//------------------------------// // Chapter 9 // Story: Millennium Wake: Part 1 // by Chaotic Dreams //------------------------------// Chapter 9 ‘You’re telepathic too?!’ Rarity mentally screeched. ‘But you’re not even a unicorn!’ Surprise said nothing, still ogling at all the colors of the carriage. “Surprise?” Rarity asked aloud. “Yes, Marshmallow?” Surprise turned her head to give a lopsided smile to her favorite confection. “You’re telepathic?” Rarity repeated. “But how?” “Tele-what now?” The white pegasus tilted her head to the side. “Oh, never mind,” Rarity sighed. “How long until we get there?” “Should be as soon as the promotional material is over,” Daybreak answered blankly. “What?” Rarity asked, one of her eyebrows raised. “Ooh, an in-flight movie!” Surprise giggled, her hooves pressed together in front of her toothy grin. “Pass the popcorn!” “What are you all talking—” Rarity abruptly halted herself when the wall in front of the group suddenly began to change colors. The lights shifted and rearranged, forming images and words. It was just like the neon advertisements in New Canterlot, but these pictures were moving. And then, all of a sudden, there was sound! It seemed to come from all directions, though Rarity could see no discernible source. “Welcome, friends, to your very own Rainbow Industries complimentary sky carriage!” a cheery stallion’s voice boomed. Rarity noted that it was different from the voice of the pegasus pulling the carriage. Where was it coming from? Even magically recorded voices needed a source, but she didn’t see a broadcasting device anywhere. “While we wait for the sky carriage to reach its destination, why don’t we take a look at all the wonderful things Rainbow Industries has to offer, as demonstrated by our very own President Rainbow Dash?” The picture on the screen was a rotating, three-dimensional model of Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark. Circling what was undoubtedly the company symbol was its slogan: “Making the world 20% cooler in ten seconds flat!” Now, though, the image changed to show an all-too-familiar rainbow-maned pony wearing that very same company logo as a cutie mark. “Hiya, friends!” the Rainbow Dash on the screen greeted, waving a hoof at the audience with a chipper grin. She sat behind a desk made of densely constructed cloud in a room made of a similar material. Rarity suppressed a shiver. No matter how she moved, Rainbow’s eyes seemed to remain deadlocked on her. “Hi!” Surprise called back, waving enthusiastically. “Here at Rainbow Industries, we produce only the finest of rainbow technology,” Rainbow Dash began. Or was it really Rainbow Dash? Since this was only the image of her, who knew if it was just another imprint? Or maybe this really was a recording from centuries ago, only—unlike the Disks—this one had been allowed to be viewed by the public. “But what is rainbow technology, you ask? “As you probably know, after my days as a weathermare in Ponyville, I became captain of the Wonderbolts, the finest flying team in Equestria!” gushed the president of the company. “I enjoyed many years of living my dream by providing awesomeness to thousands, but did the ride stop there? Oh, no!” She rose and walked proudly to a nearby doorway, flinging it open to reveal a vast expanse of blue sky. “According to my egghead friend Twilight, whom I’m sure you all know as the founder of Sparkle Technologies, flying wasn’t the only thing I was good at. Observe…” She coiled her limbs and launched herself out into the open air, snapping her wings out and tilting into a sharp dive. “Every pegasus has a trail,” Rainbow yelled to the audience over the roar of the wind as she pulled into a level glide. “A trail is the signature wind stream left behind by a pegasus when they fly at high speeds. Mine, as you can see, is a totally radical rainbow!” As Rainbow flapped her wings and gained speed, the rainbow trail extended and became more opaque, shining in the light behind her. “Like every other pegasus, I thought that my trail was just my trail, awesome to look at but not really useful,” Rainbow said as her wake left a multicolored band of light in the sky. “But as it turns out, Twilight discovered that my trail could actually be used for something. With a little magical tampering, we developed this pretty little rainbow into some hardcore rainbow technology!” Rainbow Dash continued to accelerate at a tremendous rate, before suddenly reaching the climax of her flight. With a thunderous roar, a familiar ring of multicolored light and fire danced across the sky. But she wasn’t done yet. Using her doubled speed from the sonic breakthrough, she whipped around and began to circle her own rainboom. The blast of light began to collapse in on itself as its creator generated a gargantuan whirlwind. The rainboom residue was quickly corralled into a tight ball of rapidly flashing color, which Rainbow approached and bucked. Turning to follow the ball of blaring light, Rainbow circled it rapidly to retain its shape. She pulled away just before it barreled into a large funnel made of clouds and was sucked out of sight. “As you can see, though my rainbow trail is the main source of rainbow technology, we can make expo… exponent… a lot more rainbow tech with a sonic rainboom,” Dash explained, hovering in place with her face scrunched as she stumbled over a complex word. “Though the highest grade of rainbow tech comes from yours truly, we can also make it out of any rainbows we find. Just add a little unicorn magic, and…” Rainbow landed on a bank of clouds next to the mass of stratocumulus that had devoured her rainboom. The cloud funnel apparently led to a large machine made entirely out of clouds, maintained by several unicorns and pegasi. The unicorns sent streams of magic into specific locations on the device, while pegasi carefully turned cloud knobs and levers. The unicorns wore strange devices on their hooves—apparently they were the “hover-horseshoes” that the pilot had spoken of. At the end of the machine, Rainbow Dash gestured at an assembly line jutting out of the device. Carried by the conveyor belt were the strangest machines that Rarity had ever seen. They were just like the sky carriage in how they seemed to be made out of segmented multicolored light, but these structures were in decidedly unfamiliar shapes. “… Voila! You get rainbow technology!” the appropriately-named pegasus concluded. “Much of rainbow technology is used in the construction of pegasus cities as well as military constructs, the latter of which we’ll be demonstrating today. For example, if the military should ever need to engage in combat with a hostile force, they can just use our patented Rainbow Industries weapons harness to blow the enemy away!” Rainbow picked up one of the light constructs and slipped it on. The device was much bulkier, larger, and obviously brighter than the teleharness. The way Rainbow moved, though, suggested that the weapons harness didn’t weigh anything at all. And why would it? It was made of light, after all. “Vice President Scootaloo!” Rainbow Dash called to somepony off-screen. That solved it, then. Rarity knew this had to be a recording of the real Rainbow Dash if the familiar orange coat and purple mane of the pegasus that now appeared onscreen were anything to go by. Unless Twilight had made an imprint of Rainbow’s tag-along fanfilly as well? It made sense that the real Scootaloo would’ve followed Rainbow Dash to this new company, but did that mean she would have been important enough to make an imprint of? “Please bring forward the ‘volunteer!’” The now much-older Vice President saluted wordlessly and slipped off-screen again for a few seconds. When she came back, she was dragging a very furious-looking pegasus in a straitjacket. “What in the world?” Rarity whispered to herself. “Oh, no, tell me this isn’t going where I think it is!” “This here is inmate #83750 of the Cloudsdale Correctional Facility, so don’t feel sorry for him, folks!” Rainbow explained, gripping her weapon harness as it began to glare and hum. “You all may remember him as one of the masterminds behind the infamous Fillydelphia Fire. That being said, I think his punishment is only fitting, don’t you?” Rarity couldn’t bear to watch, but at the same time found herself unable to tear her eyes away from the screen. “Hey Scoots,” Rainbow called over the growing hum of her weapon harness. “Rip off the bucker’s mask, would ya? I want to hear what his final words as the Mach 8 rips him a new one.” “Sure thing, boss!” Scootaloo chimed, zooming over to remove the rather intimidating restraining muzzle on the winged stallion’s face. The young orange mare dashed away again just as quickly, nervously glancing over her shoulder at the pony she’d just unmasked. “Any last—” Rainbow tried to say as the weapon harness reached the apex of its charge. “You’re all going to die!” the restrained pegasus roared. Were those flecks of foam flinging from his mouth? “The Seekers shall uncover the truth, and all nonbelievers shall perish beneath the void of nothing when we break through to the true world!” “Alright, crazy!” Rainbow yelled over the stallion’s ramblings, pointing the weapon at him. “I asked for your last words; I didn’t ask you to write a book!” “You shall all—” the stallion tried to rant. “FIRE!” Rainbow yelled with a satisfied grin. The weapon harness, which was now glowing so brightly that it was painful to look at, erupted in a barrage of light. Prongs of light that had been sticking out in front of the harness blasted streaks of colored lightning at the screaming victim, digging into his flesh. The pegasus’ body seemed to bloat impossibly for a moment before exploding outwards in a burst of blood, sickly discolored by the beams of multicolored light. “Success!” Rainbow laughed victoriously as the light cleared and the blood sizzled into reddish steam from the zap. “Another bulls-eye, boss!” Scootaloo cheered. “That’s right, folks!” Rainbow announced, turning back to face the audience. “For a tiny fee, you too can wield the awesome firepower of Equestria’s military and defend yourself and your family from anything that would do them harm! Remember, we don’t want another Fillydelphia Fire on our hooves, so be prepared to face any threat!” The screen winked back to its display of the rotating lightning-bolt logo. The male voice from earlier shot into a rapid-fire listing of corporate minutia that was far too fast for Rarity to comprehend. And, with another flash of light, the wall had returned to its single color. “That guy at the end should’ve talked faster,” Surprise mused as she reached into a red-and-white striped bag for another hooffull of popcorn. Rarity could feel acidic bile rising in her throat at the grotesque fate of the criminal stallion, but swallowed it before it could complete its journey, shuddering at the awful sensation. “What the… what in Equestria—I mean The ULE—was THAT?!” she stammered. “I mean… how… why…?! “Want some popcorn?” Surprise asked, her eyes gleaming with innocence. “And where did you get popcorn?!” Rarity shouted, flicking a hoof at the smiling pegasus. “Didn’t you get any when the airline stewardess came around with the trolley?” Surprise giggled. Rarity tried to say something else, but the words just wouldn’t come. The incredulity of it all was overwhelming. Surprise she could almost understand. Rarity had been stuck with her long enough to expect the unexpected with this new yet frighteningly familiar (if a whole lot crazier) pony, but Rainbow Dash?! Rarity had known the cyan pegasus practically her whole life! How could she have just… why did she… and to a pony who hadn’t even had a chance to defend himself!? So what if he was an arsonist—what could he have done to make one of Rarity’s best friends in the world do THAT?! “I see the treatment of Rainbow Dash’s ‘volunteer’ has upset you,” Daybreak remarked coolly. Was that a hint of gruffness Rarity detected in the robotic pony’s voice, or was it just her imagination? “It upset me as well.” “So I’m not the only one whose brain feels like it was just abused?” Rarity inquired, still finding it hard to think at all after what she had just witnessed. “Not at all,” Daybreak assured her. “I can’t believe they went so easy on such a monster.” “WHAT?!” Rarity screamed. “Oh, forgive me, I forgot,” Daybreak elaborated. Wait, forgot? How could a robot forget? “The Fillydelphia Fire happened after you fell asleep. That’s one thing you should be glad you missed. Trust me when I warn you not to go looking into what happened there. If you knew the truth, you’d think your friend was being easy on that miserable excuse for a pony as well.” Rarity shivered, unable to do anything else. “Anyway, it looks like we’ve arrived,” Daybreak announced, turning to look out the window. “Great-auntie, welcome to Cloudsdale.” A smile broke out on Rarity’s face as she rushed to the window. Sticking her head out against the buffeting wind and for once not caring what it would do to her mane, she scanned the sky for any sign of what she hoped would be a familiar location. The Everfree Forest had been the same as ever after she awoke, but that wasn’t exactly a good thing. Cloudsdale, though… Well, it would just be nice to see a city that hadn’t been ruined and then built over. “Surely the pegasi will have kept Cloudsdale the same,” she muttered to herself. “They’ve held onto that timeless classical style for millennia, so why would they change a look that works…? Wait, uh, Daybreak, darling? Where IS Cloudsdale?” Rarity’s eyes darted across the horizons, but they were met with nothing but empty sky save a rumbling cluster of towering thunderheads in the distance. That they seemed to be heading toward. No… no, that couldn’t be— “It’s right in front of us,” Daybreak informed her, looking out the window on the other side of the carriage. Surely there HAD to be a mistake here. Daybreak must be getting back at her for that thought, yeah, that MUST be it… “But all I see is a pack of storm clouds,” Rarity gulped, praying she would be granted at least one location in this frightening new era that had retained even the slightest bit of familiarity and normalcy. She wasn’t. “Where’s Cloudsdale?” “That IS Cloudsdale, Marshy!” Surprise piped up, nearly knocking Rarity out of the window as she leapt over the white unicorn’s head and took wing. “No, no that can’t be…” Rarity whispered desperately to herself. “When did such a beautiful city like Cloudsdale become that dark mess?!” “It became like that when they built Rainbow Industries,” Daybreak explained. Was that a hint of grim satisfaction in her voice? Rarity scolded herself for continuing to think the android would hold a grudge over something so simple as a slipped thought. But robot-ponies didn’t think like living ponies did, right? So maybe there really was a grudge… Ugh, all this paranoia was making her head hurt. How had Twilight managed it all? “Yes indeed!” the pegasus flying the sky carriage called back. “All the factory smoke made storm clouds, which some folk say ruined the beauty of Cloudsdale. Those ponies must have never seen real beauty! Now we have rainbow tech to beautify our fair city as much as we want!” And it was true. As Rarity looked on to the growing dark blotch in the sky, she could spy shimmering points of light that grew into structures constructed out of light just as the sky carriage was. Bridges made of the stuff spanned the midnight towers while ridiculously huge billboards with moving pictures like the sky carriage’s advertisement showed off all kinds of products tailored to the city’s predominant population. But what surprised Rarity most of all was that pegasi weren’t the ONLY population that Cloudsdale seemed to sport. As the carriage flew under and over crisscrossing bridges and around the airborne behemoths made of thick water vapor, the unicorn began to spy her own kind. Pegasi were flying everywhere in lines of surprisingly regular traffic, save the occasional pegasus that flew every which way, but everywhere Rarity looked she could see at least one pony with a horn. “What are those unicorns doing here?” Rarity inquired. “Rainbow technology takes magic to make, remember?” the pilot pegasus called back. “Lots of unicorns live up here now to keep the factory running. We pegasi make the rainbows and the unicorns turn the rainbows into rainbow tech.” “And they can all walk on clouds because of those hover-horseshoes?” “The horseshoes are cast with a stronger version of the enchantment the original Twilight used to allow your friends to walk on clouds in your own time,” Daybreak explained. Rarity gave her a funny look. “What? The original Twilight told Mother and I all of your old adventures.” “But I don’t have any hover-horseshoes,” Rarity remarked. “Maybe I should just stay on the parts of Cloudsdale that are made of rainbows.” “I’m pretty sure you do have a set,” Daybreak intoned with a wry smile. “Pinkie Pie’s Party Supplies makes the things. Take a look; Pinkie’s imprint undoubtedly put some in your bag.” Rarity gulped as she complied, taking off her saddlebags and opening the flap to the larger-on-the-inside interior. Horseshoes hadn’t been among the things she had thrown out and left by the side of the road on the way to New Canterlot, had they? The white unicorn sighed with relief at seeing a bag of four garishly pink horseshoes in a plastic bag marked with the familiar party pony’s cutie mark. She quickly put them on as the sky carriage gave a jolt and sunk a little. They were surprisingly easy to apply; they simply stuck onto one’s hooves like strong magnets. “We have arrived at our destination,” the unhitched pilot pegasus announced as he opened the carriage door. “Welcome to Rainbow Industries!” Rarity tentatively stepped out onto the dark cloud below while Daybreak applied to herself a spell similar to that of the horseshoes. Surprise alighted next to the white unicorn as her hooves touched the soft, spongy fluffiness. Electricity crackled and tiny peals of what might have been thunder if they were a hundred times louder rumbled with each step. Rarity released a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Thank goodness, the horseshoes worked. Of course they did. Rarity had yet to come across a Pinkie Pie’s Party Supplies product that hadn’t worked. But after her fall in what she was beginning to think of as Old Cloudsdale during The Best Young Fliers’ Competition, Rarity did have to admit she had acquired more than a small fear of heights. After Rarity was certain that her hooves wouldn’t fall through the soft, shifting pillows beneath her, she looked up. And her jaw dropped, a tear coming to her eye. If the skywhales’ song had been the cry and laugh of the dance of the universe, then this was what the dance of the universe looked like. Rainbow Industries was not some warped patch of unreality as was Pinkie’s company, nor was it a hulking mess of robotics as was Twilight’s. No, Rainbow Dash’s appropriately named corporation was made of neither metal nor concrete. It didn’t even have the slightest smidgeon of storm cloud in its construction like the majority of Cloudsdale did. Rainbow Industries was a wondrous explosion of light, bursting forth in infinite myriad armies of color waging war on the blank and the drab. Pictures swirled into focus and then burst into new lines of light that circled the buildings of the complex before shooting skyward and exploding as light shows that would have left fireworks jealous. Towers made of rainbow twisted around each other before diving back down to become rollercoasters melting into rivers of shimmering brilliance, scintillating in the flashes of lightning arcing between the thundercloud buildings of Cloudsdale all around. The lights forming the grand door to Rainbow Industries, each bearing half of the company logo, glowed all the brighter when Rarity was finally able to tear her gaze away from the rest of the palatial factory. The cyan pegasus’ cutie mark shifted and changed into a picture of the unmistakable face of the pony who had once proudly bore it. “Hiya, Rarity!” Rainbow Dash’s apparent imprint greeted. “Welcome to the most awesome place in the world!” “The most awesome place in the world?” Rarity breathed. “I’d say it’s the most awesome place in the universe!” “I’ll have to remember that,” the multicolored shade laughed. “I’ll put that as the tagline on my next shipment to the military. I can see it now: ‘Rainbow Industries brand rainbow technology. Made at the most awesome place in the universe! Rarity approved!’ But anyway, if you think the outside is something, you should see the inside! Why don’t we step into my—” “GREAT-AUNTIE RARITY IS HERE?!” The face of Rainbow Dash’s imprint was suddenly split in half as a dash of electrified light came zapping out of the factory… and crashed right into Rarity. The white unicorn was sent into a furious tumble that only ended when the bolt of light had smacked her into the sky carriage, knocking the wind out of her. “OHMIGOSH I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS AND THINGS TO TELL YOU AND—” the living laser blurted with more excitement than Rarity would have thought possible even with an extra-large dose of ‘sugar rush.’ “Hey!” Surprise cut in. “Get off of her! That’s my Marshmallow! Go find your own!” ‘Somehow, the word ‘ruffian’ just isn’t enough in this situation,’ Rarity thought as she wheezed for air, struggling to inflate her empty lungs under the pressure of the explosion of color jumping up and down on her. “I SAID GET OFF MARSHY!” Surprise yelled, zooming into a flying tackle that knocked the polychromatic wisp off of the white unicorn. “I WILL NOT SHARE MY FAVORITE CONFECTION!” “Alright, I believe that’s more than enough!” Daybreak shouted, stamping a hoof as her horn ignited. The familiar burning orange glow encircled Surprise and what Rarity could finally see was another pegasus and pulled the two apart. Though, it was by far the strangest pegasus Rarity had ever seen. For starters, at first glance, Rarity had thought it was another robot. The pegasus’ forelegs and upper torso were encased in a black suit of armor that was so interlaced with magical circuitry it appeared almost mechanical. Most of the rest of her was decidedly organic, thankfully. Rarity couldn’t see any metallic gleam on the exposed sky-blue coat of this pony, like what she could see all over Daybreak, and what’s more, those eyes were very definitely alive. But the strangeness far from stopped at the pony’s almost robotic appearance. Those very same eyes that left no uncertainty about whether or not this pegasus was alive were also the biggest shock about her. They were Rainbow Dash’s eyes, complete with magenta irises and short, straight eyelashes. “Rainbow D-?” Rarity began to say, but cut herself short. Even if the eyes and blue coat were identical in every way to Rarity’s long-gone friend, the rest of the pony screamed of the alien and the all-too-familiar strangeness of this new era. If not for the pony’s wings, mane, and tail, the white unicorn almost could have mistaken the pegasus for a clone of the fastest flier in Equestrian history. Even a clone of Rainbow Dash, though, would never have allowed her wings to be encased in, or—dare she think it—REPLACED by the bizarre machinery gently humming with magical energy off to either side of her torso. The things jutting out from the pegasus’ mechanical armor weren’t so much wings as they were wing-shaped supportive rockets, keeping the pony aloft with soft rainbow light even after Daybreak released the pegasus from her telekinetic grip. The mane and tail were other stories altogether. They actually looked like they were made of the same kind of rainbow light composing the sky carriage and Rainbow Industries. The pseudo-hair softly undulated before sparking into furious crackles of color and back, as if the two behaviors were warring. “What… what are you?” Rarity asked, before she caught herself. “Oh! I’m so sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but… what exactly are you?” “She’s not a cyborg, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Rainbow Dash’s imprint smiled as the doors slammed closed again to reveal her glowing face. Then, seeing Rarity’s blank look, it added “She’s not part machine.” Rarity shuddered, a horrific memory rushing back to her. She had almost become that very thing at the hooves of Twilight's imprint at Sparkle Industries. “Then what is she?” “I’m Firefly!” the newcomer announced proudly, zooming into the air and puffing out her chest. “The most awesome pony since Rainbow Dash!” “She’s the future captain of The Wonderbolts,” the eponymous imprint added. “Rainbow Industries is their number one sponsor. Every Wonderbolt captain since I was on the team has come from this company, and Firefly’s the most promising candidate I’ve ever trained.” “So she’s your—I mean, the real Rainbow Dash’s—descendant?” Rarity asked, her face lighting up. Even if this new pony was more than a little overzealous, she was a living pony who seemed to actually be sane. With Daybreak leaving soon, it would be so nice to actually be able to talk to somepony who didn’t constantly refer to her as a foodstuff. “That’s great! I can’t wait to hear all about Rainbow Dash’s family!” “She’s more than a just a descendant,” the imprint began. “And the real Rainbow Dash never had a family. But more on that later. Now, let’s all step inside, and I’ll give you the grand tour!” The imprint disappeared as the doors opened, revealing a shining lobby where pegasi and unicorns alike flew and trotted about desks made of light and fountains spewing liquid rainbows. Surprise and Daybreak trotted into the factory, Firefly zooming over to land beside Rarity to walk with her. “No offense, and forgive me for not understanding,” Rarity said, turning to face Firefly as they strolled through the factory doors. “I mean, you must know that I’m thrilled to meet you. But how can you be more than a descendant of Rainbow Dash if Rainbow Dash never had a family?” Firefly said nothing at first, her face instantly changing from one of unbridled enthusiasm to one of harried desperation. The odd pegasus leaned in close to Rarity’s ear and whispered only two words, neither of which brought any answers but opened a floodgate of new questions. “Help me.” . . .