Shades of Gray

by lrft4_san

Intruders

Part II Intruders

It was fifteen minutes before Hikari and Valiant came upon a large building with its dark shadow looming ominously over the surrounding shops, just on the edge of Cloudsdale. They had reached the Weather Factory. The structure held no trace of the beautiful and intricate designs of the shops and homes that Cloudsdale was famous for. Instead, the main Factory building resembled a large, flat box, with high walls made of gray, nimbostratus cloud. From each of the four corners, smoke stacks towered high above the city, releasing not smoke but small, fluffy white clouds into the sky, which were quickly gathered up by groups of waiting pegasi who transported them to different parts of Equestria.
The two young pegasi stopped by a shop, just across the street from the Factory’s main entrance to rest for a moment. As they waited, Hikari sat down and closed her eyes, trying to remember something important.

" Ok, let me see." She said, gently tapping a hoof to her temple. "If we fly around to the side of the factory, we should find a door there that we can sneak in through. It’s a service entrance used by the rainbow team when they leave to make their deliveries."

"But won't it be, you know, occupied?"

"Don’t be dumb, Val. Didn’t you check the weather schedule this morning? There isn’t supposed be rain in any of the near by towns today, so I can’t imagine it would be too busy right now. I figure if we're quick, we can sneak through the door, walk through the lower level until we find some stairs, then up the stairs to the main production floor of the Weather Factory. That’s where we start our tour."

"Sounds easy enough. What are we waiting for? Let's go." Said Valiant eagerly. Hikari shook her head.

"Not yet. We need to wait for the right moment. Look at the clock?” She pointed a hoof towards a clock tower the stood to the right of the entrance to the Factory. “It's almost eleven; the lower level factory workers should be going on break soon.” She turned back towards the Factory. “Over there; you see that platform coming out of the side of the building?"

"Yeah."

"That's where they'll be coming out. This is the perfect spot for us to watch it from. We’ll make our move as soon as we see them leave."

Sure enough, a few minutes later, a loud whistle could be heard coming from somewhere within the Factory. It wasn't long before a small group of pegasi came flying out of the now open door.

"Ok, lets move." Whispered Hikari.

"Right." Valiant nodded and followed behind her. The two pegasi galloped over to the edge of the city.

"Looks like our best hope will be to dive off here and approach it from underneath.” Said Hikari, as adrenaline began rushing through her. “On the count of three, we jump."

"On three. Got it."

"One."

"Two."

"Three." The two pegasi dove off the side of Cloudsdale towards the ground bellow. Then, in almost perfect unison, their wings snapped open lifting them so that they were just bellow the level of the city, out of sight from any watchful eyes. The sudden sensation of the wind pressing against her feathers sent a shiver through Hikari’s body; this was what she lived for.

Valiant looked over at Hikari, her wings beating in time with his; he couldn’t help but think about how beautiful she looked with the wind rushing through her mane and feathers. In a burst of excitement, Valiant felt the sudden urge to show off for the filly. Beating his wings faster, he picked up speed and pulled ahead of Hikari. Then he closed his wings and went into a sharp dive. After dropping a hundred feet, Valiant snapped his wings open, and went into five loop de loops before pulling up and leveling out again with Hikari who giggled at his antics.

"Not bad," she said flying close to give Valiant a friendly swipe of her tail. "But try this." She took off, flying up about thirty feet before she pulled her wings closed and dove, spiraling like a drill towards a cluster of clouds below them. Valiant winced as Hikari came into contact with the first cloud below her. The only thing that Valiant could think in that moment was that Hikari was really going injure herself this time. But the impact never came; instead of smacking into the surface of the cloud, Hikari drilled right through it, making hole clear through the cloud, continuing through the next three clouds under that one. Hikari opened her wings, pulling out of her dive, and flew clumsily back up and joined Valiant back at the level they had been flying at.

"Well," She said looking tired and obviously dizzy from having done so many rotations. "What do you think of that?"

"Ok, I'll admit it; you definitely know what you're doing." The two couldn't help laughing. When they finally calmed themselves, they turned back to the Weather Factory and continued flying.

It wasn't too long before they reached the platform where they saw the Factory workers exit.

"This is it," said Hikari as they landed. "There should be a door somewhere." She looked around, inspecting the area. "Oh, here it is." The two walked over and inspected the door.

"What if it's locked?" Asked Valiant. He was starting to feel a bit anxious.

"Only one way to find out." Hikari put a hoof on the door and gave it a push. To her surprise, the door opened easily. "Val, Make a mental note: if we run into an employee, tell them that their security is very lacking."

"Noted, though I bet it's probably never been a problem. I mean, whose gonna steal clouds and rainbows? They're practically free anyway, right?" They both laughed at the thought of somepony sneaking in and taking off with their hooves full of clouds.

"Shall we," said Hikari, motioning to Valiant to go in.

"Fillies first." Valiant bowed his head, letting a small chuckle escape as he did so.

"My, such a gentlecolt." Hikari returned the bow and walked in to the large building.

The first thing they noticed as they entered the building was how vast the lower level of the Factory was. Within the large room were a few rows of carts and hundreds of large containers (most of which were empty, while some were filled with beautifully swirling multicolors). Other than that, the room looked pretty much empty. Hikari looked up and saw many different pipes and tubes that snaked along the ceiling, stretching all the way from one end of the room to the other.

"This is the rainbow packaging plant." Said Hikari, admiring one of the rainbow filled canisters.

"Hey," said Valiant in a low whisper, "did you ever hear the story about how rainbows are made of naughty young pegasi who don't pass their flight school exams?"
"Oh shut up,” Hikari scoffed, “that's just a myth used to scare foals into doing well in school, or eat their vegetables or something. You can't honestly think that that's true."

Valiant shrugged.

"It could be true. Just think, one little mistake and then, GOTCHA!" he shouted as he lunged forward and landed on top of Hikari.

"Aagh!" Hikari exclaimed as she collapsed under the weight of the colt. The sound of her scream reverberated throughout the hall. "We should go," she said, feeling a bit worried. "Somepony might have heard that."

They started to make their way down the hall through the many rows of canisters. Hikari suddenly stopped, feeling very confused. She had studied those blue prints a hundred times to make sure that her information was correct. Yet something was very wrong.

“I don’t understand,” said Hikari, as she looked around. Her face wrinkled in a frown.

"What's the matter?" Valiant asked.

"We're lost."

"What do you mean 'lost?' I thought you knew where you were going."

"I thought I did too. Every one of the blue prints that I looked at showed a staircase right here that is supposed to lead to the upper levels of the Factory, but as you can clearly see, there isn't one." Hikari closed her eyes, retracing their steps, hoping that she had miscalculated somewhere, but no, she had made no mistakes, she couldn’t have. Then, without warning, a whistle blew marking the end of the lower level workers lunch break. When the ringing echo of the whistle faded away, it was so silent in the room that you could hear the hearts of the two pegasi racing as the ponies stood frozen, too scared to move.

"Come on Kari," said Valiant, reclaiming his courage. "They'll be here any minute. We've gotta go."

"Where?" Asked Hikari, feeling defeated.

"Look," Valient pointed a hoof to the wall on the other side of the room. "There's a door over there, just a little ways further up. If we can get to it you might get your bearings back." Hikari nodded. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was certainly better than sitting around, waiting to be caught. As soon as they heard the main entrance open, they bolted across the room.

The door wasn't as far as it looked, but every time they came out from behind a canister, they expected to run into a Factory employee. They didn't, though they heard plenty of voices starting to fill the room. Finally, Hikari had a hoof on the doorknob. Up close they could see that the door had a sign hung on it near the top that said 'Do not enter, authorized personnel only'. This worried Hikari; breaking into the Weather Factory was one thing (they were supposed to be there on their class trip after all), but sneaking into someplace where they were clearly not welcome was something that caused her to hesitate.

"Now or never." Said Valiant. He gave the filly an assuring smile. "Don't worry Kari, I'll be with you the whole time." Hikari nodded, turned the knob, and pushed. For the second time that day, the ponies were surprised at how lucky they were to see yet another door open so easily. "See what did I tell you? I mean seriously guys, if you don't want somepony sneaking in, put locks on your doors." They both laughed quietly, but the sound of a voice a few feet away caused the two to jump, and flee into the next room, closing the door behind them.

Comments

[dragonridergoku]

Rainbow Factory reference LOL good job with this chapter, I await more

[lrft4_san]

1708170
lol, yeah I had to put in a reference to Rainbow Factory as it was the inspiration for this story. And I'm glad you liked this chapter, it was a pain to finish, I must have spent a solid three or four hours reading and rewriting (which I did somewhere between ten or twenty times) that part of the story before I was happy with it. I think I'm getting better at editing.

[dragonridergoku]

1708353 Thats a good editor alright. I never edit my work, what you see is the raw product. Unless you count the editing while i write.

[lrft4_san]

1708370

Yeah I almost never edit my work either, but for some reason I just felt the need to edit it. Most of this was written months ago, so I thought I would clean it up a bit before posting. Also, having graduated with a degree in English I should probably get in the habit of editing all of my writing pieces

[jhkLimd]

Somehow I have a feeling that Valiant is going to either die or sacrifice himself so that Hikari can live or vice-versa. It just seems a little bit stereotypical. I hope you somehow change that up in one way or another. But if not and this was the ending that you were going for, It's still a GREAT read either way, can't wait for more chapters! :D

Thanks
-Zravox