Rainbow Factory: Reckoning

Chapters

Dash's Ruminations
Fresh Meat
Hello… Inspector?
The Visitation
The Machine
The Chapel of Sanity
Doctor Atmosphere
A Heartless Nursery
From the Mouth of Babes
Begging for the Apocalypse
Plotting
Passion
Pressure
Fallout
Resurrection
Exhilaration
Wrap Up

Dash's Ruminations

Equestria awoke to another faded morning. The rising sun lit the sky to a blue-gray. It was not particularly overcast; that was the schedule for Tuesday. The grass was green, apples were red; every color was where it should be, but they were dull and desaturated. It was as if light itself needed to drink some coffee and wake up.

“Coffee” came in the form of rainbows. From Cloudsdale’s edge and numerous other strategic outlets, these rivers of radiant spectra poured down and impacted the ground with a shimmer and a flash of warmth. All around the area where they fell, health and vibrance seemed to well up from the ground.

Far above the ground in Cloudsdale, in the facility which was the source of this glorious display, mountains of geared mechanisms and pressure valves sat shrouded in gloom, ready to awaken.

WHOOSH

The dark jungle of pipes rushed past. The upside down landscape of the ceiling continuously reared up and disappeared, pushed behind into the distance by rapidly beating wings. Rainbow Dash flew through a hallway like a bullet from a gun, signaling another lap of her own private “Weather Factory 500”. She came out into a dimly lit work floor, then dove back through the machine’s upper components. Obstacles closed tightly around her at dangerous speed, but she knew they would never touch her.

She had flown this route hundreds of times at twice the speed, without accident. She closed her right eye habitually as she entered the fluorescent glow of the more clinical office and lab spaces at the south end. She made a series of impossible turns at ninety-degree hallway junctions, buzzing right over the heads of the workers as they clocked in for the day. They all wore the same gray work jacket. Her own blue-gray jacket was streamlined for flight, but still flapped sometimes during her intense maneuvers. MANAGER: RAINBOW DASH was stitched across the front next to the Weather Factory logo.

The other ponies claimed she was so fast that they would still feel the wind of her first lap when she flew by on the second. Or that they could turn all the fans off and she would keep the whole place ventilated by herself. Dash knew—with no small satisfaction—that both claims were true, when she was pushing herself. Today she was just cruising, thinking.

She pulled out of the green-tinted light, turning back to more industrial areas. She opened her right eye, prepared to go back into the darker environment. The last office she passed was her own. Being the manager, she was centrally located in the hub of activity for the whole facility, between the offices and the machine operating halls.

Though it only briefly flashed by her, she was still inhabiting the snapshot. Flying was her way of observing, concentrating, meditating to a trance-like degree. And her mind was stuck in that office.

The light was off, but the morning sun cast slanted rays across the room. This was the only window in the factory, reinforced of course. It was the only luxury she allowed herself. Hours earlier, she had been sifting through piles of paperwork. She had always found it tedious, but in recent years she had come to see it as a break. If the job involved running or flying or lifting weights, she would disdain sitting on the sidelines, but with this job…

She had scanned over and over these reports as if she was a young flier studying for an exam. Even now she could see each report she had laid on her desk, placed in a way that helped her think about them, something Twilight had taught her.

As she raced through the concourse, she fixated on that one glimpse of sunlight. She could stare into it forever. Its yellow hue stayed the same even through the dimming years. It was so bright, it seemed it could wash away the other colors which stained her memory. This morning, however, it occurred to her; what if it HAD changed? What if it had faded slowly, and only seemed bright by comparison?

She scowled, speeding up as if to outrun the thought. Most thoughts which were that depressing turned out to be true these days. Whatever. She decided that she needed it to be undimmed, and that’s the way it would be. Was that her therapist talking?

Besides, could it really reach all the way up there? Officially it was “deficiency” or “depolarization” or a host of cover words, but she knew what it was. She had seen it before. She had felt it when she and her friends had been changed by Discord.

Which was shit, she was the most loyal pony ever. Loyal to Celestia, no less, and to the way of the pegasi. It had to be the right thing, it had to. She was so fucking loyal she wanted to kill herself. But she couldn’t. She wasn’t supposed to, and she couldn’t let everypony down.

The paperwork made more sense to her at high speed than sitting and staring at it. She had opened up the output reports as well as her own file, preparing to make her case. There was a rumor that the department was due for an audit—she had thought it was too classified for such a thing, but apparently oversight is magic.

If somepony was coming to question the way things were run, they were coming to question her ability. There was one particularly condemning report on her mind. She had left it out deliberately, front and center. There would be no avoiding it, so she wouldn’t bother to hide.

Months ago she had caused a riot among the captured fillies. One of them had almost broken out, which could have exposed the whole operation. The whole thing was so sloppy. Yes, it was a particularly feisty batch, but she had needlessly pushed it farther when she should have been containing them. Sure, somepony she knew was being processed that day, but nothing dangerous would have happened if she hadn’t had her psychotic break—which she almost didn’t come down from.

A lot of employees in the Rainbow Factory had to go through one. If they made it past that point, either coming back towards sanity or settling into an occupationally functional psychosis, then they were keepers. Some of the ones that didn’t make it through had to be processed, though it didn’t do much good for product.

Dash had come through hers into what her therapist had termed “compartmentalized, relative sanity”. She almost wished she had gone the other way. In any case, most ponies’ breakdown didn’t generate paperwork like this. Most ponies weren’t the manager, and they weren’t the best. Dash was supposed to be the best.

Now she knew that she would have to cover her own ass. The inspector would surely use this file against her, but that’s why she had put a case together to prove why she should be there.
And it was solid.

As Dash zipped back through the offices, she realized she hadn’t thought about flying at all. She had completed half the circuit without even looking where she was going. On a nagging suspicion, and a reckless urge, she closed both eyes. She powered ahead, twisting, turning, acting on instinct. She tuned out, purposefully releasing herself into autopilot, pure muscle memory. She thought of nothing... Warm past the steam pipes. Clanking on the work floor. Droning hum by the generators. Brighter again.

She had completed another circuit. She smirked briefly at her achievement, but it soon faded to a frown. She shook her head, murmuring, “I’ve been here too long.” There was no more thrill of flight, no exhilaration.

She put on the brakes, slowing to a smooth stop in front of her office. The metal grating clanked under her hooves as she touched down.

She realized that she could actually refrain from defending herself, and let herself be quietly removed from the position. She was tempted for a moment. But only a moment.

She wouldn’t chicken out. That would only bring another manager in to do the same job. And, she knew, she could do it better than anyone. Now that she was on the proper medication and cursedly sane, she had made everything more efficient and eliminated the possibility of another incident with better procedures. It may be a sinking ship but she was its captain.

She knew from her adventures with Twilight that she was a hero, and she would be the one to save the world this time. She was dying for it to be over but she would die before she quit. She wasn’t a quitter. Quitters are inferior.

She slipped in the door and headed for the desk to face the paperwork again. This time she was more certain and centered. She would prove her right to be here, just like she always did. No sweat.

Fresh Meat

Gauze Wrap, a white pony with a striking red mane and a bandage for a cutie mark, led four young pegasi down the hallway. With bright artificial lighting and clinical white walls, it appeared to be a hospital. Two more grim-faced adults followed behind the fillies.

The hallway opened up to a space like a waiting room, but without comfortable seating. More staff members were milling about, and hardly glanced at the new arrivals. To the left were three glass-walled rooms. Gauze Wrap led them to the furthest of the three and held the door open as the nervous fillies filed in.

Inside was disarmingly playful. There was a mural of flowers and sunshine, a bean bag chair, and a toy chest. Paper and half-used crayons littered the small table. The little room looked like a perfect daycare, except for the glass wall facing the waiting area, which appeared to be a mirror from this side.

The young ponies were dejected. Shooting Star, a little colt with a fiery orange mane, hung his head and asked, “Are we in trouble? Is it because I failed my flight test?”

“Your grades weren’t great,” Gauze Wrap admitted, “but it’s okay.” He smiled sweetly. “During the test, we measured you and found out that you’re very special.”

“Special?” the colt wondered, now hopeful.

He nodded. “Yes, out of all the fillies you four are super special. You know why?” He was wearing a colorful bracelet, and he began to idly fiddle with it as he spoke. “You have a rainbow inside you.”

“Wow.” The little pony’s eyes lit up.

Cloud Lily, a pale blue filly with a white mane, sheepishly mumbled, “Really? I don’t feel very rainbowy.”

Gauze Wrap explained, “You can’t see it, but it’s trapped in there. When you fly, it pushes and pulls, trying to get out. With all that going on inside you, no wonder it’s hard to fly straight!”

“Ohhhh…” she nodded, as if it all made sense now.

“Nuh uh, I fly super straight!” Shooting Star announced. “I’m like the bestest flyer! But only, turning is hard…”

“That’s good!” Gauze Wrap said, putting his hoof on the little one’s shoulder. “Your rainbow is a little calmer. But the great news is, in just a little bit you’re going to see the doctor. He’s going to help you let the rainbow out, so everyone can see how pretty it is.”

Cloud Lily worried, “Doctor? Will there be needles?”

“No needles or anything,” he assured. “We’ll use magic. It’ll be a little loud, but it won’t hurt at all.”

Shooting Star piped up, “So does that mean we can take the test again? I promise I’ll do like a million times better.”

Gauze Wrap smiled. “I’m sure you will. But not today. You get the rest of the day off of school.”

“Yay!” they all exclaimed.

“I need to go now. You can play with the toys, but try not to make too much ruckus, okay?” he said in an encouraging tone, trying to excuse himself without worrying them. “If you promise to be good, you can all get a cookie.”

The fillies nodded and Shooting Star pledged, “I’ll be soo good.”

“Here you go!” He laid a paper sack of cookies on the table. “Now just wait here and the doctor will see you soon.” The moment he stepped out the door, his face sank. He quietly locked the door while they were going for the cookies. They didn’t notice.

He stepped past the guards and unlocked a heavy door. As he crossed the threshold, the bright, clinical façade ended abruptly, and he was standing directly opposite the machine itself on the gloomy factory floor. The toothy maw waited not twenty meters from the nursery-prison.

Guaze Wrap looked down and fondled his bracelet. The six beads represented the Elements of Harmony, and were supposed to foster the wearer’s devotion. He gingerly touched one, then the next, in the traditional sequence.

Another shape, the same steel gray as the wall, dropped down from a walkway and landed beside him. Gauze Wrap, startled, took a step back and blurted, “What do you want from me, Lobo?”

The gray pegasus stood only an inch taller, but his menacing posture advertised the fact that he was not afraid to get into a fight. A rough tattoo of a knife-pierced heart and crossbones on his flank made it impossible to distinguish his original cutie mark. He gave the other worker an intense look and asked accusingly, “Enjoy your little fantasy? What did you tell them this time?”

The caretaker retorted, “I give them their last moments of kindness and hope. Why is that so hard for you to understand? Not everyone here is some, some kind of monster that enjoys terrorizing children.”

“Better if you just break it to ‘em,” Lobo stated frankly. He looked down as if talking to an imaginary filly. “You’re not special. Nobody loves you, nobody cares. You’re here because you’re not good enough.” He looked up to see if he had struck a nerve, and was not disappointed. “The sooner they learn that, the easier it’s gonna be to accept what’s about to happen to ‘em. I just like to see their faces when they figure it out.”

“You are just a miserable, hateful soul, you know that?” Gauze Wrap declared, with a mixture of disgust and pity. “No wonder you lost your color. You should come by the chapel some time, and make peace.“

“Peace? More like denial. I know I belong here.” The thug leaned forward, bringing their faces uncomfortably close. “If you’re such an angel, why are you in hell? Put you in that big blender and you’d come out gray as me.” He gestured to the huge steel contraption that loomed over the bloodstained floor.

The smaller worker glanced nervously at “IT”, but didn’t pull back. He mustered a fiercer tone to ask, “Is that some kind of threat?”

Lobo held the tension for a moment, staring. Then he relaxed, unimpressed. “Just the facts.”

Gauze Wrap stood up straighter, and proudly stated his own facts. “My color is pure. I follow the code of Harmony, and I do my duty. My father and his father all had this color, and we’re all upstanding members of the community, but you wouldn’t understand anything about that. You criminals are all the same.”

“You might wanna hurry and upstand the community at the front gate,” Lobo mocked. “Some bigwig’s here to check up on us.”

“So?” Gauze Wrap gulped. “You let him in, didn’t you?”

“Nah. He looked like an asshole,” Lobo answered with a casual shrug. “You should probably get over there before he gets pissed.”

“You...” Gauze Wrap’s eyes bugged out. “You’re unbelievable!” He turned around and scurried away.

“Oh, I know,” Lobo muttered with a hollow smile.

Hello… Inspector?

Dash was now sitting at her desk. She couldn’t think of anything else she could do to prepare, but she couldn’t shake the feeling she may have overlooked something. They would probably demand more production, but they always did, so whatever. She just hoped they wouldn’t want to talk too much about her file, about things like that. She squirmed in her seat and felt her chest tighten. Which was irritating, she shouldn’t feel like this and certainly shouldn’t let it show. Oh yeah, how about another dose just in case… She pulled a medicine bottle from a drawer and tipped a big blue pill out into her hoof. She took a swig of water to wash it down, with effort, but it didn’t wash away the bitter taste.

Just then there was a knock on the door and somepony called her name. Lobo leaned in from the doorway. “Hey boss, you got a visitor.”

She took a deep breath and nodded quietly. She straightened the stack of papers—something Twilight would have appreciated—and pushed her chair out. She trotted past her underling with a measured pace, as if unaffected.

Below, workers still hurriedly scrubbed at the stubborn blood stains around the Machine. Dash suspected the dark blot could never be removed, and they certainly weren’t going to finish in the next few minutes, but she would let them try.

Lobo followed at her side as she headed for the main gate. “I want you to know I got your back,” he said sincerely. “If this guy is angling at you trying to take you out, I’ll end him for you. Straight up.”

“What?” She cut her eyes sideways at him and raised her eyebrow. “Thanks, but I don’t think the Princess would like that.”

“I can tag along with some of the crew, make sure he feels our eyes on him,” Lobo suggested. “Make sure he knows it’s our house. I’m serious.”

She hid a sigh. He was loyal in a certain way—the way he learned in prison. The other ex-cons mostly followed his lead, so he was a necessary evil. “I’d rather he saw you all working hard.”

“True,” he agreed, though clearly disappointed. “That’s a shame though, I was looking forward to looking at you all day.”

Dash stopped in her tracks. “Try it and you’re dead. I don’t have time for you to be creepy today.” She had made it as clear as possible that nothing was ever going to happen, but every now and then he would make another pass.

He put up a hoof in the gesture, as if to say, “My bad.”

“I would have gotten rid of you already if you weren’t so useful.” She said it to put him in his place, but he may have taken it as a compliment. He was really throwing her off. What if he said something stupid in front of the inspector? “Look, I’m actually trying to make a good impression, so just keep your distance.”

“Alright, I’m gone,” he said, and turned to leave. “But if you need to knock some heads, I’m here.”

As Dash arrived at the gate, she didn’t have to ask who was who. A pair of guards stood stoically. They may as well have been permanently installed on either side of the vault that sealed the secret area from the rest of the Cloudsdale Weather Factory. Gauze Wrap had already begun to barrage the outsider with friendly platitudes, but stopped as the boss approached. Ugh, a unicorn. He was golden brown with a silver mane. His blue eyes were very intense behind a pair of black-rimmed glasses. He wore a light tan coat, with a small notebook and pen tucked in the front pocket. He looked very middle-manager, kind of nerdy, and very ground-dweller.

How could any ground-dweller understand Cloudsdale? Pegasi are like birds, fly in a flock, live as a flock. The flock only flies as fast and as high as its weakest member. Any bird that can’t keep up with the flock, any fledgling that can’t learn to fly, is abandoned, doomed to—well, probably doomed to a pampered life in Fluttershy’s cottage. That’s why Fluttershy left, she couldn’t deal with the reality of it. It was good for her to be far away, in her own little world of niceness.

“All ground-dwellers belong at a distance,” Dash thought, casting a sharp glance to this… inspector. Every pegasus knows that’s why the clouds are so high. But every now and then, some pretentious unicorn would cheat nature with a cloudwalking spell, and strut around the sky city as if he owned it. Just because they have a little magic in their horns, they think they can control everything.

He turned and met her stare directly. She held the eye contact on purpose. She was not one to timidly pretend she wasn’t looking. She was determined not to give any signs of weakness. She expected to find him permanently locked in a smug, know-it-all expression. She found instead a familiarity in his eye, as if he knew her. Dash double-checked her memory to make sure they hadn’t met before. Definitely not. He was probably just another shrink here to analyze her.

“It’s good to see you, Rainbow Dash,” he said in a friendly greeting.

“Right…” she responded warily. “So you’re inspector Ironshoe?”

“Expecting a pegasus?” guessed the inspector, probably from her tone.

Dash answered flatly, “Well, yeah.”

“Does it bother you?” the unicorn pressed, but his voice was more curious than aggressive.

Dash gave him a doubtful look, wondering if he really wanted the answer.

“Please, speak freely,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered. “Yeah it does.”

“Of course it does. The last thing you want is someone who doesn’t understand you to come meddle in your affairs. Especially in matters as sensitive as this.”

At least he knew what he was getting into, but he was still an inspector from Canterlot. Your whole job is to meddle in our affairs. Putting that aside, she asked, “What do you want to see?”

“Everything,” he said with a sweeping gesture. “Not just the paperwork, show me every part of this facility that has to do with making rainbows. I’ll also need you to demonstrate your process.”

It made sense that he wanted to see how it was done, she was prepared for that, but it was always uncomfortable to have someone new around when they actually do it.

Almost as if it was an afterthought, he turned back to the entrance and gave it a quick flash of his horn. A glowing wheel of unrecognizable symbols appeared across the main gate. It was a seal of some kind.

That literally ruffled her feathers. She didn’t usually understand Twilight when she was talking about magic, but it wasn’t hard to figure out that no one was coming or going without this guy’s say-so. “What did you do that for?”

“I don’t want any interruptions,” he explained. “Let’s get started.”

Dash led the way back toward her office. As they stepped onto the walkway overlooking the machine, the floor workers looked up at them. Dash looked sideways at the control deck, where engineers were pretending to mind gauges and switches but really wondering who the new face was and what was going to happen with the boss. Apparently a rumor had gone around that they might not be doing any dirty work that day.

She leaned over the railing and shouted, “What are you looking at?! This is an inspection, not an off day! Get it running and ready to make spectra!”

The workers below scattered, hurrying to their tasks with answers of “Yes sir!” Dash thought “yes ma’am” is something you’d say to Rarity, so she had her subordinates address her as “sir”.

Lobo was one of the ponies watching them from below. “I’ll get the little skittlebags ready to ride the rainbow,” he quipped as he headed for the holding pens. Dash growled under her breath.

She told the chief engineer, “I want a ready report when I get out of my office.” She nodded toward the inspector without looking at him, and added, “Just don’t start without us.”

When she resumed her course, Ironshoe asked in an offended tone, “Skittlebags? Is that how you usually talk about the lives of the foals you have here?”

“Don’t mind him… It’s hard to do this job without getting numb to some things.” Dash was embarrassed, but also a bit frustrated that he would make a deal out of it. “I mean, Public Relations has a really sensitive way to say anything, but inside these walls that just doesn’t matter. Why mess around with nice words when…”

“Actions speak louder,” he said, finishing her thought. Clearly he had been briefed and knew exactly what the purpose of the Machine was. It couldn’t be accurately described with any nice words, but she didn’t like his tone, as if they were doing something wrong.

Dash put her hoof on the door handle, but held it shut, blocking him. She looked him in the eye and firmly corrected, “That’s true, but these foals don’t have lives. They wouldn’t be here if they did.”

The Visitation

Inside the office, Ironshoe slipped out of his jacket as if he had just come home from a long day. He lifted it over his wings as he pulled it off his back, and casually passed it to Dash, saying, “Would you take my coat?”

Oh great, he’s old school. Dash took it before she had time to think twice. “Why am I doing this?” she thought. “You know, you may be a big shot, but I’m not your secretary."

What she had just seen registered as she turned and hung it on the coat rack, and she blinked in disbelief. The room brightened with a warm, flickering light that emanated from behind her. She froze, her mind skipping a track. She knew something was up, something big, and she would have to deal with it when she turned around.

She turned around anyway.

He was huge. Everything about him glowed. His brown fur had turned golden. His outstretched wings filled the space before her. His mane and tail were streams of ethereal white fire, with flames gently flowing out from the source, on and on, without end. He was expansive, he was the horizon. His eyes—she couldn’t look him in the eye.

Everything around them seemed dark by comparison, faint, like mere shadows. She felt that she could fall through the floor, like she was floating in space, like nothing was real but her, and him. Her skin crawled, to think that there was nowhere she could go that he couldn’t see her. She felt see-through. Far beneath, the sickly earth was stained red. And high above – a sword.

He pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. Dash staggered, as if drunk, as the trance passed and everything faded back to normal. She steadied herself. Catching her breath, all she could say was, “Holy shit.”

She blinked at him; once again he seemed like a flesh and blood pony, and not some unearthly force. But he was indeed a golden alicorn, with a fiery white mane. He allowed her to stare for a moment. Then, in a voice that was deeper but not louder, he bade, “Have a seat.”

Her mouth was like cotton. It seemed to take forever. He was actually going through the records quite quickly—she should have been offended at how quickly he glanced over it. And yet it seemed so long. Dash felt like a filly in flight school waiting for the teacher to grade her tests. Her heart was pounding, her hooves were sweaty.

Why would Celestia send—THAT —and what did it mean? It would make sense for her to send some regular lackey, some inspector, to maintain her distance from the facility. The whole thing was a black operation, everyone knew that—but why send this secret alicorn? The only reason Dash could think of for this escalation, was that this being was here to get rid of them or replace them. And no one retires from the Rainbow Factory.

That wouldn’t do. Panic would be useless. If she assumed that she was done for, she would probably make it true.

With a little defiance, she would be more like herself. If he was a bigger deal than Celestia and Luna, she would have heard of him. That meant the royal appearance must be showing off, like he was compensating for something. She gathered a smirk.

She glanced at him again and the smirk immediately vanished. Was that embarrassment? Not about her work, but about the factory, about everything. It was always painful to bring in a new pony. This was different, worse. She felt almost like—no, she felt exactly like she would if her dad found out what she really did for a living.

He looked at her over his glasses. She immediately looked away. She forced herself to make eye contact again.

“Good accounting,” he concluded. “These reports are all well done. Paperwork is one of the few things you were ever afraid of, but this is all thorough. I know that once you believe you’re doing the right thing, there’s no stopping you.”

“I’m flattered,” she said dryly. He must have read her personal files, she thought, or Celestia told him about her. She didn’t like that he knew more about her than she did about him.

This strange being claimed, “You know who I am, but it’s been awhile.”

She doubted that very much. “I really don’t remember ever seeing you before. Then again, what did you look like?”

“You’re wondering, which is the illusion? This form is for your eyes only, for now. I’m showing you so we can talk a bit more honestly, and hiding it from the rest so we can walk around without any disruption.”

“You wanna talk?” she asked warily. “Let’s start with, who are you exactly, and what do you want?”

He finally introduced himself, “My name is Yeshua, and I was sent here by my father, not Celestia.”

Why haven’t I ever heard of you? And what kind of a name is that? Most ponies have a descriptive name, words that mean something about who they are or what they do. She couldn’t even tell what language this was from.

“I’ll tell you everything right now if you’ll give me an honest answer to one question.” He paused deliberately to give weight to what he was about to say. “Are you okay?”

“Am I…” she was taken aback. A part of her wanted to scream the answer. Are you kidding? Look around you, no one here is “okay”. She choked it down successfully. She corrected her brief distraught expression into a cynical squint. This sudden “let’s be honest” stuff seems like a trap.

Manager Dash straightened up. “I’m doing great. I’m doing something important here, and I don’t want you to get in the way. Obviously you’ve read my psych file, so you know I had problems earlier, but you also know I’m stable now.”

He was obviously disappointed, which was irritating. “Then we’ll have that conversation later. We’ll work our way up to it.”

Did he just assume that I’m lying? “Listen, you don’t get to decide what I think. Whoever sent you, I just want you to be honest when you’re writing your report and tell them that I’m doing a good job here.” That felt good to say, like she might actually get back in control of the encounter.

He nodded. “If you’re sure about that, then let’s go. Show me.”

“Alright then. Follow me.” He did follow her to the door. He took his jacket off the rack, and as he put it on, he seemed to shrink. The golden luster of his fur faded to a more normal hue, and with a brush of his hoof, his mane settled once again as normal hair. Despite the sunlight from the window, the room was instantly darker and colder without his glow.

She would play it cool, like she usually did. He was supposed to be here to investigate and ensure that things were being run properly, so she would strut her stuff and prove how well she had done. But she would be watching him, and figure out what was really going on.

The Machine

Yeshua stared into a gaping black hole. Inside the thick metal rim were hundreds of steel teeth, welded together to form interlocking balls of spikes. They were arranged so that they all fit together as they rotated, dragging anything caught in their grip toward the center and shredding it into a thousand ribbons. It stood still now, and an attempt had clearly been made to clean it, but nothing could hide the blood stains.

The mouth of the machine stood vertically, like a doorway into oblivion. A conveyor belt on a raised platform stood in front of it, ready to feed the iron jaws. There was space for two ponies to “safely” work on the platform. The whole platform and the opening of the machine was enclosed by glass walls.

Dash couldn’t think of anything meaningful to say, but she had to break the silence. “I know the old model was oriented vertically. I didn’t tell them to make the intake horizontal, it’s like that for egghead reasons. Turns out you get a finer grind if the processor head pulls it in with the rotation, instead of just dropping it in.”

The apparent unicorn gave her a sideways glance. “It? Dropping what in?”

“You know,” she replied with a little frustration. They both knew very well they were talking about live ponies, but he was trying to make her say it. I’m just compartmentalizing like my shrink tells me to. “The subject.”

He let it go for the moment, and tapped the thick glass. “What’s this for?”

“The fish bowl? That’s sound proof glass. I had that put in there,” Manager Dash explained. “I guess it’s another layer of security, but we haven’t really needed it since my new protocols. Now we tie the subjects before they’re even brought here. It’s really there for morale.”

“It doesn’t go around the entire machine, so that’s not the noise it’s blocking,” he observed correctly. “It’s for screams.”

“Well yeah,” “Turns out that’s just part of the deal, but I figured not everypony on the crew has to deal with that. We tried anesthetics to keep them quiet, but it turns out it affects the product if they’re unconscious when they go in. We still give them a little to dull the pain. Also my idea, by the way. I’m not some kind of monster. We do it as equinely as possible for all involved.”

“You want the killing but not the screams,” he concluded. “So this makes you feel better about what you’re doing?”

“Hey, we have to do this,” she defended. “I’m just trying to keep us all from losing our minds.”

His eyes traced around the edges of the glass door where workers entered the enclosure. He turned to her and stated bluntly, “I want it gone. Today.”

“Seriously? I mean, I could keep that in consideration. You could put it in your report, if that’s even a real thing you do.” Her voice lowered on that last part. She watched his reaction carefully.

“For efficiency with large loads,” he said. “Look, the door’s too small. I want it removed before the demonstration today.”

Wait, What? She gulped. The last thing she expected after all his noble talk was that he would ask for a bigger demonstration than necessary. She pictured doing the sacrifices one after the other, under his disdainful glare. Then her imagination really took off, with images of the golden apparition she saw in the office picking up all of her crew with his magic and furiously stuffing them into the machine. He clearly saw everypony there as the bad guys, she just couldn’t get a clear read on how angry he might be.

“Ugh, fine. It’s not like we don’t hear screams in our dreams anyway.” Normally she wouldn’t roll over so easily, but even if he was just a pony from internal affairs, she didn’t want to oppose him. It’s not like a little glass would stop him if he wanted to wipe them out.

She stepped aside and ordered two floor workers to begin unbolting the sound trap so that it could be detached. When she turned around, he was already pacing down the length of the machine, surveying its parts.

She trotted until she caught up. Instead of showing her nerves, she tried to channel Twilight and play the role of tour guide. “Most ponies don’t know how spectra is made, I mean since it’s a secret, but it’s quite a process. First the material is turned into a liquid, so that it has an even consistency. Then it’s vaporized and the magic is extracted in its purest form. That’s what those are about.”

She pointed up to a battery of a hundred magical crystals, each the size of a pony, embedded into the top of the machine. “Then the magic is separated by type and then re-infused into liquid form. Each type makes a different color of spectra. Since the magic is different, we don’t have to worry about the colors mixing again.”

“I mean, it’s not about decoration, it’s about the magic, but we do want it to match naturally occurring rainbows. Which, let me remind you, there are very few natural rainbows, much fewer than there used to be.” She kept pace as he walked along the main housing, apparently studying it down to the rivet.

When the silence felt awkward again, Dash filled it. “A lot of people are surprised to see magic crystals attached to a machine. A lot of the bulk of the machine is to handle the steam part of the process, but the rest is about controlling the magical energy.”

She watched him, but didn’t see a reaction to anything she said. “You already knew all that, didn’t you.”

He nodded.

Two bulky masses of strangely shaped iron knobs hung from the ceiling over the back half of the machine. Each held spools of copper wire that were so thick they almost looked like pipes instead of wires. The one directly above the machine was obviously connected into the heart of the machine with a cascade of insulated cables. The other, off to the side, did not appear to be connected to anything, and a patina of rust had been allowed to form on it.

Looking at the one that was in disrepair, he asked, “Why don’t you maintain this one?”

“Oh, that?” Dash said, having almost forgotten it was there. “We made an auxiliary capacitor when the new machine came out, but we didn’t really need it. We were afraid that with how much more energy it could process, it could be a disaster if it overloaded. But in the real routine function we haven’t gotten anywhere near the safety limits. We don’t try to do the biggest batch possible, we just keep it running constantly. Turns out that’s gentler on the machine, and we don’t have to replace so many parts.”

His horn glowed and he shot a bright bolt of energy into the metal. The capacitor rung almost like a bell and shook off what looked like dust or sand. It was particles of rust. Dash quickly turned her face down so that she wouldn’t get any in her eyes. “That should give you a head start. Make sure it’s working properly and get it connected. I want it ready to go in an hour.”

She coughed. “Yes sir.” She took off and rose to the second level. The chief engineer leaned his elbow on the railing, pretending to double check some gauges, but obviously watching the newcomer. “Hey, the inspector wants the auxiliary capacitor plugged in and ready to go, within the hour.”

“Really,” he said dryly, and stroked a gray hair on his chin. “Chop chop, eh?”

“Yeah.” She added with weight, “I think we might actually need it this time, so do it right.”

She snuck a glance back to the impostor below. He really was intent on that large load of his. A shiver went down her spine. What did he want to do? Does he want an overload? Her mind raced through the fastest ways to escape the factory. No. I have to protect my crew. I have to protect the Machine.

If it came down to it, could she trick him, or fight him? Despite his mild persona, directly opposing him seemed like a very bad idea. And that aside, there was a part of her that felt that it would be wrong to do anything to him, but she didn’t understand why. Who was his boss anyway, and surely he was under Celestia’s command?

Then she knew. This tour of the facility—it was perfect. It was the only option. She had until it ended to show him all the good they were doing. Or even just make him understand their dilemma. It seemed like he wanted to understand her, despite his cynicism about the factory. Surely Doctor Atmosphere could convince anyone. And the neophytes… Yes, it could work.

She flew back down to his side, and motioned for him to follow.

The Chapel of Sanity

Dash led her strange guest away from the machine to another section. “After we had so many casualties from mental breakdown, I wanted to get more resources in here so help is as close as possible. I cleared out some rooms in this hall to create what we like to call the Sanity Department.”

It was another area of clinical white walls, this time bathed in the warmest, most soothing light possible. The nearest door read, “Office of Mental Health, Patient Entrance”. Next to it was a large window. Through the frosted glass they could see a waiting room lined with chairs, though they couldn’t see who was inside.

“We should talk to Doctor Brightmind,” Dash suggested. “I think you’d like talking to her. Not that you have issues, I mean.” Actually, she hoped the shrink would get him talking about all his issues. Doctor-patient confidentiality be damned, she needed to read all of the psychiatrist’s notes on him.

“That’s alright. I can get a taste from these.” A shelf by the door brimmed over with pamphlets with large print and colorful pictures. Some of the workers could not read very well. Yeshua winnowed through them with his hoof, reading off the titles.

It’s Not Your Fault

Saving the World One Rainbow at a Time

It’s Okay to Be Depressed

How Potions Can Improve Your Mental State

He seemed disappointed. “That’s all I needed to see.” He looked back at her and said with a slight but sincere smile, “I’d rather talk to you, anyway.”

Oh great. She still couldn’t figure him out or how they were supposed to know each other.

He moved on down the hall to the second door. An engraved brass plate marked it as the “Harmony Chapel”. Yeshua seemed chagrined, and remarked, “This seems out of place.”

Dash shrugged. “Some ponies need different kinds of therapy.”

He opened the door and stepped through. It started to swing shut behind him, but Dash caught it before it could knock on the door frame. She hesitated, but reluctantly went in after him.

It was not a large space, but the high ceilings and the stained glass made it feel open. Of course it was not real sunlight behind the windows, but in the stark world of the factory, the bright colors were uplifting. Three walls were covered in wood panels, one wall was decorated with a stylized mural which highlighted the role of rainbows in the magic cycle.

A white pony was sitting statuesque, perched on a cushion in the middle of the floor. As he held a meditative pose, Gauze Wrap seemed to be the centerpiece of the place. His eyes were tightly shut as he continued the ritual that had been interrupted earlier.

To Dash’s surprise, the newcomer did not walk out into the space. Instead, he traveled along the wall, making a beeline for a figure crouched in the corner. The worker was on his knees, quivering, apparently praying, unable even to lift his head. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Have mercy!” he moaned. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Noticing their approach, he nervously got up and tried to put himself together. He wouldn’t look up at them. He clearly would have preferred to slink off without being noticed.

Yeshua put his hoof on the trembling pony’s shoulder and assured, “Go in peace. Your prayers have been heard.”

The worker looked up with a tear, and maybe something like hope briefly flashed across his face. He nodded nervously and excused himself, hurrying back to his post.

“So do you know that guy too?” Dash wondered, but didn’t say anything.

Gauze Wrap had noticed them and approached to greet them. “Welcome to our little chapel.” He cast a disappointed glance at the tail retreating out the door. “Sorry you had to deal with that, his faith is a little weak.”

“A little faith is enough,” the stranger said.

“I suppose you’re right.” The worker-turned-priest shrugged, and invited, “Come, let me bless you.”

He motioned for his guest to follow back to where he had staked his claim in the center, but this time he sat on the bare floor and gestured the newcomer to take the cushion. The “inspector” took the seat he was offered.

Dash followed halfway, but hung back.

“Won’t you join us, Loyalty?” Gauze Wrap said hopefully to Dash, like he always did.

“You don’t have to call me that. I think I’ll let you two do your thing.” Dash stayed in the back of the room. At first she had such a good feeling about the chapel, but she had grown more uncomfortable in it every time she visited. She always got the uplifting sensation like something wonderful was about to happen, followed by a crushing certainty that it never would.

Gauze Wrap offered his hoof according to polite tradition, and Yeshua accepted. The white pony looked up at the light and brushed his red mane out of his face. As though reading poetry, he spoke sweet and steady.

“Praise Magic, power of the Elements together.

Praise Honesty, I have been true, stay true to me.

Praise Kindness, I have been kind, be kind to me.

Praise Generosity, I have given, give unto me.

Praise Loyalty, I have been faithful, be faithful to me.

Praise Laughter, I have brought joy, bring joy to me.

Praise Harmony! As I have been in harmony with all your ways, bring me peace.”

The plain seeming unicorn listened, and allowed a polite pause before observing, “That’s a very nice prayer. But the way you said it all depends on how good you are, not on the goodness of Harmony.”

“Exactly! You are very discerning,” Gauze Wrap said happily. “Why should we ask Harmony to bless us, if we’re not willing to do what it takes to deserve it? But you and me, we are doing the will of Harmony, so we can pray confidently and know we will be rewarded.”

“Is it wise to ask for what you deserve, in a place like this?” Yeshua asked doubtfully. “How do you know you’re doing the will of Harmony?”

Gauze Wrap looked at him with sympathy, and explained, “I know when I first learned how all this works, it was hard to accept. But now I consider the whole factory a temple. The Temple of Rainbows. Harmony gives us life and friendship. But there are some ponies who are not faithful to Harmony, sinners who do the work of chaos.” His body language and tone conveyed that the wicked ones he referred to were somewhere out there, not anypony he was speaking to. “But by offering sacrifices, we give magic back to Harmony and restore balance. We get rid of the offspring of sin, and the ones defiled by its curse—the ones who don’t have cutie marks, don’t have destinies, and are destined to cause chaos in our society. Harmony is pleased by our offerings, and once again replenishes the land.”

He put his hoof to his chest. “It’s not my job, but my calling is to bring kindness and peace to the workers and even to the sacrifices, to help them redeem themselves by nobly offering their bodies to the rainbow. You are also here to aid us and do the work of the Sun Bringer. This is how I know we are in harmony, both of us.”

“In harmony with whom?” Yeshua asked again, entirely unfazed by the long-winded answer.

“What?” The pony priest grew confused.

The mysterious unicorn clarified, “Harmony means unity, agreement, being in tune. So who are you in harmony with? When you pray, who are you speaking to?”

“I’m in harmony with, well, Harmony…” Gauze Wrap was taken aback by the boldness of the questions. They were so basic that they were hard to answer. “I mean, we’re in harmony with each other.”

“That can’t be all there is to it,” the newcomer countered, pressing the issue. “Changelings are in harmony with each other, literally. They’re a hive mind.”

Dash remained aloof but leaned her ear to their conversation. She still needed to figure him out.

“Harmony is…” Gauze Wrap wanted to continue in his peaceful tone, but he was starting to get offended. “Don’t say such things! We are in a holy place! When I pray, I am not just speaking words to an empty room, I am connecting with the elemental magical forces that created this world! Harmony sustains us, binds the universe together. I live by the Elements in every aspect of my life, I epitomize the magic we create here. I bring kindness to this dark place. I give generously of my life. I uplift the spirits of the lowly with laughter, my loyalty to Celestia and Cloudsdale is unquestionable. I am in Harmony, and I do the will of Harmony!

“The elements are principles. If there’s a “will of Harmony”, now you’re talking about a person,” Yeshua put the pieces together as though the connection was obvious. “The person who made ponies and gives each one a special gift.”

Dash usually zoned out during religious stuff, but listened to every word this time because it was so bizarre. Not only that, but a pit formed in her stomach when she thought about Harmony as a person. She couldn’t express why, but the more he made sense the more uneasy she felt.

He continued in a level tone, but each question was sharper than the last. “What elements of his personality makes you think that what happens here is okay? His generosity, or his joyful laughter? What would he think if he saw you—would he appreciate your kindness when you’re telling lies to children? Or would he applaud your honesty when you kill them. The changelings deceive, then they drain the life out of others. If you sacrifice others to save yourself, tell me again, who are you in harmony with?”

The pious pony’s eyes bugged out. “You’re mad! Insane! Who has ever heard anypony say such strange things? I don’t care who you are! You blaspheme Harmony, you slander me, and yet it’s you who is the discord in this holy place!” He stood up straight and pointed his hoof to the door. “Get out. I don’t care if you outrank me, I don’t care if you have me sent to the machine. Get out of here now, and on the way out you can go straight to hell!”

Dash realized with a chill that Yeshua could be incredibly dangerous if he got truly angry. She couldn’t see his face—was it too late? She jumped out into the middle of room, and interposed herself between them. “Nonono WAIT, Please don’t--!”

Though upset, he was composed. He was obviously frustrated, but she was surprised to find a note of sadness in his expression. She could see right away that he was no immediate threat, other than the vague existential dread.

He sighed. “Your calling was comforting and calming the ponies in the hospital where you used to work. Now you’re no different from Lobo.”

“Wh—what did you say?” Gauze Wrap stammered in utter consternation. He tried to rally some withering retort, but found himself speechless.

“Look, can we just continue the tour?” Dash asked assertively, pretending that she hadn’t just lost her composure a moment ago.

“Of course,” he assented. The two of them stepped out without another word. Gauze Wrap was still staring straight ahead, motionless. She closed the door, relieved to have them separated again.

“So much for a low profile,” Dash quipped. “Why don’t I just show you the lab, okay?”

As they walked, she felt the need to speak up. “Go easy on that guy. I don’t care if you agree with his ideology, we need him. Gauze Wrap is part of the original crew, one of the few workers who actually understands the machine. He kinda helps keep the others sane. He’s good at calming down the fillies, too. He thinks he’s a good person, so maybe he is, right?”

Yeshua looked at her doubtfully. She knew it was flimsy, but the way he looked at her irritated her more than if he had given her a lecture.

She continued to vouch for him, at the risk of overselling it. “We even let him go see his family on holidays—it would be a little too suspicious if nobody who came in here ever came out. His psych evaluations are something else, they say there’s no risk at all of him exposing the factory. He believes in what we’re doing, and believes in keeping it secret.”

“Is that the only reason? He’s the only one who gets any holidays, besides you.”

“He gets out because his dad is rich,” Dash admitted. “I do because I’m famous after what happened with Twilight and the Elements. That’s the whole reason I was picked for this job.” Her adventure with her friends made her feel so special back then, but now she hated to even mention it. It always came up, and it was the only thing people knew about her. They always expected her to be some saint or an expert on magic. And once again, I’m expected to know stuff.

Not that Dash was interested in praying, but she was embarrassed that she didn’t even know who she was supposed to be praying to. The Elements of Harmony worked when she needed them to, and that’s all she ever cared to know. Celestia was the automatic answer that jumped to her mind. But she knew that was wrong. First, she knew Harmony was around before the Princesses, so they couldn’t be one and the same. Even if Celestia was supposed to be some kind of incarnation of harmony, Dash had lost all sense of awe and wonder while doing her leader’s dirty work. Aside from the sun, Celestia’s power was all bureaucracy and machines. No, instead of an answer, Dash’s mind kept coming back to, “Who does this guy think he is?”

Out of nowhere, she was compelled to speak her mind. “I don’t really care anymore if we’re doing the will of Harmony, or in Harmony with the Creator, whatever the lingo is.”

She unloaded. “I can’t connect with the Element of Loyalty anymore. Otherwise we could just use the Elements to fix everything. That’s what they’re here for, right? It still has my lightning bolt, like it wants me to use it, but it won’t light up or do anything for me, like it’s broken. I thought I had some kind of magical destiny, but I guess that’s not really what it’s cracked up to be. I feel like Harmony has abandoned us. Abandoned me.”

“It really hurts to hear you say that. Do you think Harmony abandoned you, or you abandoned Harmony?” he asked, and paused. She didn’t answer. “Who changed?”

Dash’s heart sank really low. Was it his words, the sorrow in his voice, or just that she had allowed herself to imagine for a moment that everything was a mistake. Worse yet, she had imagined, even hypothetically, that things could ever get better. Before she showed too much embarrassing emotion, cynicism returned to wall it off.

“Well that’s great for you, I’m glad you’re still better than us,” she quipped sharply, but it came out more hopeless than angry. “I don’t know if you’re immortal or whatever but we regular ponies kind of need magic to live. If Harmony would abandon us and leave us to die, then how is Harmony any better? Why shouldn’t we do… what we do here. We’re just doing what we can to survive.”

“Faith hasn’t solved our problems,” she concluded bitterly, “so we’ve turned to a more scientific approach. I don’t know if they have any science where you come from, but I know someone who can explain it to you. Dr. Atmosphere not only designed the machine, but proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it’s the only way to save Equestria.” She hastened ahead, and further conversation was dead.

Doctor Atmosphere

The laboratory was full of equipment that Dash had never seen anywhere else. Steam pipes descended from the high ceiling, each supplying pressure to a different apparatus. Most of them where silent for now, but some gave a low hum or gurgle that hinted at what was going on inside. The main instruments lined the back of the room. Flasks and beakers surrounded a contraption of glass pipes where spectra was subjected to endless chemical tests. Cabinets along the end of the room were stuffed full of carefully packaged samples.

Whenever she came here, she felt like Twilight would have been better for the job. If the scientist or any of his staff tried to explain something, she just had to nod and try not to look stupid.

“Increase the voltage!” an authoritative voice called from further into the lab. There he stood, a figure in a lab coat and thick goggles, surrounded by an erratic flicker and an unnerving crackle. His white clothes gave sharp contrast to his dark red fur and jet black mane. He was fixated on his experiment, a glowing rainbow suspended inside a huge vacuum tube. Arcs of simulated lightning flashed across the bottled sky.

His assistant left her post by the levers of the apparatus and tapped him on the shoulder. His head snapped around. He followed her gesture to the visitors that had just entered. “Alright, shut it down.” She hurried back to yank the main lever down.

“Not all at once!” the scientist scolded. “You have to draw the power down slowly! How many times have I told you...” He trailed off, glancing toward his guests. He pulled off his goggles and dangled them towards her. “Just go, and do your daily titrations.” She dutifully took his protective gear and slunk away.

He approached Dash and the newcomer, saying, “Welcome! Inspector Ironshoe, I presume? I am Doctor Hyde Atmosphere. I’m sure you’ve heard much about me.”

“I have,” said the supposed inspector.

“Have you seen my Machine? Isn’t it magnificent?” Hyde asked eagerly.

“It’s effective,” Yeshua agreed, with reservations. “But rainbows are magnificent.”

“Yes, quite,” the scientist said, unfazed. “No process is better than its product. But you should know that it’s far more effective than it was at first.”

“I’m sure you’re aware that I designed the original machine,” Hyde said as a matter of course. “What you may not yet appreciate is the fact that I’ve been refining it for years. I have not been sitting on my laurels. The initial formula was able to produce rainbows, yes. But today we can make twice the spectra per unit, with twice the quality.”

The scientist took any space of silence as an invitation to continue. “Many leading wizards and potion brewers have also contributed to this achievement, though sadly most did not understand what we were creating. Each only knew of the specific problem they were solving, just their own small piece of the puzzle, for security reasons of course. Essentially the machine does what they would all do if they were gathered here.”

Hyde paused, almost embarrassed, wondering if his guest felt slighted. “Not many of your kind have been here. I know as a unicorn, this must seem like a pathetic display of jealousy, pegasi trying to compensate for the inability to wield magic ourselves. I hope you’re not offended to be replaced by machinery.”

The visitor answered honestly, “No, I assure you, that is the least offensive thing about it.”

“Ah yes, this business is not for the faint of heart,” Hyde nodded understandingly. “Imitation may be flattery, but this is not mere flattery. Automating the magic allows us to increase the scale of the operation and use unskilled labor. It also allows us to control the magic very precisely and get the same result every time. There are very volatile elements which, outside of the protective shell of the machine, would be too dangerous to work with.”

“But perhaps most important, it allows us to operate independently. There is no single pony whose removal would halt the operation. If we relied on the talent of a unique spellcaster, they could fall ill or become troubled and refuse to continue,” Hyde said as though describing some horrible fate. “No, this is our lifeblood, this is our legacy for the generations.”

“But you are the only one who understands how all of the pieces work together,” the guest noticed. “Does it all depend on you?”

“The invention of the system was my own spark of genius. But now that I have discovered the principles, anyone with an adequate intellect can replicate my results. I claim full scientific credit, but even my disappointing assistants could continue in my absence,” Hyde said with a disdainful glance towards his helper at the back of the room.

Doctor Atmosphere said hopefully, “When you report to Princess Celestia, I would like you to request that a historical record be made. I know that information is under tight control right now, but one day perhaps the world will be ready to openly accept our service, and I’d like them to remember my name. I don’t think that’s too much compensation.”

Yeshua said solemnly, “I’ll make sure you get the credit you deserve.”

Doctor Atmosphere smiled proudly, but Dash thought he should be more careful what he wished for.

“How did you ever turn this complex magic into something that can be done automatically? Harmony magic can’t be accessed by any heartless machinery,” the disguised inspector pointed out. “So what kind of magic are you automating, exactly?”

“Ah, finally!” The scientist’s eyes lit up. “It’s so good to have visitors who ask such intelligent questions. It’s true that some kinds of magic are difficult without an equine touch, a force of will even.” His voice became wistful, and he swept his hoof in a fanciful flourish through the air, like a stage actor. “Harmony magic is what the Machine must harness, the magic of friendship and love, of cutie mark talents and destinies. The stuff that makes us who we are. No steam pump or electric current can capture it. It’s too special, too powerful, too precious.”

He lowered his tone and continued cleverly, “That’s all very romantic, but there are other kinds of magic which are more malleable. There is liquefied input and liquid output, so in a sense the Machine is brewing a large potion, which is something that machinery can handle. For the really interesting part, amulets get the magical processes started.”

He stepped closer and started to motion with his hooves, excited to share his solution. “Some magic can be summoned in rituals. Though ponies are required to perform them, rituals are just a set of actions that can be repeated to produce the same result. When the operators pull the levers, push the buttons, and do as they’re trained, they set into motion rituals that are completed within the Machine. Even though they’re not fully aware of what is happening, their consent and their intent is enough to trigger the magic. And Harmony magic can be acted on by other magic.”

“So what magic does it trigger?” Yeshua asked once more.

Hyde’s gaze wandered as he searched for a diplomatic way to put it. “Certain criminal elements have used artifacts or other magic to steal or alter cutie marks. But it can be put to more productive use. Extracting Harmony magic from the processed bodies can be done in much the same way.”

“So you do know that you’re using dark magic,” Yeshua pointed out as a red flag.

Doctor Hyde rolled his eyes. “Don’t be alarmed. That’s just an ignorant name for any magic that provides an opposing force for Harmony. It’s a perfectly natural aspect of our world. There is no evil witch in the basement. Since it’s all contained in the Machine, it’s perfectly safe.”

He quickly moved back to the positives, like a good salesman. “Some of the byproducts of the Machine fetch a lot of bits from discerning magicians and medical buyers. Mothers, of course, pay for the service of removing the neophytes, and towns will give anything to have one of our rainbows nearby. This is a business, after all. Not only does the machine pay for itself, we create an impressive profit.” Having built it up, now he reached the point of his pitch. “So it would only be sensible to expand my laboratory, even from a financial perspective. I trust you’ll recommend a larger budget, and maybe some better staff to assist me.”

Rainbow Dash was mortified. She quickly deflected, “Yeah, sure, but remember it’s not about the money, it’s about saving the world.”

“About that,” Yeshua said. “I know the problem is getting worse. Show me the numbers.”

For once, Hyde was silent. He nodded somberly.

“Gladly.” He opened a filing cabinet and pulled out a thick binder. “I’ve had all the measurements meticulously recorded, daily, for several years.”

As he offered it to the inspector, it glowed, and hovered in front of the unicorn. It opened, and Yeshua scanned the page. “Very detailed.”

Bright yellow lines appeared in the air, forming the outline of a chart, with numbers along both sides. The pages of the binder began to turn rapidly, and the numbers were shining on every page that passed. Points of light appeared almost rhythmically, rising and falling along the length of the graph in a symphony of data.

“Have you considered working here?” the scientist said, his eyes alight with pleasure.

A line traced along the points. There were sharp peaks and valleys, but from left to right the trend was ever downward. “This is the ambient Harmony magic across Equestria.”

“The problem began before I was keeping records,” the methodical researcher commented, “but since then you can see how it has been draining away faster and faster.”

The inspector—for a moment Dash doubted her wild ideas about him being something else. For all his weirdness, he really seemed to be inspecting everything, and latching on to any paperwork in sight. He asked, “Do you also have a copy of the factory’s operation reports?”

“Of course.” Hyde collected a stack of papers, emptying the contents of multiple yearly folders.

The papers leapt into the air of their own accord, passing in front of the magician one by one and collecting back into a stack that hovered obediently beside the binder.

“These are the exact times when spectra was deployed as rainbows,” said the chart-maker.

Blue marks appeared along the bottom of the chart, that seemed to match the rhythm of the yellow peaks.

Ah, perfect. The data tells the truth. You can see our work restoring the world time after time, like a heartbeat. Notice, as we increase production, the peaks are higher. The more sacrifices are made, the more magic we are able to restore. It’s slowing down the decline, but we haven’t been able stop it yet.”

“When the artificial rainbows touch down, the reserve of Harmony magic does go back up. But let’s look closer.” At the visitor’s wish, the expansive holograph zoomed in from years to a couple months. “I’m adding in the times the machine was in operation—the time when the fillies were killed.”

“Why?” Doctor Atmosphere objected. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

Deep red marks scarred the air, one before each stroke of blue. Each condemning mark coincided with a steep plunge in the world’s magic. “Every violent act damages the harmony of this world, most of all the murder of the innocent. Since the intent to kill is almost as important as the act, you can assume most of the damage in the 24 hours before is also the result of what happens here. Look, you lose more than you gain, every time. The more fillies die here, the worse it gets.”

The admiration on the scientist’s face twisted into a look of contempt. “What? That is the flimsiest correlation I have ever heard! You have causation backwards. The size of the sacrifices don’t cause the decrease, we sacrifice more because of the decrease. When it gets worse we have to make more spectra to compensate. Of course it lines up. Besides, that’s clearly not the cause of the problem, because the world was already losing magic before the Rainbow Factory began operating.”

Hyde snatched files out of the air with irritation. “That’s an impressive visual display, unfortunately your deduction leaves something to be desired. Clearly you don’t know the first thing about reading and interpreting scientific data.”

Hyde hastily stashed the papers back into the folder. His frustration showed as he shoved the sloppy stack down out of sight with no regard to snagged corners, crumpling pages in the process.

Yeshua gave no rebuttal, but gave Dash a look. She made eye contact and received the message, and looked down. She was really uncomfortable that this was even up for debate, and especially that Dr. Atmosphere had been put on the defensive. She was a little reassured that his answers sounded reasonable, sounded correct. In fact, both of them sounded right when they were talking. Come on Hyde, say something smart.

“All you’ve proven is that we need MORE sacrifices!” the mastermind insisted, raising his voice. “In fact, that will be crucial to solving the real underlying problem. As much as Harmony magic is innate to all ponies, it is also true that all ponies have a tendency to drift out of Harmony.”

“Look here, let me show you the problem, in its smallest increment.” He stepped away to retrieve something from a metal supply cabinet. Glassware clinked as he pulled out a particular jar. He brought it back to them, holding it close to his chest on the way. “Here is the problem,” he announced, and held the jar out where they could clearly see… A tiny, shriveled form floating in formaldehyde. Though it was only a few inches long there was no mistaking it for anything but what it was—a pickled pony fetus.

Dash was unaffected. She had seen this all before. But she could tell Yeshua was rankled by the sight of it, more so than by any discussion or disagreement.

Doctor Atmosphere studied his macabre object lesson and began to teach. “As they say, ‘It all starts with a mother’s love.’ Well, maybe a little bit of a father’s love too. Or maybe another mother’s love, we’re progressive now,” he shrugged. “But they also absorb Harmony magic from the world around them. In a poetic sense, it’s as if mother earth loves ponies, like the universe lovingly gives each one its own magic, starting the moment they are conceived.”

“They take in Harmony magic during their early development, up until birth, and release it during their lifetime, which should create a perfectly balanced cycle.” He lowered his voice as if about to say something scandalous. “But NO. They don’t ever actually release as much as they took out, they don’t actually pay back their debt. Some come closer than others, but the deficit is inevitable. Some phenomena like naturally occurring rainbows actually release Harmony magic back into the world as well, and for a long time that was enough.”

He set the jar on the desk. “He may be a greedy little parasite, but he’s manageable. But here’s the real problem…” His statement of contempt hung in the air a moment as he walked back to the specimen cabinet.

He gave them a sideways look, trying to contain a mischievous smile. He threw open the doors all at once, rattling row upon row of glass containers. Each held another shriveled baby pony. “Too many problems!” he proclaimed loudly. He watched their reaction, reveling in the shock, wondering if they could understand his forbidden wisdom.

Yeshua’s eyes flashed with anger through his calm demeanor, but only Dash saw it. A chill went down her spine. Everything seemed heavier.

“Simply put, there are too many ponies,” the scientist said callously. “The deficit grows as the population increases. The Rainbow Factory allows us to pay back that debt. It atones for the excesses of our society, if you will. In time, everyone will understand that we should not value the quantity of ponies, but rather the quality. If we scale up the Factory’s operations, we can end overpopulation, and select for the best and brightest offspring.”

Yeshua seemed, well, not confused, but mystified that anyone would think that way. “Aren’t you overlooking the basic way that Harmony magic works? Every friendship and every kind deed strengthen the magic of Equestria.”

“Yes, well, you’d think that galloping around hugging ponies would sort it out, wouldn’t you,” Hyde said with a note of sarcasm. “But just as it’s in their nature to be loving, being suspicious, fearful and jealous is just as intrinsic. Trying to teach ponies to be better usually only gives a small, temporary boost, not enough to counteract the loss. You can’t change equine nature.”

“This IS the simpler solution,” he insisted. “We are using all their love and laughter, we’re just helping them let it all out at once.”

“Since it’s about love and laughter, why do you think it can be solved in such an unloving way?” Yeshua asked rhetorically.

“Unloving? UNLOVING?! This is my labor of love!” He held his arms wide, as if he wanted to embrace the entire science lab. “Every pony is here to work together, for the love of the motherland.”

Yeshua was beyond unimpressed, and continued to appeal to a nobler instinct. “If you’re doing it for love, why don’t you sacrifice yourselves, instead of the weak and vulnerable?”

Hyde looked hurt. “Ah, but we are sacrificing ourselves, aren’t we Dash?”

“Yeah, seriously,” she nodded, with a hint of emotional exhaustion. “I feel like I’m giving everything I have here.”

“You see?” the devoted researcher said in a soft, if pedantic tone. “No pony is happy about the violence. This is the only way.”

A sly smile crept across Hyde’s face as he had an idea. “Ah, this should clear things up. You probably believe that Rainbow Dash can solve this problem all by herself. Come on, who wouldn’t think so?”

“Yes she can, in ten seconds flat,” Yeshua boasted on Dash’s behalf, turning to her. “Why don’t you make a Sonic Rainboom?”

Dash cringed. “Geez, don’t you ever watch the news? Do I really have to talk about this again?” She looked at them both a moment, checking if they really expected her to say more. She huffed. “The last time I did was a disaster. It came out gray, scared everybody. I’ve been hiding here ever since.” She hated to think about it—the most humiliating day in her life. It’s like I just suddenly found out I’m not myself anymore, and I had to find out in front of the whole world. She looked down, avoiding eye contact and nearly holding her breath till the conversation moved on.

Dr. Atmosphere noted ruefully, “The magic index actually dropped that day.” Just then noticing how dejected Dash was to talk about it, he tried to soften the blow. “Now that’s nothing particular about Dash here. You see, everyone has been affected by the magic crisis, and adults are exposed to more of its effects. Why, if you were to make a rainbow of spectra from adults, it would probably come out shades of brown, and hardly worth the trouble. When we have to retire one of the inbred failures who—“ He halted at the sight of Dash forcefully making a kill motion across her throat and glaring at him.

He resumed more tactfully, “What I mean to say is, when our workers are no longer able to serve, they—nobly give themselves—yes, to the cause to ensure the secrecy of our endeavor. But they yield not a tenth of the product of one of our little ones.”

“Do I still see a little trace of doubt on your face?” Hyde rhetorically observed. “After all, the factory doesn’t keep the best stock of workers, many are even criminals. Perhaps you think that if there was someone good enough, someone strong and noble and virtuous, they could sacrifice themselves and save us all with the power of goodness and friendship.” He hugged his chest in a caricature of some pure and loving fairytale person.

“This little instrument here can tell the magic potential of a pony,” he said, holding up something like a Geiger counter, with a probe coming out the top and an analog gauge on the face of it. “In other words, how good a rainbow you would make. Ponies of particular virtue do indeed have a higher potential, and just our luck, we have a couple of them right here.”

“I am a pillar of society, intellectual, visionary, and absolutely committed to saving the world at any cost,” Doctor Atmosphere humbly self-identified. “But if I had to boil that down to a number, it would be….” He held the detector to his chest and pressed a button. It gave a beep, and he held it up for them to see the gauge. “2.1.”

He turned to his manager as if she had just walked onto the stage. “But here we have the one and only Rainbow Dash, hero of Equestria, wielder of the Element of Loyalty, a true patriot and friend! May I?”

“Sure,” she sighed. She didn’t feel like the person he was describing anymore, but she wanted to see where he was going.

He unceremoniously prodded her and tapped thebutton. “See, 3.9. She really is good. But even though they’re rejects, most of the foals have a purity over 5.5, so you see, even the best adults aren’t good enough to replace them. Never have been, never will be. Not even Princess Celestia in all her radiance. That’s just the way it is.”

Now that Hyde was pleased that all the points of his argument were lined up, it was time to finish it. “Now, you come up here with all your virtuous talk, understanding nothing. As if you would teach ME about ethics, and science of all things! If you really think you’re any better, why don’t we find out right now? Go on, measure yourself!” He held out the detector as a challenge.

The plain-looking unicorn picked it up with magic and laid it back down on the table, as if unwilling to touch it. “I’ll pass for now.”

“Hmph. Just as I thought.” Hyde didn’t smile, but somehow he exuded smugness anyway. “Best decision you’ve made today.”

“It wouldn’t help,” Yeshua said, unbothered. “You don’t need numbers to tell right from wrong.”

“Numbers do tell me correct from incorrect, which is the same thing as right and wrong,” the scientist shot back. “Clearly you’re only interested to discuss the way you wish things were, and not reality. As a matter of fact, who are you to debate me on this? What are your certifications? Where are you published?”

Yeshua simply stated, “I am who I am.”

To Hyde, it must have sounded like a weak deflection. To Dash, it was frustratingly mysterious, almost ominous. Yeah, but who the heck are you?

The “inspector” switched from a confrontational tone to a more inquisitive demeanor. “What about you? Is this the reality you want, or do you wish things were different?”

Doctor Atmosphere paused, not to choose his answer, but to put it to words. “Even if the magic crisis didn’t exist, I would believe in what we’re doing here,” he declared with certainty.

Dash raised her eyebrows before noticing she was the only one surprised by his response. That’s the whole reason anybody does any of this, right? Doesn’t EVERYBODY wish things were different?

“You see,” Hyde elaborated, “Cloudsdale has always had strenuous rites of passage, without which a young pegasus cannot become a full member of society. Why should we waste our time, our teachers, our precious resources raising the weak and inferior? Such folly would only hold us back. And I won’t even enumerate the massive waste and social disruption the neophytes would cause. They’re parasites on society.”

“It’s only progress,” he explained. “By overcoming adversity, an individual grows stronger. In much the same way, this cleansing purifies and strengthens our society and our bloodline. This is how the pegasi have evolved to be the strongest, most independent race of ponies.” He paused, briefly, waiting for the inspector to contest the assertion with some worn-out rhetoric about unicorn superiority.

He took the silence as a surrender to his reasoning, and continued with a flourish. “This facility is simply the extension, the full bloom of this hallowed custom. Now, within the secrecy of these walls, we are free from foreign, superstitious moralities. Here, we can not only ostracize the useless and the pathetic, but we can eliminate them completely. Now we control what we take out of our gene pool and what we put into it. Now we control our own evolution directly. This is the greatest advancement of civilization in a millennium! We are creating the perfect society. We can’t teach ponies to be better, but we can breed them better. Perhaps one day, we shall even become so strong, that we do not need this place.”

“Very well. You know what you’re doing,” Yeshua said with finality, as if reaching some sort of verdict. “I’m done here.” Just like that, he turned and walked toward the exit.

Irritated that anyone would turn away from his “beautiful” speech, the scientist called after him, “Well, don’t run off and forget this lesson! If I were you, I’d be taking notes.”

Dash followed in a low hover, trying to burn off nervous energy. She was frustrated at him for turning this into another argument. Why couldn’t he just see the light? But no, he had to put more doubts in my head.

On his way out, this fake inspector was walking past the table where he had set the personal magic detector. Dash glanced at it. The thought raced across her mind like lightning. Why didn’t he want to be measured? If his number was lower than theirs, he couldn’t keep acting like he was better than them. He was looking away from her and Dr. Atmosphere was grumpily headed to restore order to the wad of records that he had stuffed into the drawer earlier.

Within a second, Dash carried out her impulse. She subtly steered her flight to the stranger, grabbed the little device off the table, and sneakily pointed it at him. She was careful not to touch him or make any jerky movement that would draw his eye. She pretended she was doing nothing, and pressed the button.

If the reading was low enough, she would say it loud enough for the scientist to hear, just so everyone would know he won the argument. Come on, 3 or under. Even if it was a few bars higher than her score, putting a number on it would still take him down to earth.

Instead of a soft beep, it let out a continuous shrill alarm. Yeshua stopped in his tracks and looked her in the eye as she held it to the side of his chest. His gaze was intense but more disappointed than angry.

“Don’t give me that look, I was just curious,” she said. She checked the gauge. The needle jumped off the end of the scale and its circuits screamed in confusion. Dammit. Whatever he was, he was simply not equine. That didn’t help her at all, and she quickly put the detector back on the lab table, hoping to drop the subject.

Doctor Hyde stormed across the room and snatched it up. For a brief moment, he stared at it with wide-eyed amazement. He quickly replaced his shock with a deep scowl, aimed sharply at Ironshoe. “What did you do? Look, now it’s on the fritz.” He turned a knob to silence the offending sound. “Inspector, when you write that report of yours, be sure to tell Celestia I need the money for more reliable equipment. And don’t even think that reporting this childish argument will help you. I’m far more important than you.”

They left the lab without answer, and Dash stared at the floor as she went.

A Heartless Nursery

Dash’s head was spinning as they left the lab. Could there really be another way to save the world? Could it be true that the Machine, that all of this, was a waste? Impossible. Can’t be. I’ve given everything for this. She didn’t know what to believe, but it was clear that this being, this thing was angered by the Factory’s operation, and even its existence. She thought about the reading on the detector. The reason it malfunctioned was that it couldn’t process the truth, she understood that too well. She somehow felt disloyal to test him like that, as if she betrayed him. That’s crap, my duty is to protect this Factory… no, to save the world, and our way of life… from him. And she was running out of options to convince him

Yeshua asked, “Where are the fillies?” The tone of his voice was normal, just as it had been before. It seemed he was letting Dash’s behavior slide.

That was a small relief, but their destination was a bigger concern. Nevertheless, Dash gestured ahead, and led the way past the mouth of the device and down an adjoining corridor. She wanted to take advantage of this short moment when they were moving from place to place. Unless he wanted to go looking at bunks and pipes, the tour was almost over. Time was almost up. And she had wasted it, finding other ponies to talk to him and make her case for her. They only ended up arguing, and his mood must be worse now than at the start. And then she had to go and pull that stunt with the detector. She wanted to kick herself. Thank the Princess that she hadn’t gotten the psychologist involved.

Dammit, I’m so stupid. He TOLD me what he wanted, he said he wanted to talk to me, not get into a fight with every big talker in the place. His only positive interactions were with her and that random guy losing his mind in the chapel. Apparently he liked pitiful creatures more than big egos.

“Hey, you know, when I said I’m doing okay, I meant that I can deal with it,” she said in friendly tone. She slowed down to drag out the moment.

He turned his face to her, showing more interest than before.

“It’s really hard, of course it’s hard. This is not a job, that, like, anybody wants. I don’t like doing it, I don’t like seeing it, I don’t like talking about it. I was really losing it for a while there. It’s really tough, but I guess I got tougher. Now I’m taking some pills and controlling my breathing. Exercise and diet help. I mean, I’m still having trouble sleeping, but now I can focus again.”

To her surprise, he just listened to her. When she trailed off, he didn’t have some kind of witty comment or objection to anything. Maybe she was getting somewhere now.

She took a deep breath and continued, “I feel really bad sometimes, and I miss my friends. I can’t really talk to them about this. I mean, they’re happier if they don’t know.” It wasn’t easy being vulnerable, but she see in his eyes that he was really empathizing with her. “I can’t really go back to my old life. I said I’m okay because I can deal with it, and I’d rather not pass this off to someone else.”

Now she had to turn all of this into a positive. “I was asked to be a part of this, to run this place. I go through all that, and I stick with it because we need this. This is what I’m supposed to do, it’s my duty. And if you look past how ugly it is, it’s a good thing for everyone. It’s not for us in the factory, it’s so everyone else can live a normal, happy life.”

“I mean, even for the fillies, it’s like we’re doing them a favor,” she rationalized. “They’re the ones that everybody picks on, they’re poor, some of them have disabilities. Nobody wants them. I mean, they just won’t be able to live up to anyone’s expectations in life, and I think they’d be pretty miserable growing up like that in the city.”

Yeshua pointed out, “Fluttershy got picked on a lot growing up, and she really struggled in flight school. If the Factory were operating back then, she might not still be here.”

“But-” she objected. She thought that was really unfair to say, but she couldn’t explain how that was different. “Things were different then. And Fluttershy…” how could she even describe, Fluttershy didn’t belong in the same world as this place. “She’s a special case.”

He replied as only someone who knows her could, “Yes, she really is.”

“But you know, I’m protecting her.” That felt true, really true. I’m even protecting her from myself. “She needs this like everyone else, but she’s so gentle and it would really hurt her to know what goes on, even if it’s for her own good.”

“I’m working really hard to make this place better. It’s hard on all of us, not just me. That’s why I got more medical support, and mental health stuff. And not just the workers. After the little riot we had—I’m assuming you know about that…” She winced as she said it. There was just no nice way to put it.

She tried anyway. “After that I had second thoughts about the way we take care of the fillies while they’re waiting. Well, I mean, we didn’t really take care of them at all, they were just out in the open and saw everything. It really scared them and made them…” Truth is it made them panic and try to escape, and one of them almost did escape. She really was speaking from the heart, but it felt like she was making excuses. “It made them do things that could get them hurt. It didn’t feel right. So I built them a safe waiting area, like a nursery. Little groups of them wait in their own cute little rooms, and everyone’s nice to them until their time comes up. I’m not doing any of this out of malice, okay? I mean, everyone deserves a last meal, right, and I just wanted their time here to not be so bad.” As she finished, they arrived at the door to the holding area.

“So you made them a nice little jail,” he summarized flatly.

“Well yeah, what was I supposed to do.” She swiped her access on the lock and swung the door open but stood still. “There, you can see it. But we don’t need to go in.”

“What, and miss the good part?” he asked, as if he had been looking forward to coming here.

Dash didn’t like that. “I mean, I usually stay out. Watching them, seeing their faces, just makes what we have to do so much harder.”

“Not really,” he said. “Getting to know them makes it easier to do the right thing.”

As he stepped toward the doorway, she reflexively blurted, “Wait!” She had a hunch, an almost overwhelming certainty that it would be impossible to stop the flow of events once he entered. She sensed that, whatever he had in mind, he would be compelled to carry out if he was around the little inmates for anything more than the briefest moment. “Please, I mean, you might disturb them.”

“You think that my plans will change if I spend time with them and get attached to them. That was my plan all along. That’s why I came to spend time with you as well, before I do what must be done.”

She fell stone silent as he walked past her into the heartless, sterile nursery. He had guessed her thoughts, exactly, again. He knew her. For so long, she had struggled along, but pushed forward, only to do what she had to do. What must be done. That’s what she always told herself before erasing small helpless beings from existence. Was that it, then? Was he going to get rid of her? Was she just helpless, just an object of wrath to be pitied, walking ignorantly to her inevitable demise?

She followed after him, watching him. It really was built like a jail. Locked doors and windows of one way glass lined the wall, to observe and access the inmates. The open part was built like a hospital or school, but each cell was brightly decorated with cutesy themes. Inside, the colorful young ones sat on the floor, paced about, and whispered to each other. There were no more than five kids in each room, and due to the walls and special windows they couldn’t see or hear what happened to the other groups. Even if one batch got out, they would be outnumbered and contained within the holding area.

One of the staff shut the entrance to the factory floor behind them and ensured that it locked. Several guards milled about the holding area. Ostensibly they were supposed to keep watch on the inmates, but their eyes were dulled with boredom. They all straightened up and pretended to be alert as soon as Dash walked in.

Their presence should have made her feel more secure, but she only felt more tense. It didn’t quite make sense. If that’s what he meant, why did he want to see them, and see her? It’s as if he was asking her to change his mind. So was she supposed to play cute and try to be lovable, like a dog at a pound? Did he want her to grovel for her life? The very thought made her mad. But I didn’t do anything wrong. I do what they tell me to do. I do what I’m supposed to even when it’s hard. That’s what loyalty means, right?

Maybe she was supposed to beg for her life, but that never worked for these kids, so why would it work for her? Maybe that was the point. And yet as cold as that would be, his face was telling a different story. As he gazed into those windows, the sharpness and intensity had turned to mush, to kindness and maybe deep sadness. “Where do they come from?” he asked.

“At first we were taking outcasts, abandoned, a lot of flight test failures. But then—demand kept going up. It wasn’t enough. What can I say, pegasi are born to fly. Orphanages. Celestia expanded the orphanages in Cloudsdale, and made it easier for anyone to leave their kid anonymously. It’s kinda… takes a lot of pressure off unprepared single mothers. Frees ‘em up to pursue their careers and stuff… we’ve gotten a lot more productive. Instead of throwing society off balance, these foals end up restoring the harmony of it all. That’s what they say.”

They came to the batch which was first up for processing. They had just been gagged and hog tied. Some were struggling, others were crying.

He stopped, and motioned to one of them. The boy pegasus was light tangerine with a brighter orange mane, but a red-purple tone showed on the side of his face, where he had obviously been struck. “Why is that one bruised?” Yeshua asked, offended.

The colt did indeed appear to have been handled far more roughly than necessary. Dash lied, “I don’t know.” Lobo, you idiot. “That’s not how we normally do things.” She knew it was him, even though she’d told him to stop, and ordered the other guards to keep him in line. They were more confused than anything by her desire to protect the subjects, and a couple of them were his friends, or more accurately members of his gang.

Without looking away from the fillies, Yeshua said, “Have the guards wait outside. I don’t want any interruptions.”

“I’m… really not sure about that.” Dash tried to figure out if he would really try some sort of jailbreak, or if the guards could actually stop him.

“You can have them block all the exits if you want,” he offered. “Don’t worry, I won’t let any of the kids out of their rooms. They’ll be safer where they are, for now.”

She thought about it. This would make everyone suspicious that something was going on, but something WAS going on. After all, she could use an out, a backup plan. “Alright, fine. Just give me a moment.” He nodded, and seemed content to wait with the fillies. She spoke louder in her boss voice, “Everybody come with me, we are taking a break in the mess hall.” They were confused, but when she moved toward the back door they filed out behind her.

As soon as they were all out, she shut the door. She zipped over to the nearest worker and got in his face, speaking quietly but intensely. “Tell Lobo I might need his special assistance. And tell Doctor Atmosphere his detector works just fine. There is no Ironshoe. You got that?”

The worker went stiff, his eyes wide with confusion. “What?”

“You don’t have to get it, just tell them.” She paused until he nodded. “Tell them to be ready, but don’t do anything stupid until I say so. Go.” He stepped away slowly, rehearsing the message, then turned and galloped away.

She spoke up loudly again. “NO ONE opens the door to the nursery until I come out. Got it?” She waited until they acknowledged, then slipped back into the ward.

He was waiting patiently, not even looking her way, just staring at the glass like he was window shopping for puppies.

If he suspected anything, he didn’t show it. She took the moment of silence to review her options. She didn’t know for sure that he could be overpowered. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. When he revealed himself the first time, his aura was overwhelming. Maybe he wasn’t even here to do anything, but that seemed unlikely. Why come here of all places, just to talk?

But she did have one more opportunity to convince him, in the neophyte room. No victim, no crime. If he just gives us more time, we’ll fix all of this ourselves. That’s a good pitch, right? As long as no idiots barged in and interrupted them, that was still her best chance.

In fact, she wondered if she was his greatest weakness, since he seemed to take some sort of a weird liking to her. Guys are such creeps. She looked back to him, as he gazed at the little ones with the face of an incurable softie. Okay, so maybe I’m thinking about Lobo. Ugh, I can’t believe they let him come in here and make me look bad.

“I’m going in with them,” Yeshua said to her. “Do you want to join me?”

She avoided his eyes and found herself speechless. Why would you even ask? She shook her head in frustration. “We can look just fine from here. All you’re gonna find in there is more heartache.”

He gave a breath that might have been a sigh, moved to the door, and pulled the latch.

As he stepped inside, Dash knew this was a very bad detour, one that could derail the whole thing. She stayed in the hall, waiting to lock the door behind him. She would have no part in this toxic encounter.

Dash’s guts began to twist in knots. She wondered if that was because of the tension, or because of her condition. It always triggered in this room. She hated coming here because certain memories were harder to suppress when she got close to the fillies. She reached for the extra chill pill she kept in her jacket pocket and swallowed it without water. She didn’t need feelings, she needed to be sharp.

From the Mouth of Babes

He folded his glasses and tucked them into his jacket pocket. The plain inspector vanished as he removed the jacket, revealing the great alicorn. The little nursery room seemed to catch on fire as he entered. Dash figured the little inmates must be terrified to see this hot, radiant being looming over them.

Yeshua stooped down to comfort the fillies. He loosened each knot with gently controlled magic, and unwrapped the bonds of each one with his hoof.

When he freed the pale blue filly’s legs, she immediately wrapped around his foreleg and clung tight for security. With the gag removed, the first word from Cloud Lily’s mouth was, “Daddy!” He brushed her wintry mane off of her face and looked into her tear-blurred eyes.

Dash raised her eyebrows in genuine surprise. They reacted as if they already knew him. Surely they’re not his kids. Of course they weren’t, each young pony was from a different family anyway.

Yeshua sat down next to her so that she could lean on his side while he unbound the bruised colt.

Shooting Star pleaded, “I’m really sorry! I’ll do better, I promise!”

Yeshua picked up the bright orange colt. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Shooting Star was still anxious. “Somebody told us it was okay, but then the angry guys came.” He looked down and to the side, hiding the swollen side of his face.

The great golden alicorn tenderly nuzzled him and kissed his bruised cheek. He lowered the little one back to the floor, to stand on his own four hooves. “There. How does it feel now?”

Shooting Star touched his face with a look of wonderment, and beamed, “All better! That works even better than mommy’s kiss the booboo. Are you the doctor?” The dark mark and the swelling was gone without a trace.

Another filly whined, “I want my mama. This place is scary!”

“You need to wait here just a bit longer. Nothing bad will happen now. You’ll get to see your mama in a little while,” he reassured.

It was obvious to Dash as she watched that his tenderness for them was genuine. Frankly it was amazing that these kids would trust anyone, after all they’d been through today. Even through the soundproof glass she could feel the warm, wholesome presence that radiated from him. She stepped back, as if she was afraid to fall under his spell.

Cloud Lily said, “I don’t wanna go to the doctor anymore. They said they would help us but now it’s all scary.”

Yeshua patted her head. “There is no doctor here. They were lying, and that was wrong.”

Shooting Star was disappointed. “But… I wanna get better at flying. They said, he said the doctor would make me better at flying around, and I wanna do tricks and be cool and make my mom proud, and, and fly better.”

“You don’t need a doctor for that, you just need more practice,” the big alicorn said in a fatherly tone. “You know what else? I’m already proud of you.”

“Buh buh but I’m not very good,” the little colt fretted.

“You are worth more than your wings. Even if you can’t fly right, I’m proud of you. If you can’t run right, I’m proud of you. If you get the sniffles and can’t smell right, I’m still going to be proud of you.” He lightly pressed the little one’s nose as if pushing a button. “Wouldn’t it be silly to be upset with someone because of their nose?”

Shooting Star stared crosseyed at his own snout, pondering the question.

“I’m proud of you right now,” Yeshua encouraged, “and your mom loves you too, just the way you are. She didn’t want to send you away, she was told she had to.”

“Do you think my dad will really love me no matter what?” Cloud Lily asked, saddened.

“Honey, your dad is kind of a jerk right now,” he said bluntly. “He loves you, but he’s being very selfish. He’ll only tell you that he loves you when you’re doing good in school and winning competitions. He thinks that if he rewards you when you mess up you won’t try to do better. His dad was very harsh with him, and that’s what he thinks love looks like.”

She looked down, dejected. “He sent me away… because I’m not good enough. Nobody wants me.”

“It’s not your fault,” he told her gently. “He doesn’t know how to help you, and is afraid of what people will say. He sent you away, but he didn’t mean for it to be like this. He was told you would go to a special school where they would help you, but that wasn’t true.” She hugged his leg tightly.

“It’s going to take your dad a long time to realize how much you mean to him. Until then,” he said, holding up her chin and looking her in the eyes. “I’ll be a father to you. I will always be watching over you, and I’ll always be proud of you.”

Cloud Lily nodded, a tear in her eye. He pulled her into a tight, comforting hug for a minute until she calmed down. And another while until she smiled, feeling loved.

Shooting Star was mesmerized by the dancing white flames that made up the mane of this mysterious, heavenly presence. He reached out to poke it carefully, but hesitated. “Can I touch it?”

“Go ahead, it won’t hurt you,” Yeshua invited.

The little one formed a mischievous smile. Instead of poking with his hoof, he sprang head first into the flickering warmth and vanished in the big pony’s mane.

The other fillies gave a little gasp as he disappeared. There was a moment of suspense.

Shooting Star’s face poked out from the gently rolling blaze. Triumphant, he announced, “I’m a FIRE!”

“Yes you are,” the alicorn said, mirroring the tiny pony’s grin.

“No way! Is it hot?” his friends asked in wonder. “Are you burnt up?”

There was a little magical “poof” sound. The happy foal hopped out, completely unaffected except for one important detail. “Lookit! Ohmigosh I got my cutie mark! That’s so cool!”

Rainbow Dash almost did a double-take when she saw a flame emblem on the hind quarters of the foal. Did he really just get his freaking cutie mark? More importantly… Did Yeshua just GIVE it to him?

“What does it mean? Do I have fire power now? Fwoosh!” he said, pointing his arms out and pretending to shoot fire out of his hooves.

“You’re so silly. It means that you’re brave and faithful. A lot of ponies trust you, and you inspire them. Ponies see you being brave and you make them brave too. See?”

The other fillies had already started playing in the magical fire. Shooting Star looked around at the others, and back to Yeshua. They shared a grin.

Dash tried to put the pieces together. Cutie marks have some sort of connection to Harmony, she knew that much. She remembered her five friends who had gotten their cutie marks all on the same day, before they had even met, as if they were meant to come together. And they were meant to come together to use the Elements of Harmony. The Elements even changed form to match the emblem of their bearers. So Harmony had something to do with destiny, even with existence, and being somehow out of harmony was the whole reason for the magic crisis. The Rainbow Factory was there to make up for its apparent absence.

Dash had felt so alive and special when she had been filled with the magic of the Elements. That experience was unforgettable. I’d give anything to feel that again. But now it had rejected her. She couldn’t use her own cutie mark, much less the Elements themselves.

“Don’t go,” Cloud Lily begged. “I’m scared. What if more angry guys come?”

“No more angry guys,” he promised. “I’ll put a magic seal on the door so no one can come in or out. As long as you can see it, nothing bad can happen. And when it goes away, that means the trouble is over and you can go back to your parents.”

“Thank you mister!” Shooting Star responded confidently. “I bet the bad guys will get in trouble now.”

“Don’t worry about them.” Yeshua motioned toward the other kids. “Just make sure to cheer up your friends while you’re waiting here.”

The little colt stood a little taller. “Yessir okay.”

“Before they get their cutie marks it’s easier to believe they don’t have destinies.” He glanced towards the little fire filly. Through the glass they saw Shooting Star give Cloud Lily the last cookie. She smiled sheepishly and took a bite.

Still in his true form, Yeshua pointed his horn at the door cast a spell. A seal appeared, like the one he had placed on the front gate. At the same moment, identical glowing marks appeared in front of every holding cell.

She knew in that moment that he would not let a single foal be harmed. This was a clear sign that they were under his protection. Why would he pledge to defend some random fillies he had never met until just now? He’s acting like they’re his own kids! Everything about his words and behavior told her that there would be no little ones going to the Machine today. And if not today, perhaps not ever. That must be why he had come—to stop the Rainbow Factory once and for all. She shuddered to think why he wanted the Machine activated at full power. He must be close to completing his plan.

Anger rose up inside Dash, blocking out the other emotions that tormented her. How could you take this away?

She had already tried being nice. This time she spoke up assertively, realizing she didn’t have anything to lose. “When you’re done playing grandpa, I’ve got something to show you.”

She swiveled and headed straight for another secured door on the other side of the room. This one had no windows or decorations or guards. She swiped her access card on the panel. “While you’re making me feel bad, look at all the good we do.”

She swung it open to reveal a room full of medical equipment. A low hum and an occasional beep signified that the system was functioning as usual. The gadgets, tubes, and monitors all centered around glass vats full of yellowish liquid, each no bigger than a fish bowl. A tiny equine figure floated in each one. They were fleshy and awkwardly proportioned. Plastic umbilical tubes pumped the fluids necessary to keep them alive, and each vat had a heat lamp that kept it warm. There were rows of them.

“This is the spectra of the future,” Dash explained. “Special magicians teleport fetuses out of the womb before they can be born. Once they’re collected they’re called neophytes. These new incubators can keep them fresh, so we can transport them here for the Machine. This way we will be able to make rainbows without any harm or suffering. This is what you call progress.”

He stared at the complex life support system and shook his head in disbelief. “Is this what you’ve done with all your knowledge of healing?” It obviously wasn’t there to save lives, but only to keep the meat fresh.

“What’s the matter?” she taunted. “Mares love it because they don’t have to actually give birth, but you wouldn’t understand that. Neophytes are hardly alive anyway! You want to be nice? This is compassion, the equine thing to do.”

She led the way into the room which was not only well lit but impeccably clean. “Obviously they aren’t as big, but they give more product per ounce, for egghead science reasons. At one point we’re going to switch over, but the magic deficit keeps growing, so until we can open more clinics, we do both.”

She squinted at the pudgy, half-formed bodies. “Look at these little blanks. Mares come to us and they’re gonna have to call off their life plans, all because they got stuck with these things.”

He did look, peering closely at the closest neophyte. His gaze softened again, surveying its little features and observing its chest rise and fall with the beat of its tiny heart.

She was irritated that he seemed to think they were cute. “Isn’t a mare’s destiny, her hopes and dreams, worth more than this little blob of flesh?” she derided. “And look how many ponies we help! They come to us, begging for us to make them not pregnant. One little teleportation, and poof! They’re free.”

“Free from motherhood?” he asked, without looking up.

“Yeah,” Dash insisted. “I don’t know if you noticed, but you made it a pretty bucking tough assignment.”

“Pretty tough to do alone, anyways,” he conceded, but added, “but it’s not like you to back down from a challenge.”

Dash scoffed, “A challenge, huh? You probably want to keep us locked up in our homes! Did you give me this cutie mark to do laundry and wash dishes? I don’t think so!”

He was so absorbed with the tiny ponies that he offered no retort.

She took the opportunity to hammer her point home. “Once we make the transition to neophytes as our only source for spectra, all of your touchy-feely arguments about feeling sorry for fillies will go away. I mean, they’re not even real ponies. It’s not a crime if there’s no victim. Do you want to force foals to grow up where nobody wants them? Now that’s wrong.”

He walked the rows slowly, appreciating each one as an individual, though Dash couldn’t tell them apart. Of all the things he had done, this made her the most nervous. She didn’t know what exactly she was afraid of, but just being there with him, knowing who he was…

To her surprise, he opened one of the incubators and lifted its little occupant out of the amniotic solution and held it in his hoof. He gingerly touched his other hoof on the neophyte’s chest. Its eyes didn’t open, but its legs moved ever so slightly in response. He gazed at it lovingly. “Oh, look at you. Everything you will be is already in there, right where I put it. You just haven’t had time to show it.”

He removed the intravenous tubes, disconnecting it from the machinery. Dash was caught off guard. Was he pulling the plug on it? He cupped the little fetus in his arms, drew a deep breath, and exhaled on it. Before her eyes, it grew slightly larger, and its skin became fuzzy with new fur. Its stumpy little mane and tail were bleached. He stroked once, and the hairs turned to a sandy cream color at his touch. He stroked again, adding blue to its mane and tail. Finally, he tenderly kissed its forehead, and its eyes opened. There it sat, a perfect little foal. He was a colt. “Who wouldn’t want you?”

The sight made Rainbow Dash cold and clammy, as if she had seen a ghost. She put a hoof to her stomach, sensing rising nausea. She was both ashamed and terrified. She tried to back away quietly. He was facing away from her at the moment, and a rising panic told her that she should be out of sight by the time he turned around. She cast another glance at the neophyte, but seeing the baby was almost excruciating. The foal gave a little cry, and that being comforted it.

Her bowels revolted.

She spun around and started to run but found herself staggering instead. She practically limped as she made her way around the corner into a maintenance hallway. She grasped onto a bio-waste bin, pushed the flap open with her snout and vomited inside. She heaved and spat out her breakfast. She panted and coughed as she tried to get rid of the last of it. She collapsed onto the floor before she was done, too devastated to care.

Begging for the Apocalypse

Firelight brightened the hallway and flickered off the walls. He was there. She felt a large hoof press softly on her back. Her hyperventilation redoubled, but only for a moment, as she found his touch more calming than she expected. Her breathing slowed. The pain eased. Her head cleared, but for the moment she focused her thoughts on laying still and moving her lungs.

After regaining her strength for a minute, she crawled out from under his hoof and sat up against the wall a few feet away. He offered her a sanitary cloth from the lab, and she wiped her mouth.

She stared blankly ahead, and there was hushed silence.

He relented of his piercing gaze and stared into space with her.

She whimpered and clutched her belly. She felt so empty, remembering the life she once held. “My baby…why…”

“I…” Dash took a deep breath. She was finally ready to spill. “I got knocked up with some dumb guy. I didn’t mean to, it just happened. I didn’t want my friends to find out. I mean, then I couldn’t go on adventures with them anymore, and I couldn’t join the Wonderbolts… so I had them take my baby. They took her here and threw her away like trash.”

“It was so easy. Poof, just like that. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t hurt at all.” But it hurts now. Why do I feel so bad? It was just a little lump in my belly, and then…” she choked up. “Nothing.”

The little neophyte—no, the foal—cried, anxious at being left alone. It was a haunting sound to her suppressed mothering instincts. Yeshua got up and calmed the little one. He wrapped the tiny colt in a cloth, and placed him on a warm spot between two incubators that were still active. He also gave the foal a sip from a spare canister of nutrient formula.

Dash’s regret only worsened as she sat alone. She glanced through the doorway of the lab, where she could at least partly see the great being caring for the neglected little pony. Why was I afraid of doing what he’s doing? I should have been afraid of ending up like this.

When he returned to her side, she was relieved to be in the warmth of his presence again. Even though she couldn’t bring herself to look up at him, it was as if she had missed him.

After a while, he said softly, “I know you miss Scootaloo.”

Tears finally welled up in Dash’s eyes. She choked on a cough. “You don’t understand.”

“I miss her too,” he added. For an instant she gaped at him, fearing it was some cruel trick, but he was so honest she knew it was true.

There was no more reason to hold back. “Damn it, why did she have to fail me? I just knew she could handle that stupid flight test, fuck, why did she have to do that? What was I supposed to do? I took her under my wing and gave her a chance, shit, why did she—“ Dash snorked back mucus, she was really crying now, “Why’d she have to make me love her?”

“Destiny, fuck. She never got her cutie mark. I never told her. It was so obvious, her name is Scootaloo! How could she not know? I never got to see the look on her face when she figured it out. Why’d she have to die before she got it?” Her eyes searched about the cramped hall in vain. “Why didn’t I tell her? Why would I do that to her?”

She looked down, defeated. “Why am I such a bad person? This whole place, everybody says it’s okay. It’s not okay. It’s horrible.”

“I know who you are.” She glanced at him briefly. “I remember where we met now.”

“Elements of Harmony…It felt… you’re amazing. I’ve wanted to feel that again ever since,” she confessed longingly. “Now I’m… I can’t believe they called me Loyalty. When I got my cutie mark, I guess that was you, too.”

He nodded.

“Are you the one who made all this?” she started to gesture to their surroundings, but was frustrated that all she had to point to was bleak and tragic. “Not the stupid factory.” She thought about the outside world, which seemed to exist in a separate universe. “The rest of it, everything.”

Yeshua answered, “I am.”

“You made this whole happy world, you put us here, and all we had to do was be generous and kind and stuff, and everything would have worked out,” she lamented, exasperated at herself and society. “You gave us so much, and what did we do with it? How did we get here?”

He could give a very long answer, but he summed it up simply. “You fell out of Harmony with me.”

“Out of harmony…” Dash shook her head. “We’re not even close. We thought THIS is what good is. We can’t even recognize you anymore. Even your name sounds weird. Yeshua? Like, it’s not even a pony language.”

“It is from a pony language, actually, but a very old one,” he explained, “and it’s not that strange. Most ponies’ names are words that tell who they are or what they do. Yeshua means Savior. That is who I am, and what I am here to do.”

“Why?” Dash asked. That sounded so hopeful, but she had already given up. I don’t feel like there’s anything left of me to save. Oh right, I’m sure he’s not talking about me. “You said you miss Scootaloo. How did you know her? I mean, we’re so small, we’re nothing. We’re here and we’re gone, like neophytes. Why do you even care?”

“I am a father to the fatherless, the bridegroom of widows. The way you feel about your child, and Scootaloo, all the pain and the anger,” he said, with a choke in his voice. “Every foal and filly that comes into this place is like my own child. It’s just my nature.”

Dash finally worked up the courage to ask the obvious. “These kids here. You’re here to save them from us, aren’t you?”

He nodded solemnly once again.

She had known from the beginning that he must have the power to destroy them all, if he wished. It had been in the back of her mind since she saw him. Now she knew for a fact what she had feared. It was revenge, no, justice, that brought him here. But now she realized that it was out of love, and she couldn’t help but take his side.

“I know we’re not saving the world.” It stung to admit it, but it gave Dash so much clarity. “We’re the villains, aren’t we. I’ve seen some really bad villains, but none of them did anything like this. I’m not a villain, I’m a monster. Save the world from us.”

“I will,” he told her certainly.

“So what are you gonna do?” For once, she wasn’t afraid of what he would do. Maybe she was ready to just accept his decision. “Are you gonna turn everypony who works here into rainbows? Restore some kind of karma balance?”

The compassion somehow coexisted with the anger in his eyes. He shook his head. “That would make sense. But no.”

“What, is it because you’re all soft on me? You should do it,” she said, weary from the burdens she had been carrying for so long. “I don’t want to go on anymore.”

“I want you to,” he said.

“Please. This is hell, when I’m not here it’s the nightmares.” She just wanted everything to stop, but she didn’t know what death would be like. Surely it can’t be worse. “I guess I’m going to the bad place when I die, right?”

“That’s the way it usually works. The bad guys are punished and the good guys live happily ever after. But I don’t want to do that to you.”

She squinted through tears. Why wouldn’t he just finish her? It wasn’t fair. “Just zap me out of existence or something. I don’t care.”

“It’s not just them. You were also like a daughter to me.” There was a lot of care, and a lot of hurt in his voice. “Even if you aren’t loyal any more, even after all you’ve done, I still care about you.”

“Why? I got rid of my daughter. Maybe you should too.” If the roles were reversed, Dash couldn’t imagine letting someone like her off the hook. “Make it quick, or make it hurt, I don’t care. You can hug me and kiss me first if you have to but please kill me. This is all such a mistake. I’m a mistake.”

“You know,” Yeshua revealed, “your mom was in a tough time when she had you. She was afraid she made a mistake, and she almost got rid of you.”

“Really?” It was hard to picture, like it was an alien concept to her childhood memories. Her mom always seemed so kind and supportive. All things considered, her upbringing was pretty good, so she never pictured it being that big a deal. But she had always thought it was odd how close her birthday was to her parents’ anniversary.

She did the simple math. So… Mom was already pregnant at the wedding. They probably got married BECAUSE she was pregnant. She couldn’t remember her mom ever talking about the plans she had before, but she must have had them. And they were pretty poor in the early years. Dash would have felt very grateful, and found it all very heartwarming, if it hadn’t ended up in such a dark place. “She should have just gotten rid of me. Look what I am now.”

“When I made this world, I could feel all the pain and heartache it would have. I almost scrapped it and started over,” the great being related.

“Why on earth didn’t you?” she asked, confounded.

“The same reason your mother kept you,” he explained. “Because you’re worth it.”

“Really?” she said, wiping a tear. It felt really good to hear, but she was too confused to receive his acceptance. “How am I worth it? I don’t get it.”

“It’ll make sense one day, but it doesn’t have to make sense to you.” He simply said, “You’re worth it to me.”

She couldn’t argue with that, but she couldn’t see herself as part of a happy ending. But maybe, the last hope she had held onto, could be realized. Maybe she would live to see her real wish fulfilled. She spoke insistently, almost begging, “Please just get rid of all this. Please. I hate that machine. I hate it so much. You don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to blow it up. Promise me there won’t be anything left of this place.”

“It will be done,” he vowed. “But first there’s something I must do. Will you help me? I want you to be the manager, just a little bit longer.”

Plotting

They emerged from the holding pens onto the factory floor. The “inspector” had returned to normal. Though his face was disturbed, he was holding up better than Dash. She hung her head, and wiped her face with her hoof. She didn’t want to let the others see that she had been crying.

She shook her head. “Do you really need to?”

He lifted her chin with his hoof. “It will be alright. Just let this happen the way it is meant to happen. But please do the job for just a little longer, for me.”

He turned and stepped toward the door of the Harmony chapel. “Wait for me,” he said, and went in alone. He shut the door behind him.

She stood there feeling hollow. She had poured her heart out to him, and he actually accepted her. Now he was going to leave her alone again. Everything was raw now, everything she had become numb to was painfully fresh again. She couldn’t believe everything she had done, and the thought of doing it again, even one more time… she felt like this was the hardest thing he could ask of her.

“Dash,” the chief engineer informed, “Generators are running. We’ve got steam.”

“Is everything ready for...” she trailed off. “For a demonstration?”

He nodded, but gestured across the way. “Everything but that backup capacitor.”

Gauze Wrap flew in from the back of the area of the main power relays to report, “We just got it hooked up. Instruments?”

The chief looked down at the corresponding panel. When he toggled the switch, the tiny lightbulb next to it came on. “We’re green.”

“Hold at ready status,” Dash answered automatically.

“We’ll be ready when you are,” he replied.

She stood silently. She stared at the pipes and the rivets, trying to seize on tangible details instead of getting lost in her head. It wasn’t really working, her mind was racing, but it was going nowhere.

“Dash, there you are! I received your message.” It was Doctor Atmosphere, who had quietly slipped in from a side hall. “So this ‘inspector’ is no ordinary unicorn, is he?”

Dash looked down. If Hyde already knew, then there was no harm in telling him. “No, I don’t think he is.”

“At first I didn’t believe the measurement on my detector. But thanks to you, I went back and double-checked.” Hyde leaned in and whispered, “His cellular harmony is off the charts. His fundamental magic-his rainbow magic-is absolutely pure.”

“I thought that was impossible,” Dash responded, but without surprise.

“It isn’t possible, not for a pony. Even Celestia herself is nowhere near that.” Hyde spoke with a mixture of wonder and alarm. “Dash, he’s not here to check our papers. He’s here to punish us, isn’t he? My best guess is that he is angry with us for being impure, sinful. For hurting his precious little mongrels. He wants to destroy the factory, maybe even Equestria.”

“Yeah, he is pissed. He’s going to destroy the factory, I think. But, I don’t think he’s evil. Maybe we are.” Dash was hoping he would, and that this dark dungeon would crumble. She just needed this to end. But how could it happen, if he were to die here? So many had died here before, in secret, and nothing changed.

“We can’t be distracted by nonsense like good and evil right now,” Hyde quickly scolded. “We need to think about survival. Whether he intends it or not, stopping us now would doom the world. But there is a way something good can come from this. If he were to be put in the machine, the spectra produced would be immense, perhaps even unlimited, though I will admit the device may not be capable of processing that much. But even if we only manage to properly harvest a fraction, it will sustain Equestria for decades, centuries perhaps.”

“You said earlier if we could find someone completely pure to sacrifice, we wouldn’t have to use the machine ever again.” Her head was spinning. He had found the answer alright. All this time she had tried to save the world. The more she had tried, the less she had cared, slowly giving up on the idea that this would ever end.

“Well, that’s possible,” Hyde said dismissively. “But think of the services we provide, and not just the rainbows. In the long run we need it for the quality of our gene pool, but in the short term it allows us to give everyone a better life. You’re always reminding me of the mares held back by unwanted pregnancies, who wouldn’t be able to fulfill their dreams. Pegasus society needs this if Cloudsdale is to become truly great.”

Dash finally admitted to herself that she disliked him. “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you? You’d really keep doing this, just for your utopia?”

“Of course,” the red scientist affirmed. “If we save Equestria once and for all with this method, that won’t make the factory unnecessary, it will show us how much we truly need it. But that’s all a concern for later. If we don’t have a plan before he comes out of there, we may be the ones being sacrificed.”

“So you’re saying, all we need to do is bump him off, and we’re done here?” Lobo blurted out loudly. Dash hadn’t even noticed him approaching, but he was uncomfortably close.

“Hey, we’re having a private conversation here!” Dash objected.

Now everyone was looking at them. Before she could shut him up, Lobo announced, “Hey guys, all we have to do is beat up this one unicorn, throw him in the blender, and we can go home!”

Everyone snapped to attention. Whether they were criminals or conscripts, whether they were remorseful or not, this was a prison, and everyone wanted out. Dash knew right then that she had lost control of the situation.

“Yes, it is true,” Doctor Atmosphere addressed them. “This Ironshoe isn’t one of us. He’s not even a real inspector. But he would make an amazing amount of spectra.” He paused, glancing back at Dash before continuing, “So much that we might not be needed here anymore.”

She knew that he didn’t want to let any of them leave, that he didn’t want the factory to close. But he considered Ironshoe an enemy, and he knew what his audience wanted to hear.

Gauze Wrap shook his head. “I should have known he’s not the real inspector. He started saying twisted, vulgar things right in the holy chapel. He must be some kind of demon, or maybe a changeling. To think, he’s in there right now!” He marched to the door indignantly, and started to reach toward it, but hesitated. Instead he put his ear to the door. “Did anyone go in there with him? I think I hear more voices.”

Lobo pushed past his pious coworker impatiently and grabbed the door handle. “I’ll just take a peek.” He pulled it open just a crack and peered in cautiously.

The voice that had been muffled could now be clearly heard. Yeshua’s voice loudly lamented, “Please Father, is there any other way?! I can take the pain, but I can’t bear for us to be separated. But your will be done.”

Lobo carefully shut the door and turned to the group. “There’s nobody else. Who’s he talking to?”

“Who knows, probably more blasphemy,” Gauze Wrap dismissed with scorn.

Lobo growled, “He’s not double-checking our books, that’s for damn sure!”

One of the guards from the holding area—apparently one of Lobo’s lackeys—addressed him with concern. “Didn’t he seem protective around the fillies? When he saw the way you roughed ‘em up, he was pissed. Like maybe he knows them, they’re related or something, and now he’s here to kill us!”

“That can’t be. We only take losers, the ones no one cares about,” Lobo said, shaking his head.

“Be warned, his magic is extremely dangerous!” Doctor Atmosphere proclaimed, stoking their fears. “But his body is flesh and blood, so you should be able to incapacitate him.”

Lobo went to a supply bin, and came back brandishing a piece of replacement pipe. “Then I’m not gonna give him any time to react. You guys.” He gestured to the guards and some of the more aggressive workers, who were already gravitating toward him. “I’ll get the drop on him, and then you guys all rush in.” He grinned. “See Dash, I told you I could handle him if you needed me to.”

“Lobo, put it down. That won’t be necessary,” Dash said assertively, but now with everyone looking at her she explained with less confidence, “I think he’s going to do it willingly.”

The thug cocked his head, barely registering. “Huh? That’s nuts.”

“It’s the only honorable thing to do, if he has that much magic in him.” Gauze Wrap stated with conviction. “He owes it to us.”

“I’m not gonna risk getting killed by his magic,” Lobo said, as if to end the discussion. “If we stop to have a conversation, he’ll probably just teleport away anyway. If he has a death wish, fine, he just won’t fight back.”

“I agree, we can’t take any chances with the future of Equestria!” Hyde chimed in.

“HEY! I’M the boss, and we’re gonna do it my way!” Dash insisted in the voice she used to bark orders.

“Oh, yes ma’am,” he mocked. “You’re the boss for how much longer? This could be our last day! I’m not gonna let anyone get in the way of that, and I think these fine gentlemen here agree.”

Dash was furious. He had been putting together his own gang this whole time, trying to get to the top of the hierarchy. This wasn’t his first prison after all. She wanted to give him a flying kick. But then she thought of Yeshua’s words. He had told her to let things happen, not to start a fight with her whole crew.

Lobo took her silence as an invitation to push further. “Besides, you were making friends with him earlier, I saw it. Do you have some sort of crush on him? How do we know you’re on our side?” They all looked at her suspiciously.

“I don’t—he’s not my friend,” she blurted defensively. The words were bitter in her mouth. “Fine, do it your way. But when we’re working the machine, we do it like professionals. That means you’re gonna take orders from me, so you don’t screw it up.”

“You’ve got a deal. Yes sir,” he said, but this time he was serious instead of sarcastic. Dead serious.

Passion

Yeshua stepped through the doorway. Dash started to yell a warning, but was already a second too late.

Lobo swooped down from the ceiling, swinging the pipe as hard as he could down onto the back of his head. It connected with a sickening whack. Yeshua staggered, and his glasses fell off onto the floor. Lobo had expected to topple him with the one blow, but he stood up straight, and Lobo was suddenly confronted with his intense and unfiltered gaze.

The grey Pegasus backed up. “Shit! Somebody help me, he’s gonna—“ He cringed, as if he expected to be vaporized.

Yeshua looked at Dash, and then looked straight ahead, silent.

After a suspenseful pause, it was Dr. Atmosphere who spoke. “It is possible for a unicorn with a concussion to be unable to use their magic, sometimes for hours, or days.”

Lobo watched for a moment, then flashed a grin. “Ha! I got him. Look, he can’t use his magic.”

“Then let’s get him!” one of the guards yelled, and they all rushed forward. They knocked him down, surrounded him, and started kicking him. He didn’t resist.

“Kick him in the head again! Again! Don’t let him snap out of it!” One of them kicked him in the balls. Another two started stomping on him.

Dash flew directly over the scene and yelled, “Stop! Cut it out already! I SAID STOP!”

The mob stepped back and examined their work. He lay bruised and bloodied, but breathing. He groaned, but didn’t rise.

“Yes, quite,” Dr. Atmosphere said from the sidelines. “Let’s not waste any more of his blood, it’s too valuable.”

“It’s a good thing we stopped…” one of the guards said sarcastically. “Because this is a nice jacket! Gimme that.” He grabbed Yeshua’s jacket and started tugging it off of him.

Another pony said, “Hey, I had my hoof on it first.” And so they argued, “My idea, my jacket.”

“No, I think it will fit me better.”

“Fine, we’ll flip a coin.”

He seemed to grow as they pulled it off of him. They gasped and gawked as his wings were revealed. Nevertheless, the two ponies continued to claim the jacket for themselves.

“Whoa, look! We got ourselves a big one!”

“It’s a good thing we hit him when he was small.”

Gauze Wrap puzzled at him. “Alicorns are supposed to be royalty. How come I’ve never heard of your kingdom?” Getting no response, he announced, “Everyone hail the King of Nothing!”

Four of them held him down while the others tied his legs. Normally they would hog-tie a filly, but a larger body would fit better stretched out. They tied his back legs together out behind him, and bound his front hoofs tightly. Gauze Wrap also fastened a rope around his neck and lashed it to his front legs to prevent him from thrashing around. But he lay still.

Lobo yanked the rope tighter around his throat. He winced and coughed.

“Easy, easy!” Dash ordered, flying over the two of them. She pushed Lobo back when he was slow to respond.

“Come on, Lobo,” Gauze Wrap chided. “It helps if they’re alive when they go in.”

“The beast likes it fresh,” one of the engineers said as he tapped his wrench twice on the housing at the mouth of the machine. That was his signal that all was ready.

The enclosure of soundproof glass had already been unbolted and set aside as ordered. As they brought their oversized sacrifice to the platform, Dash realized that he wouldn’t have fit unless it was removed. They shifted their grip on his legs, and hoisted him up onto the conveyor belt. They positioned him the same way they carried him, facing away from the machine’s teeth.

“Turn him around,” Dash said. It was a hell of a thing to go into head first, but she figured it would shorten his suffering.

Lobo smiled and shrugged. “I don’t think so boss. This way he’ll be extra fresh.”

Dash hated that smile, but what he said kind of made sense. She looked into Yeshua’s eyes. He gave a slight nod. None of the others saw it. She nodded also.

Most of the ponies who had carried him left and returned to their stations.

There was a lump in Dash’s throat as she looked around and realized everything was ready. She took a deep breath. “Start it up.”

Switches were flipped, and with a deep thud, the pipes and pistons came to life. There was an angry whir as the rotating blades spun up to speed. They turned in such a way as to pull the victim further in, but they cut better than they pulled, so the conveyor belt helped them finish the job. A “pusher” usually stood behind and made sure all the gruesome fuel went in.

Gauze Wrap and Lobo both stood ready as pushers this time. Dash stepped onto the platform next to Gauze Wrap and tapped him out. “I’ll do it.”

“As you wish,” he said, standing aside. “But I’m right here if you need me.”

She stood right by Yeshua and put her hoof on his. “I’m here for you,” she whispered.

“I’m doing this for you,” he answered quietly. She knew now it was the love in his eyes that had bothered her. A tear came into hers.

Lobo brushed up beside her. “Are we having a moment here?”

“Ugh, step off,” said, pulling away from him. “You don’t understand.”

“Well I don’t like the way he’s looking at you,” Lobo prodded.

Yeshua’s eyes turned to him compassionately, much the same way he looked at Dash.

“Forget it, puppy dog eyes never work on me,” Lobo said, moving away to the lever that starts the conveyor belt. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

Dash paused reluctantly. Lobo repeated, “Should I do it?” and put his hoof on the handle.

“No,” she said softly, but it was lost in the rumbling echoes.

“You gotta give the order, boss,” he insisted. “Should I do it?”

“Yes,” she said, frustrated. He pulled the handle and rubbed his hooves together as if washing them. They lurched forward, and began inching slowly toward the gaping maw. She winced as they got closer and closer.

The iron teeth met his rear hooves with a crunch. Yeshua let out a cry. His legs jerked involuntarily as if to get away from the source of the pain, but the grinder had already grabbed hold and held them firm. His ankles disappeared. Blood began to splatter and they could hear bones crack. It continued to chew through his calves. He yelled out his agony. The machine yanked on the end of his tail, as if it would pull it out, but mostly cut it. Dash’s guts twisted as she watched. Why did it have to be so slow.

His nerves were briefly overloaded, and his yells turned into gasps. The respite was short lived. The pain and the blood redoubled as the teeth reached his flanks. As it dug into the full width of his body, it slowed further.

The huge pony cried out in pain as his spine began to shatter. The exhalation blew Dash’s mane and tail about as if she was flying against the wind. She had heard Luna’s royal voice, and more rarely, Celestia’s, but this was louder. The bellows and screams of agony drowned out the infernal noise of the machine and inflicted a throbbing sting on the ears of all present.

“I’m sorry!” Dash wailed, as the beast continued to slowly chew inch by inch.

He fought through the pain to say, “HELP ME!“ Dash wanted to, she desperately wanted to, but she didn’t know how. He gritted his teeth. “HELP ME IN!”

Dash gathered herself do to what needed to be done. She and Lobo grabbed around his chest and heaved, pushing him further in. The jaws of the machine surged again, as if unjammed. Dash dug her hooves in to the floor and pushed harder.

The red-purple spray began to speckle her face as the iron teeth drew nearer. He was halfway through. A moment more and it would dig into his rib cage. While there was still time, he drew air back into his lungs. He was very weak now, and it was all he could do not to yell it back out, and some escaped in a groan as he mustered the control to speak. His words came, this time in a low voice, that only Dash and Lobocould hear. “I forgive you. Both of you.”

Dash was amazed, and could say nothing in reply. Past the shock and fear on her face came a conflicted sadness. How could he say that?

“Don’t say that,” Lobo said in the same moment. “We’re bastards, you’re supposed to hate us.”

“Don’t be afraid—“ he was cut off by painful spasms, but again fought for words, “-to come home.”

“No way, I can’t.” Lobo stopped pushing and backed away. “I can’t! You don’t know.”

The machine stuttered for a moment as it crunched on his lower rib and spine simultaneously. Overwhelmed to the point of numbness, he gave a last weak breath. Dash read his lips as much as she heard the words, “It’s done.” The processing head finally compressed the bones together with a snap and began to consume his chest.

Dash and felt that she was now pushing truly dead weight. She sobbed and pressed against him harder. She knew that he wanted to give everything, but really she was clinging on to him for comfort.

The grinder finally pulled that stubborn wing in by the joint, resulting in an explosion of golden feathers. His shoulders threatened to again clog the machine, and Dash flung herself against his chest, almost hugging him. She squinted through the blood which dripped and splattered profusely onto her.

She barely registered as Lobo shouted, “Stop!” He hastily clubbed his hoof at her legs to knock them away from the stallion’s remains. She gave him an offended glance as she continued to strain against the load. Lobo grabbed her around the waist and dragged her backwards. He pinned her to the ground and yelled in her ringing ear, “Do you want to go in too?”

She was suddenly conscious of a roaring, malicious wall of knives scarcely a foot away. She had almost gone headlong into the Pegasus Device. As it finished the thickest area of bone, it sped up, and would have caught her hoof before she knew it. She was light as a filly next to the alicorn, and would have been sucked in effortlessly.

She gave Lobo an acknowledging nod and looked down. She couldn’t watch as that long, graceful neck disappeared, save for a pained glance. Those eyes. The light had left them, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that they still meant something.

The gruff worker pulled her to the back of the platform. “Go on,” he told her. “You’re done here, boss.” He stood and stared at the macabre process, as if deep in thought.

As the mighty alicorn’s horn met the steel, bright sparks of magic, as well as slivers of bone and metal, shot out in all directions. Lobosheltered both of them with his with a wing, but still flinched from the shrapnel. “Dammit!” he cursed, and gritted his teeth until the bright flare passed. When he and Dash looked up, all they saw was the last inches of a foreleg vanishing into the machine.

Once Lobo shut off the loud grinders, they heard the wailing siren. Their fixation with the gruesome progression had kept them from noticing the activity around them. The other ponies had begun to give cries of alarm. The floor under them was trembling.

“Is the machine doing that?” Dash asked a Gauze Wrap, who was nearby. He shook his head.

“Earthquake procedures!” Dash barked. “Everypony find a doorway or something and stay there!”

For a second, the others gave her a strange look, but as the shaking intensified, they began to scramble for cover. She and Lobowedged themselves in a doorframe. She immediately wished she wasn’t still so close to him. Fortunately, he was too concerned with his own skin to do anything inappropriate.

“This is ridiculous!” he protested, “Earthquakes don’t affect clouds!” Rainbow Dash remembered that, of course, the whole city was far above any shifting tectonic plates. Everything must have been shaking.

Some cracks formed in the cement, and debris fell from the ceiling. A pipe burst, releasing a column of steam. “Shit, we’re so gonna die! This whole place is coming down!” Gauze Wrap yelped. He instinctively started sputtering, “Praise Magic, power of the Elements together. Praise Honesty...“

After a while, the building gave up its convulsions, and some measure of quiet returned to the factory floor. Finally the technicians could give heed to the various warning signals on the control stations for the Device. Some of them began to push buttons in a panic.

Dash gave Gauze Wrap a shake, interrupting his rote incantations. He snapped out of it and flew to the handle of a valve, and strained against it until the violent leak was stopped.

Dash was about to head up to the control deck, but there was a light from the main hall and two more ponies rushed in. It was—gulp—Princess Celestia, gleaming, panting, and wide-eyed. Beside her was a very confused brown pegasus, wearing thick-rimmed glasses and fumbling a clipboard.

Lobo glanced from his bloodstains to Celestia and scrambled to get out of her sight. Dash felt like disappearing too, but met her as she headed onto the factory floor and said, “Princess, I—“

“Where is he? What did he do?” the Princess interrupted, striding past and looking around.

“The inspector?” Dash asked, following. “He made us… we…” she choked on the confession.

Celestia spun around, sending her ethereal mane into a flurry. “No, of course not! This is the inspector,” she said with exasperation, pointing to the bookish brown pegasus.

“I’m inspector Ironshoe,” she whimpered. This was the domineering Miss Ironshoe? Suddenly, Dash could picture her with an arch in her brow, giving terrified workers a deathly stare. Now she seemed small, weak, and irrelevant. She excused herself to the Princess, “I’ve been trying to get in for over an hour, but the compound was sealed.”

“Harmony came here!” Celestia explained hurriedly. “He hasn’t been to Equestria in centuries! By the time I found out, he was already inside. I came to stop him. He must be furious. I’m here to stop him from destroying the factory. Where is he?”

Dash’s jaw hung open, her tongue seemingly glued to the bottom of her mouth.

“Where is he?!” the panicked ruler demanded.

The rainbow pegasus pointed a faltering hoof toward the mouth of the Device. The Princess gave a gasp and raced towards the ghastly spectacle. A pond of blood covered the floor around the processing head. More blood glued horsehair and feathers all around the serrated hole. She came to scrambling halt at the scene, almost tripping. She picked a long, glistening feather off the wet concrete. She was stiff for a few seconds, but her eyes were wild. Dash noticed her mane was frazzled and limp, devoid of both its usual motion and sparkle.

Gauze Wrap approached her. “It’s alright your majesty. By your wisdom, we have saved the world!”

In an uncharacteristic outburst, she screamed, “YOU IDIOT! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!”

Gauze Wrap was taken aback and speechless, leaving Dash to handle her. She wailed again, this time more plaintively, “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” Celestia trembled, and her dignified airs evaporated. “Oh shit, we’re so screwed! I screwed up so much!”

“I… uh, he told us to do it,” Dash explained. “The energy inside him… is just what we needed.”

“WHAT?” Celestia reacted. “WHY, HARMONY, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!” she screamed to the air, as if he might answer. She panted harder. Her light waned, and she began to gasp, this time for air and not from shock. “Shit Dash, if he told you to kill yourself…ungh,” she started to scold, but her voice was mournful and afraid. “Don’t you understand, our world doesn’t go on without him. Oh, shit.” She began to hyperventilate. “Dash, the sun—I can feel it! There isn’t any light inside.” With that she leaned against the machinery and began sinking down as her strength left her.

It was true. It was darker outside the factory than inside the dim structure. Inside, red emergency lights were enough to cast crooked shadows behind all of the pipes and angles. Outside, the sun was dark, and the moon as well; no city lights were on either, since it was supposed to be daylight. With the earthquake and now the blackness, Equestria panicked.

In the midst of the confusion and hopelessness, one pony found clarity. Rainbow Dash echoed her own words back to herself. “He told us to do it… And he didn’t want to destroy the world. I know it.” How did she know? His eyes—that’s what was in his eyes. It was pure and selfless compassion.

Pressure

She charged back into the clamor at the control stations for the machine, ready to take charge. It was her job, after all, and she would do it. “This is the last time,” she told herself, “but we’re gonna do it.”

The crew of the Pegasus Device was in a panic. “It ‘s not gonna work. It’s too much!”

The chief engineer hollered, “All stations, switch off automatic, this is way past program!”

“What’s the problem?” Dash asked him.

“Everything’s haywire. I knew it would be a big job, but we’re crossing safety protocols,” he worried. “I was about to call it off.”

“Red Spectra is at double normal pressure!” someone alerted. “Blue at double pressure! Green at double pressure… ALL SPECTRA at double pressure!”

“The capacitor is spiking!”

“It’s overheating! Coolant valve one is wide open, but we’re overheating!”

Desperate eyes turned back to Dash and the chief engineer, the two senior staff. “Do we hit the emergency release? Sir, are we gonna stop?”

“No!” Dash declared, “Don’t you dare release anything till the process is complete. He wanted us to make this rainbow, and we will! Screw protocol, I don’t think we’re even at max yet.”

After a tense pause, the engineer nodded. “She’s right. The Machine has got more in her. We can take double—remember your training!”

The crew made necessary adjustments.

“Both coolant valves open.”

“I’ve stabilized the pressure at two and a half standard.”

“Rotating the coils, that should buy us some time.”

“Good work!” the engineer called out, but relayed his concern to Dash, “Gross rainbow energy just passed one thousand, and it’s still rising.” The Device held steady for a while, but problems returned as it crossed the two-thousand mark.

Fear started to spread through the technicians again as their attempts came up short. “Nothing we can’t manage! Hold, we can hold this!”

“Is it decelerating past two thousand?” Gauze Wrap asked.

“We’re still under critical values,” the engineer replied, but his face was pale.

Unsatisfied, Gauze Wrap called again, more urgently, “IS IT SLOWING DOWN?”

“It’s accelerating,” he admitted. “My goddess—Three thousand, and it’s accelerating!”

Everypony on the control deck stopped what they were doing. Dash could see from their horror that things had become downright dangerous.

“Dash, give it up!” Lobo challenged. “You’re gonna get us killed! We shut this down, or I’m leaving!”

“Not now everypony! If we quit now, we’re dead anyway. Harmony didn’t die for nothing. He told us to do this, and he’s not going to kill us.” With their fears being tangibly realized in front of them, they didn’t give her reasoning much value. The whole crew was on the verge of rushing out together.

“ARGHHH!” Dash finally yelled at them, as if she lost it. “FOR ONCE IN OUR MISERABLE EXISTENCE, WE’RE DOING THE RIGHT THING! DO YOU REALIZE HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS?! IF YOU QUIT NOW, EVERYTHING YOU HAVE EVER DONE WILL BE FOR NOTHING!” She caught her breath and watched them.

Almost half of them—including Lobo—got up and hurried toward the main hall. “Are you IN THIS?” Dash demanded of the rest. They confirmed, and returned their attention to the controls.

At this point most of the dials were in the red. “If we don’t do something, it’s gonna blow.” Electricity arced off of the massive coils like lightning.

“Isn’t that what the auxiliary capacitor is for?” Dash remembered that Yeshua made them prepare the rusted and unused backup.

“Hell, it’s not engaged! I ordered you to turn it on!” the chief shouted angrily.

“I’ve never done it,” the tech confessed. “Where are the controls?”

The engineer jumped down and pulled him to a small panel on the other side of his work station. “Look familiar?”

“All this time, I thought these were someone else’s controls. Yes sir, I can work it.” The second bank of coils took some of the charge, and the lightning stopped for the moment.

As he returned to his post, the engineer grumbled, “We needed a real audit.”

“The whole system is overheating!” came the next alert.

“Are you using ALL the coolant?” Dash asked. “There’s no tomorrow.”

“Overpump it!” the engineer directed.

“It’ll ruin the coolant units, but here goes.”

“The pressure!” someone else hollered. “Pressure is critical on all spectra! The meters just blew.”

“Isn’t there something we can open up without losing material?” Dash demanded.

“I’ve already opened the recirculated chambers,” the chief engineer replied as he shook his head. “There’s nothing more we can do from here.”

Gauze Wrap shouted, “Come on, we’ll have to open the valves manually.” Several workers followed him down to the bowels of the contraption and started twisting a series of red valves the size of dinner plates.

“Any hotter and we’ll crack the crystal matrix! That is, if we don’t melt all the gaskets first.”

There weren’t any more measures to control the heat—on paper. Dash flew to the wall and tripped the sprinkler system for the factory floor. Where water fell on the device, it hissed and boiled. Something cracked. Dash winced; hopefully it wasn’t necessary. So many things were going wrong at once, it was hard to tell.

“Almost ready to reconstitute! Distribution team, on the floor! Get ready for liquid product. Be advised—Spectra’s gonna surge out of there like Discord himself.”

The chief engineer hesitated with his hoof on the main lever. “All the crazy stuff we’ve been doing comes to a head when I pull this,” he warned. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“We can’t wait any longer, hit it!” Dash insisted.

He complied, and stepped back. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. The energy—it’s theoretical! I don’t know what we’re making. It can’t be liquid, we’ve got to be mixing gas—or plasma!”

“Distribution team, abort!” Dash barked into the intercom. “Everybody away from the Machine! Get out of there!” Ponies scampered and flew in all directions.

Princess Celestia was still collapsed near the maw of the crippled steel giant. Gauze Wrap and another worker grabbed onto her and started pulling her away to safety.

Everything was within seconds of catastrophic failure as the rainbow process neared completion. All the buttons were pressed, all the switches were toggled, and all the gauges were blown. Now it was the vibrations of the machine that shook the factory. “Rainbow energy—still rising!” the chief engineer marveled. “Dash, we have to—”

A massive explosion split the machine. Dash’s vision went white, and she was hurled backwards.

Dash struggled to open her eyes, but it was uncomfortably bright even through her eyelids. She felt herself on a slant, resting against the wall. Everything seemed sideways. Her eardrums were blown, but she could feel the vibrations. She covered her eyes with a hoof and squinted at the hot light. She couldn’t bear to look directly at it, but she could see brilliant colors reflected from every surface.

An enormous rainbow of magic ether had blasted its way out of the machine and through the thick cloudcrete that encased the compound. The building tilted sideways. In fact, an entire district of Cloudsdale was listing by almost thirty degrees from the recoil as the glistening stream launched itself over the horizon. With unrelenting force, the phenomena was still ripping chunks out of the machine and the factory and spewing them into the sky. Finally the back end of the rainbow pushed out to freedom, and lifted the new beam of daylight through the roof. Gaining altitude, it quickly stretched across all of Equestria and beyond.

The Harmony Rainbow had arrived.

Fallout

The dark void went on forever. Dash floated without bearing, breathless, aimless. Why was she here again? No, why was she still here? She had never left. She wondered at herself, as if she was surprised she had ever existed. Somewhere below, the earth was faintly lit by a distant, flickering light. It was stained, corrupted. She turned from it in disgust, but its corruption had somehow touched her. In the increasing light, she tried to wipe the stain off her body, but it was no use.

She looked up to see the source of the light. What had started as barely a candle grew into a scorching radiance as it drew near. A sword full of fire and fury was plunging down toward the earth. It lit up the heavens and the earth below like the sudden dawning of the sun. The double edged blade seethed with red wrath in answer to the horrors and bloodshed on the polluted world below.

Dash struggled to escape the path of the holy terror. She flailed her legs and wings, with no ground to run on and no air to fly in, and no breath to scream. Just as doom reached her, a vast golden figure jumped between her and death. The blade pierced through his chest, embedded, and went no further. Their eyes met in that moment.

She gasped and broke free of her paralysis, spasming as she jolted awake and spilling a can of cheap soda on the floor. Rainbow Dash still lay on her couch, and monotone voices still blabbered on about things they didn’t understand. The room flickered with the flat light of the television in front of her. The receptor crystal glowed more strongly than ever—so many signals. She was alone in her huge cloud home, where she was supposed to be. She had been promised a lavish retirement, but it always sounded hollow to her. However, it had saved her mind many times to come out here on Sun Days. She was allowed to leave the Factory, under secret surveillance of the Royal Guard, mostly so that Equestria wouldn’t worry why one of their precious “mane six” had disappeared.

Now she was being kept here, while they decided what she was. A patsy? A piece of evidence? A victim? Was she a hero, a monster, or more disturbingly, both?

The news channels had turned into a damn good reality show, and Dash found that it was the closest thing to relief to have the truth known by everyone. She didn’t have to carry all those secrets anymore, though she felt anything but unburdened. Now the biggest fireworks of the scandal were over.

The damning evidence had all spilled out, and a contrite Princess Celestia had confessed everything to the nation, in the midst of a total breakdown in front of the other Princesses. Apparently she hadn’t ever told her sister. Luna had showed up in support, but when she found out, the look on her face… and then the cameras went dead, apparently the night Princess had an explosive fit of uncontrolled magic. Now Celestia had locked herself somewhere in the castle, or Luna had locked her there, it was under debate—and they were not on speaking terms. Cadence had an excuse for why she was needed in the Crystal Empire. Who was running the show now anyway?

With the lull in royal drama, reporters now wondered endlessly about the brilliant beam across their sky, and of all things, whether or not they liked the rainbow. “Amid the celebration of the return of the land’s magic, many public agencies are warning about the possible dangers of the new rainbow. Unlike an ordinary rainbow, this massive event appears to be self-sustaining, meaning it’s here for good. Health agencies have cautioned that its magic is much different from an ordinary rainbow and they do not know the possible effects it could have on ponies. Reports are coming in that ponies may suffer psychological effects from simply looking at it.”

The picture shifted to a sound bite of a tearful, starry-eyed colt, the only one on the network with half a smile, testifying, “I had a vision… so beautiful…”

It cut to a relative, or marefriend, worrying, “He’s… changed since he looked at it… I’m scared we might not get him back.”

A doctor in a white suit warned, “We’re still investigating possible cases of hallucination, hypnosis, and the dependencies it could generate—like a drug.”

“As reports stream in of Rainbow-induced cutie marks, parents fear if it is safe for their children.”

“What if it’s like the cutie pox or something?” asked a mother in a foil hat.

The reporter concluded the story by saying, “While some communities are gathering outside to welcome the new magic, authorities are instructing citizens to stay indoors, wear sunshades, and to contact their doctors immediately if they develop symptoms.”

“You idiots,” Dash scowled, “You better not look at it, it’s too good for you.” She changed the channel.

“Weather operations are on hold. After this outpouring of public outcry from across the nation, only one thing seems to matter. The entire structure of the factory will be dismantled and scattered. Even the plot of cloud it rests on is to be cut off from the city and made to dissipate. The idea is that there will be absolutely nothing left. We are about to bring you live coverage of the demolition at the end of the hour.”

“Pssh, whatever!” Dash snarked, and shut off the TV. On one hoof she was glad to see it go—did they say “nothing left”? But the way they were doing it was like they wanted to sweep it back under the rug. Oh, sure, everyone was in such an outrage about the horrible murder factory, and the unspeakable monsters who made it.

“I call bullshit,” she murmured. Everypony thought they were better, as if they weren’t all part of it. Nobody was taking responsibility. How mad could they be about it, when they were ones who didn’t want those foals. And it sure was convenient that everypony got to gripe about it—AFTER the magic crisis was solved. “If we still needed rainbows, you’d beg us to save your skins,” Dash thought. Unfortunately, it didn’t make her feel better that everyone else sucked.

The crying of an infant foal came plaintively from the other room. Dash had flown to the baby’s side before she even knew what she was doing. The little cream colored foal, the one from the incubator room, was nestled in a cocoon of blankets on her bed. She picked him up and cradled him in her arms. Dash didn’t know what had come over her, but on a sudden impulse she had taken him home from the lab. She had cared for him in secret for the past 24 hours.

“It’s okay. I’m here, I’m here,” she cooed, and gently rocked the little filly in her arms. To think that two days ago this foal was a neophyte in a test tube. “You’re not a neophyte, you’re a foal. Neophytes don’t exist. You’re a sweet little foal now, and you always were.”

She swayed the tiny pegasus back and forth for a long time. She brushed aside his deep blue mane to gaze longingly at his soft small face. The baby calmed and looked up at her happily. “Don’t smile at me,” Dash said, still in an encouraging voice. She almost felt like Yeshua had given this little one to her as a gift, such a precious gift, but after what she had done with her last gift…

“What am I doing? I’m not your mama.” She hung her head and cried. “Why do I feel like I need you?” she sobbed. “This is crazy. I shouldn’t be anybody’s mama.”

What would happen to them, she wondered. How could she go on, what would she do now? Would they even let someone like her keep a foal? “You deserve better,” Dash said, and rested the filly back into the blankets. Maybe the mother would show up for her baby.

Now that the rainbow factory was exposed and Dash couldn’t live a normal life, maybe she didn’t have a purpose any more. Certainly the Wonderbolts don’t take child murderers, so goodbye dreams. And she shouldn’t have any hopes or dreams, she shouldn’t have any friends, not after what she did.

Maybe, she thought, she should fly away and exile herself, and fly out over the ocean until she exhausted herself. But she never did like long waits. “If you want something done, go ahead and do it,” that’s what she always said.

She thought of the flagpole in the big stadium. I could fly way up high, and come straight down so fast on it that it… She pictured an olive on a toothpick.

It would probably make some kind of statement—a correct one, too—and one that couldn’t be ignored. She hoped her blood would be bright red, real red. That was probably the only real color left in her. She had poured out the color from so many ponies, and now it would finally be her turn.

There was a knock at the door. Dash froze. Hopefully they would go away if she waited. There was a pause, and more knocks.

“Dash, it’s me,” Twilight’s voice came through the door.

Dash felt an irrational terror shoot through her spine. She hadn’t talked to her friends since… But they had just now found out, of course, like the rest of the world. She had dreaded this moment for a long time.

“It’s me, Twilight,” her old friend said persistently. “Can we talk?”

Dash winced. If only she could have opened the door to Twilight and had this conversation years ago. It was really too late. Twilight is such a good person, she doesn’t need a friend like me.

Dash picked up her grey Factory jacket from the corner where she had thrown it in disgust, and slipped it on. The little filly started crying again, probably because of the commotion. “Wait here for aunt Twilight,” Dash whispered. “She doesn’t need to see me, but I’m glad you will see each other.”

“Dash! Dash?” Twilight pleaded. “I know about what happened. I just want to talk.”

To Dash it just seemed like there was nothing to talk about. There was nothing she could say, nothing would be enough, nothing would really mean anything coming from herself… except for one statement, a final statement. Surely Twilight would understand that.

The voice came through the door again, but lower this time, and unsure. “… Is that what happened to Scootaloo? …”

Dash’s chest tightened up too much for her to answer.

“I’m so sorry…” Twilight started to say, but Dash had already bolted away, smashing through a window on her way out. Twilight yelled, “Wait!” and the police echoed the sentiment, but the champion flyer had already disappeared. She dove under the cloud layer and swerved sharply, powering in a new direction to escape if anypony was pursuing her. They may as well have pursued her, she wished she could fly fast enough to outrun the glances of the locals as she whizzed by. She took a turn, darted through some buildings, and took another turn, swerving about frantically.

She didn’t know where she was going, so she ended up where she always did—the Rainbow Factory. Oddly enough, no one would think to look for her there. As she looked at it, she felt strangely drawn to the place. To think what it would look like empty, quiet, desolate… it seemed like where she belonged.

To her eyes, the gaping hole in the roof was beautiful. From within the structure, metal glinted, reflecting the colors of the great rainbow above her, but she still couldn’t bear to look directly at it. It was life and light and love, and everything she didn’t deserve. She had wanted to be the best, but she was the worst.

There was a construction crew around the crippled factory. They had gathered to destroy it in hopes of wiping away Cloudsdale’s public disgrace. It fit. It was the only right answer. She had become synonymous with the factory, and if they could get rid of both at once, so much the better. She would go down with the ship.

She stalked around the perimeter, looking for an opening. They had already separated the facility from the larger Weather Factory complex so that it wouldn’t damage any other buildings when they took it down. The ominous cloudcrete structure was now perched implausibly on a small island of cloud that could barely support its weight. She waited a minute, unsure if she could cross the gap without being spotted.

The demolition crew was withdrawing from the building. That meant there would be no one else inside, and that it would happen soon. Good. The foreman barked an order and all eyes were averted for a moment. That split second was all she needed to dart in unnoticed.

Resurrection

Inside the gate, she was confronted with thick darkness. The Rainbow Factory had always been gloomy, but never this bad. The generators were disconnected, so there weren’t even emergency lights. She waved her hoof in front of her face. Nothing.

Dash felt a restless need to go further in, even though it was black as a tomb. She started walking forward, and after a few meters she turned left to avoid the wall. She didn’t even need to feel her way through. She would stub her hoof in her own house, but she knew this place too well. Even when she was away from the factory, she couldn’t stop seeing it in her mind. She was still trapped here.

She paced through the eerie maze of hallways. With all the pipes and machinery finally silenced, the echo of her steps seemed unnaturally loud. She thought of those stories about monsters in a labyrinth, but she wasn’t scared. She was the monster.

The despair of the place was palpable as always. Dash mused that if they had actually had to work in utter darkness like this, everyone would have gone insane within a week. At least now it was just a cold, dead shell. She wandered from section to section, to assure herself that it really was empty. It’s over, she finally accepted. It’s really over.

She felt just as empty, like a ghost. She wondered where she should be when the end came, but there was really only one place. The only place she had avoided going is the one place she was destined to go—to the Machine.

As she reached the corridor to the factory floor, she was stopped in her tracks by the brightness of the light at the other end. She blinked. It was like sunlight, but had the sun come up in the last few minutes? After her eyes adjusted and it was no longer painful to look at, she headed to investigate.

When she had almost there, a young filly stepped into view. The little girl looked at her a moment, then scurried away. There was something so surreal about it.

Am I hallucinating? Is this place haunted? Dash was in no mood to run away from vengeful spirits, not today. In any case she had to be sure there wasn’t really a kid in danger. She started into a run, and rushed into the light.

A soft, colorful glow was coming down through the broken ceiling, but the brightest light was coming from the direction of the Machine. The entire device was a twisted mess. It had already gone into meltdown before the rainbow burst out. The source of the light moved in and out among the wreckage.

Dash looked for the girl. To her shock, there wasn’t just one foal, but many, running and playing among the debris. They were see-through, half real, like a vision. Frightened by Dash’s sudden arrival, they stopped their carefree activity and retreated to the light.

The thought crossed her mind that she might already be dead. She approached the machine to see where the light was coming from, but now with slow sensitive steps. There she saw him.

A golden alicorn, wreathed in fire, stood among the mangled steel that was supposed to destroy him. Light emanated from his regal presence. The children flocked around him and hid behind him, peeking warily at Dash. As she watched, he stooped to examine a large fragment of crystal.

The Machine used the crystal matrix to store magical energy, but it had cracked and shattered. Something inside the shard shimmered and moved erratically, almost as if trying to escape. Yeshua pulled the energy out of the crystal. No longer refracted and scrambled, it reverted to its true form—a foal. He embraced the soul for a moment, then set it down among the other child spirits.

He turned to Rainbow Dash. “Come,” he beckoned.

She did approach, slowly, stammering, “You… you’re alive! But, but…” Was he a ghost too? He wasn’t see-through.

“Yes, I died,” he acknowledged. “But I’m far too fundamental to this universe to cease to exist.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “See, I am just as real as you are.”

“What about the kids?” she wondered nervously. If he was real, then maybe they could come back too, and everything could be undone like it didn’t happen… but she could sense that wasn’t quite right.

He shook his head. “They don’t belong here anymore. I’m taking them home with me.”

She had been overwhelmed with surprise and relief to see him again, but now the shame flooded back in. “I—I’m so sorry. I killed you, and these poor little foals, I did everything wrong!” She hung her head, embarrassed to look him in the eye.

He lifted her chin and brought her focus back to his kindly gaze. “I know. I forgive you.”

This is why she had been afraid of those eyes—it looked like he could see inside her, like he knew everything good and bad about her. Surely anyone who knew who she really was would reject her, but he didn’t. “But why would you want me? I haven’t been kind or generous or anything, I haven’t been loyal to you at all. Why would you be kind and loyal to me?”

“You aren’t, but I am,” he replied, with inescapable simplicity. “I came to save you from yourself. Someone had to pay for all the evil deeds, to restore the balance of it all, but I’ve always loved you and I didn’t want it to destroy you. Just like I came to rescue these fillies, I came to make a way for you to be whole, be clean. To give you real life, my life, so that you can live in my kingdom forever. One day, I’ll bring you home, just like these little fellas.”

“Wow, I don’t deserve that,” she said. What else could she say? He was freely giving her more than she could ever earn.

“I know. I want you anyway.” He smiled and patted her head, tussling her mane affectionately. “I brought someone you need to meet.”

Another ghostly form floated into view, made of light and colors like stained glass. It was orange and purple, with an attitude, and beating her underdeveloped wings. It was Scootaloo, and she was flying just fine.

“Oh, hey Scoots…” For a moment, Dash was afflicted with the stupid temptation to act cool and be casual, but she got over it. “Geez, I really screwed up. You know I always thought you were cool and wanted to help you succeed. And then when I saw you in here… I promised your parents I’d help you fly better, and when it didn’t work out I got so upset. I think I was mad at myself? Wow, I was such a monster to you, but I guess that’s what I became in this place.”

“Yeah,” Scootaloo said with a nod, “it was a pretty awful thing to do, but somehow, I still care about you. That’s what I was trying to say, before… you know. I still don’t get it, but… I forgive you.” She held out her hoof.

Dash met the gesture with her own hoof, pressing palm to palm. Usually it would have been a hoof pound, like a quick fist bump, but they held it there, not wanting to pull away. Scootaloo didn’t feel solid, as if they could pass through each other, but she could still feel the warmth of her touch. “I missed you kiddo.”

“Yeah. It would have really been fun to finish growing up with you. My parents didn’t really want to deal with having a retarded kid,” she said bluntly, and sighed. “They sent me here as soon as I flunked, like they were relieved to get me off their hooves. But you didn’t look at me that way. You’re kinda the one who made me actually look forward to living my life.”

That felt really good to hear, but stung at the same time. Dash tried to hold in a tear, but it got out anyway.

Yeshua had stepped away from the conversation. When he came back, the vast, shining being cradled something tiny. He held it out to her. It was a sky-blue unicorn baby, with a bold rainbow mane and tail.

Although it wasn’t a pegasus, Rainbow Dash was obviously the mother. Her eyes widened. “Ohmigosh, my baby!” She cradled the weightless filly to her chest. “Look at you. You’re so adorable I can’t take it.”

The little girl smiled and burbled, “Mama!”

That was it. Dash immediately started to ugly cry. “My baby, my sweet little daughter.

I didn’t even give you a name. I’ve gotta name you.”

She held her tiny pony close to her face, almost nose to nose. “I’m gonna call you… Rainbow Crash.”

Yeshua chuckled.

“WHAT!?” Scootaloo bust out, “Isn’t that the mean nickname they used to call you when you were little?”

“Yeah,” Dash said with a smile, blinking through tears. She couldn’t take her eyes off that pudgy little face. “That’s what ponies would say whenever I crashed, and I crashed more than anybody, and they said I’d always be a failure, but mom and dad believed in me. And they were never embarrassed about me, and I didn’t quit, and I proved everybody wrong.”

The waterworks returned in force. She blubbered on, “And you’re a part of me, and I never should have quit on you. I was so afraid what everyone would think, but I should have been proud of you. So I wanna call you Rainbow Crash because I thought you were a mistake but you’re actually awesome.”

She squeezed little Crash close to her heart and rocked her side to side. They were like that for a while.

Yeshua prompted Scootaloo, “Remember what we talked about?”

“Oh yeah.” Scootaloo encouraged her mentor, “I don’t want all this stuff to make you afraid to have kids. Or, I mean, more kids. You’ll be a good mom.”

Dash shook her head. “No way. I can’t.” She had already failed the little baby in her arms, and she couldn’t take the thought of doing that again.

“Yes way. Best ever,” Scootaloo said with total certainty. “If they make you think of us, don’t think that we’re gone, remember that we’re waiting for you. We just… beat you to the finish line.”

“Waiting for me, where?” Dash asked, apprehensive. Scootaloo seemed to gesture to herself, to her own free existence as a body of light. Dash understood, sort of, but it still seemed out of reach. She looked down, afraid that she would have to disappoint them again. “Even if I kinda know where you’re going, I don’t think a pony like me could ever go there.”

“No, you couldn’t,” Yeshua acknowledged, but in a tone that made it clear that didn’t matter anymore. “I went through hell for you, to give you this rainbow, this part of myself, so that you can belong with me again.”

“So I guess… you really do want me,” she said. She was just now beginning to believe it, to accept it.

He embraced her, squeezing her tight. “I wanted you before you were born, and I still do, even after all this. I love you, my little Dashie.” He kissed her forehead. She felt as happy and secure in his arms, as the little baby did in hers. She listened to his heartbeat.

She didn’t know how long they were like that. She didn’t want it to stop. For a while it seemed like they could really just live in the ruins forever as a family, and she would never have to let go of her ghost baby. But she knew it was just a passing moment, and she began to worry what life would look like after this, that it might never be this good again.

He sensed what she was feeling. “It will be a long time, but we will meet again. I’ve given you a part of myself that will be with you until then. That rainbow is proof that I love you, and a promise that I will come back and make everything right with this world. Anypony who wants to be forgiven of everything can be filled with the light of my magic, and restored to harmony with me. Just look up at that rainbow and trust me. Believe, and let it in. Now go, see for yourself, and then tell your friends and everyone you meet.”

That didn’t sound so bad, but she still didn’t want to leave the warmth of the hug. “Do I have to go now? This is… nice…”

He let go, and told her, “I’m keeping that promise I made to you. This place is about to get wiped off the map.”

“Whoa!” She jolted up straight, remembering that there were bombs somewhere in the building or under it. “Wait, what about you guys?”

“You’re the only one here who hasn’t died already,” he pointed out. “Don’t worry about us.” He gestured for her to give little Rainbow Crash back to him.

She wanted to hold on to him, but there was hardly anything for her to hold. The translucent foal was already in another plane of existence. She gave him the baby; clearly he was the only one who could take care of Crash now. She trusted Yeshua with her baby, like she trusted him with herself.

“I do have one more mission for you, if you’re ready for it,” he requested.

“Anything,” she said, with no reason to hold back.

“There’s only one copy of the data that shows the truth about this place, and it’s about to be destroyed along with the lab,” he informed her. He didn’t have to tell her how important it was for her to get it. If she didn’t, the fake news would say the factory was a necessary evil, and she would have to hear it for the rest of her life. “Give it to Twilight, she’ll know what to do with it.”

“Is there enough time?” she worried.

“Only for you,” he quipped, giving her an I-believe-in-you smile.

She grinned. I was made for this.

“Run your race,” he encouraged, but added more urgently, “Right NOW.”

She spun toward the south end and opened her wings. As she launched into flight, she heard Scootaloo begin to cheer, “Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash!” She zoomed through the open sun on the factory floor and disappeared into the dark offices.

Exhilaration

She forgot how thick the darkness was going to be. She thought about pressing ahead, but there was no point. Kicking herself, she doubled back to her office. She flung open the door, fished a flashlight out from under her desk, and caught the door before it could swing closed again.

She dove back down the hall. Did she have minutes, or seconds? She almost got to the lab before she even turned on the flashlight, which she held in her mouth so she could have her hooves free. She knew the corridors of this place too well, but she wasn’t so very familiar with the inside of the lab.

She kicked open the door in her rush to get in, but she had to pause to orient herself. The strange shapes of the scientific equipment was somehow even creepier than normal when lit only by her flashlight. Some things were missing and others had been pushed out of place.

She darted across the lab to the filing cabinet. There was a wire running across the floor to the side of the cabinet that ended in – gulp – a bundle of explosives. There was no timer, it could just go of any moment.

She yanked open the drawer, and braced herself for the sight of endless folders. To her surprise, there was only one. All of the science of the machine was supposed to be destroyed, to burn along with the rest of the place, that’s what the news said. But someone had other plans. All of the information was missing, except this small piece. Sure enough, it was the binder of reports that Hyde was so embarrassed about.

She backed away from the bomb and quickly stuffed the papers into her jacket.

Well, that wasn’t so hard. I mean what are the odds a bomb just happens to go off when you’re looking at it?

The detonator beeped. She jumped into the air, launching toward the exit.

BOOM

The empty filing cabinet was torn apart by the fiery burst. The shock wave stung and shattered glass throughout the enclosed space, but Dash escaped the worst of it. It was mostly an incendiary bomb, and not nearly as powerful as the ones set to destroy the foundation. However, at the same time, a flurry of deep thuds came from somewhere below. A continuous crashing sound followed, like a train wreck, and it seemed to come from all around.

It only took Dash a second to get back to the door out of the lab, but she could feel a downward motion as she pushed it out of the way. Freefall.

As she raced down the corridor, a crack in the ceiling let in a glimmer of light. She dropped the flashlight to take deeper breaths as she picked up speed. She was pelted with rocks of concrete as she dove under the fissure.

The hallway tilted to one side as the structure dropped, and the whole factory started to break apart. There was only one place that was safe—the part of the factory where the ceiling had already been shattered by the rainbow.

She ducked away from the scalding plume of a ruptured steam pipe. Turning the corner, she could see freedom at the end of the hallway. The ceiling started to collapse over her as she made a break for it. Huge pieces of debris came crashing down in front of her to block her path.

She gave a strong beat of her wings and then closed them tightly to her body, diving for the gap underneath the industrial avalanche. Billowing dust from the shattered cloudcrete obscured her vision. The broken edge of the ceiling scraped a few feathers from the end of her wing and hairs from her tail as she escaped into open space by the narrowest of margins.

She was back over the factory floor. There was no sign of Yeshua or the fillies. The ruined machine sprawled below. Its destruction would be complete in a few seconds. Good riddance. Multicolored light streamed through the rift above. She followed the light towards safety.

As the factory imploded, the two halves of the building fell in toward the center. The gap in the ceiling where she planned to escape was shrinking rapidly. She pulled up, swooping out from under the remains of the upper levels. For a moment it seemed she would be crushed by the looming structure… but only a moment. Once she hit the open air, there was no stopping her.

So awesome!

As the whole structure fell beneath Cloudsdale, Dash shot straight up into the sky like a bullet. She didn’t look back. She powered up, up into the cloudless blue. She blinked through the wind and tried to adjust to the light.

And what a light. There it was. It was so bright, but she didn’t look away. The huge rainbow shone with a natural resplendence she had never seen in all her years at the factory.

It was a gift. It was for everyone, but… even for her, despite everything. Maybe especially for her.

She let it in. Her whole body tingled as if full of light.

I’m alive again. She couldn’t help but fly closer and closer to it. Sure enough, it was not just a vision, it was real.

She skimmed across the surface of the river of color, soaring even faster in its current. I’m free.

She swooped up and down, in and out of the gleaming beam. She laughed and laughed. All the fear and shame that had weighed on her for so long just vanished.

She didn’t know how long she was entranced, gliding along the rainbow and playing in its light. Finally, she glanced down on the world. It was greener once again, as if spring came overnight after years of winter. The top surface of the clouds reflected back the multicolored glow, but the city itself held on to a tinge of gray, as if unsure.

She wanted to tell everyone at once that there was nothing to be afraid of, that everything would be better. She rolled into a dive, heading back to her home town.

She noticed that the blue of her fur was restored, with more luster than ever. Energized, she surged ahead, not willing to wait for gravity to carry her down. She zoomed across the sky at maximum speed, just for the joy of it.

As she crossed the sound barrier, there was a flash of light. Waves of color exploded around her in a perfect circle, a perfect match to the larger rainbow above. She had released her signature sonic rainboom without even trying.

She swooped low over the white rooftops and surprised pegasi in the streets, still at high velocity. She pulled up, bleeding off her speed in a wide loop before settling into a relaxed glide. She watched with satisfaction as her ripples of color spread away toward the horizon.

A smaller pink flash lit up a nearby cloud. It was Twilight Sparkle. She had seen Dash’s technicolor display—well, everyone had—and teleported up closer to her estranged friend. Dash happily flew straight to her and touched down lightly onto the puffy surface.

Dash was already landed and taken a couple steps before she realized she was still nervous meet Twilight. She stopped in her tracks. “I… you know what I did…”

The gifted unicorn was beaming under the light of the colorful sky, as if one with the light, but wore a look of deep concern. She nodded sadly. “I don’t understand how this happened to you, but...” She drew close and reassured Dash with a bittersweet smile. “I’m here for you.” She surprised Dash with a hug.

A tear came to Dash’s eye as she was overwhelmed with relief. Why was I so scared of this? She returned the hug and sniffled. “Twilight, I have to tell you something, about the Rainbow…” she started to explain, but went silent again. She wanted Twilight to know everything that she had seen and heard, but it was still hard to talk about, and even harder to know where to start.

“I know, Dash.” With a sense of wonder, Twilight revealed, “I know about Harmony and the Rainbow. I know what he did. I did some research, and… I figured it out.”

“Of course you did.” Dash smiled. She was always surprised by her friend’s intelligence, and she used to tease her for it. Regrets quickly bubbled back up. “I’m sorry I hid from you all this time.”

Twilight agreed, sadly and sweetly, “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you.”

Dash realized that she was still wearing the jacket from her uniform as manager of the twisted Rainbow Factory. She unbuttoned and pulled out the clunky binder that had stayed pressed to her chest by the tight fitting jacket. She handed it to her friend and said, “I think you’ll know what to do with this.”

Dash shrugged the bleak gray uniform off and tossed it over the edge of the cloud. That’s not who I am anymore.

There was just one more thing she had to do.

Wrap Up

Rainbow Dash stepped out through ornate doors into the light of the great hall. Great beams flowed through the stained glass and onto the crowd. The audience stirred and murmured when they saw her. She entered from a side door and onto the raised dias. Time moved slowly as she approached the podium, and felt herself become the center of attention. She breathed deeply.

The Princesses were there on the dais, waiting just on the other side of the podium. Princess Luna stood tall, presiding over the assembly with her natural air of authority. Her expression was somber, but there was no more anger. Her wrath at her sister’s crimes had cooled when she remembered her own fall to evil, when she had become Nightmare Moon. Now she stood, stoic and sad, but dignified. Clearly Luna was the one currently keeping things from spiraling into chaos.

Princess Celestia was diminished. She was physically taller than Luna, but she seemed shrunk down. The smug superiority she had become accustomed to in recent years had vanished entirely, and she seemed lost. Despite that, the sun was up and shining again, a beautiful warm sunshine. She looked at Dash, with the eyes of someone who knew she didn’t deserve for everyone to think so highly of her. Dash understood perfectly.

Dash reached the podium and turned to face the crowd. She tried to look straight ahead, over the ponies, and especially not at the newsponies who would be broadcasting live.

She glimpsed down at the microphone, and back up at… eyes. So many eyes. She didn’t know if she was more nervous about the crowd, or all her friends. They were there, right on the front row. Her mouth went dry.

Applejack was as stoic as Luna. She was trying to be supportive, but Dash knew she was hiding her anger. She was angry about the atrocities of course, and the lying, and more than that frustrated that she hadn’t been able to help her friend. Dash could still hear the exasperation in her voice when she first found out, as she had exclaimed, “We woulda helped ya! Why didn’t ya tell us before it got so bad?!”

Fluttershy was staring at the carpet, heartbroken. She couldn’t bear to even think about all of this, but she still cared about Dash. “That’s pretty impressive,” Dash thought.

Pinkie Pie fidgeted, deflated and searching for ways to cope. She was most disappointed of all to learn that she missed the chance to be crazy Aunt Pinkie for Dash’s foal.

Rarity was ashamed, and looking to Dash for strength. When Dash had confessed about the Factory, Rarity confessed that she had gotten pregnant just recently, and given the foal up as a neophyte in Canterlot’s first clinic. Thankfully her tiny baby was still alive in an incubator somewhere and hadn’t yet shipped to the Factory. Doctors were still trying to figure out which one was hers.

Rainbow Dash found her knees weakening and her head swimming. She glanced to the side to see Twilight standing right next to her. As upset as she was about what had happened, Twilight was calm, and Dash felt calmer just looking at her. Twilight’s eyes weren’t upset, but clear and kind and insistent. “I’m proud of you for doing this,” she whispered.

Dash was amazed, and remembered the warmth that had begun to well up in her heart. I’m so glad you’re with me. Thanks Twilight.

“I am a good pony,” Gauze Wrap declared as if making his own speech. But he was not on stage or in front of a camera, he was standing alone in a well-furnished master bedroom. “I’m as good as my mane is red.”

“Is it true what they’re saying about you?” said a feminine voice from the other side of the locked door. It was his longsuffering wife. “Tell me it’s not true.”

There was a television in the corner. It was on at a low volume, tuned to the news, obviously, like just about every other TV in the land. The whole sordid story was slowly but steadily emanating from the speakers in an almost monotonous stream of horrified and condemning words.

“Some of the ponies I worked with were bad,” he admitted. “Heartless lowlifes with no color left. But I’ve kept my color, you know why?”

She tried to turn the knob, again, with no luck. “Please open the door, you’re scaring me. Please just let me in.”

Dark curtains were drawn across the window. The lights were on, but the light coming in under the door was brighter. “Do you understand why I refuse to expose myself to that unnatural rainbow?” he asked rhetorically. “Because I’m already good. I don’t need anything or anybody to make me good.”

He wobbled a little and stretched out a wing for balance. He was standing awkwardly on a puff of cloud that could barely support his weight. “Everything I did, I did with kindness. All the time I served in that factory was generosity. I’m more honest and loyal than Celestia, because I won’t lie and apologize.”

There was a rope hanging from the ceiling. He paused to concentrate on tying it into a noose. “We did what we had to do. I did the right thing. We did it to save the world… to save you. Don’t you see, everything I did, I did for you. I’m a hero, don’t you understand?”

“I don’t understand, I’m sorry,” she moaned, pressed up against the outside of the door. She had given up on opening it herself. “I don’t understand how it came to this. Open the door. You don’t have to do anything to yourself, open the door and we can talk about this.”

“That’s alright, dear. This must be sudden for you. You’ll understand, in time,” he explained regretfully. “But they don’t understand. They’ll never understand, they just want me to be a monster so they can feel superior. I can’t stand to see them looking at me like some sort of criminal. I am an upstanding citizen from an upstanding family. This is the only way to protect the family name.”

There were shuffling feet outside the room. He wondered if she had heard everything.

“There’s no place left for me in this world, even after all I did for them. It will be better for you, if I go.” The knot was finished. He gave it a solid tug to make sure it would hold him.

“Our little girl is here. Whatever you’re going to do, please don’t, for her,” she pleaded.

“Daddy, come out daddy!” a little voice called innocently, not understanding the severity of the situation.

Gauze Wrap answered in a soothing voice, “I have to go, baby. Don’t be sad, daddy’s going to heaven.”

He leaned forward to put his face through the loop, and began working up the nerve to pop the little cloud with a stomp.

He paused at the sound of a familiar voice he did not expect. Suddenly, after days of silence, Dash had appeared on the television.

Dash took a deep breath, and began. Starting was the hardest part. She had no script, no notes—those only would have made her freeze trying to do it perfectly—but she knew what needed to be said. “It’s me, Rainbow Dash. I was the manager at the Rainbow Factory. I know what I did was wrong. I’m sorry. I know an apology can’t ever be enough.”

“But getting rid of the factory doesn’t make this okay. Blaming me, Cloudsdale and Celestia doesn’t make this okay. I did it worse, but we all did this. I thought if I kept it a secret from you, you could all be happy, and the world could be okay. That you wouldn’t have to be bad, like me. But the truth is everything is not okay out here. Not in Cloudsdale, not anywhere."

“A few years ago, Twilight had me in the Hearth’s Warming play. I thought it was dumb. But we told the story of how we almost ended the world in a blizzard because we were racist and couldn’t get along. Because earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi didn’t want each other."

“This time, we almost lost all our magic, because we didn’t want our babies. We didn’t want to be mothers, didn’t want to be dads. Somehow we think it will be a drag, that it will stop us from living our lives. For some reason we care that we won’t be able to make as much money for ourselves. In the factory we said, ‘There are too many ponies anyway.’ Think of the ponies you care about, and tell me which one is too many. But we don’t know these fillies. Sometimes we don’t care about these kiddos because we don’t know them yet."

“I didn’t want my baby. I didn’t want my baby because it was inconvenient. I was embarrassed. I got pregnant when I didn’t have a relationship and I didn’t have a plan. I wasn’t ready."

“The joke in Cloudsdale is, ‘No filly is ready for flight school, they learn on the fly.’ I think parenthood is like that. You can’t be ready. You can never know what it’s like until you try.

“Our moms and dads wanted us. They raised us and cared for us, and stupid as it sounds we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them. My mom was worried too. She almost gave me away. But I’m so thankful she decided to raise me.

“Maybe you feel like your parents didn’t want you, and I’m sorry about that. But please stop being afraid of this rainbow! This rainbow means, “I love you, I want you.” It means there are no unwanted fillies. It means, all is forgiven. If there are no unwanted fillies, there are no unwanted adults, no unwanted ponies period! Messed up as we are.

“The magical guy that made this world and gives us all our destinies—he cares about each and every one of those poor fillies I ground up into spectra, but somehow he still cares about me. I don’t know how to expect anyone to forgive me, but he did. So there is nopony out there who is unloved."

“I know a pegasus mom, who has a disability that makes her life hard, and she knew her baby would have the same problem. She decided to raise that kid anyway, and they’re happy. At first I thought she was crazy, but she’s a hero to me.”

Derpy, watching on a little couch in Ponyville, hugged Dinky tight.

Dash beckoned to her parents on the front row. They walked up the center steps and stood next to her at the podium. Her mother Windy cradled an infant in her arms. It was the foal from the lab. She presented the child to her daughter, who held him up for all to see.

“This is my baby,” she announced proudly. "Adopted, anyway. Look at this adorable little guy. You’ve been told that neophytes don’t matter. This is what a neophyte is—a pony. I know I don’t deserve to have him, but someone I trust told me that I will be a good mom.”

She cradled her adopted son. She had made a speech, but her little guy made the most important statement just by being there, just by being alive. She was ready to sign off and step down, and be with her family and friends. She gave the crowd some parting words. “We don’t need a rainbow machine… we never did. We just need to want each other.”

Before she had made it down off the stage, there was a startling disruption. One of the crystal balls the media was using suddenly seemed to go rogue. It made horrible popping and zapping sounds before turning on like a light bulb and shining a beam up into the air.

Giant letters appeared, looming ominously over the gathering. It spelled, “H.A., PHD”.

A loud commanding voice emerged through radio static. “Enough of this meaningless charade! Don’t listen to these strange fairytales, these useless emotional appeals. Listen to hard science, to reason! The papers confiscated by the police will prove that the Rainbow Factory was necessary and right. My research alone has protected our world. I am no murderer, I am your savior. When this ‘Harmony Rainbow” is used up, which I’m sure it will be, you will need my rainbow science to survive!”

Twilight stepped forward, and revealed papers covered with jargon, that she had carefully kept on her person. “Back off, Doctor Atmosphere! I have a little something my friend recovered from the factory. Recognize these notes?”

The dignified, mysterious monogram disappeared, and a disheveled Dr. Atmosphere’s distorted face could be seen peering at them from his secret hideout. He squinted at her in disbelief. “Impossible!”

Twilight brandished his own research like a weapon. “The science shows that the rainbow factory never did any good. Every young pony murdered can be traced to a drop in the global magic quotient. The rainbows you made barely returned half the magic that we lost with each filly. The fact that you tried to get rid of this, means you knew all along. No one will ever believe you again!”

“How dare you lecture me!” he snapped, trying to drown her out with the volume of his projection system. “Don’t listen to her, this rebel is inciting treason! No, this is blasphemy. If there is a god in this world, her name is Princess Celestia. She has the right to rule because she is the strongest! She knows best. Everything I did, I did under her orders! Great Princess, step forward and silence them!”

Princess Celestia did come forward, but not with the divine anger he was hoping for. Hurt, she asked, “How could you? I trusted you, Hyde! I thought it was necessary, but I was wrong! I am ASHAMED at what we did. All this time I’ve been terrified that ponies would find out that I’m not the perfect Princess I was supposed to be. I’m just a pony who’s good at magic. I didn’t know what to do, and I made everything worse. Just say that we were wrong. You can come back, if you admit you were wrong.”

The giant face quickly scowled and vanished back into the crystal ball.

Gauze Wrap lunged at the television and knocked it over in his haste to turn it off. “No! That can’t be true! I don’t believe it.” He jumped back onto the puff of cloud and pulled the rope firmly around his neck. “I refuse to live in a world where everything we did was a lie!”

His horrified wife threw herself against the door with a desperate yelp. It broke, leaving her tumbling into the room. She looked up at her husband, still poised to end his life. “Oh Gauze Wrap, no!”

His young daughter peeked in. His eyes suddenly fixed on her, entranced. “Daddy, I went outside to got you a fwower.” She was a gentle baby blue and lavender, but in this moment, they were the most shocking and powerful colors he had ever seen. She was radiant, vibrant, and stunning to his eyes.

The flower she carried was so beautiful and unsettling to his soul. It was the strongest, purest crimson he’d ever seen. In a moment, he suddenly came to believe that he had never seen color at all. He held a lock of his mane in front of his eyes. His hoof and his hair just seemed like different shades of gray.

He pulled back from the noose, and dropped to the floor, quaking from head to tail.

Someone else had also been listening. A gray pony stared into his stiff drink while the others at the bar watched the TV sullenly. Lobo had escaped the factory during "the incident" and had flown out to Las Pegasus to lay low.

The bar would normally have been boisterous, but now the patrons only talked in low murmurs. No one knew what to make of it all. The window shutters were closed, and curtains drawn across them, but slits of bright light still got through around the edges.

Lobo got off his bar stool, stood up straight, and barked, “Hey everypony, listen up! There on the TV? That’s my boss.”

The room snapped to attention, not only from the suddenness of the outburst, but also because of his words. There were two kinds of drinkers that day, those watching the broadcast, and those pretending not to.

He proclaimed, loudly and fearlessly, “I was a bruiser for the Palomino crime family, put a lot of hurt on anypony who crossed us. Went to the slammer for it, and cut some guys in there too. They moved me to the factory—nah, I volunteered. I’m the first shift floor chief for the Cloudsdale Weather Service, Rainbow Division. Some days, I liked my job. They call me Lobo, the wolf.”

There was dead silence. Interest turned to fear or horror as he spoke.

He issued a challenge to the room. “If you think you’re better than me, raise your hoof.”

Each patron froze, not wanting to be the one to provoke him.

Lobo wheeled around and addressed the one pony who could best understand what was going on. “Bartender, I know you’re better than me. Raise your hoof.”

The old barkeep nodded. This was not the first time a young stallion had poured out his soul over a pint, but this time was the most damning. He raised his hoof high enough that everyone could see.

“I am a damn babykiller. Everyone else go ahead and put your hooves in the air,” Lobo insisted again.

One by one, everyone there raised their hoof, if only to head height.

“HAHAHAHA!” he burst out with pained laughter. “You’re damn right! I’ve always known I’d never be any good, it’s what my dear old dad taught me. In some ways, I liked it when he beat me, because it was about the only time he’d ever touch me.”

“Now I know you’re all better than me, but let’s cut the crap. You’re all in here for a reason,” he accused. “Oh, but maybe you’re not running from anything, maybe you’re a really buckin’ nice guy and you’re just having a good time.”

“Who here brought sunshades?” he said, lifting his own dark glasses straight up as if he was placing a bet. “It was fuckin’ night when we came here. Who here brought sunshades so you wouldn’t have to look at that rainbow?”

The bartender pulled a pair out of his pocket and set it on the counter.

One drinker lifted his forearm off the table, revealing the shades he had been hiding there. The next pulled a pair out of the inside pocket of his jacket. With heavy hearts, everyone came clean, showing their sunshades as a token of the guilty consciences and paranoia that brought them here.

“What a beautiful time we’re living in,” Lobo commented with an ironic smile, but it quickly faded. “Nobody’s bullshit holds up anymore. Now we all know we have something to hide. We all have good reasons we’re scared shitless of coming face to face with goodness and harmony.”

He had spoken every word with fierce conviction up to this point, but now uncertainty crept into his voice. “If what my boss said is true, somebody up there still wants me, even after all the shit I’ve done. That’s crazy! I’m nothing like what my mama wanted me to be, but maybe… Maybe she’d still like to see me too.”

He glanced at the windows, where small points of light showed through despite the heavy blackout curtains. “You know convicts don’t get to leave the factory, and there are no windows. We hardly glimpsed the sun. But this is just the stupidest shit—I haven't seen a rainbow in ten years.”

He looked around at the witnesses of his confession. Maybe, just maybe they understood the decision he had made, and how hard it was. He stepped toward the door nervously. “I wanna see a Rainbow. I wanna come home.”

He hesitated, his hoof on the knob. Without looking back, he said, “If I’m struck dead when I look into that thing, you know why. But if it works for me, it’ll work for you. I don’t even remember what color I’m supposed to be. My real name…” He shook his head, and laughed at the irony, but his sad laughter trailed off. “My mama named me Love Boat.”

Multicolored light flooded into the room as he swung the door wide. He stepped out, and looked up.