//------------------------------// // Chapter I // Story: Delirium // by Fabby //------------------------------// Scootaloo drifted through the shadows of Cloudsdale like a ghost, never spending more than a second out of the darkness. Her long pink mane was tied up in a ponytail that fluttered in the high altitude winds as she rounded the corner of a city block, ducked low so that anypony that might glance out their windows would not see her beneath. It was a new moon, so the night was black save for the few glittering stars that blinked in the sky like so many snowflakes. She was out far past the curfew of a pony of only thirteen years, and her rumbling stomach reminded her that any unwanted attention was not something she could afford. She came to the edge of one of the city’s massive cloud banks, a residential neighborhood she’d been lurking through. The summer air was warmer here than in the heart of the city, coming up and over the edges like lazy ocean waves. Not more than fifty feet beyond the drop was another cloud basin, its edges dotted with thin streams of rainbows flowing off into the night like multicolored ribbons. Scootaloo payed no mind to the air or the colors, only the gap. She gave a glance back and fluttered her wings. Her face hardened at the sight of them, scrawny and misshapen. She knew she couldn’t fly half the distance before her, let alone the entire length. A weary, hungry sigh, and Scootaloo began the slow march around the edge of the neighborhood in search of a way across. Not two miles down the road, she found it. Here, the gap shrunk to less than ten feet, and even sunk down on the other side. With a running start, she could make it with just a jump. Still keeping low, she backed up a short distance, broke into a sprint, and leapt through the air. Scootaloo landed on three legs, her fourth slipping on the very edge of the cloud bank and into the air below. She stifled a scream as she stumbled, and her other hind leg went over. Instinctively, her wings began pumping like mad, buzzing like a motor and giving enough force for Scootaloo to pull herself back over the edge. She flopped on her back, wings burning, trying her best to gasp for breath in silence. She lay there for nearly a minute before shakily standing up and making her way around the side of a massive building labeled “Cloudsdale Weather Services.” Around back, she found a giant ventilation grate twice her height, a few inches off the ground. Lucky for her, the screws had long since rusted, and the grate itself was bent and brown in several places, even missing entire bars. Such was the fate of any metal materials used when building a factory made of condensed water. She grabbed both ends of it and gave a yank, and with a dull crack the vent was open. She stepped inside, not even bothering to duck, and pulled the grate over the mouth of the vent behind her. She followed the vent until she found an opening, lowering herself into an intersection of hallways. The walls were lined with white marble columns, giving the factory an almost regal feel. Scootaloo had never understood pegasus architecture, being born and raised in Ponyville. The thought of the tiny town had her thoughts on a tiny cottage, four blue-green walls, a voice calling from downstairs– A cone of light turned the corner and Scootaloo flung herself through an open door beside her. She pressed herself up against cold metal lockers, hearing only her heartbeat and the hoofsteps of the guard outside. Dim shadows danced across the room as he passed by, until everything was dark again and she let out a quiet sigh of relief. Breaking into empty homes was one thing, she noted, but a massive facility like this was almost out of her league. No! Don’t think like that! What would Rainbow Dash do, give up? Scootaloo paused, then groaned. She probably wouldn’t be stealing lightning jars for money in the first place. Her stomach growled at her, she sighed, and walked to the far end of the locker room to a purple door emblazoned with a white lightning bolt. She opened it slowly, making sure it didn’t creak, and peered inside. No guards in here, she noticed. Another stroke of luck. Scootaloo closed the door behind her and squinted into the darkness. This was one of the newer rooms, after Cloudsdale had moved on from metal machinery so they wouldn’t need to replace them every few years. There were two giant coils for generating the lightning, each with dozens of thick multicolored wires trailing off them like tails. The ceiling was easily three stories high here, dotted with thin metal rods to catch wild arcs of electricity. On either side of the room, staircases rose to overhead catwalks that bordered the chamber, with several doors on each side. And in the corner, a pile of boxes hummed through the silence, with faint, colored light leaking through the cracks. Scootaloo’s eyes widened and she licked her lips at the thought of her first hot meal in weeks. She padded her way across the room and opened one of the boxes. Lightning jars. White and yellow and blue. Each one would sell for a hundred bits or more, and at that thought she had her first smile in weeks. Reaching inside, Scootaloo lifted out the first jar, turned around, and saw the locker room door open across the room. “Hey! What are you doing in here?” Before the guard could even move, Scootaloo grabbed the jar and was bounding towards the stairs as the his light flared behind her. She ran up the steps two at a time, and as she reached the top she heard the first alarms ringing. The guard had pulled an emergency switch, and more guards would be here any second. Without thinking, she yanked open the first door she came to. Scootaloo dashed over the catwalks like a madpony, tiny wings buzzing. Still clutching the cork of the lightning jar in her teeth, she turned the corner, vaulted over the catwalk and landed with a thud in the winter machine room. Doors slammed open on the catwalk above, and the room filled with flashlight beams, all pointed at her. Without stopping, she dove through a gap in the metal pipes connecting the different parts of the machine, slid under a thick water hose barely two feet off the ground, and–spotting another large, rusted vent grate on the wall above–leapt up, bounded off the water hose with all four legs, and headbutted the grate so hard that it split down the middle. She clambered up, wings buzzing, all the while struggling to keep the only grippable part of the lightning jar in her grasp. This vent wasn’t as tall as the other, so that she had to duck ever so slightly. So Scootaloo crouched and shambled her way through, all while alarms and the shouting of guards were ringing in her ears. About ten seconds in, she realized she was shaking. She came to a stop at the vent’s corner, just for a second, and tried to harden herself. There could be no mistakes now. She would not go hungry for another month. Several minutes of guessing which turns went where, and Scootaloo found herself dropping onto a catwalk overlooking a chamber filled with cloud machines. So she’d found herself in another abandoned part of the factory. Just how large was this place? Massive vats of water were suspended over boilers, with hoses leading to a set of pressurized tanks just beneath her. Catwalks criss-crossed the room every few yards. The machinery all looked rusted, as if nopony had used it in years. Just then, the lights sparked to life across the room. Doors opened on either side of her, guard ponies ran out. Time seemed to slow down as she weighed her options. If the space beneath her had been a cloud floor, she may have been able to drop off the railing and continue on the bottom floor. But a row of decrepit steam tanks seemed less promising. Going back into the vent would only leave her cornered, assuming she could clamber back in without one of the guards getting a hold of her tail. That left only forward, across the gap between the catwalks. The width of the chasm seemed to grow with each rapid heartbeat, so that the distance of twenty feet seemed like a hundred. Scootaloo swallowed, her wings buzzing. “Stop right there!” the left guard shouted. Both he and the guard to her right were nearly a foot taller than her, and they both lunged at her. Just as they were about to grab her, Scootaloo leapt up onto the catwalk’s railing and dove into the gap, her fragile wings buzzing like mad. Her front legs reached out, grasping desperately at the catwalk before her–but she found only air. Gravity finally overpowered her, and Scootaloo screamed. She felt herself spinning backwards mid-air, and saw the lightning jar fall past her, just outpacing her. The electricity in the jar crackled before her as she blinked one more time. She heard one of the guards shout something, saw him make desperate a reach towards her– The jar hit a steam tank and shattered, filling her vision with light. Had it been any other room in the factory, where the machines were modern and strong, it wouldn’t have mattered. But here, the pressure within was held back by only thin, rusted aluminum. The noise of fifteen steam tanks exploding rocked the entire building, blasting past and around her in a fury of white light and hot steam. The force of the explosion blew out her eardrums and threw Scootaloo back, where her head smacked against a pipe. Her ears bleeding, she looked up just in time to see a jagged chunk of metal streak across the room and strike her through the chest, nailing her body to the wall. Scootaloo sputtered, only for a moment, and managed one last brave look down. All she saw was red, and then nothing.