> Feeling Fuzzy, Tasting Colors
>  by Deparnieux
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> Chapter 1
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As winter comes for Equestria, creatures of all manner (mostly ponies) grow sleepier and more lethargic as the snow sets in. The town transitions ever so slowly from the open-market, harvest season bustle of summertime to shut doors and glowing hearths, smoke puffing from the chimneys as the inhabitants try to stay as cozy and warm as they can possibly get. 
One great way to meter the change is watching Sugarcube Corner’s menu. A couple days after Summer Wrap-Up, Mrs. Cake stops her line-up of berry smoothies and frosts for brewing warm pumpkin spice mugs- that’s when autumn really begins. A couple months later and the bakery menu shrinks massively over a few weeks, almost intimidatingly so. Naturally, residents tend to shop less and less for baked goods as the temperature dips lower and lower, too chilly for even the wildest of parties, and the bakery’s income is relegated mostly to shivering foals looking for some hot cocoa after a tiring snow-sculpting session or falling through a snowdrift. When the bakery begins to hibernate like this- this is winter.
Then, about a week before Hearth’s Warming, something interesting happens. The menu goes back to its old size in a single day, ballooning even larger as Mr. Cake comes up with new seasonal pastry specials as he goes along. Carts come in, empty off lavish amounts of perishable goods, and rocket off to make way for the next. And the next. And so forth like that for days on end. But for now, business is slow in coming. Maybe a passing pony misses the taste of that melon cake they had a few months ago, or their name is Pinkie Pie and the shelves mysteriously empty. A couple dozen loyal customers buy a few pies, but that hardly justifies the shipment of goods…
You can see the tents before the sun rises. Tents as far as the town’s skyline will allow anyone to see, stretching down the street and then looping back again where Princess Twilight herself has camped and takes the time to prevent the entire road from being blocked off. Come the crack of dawn on Hearth’s Warming Eve and Sugarcube Corner opens for business, the waiting throng rushes in like a horde of angry bees, practically ramming down fat wads of bits down Mrs. Cake’s delighted throat. The pies and cakes fly right out the door, destined for home feasts and the reception at Ponyville’s winter pageant. Like clockwork, the last satisfied customer leaves and the Cakes shut the door of their empty store. Maybe there will be some extra cookies, but the irresponsible parents and absent-minded coltfriends are far too busy picking out gifts at the eleventh hour to stop by for an indulgence.
For the foals, it’s really very difficult not to gossip as they watch their parents and neighbors mill about like drunk hummingbirds, frantically looking up and down from laundry lists of giftees. What are they getting? What’s missing from their lives right now, that they’ll suddenly find under a tree the next day? Every year, the same excitement as the unicorns expect this year’s edition of “Trixie’s Greatest Magic Trix” and the earth ponies anticipate unwrapping a shiny, new set of tools and garden seeds. The pegasi revel in silky streamers that billow rainbows behind them as they soar through the air or grooming kits to make the feathers on their growing wings shine with pride. For the particularly spunky ones, their gift takes the form of acrobatics lessons instead of objects.

Scootaloo watched all of them talk, a sourly jealous frown crossing her face as one of the older colts in the distance did a few backflips to show off. The little wings on her back gave an indignant little flap as if to scoff.
“Oh, stop kidding yourself,” Scootaloo scolded them with a ruffle of her orange coat. “You can hardly even hold a hover.”
And that was the crux of the problem, wasn’t it? What exactly do you get a pegasus child for Hearth’s Warming who can’t fly? Worse, with wings like hers, dwarfish and practically shriveled, useless for any purpose other than the single, propeller-like motion she used to ride her scooter around the town? At least if she had a wingspan at least passable for a pegasus her age, she might be able to take razor-wing lessons and do something else with the gift Harmony gave her- although, she reflected wryly, giving her the power to slice through solid wood with a cursory thought might not be such a good thing for public safety.
Scootaloo kept wandering, passing more throngs of busy shoppers on a coincidental route toward Sugarcube Corner. She made sure to keep her head bowed low as she passed the roving gaggles of unicorns and earth pony foals, and when she stopped examining the well-worn cobblestones long enough to look up, she found herself practically on the bakery’s shuttered doorstep. 
“I guess it couldn’t hurt to try,” she mused inwardly. “Maybe Pinkie has some spare cupcakes.”
Suddenly a soft thud, like faraway cannon fire, boomed through the town. Odd, perhaps, but the most frantic reaction the distant report provoked came from a single street vendor, craning his head up to the sky to make sure nothing was on a direct collision course with his stand. The other passersby stopped their rushing for a moment before going back on their way, the playing foals hardly skipped a beat, and Scootaloo ignored it too. Even when the whistling began, only a few ponies stopped to check whether the anvil airship had sprung a leak over the neighborhood… again. More stopped as the whistling got louder and louder, and as the screaming came into full earshot, the whole town began to put down their tasks for a moment of silent, patient curiosity. Everypony was watching by the time Rainbow Dash came burning in, screeching just below roof level, and more eyes joined the crowd as they rushed in from smaller, side avenues and the cottages lining the road.
Rainbow Dash’s sky blue muzzle smashed dead-into the cupcake-shaped shingle hanging from Sugarcube Corner like a champagne bottle being opened in reverse. Her momentum carried her body impaling the sign around and around the pole it hung from, squeaking madly in protest before grinding to a halt. Rainbow Dash began these three loop-de-loops still screaming from the burn-in, but by the unceremonious, creaky end, she was groaning, green and seasick as possible without vomit involved. The town watched for a few moments to ensure two things: One, that their dear Rainbow Dash was neither dead nor seriously injured. Two, that whatever that dreadful moron Rainbow Dash had just done, their precious Sugarcube Corner was safe and decidedly not on fire.
“Well, I’ve had worse landings,” Rainbow Dash groaned, her backside facing Scootaloo as the sign slowly rotated back around. “Could- Could somepony get me down from here? I’d cut it myself, it's just balsa wood, but…”
She trailed off and tried to move her wings. Stuck as she was halfway through the sign, the wood held the pinions of her wings firmly against her sides. Business as usual, then. The townsponies went back to their errands, hurrying even more to make up for the thirty second deficit.
“Aw, come on! Don’t be like that!” Rainbow groaned. “It doesn’t happen that often, I- Scootaloo?”
“Oh!” Scootaloo snapped herself out of the shock of her idol- well, anypony really- accidentally pillorying themselves in her face. “Sorry, I’ll, um, find something to-”
“No, hold on for a second,” A strange look came over Rainbow as she seemed to forget where she was. “What are you doing?”
“Getting you down,” Scootaloo glanced over shoulder, back from a dilemma of power tools and flamethrowers.
“I mean, what are you doing here?” As she rotated, Rainbow was in the perfect position to look meaningfully at Sugarcube Corner’s rich decorations, lining windows that were closed and a single, profoundly locked door. Where absolutely no one was, but the two of them. “Why aren’t you with your friends?”
“I thought I’d just try and see if they had a bite to eat and head home,” A subdued tone entered her voice as Scootaloo’s eyes slid away from Rainbow’s. “It’s nothing, really.”
“Scootaloo, my head really hurts,” Rainbow sighed, gesturing flatly at the slab of wood it’d just been blown through. “The little birdies and I don’t have the patience for evasive answers right now.” 
“Well, you know, it’s Hearth’s Warming Eve,” Scootaloo mumbled, fighting back a flush and tears of embarrassment. “Where do you think my friends are? Sweetie Belle is talking with the other unicorns, Apple Bloom is probably halfway to Sweet Apple Acres with the earth ponies, and all the pegasi seem to talk about is flying. I don’t really have anyone to be with.”
Scootaloo sighed, pausing for a moment before going on. “I’m sure you’re really busy too. This won’t take a second, okay?”
She stepped aside to reveal the assembly of an enormous potato gun, rotating it around so that Rainbow Dash was staring down its muzzle. Scratchy highlights of bright pastel paints attested to the creation’s origins in Pinkie Pie’s workshop, and the rough-hewn carriage assembly seemed like it had come from the Apple family’s junkyard- all things Rainbow would have found fascinating for potential pranks in almost any circumstances other than this one. As Scootaloo rammed a puffy ball of cotton down the muzzle, her squirming began anew as Rainbow realized that while the impact wouldn’t cause any permanent damage, it certainly wasn’t going to be pleasant. 
“Just hold still…” Scootaloo squinted down the sights and lit the fuse.
Rainbow Dash scrunched her nose down and tensed up, mentally hyping herself for a sinus-clearing facial rearrangement.
The sinus-clearing facial rearrangement came and passed, whooshing by Rainbow’s head like an angry locomotive and converting the entire right side of Sugarcube Corner’s sign into a shower of splinters. Now greeted by a surplus of room on one side, Rainbow wiggled slightly where she was still more or less stuck, managing to get a wing between her left flank and the wood. She took a breath and channeled the razor-wing magic through her wings, the gaps between her feather barbs closing and hardening with a subtle turquoise iridescence. Suddenly sharp enough to slice through dragon scales, all it took was a simple push on her part to cut cleanly through the left half of the balsa wood, freeing her for a drop to the ground. Rainbow fell gracefully with the wood and landed with a triumphant flare of her wings; meanwhile the wood loudly shattered into several splintered planks and the mess glared up at her accusingly.
But Rainbow Dash’s eyes had more important things to be doing than being mollified by vandalism. They were watching Scootaloo silently pack her things away- wherever exactly she kept them on her person- and leave.
“Hey, Scoots, where you going?” Rainbow whizzed over to her side.
“Home,” came the curt reply. “Sleep, probably. Tomorrow is another day.”
And she kept on walking, her head low to the ground. Or at least that was the idea. It took Scootaloo at least a few moments longer than it probably should have to realize that Rainbow Dash was holding her up by the scruff of her neck and her legs were walking on nothing but air.
“Oh no you don’t,” Rainbow Dash mumbled through a mouthful of neck. “Come on, let’s talk about it.”
“Don’t you have something else you could be doing right now?” Scootaloo glared back at her.
“Uh, no. Not since I was very firmly told to leave Cloudsdale’s Hearth’s Warming setup a few minutes ago,” answered her friend sheepishly. “Face it, you’re stuck with me.”
Scootaloo more or less gave up at that point. After all, it wasn’t as if she didn’t honestly want to hang out with Rainbow. Wanting to show it, of course, might have still remained a concern if Rainbow Dash wasn’t practically dragging her back to the steps of Sugarcube Corner, promising to break in and scrounge around for some cupcakes in exchange for a conversation. The smile on the little filly’s face only grew as they talked about the weather, Wonderbolt gossip, and Applejack’s twenty-third barn, destroyed under mysterious circumstances. As Scootaloo stuffed her face with the cupcakes, creases passed over Rainbow’s as the topic returned to Hearth’s Warming.
“So what’s up with you this time of year?” Scootaloo peered over at her big sister.
“Rarity’s all shut in making outfits for the Hearth’s Warming Festival,” Rainbow sighed, dejectedly kicking at the street gravel. “Twilight has her Princess… stuff, she hasn’t left her castle in weeks, and Applejack’s getting ready for her family to come over. Pinkie and the Cakes are in their holiday baking craze, and, well, Fluttershy still isn’t showing her face around town…”
“So it’s all been very boring,” Rainbow’s eyes rolled and her tongue flicked out and in again. “Since Cloudsdale booted me out, I’ve got all the time in the world to keep my favorite little sis’ company.”
“It wouldn’t be such a problem if I weren’t like this,” Scootaloo sighed, glancing sidelong at her tiny wings.
“What, different?” Rainbow Dash unfurled a wing and tenderly wrapped it around her. For the first time that day, a passing pony stopped and stared. “Well, tell you what, there are some upsides to being different.”
Scootaloo met Rainbow’s suddenly devious gaze with excitement. From anyone else, that line might have been cliche and profoundly underwhelming, but with Rainbow Dash, it probably meant that something expensive was on a one-way track to shardsville.
“What’s that?” she asked eagerly.
“Let’s just say a certain mare with a sore neck wants some revenge on Cloudsdale for shooting her out of a cannon,” Rainbow Dash’s eyes rolled about innocently. “Hypothetically, of course. Hypothetically, this mare’s schedule is wide open and she could really use a sidekick when she tries to break into the Rainbow Factory…”
When Rainbow Dash’s eyes rolled back around to her companion, she found her standing up ramrod straight, the orange of her coat now blanching to an unhealthy moldy-tangerine color. A tense, uncomfortable silence stretched out between them as Rainbow Dash squinted at her friend and tried to figure out what in Equestria had gone wrong now. What had she said wrong? Realization passed over her like a necrotic fart on the wind, and the quizzical smile on her face dripped down into a scowl as Rainbow delivered a caustic stare in whatever direction she thought Fluttershy happened to be in at the time.
“Oh. You don’t think…?”
Rainbow Factory, Rainbow Dash remembered, was a horror novel published by Fluttershy several years prior, concerning the very much real Cloudsdale facility of a similar name and its fantastical role in turning poor flightless pegasus foals into the rainbow power that really kept their cities aloft. Fact and fiction so strangely mixed, calls for investigation exploded like wildfire when the manuscript hit publishing in unicorn and earth pony circles, who could not set foot in the mysterious cities in which the purported factory resided. Letters were sent to Princesses. Hastily placating, temporizing responses were mailed back while Princess Luna issued an impromptu edict declaring the book banned for printing, sale, and transportation. Then the scholarly community threw a fit over “free press” even as illegal printings were springing up all over the nation. Luna was subsequently censured and soon after the ban was lifted, every literate pony found themselves some degree of “intimately familiar” with the story’s premise and plot.
Somewhere along those lines, Scootaloo had gotten a copy.
“I know exactly what’s going on here,” Rainbow growled. “Okay? Punishment. Ongoing. For something that was clearly an accident.”
Unlike most pegasi, Rainbow hadn’t been too bothered by Fluttershy’s novel. Sure, the reference was a little on-the-nose, but the writing was simply too riveting to ignore! After all, there weren’t many novels in Equestria with the same caliber of gut-twisting prose, and making it through Fluttershy’s surprisingly grotesque work was a badge of honor for her own bravery. To say nothing of loyalty, Rainbow’s willingness to not read at all into the commentary led her to side with Fluttershy, and support from her other friends and the Princesses saw that the novel remained in print long enough for her to make her point. A few heartfelt and very, very public apologies later, the Flight Academy in Cloudsdale saw an intense bullying reform and the matter mostly went away. Clearly, wherever “away” was, it hadn’t been far enough.
“This is what I get for standing up for publishers’ rights,” Rainbow moaned, turning back to Scootaloo. “Look, it’s just a stupid story that Fluttershy wrote. Nothing about it is actually true.”
“Have you ever actually been inside the Rainbow Factory?” Scootaloo asked warily.
Rainbow Dash scrunched up her face as a backup fuse popped violently in her brain. This was another reason why the novel had been so effective at causing an uproar. The pegasus elders had always been understandably antsy about letting visitors into the power plant that kept the city aloft in midair, and Princess Celestia herself tended to be the one to do the inspections, meaning that even most pegasi didn’t know what was inside.
“No, and that squishy little marshmallow hork hasn’t either,” she angrily groaned. “Look, Scoots, even if I broke in and told you that it's fine, would you believe me?”
“I-”
“Don’t you wanna have some fun this Hearth’s Warming?” Rainbow Dash’s voice wafted in an incoherent mumble from the street cobblestones. “Hang out with your sister Dashie, do some legally questionable things…”
“Uh-”
“Okay, that didn’t come out right either,” her scratchy voice deflated like a balloon and Scootaloo could hardly hear her as Rainbow went on, “I’m at the end of my tether here, Scoots. Everypony else is busy and I’d really appreciate the company.”
The silence spread out between them as Scootaloo’s child brain did some arithmetic. It wasn’t as if Rainbow was inclined to do Cloudsdale any favors, she thought, having just been shot out of a cannon and all. Scootaloo looked back at Sugarcube Corner’s door, or at least what remained of it, as the ruined little hinges squeaked in the painful memory of a cupcake-hungry pegasus slashing the wood to bits. Speaking of bits, those must’ve been expensive cupcakes, she reflected, because they were yummy. Vandalism, breaking and entering and grand theft was a lot of trouble to lure in a single foal, and besides, that wasn’t how the book went anyway…
Scootaloo looked at Rainbow for some advice, but her big sister’s muzzle was only nestling deeper into its comfy pavement bed. Who could blame her? Being shot out of a cannon and vividly recalling political controversy took a lot out of a pony.
“So we’re breaking into the Rainbow Factory?” Scootaloo poked the blue pile of comatose Dash.
“You’re coming along?” Rainbow popped bolt upright, her ears perking up fast enough to snap. 
“As long as you promise to keep me safe,” Scootaloo smiled up at her big sister. “Okay?”
“So that’s a yes?” Rainbow’s hooves skittered excitedly over and she stared down at her potential companion.
“Oh, bother,” said Scootaloo as she realized Rainbow was never going to slow down for the mushy stuff. “Yes!”
Scootaloo hopped on Rainbow’s back and hung tight to her barrel as they blasted back off for Cloudsdale. At the speed Rainbow was flying, the two of them were long gone before the authorities arrived to investigate the break-in at the bakery, and they were probably already in Cloudsdale by the time Pinkie Pie wrapped up a few lovely funeral services…  one for every single member of three dozen stolen cupcakes.

The leisurely cruise to Cloudsdale saw them arrive in the late afternoon, the sun just low enough to cast a lovely orange horizon behind the city made of clouds. Most beautifully of all, the wispy edges of their amorphous shapes caught and held that bright glow, causing each edifice to shine as if outlined by a halo, and the cloud streets to sparkle as if they had been paved with diamonds. The sight of Cloudsdale at this time of day brought in many a pegasus visitor, even more so now because of the looming Hearth’s Warming Festival. Unicorn and earth pony tourists were there too in hot air balloons, surveying the bustling terraces and byways with rapturous interest. These particular visitors were probably out to see the sights before their own festivals in Ponyville or Canterlot, so most of them had begun the final descent to join their respective preparations. Keyword being “most.”
Rainbow Dash tried purposefully to avoid the ones using the brilliant city as a backdrop for more intimate activities. Scootaloo however, sitting upright on her back, took the opportunity to drink all of the gleefully sensuous romance in. After all, she’d seen Cloudsdale before. These visitors in their colorful, glitzy balloons were something different, an interesting mix of new and familiar.
“Hey, Scoots, are you seeing any quiet landing pads?” Rainbow Dash scanned the city, flapping her wings harder to maintain a slower hover. The long flight and Scootaloo’s extra weight made this last effort difficult, and Rainbow’s wings twitched in protest before obeying. “Kinda don’t want to get seen by reception, you know? Their ‘do-not-return’ order was very clear…”
No answer.
“Scoots, my wings are kinda getting tired here, I-” 
“Hey, is that Lyra and Bon Bon?” Scootaloo found herself turned ninety degrees away from the city. Sure enough there they were, Lyra and Bon Bon in a balloon, breaking away from a kiss to see Rainbow Dash flying by. “Hiya!” Scootaloo called out as the couple waved back at her. “Happy Hearth’s Warming!”
“SCOOTALOO!” One of Rainbow Dash’s wings stalled for a moment and she departed for a moment before hastily correcting back to stable flight. “Landing pad! Please?”
“Alright, alright, keep your hooves on,” the orange pegasus turned back from the couple and back to Cloudsdale.
In grounded cities like Ponyville, Rainbow might get away with a relatively cushy landing crashing through somepony’s thatch roof. That held less true in Cloudsdale, where she would simply pass through the airy barriers that protected Cloudsdale homes, blasting a pony-shaped path through the building and straight through the foundation of the city, falling back to earth in a squawking panic. Landing pads scattered throughout the city tended to be far denser or even solid, so a pegasus coming for a landing didn’t find themselves buried face-deep in the street. 
Compounding the problem was the fact that Cloudsdale- the city of clouds- moved and changed as time went on, winds blew, and the air became warmer or colder. If a certain pony woke up in their Cloudominium on Floor 8 of the Bora Building and left, she needed to go about her day knowing that the Bora Building wouldn’t be in the same place when she came back. It and the landing pad on its roof might have blown, say, a few hundred feet west to the Cloudisseum, the stadium where their Hearth’s Warming Festival was being held, and where this certain pony was sure to be spotted, captured, and sent careening back to Ponyville.
“There!” Scootaloo leaned over Rainbow’s right crest and pointed down at a cluster of tightly packed buildings. “I think I see the Downburst Building!”
Cyclic wind often took to the Downburst Building and its neighbors, gathering most of them up in cramped scrums of residence. The residents of the Downburst Building in particular had the worst of the wind, and due to an area of violently downward blast ended up suffering a far more inconvenient fate than uncomfortable familiarity with the neighbors.
“Good call, Scoots,” Rainbow puffed, fluttering lopsidedly to the hole in the middle of the packed residences.
No, instead of shifting left or right, the Downburst Building sank instead. Evacuated since the lower half pierced and fell out of the city’s lower limit, no one would be on the roof pad to recognize Rainbow Dash.
“Oh boy,” Rainbow’s wings well and truly stalled as she pulled over the pad. She had just a couple moments to imagine them belching out black smoke in indignation before gravity took hold of her and yanked her and her passenger straight down to cloud floor.
“Wahooo! Yeah! That was fun!” Scootaloo popped her head out of the thick cloud pad and scampered over to where Rainbow Dash had an ostensibly more difficult landing. “Can we do that again?”
“Mmmmrff,” Rainbow mumbled back. Having her entire upper body crammed inside fluffy concrete with the consistency of marshmallows had that effect on her voice. “MMMLP!”
“Oh, whoops,” Scootaloo clanked down a welding mask over her face and produced an enormous, solar flare of a propane torch. “Hang on, this won’t take a minute…”
Thirty seconds later found Rainbow Dash sitting upright, free of the pad, staring straight out with a shell-shocked look on her face. The crispy smell of singed Dashie feathers filled the air and Scootaloo puffed out the furious torch with one mighty breath, leaving it and the mask on the ground. 
“Well, that ought to do it!” she bounced over to Rainbow and hopped at her, where blue wings wrapped instinctively around the foal. “What now?”
“Now we case the Factory,” Rainbow croaked, five minutes later.
They climbed out of the pit the Downburst Building sank into and into the surrounding maze. The alleys were hardly thick enough for ponies to walk through single-file, which probably contributed to their emptiness; the pegasi landing on the roofs above usually just hopped off the building and glided to some roomier promenade. Once clear of the cluster of buildings, Rainbow was once again well enough to fly, and darted from shadow to shadow with Scootaloo toward the city’s industrial district, where weather was made.
Thankfully, what with the Festival, the usually bustling streets were empty. In fact, the long, semisolid stretches that skirted the Weather Factory (and assorted others) had been her first thought for infiltration, but as a violent sideswipe passing overhead reminded her, landing in the industrial district was less than possible. Discharge from the Weather Machine, so powerful it had to be plugged directly into the city’s power source and which provided rain to a greater part of the nation, constantly manifested in those flurries, like a tiny, permanent tropical storm. The winds also had a nasty habit of stopping or switching direction with the machine, which sent landing pegasi skidding along the icy pavement or smashing into buildings along the side. The staff at the Row Three Blender Foundry knew Rainbow by name, and the hospital next door had a room reserved in her honor.
“So, what exactly are we doing here?!” Scootaloo shouted over the roaring din.
“I don’t know!” Rainbow shouted back. “ Maybe there’s something expensive we can break inside! I just want to get back at the city for shooting me out of a cannon!”
“Why did they shoot you out of a cannon, anyway?!”
The short version was that Rainbow tried to play a prank on the party organizers, and since it was an official Cloudsdale event, the mayor hadn’t appreciated it. In the time it took Rainbow to tell it, the two of them had made all of two difficult steps toward the factory doors, and Scootaloo pointed out that they very much had the time to hear the full version.
Earlier that same day, the festival had been shaping much like any other. Festive lights were being strung around the outskirts of the Cloudisseum arena grounds, a healthy bonfire had been built in its center for a communal bake, party games, mistletoe lines- relatively run-of-the-mill orders. Then the catering came in. Once again, all appeared to be normal as Rainbow Dash set up the sumptuous hayburger platters and skewers of candied apples. Things remained to appear normal as she decorated the crystal punch bowl with some tinsel around the rim and finished off the affair with an entire bottle of Deluxe Dragon Elixir. The “good stuff,” or so she’d been told- and for dragons, it certainly was quite the package deal. What other liquid could be used to accelerate a fire, burn the dirt off of a freshly-dug gemstone, and serve as a hearty drink at the same time?
Needless to say, the city elders and their comatose taste-tester were not amused. They forced Rainbow to get more punch, and then to drink the original bowl of spiked punch as a punishment. Almost immediately after the first few gulps of paint-stripping nightmare poured down her throat, Rainbow choked, puffed up, and vomited a terrible gout of fire directly at the blaze-ready bonfire. The pile of dry sticks and sawdust sent sparks flashing across the decorations, angry at the rude awakening, and set vicious fire to every last piece of Cloudsdale’s Festival preparation since the previous week. It was amid those ashes that they decided to shoot Rainbow out of that cannon, just to be safe.
“Ah,” Scootaloo murmured in understanding as the dark cumulonimbus doors of the Factory shut behind her. “You know, that makes a lot more sense now.”
 The central chamber of the Weather Factory greeted her when she turned around, towering up to what Scootaloo could only imagine was the very top of the building and burrowing straight down through the city’s cloudy foundation. A massive shaft of white light poured in from the outside through a crystal lens into a receptacle on the far wall, where it danced around a matrix of prisms, the resultant mix of colors pouring down into a maze of pipes. At the bottom, far below, she could see huge tanks filled with violet liquid, and pipes pumping it both up to the outer Factory behind her and somewhere even deeper below. 
Scootaloo leered about the machine, looking for any sign of pegasus children or their remains. At first, a red patina on the machines found her recoiling back toward the exit, but it was quickly revealed to be nothing more than a thick patina of rust. The control console too seemed to defy expectation, displaying pressure gauges and flow valves where Scootaloo expected to see the power controls for mulchers and conveyor belts. Feeling braver, she stepped out into the open and examined the prisms.
“Wow,” Rainbow commented, looking out onto the factory floor far below. “It’s, uh... big.”
“How does it all work?” Scootaloo asked, a lot more perky now that it was more or less confirmed that the color energy didn’t come from metabolizing little foals.
“When white light strikes a prism, it fractures into rainbows,” Rainbow pointed out in a superior tone. “Don’t they teach anything in school anymore?”
Scootaloo looked up at the huge white laser, then back at her sister. “So where did that come from? It sure wasn’t outside when we came in.”
“Oh yeah…” Rainbow followed her gaze, putting on her most thoughtful face as her brain clocked into overdrive. Five seconds later, it overheated. “Nope. No- no idea. Why don’t you go check it out? Play around, have some fun. Just don’t turn it off.”
“What happens-”
“The whole city falls out of the sky.”
“Oh,” Scootaloo turned back to the Rainbow Factory with renewed interest. “Good to know.”
The two of them took a few more looks around their surroundings and came to a mutual understanding that since neither of them really knew how the building worked, there was really no way of identifying the objects whose absence might cause a minor inconvenience and the more essential ones holding back imminent disaster. As reluctant as Rainbow Dash was to leave without some sweet revenge, she was even less willing to accidentally annihilate her entire hometown- so she decided to let Scootaloo play on the Factory’s main interface while she figured out another way to get revenge on those blasted city elders.
“Mmmm,” Scootaloo rubbed her hooves together eagerly, taking her seat at the console with dramatic flair.
For her part, the deliciously ironic transition of power- from recoiling in fear of the mysterious machine to being its master- no doubt weighed heavily on the little foal’s mind as she looked over the various controls. But warmth bubbling up in her heart interrupted Scootaloo’s personal satisfaction and she found herself glancing more and more at the sister she had in Rainbow Dash, eventually just resting her head on the console in dreamy reflection. Who else could, in just a few hours, bring a little foal like her on such an adventure as this? Who would? Even disregarding those questions, it seemed unfathomable that anypony would pick her- the only flightless pegasus in recent memory- on Hearth’s Warming no less, when anypony who was anypony had better things to do. Apparently not Rainbow. She would.
And maybe it was just a little irresponsible to put Scootaloo in a position where she could destroy the whole city of Cloudsdale just by ratcheting down that big lever to the left from “Auto” to “Off.” Undeniably, Rainbow knew how to make a foal feel special.
“Um, Earth to Scootaloo,” Rainbow bemusedly peering down her muzzle broke Scootaloo out of her reverie. “I know I have rainbows in my mane, but the machine is down there, not over here.”
She padded around the single panel console and took Scootaloo’s place on the chair, hoisting the filly onto her lap as she scanned the controls to figure what might be fun to play around with.
“See that button- ‘Discharge Valve?’” Rainbow rubbed the top of Scootaloo’s mane with her chin. “Why don’t you give it a try?”
“Just- just like that?” she asked hesitantly.
The button in question had clearly been used before, although judging by the wear on the mechanism, not very often. Still, Rainbow Dash reasoned that as long as it didn’t shut off the power flow to whatever magic booster kept the city afloat, it wouldn’t do anything particularly important. The few tourists still observing the city noticed, with varying degrees of interest, that the rainbow falls descending from various aqueducts began to taper down, then peter to a halt; as Scootaloo removed her hoof from the button, the needle on a pressure gauge to her right ticked on to life and slowly began to march right. An encouraging thud boomed throughout the factory, but silence returned after its echo passed.
“See?” Rainbow Dash chuckled. “Nothing happened. Here, let’s try ‘Sample Extractor.’”
This button had a more immediate effect on the two of them in the control room. A panel opened up in the machine, revealing the interior of a rusty, squeaky dumbwaiter containing a rack of large test tubes. Distant clanking sounds rumbled through the upper matrices of the machine as some of the separated colors were siphoned off into sampling pipes, then again as these valves creaked shut again. Seven nozzles whirred down from the ceiling of the dumbwaiter, pouring the thick, fluorescent rainbow colors down into the tubes, retracting once their job was complete.
“Oh, wow,” Rainbow murmured, taking the rack up in her hooves. “This is… something.”
Scootaloo picked up the test tube containing orange and gave it an experimental whiff.
“It smells sweet,” she remarked. “Almost like… apples? Applesauce?”
When Scootaloo took a deeper breath of the vapors, she immediately realized that her first words had hardly done it justice. If orange had smelled of applesauce, it was applesauce on such a level that it could no longer be called such a crass name; that same sort of way “snails” suddenly turn into “escargot” when prepared with the utmost finery. If Applejack had smelt it she surely would have fainted in delight, and as Rainbow Dash realized while she smelled it herself, the liquid reminded her of her rancher friend in an earthy sort of way.
Mesmerized, Rainbow leaned in closer for another draught of that scent.
“Uh, Rainbow?” Scootaloo watched as her big sister snuffled her way down the mouth of the test tube. “Maybe it isn’t such a good idea to-”
They were both treated to a satisfying pop as Rainbow Dash suddenly found her muzzle wedged as far down the test tube as it would go. That is to say, all the way.
“MMFFF!” the orange liquid splashed into her mouth when she tried to breathe, and Rainbow Dash scrabbled desperately with her hooves to push the glass thing off before she either passed out in Applejack’s thrall or drank more of what she suddenly remembered was the tailings of a very, very powerful power plant. “HLLLLLLLP!”
Scootaloo didn’t waste any time, grabbing ahold of the end of the tube and yanking with all her might as Rainbow pulled in the opposite direction. The tube came loose on their second mighty heave, and they hastily replaced it in the rack as Rainbow steadied herself from the lingering symptoms of hypoxia. Gratefully, the now-frantically buzzing pressure gauge they’d triggered earlier served as a great forehead massager.
“Are you okay?” Scootaloo asked.
“I don’t know, honestly,” Rainbow said, a strange shine taking to her eyes. “It sort of feels like I’ve been eating apple pie while Applejack sits on my face.”
Scootaloo’s eyes widened in surprise, and the silence stretched out between them as Rainbow realized how inappropriate that remark had been. When Rainbow finally scraped together enough dignity to speak again she did so in the precise shade of a plump, healthy tomato.
“Scootaloo, you must never tell anyone I just said that,” she squeaked. “If you do, I swear to Celestia, I’ll… um… P-probably hide in my room and cry?”
The odd orange glow in her eyes had to work hard for that one, and Scootaloo’s own narrowed in suspicion as she picked up on the glint. 
“Say, Rainbow…” She carefully tested the waters. “Who’s your secret crush?”
“Applejack,” Rainbow murmured blankly.
Again, the strike of that orange spark, Scootaloo noted, and an unusually candid answer. Whenever that question came up in their conversations, Rainbow dependably brushed it off, saying that there was simply “no one awesome enough” to match her, and that she wouldn’t be tied down to any of her many suitors. Scootaloo shared knowing chuckles with her friends at that, since it was more or less common knowledge that Rainbow had never managed to even get one hoof in the door of a romantic relationship. It was as if all the doors in the world were closed to her- so Scootaloo just had to ask one more question to make sure this liquid did exactly what she thought.
“And who’d make the first move, you or her?” Scootaloo asked, ears perked up for the confirmation.
“Me, of course,” Rainbow whispered, looking at her little sister through a curious mix of haze and clarity. “... You think you’re the only one alone on Hearth’s Warming?”
Silence reigned for a moment, and Rainbow closed her eyes and took in a deep shuddering breath. When she opened them again, the orange glow behind her eyes had faded away, leaving just her, Scootaloo, and bared feelings in the room. Scootaloo’s ears dropped back down and she huddled in next to her big sister.
“So… yeah,” Rainbow nodded, shaking away her misty eyes as she wrapped a wing around Scootaloo. “But you know what? It’s alright. After all, I won’t be alone this Hearth’s Warming, right?”
No sooner than she had finished tousling Scootaloo’s little mane, a violent pop of breaking glass sent the beleaguered red needle of the pressure meter skittering past their hooves.
“Oh,” Scootaloo mumbled, looking back at the violently rumbling Rainbow Factory. “That may not be good.”
She and Rainbow snatched the rack of test tubes in their mouths and started running once rivets started whizzing past their heads. Behind them, the immense machine groaned as leaks tore through six of its seven pipes, spilling red, orange, green, blue, and indigo out into the bowels of Cloudsdale city, turning the network below into a chaotic cesspool of bright colors. Thankfully, the lines containing violet- the lifeblood of the factory being pumped off below Cloudsdale- seemed to stay intact. The terrible crack of those pipes giving way heralded Rainbow and Scootaloo as they burst through the factory doors and desperately dove upward into the gusty wind blast outside.
As expected, Rainbow Dash hardly got a few feet in the air before the crosswind forced her down again. With Scootaloo on her back, there was just no way she’d ever be able to take off.
“Rainbow!” Scootaloo cried out in the storm. “What’s going on?”
“We just broke Equestria’s largest Rainbow Factory!” Rainbow shouted back. “The city hasn’t fallen out of the sky, but that won’t stop the mayor from killing us if we’re still here when they show up!” She gave a show of flapping her wings, much to the amusement of a passing downdraft. “We need to take off right here, but I’m just not strong enough!”
Without any other options, Scootaloo considered the colors in front of her. If orange was an Honesty serum, then maybe the others served similar purposes. If they followed a code like the Elements of Harmony, then red would be Loyalty, blue Laughter, and violet Generosity… None of which were particularly helpful at the moment. Yellow and green were wildcards, so that was out of the picture. 
Her eyes wandered back to violet, drifting between that and its darker neighbor in indigo. If indigo represented Generosity instead, maybe violet represented Kindness? No, that didn’t seem right…
“Magic!” Scootaloo shouted triumphantly, holding up the violet phial. “Rainbow, quickly drink this!”
“All out of good ideas, I see,” Rainbow snarked before obediently raising the vial up to her lips. She took a little sip before handing it back and mused, “Wow, that’s fizzy. Kinda like grape sod-”
The pink static shock of a lifetime sent her head whiplashing back, a thundering snap following like a million toothpicks snapping simultaneously. That same magenta lightning burned in her eyes and traveled down to every last barb in her feathers, crackling out into the cloud below. When Rainbow again flapped her wings, she blasted through the mighty crosswind as if it was a wispy breeze and burned down around the city to inspect the damages from below.
“That violet liquid must be the magic fuel that keeps the city in midair,” she explained. Even these gentle words were affected by that brief infusion of magic, so that her normally raspy voice now had the tone of swords scraping against one another. Rainbow crackled and surveyed the base of the clouds where the rainbow flood was beginning to soak through Cloudsdale’s foundation and fall to the ground below. Sure enough, in that insane swirl she saw every last color in the rainbow but violet, and despite the obvious panic, Cloudsdale still floated proudly in the air. “Alright, it looks… fine. It’ll be fine.”
Scootaloo said nothing as Rainbow Dash burned towards Ponyville, only eying the Weather Factory whir down to a halt and listening as buzzers surrounded across the industrial district. No violet fuel had leaked, so the lines were yet unburst, but whatever workers that were there certainly wouldn’t give them the chance. She watched as frazzled pegasus guards raised similar alarms in the city proper, grinding their Hearth’s Warming Festival in the Cloudisseum to a rapidly evacuated halt, and she said nothing. Revenge was what her sister Dashie wanted, right?
“I mean, this is what they get, right?” Rainbow grumbled. “Fair’s fair, they shot me out of a cannon, this is exactly what those leery mayor people deserve…”
As some of the fleeing pegasi gathered around the underside of the city, curiously looking up at the devolving mystery above them, Scootaloo wondered what the future of the Rainbow Factory looked like. Would there be another scandal? Would Fluttershy and her novel get sucked into the middle of it again, somehow? And what would happen to her if that was the case? Scootaloo eagerly envisioned a future that buried poor Fluttershy’s house under mounds and mounds of curious fan mail- questions about the Factory’s destruction and what she knew- and that poor squishy pegasus’s head poking out of the immense pile, wearing a mildly distressed look on her face. That was what Fluttershy got for scaring the daylights out of her! Scootaloo smiled and said nothing.
“Aw man, Fluttershy…” Rainbow’s face paled slightly and her countenance tightened queasily. “The press’ll eat her alive now that she’s not anonymous anymore… She can’t handle that kind of attention!”
She shook her wings and veered a little lower west, on the glide path for Sweet Apple Acres instead of Ponyville.
“Okay, Scoots, here’s the plan,” she sighed. “I’m gonna drop you off at Applejack’s.”
“What?” Scootaloo broke out of her reflection and gaped down at her big sister. “I thought we were going to spend Hearth’s Warming together!”
“And I wanna, Scoots,” Rainbow looked up and met her eyes. “Believe me. But today has gone way, way off the rails. Most, if not all of that has been my fault. My poor decisions- and if I turn myself in to Twilight right now, maybe there’s a chance we can get in front of this and fix it before it gets even worse.”
Her glide slowed as the road leading into Sweet Apple Acres came into clear view, allowing Rainbow to survey her runway before coming in for a slow landing.
“”It’s the responsible thing to do, and I don’t want you to be involved in the punishment,” Rainbow roundly finished her apology- one of her better ones, if she did say so herself. “I’m really sorry, Scoots.”
“Okay,” Scootaloo responded, not skipping a single beat. “Then I guess you won’t want to be having fun with these, then…”
She jangled the test tube rack enticingly. To her credit, Rainbow really tried to escape the temptation, turning her head right back to the flight path and even skipping a third ground check to come in for a faster landing and get this tempting child from Tartarus as far away from her untainted soul as possible. But when Scootaloo shook the glass tubes again, Rainbow’s ear twitched to follow the noise, and when the filly made as if to tip them over and pour the contents out over the trees, Rainbow banked and forced Scootaloo to tilt back. As Rainbow righted herself and whooshed by, she even leered over to see if any of that precious tipple had fallen out- not that even she was fast or coordinated enough to catch it, of course.
It was far, far too tempting. If drinking a single sip of the violet fuel caused Rainbow to get that “sparky,” imagine what it could do to Twilight! Surely the vision of her friend, glowing fluorescent lavender and crackling with enough energy to power Ponyville for a year, was worth the casualty of a single day of responsible work. Salivating so intensely at the idea of a single color mixed with a single one of her friends, Rainbow had no chance against the onslaught of hilarity when she thought about mixing laughter with Fluttershy, or loyalty with Rarity, or any possible combination of them all. She sold her soul without a second thought and just like that, buried responsibility, full service and all.
“Oh, Scootaloo,” she grinned back at her dear little sister. “Where would I be if I didn’t have you to lead me back to the right path?”
“Where would I be if you didn’t take me with you?” Scootaloo leaned down to hug Rainbow’s crest.
The sun’s last kiss in the dusk sky saw Rainbow violently pulling up from landing approach, traveling again at breakneck speed for the Ponyville Hearth’s Warming Festival. Responsibility for Cloudsdale, warnings for Fluttershy, and accountability for what was sure to be a historic epidemic of party hangover could all wait for the next day. She, Scootaloo, and seven color-spiked bowls of Ponyville party punch had the Hearth’s Warming of a lifetime to have together.