Pegasus Device: Reckoning

Cloud Cover hovered still in the middle of Gentle’s office, feeling a bit like an old cartoon character. When the door had unlocked, she had leapt up into the air with hindlegs dangling and her forelegs up in shock. Now, she figured, she needed a skinny lamppost she could hide behind, some access to hammerspace to disappear into.

The door opened sharply, but only moved an inch before suddenly halting. She could hear a murmured argument outside, and prayed for time to stop while she frantically looked around the room. A microsecond later she remembered the wooden cabinet to her left, and she jumped into it and closed the door so quickly that she could feel it rocking in place. It was a tight fit, with various jackets and professional-style clothing accessories bunched up behind her. If she breathed too deeply, her belly might push open the door, and so she subconsciously decided that she would just stop breathing entirely to avoid the chance.

There was a faint beam of light coming through the gap between the two doors, and she cursed her curiosity. She craned her neck painfully, just enough to get the slightest sliver of vision into the office outside.

The door swung fully open now, and she recognized the strange stallion named Foresight from earlier holding it open for Gentle to walk in. Despite her concrete expression, Cloud Cover felt she looked tired, exhausted even. Her squinted eyes were dark and her gait was ever so slightly jittery. Foresight followed Gentle into the room and closed the door behind him.

“Last I have been informed is that the Thirteenth Auxiliary was having difficulties with their generators, a malfunctioning chaos converter keeping a generator module offline.”

“So is it still on schedule,” Gentle asked. She spoke softly to Foresight, and it sounded to Cloud Cover as if she had been speaking for a full day straight. The harsh tones she had used in their interview were gone now.

Cloud Cover wondered about this sudden change. Half an hour ago, or less than that from how she felt, Gentle had sounded no different from the same cold, heartless bitch that Cloud Cover had interviewed the day before. What had caused her to lose all that energy, to seemingly shrivel up like a mushroom left in the sun? Or maybe… She focused on Gentle as she spoke and moved, and gaped. Maybe this was how Gentle always was; an old mare, broken from the weight of the world and a million personal sins, exhausted but refusing--or unable--to quit.

“Yes, Ms. Butterwing. They haven’t told me yet but, the central techmag shield came online five minutes ago. So really…” He trailed off, sounding sad.

Gentle didn’t reply. She walked around her desk, within a foot of Cloud Cover’s hiding spot, and then to the picture window. She slid one of the curtains to the side, looked out into the night sky, and frowned.

“You won’t be able to see it from here,” Foresight said, answering her question before she asked it. “If you’d like, I would love to escort you to the foyer, where the central beam can be seen.” He smiled awkwardly behind his broken glasses.

Gentle turned and smiled meekly at Foresight. “No, thank you. I believe you. How soon can we conve-” She froze, staring at her desk and the bright red folder open on it.

Oh, Luna, I forgot the flocking report, she’ll know I’m here, I’m dead, I’m dead, Cloud Cover’s thoughts raced. She shifted a knee as quietly and slowly as she could, poised to shatter the amulet on her chest, and tried not to let her panic change her controlled, sedate breathing.

Gentle walked up to the folder silently while Foresight looked at her with a quizzical expression. She quickly read the open page, and then tenderly closed the folder. Cloud Cover could not see Gentle’s face from her vantage point, and wondered what she was thinking.

“Sorry, Ms. Butterwing, you were pondering…?” Foresight asked, his tone matching his curious face.

“...Sorry. I was asking how soon the Board can be convened. I want to make absolutely sure everypony is on the same page before we move forward with this project.” She spoke slowly and half-heartedly, twisting her head around as she looked around the small office.

“All the Directors are on stand-by, as per the guidelines. We can have them together in the meeting room in about ten minutes, at your call.”

Gentle moved back to her desk and put her hoof on the folder, still searching the room with the least bit of subtlety. Foresight didn’t say anything about it, opting instead to wait for his boss to reply. Gentle fixed her sight on the cabinet, and moved towards it before she paused midstep. She changed her gaze--much to Cloud Cover’s relief--onto the jar of Spectra, which was just as still as it had been after Cloud Cover had replaced it.

“...No,” Gentle said, drawing the word out, distracted from her conversation with the stallion. “No, I’m sorry Foresight,” she said walking up to him and bringing a hoof to his cheek.

Foresight frowned. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“I know.”

“I won’t do it until you tell me to.”

“I know.”

They stared at each other then, and Cloud Cover prayed one of them would break the silence that had persisted for a minute after Gentle had spoken so she could exhale and get a new breath.

Gentle grimaced, and put her hoof to the floor. “Foresight, assemble the Directors in the Main Theatre Room. It is, unfortunately, time for the next step. I know, I’m sorry, I know. Don’t worry. You’ll do fine, I know it. It needs to be done.”

“Ms. Butterwing. No, Gentle.”

The old mare stepped back in shock. “What?” she whispered.

“Gentle… it doesn’t need to be.” Foresight sniffed, and a tear ran down his face and dripped to the floor. “I’ve gone through so many possibilities, so many alternatives. This isn’t efficient, this isn’t right. We don’t need to do this.”

“You’re right, Foresight,” Gentle said, her hard professional voice coming back. Cloud Cover was not sure if it was to intimidate her co-worker or cover up her own emotions. “We don’t need to do this. But I do. I do, Foresight, and I know that you know that. It’ll be fine. Come here,” she said, embracing Foresight. The dichotomy of tone and action confused Cloud Cover.

What in the world… is going on? Are they a couple? Is she dumping him? Transferring him? Retiring, hopefully? This is so weird. Oh, Luna, my back is starting to cramp… Please leave, please leave, please leave…

“Assemble them in the Main Theatre Room, Foresight, that is an order. Fifteen minutes from now, as planned.” She gave another weak smile, pushed his sliding glasses back up to his eyes and went to go out the door.

“Ms. Butterwing, do you mean the MTR?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, outside already. Foresight followed her, closing the door behind him.

“Then why did you say the whole name…” Cloud Cover heard before the latched door cut her off from the conversation.

She waited then, in her cramped little closet, taking only the risk to breathe a little bit deeper and faster. After what she felt was five minutes had passed and nopony returned to the office, she pushed it open and fell out of it, gasping for real gulps of air. She lay there on the cold floor, coughing lightly, shaking, confused.

What had she just overheard? Nothing they were speaking about sounded like any aspect of the Contingencies she had heard of, but Foresight seemed extremely worried about it, so it must have been serious. And what was all that nonsense with Gentle Butterwing, steel eyed and keen minded dictator of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation, breaking down emotionally with her underling?

Cloud Cover pulled out the lush chair at the desk and flopped onto it. She felt as if she kept getting caught up in strange management scuffles with this damn factory. Eighteen years ago, she was used as a tool for Hide Atmosphere to wrench control--if not in name but in practicality--from Rainbow Dash. Now, she had shown up again, and the current boss of the place was having some sort of relationship issue with the Head of Logistics.

She glanced down at the desk, and started. The Contingency A folder. It was gone-- Gentle had picked it up and tucked it under her foreleg. Cloud Cover’s only definitive proof that the Corporation was aware of the Reckoning and was refusing to provide the only way of saving most of Equestria was now gone. She dropped her head into her hooves and groaned. She could have grabbed it before she jumped in the closet, she should have grabbed it, because now Gentle knew she was in the office--

With a blank face she jerked up. Gentle had known Cloud Cover was in the office. She had to have--why else would the folder, kept under a special memento, be moved but not taken? So why didn’t she search harder for her? Why did she continue to talk about her plans, and let herself be so emotionally open, especially if she considered Cloud Cover to be a ‘failure’?

She looked at the desk and realized then that there was an ID card there that had not been there before. She pawed it closer to her and stared, dumbfounded.

It was Gentle’s ID tag for the elevator.

She had left it there when she grabbed the folder, and she had clearly announced where she was planning to go; the Main Theatre Room, the heart of all evil in Cloud Cover’s life. When she was last there, she had seen a ghost-- the emaciated shell of an old… ‘friend’ of Rainbow Dash’s. Absentia, that was her name. She remembered when the atrophied mare saved her from Rainbow Dash. She remembered breaking the chains that suspended Absentia above a room of rust and corpses. She remembered the massive Pegasus Device at the back of the room, that arachnoid monster of blood-spattered metal and hollow glass tubes.

She remembered the screams of a hundred, a thousand, a million foals that assailed her like so many banshees when she first touched that plain grey door.

It was a trap, obviously. Cloud Cover briefly wondered if Gentle had thought her so stupid a failure that she would fall for it blindly, but threw that idea out after a moment’s consideration. She might not be a pegasus to Gentle, but she was still a living breathing adult pony, and the Executive Director of the Corporation was not a position known for underestimating others. So it was blatantly a trap, but also one that Gentle expected Cloud Cover to fall for despite knowing that.

She tapped her chin. She tapped her amulet. She tapped her chin again. She thought of Corona, realizing that she had done so more in the last day or so than she had in the last decade. What would he have done? She tapped her amulet again. He would have run, as fast as he could, away from the danger. Is it cowardly to be realistic? She shook her head; there was no time left for philosophical questions.

What would Cloud Cover do? she thought, changing tracks.

She looked at her cutie mark.

I would investigate, no matter the risk.

Was it courageous to run forward to certain death?

She spread her wings wide and brought them down hard, taking off. She snatched the ID card from the desk and threw it on, adjusted her saddlebag, and aimed at the door.

“Suppose I’ll have to find out,” she said, blasting off.

About halfway between where she had launched off the glass at the back of the room and the door, she remembered that it had opened inwards. Beating her wings hard, she shifted in the air and collided with the glass pane with her shoulder. The door’s hinges were not made of any security material, and the whole frame exploded as Cloud Cover’s momentum carried her forward. The flying door whipped outwards and knocked over two large stallions in vests who had been reaching to open it.

Cloud Cover carried through and shoulder-checked the wall across from Gentle’s office. She looked down to see the two surprised stallions shout at her while they tried to untangle themselves from each other and the remains of the door. She dropped and springboarded off the panel, rocketing herself forward while knocking the two guards back, and flew haphazardly down the hallway.

She rounded the corner, skidding in the air as she did so, and locked eyes on the panel for the elevator. Between her and it were a small group of employees; some ponies in lab coats and one in the armoured vest. She shot down the hallway shouting, bowling over the employees. The guard made a move to reach for her, but she dived instead of trying to go over her and caught her hindlegs, tumbling the mare face first onto the floor. The elevator access rushed to meet her and she grabbed onto the middle and closed her wings, dropping fast in front of it. She scrambled to her hooves and lept to the security panel, smashing the ID card against it over and over.

She looked down the hallway as the other two guards rounded the corner, pointing at Cloud Cover and yelling for the employees to stop her. She turned back to the panel and realized she was holding the card backwards. She flipped it and the reader instantly accepted it, and the doors wooshed open in a split second. She jumped inside and rapidly smacked the close door button, right as a confused scientist stopped in front and reached for her.

She smacked his hooves away and growled, and he recoiled. A tiny voice in the back of her subconscious wondered what it must have looked like for him. Here she was, ragged, sweaty, mane unkempt and full of grease, baring teeth and feral eyes, ready to snap his forelegs up if he had gotten any closer. She stood there, shaking and hackles raised like a cornered wolf, daring the scientist to try again.

He looked at her, wide-eyed, and hit a button on the exterior panel, closing the doors with that same whoosh as a moment ago.

Cloud Cover sat down, surprised at this turn of events, and then hit the button for the main floor so the guards couldn’t just reopen the doors. The small room shuddered, and then Cloud Cover felt the familiar sensation of movement while staying still. She looked at the numbers available to her and thought for a moment.

When she had been there before, the Main Theatre Room was on the lowest floor of the Upper Factory. She tried to remember, twenty years ago, what floor she had been on when she had taken her elevator to freedom. It must have been one or two lower than the offices. The central control room had been there--

She blinked. The eighth floor button, which had been dim when she first arrived, was now lit up just like the rest. She looked again at the ID tag which had gotten her access to the elevator, and realized that it was not that the light had been broken, but that it had been unavailable for her to choose. But now that she had scanned in as Gentle, it was open. She hit the button and the elevator lurched in its descent and then stopped. There was a quiet ding, and the whoosh, and Cloud Cover stepped out before the door closed.

She felt weird. Nothing on the floor seemed familiar to her, yet at the same time she remembered every intricate detail as if she had seen it a thousand times, or had dreamed of it every night without remembering. The walls were brilliantly white, a far departure from the rust and grime of two decades ago. She walked cautiously along the metal grating suspended above a bottomless pit, leaning against sturdy guardrails as her eyes followed some of the more massive pipes down into a radiant fog below.

Nausea and dizziness swept over Cloud Cover, and she dropped to her haunches to catch her breath. There were no spiderwebs of hoses and tubes, no low hanging wires with occasional sparks, no cracked vents leaking clouds into the work space. Everything was clean, orderly, and in perfect repair, and yet there was a stench of oil and blood that seemed to emanate from the walls and leak from the pipes. It was not a scent that was actually there though, merely one brought forth by her memory, triggered by ghosts of familiarity; a yellowed sign there, a door over here, a turn in the hall just up ahead.

She did not know where she was, but she knew where she was going. Her legs started to carry her down halls they had run almost every night in her sleep, and she let them lead. She passed by a clean yet ancient looking vent, and it became apparent to her that part of her confusion was the difference in size. She had been nay higher than her own knees when she was last here.

She turned a corner and froze. This hallway she did remember. All of the pressure washing and shiny new plastic and bright reflective warning tape did nothing to stop her from recognizing the large and flat grey-coloured door halfway down the aisle. She looked around and, seeing nobody, sat for a moment to catch her breath.

Beyond that door was Gentle, and the other Directors of the Corporation. The five most powerful Pegasi alive, at least that Cloud had ever heard of. She thought of Foresight and his broken glasses, and figured that perhaps it was the four most powerful Pegasi alive, and him. They could all be old and miserable ponies by now. Just because they held sway over hundreds of thousands of her kind didn’t mean that they would be trained professional fighters. She might not be able to intimidate them, no, but perhaps she could make a case to their Equinity. Maybe they didn’t know that Gentle had an alternative solution?

Well, worst case scenario, I tackle the bitch, grab the folder in the confusion, and magic myself to freedom, Cloud Cover thought, stepping up. She walked quietly up to the door. It seemed just as large to her now as it did when she was a filly. She took one more deep breath, steeled herself, and rushed the door, putting all her weight into it as she pulled the handle.

Thankfully, there were no screams this time. Less fortunately, the instant Cloud Cover breached the Main Theatre Room, a searing pain ripped through her body, as if every nerve had been set on fire.

“Gent-ack…” Cloud Cover managed to get out, collapsing to the floor and rolling limply to the centre of the room. She blinked her eyes through the stinging pain and saw, by the door, two guardsponies flying. They were holding strange little devices with an electric-blue glow at the end, and were looking down at her disdainfully.

Shit.

She moved to smash the amulet on her chest, or would have, if her leg had responded. She rolled her eyes down as her head would not turn for her, and found her forelegs to be just as limp as the rest of her, and sunken slightly into the cloud.

Shiiit.

“Get her up and looking at me, and then get out.” It was Gentle’s voice, back to it’s dead professional tone.

Shiiiiiiiiii-

A numb tug at the back of her neck by one of the guards cut off her line of thinking, and she hung like a kitten carried by its mother. A stepladder was dragged over from a corner of the room, and Cloud Cover was dropped onto it. The top of the ladder held her flimsy head up, letting her get a good view of the room for the first time.

To say what Cloud Cover saw was ominous would be an understatement. The room was just as luminous as the rest of the Rainbow Factory she had seen, with perfectly clean cloud walls and neatly organized pipes and wires. Four ponies, three of them dressed neatly in suits and the other just Foresight, stood across the room from each other underneath the hanging scaffolding. They were glaring at her with all the intensity one would expect after making a loud noise in a library. They didn’t seem malicious, rather, they looked annoyed.

In the middle of the room, at the back wall, was what really filled Cloud Cover with dread. There, amidst all the splendid spotlessness, was a huge machine. Its steel shell was oxidized and dented, and at the top of the thing where an upside-down pyramid-shaped hopper stood, there was a line of rust that circumnavigated the opening. At the bottom, four huge glass tubes extended from the left and right sides, each stained lightly with each shade of the rainbow, and curved sharply into the floor to sights unknown.

Cloud Cover had seen this before. She had seen it only as a backdrop to a timid and broken mare lifted by chains, covered in dust and blood, surrounded by pigeon-chewed corpses. She didn’t know what it was, but from all she had read and all she had watched when the Royal Inspection had concluded, she knew it had to be a Pegasus Device.

Gentle Butterwing was standing in front of it with her back to Cloud Cover and the other Directors, and was fiddling with some small controls on a panel set in the Device. Cloud Cover heard the door click closed to her left, and Gentle turned around.

“You are a colossal pain in the ass, do you know that?” she said.

“Why, Gentle?” Cloud Cover shouted, refusing to play games or pretend to be nice. She expected she would die soon, and needed to know. “Why are you letting everyone die?”

“Because they’re supposed to,” Gentle said absentmindedly, flying up to the left side scaffolding. She started pulling small levers and turning large wheels, and said no more.

Cloud Cover’s eye twitched. What sort of answer was that? Some sort of freshman-psychology-major bullshit about the inevitability of death? She screamed out again.

“That’s not a reason! Just because we’ll pass eventually doesn’t mean you get to decide for every pony and creature when and where that’ll happen!”

“The reckoning cannot be stopped, Cloud,” Gentle replied, almost bored, flicking some switches.

“It can and you know it! I saw your report, Gentle, the one you had stashed in your office. Contingency A!” Some minor movement had come back to Cloud Cover and she put all her effort into turning her head to look each Director in the eye. “So many could be saved! Think of the legacy of the Corporation, of the Pegasi race, how we could all have been heroes! Did she tell you?” she asked, catching Foresight’s eye. The stallion looked down and away from her. “Did she tell you that we could save most of the world?”

Gentle flew up from the scaffolding and hovered down in front of Cloud Cover. She wound back and then brought her hoof forward, punching the paralyzed mare so hard the ladder rocked.

“You do not get to use the word we.”

Cloud Cover brought her dropped head back up to stare her adversary in the face, shaking through the effort. “Is it about the city? About keeping Cloudsdale whole? It’s just a fucking cloud, Gentle. Is that why you rejected it, huh?” She shouted to the room, trying to find a Director to listen to her. “You’re all really going to let millions die to keep the Meganimbus intact? Is that it?”

Gentle punched her again and then flew back up to the scaffolding.

“Were you even listening, failure?” She did not look at Cloud Cover when she spoke. “I already told you. Their reckoning cannot be stopped.” She turned around then and stood tall, looking down on her captive. “This factory is cursed, do you know? Children sing about it, like it’s a joke. In the Rainbow Factory,” she sang in a childish mocking tone, “where not a single soul gets through… But it’s not. I have seen it for myself, watched the curse in action. Any pony who interacts with the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation is doomed to die at it’s hooves. Or go insane, or just be…” She paused, taking a breath. “Or be broken.” There was another pause while she settled an onset of rapid breathing.

“So what does that have to do with everypony else?”

“Have you ever looked around you, Cloud? Ever woken up and inhaled the revitalizing scent of a sunny day after a rainy night? Ever sat in a park and smiled at a rainbow? Well, maybe not you, I suppose. But have you ever warmed your wings in the sunlight? Eaten food that had been watered by rain? Fallen asleep to the rhythmic rumbles of thunder? Everyone has interacted with the Corporation, Cloud. Everyone. This is the reckoning I speak of.”

She pulled a huge flip switch down, grunting as she fought against the stiff pivot point. It slammed down and sparked once, and the quiet in the large, empty room was shattered by deep, gut-rumbling klaxon. The Pegasus Device hummed to life as motors and pistons and pumps within the large box started up. There was a minute of cacophony, and then the klaxon went quiet, leaving the vibrating machine to fill the room with noise.

Cloud Cover stared at the hopper, seeing the tips of scythe-like blades alternate back and forth over the rusted edge.

Not rust, she realized. She turned her head, mouth gaping, to the mad mare up on the catwalk.

“You’re insane,” Cloud Cover said. “She’s insane,” she said to the Directors. “She wants everyone to die because they’ve lived in weather? Are any of you listening to this? You don’t have to follow through with this bullshit! The first Contingency...!”

“There’s no use, Cloud.” Gentle flew over and landed in front of her. Cloud Cover cringed in preparation for a punch that did not come, and opened an eye to see Gentle run a hoof down her cheek softly. She reviled her touch, but could hardly pull her head away. “This corporation was built on Loyalty. Unless I tell them otherwise, they will not change course.” She turned and walked towards the Device again, and the Directors’ gazes followed her movement silently. “It’s too late, anyways. The Reckoning has already begun.”

“Wh… what? You’re lying. You have decades.”

Gentle laughed softly. “You know, Cloud Cover, Rainbow Dash’s plans were always liable to be ruined. She always moved too fast, went too early, never planning, never thinking, just rushing in.” She turned and, confusingly, smiled at Cloud Cover. “You did a great job screwing things up for her back then, just completely uncounted for in her plans. It played right into Hide’s own goals. But I’m not Rainbow Dash, Cloud.”

She reached the Device and pressed her chest against it, running her forehoof down it slowly as if in the embrace of an old lover. She rested her head against the machine and smiled sweetly, and then released it and spun back to face Cloud Cover.

“You have always been a part of my plans. Ever since I took control of the Corporation, I knew you would show up one day and try to destroy everything I had worked for. To break my Corporation.” Her words started to shake, her anger boiling to the surface. “It’s why we purchased Cloudsdale at Seven. It’s why I accepted your interview. It’s why I’ve kept you alive, all this time, when with a clap of my hooves I could have had you disappear overnight.”

“Why would you keep me alive if I was going to be a problem?” She let indignation fill her voice. Every moment Gentle spoke, a bit more feeling would return to her limbs, a bit more muscle control.

“So I could break you. So I could watch as you learn that you have already failed, before you even started. There’s no getting through the Rainbow Factory, Cloud.” She started to fly now, rising up directly in front of the Pegasus Device. “Silver Linings, Blue Note,” she said, pointing to the two pegasi on the left side of the room. “You make sure those air walls stay online, no matter what. Keep Cloudsdale safe.”

They nodded, staring emotionless at their flying leader.

“Sapphire.”

The mare next to Foresight looked up with a look that was hauntingly familiar to Gentle’s typical demeanor.

“Make sure there is order amongst the Safe Zone. You know the plans for city hall. Keep Cloudsdale in line.”

Sapphire nodded once, a devilish grin forming on her muzzle.

“Foresight.” Gentle moved down towards the stallion and embraced him. After a long moment that would have been quiet save for the roaring elephant in the room, she released him, and hovered back. “It is up to you to guide Cloudsdale into its new era. The others already know their allegiance falls to you after me. Hey, stop that. It will be okay. I will see you soon enough. Be strong for Cloudsdale, Foresight. You are the only pony who could organize and direct this new world.”

Foresight nodded rapidly, grimacing. He affixed his glasses--a move Cloud Cover suspected was to cover up the wiping of tears--and stood tall, appearing for once to be firm and resolute.

“Cloud Cover.” Gentle said this softly as well, flying over in front of her. She leaned in close to the paralyzed pony, whispering so softly that only Cloud Cover could hear. “You escaping was a great insult to the Factory. You cannot escape your reckoning, as I cannot.”

Cloud Cover’s mind was racing. She didn’t know what was going on; what the orders were about, why Gentle had said them, what the purpose of this strange meeting in this damned cavernous room was even about. Gentle must have been lying about triggering the Reckoning. It was a jab, insult to injury, designed to break her soul before tossing her in the Device. Gentle was right there, next to her. She tried to lift her leg, and though her hoof twitched no other muscles responded. She glared at Gentle, hoping and praying that perhaps if she had hated her enough, despised her enough, the mare would collapse dead. She would not give Gentle the satisfaction of her being afraid.

She just needed Gentle to rescind her orders. There had to be something, anything she could use as leverage. Some sort of philosophical or moral argument, some paradoxical thinking that made her realize she was wrong.

Gentle pulled back, running another hoof lovingly across Cloud Cover’s face, before grabbing her chin and wrenching her to the floor. Cloud Cover crumpled, rolling on to her back. From where her head lay, she could see just the Pegasus Device, looming ten metres away, upside down but grinding and shaking and begging for its meal all the same.

And then she saw Gentle, positioning herself directly above the hopper. She hovered, her limbs hanging limply, and looked to each of the four Directors in turn, saluting each one with a dip of her head. Then she looked down at Cloud Cover, and smiled.

“There is no way to fix this, Cloud. We all must accept the curse. I have delayed my reckoning for too long. It calls to me. I hear the loving whispers at night, see its beckoning avatars in the day, feel the warm embrace when I am near, smell its blood and spectra when I am far. You and I have both delayed this for far too long.”

“...What are you…?”

“But I’ll be damned if I let a failure have the honor of going first.”

She looped grandiously in the air, spiralling with her wings splayed out fully in one final stretch, and dove headfirst into the scissoring blades of the Pegasus Device. There was no noise from her, though various internal modules hummed to life at the detection of fluids. Her light green coat vanished to be replaced by a boiling heap of gore and blood that churned and bubbled in the rapid blender. Cloud Cover had closed her eyes as tight as she could once she realized what Gentle had done, but she had been a split second too late; the afterimage of bits of wing and leg tossed comically in the air was burned onto the inside of her eyelids.

Cloud Cover yelled out, an extended ‘no’ that rang over the gurgling sputters of Gentle’s remains. She had wanted Gentle to die, yes, and perhaps even at the hand of her own machine, but not yet. Not until she had issued the order to follow Contingency A. Not until her malevolent plans had been unveiled to the world, and she had been caught, and tried, and punished. Not until Cloud Cover had escaped.

The final bits of Gentle finished falling into the machine, and a brilliant glow filled the room as fresh spectra ejected from the Device, filling the large glass tubes and radiating shimmering shades of green and red. Cloud Cover did not open her eyes.

The machine finished its deed and there was a whine as gears slowed down until it idled, waiting patiently for its next meal, forever unsatiated. The Directors walked out slowly from the room as the last of the spectra drained into the lower floors, paying no heed to Cloud as she lay still on the floor. She kept her eyes closed, hoping that perhaps she was simply still in another one of her nightmares, and hoping that perhaps at any moment Luna would come along and blast the dream apart and comfort her, and hoping perhaps that at any moment she would wake up and be at home, in her bed, covered in chill sweat but very much alive and safe.

She heard the door open and shut as the Directors filed out. She heard it open and shut again with what she supposed was the two guards that had paralyzed her. She felt her forelegs get grabbed, noticed a strange sensation of television static where she was held, and tried to kick one of her free hindlegs. It jumped an inch, but she gave up hope. It was progress, but not enough.

Cloud Cover did not open her eyes as she felt herself slowly drug forward. The pegasi guards were walking, one on either side of her, hauling her up towards the Device. She did not consider herself religious despite her frequent praying as of late, but she called out with her mind, begging somepony, some god or goddess, anything, to show up and rescue her.

She thought of Corona, and admired his bravery in not only facing, but summoning death. She still feared the unknown that lay beyond.

She felt a tug on her forelegs, and then a second stronger tug, but did not open her eyes. The guards tugged hard one more time, aching her sockets, and she realized that she was no longer moving. There was a weight on her breast, circular and centred directly over her heart, pinning her down to the floor so hard that she could feel the cloud starting to bunch up by her withers.

Cloud Cover opened her eyes and immediately regretted it.

Standing between her hindlegs, with a solitary hoof stepping down hard on her ribcage, was a stallion. Or rather, it was most of a stallion. He had had a pastel blue coat and a deep navy blue mane, though it was hard to see the colours amongst the bone-deep gashes that lined his body. It was as if he was a zebra, except with lacerations instead of stripes. Ropes of intestines and glistening organs had slipped out of his carcass and were resting slimily on Cloud Cover’s barrel.

His face, however, was pristine. It was old, and tired green eyes locked on her own golden irises. There were scars, absolutely minor marks compared to the evisceration around them. Cloud Cover recognized the face, but she could not remember who it was or how she had ever known them. She looked up at her captors, curious to see how they felt about this new development.

The guards were frozen in fear, staring with horror and incredulous expressions. Cloud Cover attempted to pull her legs free, and though still weak and movement limited, they were easily released from the guard’s grip.

Cloud Cover heard a sudden rush of silence and dropped her head to look back at the Pegasus Device. The change in noise level in the room had obviously distracted the guards from the corpse standing on Cloud Cover the same as it had her, because she saw them turn their heads towards the machine as well.

All three of them immediately regretted it.

Surrounding them were a hundred, a thousand, a million foals, all in various forms of decay or damnation. They all leered at the guards, unblinking and otherwise unmoving. Cloud Cover, and the guards, turned back to Contrail, who was now joining the hoard of colts and fillies in scowling at them.

The guards shrieked and rocketed towards the door, colliding with it together and exploding the steel panel off its hinges. It clattered against the railing in the hallway beyond, coming to a rest long after the two ponies had vacated the area.

Cloud Cover had not watched them leave, however; she focused on Contrail, feeling just as scared as the guards must have. She envied them for their capacity to flee, and took no solace that her only recourse to this terror was apparently the act of wetting herself. She blinked, and all the foals were gone, but Contrail remained.

“...Who…?” She said, not breaking eye contact.

Contrail did not reply, instead lifting his hoof off of Cloud Cover’s chest and moving it forward to rest on the amulet around her neck. She glanced down and then back up at him.

“Wait, no, no no no, not yet, who are-” she said, getting just that far before the light blue hoof stomped down and shattered her amulet, and she was gone.

For a brief moment, Contrail stood in the centre of the Main Theatre Room, moving only his head as he surveyed his environment, and then he too was gone.