Rainbow Dash's Unstoppable Ego

by MagicS

The Eternal Furnace I

It was like she had passed through a veil.

Coming out of the foggy snow swamp she passed by a dark mountain and emerged into a bright and vibrant landscape in the True North. No longer did she feel like she was flying above some sort of forgotten graveyard of ice, the sun was out shining in a sky clear of clouds and the snow and mountains around her held an inviting atmosphere over them. Truly it was like flying back in Equestria where things just felt right and sublime. Rainbow Dash didn’t understand the sudden change—she would have to chalk it up to another quirk of the True North—but she welcomed it all the same. She didn’t need things to be so cold and desolate all the time and now with her ability to see to the horizon in every direction she was sure she’d be able to find something or someplace that would have food. Rainbow Dash had been fighting her stomach pains and ignoring the growling coming from it for a while now. At least she had reached a new place where eating the snow didn’t seem too bad, but that would only be the most minor of temporary fixes. If something real didn’t come along soon she’d be in actual trouble. And if something dangerous came up she really didn’t want to have to deal with it on an empty stomach either. She needed to get her energy and strength back to full.

“Okay, okay, can’t waste any time, Rainbow Dash.” She said to herself as she flew out over the slopes of a tall mountain.

This was again another mountainous area of the True North she was in, these mountains reminding her of the time she flew through the Yaket Range thanks to their size and proximity to one another. They weren’t as clustered together as the mountains that surrounded the mammoth city but they still mostly left no room for flat land between them. It was all ridges, cliffs, and valleys, with small rivers running down in some places.

Her eyes darted about, not frantically but still a bit hurried, to take in all the sights and make sure she didn’t miss anything. What kind of sick irony or bad luck would it be if she accidentally flew right past some food? She was like a hawk now searching for its prey—absolutely anything that looked like either food or someplace ponies or other creatures might be living.

She was careful not to just focus on the ground too, flying high enough where she could easily scan almost the entirety of any mountain she flew by. Thanks to it being the middle of an unclouded day she could look around the range and see pretty much all the nearby mountains as well. None of them were exceptionally huge and the light reflected brightly off all the white snow caked on their sides. More and more this was looking like a wintry vacation spot, the kind of place some enterprising ponies would build a ski resort.

It’s a shame it still looked so empty and devoid of anyone living here so far. Rainbow really needed the opposite to be the case.

Passing another mountain and still seeing nothing she got frustrated. Gritting her teeth and frowning she dove low to a snowy slope and gingerly landed on it, walking a few feet to a small cliff that looked over a cold river slowly flowing below. She watched for a second and then clicked her tongue, jumping off the cliff and gliding to the side of the river.

“Better than nothing,” she said and lowered her head to gulp down some of the water.

It wouldn’t fill her stomach properly but it was the best she could do right now. And the cold water was very fresh and clean, feeling great as it ran down her throat. Sometimes ice cold water just tasted and felt better than anything else you could drink and this was one of those moments.

Even while she was drinking though her belly groaned and she lifted up a hoof to rub it while she drank.

She finally finished her drink and pulled her head back up, panting as the water dripped down the sides of her mouth. How long could a pony go without actually eating food? Applejack would know. Twilight too, probably Fluttershy… Pinkie Pie would say “One day without a cupcake!” and then pull one from somewhere and shove it into her mouth. The water had been partially satisfying and she needed it after flying through that dead zone but her belly still ached for true sustenance.

Rainbow Dash tossed her braid over her shoulder and stretched before shooting off from the ground and getting back to looking for food. She quickly reached the height around the tops of the mountains and started scanning some more. “Food, food, food, food, food...”

No such luck just from chanting it over and over again.

How come such a nice looking area of the True North was uninhabited? She had gone through so many horrible places and now a nice, totally fine, spot like this didn’t have a single pony living here? What a waste. And there weren’t any birds flying out or other animals skittering along the ground or on the mountains either. If there had been she would’ve known there was at least some kind of food here for animals to sustain themselves with. She was beginning to think she had simply reached the end of things and there simply was no more civilization or life further north of here for her to find. That had to happen eventually, right? That could be really bad if that was the case—and even if she found food it would be really bad because that meant no more adventure too.

Rainbow Dash shook her head, it was stupid to get negative like that. She wasn’t the type to get defeatist and give up without a fight first. Or after a fight. Or ever. The True North had to contain so much more for her, her pride and ego demanded it. And forget “Had to happen eventually”! No it didn’t! She didn’t know what was up here or in the rest of the world, there were infinite possibilities. Of course at the moment she was still searching for food first and the adventuring could come afterwards.

Her stomach growled as if to remind her of that fact.

Another day or two and her ribs would be showing.

“There’s gotta be something around here...” Dash said as she rounded another mountain.

And at last, it came to her.

A scent drifting along the wind. It was familiar, very familiar, Rainbow Dash had smelled this many times before in her life. Smoke. And unfortunately she could tell immediately it wasn’t the sort of smoke from cooking something, it was the kind of smoke that came from something like a house or forest burning down, or maybe even coal too. The more industrial kind of smoke. Which at least still meant there was something around and that probably meant some kind of food unless it was just a random forest fire somewhere. But from her earlier observations of the landscape and this mountainous area she was pretty sure there wouldn’t be a big enough forest to make this smell—not to mention it would never just randomly catch fire in the first place. There was definitely something else at play.

Rainbow Dash swung her head around from side to side, closing her eyes and just using her nose to try and figure out where the smell of smoke was coming from. After a second she opened her eyes and looked to the east. That direction. And it should be pretty close. Rainbow Dash flew off to where her nose was taking her and made it past another couple of mountains that were in the way, she still looked around them to make sure nothing on them was the source of the smell or had anything else going on but she still quickly darted between them all.

That soon left her with an unobstructed view of the true source of the smoke. Another mountain slightly northeast of the rest of the range.

At first Rainbow Dash wondered if it was a volcano, as black smoke billowed from atop it without break, but as she got closer and looked harder she realized that wasn’t the case at all. And there were a few other oddities about this mountain. It shimmered in the sunlight and that wasn’t because of any snow on it, it was because the entire top half of the mountain was metal. Like a gigantic metal cone had been built around the actual mountain, totally encasing it. And the smoke was from a number of smokestacks all close to the top as well with one final one jutting right out of the mountain’s peak.

“Okay, this is weird.” Rainbow Dash scratched her head as she looked at it.

Even if she wasn’t hungry she’d want to check this place out. But now it was the only place around that might have some food there, cause ponies or something else definitely lived there.

Rainbow Dash flew fast towards the mountain, she didn’t see anything built on the exterior except for those smokestacks, nor did she see anything on the ground around it or on the lower half that was still stone and snow. She was hoping there would be some kind of obvious entrance or something on it but now that she was close to it the metal skin looked like a smooth shell. No doors. No windows. No platforms. She clicked her tongue and flew around the mountain, close to the top, to give the whole thing a once over but it looked the same on every side.

“So how do I get in there? Whatever this place even is...” Dash wondered.

She then flew over to the nearest smokestacks and quickly had to squint her eyes and cover her mouth thanks to the abrasive smoke. Technically these stacks were the only way inside the mountain she saw but there’s no way she’d be able to breathe or see when inside them. Add to that she had no idea how far they went, how hot they got, or where they led to, that it was probably an insanely bad idea to try and travel down one of them. These smokestacks all probably led to boilers, foundries, or furnaces, that’s what she figured. And going down one would likely end with her being cooked up.

Definitely a bad idea. Already she was having a little trouble keeping from coughing just from floating near this one. She should probably go look for another way inside the mountain. Maybe if she scaled down the mountain a bit she’d see something, the whole thing wasn’t metal so maybe the entrance was around where the cap stopped and the natural mountain began.

If there was an entrance at all. But Rainbow Dash was keeping herself optimistic.

So she quickly flew down the side of it while keeping her eyes on the shiny metal for any signs of a door and in only a few seconds she reached the boundary line where the metal and the rock met each other. And as it turned out she was a lucky pony today.

Shortly before where the shell stopped it jutted out above the rock part of the mountain like an overhang. Maybe just ten feet out but it looked to Rainbow Dash that it went the whole circumference of the mountain like that. From where she was floating she could see it start to curve around the perimeter. And that was only the half of it, a catwalk was hung from the overhanging part of the metal shell, bolted right into it and following along the whole way around the mountain too. Rainbow Dash grinned and hopped onto the catwalk, resting her wings for a bit. The catwalk also had other walkways at an even interval of maybe thirty feet each that led right from it up to tightly sealed hatches built right into the metal wall of the mountain.

“Yes,” Rainbow Dash pumped her hoof. Entrances.

She took in a big lungful of air to catch her breath and walked right down the catwalk to the nearest sealed door. “Please be unlocked, please be unlocked, please be unlocked...” she repeated in a mantra in the hopes her luck would continue.

A quick frown came to her face though. Forget locked or unlocked, there didn’t look to be any way to open this door from the outside at all. She saw no wheel, no lever, no button, no handle, nothing. It was sealed tighter than the lid on a pickle jar.

“Ugh! Great!” Dash threw up her hooves in anger and fell over backwards, staring at the top of the overhang in frustration and wracking her brain on what to do next.

It looked way too thick and tough for her to break. It was nothing but clean silvery metal with no kinds of markings or indications on it either. She really had no idea what to do…

Rainbow Dash rolled back onto her hooves and stood up. “Thinking isn’t going to get me anywhere. Maybe this door can’t be opened from the outside but others might.” She nodded to herself and looked down the catwalk, seeing the next hatch a short glide away.

But before she could even make the journey to it a hiss erupted from the very door she was looking at. The rumbling of mechanical pistons and the shifting of several locks and bars came from the steel hatch and it opened up, not to the left or right but straight up, being pushed by two pneumatic rods safely kept hidden behind the door that squealed with oily slickness.

Rainbow Dash blinked a few times. Pure luck? Did someone know she was out here and had opened the door up just for her?

She heard the sound of wheels on metal and in a second a cart appeared from the door being pushed by a pony. He was an older earth pony with a beige coat and a graying unkempt mane, wrinkles on his forehead right above his brown eyes and furrowed eyebrows, he wore a gray-blue jumpsuit that was covered in dirt and grease. The cart he was pushing held half a dozen brown containers that looked like they were welded shut on top. Rainbow Dash had no idea what might be in them but that wasn’t important right now. She had a way into the mountain.

It was clear the door hadn’t opened for her but she could use it anyways. The pony with the cart wheeled it to the edge of the catwalk and stopped, walking from behind it to the containers and looking like he hadn’t noticed Rainbow Dash only a short distance away at all. Dash decided she would change that and flew over to where he was right as he was pulling one of the containers off the cart.

She landed with a soft thud on the metal catwalk that shook it slightly and said hi to the stallion. “Hey!”

He jumped with a start and whipped around, pressing his back up to the cart. “Wha—don’t scare me like that!”

“Er, sorry.” Rainbow Dash winced. The catwalk didn’t have a railing and he couldn’t fly so it was already a little dangerous for him to be out here even without getting startled.

The pony looked her up and down with suspicion. “Who are you anyways? You from outside?”

“Yeah I’m from pretty far away,” Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her neck. “Name’s Rainbow Dash, what about you?”

“Oil Slick.”

He seemed determined to not say anything else and just stared at her so Rainbow Dash spoke up again. “So what is this place?”

“Our city.”

“Aaaand?” She raised an annoyed eyebrow at him.

“Well what else do you want me to say? It’s a city where a whole bunch of us live and have so for generations,” Oil Slick shrugged.

“Right,” Dash would’ve liked a little more info on it but this guy clearly wasn’t big on conversation. She pointed over at the open door. “Are these doors the only way in?”

He nodded. “Nowadays. We closed ourselves off a while ago.”

She was about to ask why when her stomach grumbled. Blushing in embarrassment she changed the topic. “So you guys have plenty of food in there at least? Because I haven’t eaten anything in days.”

“This isn’t a vacation spot,” Oil Slick snorted. “You don’t want to go in there, you could get in trouble and they might not even let you leave. There’s a lot of dangerous stuff going on in this place.”

Dash shrugged. “Not like there’s anything else I can do, didn’t look like there’s any other food nearby. And I’m not afraid of any danger or anything inside this place either. In fact, I’d kind of welcome the opportunity to get in trouble.”

“Well suit yourself then, I won’t stop you from going in but I’ve still got work today so you can just fly all in there on your own,” he waved her away and grabbed the first container on the cart, lugging it off and putting it on the catwalk. It looked heavy.

“What’s your job?” She asked him.

He sighed but looked over at her anyways. “I guess you could call it trash duty. I’m taking care of waste generated by the city that can’t be recycled or incinerated. It all gets dumped off the side of the mountain out here.”

“Waste?” Rainbow Dash crinkled her nose in disgust.

“Not that kind,” Oil Slick frowned at her. “Toxic waste, chemical waste, you can’t recycle it or safely incinerate it. So we just get rid of it like this.”

“Oh,” Dash nodded her head. And then frowned as a thought came to her and she looked at the bottom of the mountain. “Wait. Isn’t that bad? And dangerous? There’s no way that stuff can be good just thrown out like that.”

Oil Slick just shrugged again and tossed the first container off the catwalk, Dash watched it tumbling down and down until it went out of sight. “So what? Out of sight, out of mind. We can’t do anything else with it and once it’s thrown off like that it’s not our problem anymore.”

The way he made it sound that stuff was basically poison in a box and she really didn’t like the idea of it just being dumped like that with no concern for any adverse effects. “Really nice of you.”

“Hardy-har-har, complain all you want but I’ve gotta get rid of this stuff,” Oil Slick mocked and ignored her, grabbing another can of the stuff.

She probably would’ve stayed and complained some more if her stomach didn’t grumble again. She didn’t have the time to spare arguing with some guy about this and by the sound of things he was only one very minor part of the problem. Food was too strong of a call for her right now and the door was open. “Fine. But you’re lucky I’m so hungry.”

“Yeah, yeah...” he grumbled and tossed the second canister away.

Rainbow Dash frowned but gave up on this guy for now, turning and walking down the catwalk that led into the door he came out from. Once she made it past the threshold she instantly noticed just how dirty and poorly lit the interior of the mountain was. Compared to the clean and polished steel of the outer shell the insides were a greasy mess of black pipes, gratings, and vents. Electrical lights hung from above that only had a dim glow to them, occasionally flickering on and off and giving the place an even worse look. Was the whole place as broken down as this? Right now she was just in a narrow corridor and it looked like it opened up a bit down the way. Oil Slick would probably be done with his job pretty soon so Dash made an effort to quickly trot out of this corridor and look around the rest of the interior for someone else or directions on where to find some food.

She had to step up a small ramp but it led into a wider and taller room that looked like it curved around the mountain for a good distance in both directions while another door sat right in front of her. It might’ve even gone the entire way around, she wasn’t sure. Judging by the looks of it though she was still in some kind of exterior area of the city, squinting to her left she saw another corridor that she bet led to the door she had initially tried to get through. This whole room was like an access corridor or something between the outside and inside. It reminded her of… what was it? The airlocks back at Dust Bunny’s underground city and the science lab.

“Which means...” Rainbow Dash looked to the door. Unlike the hatches this one had an actual handle on it. “You should take me right into the actual city.”

She walked up and grasped the handle, pulling on it revealed the door was unlocked and Rainbow Dash smiled as she went in and ended up walking down a tunnel a short twenty feet before coming out into a new room. That smile then quickly died on her face as she took a look around.

“This is like a prison,” was her first thought as she took in the huge room she had ventured into.

It was a large, square room with an open floor and four different levels all with grated balconies that lined the sides of the room and four stairways at each corner. The walls were covered in what she figured were rooms along each level but had the appearance of cells thanks to the blunt and intimidating look of the dark metal and poor lighting. At the left and right sides of the room there were also huge openings that went halfway up the walls in height and likely led to other areas of the city. While directly across from her there looked to just be a regular sized door. As she took a few steps into the huge chamber and looked around she also noticed that while the floor was empty and devoid of anything now there were spots on the floor where it looked like stuff had at one point been bolted or nailed down there. But she had no idea what.

“And where is everyone?” She asked aloud, since there wasn’t a soul in sight despite how many ponies this place could hold. She supposed they could all be in their rooms but it seemed too quiet and still even for that.

Rainbow Dash flew up and looked around the floors and rooms nearest to her, every door had a handle so they could at least be opened up from the outside like normal doors. But if that was someone’s home she couldn’t really barge in there… despite how hungry she was. So instead she landed on the grating in front of it and knocked on the metal door first.

And then knocked again, louder.

“Anybody home?” She yelled as she pounded on the door. It didn’t seem like anyone was. “Ugh, great, I’m starving here!”

No other doors had opened up and no ponies had popped their heads out to see the commotion she had been making so it likely was the case that this whole place was empty. Rainbow Dash grumbled in annoyance and jumped back down to the ground floor, pacing about in the center of the room. There were without a doubt lots of other ponies in here but now she had three different directions to choose from on where to go to find them. She tapped her hoof impatiently on the ground while her stomach ached and groaned at her.

But finally she ended up not having to make a decision. From the big tunnel to her right a grinding sound came and lights began to flicker on, illuminating the way down there. Rainbow Dash walked over and watched as far down the tunnel a huge door was opening up and retreating into the ceiling while ponies marched on out from behind it. It looked like hundreds of them were coming from wherever was behind that previously sealed shut barrier.

And from what she could tell this was not a very friendly and jovial looking group of ponies. There was no light conversation being held between them, they just looked blankly ahead or at their hooves as they walked back towards the big room Rainbow Dash was in. What had they just been doing? While she looked over them she saw they were all wearing the same kind of jumpsuit as Oil Slick, and all of them looked to be covered in grease and soot the same way. What really distressed Rainbow Dash though was that she didn’t just see mares and stallions walking back here—there were plenty of young fillies and colts too no older than the Crusaders.

Finally the ones at the front noticed Rainbow Dash standing there and they came to a stop while the others murmured behind them, wondering what was going on.

The dozens of ponies at the front stared at Rainbow Dash for a second until she finally raised a hoof to wave at them and smiled.

“You guys got any food around here?”

Author's Note:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJAGgtWwvSk

Comments

[superfun]

Rainbow Dash tossed her braid over her shoulder and stretched before shooting off from the ground and getting back to looking for food.

Huh, surprised she either hasn't undone it already or it hasn't already undone on its own, considering how long it's been since she left the valley

The new location is pretty interesting

[THERDSTORYWHISPERER]

Great chapter!

[MagicS]

10633576
She figured she might as well be polite to Shibu, no sense undoing it on her own, and she hasn't really stopped for real anywhere until now. It'll come undone naturally soon anyways.

[superfun]

10633787
Makes sense

[Mini-Joe]

I think I'm gonna like this part of the story. Mechanical stuff is cool.