The Real (and totally not scary) Rainbow factory

A slack jawed pegasus stallion stood, mouth agape, with a look of utter disbelief on his face. The stallion in question had a faded grey coat with a long (some say too long) white mane and tail that turned into a dulled out rainbow about halfway down. The reason for his surprise was caused by a pegasus mare who had a muted yellow coat and a green mane that was highlighted by several darker green streaks. She stood with an air of authority and in this particular instance, annoyance.

"What do you mean she can't come in today?" a baffled Rainbow Spectrum asked the pegasus in front of him.

"It's just what I said, the poor mare had a delay while she was moving, so we need somepony to fill in for her on today's tour," April Showers replied with a level gaze.

"So why me?" Spectrum asked, still in denial of what was being requested of him.

"Because all you do is sit around and pull a lever five times a day at most," April responded curtly.

"Hey, it's not like anypony else can fix MY machine if it breaks, plus it's not my fault that the blanks can't be produced fast enough," Spectrum retorted.

"And while 'YOU'RE' machine is functioning properly and the next blank is still in production, all you do is sit and look pretty, so as your boss I decided that you can look pretty where it will actually be useful," April said with a glare that made things final.

After a long stare, Rainbow Spectrum turned away and began walking tword the entrance of the tour.

"Stupid tour, stupid boss, stupid pulp fiction," Spectrum muttered under his breath as he walked out of earshot of April.

It's not that he would have minded giving a tour, It's just that his boss had been so, well bossy about the whole thing.

He neared the door marked 'Tour' and took a deep breath.

"Hi everypony, my name is Rainbow Spectrum; welcome to the first tour of the Rainbow Factory branch of the Weather Manufacturing Center," he said with much more enthusiasm than he displayed a moment earlier.

For the first ever tour of the Rainbow Factory, the turnout was a rather sorry size. There was a grandmother with her three grandfoals, (Two fillies, one colt) a small group of five, (some of whom Spectrum recognized from Cloud Production) and a young colt with a red coat who looked to be in his early teens with a face that said he had wandered in here because he had nothing better to do.

"Oh great," Spectrum thought, "there was such a BIG crowd today that the boss simply HAD to hold the tour to avoid disappointing ALL these ponies."

The sarcasm would have made a fine, thick jelly if it were to be spread upon a slice of toast.

"If you'll follow me, we can start the tour," Rainbow Spectrum began.

As the tour group started to meander in his general direction, Rainbow Spectrum began to recite the script that he had helped write.

"So how is everypony doing today?" Rainbow began.

A general mumble was heard from the group.

"That's great," Spectrum said with a lot more enthusiasm than he had felt, "I'll be your tour-"

"So when do we get to see the grinder?" The red coated teenager interpreted.

"You and I are going to get along GREAT aren't we?" thought Spectrum.

Delicious, spreadable, sarcasm jelly.

Rainbow Spectrum sighed, "I take it you're referring to the recent piece of pulp fiction called The Rainbow Factory?"

"Dude, that story was sick," the teenager said with a wicked grin.

"Gran, what is he talking about?" asked one of the fillies.

"For those of you not familiar, it is a story that was published in a pulp fiction magazine that depicted The Rainbow Factory in a less that savory light," Rainbow Spectrum answered.

"Yeah, that's putting it lightly," the teenager scoffed.

Outwardly ignoring the comment, Rainbow continued as they reached the first display, "In fact, this tour was designed to debunk several rumors that have been flying around after the story was published. For example, the story suggests that the dark clouds surrounding The Factory are to keep ponies from seeing what really goes on in there, when in reality the dark clouds are to keep the massive amount of light we work with from blinding stray ponies on the outside."

The diagram depicted two light rays going into two clouds, one white and the other a dark grey. The white cloud only managed to shotgun the light ray into several smaller rays while the dark grey cloud managed to absorb the light ray into a much smaller ray that escaped the other side.

"As you can see the dark grey clouds manage to reduce the harmful light to very low levels," Rainbow Spectrum explained.

The tour group showed varying levels of interest ranging from the excited fillies to the very disinterested teenager who only glanced over the display with an annoyingly aloof look on his face.

After a moment to look at the display, the tour began to walk again.

"Next, we will show you the first step in the construction of rainbows," Spectrum explained, "By a process of slow cooling and compression, we can create cloud gel, or a blank as many of the workers refer to it as.

"What?" the teenager interjected loudly, "That won't make gel, all that's gonna get you is hail."

"You have no Idea how much I want to hit you right now," Rainbow Spectrum thought.

"The exact process is a trade secret, however the ratio of compression to temperature is much different than the process used to make hail," Rainbow Spectrum said through a practiced mask of composure.

The next display came into view as the small group came to a halt.

"Calm down Rainbow, we made this tour to assure people that The Factory ISN'T a violent place," he thought to himself.

The next part was his personal favorite, as well as a point of personal pride to Rainbow Spectrum. He had singlehoofedly built the machine responsible for exponentially speeding up the process of adding color to rainbows. Unfortunately rank was determined by one part seniority and one part politics and not by importance. Old pegasus tradition and all.

"For this next part, everypony is going to have to wear eye protection," Rainbow Spectrum explained as he passed out thick pairs of sunglasses.

The teenager took his with a roll of his eyes.

"Let's see if this doesn't knock that look off your face," Spectrum said as he donned his own pair of goggles.

Rainbow spectrum rounded the corner and made his way to a lever on the wall and gave it a pull. The wall began to move up to reveal a large (but still much smaller than the factory) contraption.

Even though Administration had rejected his idea of having dramatic music play while the wall was moving, that didn't stop him from having it play it in his head.

"Daaaaa, da dum, daa daa dum," Rainbow thought to himself.

"Ladies and gentlecolts, may I present to you the Rainbow Light Splicer!"

The object in question looked like somepony had managed to introduce a telescope and a cannon at a crazy party. Said telescope and cannon managed to hit it off quite well and after some booze and a wild night, produce the contraption they saw before them.

"Allow me to demonstrate," Rainbow said as he moved to the control panel.

After some button pushing, a hole in the ceiling opened up that allowed a ray of sunlight to shine on a large lens. The machine began to hum as the barrel of the gun swung around until it was pointed at a glass cylinder on the other side of the room. A sloshing sound was heard from the ceiling as a pure white substance was pumped into the cylinder. The hum from the Light Splicer grew louder until it began to shake the floor, when suddenly a prismatic ray shot from the gun and into the glass cylinder. A sudden quiet filled the room.

"You may remove your eye protection now," Rainbow Spectrum said before removing his goggles.

"Hey what gives, this thing's supposed to make rainbows," said the teenager.

The glass cylinder had changed from containing pure white, to an ugly dark grey.

"Wait for it," Spectrum said, and with a flick of a switch, activated a pump.

The effect was almost immediate. As the ugly grey began to move out of the lass cylinder, it began to separate into a psychedelic display of all the colors of the rainbow.

"This concludes the tour of The Rainbow Factory, please be sure to stop by the gift shop on the way out," said Spectrum with a grin.

As the small group began to file out, a lone, red coated teenager stayed behind to get a final glance of the machine.

"Peh, a grinder would have been cooler," he said as he turned to walk away.

A faded grey leg shot out in front of him, blocking his path.

"Using live ponies to produce color is a horrid and disgusting act," Rainbow Spectrum said in a voice just above a whisper as a rarely seen dark look crossed his face, "and besides, if we did that, the only color we would get would be red."

The poor teenager's pupils shrank as he made the mentally made the connection to his own coat, and without a word stepped around the enraged stallion and cantered to the exit.

Feeling much better, Rainbow Spectrum turned around only to find his good mood deflate just as quickly as it arose.

"H-hi April,"

"Good evening Rainbow,"

***

Rainbow Spectrum unlocked the door to his cloud house and slumped down on the couch. Needles to say, the rest of the day had consisted with a royal chewing out involving something about not scaring the daylights out of members of the tour group. This was not the first time he had been chewed out, but this had certainly been the worst.

The stress of the day had taken it's toll on Rainbow as his mind and body allowed the stress to seep out and lull him into a hypnotic state of relaxation.

The slight ka-chink of his mail slot yanked him from his trance and demanded his attention. With a grumble, he got off the couch and made his way to the front door where a small stack of envelopes waited for him.

Adds, store sales, bank offers, he noticed as he indiscriminately pushed them aside. All of them looking the same, all of them mailed in the same slightly glossy paper. Then one of them caught his eye.

He picked it up off the floor to see a hoof written address in hoofwriting that brought an immediate smile on his face.

Tearing open the letter, he read:

Hey Specs,

You're not going to believe this, but I'm an egghead now! Shocking right? It all happened while I was in the hospital when Twilight (HUGE egghead) told me that I should read Daring Doo. I thought she was just being Twilight, but then I was hooked! Daring is SO AWESOME! She fights monsters, and finds buried treasure, and dodges booby traps, and all sorts of stuff. I stayed up all night to finish it. Hope to see you soon.

Your sis,

Rainbow Dash

P.S. I just re-read this and I guess I should explain why I was in the hospital. I broke my wing during stunt practice, but I'm all better now. I can already hear the I-told-you-so's. Write back soon.

A quirky smile spread across Rainbow Spectrum's face as he read the letter.

"It's just like that little filly to write that she was in the hospital so nonchalantly," he thought as he finished reading.

Without hesitation, Spectrum reached for a quill and some parchment.

Dear Dashie...