Author's Notes:

Hello! I wanted to say that the next few chapters are going to be about Pinkamena focusing on Pinkamena planning and making her escape, and with a little foreshadowing for future events. And there won't be a lot more confrontations between Rainbow Dash and Pinkamena, as enjoyable as those scenes are to write, Pinkamena can't afford to be in there for that long, too dangerous.

Also, interesting fact: Did you know horses can see better in the dark than people? They just take longer to adjust.

"What do you mean she isn't here? Where else would she be?"

Twilight asked Mrs. Cake in an almost panicked tone, making Mrs. Cake flinch. They were in Sugarcube Corner, Mrs. Cake behind the register, her hair was a mess and she seemed tired. Twilight was on the other side of the counter, a worried and scared look on her face.

"I mean she isn't *yawn* here, I went to her room to wake her up, which is already unusual since she's always been up before me. But when I went in, she wasn't there! I checked, everywhere in her room and this building, but I couldn't find her. I would've searched more, but the store was about to open and I had to cover her shift. Poor Carrot has to cook everything himself! I hope nothing bad happened to her."

Mrs. Cake said worryingly, she was exhausted from both working nonstop, and worrying about Pinkie's safety.

"But that just can't be true! Pinkie would never jus-

"Twilight, I would love to help you, but I simply don't have the time. You're holding up the line, so can you please go look for her somewhere else?"

Mrs. Cake asked desperately, wanting to look for Pinkie herself, but unable to. Twilight looked behind her, and she was indeed holding up the line. There were several ponies behind her, waiting impatiently for her to be done. Twilight looked at Mrs. Cake, wanting to say more, but realizing it wouldn't get her anywhere. She dejectedly walked out, leaving Mrs. Cake to her work.

"Yes, I'd like to have two donuts, one with sprinkles, and a strawberry milkshake."

A pony ordered, pushing forward a few bits. Mrs. Cake smiles and puts the bits in the register.

"Of course!"

She turned around and began to walk to the kitchen, lowering her head as she did so, her smile falling for a second.

"How do you do it Pinkie? I hope you're safe, wherever you are."

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"This is where you'll be staying, food will be brought to you soon. We've been given permission to stop you if you try to escape, so please, try."

The door to her new home slammed, leaving Pinkamena alone. It was the same room she woke up in, looking exactly the same as she left it. She began to pick herself off the ground, the guard had pushed her in roughly when he opened the door, she could feel a headache coming on.

"He'll die first, if I have the choice. Speaking of escape..."

Pinkamena looked at the room around her, her eyes already readjusting to the darkness. Honestly, escape was going to be somewhat difficult. On the way back here, she was going to see if there were any weakness, anything she could exploit. But, considering all the 'failures' they had locked up, this place probably got escape attempts daily, nearly none successful. The place was nearly a fortress, but, it wasn't impossible.

"I'm going to be here for a while, might as well work out a plan."

Pinkamena pulled out a small piece of chalk from her mane, something she always keeps on her, among other things. The shackles made it quite difficult to get it, she had to lower her head down to her hooves. But when she did, she managed to hold the chalk in her mouth quite easily. She walked to the to the nearest wall, and began to draw on it with the chalk.

Her basement was almost always dark when she wasn't playing with someone, so adjusting to near pitch black after being in the light for hours was something she was used to. It probably wasn't that good for her eyesight, but she could see in the dark better than most. Plus it was bright pink chalk, her favorite color, so it showed up easily in the dark.

She began to draw The Rainbow Factory on the wall, at least, what she's seen of it so far. It took longer to draw it with the shackles crippling her movements, as she had to put her hooves against the wall multiple times for balance, but she sort of needed to do this. Her plans are a lot better when she has some kind of physical blueprint, something she can look at, isn't really something you can't do if it's just a mental image.

Fifteen minutes passed by before she was done, the work before her took more effort than she liked. But when she was done, she smiled satisfyingly.

"And...there!"

The drawing was large, covering almost the entire wall. There was a huge outline, in the shape of a square with tubes coming out the top. Inside were numerous shapes that had lots of meanings, little and large squares were also inside, representing rooms. Some of it was the rooms she's the parts she's seen, but most of it was conjecture. Other than the parts she's seen herself, she had to rely on the few times she's seen the outside of The Factory, any schematics she's seen of other factories, and just common architectural sense. But this could be completely different from anything she's ever seen, there was almost no way to tell. But, there wasn't much else she could do.

"Let's see, first an overview of everything."

She looked at each of the shapes, something she came up with to preserve space. Each shape was a symbol of something else.

"Shaded in dots are ponies, open dots are the failures/workers. I don't know how they take to non-pegasi, so avoiding them unless I can tell if they're friendly would be preferable. There are two ponies who escort me out of my cell, and since mine leads directly to the industrial part of The Factory, which I assume is one of many, they won't be right outside my door.

But when I went out there, there were a lot of sentinels out there watching the workers down below, which there were a lot of. If they weren't so thoroughly terrified, I would consider inciting a riot. Which is something I don't understand that well, solitary confinement I get, that works when it comes to breaking minds, they probably have a place with dozens of cells. But then why is mine here? Why do I get my own special cell here of all places? it doesn't make much sense, at least not to me.

Anyway, back to the guards. They're focused on watching the failures work and making sure no escape attempts result in success, no matter how disciplined they may be, it won't be that easy for them to adjust to watching somewhere else as intently, not when they've been so used to watching ponies they have such burning hatred for. So sneaking past them wouldn't be impossible, assuming none of the workers see me. Good, I like the challenge."

Pinkamena drew an arrow from her cell past both shaded and open dots, moving past them and into another door.

"Assuming I get past them and into the hallway, there are two other guards in there at all times, and passerbys that could come out at any moment. I'll have to scope the place out until I can figure out if there's anything there that can help me."

Pinkamena put a question mark at the beginning of the hallway, a possibility of escape she'll have to work on.

"Now, for the possible escape routes, the food has to come from-"

A loud knocking came from the door, causing Pinkamena to quickly turn around.

"Food!"

A voice said from the other side, a tray near the bottom of the door opened and a tray slid through, the tray closing behind it. The food didn't look very appetizing, it was just a bowl of gray mush inside of it, a small bottle of water next to it, and all of these things on a small, plastic tray.

"This doesn't look that nutritional, but I need to eat it, later. I'm not that hungry right now."

Pinkamena picked the tray up and put it in a corner beside the drawing, something she'll eat eventually.

"Now, as I was saying. The food has to come in from somewhere, you can't grow food on clouds. So I need to..."

Pinkamena's planning lasted for hours, thinking of every way possible way to escape. At some point, she had eaten the gray mush left for her. It wasn't good, but it wasn't bad either, it was like stale oatmeal. Over the time of her planning, time seemed to fly, as she focused on her planning and ignored her surroundings.

"Wow, that was...interesting."

Pinkamena said as she stepped back, looking at her markings. There were now dozens of markings, all of them related to either failed, or potential escape plans. There were several x's on the map, meaning there was no way those would work, for one reason or another. But there were two rooms that hard large circles around them, the waste room, and whatever room they store the spectra in.

"Now the waste room would be the easiest to get to and escape from, in terms of actually maneuvering in, I'd still have to deal with numerous guards. But wherever they keep the spectra, I'd have to-"

The sound of the door unlocking came from behind her, causing her to panic. She quickly began wiping the wall, erasing the pink drawing easily. As soon as the door began to open, Pinkamena finished with the drawing and sat on the floor, facing away from the door.

"Wake up and get up! You've got plenty more questions to answer before we're done with you, so cooperate, and we might make your death painless!"

Slowly, she stood up, resisting her urge to kill them for ordering her around like a dog. When she turned around, she noticed it was the same two guards from before. This was something she could use to her advantage, since these two seem to be prone to violence.

"Okay, but what about bathroom privileges? I can't exactly concentrate when I have to pee."

That was a lie, she could concentrate fine. This was mostly to test her flexibility, and how easily she could trick them.

"You get one bathroom break a day, that's it. Sure you wanna use it now?"

He asked almost sadistically, she somehow felt he was lying about how many breaks she got. But it didn't matter, she could deal with just one.

"Positive, gotta go when you gotta go, right?"

He didn't say anything after that, he just grimaced. Both of them moved to the side, allowing her to go through the door. Most of the trip went the same as last time, except the sentries above barely even noticed her. They were focused on the workers, looking for any excuse they could to go down there and beat one to near death. Which is what she had hoped for, sneaking past them would be pathetically easy. The workers looked up at her, some curiously, others beggingly, wanting her to save them. But she barely glanced at them, none of her plans involved saving anyone but herself.

When they got to the labyrinth that was the hallway, they took a different turn. She was making a mental map as they went, which was somewhat difficult since all the hallways were the same dull white, she'll just have to take note of turns instead of differences. She was trying to read the signs above each door, a few of them she was able to, but it was hard to tell the difference since all signs were the same than the rest. For a while, that's all she could do. But suddenly, something changed. The walls remained they're dull white, but there was a door on the left that was different, it was a darker shade, and it was open.

In the few seconds she passed by, she looked inside the room. There were guards, dozens of them. A few of them were at a table playing cards, others eating, there was even a mini-bar in there. This must have been the barracks, which is surprising since this place had a lot of guards and sentinels, she figured it would need an adjacent building to hold them all. Or a bunch of rooms, that could work too. This was somewhere she should take note of, there might be something in there she could use, like a map of this place. If not, the alcohol might be reason enough. But getting in there without all of them noticing her? That'll be something she can plan out later.

The bathroom was, like every other room in this place, extremely clean. She did decide to use the bathroom, since it would be better to do it while she was here. She had intended to wash up a bit, wanting to look nice for her 'date' with Rainbow Dash. But the guards gave her almost no time to, they were doing their best to make this hard for her. But, she was on her best behavior, not wanting to give them any excuse. Not that that would bother her, it's more she'd prefer them not to beat her, she may not be able to subdue her need to kill if they were to make a habit of that.

She had two places of interest, The barracks, and isolation. One of the signs said isolation on it, which could mean a lot of things. But since they keep her in a solitary confinement cell, it was possible they were keeping prisoners like her in there, it was worth checking out. Problem is, she isn't sure about how the keys worked. There could be a master key that opens all cells, or each cell has a key that only opens that cell, that would be problematic if that were true.

"Hey! Are you listening to me? I said go in, now!"

The guard shouted at her aggressively, snapping her out of her trance. It seems she became lost in her thoughts, like usual, really bad habit. It seems that they had made it to the interrogation room, the guards opened the door and waited for her to enter. And when she didn't enter, they got angry.

Before they tried to beat her, and she ended up killing them, she entered the room, the door shutting quickly behind.

"Hello Pinkamena, got something on your mind?"

Rainbow asked, looking at Pinkamena almost curiously. Pinkamena couldn't help but smile, after everything that's happened, something about Rainbow's voice just made her so...ecstatic.

"Just planning my escape, takes a lot of thought."

Pinkamena sat in the chair across from Rainbow, with noticeable struggle, the shackles made any form of movement difficult.

"What's in the folder, got some paperwork for all the dead ponies?

Pinkamena said, noticing the folder on the table beside Dash. She smiled as she moved the folder in front of her, opening it.

"Today, instead of asking each other questions,"

Inside the folder, were missing reports of ponies stacked on top of each other. Along with other kinds of papers Pinkamena didn't recognize.

"These are missing reports, and our own personal papers, on every Pegasi in Equestria. For every five you identify as yours, you get to ask one question."

Pinkamena leaned forward, looking down at the first one.

"Would you like detail about how I got them and how they died? Or do you just want to say mine?"