//------------------------------// // Demons I // Story: Rainbow Dash's Unstoppable Ego // by MagicS //------------------------------// Rainbow Dash calmly walked down the curving hallway, her eyes planted ahead. It was slower than she normally moved but she was trying to gather her thoughts for her approaching confrontation with Resin. The degree at which the hallway curved and the size of the top level’s interior told her that this path was probably almost exactly a mile-long circle, she hadn’t yet traveled halfway down it but the room where the ceremonial flame was kept must be close. What was she going to say to Resin? From what she had learned from Crush and just from listening to her broadcasts it was clear the pony wasn’t in her right mind. So she’d try to do everything she could to convince her to stop making things so difficult for the ponies here and only as a last resort would she use violence. The thought of that still made her cringe inwardly, and she wondered what her friends would think about it. It was different from facing someone like Blizzard or Karkona. She didn’t want to beat up a crazy orphan. It wasn’t right. Nothing about this was as easy as Rainbow Dash wished it was. Totally evil villain? Punch them. That was her thing. This? This was a little bit tougher for her to digest and work through. Hopefully Resin would make things easy for her, or prove to not be so crazy that punching her also didn’t make her feel bad. Maybe it would turn out that she was actually just selfish and evil and Dash would figure that out while talking to her. Dare to dream. I don’t even know how she’s going to react to seeing me either. Dash thought. Something that was impossible to miss while traveling up here was the fact there were no locked doors, no guards, nothing at all keeping anyone from making it up here to the flame and Resin. There had to be some reason for why no one in the upper levels had stopped her personally then, right? Crush and his security team couldn’t respond in time to everything if Resin called them on the radio. Were they all just terrified of her? Had she crushed their hope so much they didn’t even want to try and stop her anymore? Or perhaps there was a more tangible reason that Dash didn’t know about just yet. So perhaps Resin wouldn’t even realize she was a threat or wouldn’t care about any pony who had come up to here for whatever reason. Until she made it clear that she was here to change things. Another thing she noticed as she walked further down the hallway was that the air was starting to get hot. Almost until it felt like she was standing in front of a fireplace or campfire. Or a furnace. She only had to walk a little more until she saw an opening into the interior of the mountain’s peak. It was bordered with red paint to catch the eye and had no doors to close it, just wide open for anyone to walk into. Rainbow Dash paused right by it—the heat coming out of the room was almost enough to make her sweat—and closed her eyes. Taking a deep breath she pumped herself up by lightly slapping her cheeks and opened her eyes back up, walking around the corner and into the ceremonial flame room. Now that there was nothing to directly block the heat coming from the flame the hot air practically pushed against her like a physical force. Sweat started to break out across her brow and her mane and tail became damp and matted. She was thankful she wasn’t wearing anything to make it worse. The first thing Dash noticed about the egg-domed room was the gigantic brass smokestack that took up the center of it. It shot right into the ceiling and presumably kept going until it became what Rainbow Dash had seen when she first inspected the mountain from the outside, emerging from the peak and billowing smoke. On the front side of the smokestack, the side facing her, at the bottom was a grill that allowed one to look inside and see the powerful, perpetually burning flame. Pipes that ran along the floor fed into the smokestack, feeding it the fuel it didn’t need but still misappropriated from other areas of the city so the flame could burn like a raging inferno without equal. The second thing was how incredibly clean and well taken care of every last thing in here was. It was spotless in a way that would make Rarity and Twilight proud. And the third thing was the pony sitting calmly in front of the furnace’s grill. She was wearing a polyester, khaki-colored, jacket and what looked like might’ve been a thin headband around her head. So far she hadn’t seemed to notice Rainbow Dash’s arrival. Which wasn’t surprising since she was sitting only ten feet in front of the fire and facing it, the heat washing and crackling over her must come close to burning temps. Rainbow Dash could tell she had the same orange mane and tail as Crush, and her mane was short and unkempt, but her coat at least was a prettier sort of teal color. Rainbow Dash calmly stepped forward until she was just a few pony lengths behind her and gulped. “Resin?” The mare’s ears perked up and she turned her head to face Rainbow Dash, showing a happy, friendly smile, and a single sunflower yellow eye. The other eye was covered by an eyepatch—not a headband—and the area around it showed signs of scarring from old burns. Unlike her unicorn brother she was an earth pony. “Yes?” Rainbow Dash took another steadying breath and started walking closer to her. “My name is Rainbow Dash, I come from outside your city and-” “Outside?!” Resin jumped up and ran over to Rainbow Dash in glee, grabbing her hooves and shaking them vigorously. “It’s a pleasure to meet you! Have you come all this way to bathe in the beauty, glory, and love of our flame? What do you think of the city? Isn’t it wondrous how everything exists to serve and better this glorious fire?” She pulled Dash close and hugged her, their faces awkwardly pressed side by side as Resin gestured over to the brass smokestack and made Rainbow Dash look directly into the grill. “Please, tell me what you think of the flame!” “Uhhh...” Rainbow glanced sidelong at the manic smiling earth pony as she held her closely. “It’s hot?” “Yes!” Resin nodded repeatedly. “Doesn’t its warmth just fill you up inside?” “Yeah it’s certainly doing that,” Dash felt it was best to go along with her for now. “Wonderful!” Resin stopped hugging her but grabbed her by the hooves again, spinning Rainbow Dash around joyfully. “You can’t believe how excited I am that someone from outside can appreciate it too! It’s been ages since even any of the ponies here have come up to personally bask in the flame’s warmth and feel its love!” She stopped spinning Dash around but pushed her face right up close to Dash’s. “Please, do you have any questions? Is there anything else you would like to know about the flame?” Rainbow Dash finally pulled her hooves away from Resin and stepped back a bit. “Actually I have some questions and things I want to talk about concerning you.” “Me?” Resin pointed to herself, tilting her head. “But I don’t matter at all, the flame should be the only thing that interests you.” Her callous way of referring to herself put Rainbow Dash off-guard. Dash’s eyes searched about as she gave a lopsided grin to Resin. “Uhh, well… I’m still curious. We can talk about the flame too it’s just-” “Great! Well I’m happy to tell you everything you want to know!” She put a hoof over Dash’s shoulder and started walking them both out of the ceremonial flame room. “Please come to my office and we can speak together about anything you wanted to.” Resin led them directly to her control room also on the top level of the city but directly opposite to where you entered to get into the flame room. Also unlike the flame room which took up the interior of the mountain’s peak the control room opened up to the exterior. Rainbow Dash guessed that beyond the far wall there was nothing more than maybe a foot of material before you reached open air. Filling up the room was all sorts of panels and computer stations overflowing with buttons, switches, dials, screens, lights, and all manner of things Rainbow Dash had no ability to grasp. Along the walls were several metal doors that must’ve led into some other auxiliary rooms of the control center. While right in the middle of the floor was a raggedy mattress and sheet. It seemed Resin lived right here. “So what’s the first thing you’d like to talk about?” Resin said with a cheerful smile on her face. Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her head, the mare’s attitude was very off-putting. “I guess… how come you’re so obsessed with the flame in the first place?” Resin shut her eye and hummed. “Mmm, that goes back a long ways. I had nothing, so lost, so cold and alone.” She opened up her eye and looked deeply at Rainbow Dash, an expression of pure bliss on her face. “I found my way to the flame and I remember sitting there, watching it, resting before it.” She hugged her body and gently rocked herself. “It was so warm, it hugged and filled my body with love like I had never felt before. It gave me everything.” She smiled sadly at the ground. “They forced me to leave it, but I remembered it always. The flame was always burning inside me. I knew what I had to do then; give it everything back in return. The flame itself is love and life and deserves to have everything we can give it.” “So that’s why you’ve forced everyone to live like this? And why you’ve taken all extra power and resources and just put it into keeping that flame burning as strongly as possible?” Dash asked her. “Yes,” she eagerly nodded. Rainbow Dash sighed and dragged a hoof down her face. “And don’t you see anything wrong with that?” “What do you mean?” Resin blinked. “The flame is the only thing that matters, it deserves all the work we can do for it. It gives us all of its love, the love that you can’t feel from anything else, we have to give back to it.” “You can feel love from other things you know? Like ponies. You know your brother loves you, don’t you?” Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow at her. Resin stepped forward and grabbed Rainbow Dash’s hoof and squeezed suddenly, hard enough that it actually started to hurt. Her one remaining eye bored into Rainbow Dash’s with its pupil twitching around erratically. “That isn’t real. Ponies can’t love anything, ponies can’t make you feel anything, ponies can’t make you happy. Only the flame can do any of that.” Rainbow Dash knocked Resin’s hoof away and jumped back. “Let go of me!” The earth pony blinked and looked down at her hoof, her visage turning back to normal as she slowly started to smile again. “Ah, sorry.” “Yeah, whatever...” Dash frowned as she rubbed her hoof. “Do you even really know how much you’re making the ponies in this city suffer? Or do you really just not care at all?” “It doesn’t matter one bit!” Resin smiled. “They should be happy to give their entire lives to support the flame. Whatever any of them feels is nothing compared to the love and gratitude we need to give to the flame.” “You’re just… Crush was right, I feel worse for you than for him,” Rainbow shook her head. “I don’t see why. My life is perfect and I’ve gotten this entire city to do what I want it to. The flame now burns brighter and stronger than it ever did before, it never stops, it will never leave me alone, all the power and fuel it needs is personally supplied by me thanks to the master controls here in this very room. I reciprocate the flame’s love more than anyone ever could!” Resin cheered. “But none of this can even really last!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed. “You’re working the ponies to death down there and with all the fuel and stuff you’re burning through you’re gonna run out someday, won’t you? Like what happens when the mountain is totally tapped out and your oil dries up?” Rainbow watched as Resin seemed to actually consider it, the earth pony raising a hoof to her chin and looking up with her eye. “You don’t really need to make the flame constantly rage like this, right? Instead why don’t you divert the power and fuel and whatever back to how it normally should be, then the flame can last longer even if it wont be as strong and all the ponies in the city wont be miserable. Everyone wins!” Resin was standing there as Dash finished up her little speech, her eye was twitching and she occasionally blinked or tilted her head one way or the other. At last after a careful moment of consideration she smiled and looked back at Rainbow Dash. “You’re right! I’ve been going about this all wrong!” Resin beamed. Rainbow Dash smiled. “So you’re going to-” “There’s still far too much being wasted!” Resin clapped her hoof to her chest. “The flame deserves everything but I’ve still allowed too much excess just because the work is being done down below. Of course the flame must be kept burning, must be kept alive forever, so I have to find a way to divert even more power and resources to it. Thank you, Rainbow Dash!” “No, that’s not what-” Rainbow Dash, in her horror, tried to correct her but Resin was in full swing. “There are so many excess and unnecessary parts of this city, I’ve already blocked off some of them but others are still there and still on the mountain. So they’ll be ejected! Every non-essential structure and section will be ejected from the city!” “Ejected? What are you talking about?” Rainbow asked. Resin smiled wider. “It’s a fail-safe! All non-essential parts of the city can be cordoned off and ejected off the side of the mountain with explosive bolts. It was designed that way in case of a dangerous fire or build-up of poison gas. Now I can use it to make sure there isn’t even the chance of the power in the city being wrongfully diverted.” “But what about all the ponies in those sections?!” Resin shrugged. “They’ll be evacuated to their homes, I still need workers. The ejection needs to be done manually on site anyways so I’ll have Crush and his security team get started on it immediately.” “This is all wrong! Resin, even if you do something like this you can’t make all these ponies keep working down there, it’s too much! Already I’ve gotten them to practically revolt against you. If you don’t stop or do something like this then every pony down in those housing blocks is going to go on strike and Crush won’t be able to do anything about it!” Rainbow told her. If she was expecting Resin to listen to reason or be persuaded by those words in any way, she was wrong. “They’re not working for the flame?” Resin quietly said. “Uhh...” And to her great surprise and growing sense of dread; Resin smiled. “Good. I can get rid of even more waste now,” the earth pony said as she walked over to one of the computer panels. “Resin...” Rainbow Dash gulped. “What do you mean?” “I need workers, but I don’t need those workers,” Resin shrugged. “I’m going to completely turn off the power to the lower levels once Crush and his security team are past the blockade. No heating, no lighting, no ventilation. Once they’re all dead I can have the ponies living up here take their place and everything will continue on like normal!” “You can’t! That’s, that’s just plain evil!” Rainbow Dash grit her teeth and flared her wings. “Resin, I didn’t want to do this but get away from those controls right now! I was just going to talk to you but if you’re going to be like this? Then I don’t have any problem with stopping you by force.” Resin stopped and looked over her shoulder at Dash with a smile on her face. “Oh, force huh?” She moved over to a different panel close to one of the metal doors Rainbow had noticed earlier. “I mean it!” Dash yelled and stepped closer. “Don’t you dare touch anything that could hurt the ponies down below!” “I’m not. You’re hardly the only one who’s ever tried to stop me or take control of this room, this is just to deal with you. Because I can’t allow the flame to be disturbed.” Resin said and pressed a large red button on the panel. A beeping noise came from the door and it slowly rose up while Rainbow Dash watched, revealing a shadowy interior. Then a heavy clunking and whirring noise came from the darkness and the sound of metal slamming down on metal repeatedly in rhythmic fashion as something came closer and closer to the door. Rainbow tensed up, lowering her head to the ground and preparing for whatever was coming. A large metal claw came out of the shadows and stepped into the control room, followed by another, and then the head of the metal monster. Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened as she remembered something briefly mentioned in passing by Night Reader and Brilliant Star: “Metal monstrosities”. “Well this answers some of the questions I had...” Rainbow frowned as the abomination fully emerged. It was a huge wolf-looking creation that lumbered on four heavy looking metal limbs with wires and hoses linking all over its body and glowing red eyes staring right at Dash. Flames also burned inside its metal jaw behind jagged teeth. Every so often it “breathed” and the flames billowed out the sides of its mouth. It didn’t look very fast or articulate but it did look threatening. Behind it its tail curled up and pointed at Rainbow Dash before the tip opened up into a set of metal clamps. “I suggest you run,” Resin said. Rainbow Dash smirked at her. “Heh, run? Sorry but you don’t know me at all, Resin. This thing doesn’t scare me one bit. If you want to stop me from, uh, stopping you, you’re going to have to do better than that.” “Okay,” Resin casually shrugged and pressed a few more buttons. The other doors all opened up and Rainbow Dash held a hoof up to her forehead and sighed as the sound of more of these metal monsters came stalking out of them. “Just great...” Rainbow Dash said as she looked around at her adversaries, A ram, a boar, a bear, a lion, and a crocodile. All five of them deadly looking and with their red eyes trained on her the same as the wolf. Flames came out of either their mouths or vents or pipes on their backs and sides. “I don’t think I have to worry about you now,” Resin said. “Have fun while I save my flame.” The six monsters leaped at Rainbow Dash. She clicked her tongue. “Dang.” On the catwalks that hung around the entire bottom of the metal city and made a ring around the mountain, Oil Slick was once again out and getting rid of toxic waste. Mumbling to himself about his distaste for the job and pretty much everything about the city, he was going to be happy when he could head back inside and sleep. At least he only had a couple more canisters to toss. He still had to wheel his cart back in afterward but that was no big deal. “Can’t believe this is going to be what I’m doing for the rest of my life,” he grumbled and shook his head. He had just grabbed the next canister off his cart when a slight shaking of the catwalk told him something had just landed on it. Oil Slick turned around to see a pink earth pony mare standing behind him, staring at the open hatch that led back into the city. She had a pleasant smile on her face and slowly her eyes drifted over to Oil Slick. “Is this how you get inside the mountain?” Heartless asked him. “Um, yes, it is...” he answered after a moment of hesitation. “Miss… how did you get up here?” Her grin widened as she turned to face him fully. “I flew!” “You… flew?” He raised an eyebrow as he looked over her body and the distinct lack of wings. “Yep!” She nodded and her vision drifted back to the hatch. “I have a question for you. Did a blue pegasus with a rainbow mane called Rainbow Dash come into your city? I can feel her up there but I want to be sure I’m not missing a way inside or out.” Oil Slick was confused by a little of what she had said but he still remembered that pegasus. “Yes, she did. And these hatches are the only way in or out of the city, you can find your way anywhere from inside, more or less.” “Thank you,” Heartless said and reached out to him without even sparing the other pony another glance. He had a question on the tip of his tongue as to why she was reaching out to poke him. But as soon as that pink hoof made contact with his cheek he felt his life slip away, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he was dead before he even fell off the catwalk. Heartless smiled as she stepped past the threshold of the hatch and into the city. “Here I come, Rainbow Dash.”