SAPR

by Scipio Smith

Through the Clouds (New)

Through the Clouds

“Huh,” Rainbow said.

“Hmm?” Ciel said, looking up from her book. “Something interesting?”

They were on the open deck of the skyliner. Everyone was there in some fashion: Rainbow, Ciel, Twilight, Spike, Applejack, Fluttershy, Blake; Twilight had even rigged up Penny’s optical sensors to a drone so that – the drone being over there with them – she could ‘see’ everything that the drone’s cameras could see and speak out of a speaker plugged into the miniature flyer. Since Rainbow couldn’t bring everyone over to the Hope – you could make a case for Applejack or Blake, but definitely not for Fluttershy – she had instead flown everyone and the drone over to the civilian airship, where they all stood or sat upon the deck. Rainbow was leaning with her back to the safety rail, reading that book that Tukson had given her; Ciel was standing, ramrod straight, in the middle of the deck, likewise reading – In Search of the Historical Lady of the North. Fluttershy was fussing over Spike, while Applejack and Twilight sat on the deck playing cards. Blake leaned upon the rails, her elbows resting on the metal as the breeze whipped through her long dark hair as she looked out across the white expanse of Solitas spread out all around them.

That was why they were all on the open deck; that was why Rainbow had gotten everybody here like this. They had crossed the ocean, and now, the two ships were on their final approach to Atlas itself. Rainbow wanted everyone to be here for that moment when they broke through the clouds and beheld the shining kingdom because… well, because it was a sight to see, and it would be cool for them to all see it together.

It made Rainbow’s heart soar, every time.

“I’ve only just started, but listen to this,” Rainbow said. She cleared her throat. “‘This book is dedicated to Doughnut Joe Sr., whose shop I frequented when I was living in Atlas.’ I never realised that Sienna Khan lived in Atlas; I thought she was from Mistral.”

“No,” Blake murmured. “She was born in Atlas and only moved to Mistral when she was a young adult.”

Twilight looked up. “But why would she dedicate her book to a guy who owned a doughnut shop, even if she did used to go there? It’s not like I’d dedicate a book to Mr. and Mrs. Cake.”

“I’m getting to that,” Rainbow told her. “‘He was a man of great curiosity and always willing to talk with me about anything and everything new that I had learned or discovered. One day, he said to me, “You’re always talking about this book of yours; why don’t you write it?” I told him that I needed to go to Mistral to research in the archives there and that I didn’t have the money right now – at the time, I was working as a researcher for the Atlesian News Network, saving as much as I could. Joe asked me how much I needed, and I told him about a thousand lien. That was all he said on the matter at the time, but the next time I was in there, he pressed eleven hundred lien into my hand. “On to Mistral, then,” he said, “and if you need more, let me know.” Without his help, I would never have been able to start on this journey.’” Rainbow lowered the book. “It makes you think, doesn’t it?”

“What does it make you think?” Penny asked, her mechanical voice emerging from out of the drone where it sat on the deck.

“It makes you think about the White Fang,” Rainbow explained. “And what would have happened if Joe Senior hadn’t lent Sienna that money to go to Mistral. Imagine if he’d kept his lien and Sienna had had to stick around Atlas trying to get enough money together for her trip. Maybe she never would have managed it, and maybe the White Fang would have stayed a peaceful organisation under Blake’s father.”

“I doubt that,” Blake said, turning to face Rainbow. “To be honest, I don’t think even Sienna Khan would attribute that kind of importance to herself.”

“She is pretty important,” Rainbow pointed out. “I mean, she’s the reason that the White Fang turned to violence five years ago.”

“No,” Blake replied, “she’s the one who led the White Fang into violence; there’s a difference.”

“Post hoc ergo propter hoc,” Ciel said.

“Post what now?” Applejack said.

“'After this, therefore because of this,'” Twilight translated. “Just because one thing follows on from another doesn’t mean that the thing that came before is responsible for what came after.”

“But if a leader takes charge of a group and then that leader does a thing, then the leader taking charge is responsible for the thing that they did,” Rainbow said. “That seems obvious.”

“I believe Blake’s point is that at or around that particular moment, it was inevitable that there would be a change of leadership in the White Fang and that that new leader would adopt policies similar to those instituted by Sienna Khan,” Ciel said.

“Exactly,” Blake agreed. “Five years ago, my father was tired of the struggle, and faunus inside and outside the organisation were tired of the lack of results; it wasn’t Sienna Khan who forced my father to step down, it was the general clamour for a new approach. And yes, Sienna Khan was the person who stepped up in those circumstances, and yes, she advocated for a muscular, confrontational, violent approach to the struggle for equality, but no one who didn’t advocate for that could have succeeded my father – that was what people wanted, a High Leader who would stand up to the Kingdoms – which means, equally, that anyone who succeeded my father would have done as she did. It’s interesting to speculate on Sienna Khan’s personal history if she hadn’t been given that gift that allowed her to go to Mistral, to study, to publish, to get her PhD, but her personal history is all that would change. If you wanted to change the trajectory of the White Fang, you would have to have my father achieve some tangible results to stave off criticism and renew his energy for the fight.”

“So the person doesn’t matter?” Applejack asked. “Who they are, where they come from, how they were raised don’t make no difference? We’re all just… placeholders? Ah don’t know if Ah buy that.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Blake replied. “Sienna herself goes into much more detail on this in that book, but the thrust of it is that people are shaped by their world far more often than the reverse, and that while writing history as the story of a heroic protagonist shaping said history by their actions may make for a good read, it betrays the complexity of the world and the economic and cultural forces that shape it. Sienna concedes that there is such a thing as a Great Man – and that Ares Claudandus himself was one of them – who can exercise an outsized influence on events, and without whose presence, the course of history would look different; but even they rise out of their specific moments and are shaped by them. Without the Great War, there would have been no Faunus Rights Revolution, Claudandus or no.”

Rainbow began, “And Sienna Khan-”

“Is not on that level of greatness, no,” Blake said. “As I said, I don’t think even she’d claim that.”

“Hmm,” Rainbow murmured. “I get what you’re saying, but… like Applejack said, I don’t know.”

“None of us are immune to the influence of where and how we grew up,” Twilight pointed out.

“Influence, sure, but we’re all so much more than that,” Rainbow insisted. “What about where or how I grew up made it obvious that I would become a huntress? What about-?” She pointed at Applejack, and then stopped. “Okay, it kind of works for you.”

Applejack rolled her eyes. “Gee, thanks.”

Rainbow grinned. “Come on, it’s not my fault you’re like ‘salt of the earth family values’ one hundred percent.”

“There ain’t nothin’ wrong with family values,” Applejack declared. “Or with salt of the earth, for that matter, neither. Ah’m proud to be proud of where Ah come from and what Ah come from.”

“I never said there was anything wrong with that; I’m just saying that you really are who you are because of where you were born and how you were brought up in a way that isn’t true for the rest of us,” Rainbow said. “It isn’t true for me, it isn’t true for Fluttershy; Fluttershy, your parents were engineers; who could have predicted that you’d be able to communicate with animals, or that your brother would become a hairstylist? And a creep.”

“Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy said reproachfully. “That isn’t very nice.”

“Nor is getting hit on all the time,” Rainbow muttered. “But I’m sorry, you’re right, I shouldn’t have said it, but the point is that we’re all so much more than where we came from. Ciel, sure, your folks are religious, but society isn’t, so how do you explain that?”

“I understand your point, but feel as though you may be missing Blake’s,” Ciel said. “Or at least reducing it down to a level it was not meant to sink to.”

“No, I understand what Blake is saying; she’s saying that big historical events happen because of everything else that was going on at the same time,” Rainbow said. “And I’m saying that, haven’t we been involved in big historical events? The White Fang in Vale were not defeated because of the economy or the culture or society or any other big ideas like that; they were defeated because of you, Blake. They were defeated because you decided that you wanted out, you decided that you couldn’t take it anymore, you decided that you had to do something. And also because I tried to kill you and scared you into running away and somehow we ended up at the docks but we’re all friends now so let’s move on anyway. My point is that if Sienna Khan is right, then that would have all happened anyway with or without you, but how? Who would have stopped the robbery, who would have captured Torchwick? Are you just a placeholder, like Applejack said, and if you weren’t around, someone else would have left the White Fang and come to Beacon instead? I don’t buy that. I don’t buy that one bit, and you know why: because no one else did. Only you.”

“You never know,” Spike said. “Maybe Blake’s one of those Great Men of history?”

Rainbow was of the opinion that Spike had a very good point there, and once upon a time, she would have said so, but she’d promised Blake – okay, maybe she hadn’t technically promised, but she’d as good as promised Blake – that she wouldn’t put that kind of pressure on her anymore, so she didn’t say anything, and even tried not to smile as a flush of colour rose to Blake’s cheeks.

“That is…” Blake trailed off. “I’m sorry, I still can’t believe that you’re talking.”

“I’m getting that a lot lately,” Spike said.

“I also can’t believe that you’re all so okay with this,” Blake said.

“Why wouldn’t we be okay with this?” asked Penny.

“It isn’t exactly normal,” Blake pointed out.

“Neither am I,” Penny replied. “Normal is very relative.”

“I…” Blake trailed off for a moment. “I suppose you’re right about that, Penny.”

“Besides, it ain’t like we got much choice ‘cept to accept it,” Applejack drawled. “It is what it is: Spike’s talkin’ now, and hootin’ and hollerin’ about it ain’t gonna change it.”

“I’m a little concerned,” Fluttershy admitted, “but I’ve checked Spike over, and I agree with Twilight that it doesn’t seem to have done him any harm.”

“I told you I was fine!” Spike declared.

“I know,” Fluttershy said, scratching him beneath the chin, “but I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You know I’d be worried sick if anything was wrong with you.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Spike said, rolling over onto his back in Fluttershy’s lap, kicking his legs happily in the air.

Blake smiled very slightly at the sight, then turned away to once more look out beyond the airship. They had left the ocean behind, crossing the shoreline and passing over Solitas itself. The water beneath them had changed to tundra fields; it wasn’t quite fall yet, so the ground wasn’t frozen, but it was hard and rocky and desolate all the same. Nothing grew, nothing lived – or at least not much, and nothing that could be seen at the moment. Venture along the coasts, and you could find penguins, seals, and maybe you might find caribou or, if you were unlucky, a polar bear, but not very many of any of them, and none could be seen right now.

“How do you manage to grow any food?” Blake asked.

“The first colonists didn’t bother,” Rainbow said. “They lived on seal meat and other things they could hunt, like walruses or whales.”

Everyone looked at her.

“I know some things!” Rainbow said defensively.

“Thankfully, we don’t do that so much any more,” Fluttershy said.

“It was never quite so simple,” Ciel announced. “Although it is true there was no farming in the early days of Solitas, there was some gathering of wild plant life.”

“But you don’t still live on seal and whale meat?” Blake asked.

Applejack shook her head. “We farm just like any other folks do these days. Solitas ain’t all this bleak lookin’. There’s some darn fine farmin’ country off towards the west coast. That’s where I grew up; that’s where we’ve still got our family farm: Sweet Apple Acres.” Her face fell. “Of course, out west where it’s less icy and such, the grimm are a lot friskier than they get out here. Something you always gotta watch out for.”

Blake winced. “I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t sayin’ it fer pity,” Applejack said. “And I’m just sayin’, that’s the way it is. You asked, I answered.”

“There are also the biodomes,” Twilight said.

“Don’t talk to me about them; they ain’t real farmin’,” Applejack said dismissively.

“'Biodomes'?” Blake asked.

“Big greenhouse kind of things,” Applejack said. “Artificial indoor farms stuck in the middle of the cold. Lot of robots in ‘em, doing all the hard work. Well, like my Pa always said, you ain’t a real farmer ‘less you getting your hands dirty.” She shrugged. “Anyway, truth be told, most of the food in Atlas ain’t grown in fancy domes nor in the west. It gets shipped up from Mistral in huge airships.”

“Really?” Blake asked.

“Uh-huh,” Applejack said.

“The General told me once that about a third of the fleet is protecting the Mistral food convoys at any one time,” Rainbow said.

“I suppose there’s not much more important than food,” Blake said. “A kingdom could survive running out of dust more easily than it could survive running out of food for its people.” She paused. “It’s funny, isn’t it, the way that everything is integrated? As if someone deliberately set out to make the four kingdoms dependent on one another.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Twilight asked.

“To prevent another war?” Blake suggested.

“Attention all passengers,” the loud-speaker declared, “we are approaching Atlas now. We’ll be in sight of the city shortly.”

Rainbow shut the book and stowed it hastily in a waterproof bag at her feet. “Okay, everyone this is it, get ready. Blake, Penny, this is your first time, or first time back, so you won’t want to miss this.”

“I might,” Penny murmured as everyone else got up and found somewhere to stand where their view would not be obstructed by anyone or anything.

Rainbow looked at the drone, sat down on the deck. She knelt down in front of it, so that she was closer to the camera. “It’s going to be okay, Penny. I’m going to make sure of it.” She grinned. “Now come on. This is one of the greatest sights in Remnant.”

She picked up the drone and held it up above her head as the skyliner – and the Hope which kept it company – sailed on towards a thick cloud bank, a wall of whiteness which obscured anything which might be found upon the other side.

The frigid tundra, white with the snow which covered the ground, bleak with the lack of anything but snow, fell away beneath the airships as they sailed onwards. The skyliner’s wings beat up and down, up and down, as it bore its passengers towards the clouds.

The Hope was slightly in the lead, and its long prow was the first to pierce the cloudbank. The black hull began to disappear from sight as more and more of the great ship flew into the all-consuming whiteness, but Rainbow could still see the green position lights of the cruiser’s port side blinking on and off, dim but visible, penetrating out through the cloud.

Then the bow of their own ship, just a few feet away, passed into the clouds, and as it did so, Rainbow ceased to be able to see it. The cloud, the wall of white, seemed to roll towards them over the deck, devouring all before it.

“My glasses always get so wet after this,” Twilight moaned.

“It’s part of the experience,” Rainbow said, as with one hand – the other still holding Penny’s drone aloft – she pulled her goggles down over her eyes.

But as the cloud bank engulfed her, engulfed them all, as it swept across the skyliner and consumed it, Rainbow didn’t activate any of the modes that might have helped her see better. Not only would they have spoiled the view when they came out of the clouds again, but Rainbow felt as though this, too, was part of the experience.

Everyone was gone. Everyone had disappeared, lost from sight in a fog so thick that Rainbow couldn’t see them. They had been so close before, all around her, but now, they were gone, as if they had been snatched away in an instant.

There was nothing. Nothing but the deck beneath her feet – a deck which, for all that she could see, didn’t extend much past her feet – and the blinking green lights of the Hope where it flew upon their right, and even then, it seemed to be nothing but green lights, disembodied, blinking as they floated in the air.

The droplets of water touched her face, tickling her cheeks, dousing her hair. She could feel the water running down her raised arm.

“Is everyone still here?” Penny asked.

“We are, Penny,” Ciel confirmed, her voice emerging from out of nowhere. “We are all still here.”

“Am I the only one who thinks this is a little creepy?” Spike asked.

“Only if you’re quiet,” Twilight said. “And even then, it’s the good kind of creepy.”

“There’s a good kind of creepy?”

“Of course there is,” Twilight explained. “It’s the difference between a horror ride and a horrifying experience.”

“Does it always take this long?” Blake asked.

“It builds suspense,” Rainbow replied.

Blake paused for a moment, before she asked archly. “When we get out of this cloud, are we going to find that somebody has been murdered.”

“'Murdered'?” Penny cried. “Why would anyone be murdered?”

“Blake is referring to a cliché of melodramas and murder mysteries,” Ciel explained. “A group of characters gather in a room. The lights go out. Somebody screams. The lights come on again, and one of the characters is dead. Obviously, that will not happen here.”

Rainbow let out a blood-curdling scream at the top of her voice, prompting a squeal of alarm from Fluttershy.

“Rainbow Dash!” Applejack snapped reproachfully.

“Oh, come on!” Rainbow replied, as sniggers slipped out of her mouth. “Ciel set that one up perfectly!”

“That was not my intent,” Ciel murmured.

“I thought it was funny,” Penny said.

“Thanks, Penny,” said Rainbow Dash.

And then the skyliner passed through the layer of cloud, emerging once again into the clear skies to behold, floating in the air before them, Atlas.

It was the most glorious sight that Rainbow Dash had ever seen, and probably would ever see; certainly, she couldn’t imagine anything more magnificent than the sight that confronted them as they cleared the cloudbank. This was what they were here for, this was why she had gathered them all out here on the open deck, because this… this was worth it.

The city of Atlas flew. It was something that everyone knew, but it was one thing to know it and quite something else to see it, an entire city raised up into the sky, reaching towards heaven.

And they weren’t just talking about floating buildings, or a flat disk to build upon, no, this was a whole chunk of rock, a mass of earth so deep that a crater had been left where it had been before, all of it lifted up out of the ground by gravity dust and great engines of unmatched power.

Lifted out of the ground by science and cleverness, by geniuses like Twilight and Penny’s father, by the same kind of people who had designed the fleet of airships that patrolled around the city, the black shapes of the cruisers looking like insects buzzing around their hive.

The skyliner was approaching from slightly higher than the city itself, although not as high as the highest towers, so Rainbow and the others could get a good view of the upper city as they made their way in: they could see the irrigated fields on the east and west sides, where the climate control systems allowed a little farming to be done in spite of the temperatures and the high altitudes; she could see the miniature mountains to the north, which would have been dwarfed by the actual mountains on the tundra below if Atlas had been set down upon the ground but which looked pretty cool when taken by themselves – how many people could say they made their mountains fly, huh, even if they were just little mountains? She could see the raised spur on the eastern side just below the mountains, the mansions of the Schnees and the Marigolds built up on the highest land in the highest place in Remnant where people could live. She could see the rest of Atlas, forming first an O around the central peak, then moving downwards between the farmland to the east and west before spreading out like a fish’s tail as it approached the edge of Atlas, stopping short of that edge because, you know, it was a long way down to the tundra below. She could see the high towers of glass and steel, she could see the megamalls, and the parks, and the open squares. She could see the monorail lines looping around the Academy and spreading out across the city.

And she could see Atlas Academy itself, the highest pinnacle in the highest city, set upon a lonely mountain of dark rock, joined by air and monorail and elevator with the city around it; the grounds weren’t as spacious as Beacon, it didn’t have the same wide open expanse, but it was beautiful nonetheless, at least in her eyes: the iron tower, lit up with lights of blue and white, surrounded by lesser towers like the points on a crown.

And it shone. It shone in the night with the million lights that were as high up as the stars themselves, it shone in daylight as the sunlight reflected off the glass. It shone with what it was, what it meant, what it represented, not just the greatest kingdom, but a shining light for all the kingdoms. A promise to Remnant.

A promise you broke.

Rainbow Dash frowned. That was Sunset talking, not her. She was… she didn’t feel… she had done what she had to do, for Applejack. More than that, she’d done the tactically smart thing. She’d done the only sensible thing. None of what had happened after was on her. She had no regrets.

This wasn’t the time for regrets, or the place, not with Atlas in view, and getting closer.

True, it wasn’t perfect, and true, the presence of Low Town in the crater down below, lurking in the shadow of Atlas above like a shameful secret, was like a stain on a picture – except worse, because it was kind of like a stain on the spirit too, but still… it was Atlas. It was Atlas, bright and beautiful, grand and glorious, Atlas in all her radiant majesty and hers. Hers to have, hers to fight for, hers to share with those she loved.

A shining kingdom in the clouds, for all of them.

“Everyone,” Rainbow said, a smile spreading out across her face. “We’re home.”

Comments

[Mastermind4892]

That ending felt like watching one of the Shield helicarriers rising out of the clouds!

[Mister Morden]

Atlas, a city in the clouds. No other place like it!

[The silver knight]

Atlas, a tick that sits upon the back of mantle; fueling the engines that keep it aloft with the blood it drinks from the city below.

[Raul]

11210193
Which funnily enough, while a good allegory for many things, isn’t canon, as it’s the Staff of Creation that keeps Atlas Afloat