-Now I've awoken, and I'm taking back control.
flying was exhilarating!
It was all she wanted to do anymore since magic was restored in Equestria, and pegasi could now use their wings for real. It was almost like a drug. It was addicting, it was like riding a roller coaster any time you wanted to. It was invigorating.
Zipp Storm felt like she could do this forever. Going as high as she dared, then free falling, before flipping back up and zipping off. The wind in her mane, the clouds at her hooftips, and the sky wasn't even the limit anymore. She could go as high as she could, with nothing to stop her.
She had been flying for hours. She hardly even knew where she was anymore. Far from Zephyr Heights was all she knew. She knew she should be getting back.
She turned around to travel back, when she looked further upwards in the distance. Suddenly, she saw something in some distant clouds. It looked like...buildings?
Not being able to resist checking it out, she flew straight for it.
Sure enough, as her destination grew nearer in sight, she saw the place for what it really was...a city. A city in the clouds. A city made of clouds... A city that, for the longest time in Equestria, had been untouchable due to the inability to fly.
Zipp touched down on the cloudy ground. The silence of the place was deafening. It was completely abandoned, yet, she could imagine the place full of ponies, like it was sure to have once been.
She could see phantoms of pegasi bustling through the streets as they went about their everyday business.
Zipp travelled through the streets. There were places that were unmistakenly once homes, while others looked like abandoned shops.
Then, off in the distance, stood a massive building that stood out from everything else the city had. Its appearance was towering and imposing.
Zipp flew up to its entrance. The gate had a large plaque that read "Cloudsdale Weather Corporation". Its emblem was three buildings in a storm cloud with a lightning bolt flashing out of it. The two outer buildings had pegasus wings, and there was a rainbow over the buildings.
"Cool!!" Zipp cried. "Cloudsdale huh?" Zipp tried the name out. "Fitting name." She entered through the gate.
She explored all the different sections of what was once the Cloudsdale Weather Factory, including snowflake production, rain production, frost production, even hail production...she wasn't sure why they'd make that, but ok.
"This is so cool! Pegasi used to control the weather in Equestria??" She wondered in awe.
It made her question why weather in Equestria was just all done on its own now...what changed? Maybe after Equestria lost magic, weather just decided to produce itself?...Naw... that didn't make sense.
What...what if pegasi weren't actually creating the weather in Equestria at all, but were manipulating it to their will, to do what they wanted it to?...Either way, it was fascinating to think about.
After going through all the components of what was once the lower weather factory, she set her sights on the upper parts of the factory.
"I wonder what they used to make up there..." She wondered. Taking to the sky, she flew to a high window, and went inside.
She was inside an office. Or, at least, what was once an office. There were papers scattered all over the floor and the room was dusty and musty.
Spotting a name plaque on the floor, she picked it up and dusted it off.
"Rainbow Dash, Director of Rainbow Production." She read.
"Aww sweet!! They made rainbows here??" Zipp wondered why there were no rainbows in Equestria anymore. There was everything else. But no rainbows.
"Maybe rainbows were the only thing they actually DID make..." Zipp thought.
She went into the hallway, deciding to go left. It went for quite a while, until she came to a large open area. Light illuminated the room from windows high above, which were broken. Glass littered the large room, and there was a light breeze coming through the ruined windows. There was also what appeared to be brown spots decorating the old floor.
Zipp moved to take a step forward, when suddenly, there was a distant scream, followed by a door slamming, and hooves clopping hurriedly.
Zipp spun around. "Hello?!" She called as her heart raced, but there was nothing there. Nothing but silence.
"Ok...that was creepy..." She shuddered and turned back to the large room. But...something was wrong. It was considerably darker in the room now. There was still light, but not much. The breeze had also completely stopped.
"Ok...I think I'm gonna go now..." Zipp shivered, before taking off to one of the windows. But, instead of flying through it, she smacked into it, and fell to the hard ground, far below.
"Aaugh!!" She screamed in pain. "Oooow!" She moaned. "Owowowow!" She slowly got back up after recovering from the pain of the crash.
"What the buck?..." Regaining her bearings, she flew back up to the window.
Only, it wasn't a window...it was a drawing on the wall...an amateur one at that, of a sun, clouds, and an "m" shape for a bird, like a child had drawn it on...
How had she ever mistaken this for a real window?...
Zipp flew to another window, but it was just another drawing.
She flew to another. More of the same.
She looked to the other windows...they were all drawings.
Zipp landed back on the ground, struggling to understand this. If there had never been any windows...
Where had the breeze been coming from?
Slowly stepping back, Zipp turned and ran, retracing her steps back to where she had entered this place to begin with. Stumbling into Rainbow Dash's office, she froze.
The window where she had entered, was nothing more than another drawing on the wall.
"No..." Zipp whispered. "That...that's not possible."
Suddenly, she heard a filly laughing.
She spun around just in time to see a grey blur dash past the door.
"H-Hey!" Zipp called and flew to the entrance, but it was already gone.
She flew down the hallway, in the direction she had seen it take off. But there was nothing.
She stopped when she came to a split in the hallway, not knowing which way the figure had gone.
She finally flew left, following the winding hallway until she came to another open area, looking like it was about to cave in at any moment.
The ceiling was sagging dangerously, and the floor was littered with glass shards and sharp objects. The walls were soggy and appeared to be rotting.
Zipp turned to head back the way she came, and stopped short of colliding with the wall.
The way she came was now another drawing in the wall.
"What is going on?..." Zipp whispered in horror, before turning back to the decrepit area.
With nowhere else to go, she took a deep breath, and flew carefully to the other end of the room, making it to a corridor.
She turned into another office. The desk was overturned and on the floor, she saw another name plaque. She picked it up.
"Dr. Atmosphere." She read.
Suddenly, she heard laughter and running.
Without even thinking twice, she bolted to the doorway, seeing the figure from before turn left at the end of the corridor.
"Hey! Wait!" She took off down the corridor, turning left and following it until there was another split.
"Follow me!"
Zipp's head snapped left at the sound, and she saw clearly, for the first time, a filly, before she immediately kept running down another hall.
"Hey! Slow down!" She called as she struggled to catch up.
She couldn't help but feel that something was off about this...why was there a lone filly in this place anyway?...In an abandoned city, no less.
Come to think about it...the filly's entire appearance looked...wrong. She was grey.
Sure, other ponies were grey. Alphabittle was grey. But...this filly looked different. Her grey was duller. As if there was no life. She almost looked...dead.
But, that could just be the result of having little to no food or water in this place for who knows how long.
But, then again, if she was low on energy...how was the filly evading her like this?
Finally, she came to a dark, foreboding door and stopped. Its imposing height loomed above her.
Something about it caused Zipp to shiver. But, the filly had to have gone in here. There was nowhere else she could have gone.
"I like working here." She suddenly heard a whisper, and spun around, but nothing was there. She shivered.
"Find the filly, and find a way out..." She told herself, before turning her attention back to the large door.
Opening it with a loud creak from years of un-use, she stepped inside.
It was a fairly open room. At the end, there was a large, cubic looking machine of some sort. There were 8 glass tubes jutting out from the sides, and the top of the device had a massive hopper with what appeared to be years old rust.
"Huh...I wonder what they used to put in the hopper." She flew to the top and looked inside, though it was too dark to see what was down there.
As she looked inside it, she began to feel strange. She suddenly felt a drawing towards it. An urge to enter, growing with each passing second that she looked down.
She couldn't look away. It was calling her...
Zipp gasped suddenly. This was the way out of this place! She needed to get down there!
She slowly lowered herself in with her wings. But what she didn't know was that as soon as the machine sensed a pegasus being put in, it suddenly awoke from its centuries old slumber.
The machine ran on magic, and since magic was back in Equestria, it began running like new.
Zipp heard the machine start humming suddenly, and panicked. She made to fly back out, but the blades below caught her leg and started doing their job, while pulling her down more.
Zipp's screams were soon cut off, and all eight of the glass tubes filled with beautiful spectra of every color. The spectra ran through the factory and broke out, filling Equestria's sky with a breathtaking rainbow. The very first since the factory was shut down due to no magic.
...............................................
Pipp Petals was live streaming when the rainbow shot through the sky. Ponies all around pointed at it in awe. Pipp gasped.
"Check it out Pipp Squeaks!! It's a REAL rainbow!! I kid you not!! This is no filter! It's beautiful!!"
Ponies were wondering how a rainbow could suddenly appear after centuries of no rainbows in Equestria. They figured it was because of magic returning to Equestria.
One pony in particular was quite ecstatic...
"Whoah!! It's a double rainbow all the way! What does it mean??" The stallion even started crying.
Ponies everywhere were admiring the very first rainbow Equestria had seen in centuries.
All the while, Pipp wondered where Zipp was, and if she was seeing this as well. Zipp would die to see a real rainbow like this.
Author's Note
I tried to keep the gore to a complete minimum. I don't like writing that stuff...
(Edit: I've made some additions to this story, and there are more to come yet!