"This is so humiliating." Speedwell muttered under his breath as the rather portly English broadcaster clambered from the driver seat onto the pegasus' back.
"You lost fair and square," Mayflower smirked at his friend's discomfort.
"I didn't understand the game!" Speedwell grumbled back, wincing as Jeremy inadvertently put his knee between the stallion's ribs.
"What's not to understand about scissors paper rock?" Hammond asked, incredulously.
"WE HAVE HOOVES!" The belligerent pegasus yelled back. "How are we meant to play if...
"Well, Mayflower obviously got the idea."
"He just stuck out his hoof!"
"Exactly. He called rock, and you timed out and got disqualified."
"You know what? Okay. Fine. Let's just get this over with," Speedwell sighed.
After three extremely awkward minutes of refueling, Jeremy finally clambered back into the Aston, tossing the empty jerry can into the back of the F250. Speedwell grunted as the largish man's weight slid off his back, glaring at his smug looking friend, who snickered in amusement.
"Well, we're all fueled and ready to go." Hammond said over the radio. "Jezza, could you ask our new friends how exactly we're meant to get to this Rainbow Factory from here? The note was a little vague."
Mayflower was happy to oblige. "Well, you'd want to go North until you hit the Pansy Bridge, then cross it. The bridge is one of the main thoroughfares into the city for supply trains and carriages. Once you've crossed the bridge, take the first exit, the factory will be on your left. I doubt you'll be able to miss it."
"We'd offer to fly you over, but there's restrictions on cargo flights in and out of Cloudsdale proper. You boys are going to need to go the rest of the way on your own." Speedwell added.
"What about speed limits?" Jeremy inquired, hopefully.
---
"I hate my life, I hate my life, I hate my life" Jeremy chanted as the the small convoy of cars crept slowly along at a snail's pace.
Mayflower had not been exaggerating when he called Pansy Bridge a main thoroughfare. Due to the restrictions on cargo flights within the city's airspace, the bridge served as one of the only access points into the city for wagons and carts filled with produce, furniture, and an assortment of other trade goods and essentials.
It also followed that, as hoof-drawn vehicles, said carriages traveled rather slowly. Combined with the amount of hoof-traffic on the bridge, this meant that the Top Gear crew wasn't making very good time.
At all.
"Guys, I can see the exit up ahead." Hammond said excitedly, the boredom of the past hour draining away as huge spires of white cloud, interspersed with stripes of brilliant color came into view.
"Would you look at that." May breathed, transfixed.
Truly, Cloudsdale was a magnificent sight. Far from the endless white that had occupied their vision on the drive there, the cityscape was a dazzling array of color, rainbow rivers running along channels carved in the clouds that stretched hundreds of meters high into the sky above. Between the giant pillowy structures, pegasi flitted through the sky at high speed, going about their daily lives with great fervor, the flashes of coats and manes only adding the the vibrancy of the place.
Transfixed, even Jeremy took a moment to gape at his fantastical surroundings.
Only a moment though.
"Finally." He sighed, as they turned off the main road. Here, the traffic was much lighter, most pegasi electing to fly rather than walk. Other carts still occupied the streets, but the cars slid by effortlessly on the smooth surface, earning more than a few exclamations of shock and surprise from the city's residents.
"Now, keep your eyes peeled lads, the postie said it should be easy to..."
Taking a quick look around mid-sentence, Jeremy trailed off as he took in a huge structure to their immediate left. Covered in streams of molten rainbow, the building's most prominent feature was probably the huge multicolored sign plastered to the front.
RAINBOW FACTORY
"...find, yeah, that's probably it."
"One small problem though." Jeremy chimed in, frowning to himself. "That's a rather large building with a rather small entrance. How are we mean to get the cars in there?"
"There's no way." Hammond said, pessimistically. "And I don't think they're about to blow a hole in the side of the building for us, cloud or not."
"Bear with me here." Jeremy slowly spoke, the wheels in his head turning. "I may have an idea."
---
"Sir, I may have misunderstood you when you asked for a ride." The agitated cab driver huffed, as the large man on his back made himself comfortable. Jeremy had chosen his mount out of a long lineup of cabs parked in a nearby bay. The cherry red stallion was the obvious choice. Red was, after all, the fastest color.
"Well, at least we're getting paid well." His purple coated friend remarked while Hammond clambered onto his back.
James on the other hand, was having some problems with his new lady friend.
"You've got to be kidding me." The orange mare snorted, raising her eyebrows at James's hopeful expression.
"Please Ma'am, I know it seems a little strange but..."
"Strange? You're a bit bucked up in the head aren't you?"
"Look, I'll give you a hundred bits if you let me ride you for the next hour."
---
"James May, what a way you have with the ladies" Clarkson sniggered.
"Shut it" James snapped, rubbing his bruised cheek from atop a turquoise stallion.
"Well, let's not dilly dally" Hammond exclaimed brightly. "Shall we take a look inside?"
Clopping up the front steps of the factory, the Top Gear trio, followed by their entire team of cameramen, all atop of their own unfortunate pegasi, entered the open doors of the enormous facility. After only a few steps though, the party came to a halt, gawking at their surroundings.
In the center of the grand lobby, a stream of liquid rainbow fell from a recess in the ceiling, pooling in a large fountain that shone and glittered beautifully. Along the sides of the walls, great glass tubes carried even more of the stuff from the upper floors down into the cloud surface, presumably to a lower level of some kind. The back half of the room seemed to be devoted to a museum of sorts, several long tables were occupied by numerous exhibits and displays.
The three brave adventurers surveyed the interior of the Rainbow Factory from atop their trusty mounts. Here they were, humans three miles high in the sky atop an alien world, witnesses to mechanisms unlike anything any man woman or child had seen before. Here in front of them, the very weather itself was manipulated by powers incomprehensible to the human mind. This was something truly spectacular.
"Oooh, that one's wearing a little lab coat, how cuuuute!" Jeremy squealed, prompting a glare from the passing engineer. Noticing the exasperated looks he was getting from his fellows, he coughed into one hand. "Anyway, what next?"
"Oh, here we go" muttered Hammond, as one of the cameramen rode over to the trio and handed him a golden envelope. Ripping it open enthusiastically, he read it aloud.
"The pegasi of Cloudsdale have passed down the art of manufacturing liquid rainbow down through generations, and its composition is a closely guarded secret. While modern technology cannot hope to identify the more magical qualities of the resource, testing from the small samples acquired by British Intelligence has indicated that the substance is not only viable as a fuel source, but actually burns far cleaner and more efficiently than conventional fossil fuels."
"Holy shit." Clarkson breathed. "That is phenomenal, if humans could get a reliable source it would revolutionize everything."
"How on earth do the producers know about what I can only imagine is a top secret Government project?" James asked.
"Anyway, back to the challenge." Hammond said, turning his attention back to the envelope. "You are currently in the Cloudsdale Rainbow Factory, the sole source of liquid rainbow in Equestria. Your next task is to acquire enough liquid rainbow to fuel your cars for the remainder of your stay in this land. Purchase five liters of liquid rainbow each, before making your way East to the Cloudiseum for your real challenge."
"Five liters." Clarkson's eyes almost popped out of his skull. "Just five liters of the stuff is going to be enough to last us the whole trip?"
"Imagine only having to refuel five liters of petrol at the pump every week." Hammond added, similarly flabbergasted. "There's going to be some major shit going down with the big oil companies if this stuff hits the market back home, especially since no one besides these pegasi knows how to make the stuff."
"Anyway." Clarkson interjected. "Enough with the morbid economics discussion, I'm going to go find some rainbow to power my car."
"That sounds like a wonderful idea." Hammond agreed. "I wonder if they have a gift shop."
Jeremy's ride chimed in.
"Actually, they do" He said, grunting as his passenger shifted on his back. "Just off to the right there, through that door."
Several minutes later, and after an incredibly awkward interaction with the shopkeeper, who had been most surprised to find herself surrounded by humans riding pegasi, the team reconvened in the lobby after making their purchase. Fortunately, the small store stocked sizeable bottles of rainbow for decorative purposes, and their prices were rather reasonable.
"Well, It wasn't quite as cheap as petrol, but I think we ended up with enough of it." Hammond said as they rode back down the steps of the cloud factory to their cars. A small crowd of inquisitive ponies had gathered to peek in and around the vehicles, but they quickly dispersed as the humans came into sight.
"Will that be all then?" Clarkson's new best friend asked crankily from under him.
"We need to refuel the cars, but otherwise, yes, thank you" Jeremy replied, withdrawing an empty fuel canister from the tray of the F250 and pouring his liquid rainbow into it.
"Now" He added, as he began filling the remainder of his tank with the five liters of liquid rainbow. "Generally, I don't advise pouring just any old unidentified liquid into the fuel tank of your hundred thousand pound Aston Martin, as most of the time, this can be very bad for your car. Fortunately, I have it on good authority that this stuff works, so here we go."
After paying their Cloudsdalian friends a hefty sum by way of compensation, the three co-hosts clambered back into their vehicles, and started their engines. Pulling off into the light traffic, they waved the factory goodbye as they sped off Eastward, keeping their eyes peeled for this coliseum.
Catching a glimpse of something strange in his rear-view mirror, Clarkson squinted a little, then burst out laughing and reached for his radio.
"Are you two seeing what I'm seeing?" He asked, chortling.
"Oh my word." James wheezed, laughed looking back behind him.
"My car is farting rainbows." Hammond said with a straight face.
The three men burst into peals of unrestrained laughter as they navigated the city streets on their way to a new challenge.