The Rainbow in The Grime

by Glitternight

Chapter 2- A Detroit Welcome

Chapter 2

The buildings seemed to scratch the very clouds, their height intimidating and gray. But then again, the whole city seemed gray. Gray clouds and gray sidewalks and gray buildings and gray pavement. Even the air itself seemed to take on a dingy haze. Everything sounded so mechanical and angry.

Rainbow stared at the obscenities written in colorful lines on the wall across the dumpster she had awoken in. There were words she would rarely hear in Ponyville, some she had never heard at all. The smell of apple blossoms and the summer's night at Sweet Apple Acres was replaced with the sour, bitter stench of gasoline, garbage, and smoke that rose from whatever those sticks were in the odd creatures' hands.

Rainbow saw them everywhere: in capsules of metal on wheels zooming down the dark pavement; strolling near the buildings on the sidewalk. Rainbow Dash stared in awe, wondering how they managed to prance around on only their hind legs, wondering if it hurt their hooves to walk like that. Her eyes were fixed at the ones sitting closest on a bench at the mouth of the alley, sitting with their hands and eyes fixated on small rectangular handheld objects, each with an array of buttons and lit screens. She watched them, bewildered, unable to see just what was so special about these items or their small-worded screens. But everyone and their mother seemed to have one in their hands or pockets, with long black stringy wires hanging from the item to their-- were those ears?

Rainbow stifled a laugh at the sight of them. The floppy flaps of skin hung of the sides off their faces in a dopey fashion. She couldn't tell if they were aliens or some kind of weird animals. They were all so many different shades of brown—some so dark they appeared to take on a purplish haze, and some so light they nearly glowed; and many, many in-between. Their manes were all different colors from short and yellow to long and black, some brown, some red, even one with green. Their front hooves all appeared disfigured and split into five different pieces with stubby rounded claws—she wondered if they were detachable—and their back hooves were concealed in leather and rubber casings. They all appeared to have so many emotions, some of them laughing into their rectangular devices, some just staring at walls.

Had she awaken in a different planet, or perhaps even a different universe? An entire world of questions opened before her, and the answers were so close she could taste them, right outside the walls of her stinky dumpster. She didn't know why she was here, or how, or even where “here” was.

But she was ready.

So she pushed herself up on her front hooves, over the clanking metal walls, took her first big breath of this new world adventure, and plopped head over tail over the side and on the hard rocky ground.

“Well that hurt,” she muttered, rubbing her forehead. Perhaps it would be smarter if I stayed where these things can't see me. I wouldn't want to scare anyone. She couldn't see anypony else around, so she decided it best to just assume that they had no one like her.

Somehow, that wasn't scary at all, being completely alone. The solitude wasn’t intimidating. In fact, it was liberating, empowering. No pony to make sure she was okay, to keep an eye on her. And no pony for her to keep an eye on. She felt a blood rushing thrill she hadn’t felt in so long; in too long.

She broke off into a bullet’s run, her legs pounding the ground with a thundering clippety-clop. Her front hooves slammed the floor one last time before leaping into the odorous air, her lungs filling. This wasn’t like the night before (or whenever it was she had last been in the apple orchard). This time, she was happy, she was confident, and she knew that wherever she was heading, she would arrive alone and strong. She swooped over the creatures at the bench, all of them too engrossed in their handheld devices to notice the cyan pony dash inches above their misshapen heads. Only a small one, just a filly (if you could call it that) stared up in awe and wonder, tugging on her mother’s sleeve gently. But by the time the mother looked up from her purse, Rainbow was long gone in a dash of color.

There was no feeling to compare to soaring above a world, whether it be Equestria, or some place completely new. The wind pushed and pulled gently on Rainbow’s mane, as she zoomed higher, higher, higher than even the tallest cloud-poking buildings. The air was warm and humid as she rose to the sun, but she didn’t care—she was free. She relished the sticky warmth that carried her open wings.

The new world was completely open before her, the labyrinth of alleyways and roads snaking through the hedge-like buildings and skyscrapers and complexes. The sunlight glimmered against the thousands of windows, and the higher she got, the smaller she felt, as the vast world unfurled before her, crawling on with buildings and streets for miles and miles to the horizon’s end. And those things, or animals, or monsters, or whatever the hay they were—they were everywhere she looked. Hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of them concentrated into one area. Some places had buildings as tall as mountains, some short as trees, and some places were just empty concrete spaces with those metal capsules organized in yellow painted grids.

She was fascinated with the size of it all; it was all so much, too much, too real. And she loved it. She flew farther and farther, but could still see no end to the path of skyscrapers before her, running on the floor like loose vines.

The farther she flew, however, the more intense a raw bitter stench grew. She couldn’t tell that it was coming from the factory so close, and that the smoke was everywhere. Her vision was gradually being more and more clouded with grey dust and the smell made it hard for her to think. Her head was hurting, pounding, and she started to get lightheaded. She had never experienced anything like this. Even when she had come to smoke, she could usually beat it away with her wings, but this… this was too much. The odor hurt her lungs, started to burn, and the last thing she felt before the blackness overtook her and she plummeted down was a pain in her head and limbs as she succumbed to a coughing fit.

Rainbow Dash awoke with a stinging pain in her left wing, one that seemed to pulsate. The base of the wing was swollen, and the pressure of the muscle against the cracked bone was too much for her. She started to literally shake, the agony overwhelming. She couldn’t move, at least not in a way that didn’t send a shocking pain through her entire body, from the tip of her head to the base of her hooves.

“Is it a robot?” She could barely make the wheezing voice over the pounding in her head and the pulses of raw pain.

“No, man. It’s breathing!” A nasally voice responded, and a scent unknown to her, the nauseating scent of marijuana hit her nose like a ton of bricks.

She opened her eyes barely, her head swimming. She saw a tall figure, one of the creatures from earlier pick a stick off the alley floor and walk closer. With a burning pain, it poked her wing, and the pain made her moan as tears filled her rosy eyes.

At the noise that left her mouth, one figure jumped, but Rainbow managed to make out the one holding the stick start to smile with her foggy swimming vision. He poked at her again, and as she started shaking with sobs, he chuckled to himself.

“St-stop…. Please…” she managed to croak the words out. Her lungs and throat still itched and burned with the ashes from the factory smoke.

The thing’s eyes opened wide at the words. “Hey, hey Jerry. Get over here.”

“What is it?” The one called Jerry started sulking back, his eyes blue and a little sad.

“I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to, but it fucking talks.” The one with a stick smiled wide, his canines glaring in the afternoon sun.

They were sheltered from view in another alley, privacy fence on one side and an apartment complex on the other. She was on the floor, gasping for breath through the overbearing pain, trapped with these monsters, one of which seemed incredibly amused with her agony.

It poked her again, this time right at the base of the wing, and she screamed a little. She struggled to get up through the devastation to her back, every movement like a needle to her spine. She wobbled on her front hooves, and just as she was about to unbend her hind legs, the monster kicked her down, and she fell face-first to the floor.

“Aww, it’s trying to get up.” The thing laughed at her, at her pain and kicked her again, a welt already rising on her belly. “Come on Jerry, this is fun.”

Tears rolled down her face. Normally, she would make them suffer; she would kick them and make them regret the day they even thought about messing with Rainbow Dash. But she could barely move. “Stop it! Stop!” She shouted as it kicked her harder, her legs barely able to twitch through the excruciating suffering.

“Steve, com on. Let’s stop.” The blue eyed thing, Jerry or whatever its name was, looked at her with pity in its eyes. Rainbow didn’t handle pity well. It left her pride more bruised than her stomach. She would have rather he kicked her too. “I think that’s enough.”

“Shut up, Jerry.” He kicked her in the face and she felt a deafening crack burst down her nose, tasted the coppery blood mix with the ash on the back of her throat.

“Steve, we got to go. Now. You’re dad’s gonna kill us if we’re late. Let’s go.”

Steve looked at Rainbow and kicked her one last time in the gut, a smile spreading to his cheeks. “Fine… I’ll stop if you want to be such a pussy about it…. But man, we must be trippin’ out hard. Look at this thing. I mean, it’s like that freaking kid’s show my baby cousin watches. The one with ponies and shit.” He laughed and started walking away. “Man, I don’t know what was in that bud, but let’s go before we start seeing Bugs Bunny.”

He walked away, laughing to himself as he exited out the alleyway.

Jerry stared at Rainbow, his blue eyes full of tears, as a sudden recognition overtook him. “How did you get here?” he whispered.

He approached her slowly, his breath held and his pulse racing. He knew who it was, recognized the magenta eyes and rainbow pallet of long spiking hair. “Rain—”

“Jerry get your ass over here! Didn’t you say we had to go home?”

Jerry heard the call and followed, his head bowed, wiping his tears as he left Rainbow Dash scared, shaking, and in pain in the darkening alley.

Comments

[Pegasister1209]

Bucking Steve!!!! Us bronies and pegasisters are gonna hunt you down and bucking KILL YOU!!!! WHO'S WITH ME???!!!!
Also: Jerry better be a brony and go back and help her.

[Glitternight]

1153389 lol i dont want to give anything away, but i promise u, things get better for our rainbow friend.

[Genesis1212]

o.0 welcome to life in the unknown big city (sighs) damn it steve well she was bound to meet the minority jackasses :/ next chap! :3