever betray me."
"Uh..." Orion said, thoroughly confused as they crossed the threshold into the factory. "How? We'll be dead."
"I 'unno. Haunt her or something. Get creative," Scootaloo continued. "What do I look like, a genius or something?"
"And that's the whole tour," Atmos said, his voice puffing. "Any questions?"
"Not really," Scootaloo said. "Like, we've done this tour for school four times. It lost most of it's luster the third time."
"Yeah, why did we even do this?" Orion asked. Aurora whimpered because of her broken wing, which is probably important or something.
"Listen, I'm just following the script. Would it kill you to be polite?"
Scootaloo simply sighed at this point. It was pretty clear that they were going to be murdered. Plus The strange, foreboding plaques reading things like "In the Rainbow Factory, where your fears and horrors come true" were kind of a dead giveaway. Why would you even hang those signs? Like, really.
"Alright. So get in this room to advance the plot," Atmosphere said, pushing the fillies into a large area filled with a large number of other pegusai fillies and colts. Then, standing at the top of high scaffold was Rainbow Dash, announcing to the children off a script.
"Blah, Blah, Blah. Okay. Here's the important parts. You aren't being exiled. You aren't being deported, that's only for griffins. Welcome to the factory, you'll never leave. You're worthless. Blah, Blah, sad stuff. Oh! You're new job is to help us make rainbows. Beautiful rainbows. Get hype or something. I'm not your mom."
Scootaloo should have felt broken inside, but at this point, considering they made a filly with a broken wing try to fly and Scoots was basically disabled, nothing surprised her.
"You were basically my mom!" Scootaloo shouted out.
Rainbow looked down at Scootaloo. She smiled and waved at the filly.
"Oh, hey! Yeah, don't worry. It'll only hurt for a little bit and then it'll all be over. Nearly... eh. Mostly painless. After that we can chill. It'll be cool."
"Oh, okay!" Scootaloo shouted back. "Well now I feel a lot better! Thanks!"
"So the long story short!" Rainbow announced back to the fillies. "Celestia is lazy, so we need to make rainbows for her. We need to create Spectra, which is pure color. And we live on weird 'Hasbro' rules so the Spectra was inside YOU all along. So we have to get it out of you."
"THEY'RE GOING TO KILLLL USSSS!" Orion screamed.
"EVERYPONY PANIC!" Aurora screamed.
And then the ponies panicked in an orderly fashion.
"NO! We aren't going to kill you!" Rainbow Dash yelled to the ponies. "We're going to give you gas!"
And then everypony stopped. And then they were just confused.
"Wait, Gas? That's the big joke?" Scootaloo asked.
"Yeah! There's bean burritos and soda by the door. Grab as much as you want and head to the gas chambers. We're all gonna work together to make a real work of fart."
"THEY'RE GOING TO MAKE US BREATHE POISON GAS!" Orion screamed.
"EVERYPONY PANIC!" Aurora screamed.
And then only some of the ponies panicked. The others realized it was a play on words.
"No!" Rainbow said. "Listen. The reason why nobody leaves is because we need this place to be as air tight as possible. We can't let ANY farts escape. I mean. Why do you think my mane and tail are rainbow colored? I'm employee of the month."
"Oh," the little ponies said collectively.
There was a moment of silence.
"So, that's it?" Scootaloo said. "We're just gonna fart, eat fast food, and drink soda for the rest of our lives?"
"Yeah pretty much," Rainbow said. "It's a pretty sweet gig. Welcome to the Fart Factory, losers."
The ponies collectively agreed that there were probably worse outcomes and overall didn't mind. And then Scootaloo had a gas. The End.
Author's Note
AuroraDawn... I'm like, half sorry. But this was also really fun.
