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// Price You Pay 
// Story: Sunlight's Saccharine Sack of Sufferable Sour Sounds 
// by Sunlight Rays 
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“Any final words, you miserable, worthless whore of a foal?”

Rose-colored irises locked onto mine, the only clue Scootaloo had as to who this blood-covered monster in front of me used to be.

She raised her chin as she stared directly back into those magnificent eyes, determined to keep the last piece of dignity she had left.

“You have… beautiful eyes,” she breathed out.


…


Something flickered behind those shades of magenta. Scootaloo could see the flames of fury and hatred in her eyes change. The fire still burned in her eyes, but now it had a different set of emotions.

Dash whirled around and barked at her henchponies. “Get everypony out of this room. Seal it off. Lock it down. No one goes in unless I say they can.”

“But Ms. Dash—,” one of the ponies in black began.

“Do as I say! Use the backup devices for now. The Main Theater Room is to remain off-limits to everyone!”

“Ms. Dash, what do you want us to do with the foal?”

“GET OUT!” Rainbow Dash screamed, “Just leave me be. I’ll deal with this meat sack.”

“Yes, Ms. Dash.”

Without further ado, everypony except Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo left the room. The massive doors closed, leaving them above the Pegasus Device.

Rainbow Dash hovered there, breathing heavily as she glared at the doors. She then turned to face her younger sister, but this time there was more than just anger on her face.

“Oh, Scootaloo… Why?” Rainbow Dash sobbed. Tears streamed down her bloodied face, revealing the thinnest trail of cyan underneath. “How could you fail me like this?”

“Rainbow Dash?” Scootaloo spoke, shocked by the sudden change in her sister’s demeanor, yet the slightest tinge of hope could be heard in her words.

“You were my sister, Scootaloo! I loved you as much as you loved me! You were there even when all my friends in Ponyville left me, and even when I lost friend after friend to the bowels of this cursed factory. You were the only one I had left, squirt!

“And so I returned the favor! I cared for you, fed you, raised you for all those years! I even trained you myself so you wouldn’t have to come to this damned place and see all of this wretched machinery! I loved you, so I tried to make sure you wouldn’t fail me! And yet…” Dash hung her head, her words replaced by suppressed sobs. She sniffled, then wiped the tears away with her arms.

“Dash… I’m so sorry—”

“And yet you failed me.”

The cold, unforgiving tone of Dash’s whisper left no room for Scootaloo to interject. She could only blink in fear as she uttered a single “Dash…?”

“You failed me, Scootaloo! You failed me!” Dash roared as she lunged at the failure in front of her. Scootaloo froze up in horror as she saw what was once her sister’s beautiful face. Dash grabbed Scootaloo by the neck and yanked her close, snarling as blood red irises made contact with murky lilac. “You, the sole pony I had trusted to not let me down, gave all of it up! On purpose! Because of a single Cloudsdale hater!”

Scootaloo didn’t respond. She could only gape in abject horror at the monster right before her, at the face that was now a smothered mess of blood red and brilliant cyan. Her mind and body locked up as the last glimmer of hope disappeared altogether, replaced by despair of knowing there was no way out of this.

“I should have known the day you skipped your practice!” Dash raged on. “I should have known what he would do to you when I found you and that… that worthless piece of manure in your room together! And look what he did to you!” She screamed, shaking Scootaloo by the collarbones. The chains rattled in accordance, adding to the eerie echoes of Dash’s words of anger and despair.

“Dash, I, I’m sorry. I won’t fail you a-again, I promise—”

“It’s a bit too late for that, don’t you think, squirt?” Dash growled, her voice low—almost a whisper. “You, my only friend, no, my only sister, failed me. On purpose.”

“Dash, I didn’t try to fail you, I swear—”

“SILENCE!” Dash roared, flinging a hoof at Scootaloo’s face. Scootaloo winced as the sharp pain shot through her cheek. “You let me down when it mattered the most. On purpose. My sister would have never done that.”

Scootaloo couldn’t believe what she just heard. Was Dash implying that she wasn’t her sister? Just because of one mistake? She panicked. “Dash, please! I love you, you are—”

Dash snorted, her breath like ice to Scootaloo’s heart. “Yeah, right. Love doesn’t mean jackshit, especially not from you. You’re just a worthless failure, one that doesn’t even deserve to be called a pegasus, much less my sister,” said Dash, spitting out the last word as if it tasted asinine in her mouth.

Scootaloo was hyperventilating now. “Dash, please, no, I’m your sis—”

Dash planted a firm punch into her lower jaw, the failure crying out in pain as her teeth clamped down on her tongue. “Shut up, you worthless husk of a foal. You’re not my sister. She was perfect, the best friend and family one could ever hope for, and you ruined her!” She turned away from the smaller pegasus and began to make her way towards the massive doors.

Scootaloo sobbed as she watched the red-and-blue pegasus begin to leave her. Tears streamed down Scootaloo’s cheeks as she desperately called after her former sister. “Dash, please! I’m your sister! I won’t fail you—”

“YOU’RE NOT MY SISTER!” Dash bellowed as she whirled around, glaring daggers at the orange mass of fur and feathers hanging above the Pegasus Device. She breathed heavily for a few seconds, then uttered one more sentence: “Not anymore…”

Dash turned around once more and made her way towards the exit. As the doors opened, she pulled down a switch, and the entire room plunged into darkness, the light from the doorway the only light source. Scootaloo squinted for a moment as the bright lights obscured her vision.

As the doors began to close, however, she cried out for the last time. “Dash, please, no! Dash! I am your sister! I AM YOUR SISTER!”

No one was there to answer, the sobs of the broken filly ringing throughout the cursed empty room.

As her cries, too, faded into the darkness and Scootaloo felt her consciousness slip away, she thought of a song from a faraway memory, one she sang a lot when she was still a foal.

In the Rainbow Factory, where fears and horrors come true…
In the Rainbow Factory, where not a single soul gets through…