Pegasus Device

Prologue

A blue pegasus raced through the night sky, her rainbow mane flowing behind her. She kept flying, underneath Luna's Moon. She flew toward a huge factory, where no pony was allowed in from the outside.

The pegasus flew through an open window and tightly shut it behind her. She trotted across the room, pulling on a black suit and mask. She opened the door and stopped to see a red Pegasus with a dark brown mane and glasses.

"Hide." she grunted.

"Miss Dash." he growled.

Dash cantered to a large room with long windows that wrapped around the perimeter. She opened another door and stepped out onto a platform, overlooking a large group of fillies and colts.

"Welcome, Failures." Dash hollered to the group below. "Welcome, to The Rainbow Factory!"

Some of the young pegasi whimpered below as Dash began to tell the story of Celestia passing down the duty of the rainbows to the pegasi. They all knew the story, but not the part Dash spoke of now.

"Spectra was made artificially for us by unicorns, until our greatest scientists discovered that we could harvest spectra from ponies! But the ponies had to be alive. How would you like to be part of a rainbow?"

"How do you get away with this?" a yellow colt yelled from below.

Dash smiled and pulled off her mask, enjoying the gasps of terror and surprise. "We always get away with it." Dash pointed to a yellow pegasus with a green and yellow mane. "Put him in!"

Two guards grabbed the struggling pegasus that had stood up. They put him in a circular machine and clamped his hoofs in the cuffs. The colt tried to pull his hooves out, but they dug into his skin, making him bleed.

The stallion in front of him grabbed a lever and pulled it, sending a knife into the colt's chest. The colt gasped as the knife slid out. The lever was pulled again and a needle was shoved into the newly made wound.

The colt felt weak as the needle extracted the spectra. His bright yellow coat and orange became a dull gray. The lever was pulled back and the needle slid out. The cuffs released the colt onto a conveyor belt. The colt was too tired to look at what was on the end. He was transferred to a small, square platform. He looked up to see a huge weight crush him.

A metal beam pushed his flattened body into a chute. The crushed colt was dumped to a floor below them, where the body would be used for other reasons, such as thicker clouds to hold the rainbow.

"Who's next?" Dash howled.

A small, orange filly with a purple mane raised her hoof. "Just do it quickly." she said quietly.

"That's as quick as it goes." Dash snapped. "But we can do it slower if you'd like."

"N-no." she stuttered. "I would rather you not." She walked up the platform to the machine. The guards clamped her hooves in and she closed her eyes taking deep breaths. The knife missed, hitting her foreleg. The filly screamed as the knife scraped against her bone.

The emergency stop was activated and the filly dropped to the floor, unmoving. Alarms blared all around and every factory worker in the room flew down to the young, screaming pegasi, including the yellow pegasus at the machine.

The orange filly slowly got up, trying not to put any weight on her bleeding foreleg. She looked over the railing to see colts and fillies drop like flies as Dash and her guards tasered each young pegasi.

The orange filly flapped her wings quickly and tried to take off; pain was her motivation. She barely lifted herself off the ground before she heard a growl behind her. She yelped as Dash pinned her down.

"Oh, Scoots," she sighed. "You said you would never fail me.

Scootaloo felt tears in her eyes. "I tried!" she cried. "You said my wings would grow, but they haven't grown enough!"

"That's too bad." Dash said. "You'll make a beautiful orange for the rainbow. So, you're failing me by running away."

"No... Please... I'll do anything..."