The Thunderstorm Cloud Factory

by NightDrawn

Chapter 2: The Flashback

Neo groaned as he slowly stood up, twinging in pain. His foreleg stung, and when he took a closer look at it, he saw that it had been sliced open on the side by a sharp object. It was attempting to scab itself, but the gash had been too deep, so instead it just oozed pus as blood continued to trickle down the side of his wounded leg. He looked over and saw a cracked gas mask resting on its side up against a bent, rusty vent gleaming with crimson blood.

His spiked, aerodynamic wings also stung, scratched and battered up by the long fall down the vent. He didn’t even want to attempt trying to fly with them. Air whipping at them would surely cause immense pain, and with his leg injured, he’d probably die of blood loss due to the gravity and air pressure pulling his blood down his body and out of his wound. So instead, Neo examined the area, orienting himself in the dark hallway, whilst looking for another way out.

Where am I even? the aching stallion thought to himself, What is this place? He flipped a worn old switch on the metal plated wall, and fluorescent walkway lights covered in spider webs flickered on, lighting the area around him. He appeared to be lying on some sort of mesh walkway, with cold, rusty rails loosely fastened on each side.

Great. I escaped a death mob and now I’m even lower in the factory! And wounded also! The last thing he remembered was purple gas filling a cavernous room, while an evil stallion known as “Shade Blade” ranted on about a horrible new factory. Luckily Neo’s investigation and research paid off, or else he would have been past dead by now. The new factory had been near completion, at least from what he heard of Rainbow Dash and Shade Blades’s conversation. Neo knew Shade Blade had surely started cloud production.

Neo managed to pull himself up, panting from extreme stress put on his wounded foreleg. As he took a step forward, it stretched and ripped open again, gushing blood onto the creaky metal platform. He strained to stay upright, using the dented steel railing as a support while walking down the cold, dark walkway. Observing the machinery around him, he exited the thin platform into an extensive room that smelled of musty old blood, iron shavings, and a smoky aura that seemed to come from the ceiling of the room.

“Am I really where I think I am? No way! I’m on the original floor of the upper level! Weird. They must have abandoned this place. The only thing they seem to use here now is the—”

Neo’s words cutoff as he looked up at six large vats of different colored spectra. They sat, creaking and filling every few seconds with their assigned color. The red vat appeared to be slowly tilting, its immense steel supports bracing itself from falling. It seemed as if over time, hazardous amounts of red spectra had filled the vat, and the lower floor did not have a big demand for it. Taking a closer look at the vat from his distance, Neo leaned over the rickety railing, and saw a red warning light blink on. That’s just the warning for incoming spectra, right? he thought to himself, pushing his paranoid thoughts to the back of his head. The huge cylinder filled with fresh red spectra, causing the light to blink even brighter. I guess so.

Neo continued to languidly limp down the walkway, not caring to look back. Little did he know, the sector computer for the red spectra vat had continuously prompted warning messages, informing the worker who was supposed to be there that the vat had almost reached max capacity. No pony was tending to it however, as all of them had abandoned the area to attend the contest ceremony. They doubted that a vat would ever fill to the brim, meaning that if it did happen for some reason, no worker would be able to stop it.

All of a sudden, a screaming alarm pierced through the silence, and orange utilitarian lights flashed on. Neo, holding his eyes that were temporarily blinded from the flashes, looked back to while regaining his vision, to see the huge red spectra silo buckling over. It ripped up its curved steel supports with it, and began to lurch forward.

“Oh shit,” Neo said to himself as the vat started tipping over towards him, snapping the spectra delivery pipe like a twig in the middle of a hurricane. Red spectra gushed from the delivery pipe breach, adding more liquid to the vat’s forceful fall.

He began to pick up his pace, galloping as fast as he could to an escape door nearby. It was locked and secured tightly, but luckily for Neo, he had planned ahead and had forged a special key card that could hack into any door of the facility and unlock it. As he went to pull out the key card, he looked back at the leaning vat, as it descended closer and closer to the walkway he was currently standing on. Once the silo made contact with the flimsy metal platform, it would be over for him. With only forwards or backwards to run, both of which were on the metal walkway alone, the only other place to escape to aside from the escape door he found would be the pits of the upper floor, where Celestia knew what would be waiting for him down there.

Neo snapped out of his shock when the immense vat slammed down onto the walkway, ripping it from its loose fasteners. “No no no!” he shouted as each fastener burst loose from its socket, pulling the platform down with it. He fumbled with the key card, and the walkway shook violently with only five fasteners left before his doom. The vat spilled colossal amounts of red spectra on him as it it continued to fall, and as he went to slide the card through the scanner, a huge jolt of energy shot up his body as the vat smashed against the wall shaking the entire room. He slipped on the spectra, dropping the key card into the depths, and everything went black.

“Wake up! Wake up for Celestia’s sake!” a gruff voice called out.

Neo sat up on the flat, uncomfortable hospital bed, panting heavily. His mane dripped wet, cold sweat, and he had large bags under his neon green eyes.

“Wh-Where am I?!” he yelled, frightened. Neo had not remembered a single thing since he had blacked out, and now faced a large, light-tan stallion who had been sitting at the end of the creaky bed since Neo had been brought there.

“Oh, quit your worrying! You’re safe now,” the buff, relaxed pony replied.

“You didn’t answer my question! Where did you guys take me!? I demand to be told at once! I have my-”

“Cloudsdale Intelligence Agency badge?” the tan stallion nonchalantly interrupted.

“H-How did you know that?!” Neo responded, surprised the pony knew.

The muscular stallion laughed while sitting down in a nearby chair, “Because you’re in our headquarters obviously!”

Neo looked around the barren room, and with more examination, found that he had in fact been sleeping in the Cloudsdale Intelligence Agency’s infirmary. There were only three beds scattered around the room, dusty and worn out from sitting there for many years. The infirmary had been used rarely here, since no agent had ever gotten that injured in their field of work, and the ones who had been hurt that badly usually just ended up dead or held as a prisoner in some place far from the building. “Wow. Heh, I knew that. Why didn’t you just tell me that Paper Work?”

The strong stallion’s jaw dropped open as he stared at Neo, “Why didn’t I?! Neo, have you seriously forgotten our headquarters?! This is the infirmary! Remember?”

“Oh yeah! Sorry, I just haven’t been in this room for ages. So what exactly…happened when I was unavailable?” Neo asked sitting up on the bed.

Paper Work rolled his bright orange eyes, sighing at Neo’s remark, “Well, we found you fainted on a cloud that hadn’t been cleared yet. You’re lucky that the cloud clearing showoffs hadn’t made their show yet. Otherwise you would've been more dead than a mouse in a mousetrap.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know I should be grateful and whatnot. Just get to the point, Paper.” Neo replied, wiping some sweat off his face.

“If you'd let me continue!” Paper Work said, frustrated, “Anyways, we tracked you down and saw you had a big swollen cut, so we rushed you here. Good thing you were asleep. You got multiple stitches and staples.”

Neo looked down at his right foreleg, and saw the black stitching swelling up beneath the shiny, sterile staples. He shifted his legs and the staples pulled a bit, causing sticky, brown pus to emerge from the stitching, “Ow! Does the damn doctor even know how to properly tend to a gash!? Ugh, the work on this cut was so badly done, it reminds me of your work! Did you do this?”

“Thanks for the compliment, and no, I didn’t,” Paper Work replied sarcastically.

“You’re very welcome. Next time you see that doctor, please tell him he’s fired!” Neo laid back against the wall of the room, biting his lip in pain.

Paper Work chuckled and jotted down some notes on a worn, old clipboard. He checked Neo’s injured leg and scribbled down some more observations, and glanced back up at the dark blue stallion, and once again continued to write down endless information.

“C’mon Paper Work!” Neo groaned’ “Skip the drill! We’ve been through this so many times, the office doesn’t even care about the nitty-gritty details anymore! They just want the main info!”

“Alright Neo, you win. I’m putting down the clipboard now” Paper Work chided while setting down the rotting board, “So, what happened in the factory?”

Neo sat forward and cleared his throat, “Well during my investigations, I discovered a handful of…disturbing things.”

“Go on.” the tan stallion said, now interested in Neo’s story.

“When I entered the facility to research its ways of rainbow production, I found that you had to go through a complex test and security check. Luckily they were holding this contest though. I snuck in without a single pony noticing!” Neo proudly said, smirking at Paperwork.

Paper Work sighed at Neo’s remark, “Alright, save the bragging for when you find evidence that’s actually important.”

“I did find very important evidence though!” Neo estatically replied.

“Do you care to share that with me then?” Paper Work asked, in attempt to push the conversation forward.

Neo smiled, and joked, “Oh, yes of course sir! Would you like a cup of coffee as I tell you also?”

“Just get on with it already,” Paper Work said rolling his eyes.

Neo returned to telling his story, while getting more comfortable in the not so comfortable infirmary bed, “So I decided to look into this contest more, since, after all, I had snuck into it. What I found out was that this contest was being held for a new factory!”

Paper Work’s eyes widened at Neo’s statement, “What?! A new factory?! Where?!”

“In the exact location of where the bankrupt thunderstorm cloud factory stands!” the dark blue stallion replied, almost as surprised as Paper Work himself.

“So...they’re going to rip down the old factory and build a new one there then?” Paper Work’s excited tone changed to a more questionable one.

Neo nodded at Paper Work, “Yeah. And apparently the new factory’s going to save us from this drought we’re having.”

“Finally!” Paper Work exclaimed gleefully, “How did the winner claim they could solve the problem? Did he explain his great idea?”

Neo gulped. He remembered back to the unveiling of the first place winner, that tall white stallion, Shade Blade. The atrocious acts that went down that night had burned into his mind like a wildfire in a dry field of grass. It broke his very being, watching all the helpless workers choke to death as he stood in the middle of all the chaos. Mares and stallions had rushed to him, gasping and begging for help, and all he did was attack a warden for the gas mask that saved his life and escaped through a vent he found.

“No, he didn’t,” Neo said lowering his head, “He claimed it to be classified information. The most he promised was that it would work and the problem would be solved.”

Paper Work raised an eyebrow, “Sounds fishy to me. Are you sure you didn’t leave out an important detail? One that could help us to figuring out what his idea is?”

Neo looked away, breathing heavily. He turned around and buried his face into the pillow, crying into it as Paper Work moved over to the opposite side of the bed.

Looking at the crying blue stallion, Paper Work realized he had surely caused something to trigger in Neo’s mind, “Ugh, what's wrong Neo?”

“Everything!” Neo yelled, his face wet with tears.

“Would you like to tell me?” Paper Work replied calmly and gently, trying his best to not upset the stallion further.

Neo turned back around to look at Paper Work, weeping as he mumbled, “There’s more than what I told you to the new factory!”

The limp, red punching bag slammed against the wall, ripping open and sending sand all over the hard floor of the sweaty workout room. Neo unhooked the top half of the shredded leather bag, while wiping cold perspiration from his forehead.

“That’s the fifth punching bag you’ve beat the crap out of!” an employee working at the gym called out in Neo’s direction, “You’re gonna have to start paying for replacements soon! We don’t have an unlimited amount of these at your disposal, ya know!”

Neo set the two halves of the destroyed punching bag down on the counter, in front of the employee. They were taken away by the worker who gave the dark blue stallion a frustrated glare, and replaced them with a sixth, bright red punching bag. As Neo started heading back to his workout area, his dull, black phone started to blare its cheery tune. He dropped the shiny new punching bag and took out his phone, checking who the caller was. It was his friend and employer, Paper Work. He hesitated to answer the call, since he knew Paper would blabber on about tons of information, not to mention today was supposed to be his free day where he could relax and enjoy himself. But he decided to answer the call anyways.

“Hey, I’m in the middle of working out. What’s the big problem now, Paper?” Neo said, sighing into the cold phone against his ear.

“Sorry to interrupt you, Neo, but we have a bit of a problem,” the worried stallion replied through the crackling speaker, nervousness in his voice.

Neo sat down on a wooden bench in the gym, while one of his eyebrows raised at Paper’s response, “Ugh, what is it?”

“Well, you see, I haven’t really figured that out yet,” Paper responded.

“What’s the problem then?” Neo asked, further confused by Paper.

“So the problem is that Mrs. Cake has called us up recently. She told us that her foal, Pound Cake, hasn’t returned home since the day of his flight test. She thought that he had run away, since he failed his flight test. However she told me that lately she’s been thinking about it, and worries that something else could have happened,” Paper explained from the other end of the phone.

“Something else? Like a kidnapping? Sounds like it’d be that to me. Put him on the amber alert, and send a notice out to Cloudsdale,” Neo assumed, attempting to end the conversation and get back to working out.

“Neo you’re not listening to me!” Paper yelled angrily in response to Neo’s uninterest.

Leaning back on the creaky bench, the dark blue stallion laughed halfheartedly, “Yes I am, Paper. So, what does Mrs. Cake believe really happened to him?”

“Well…,” Paper trailed off, as if he didn't want to finish his sentence, “She mentioned a rumor about the Rainbow Factory. Its...upper floor to be exact.”

“Oh, c’mon! Not this again!” Neo sighed loudly, “You and everypony else knows that shady floor has passed inspection by the princess of Canterlot herself! You think Celestia would let that factory do things to ponies that are told in mare’s tales?”

“Not exactly the floor itself,” Paper corrected Neo, “But the workers up there, or even the owner of the upper floor could. What I’m trying to say is that it could be a possibility.”

“A possibility isn’t worth the risk,” Neo promptly responded while cracking open a fresh bottle of cold water he had brought with him, “What if one of our agents got hurt trying to sneak in, or was found by the Rainbow Factory staff as one of our spies? Who’d be responsible for that then?”

Paper Work grinned on the other end of the line, knowing what response was about to come from Neo, “That’s why I’m sending you out there to investigate!”

Upon hearing Paper’s statement, Neo burst into laughter, “Ha! Nice one Paper!”

Straightening up his mind and voice, Paper’s tone changed back to his stern one, “I’m being serious Neo. Your next mission is to sneak or break into the upper level of the rainbow facility, and find out what they’re up to. Also, look for Pound Cake, as Mrs. Cake firmly believes he has been abducted by them and is being held there.”

“Whoa whoa whoa now Paper!” the now angered Neo replied to Paper, “We never discussed this. It’s required that I agree to be sent out on a mission before you can go assigning me to it. Don’t you remember the agency rules you were taught over and over?”

“There’s no open discussion on this, Neo,” Paper calmly responded, yet prominent and firm in his speech, “You’ve been assigned by high ranking officials, and the company expects a success from you in this mission. So, your choices are to take the mission and pay a visit to the Rainbow Factory, or resign from your agent position and never associate with the Cloudsdale Intelligence Agency again.”

Neo huffed and prepared to end the call, letting his friend know, “Fine! Then I’ll quit!”

Rolling his eyes at the opposite end of the line, Paper replied with emphasis in his voice, “Ugh, that’s what I expected. I guess you won’t get the dough for the task then. It was such a great payout also. Oh, how I’d love to get one hundred thousand bucks and a promotion!”

“One hundred thousand dollars?!” Neo exclaimed out loud, directing everypony's attention in the gym to him. He sat, quieting down, and picked up his phone, embarrassed at making the unintentional scene, “You never told me about the details, Paper Work. If you are going to slap me in the face with one hundred dollar bills, it makes a big difference!”

Rolling his eyes at the opposite end of the phone line once again, Paper responded, “I’m sorry, but I thought the information would be a bit more, I don’t know, important, you know?”

Chuckling as he sat back down, Neo replied, “Yeah, I guess it is, but why would I get that much? And a promotion? Is it seriously that important to the agency?”

“Ummm, you do know about the upper floor, right? Or the rumors at least?” Paper questioned the dark blue stallion.

Neo scoffed at the remark, “Well yeah, they apparently kill ponies and suck the color out of them to make rainbows. Do you even believe that though, Paper Work? For Celestia’s sake, the princess herself went in there!”

“I honestly do not know, Neo,” Paper replied, bored of the conversation himself, “I just know that no other agent here would lay a hoof near that factory, even if they were paid as much as you’re going to be.”

Laughing while thinking about the cold hard cash he would get, Neo decided to take the mission,“I’ll take the mission, Paper. Those agents are just cowards. They shouldn’t even be working still if they can’t handle a simple task like this!”

“I do hope you’re right, Neo,” Paper Work said sighing on the other end of the phone, finally hanging up, “Oh I do hope you’re right.”

Neo flew through calm warm air energetically, swooping up and down jubilantly. He wore a baggy white lab coat, and clear goggles hung from his neck. He had fully decked himself out for this mission, and was ready to sneak into the eerie facility. The only problem he faced was breaking in, but luckily he had brought along a special key card programmed by the Cloudsdale Intelligence Agency, that could hack into and unlock any door or safe in the factory.

Approaching the Rainbow Factory, Neo felt the air grow colder and colder around him. Heavy steam and smoke rose from a large smokestack towering over the dark facility. While he flew across the side of the building, searching for an entrance, he heard loud cries and yells from the other side of the black kevlar-like cloud superstructure. Two workers in full black suits were guiding young mares and stallions up to the large, heavy carbon fiber cloud doors that lead into the infamous factory. Most of the young ponies were crying or being dragged by wardens through the doors, and some just stared down at the ground, mentally broken by their traumatic experience of failing their flight test.

Neo peaked around the corner of the building where he heard the cries coming from, and saw the sad young pegasi being pulled up into the facility. Paper Work was right! Neo thought to himself, They had been kidnapping ponies! However he could not be sure as he had no proof to provide as evidence for the factory’s kidnapping. After all, Neo thought to himself again, They could just be forcing the 'failures' to work or something, and the young ones are just now realizing what their flight test failure entails.

As he continued watching the scene unfold, observing as much as he could, one mare who appeared to be older than the rest of the failed students looked up, catching Neo in her glance. As the mare stared into his eyes from a distance, she quickly noticed that Neo wasn’t a warden, but a pony that could potentially save her. The saddened mare’s face then brightened up, longing for redemption as she put out a hoof reaching towards Neo’s direction, trying to motion him for help.

“Hey, whatda ya think yer doin’, failure?!” one of the wardens shouted at the mare pointing towards Neo. The warden realized that the mare was pointing somewhere, and he looked in Neo’s direction, prompting Neo to quickly turn around and hide from the stern stallion’s evil stare.

“Ughhhh, stop your desperate desire for help, you useless bitch!” the second stallion hollered at her, while stabbing a sparking taser into the mare’s side, causing her to panic as her body shook violently from the electricity flowing through it. Her wings clamped shut, and she started to fall in the air.

The other warden swooped down, grabbing the temporarily disabled mare’s paralyzed hoof and pulling her back up to the factory’s dark entrance, “Now, now, dontcha be droppin’ out on us like that! Yer gonna love it here, ya silly filly! Ya do wanna see how rainbows are made, right?” he chuckled and shoved the mare forwards.

“N-No! I don’t want to see! Please give me a second chance! I promise I won’t fail you next time! Please!” the shocked mare cried out, tears rolling down her cheek.

“Do you not understand yet, ugh, what was your name, oh yes, Aura Eclipse?” the more educated warden asked, a grin on his face, “No failure gets another chance! You failed, and that is what you’ll always do! You were born to fail, made to fail, and grew up a failure! You’ll find your destined fate here just like every other pony like you will!” As the damnable stallion cackled, he looked down from the stairway at the other warden who had been shoving Aura up to the entrance, and motioned him to continue getting her into the factory.

“What are you doing out here this fine day?” a stallion chided, hovering next to Neo.

Neo turned quickly to see a light purple stallion with a black, wavy mane, who had come up behind him while he was watching the warden’s abuse towards Aura. The pegasus’s cutie mark was a clear test tube with some sort green chemical in it. The newfound stallion was also wearing a lab coat just like Neo’s, and blood stained goggles hung from his neck.

“Oh, hey there,” Neo said, trying to keep the nervousness out of his voice, “I didn’t see you there.’

“And I haven’t seen you around here! Are you a new scientist to the factory?,” asked the stallion.

“Y-Yeah!,” Neo quickly responded, taking the opportunity to protect his identity, “I got hired recently, and I just didn’t really know how to get in.”

“No worries! I’m Sky Shadow by the way!” Sky said happily, putting out his hoof to shake Neo’s, “Since you’re new here, I’ll just give you some good advice, don’t ever leave this facility.”

Neo was surprised by Sky’s advice, “I hate to ask Sky, but why can’t we leave? Aren’t we able to visit family and take vacations?”

Sky Shadow laughed at Neo’s question, “You really are new to this place, aren't you! Let me just make this clear to you now, nopony leaves this factory. If you’ve read the terms of agreement pamphlet, and know the mare's tales about this place, then I’m sure you understand why the president of the upper level wants nopony leaving.”

“Well, yes, but what's the big deal about leaving anyway?” Neo questioned the purple stallion, “And why are you out here then? Aren't you breaking the rules of the pamphl-”

Sky pushed his hoof into Neo's snout, halting his array of questions, “You ask a lot of questions, you know that? You shouldn’t ask questions, just some advice from a concerned friend. Our rules here are strict, and you could be, well, let’s just put it as disposed of if somepony thought you were suspicious or threatening the upper level.”

Neo stopped, shocked at the comment. Were the rumors actually true?, He thought to himself, If they went as far as to kill a worker just to keep the facility’s secret safe, wouldn’t that secret most likely be the one he’d been told of in the mare’s tales of the factory? Neo started to believe the rumors about the upper level weren’t as fake as they sounded.

“Ugh...So why don’t you say we check in?” Sky said, interrupting Neo’s thoughts, “We can let the other scientists know that you’re new to our team. Maybe you’ll even befriend a few for all we know! You got your key card yet?”

“Yep! Right here!” Neo replied, pulling out his special key card, showing it to Sky, “Anything else important I should know before we go in?”

“Oh yeah!” Sky Shadow realized ecstatically, “I forgot, never, ever, talk to the failures.”

Neo followed Sky Shadow through the dark and noisy factory, as they headed towards a large laboratory. Sky boasted that it was a top of the line workplace filled with anything you could ever possibly need to build new, futuristic machines and perform professional experiments. As they journeyed on towards the grand room, Sky explained every rule of the factory, gave advice to Neo, and overall just blabbed on about the factory in general.

“Did you know that this facility has a lower floor?! That’s where the vats are! All the spectra we produce is stored in those! Can you believe that the massive supports can barely hold them up when they’re filled?! I couldn’t either! Don’t you just love this factory?!” the merry purple stallion Sky said while leading the way for Neo.

Neo nodded and agreed with each and every statement Sky made, while looking throughout the factory for the gray mare who the wardens had called Aura. Something about her had stood out to him. Maybe it was that she looked older than the rest of the “failures” as Sky and the wardens called them, or maybe it was her pleading eyes and utter desperation. He knew that no matter what, he had to save that mare, even if it cost him his life. If he wasn’t able to, her stare would haunt him forever, burning a hole through his sanity each and every day. So the dark blue stallion continued to search for Aura, looking to see if he could spot her one last time.

“Neo? Neo?!” Sky impatiently interrupted. Neo realized that while he had been worrying about finding the mare, Sky had been asking him various questions that he had yet to answer.

“Oh, yeah,” Neo looked back up at Sky, nodding and listening to the stallion once again.

Sky stopped trotting ahead and looked back at the pondering stallion, “What’s the matter Neo? Is something bothering you?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Neo replied, pushing away Sky’s concern, “How about you head to the lab? I’ll catch up with you. I need to go print my blueprints out for a machine I created. That’s how I got this job, after all!”

“Ahhh, I see,” Sky lightened up at Neo’s answer, “We scientists are always caught up in our heads with new ideas! Make it quick though! We have a lot more to talk about, and the contest results are going to be announced in the theater room soon! We don’t want to miss that!”

“Ok!” Neo smiled, relieved that Sky did not suspect him of anything, “I’ll be sure to make it fast!”

Sky Shadow slid his key card through a slot, unlocking the door to the laboratory, and entered, slamming the door behind him. Neo didn’t care to look back as he galloped down the balcony and flimsy metal stairways. He had fortunately spotted Aura, who was being directed into a heavily guarded room, by the same wardens who had teased and bullied the poor mare at the entrance.

As he neared the wardens guiding Aura into the creepy room, Neo thought up a quick plan. He would tell the wardens that a new carriage of failures had arrived, and they were attempting to escape. Neo believed it would be enough of a believable plan, and the wardens would leave on the spot to take care of the issue. Nothing would or could foil his clever trick except—

A loudspeaker crackled on, and a young mare announced through the speaker, “Attention all wardens listening! The president has ordered that you immediately attend the announcement ceremony to guard and watch over the audience! Any wardens who do not attend will be killed on the spot for insubordination!”

The two warden’s faces went blank, and they rushed off the other direction, frantically smashing a blinking button on the elevator that had sat in the far corner of the end of the walkway. The doors leading into the standalone elevator split apart, and the two crazy stallions stumbled over each other into it, with the doors banging back together, signaling their rise to the floor above. Well, I guess that’s another way to get them out of the picture. I must be lucky that there’s the contest ceremony today.

Neo trotted over to the large cloud doors that lead into the dark, evil room where the Aura had been thrown into before the wardens abandoned it to rush to the ceremony. Luckily for him, the key card he had brought along also unlocked these doors, and he slowly pulled one of them open, peering inside.

There were dozens of young mares and stallions sitting in the musty old room. They were crying, whispering to one another, or just simply sitting there, completely emotionless. How could there be so many failed pegasi here? Neo thought to himself, bewildered, There couldn’t possibly be these many failures. It was impossible! But unfortunately, the many pegasi were here in front of his face, so Neo had no other choice but to believe this to be true.

Pulling himself together, Neo shut the large door behind him. He changed his expression to a cold, hard, mean one, and instantly became as serious and stern as he could get, “Which one of you are Aura Eclipse?!” he boomed at the group of sad pegasi, “Step forward now!”

A gray mare with a pink mane that had streaks of purple running throughout it stepped forward, tears running down the side of her face, “P-Please don’t hurt me! I didn’t mean any harm! I was just trying to—”

Aura realized that the stallion she faced was the same exact stallion that she reached out to earlier, “Ugh, do I know you from somewhere?” she asked Neo cautiously.

“Shut up you worthless failure!” Neo shouted at her, trying to keep his act believable to the other pegasi in the room.

Aura snapped her snout shut, her eyes watering up even more, “I-I’m sorry sir.”

“You better be!” Neo yelled yet again, wanting really badly to stop acting, “Now come with me! You’re the lucky one today! The first one to meet their fate!”

Neo motioned Aura to follow him out of the room, as the young mares and stallions left behind burst into tears. He couldn’t help them, unfortunately. There was no way he could get that many pegasi out by himself. And if the room had been found empty once the wardens returned, he would definitely be one of the first workers to be blamed. Even more so than that, he would be the only one to blame after hearing all about the different workers of the factory from Sky.

As Aura exited the room, the cloud doors clamped shut behind her. She wiped her tears off her face, and trotted up next to Neo, “I swear I know you! You were peeking around the corner! You saw the horrible things they did and said to me, right?!”

“Shhh!” Neo said quietly, covering Aura’s snout with his hoof, “Yes, I am that stallion. Just be quiet for now, I’m trying to get you out of here! But we need to hurry! My friend expects me at a ceremony.”

Aura gently moved Neo’s hoof off of her snout, now speaking in a low voice, “Oh thank you so much! But why are you helping me? Don't you work here?”

Neo raised an eyebrow at the mare’s question, but quickly realized that he was wearing the lab coat and goggles, “No, I don't work here. I snuck in. I’ll explain later. For now let’s find you a way out here.”

Aura looked around for a way out while Neo observed the area. So far they had not found much of an escape route, but observing the area Neo quickly learned the factory’s layout much better than before.

“Over there!” Aura exclaimed in a whisper, pointing at a pipe vertically running up the side of the factory’s wall.

“Of course! The smokestack!” Neo said, happy and relieved at the sight, “Why hadn’t I thought of that before?”

Neo rushed Aura over to the smokestack, flying up to a piece of metal that had been temporarily patching the pipe up. The piece of metal covered enough of the pipe to provide a wide enough opening for Aura. Diligently pulling back the piece of flimsy metal, Neo successfully bent the cover back and stared back at Aura.

“Oh, thank you so much!” Aura hugged Neo overjoyed, causing him to blush slightly, “I promise to make it up to you! What’s your name?”

Trying his best to rid of his blush and embarrassment, Neo straightened up, “My name’s Neo. I work as a spy for the Cloudsdale Intelligence Agency. Meet me at the headquarters. I’ll be back there soon. Now, you need to get going before somepony finds out!”

Aura nodded and flew through the opening, up the smokestack, and out of the factory, flying through the midnight breeze. Once the flapping of wings in the smokestack died down, Neo let the metal piece go, causing it to slap back against the side of the pipe, leaving no evidence behind of the escape. He landed back down on the walkway and started heading up to the theater room to meet his friend again, and enjoy the rest of his night learning more about this new factory Sky claimed the contest was for.

Rainbow Dash, a white pony who had won the contest, and the wardens in the theater room pulled out gas masks they had with them, sliding them over their snouts. As a device of some sort raised into the air and began spewing purple gas, everypony in the crowd started to scream and panic even more than they had before by the titanium lock shutting them in. Some of the workers tried to beat up wardens for their gas masks. Rainbow Dash grinned at the sight of death, while the white pony grew taller and his eyes turned a crimson red, announcing that he would now be known as Shade Blade. He laughed with Rainbow Dash as they watched the workers of the Rainbow Factory succumb to the gas, and they chatted on about something.

Putting the pieces together, Neo finally realized what had been going on; Rainbow Dash and Shade Blade had collaborated on an atrocious murder trap. Neo’s breath had been running out fast, and ponies all around him were falling to the ground, breathing their last breaths. Hopefully Sky Shadow didn't attend this ceremony! Neo thought to himself, remembering Sky’s remark about not missing the ceremony. Neo wasn't able to find Sky in the audience before the ceremony started however. Quickly realizing he was running out of time, Neo spotted a nearby warden that was laughing while teasing the workers who had been dying before him.

Galloping over to the unaware warden, the dark blue stallion bucked the warden in the chin, knocking him out on contact. Dropping to the ground, the limp warden’s face became pale from the toxin breach to his lungs. Neo had already ripped the gas mask off him, and since the warden was fainted, it was as if he had invited the toxins into his lungs.

Now with a gas mask, Neo had become a prime target of any worker still alive. He quickly looked for some kind of escape, and ended up finding a vent that lead down into the depths of the facility. Fighting through the chaos, he bucked the vent inwards, and jumped through it, falling into the depths. But what he didn’t realize was that the sharp vent was right below him.

Neo had just finished telling Paper Work about his experience in the infamous Rainbow Factory when a Cloudsdale Intelligence Agency worker banged his hoof on the door of the infirmary.

“Come in!” Paper Work shouted to the worker on the other side of the door.

The worker opened the door and looked at Neo, confirming he was there and awake, “Ahhh, afternoon Agent Neo. How ya feeling? Your wings and leg doing better yet?”

“Yeah,” Neo replied, trying to get past the question, “Is there something you came for?”

“Oh, yes! My apologies!” the forgetful worker answered, “There is a guest waiting to meet you. She's informed us that you two have met before, and goes by the name of Aura Eclipse.”