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// Dark Magic and Bluish-Green Walls 
// Story: The Padded Room 
// by Space Pony 
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	Rainbow Dash sat alone in a padded room, and the walls of the room were made of green clouds. What was strange about these particular green clouds is that they were actually blue, for they were a reflection of her soul.
Rainbow remembered a time when the clouds were yellow: yellow like a dead fish when you leave it in the sun too long on an autumn afternoon. That was a different time, a time when the room was full of noise from the outside; doctors and nurses bustling about their business, always so busy busy busy, and they weren't even business ponies.
Nowadays, the walls were blue, but Rainbow Dash didn't mind. Yellow is too psychopathic a color, even for a pony who thought she was an orange. Rainbow still recalled when she became an orange, the memories were so fresh and vivid in her mind, as if it had only happened 684 days prior.
It was a sunny Tuesday, for all the Tuesdays are sunny in Margaritaville. Back then, Dash had a friend, and that friend's name was Twilight Sparkle.
"Twilight," said Rainbow to her companion, "Will you be turning me into an orange today?"
Twilight replied neigh, and that conversation ended. Rainbow remarked to herself that, in hindsight, that was a weird place to start remembering from, especially considering that the incident didn't occur until much later in the day. For you see, Rainbow had yet another friend, and that friend was a psychopathically yellow pony named Fluttershy, who hoarded animals. At her house, Fluttershy was playing with the mice which she kept trapped in her walls, whilst Rainbow Dash was nearby, reading the latest issue of Fishing Digest. It was quite an odd magazine for her friend to subscribe to,  especially considering the fact that ponies were herbivores.
"Fluttershy," Rainbow began, "What is this magazine telling me that you aren't?"
To that her friend replied, "Stop asking questions, Rainbow, or I will have to slay you with dark magic."
Dash ceased to inquire, and instead, chose to play with some string which she had found hanging from the ceiling. She batted it at first with one fore hoof, and then the other. In the distance, one could hear a mockingjay sing, and it's song inspired some lady to write a trio of bestselling books whose entire premise is basically just Battle Royale. Yes, Rainbow played with her string, the mockingjay sang, and Fluttershy dressed up her mouse friends in cute little soldier outfits, complete with fancy hats and snazzy red armbands. After maybe two minutes, she stood back to admire her work.
"Bwahahahahaha!" she laughed, "With this miniature undead army of deadly death at my command, I will sure conquer the world! Or at the very least, downtown Toronto.
All this nonsense had begun to bore Rainbow Dash, plus she'd lost her string in the cushions of the couch, so she opted to exit the building by means of a nearby window. The decision to use the window was twofold: Firstly, Fluttershy had a weird doorknob and it made Rainbow's bones itch, and Secondly, there hung a sign on the door which read, "Open at your own risk. Those who are not pure of heart and also 3 ft. 7 in. tall shalleth be strucketh down by dark magic.
Taking this information into account, Dash chose to slip out the side window whilst her companion was occupied with trying to explain socialism to her mice. Yes, Rainbow slipped out, and promptly fell flat on her face atop the gravel, stupidly forgetting that she possessed wings. Rising to her hooves, face thoroughly in pain, she started down the path away from Fluttershy's cottage, quietly remarking to herself about how she was exactly three feet and seven inches tall. Along her way towards the gate, she stopped to wave salutations to the chaos spirit, Discord, who sat sunning himself atop a throne of Dell computers.
"I noticed," began Discord to the pony, "That you fell on your face not but a moment ago. That is a sign that you are going insane.
"Pfft, no I'm not," she replied, but it was too late, for at that moment, Rainbow Dash collapsed on the ground and promptly became an orange.
Back in the present, or at least as close to the present as we're going to be getting, Rainbow sat quietly in her bluish-green room of padded clouds. She was no longer certain of whether or not she was an orange, or any citrus fruit for that matter, but what she was quite sure of was the fact that the world was going to end if she couldn't get her hooves on a slide whistle.
Beside her sat her companion, the newest addition to the padded room, a patient who had just arrived and had yet been there since the beginning of time. It was Discord, just as it had been 684 days prior, he sat upon a beautifully crafted throne of Dell computers. A curious fact about his majestic chair was that, despite having been forged in the light of a dying star almost a millennium ago, all that computers that comprised it still ran on Windows XP, and it was therefore the slowest computing machine in the universe.
"Do you think the walls will ever be yellow again?" asked Rainbow Dash.
"No," replied Discord, "Not until you remember the true meaning of Christmas."
"I guess I can try," she said.
Rainbow remembered back to a night that had passed long ago, to when three mystical spirits had tried to teach her the true joy of the seasons. The first was the ghost of Christmas past, who was always rambling on about nostalgia, and was way too preachy for his own good. The second spirit was the ghost of Christmas present, and he was really really tall. He was so tall, in fact, that Rainbow managed to avoid him all night, simply by crawling under her patio to where he could not reach her. The third spirit was the ghost of Hanukkah, and he had the wrong address.
It was on that night, after having been visited by all three specters, that the walls of the room had turned blue. This of course, means, that Rainbow had already been living in the padded room for quite some time before the ghosts had tried to teach her the meaning of Christmas, and that begged the question, where did she find a patio? It did not matter, nothing mattered except the color of the walls, but that didn't really matter either, for the walls were blue because they were a reflection of Rainbow's soul. Her soul had a rare skin disorder.
"My heart is like an oak tree," said Rainbow Dash to Discord, but Discord wasn't really listening, because while Rainbow had been busy remembering, he had updated his throne to Windows 8, and was preoccupied with trying to find Google Chrome, which required all his attention.
They sat in silence for a while, Rainbow staring at the ceiling, and Discord trying to tell his computer that for the last time, he didn't want a free 30-day trial of ZappedTM internet security. He poured through his throne's startup files, trying to find and delete the program in charge of pestering him, but found his efforts to be no avail. Finally, he just exclaimed in disgust, shut off his machine, and went back to using it as part of his armrest. Discord sat quietly, thinking to himself about how he'd like to give Bill Gates a piece of his mind, not knowing that all of that could have been avoided if he had simply made his throne out of Apple Macintoshes.
After only five minutes, Rainbow had grown thoroughly bored of trying to find shapes in the clouded ceiling, and decided to once again attempt conversation.
"I need to bust outta here," she said to her companion.
"How will you do that?" he asked. "These walls are reinforced, and even if you somehow manage to escape them, you have nowhere to go, considering you're a complete nutcase."
She thought about what he had said, calculating a response. It was true what he said; these walls were made of the strongest cloud that money could buy, at a reasonable price, and if she escaped, where would she go? Rainbow Dash had no delusions (excepting the ones that comprised her insanity), she was quite barking mad, so much so in fact, she clearly remembered an occasion where she had tried wearing a helmet so that she wouldn't contract Alzheimer's. Little did she know, Alzheimer's is airborne, so a helmet could do her no good. What a whackjob!
"If I could make it out of here," she began to Discord, "Could you cure me of my insanity?"
"I could make it worse," he offered.
"No thanks."
Rainbow Dash sat against the padded walls, thinking once more. Now that her heart was set on freedom, she would not be able to rest until she had tasted the sweet air of the outdoors, and felt the cool wind beneath her wings. Sadly, there was no wind in this cloudy room, not even a window, or an air vent, or a door. It really made Rainbow question how she got in there in the first place. It also made her question where the light was coming from. She held up a hoof before her eyes, and remarked at the fact that it was not a hoof, but a wheel of Eldon cheese. It it true what the scholars say, to go mad is not like watching yourself spiral into insanity, but rather, it is like watching the world spiral around you. Rainbow Dash could not trust reality.
It was midst all all this thinking about reality and cheese and doors that Rainbow Dash had a revelation. If reality was not as it seemed, then what was to say her perception of the padded room was not right either? She focused on this revelation and shut her eyes tightly, and when she opened them, lo and behold, before her was the door of the cell, right where it had been all along. She closed her eyes once more and when she opened them, the door was no longer a door, but a giant chocolate bar, like from the beginning of Shrek 2. This was totally random and unintentional, but it didn't matter, because in the next instant the door fell over upon the floor and shattered into thousands upon thousands of Skittles, and somewhere a ghost could be heard, muttering, "Taste teh rainbow.
"You, know, I think being insane might not be so bad," Rainbow remarked to her friend.
"Yes," he said, "I would like fries with that."
The pony stepped out of the cell and into the corridor of the asylum, a veritable garden of all manners of nonsense, buffoonery, and antidisestablishmentarianism. Suddenly, and alarm began to blare on the wall above her. Ne-ow! Ne-ow! Ne-ow! Went the alarm, which kind of sounded like a robot cat with peanut butter stuck to the roof of it's mouth. That was Rainbow's signal to run; If she were ever to taste freedom, this would be her only opportunity.
"Attempted escapee on Level Two!" cried a physician as he rounded a corner, followed by a couple of nurses and for some reason Michael Bay.	
Rainbow turned tail and flew down the hall, unsure of what was real and what was not. Some things she was sure weren't real, like the Thanksgiving dinners which stood to block her path; those she passed right through like a ghost. There were things on the other end of the spectrum as well, which Rainbow Dash knew were obviously real, like the wheelchairs and stretches that dotted the hall. They were a part of the asylum and if Rainbow crossed paths with one, she was sure to be slowed down. What was really scary was the collection of things that Rainbow Dash was unsure of whether they were real or not. For instance, she didn't know if Michael Bay and the explosions her started with his mind were real, but she didn't want to find out.
When Rainbow had made it to the end of the corridor, she was faced with a choice. The sign on the left hall read Emergency Exit, and the sign on the right read Free Ice Cream. The pursuit was hot on Dash's tail, so she forgot which path she chose, but soon she found herself once again barreling down a long straightaway, trying her best to evade capture.
Almost ten minute into the chase, Rainbow Dash was nearly exhausted, and her pursuers had nearly caught up to her, and they were still rather energized, seeing as there was an endless supply of doctors and nurses to take the place of their exhausted colleagues, and Michael Bay was getting a ride from Optimus Prime. Knees weak, and muscles aching, Rainbow Dash had no choice but to collapse on the ground, stumbling over herself as she rolled to the floor. Just as her vision went black, she saw that the pursuing part was now almost upon her, and there was nothing she could stop them. Her sight faded, her mind went numb, and the last thing she remembered was a copy of Photocopier for Dummies floating around her head.
An indiscernible amount of time passed, after which point, Rainbow Dash blinked her eyes open. She had been dumped in a large leather sitting chair, in what appeared to be a dimly lit office of some sort. To one side, a fireplace burned, and to the other, a gramophone played some quiet easy-listening music, something out of the 50s era. In front of Rainbow sat a polished wooden desk, and behind it lay a swiveling desk chair, facing the wall.
"I see you're awake," said a voice behind the chair.
It spun around (quite anticlimactically) to reveal the pony sitting in it. He wore a white lab coat, and his own coat was a dark lavender, with a his mane a silvery gray. Whether this was natural or part of his ageing process could not be discerned. That being said, he was most definitely old, a gray beard adorned his chin, deep rings hung under his eyes, and the end of his horn seemed to be weathered by time.
"H-how did I get here?" Rainbow asked the doctor.
"I'm not quite sure," he replied, "But that's an odd thing about mental illness; We're actually still trying to figure out how you escaped your cell. In any case, while you were out, I had a chance to look you over and I've got some good news."
"What is it?"
"You're not insane. You just have brain diabetes."
Rainbow was stunned. Brain diabetes! It was Twilight's idea that Dash buy Skull Candy headphones and now look, her skull can't even control it's blood sugar! Next time, she's gonna get Beats by Dr. Dre, like she should've all along.
"So, what happens now?" she asked the doctor.
"Well, seeing as you broke our door, and how we've already sold most of your possessions on Ebay, we might as well let you go home. I can cure your diabetes right here." His horn shone bright and there was a glorious flash of light, followed by a darkness that overcame all of Rainbow Dash's vision.
When she awoke once more, Rainbow found herself at home and in bed. At first she thought that everything that happened might have been just a dream, but then she noticed something in the shadows at the far side of the room. It was a throne, and not just any throne, but a throne made of Dell computers, and of course, Discord was there. He stood up and clapped his claw against his hoof in applause.
"Spectacular show," he said, wrenching a monitor from atop his throne and carrying it over to the pony's bedside. "Six hundred and eighty-four days is a new record. Let's see how long it takes your friends."
With that, he clicked the monitor on, and it depicted five more padded rooms, with five insane ponies who thought they were oranges. Rainbow Dash didn't even care, she was just happy to be awoken from her nightmare. Or at least, she thought she was, for at that moment when she thought that thought, Leonardo DiCaprio stepped into the room and spun a top on the bedside table; They all watched it turn round and round, waiting to see if it would topple over.