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// 1. The Wish 
// Story: The Factory 
// by The Dashie 
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	Anyone who knows me knows that I like the My Little Pony franchise. They still make fun of me though. Even my best friend, Pinkroluei, or Pineh as we call him, still gives me a hard time about it. What’s weird is, he’s from Africa and somehow he’s a brony too. Why he gives me a hard time I don’t know, but anyway. It had been a year and a half since I became a brony and people still give me a really hard time about it. My parents were no different. They sent me to seminars about how to “man up” and how to “fight against your girly nature”. I’m 17; I don’t need to be told that I need to man up. So what if I like a show that was originally designed for girls. So what if it’s considered “un-manly” to watch a show about talking ponies that discover the great lessons of how to treat others or how to be a better person. Does that make me “un-manly” to want to learn how to be a better person? 
Anyway, my name is Dash, which doesn’t help my standpoint because of the fact that one of the main characters of the show is named Rainbow Dash. Most people just call me “Rainbow” now. Before everyone knew I was a brony, my life was the best: I had the best grades in my class, I was starting QB of the school’s varsity team, and I had a beautiful girlfriend; pretty much the American adolescent boy dream. Then my little sister, Susie, or as I would know her, Scootabrat, because she was always getting on my nerves, found me watching the show one night and decided to go and leak it on Facebook. Everything went downhill from there: I was kicked off the team, my girlfriend broke up with me, and everyone started to tease me, which caused my grades to drop severely. However, I was able to meet some guys who shared my interest for the show, and in the most coincidental way possible, they all had names that sounded like the name from the characters of the show. There was Pineh (Pinkie Pie), as was previously mentioned, and then there was Jack (Applejack), Twymond (Twilight Sparkle), Raferty (Rarity), and Malisty (Fluttershy), and what makes it even crazier was that they even had personalities almost identical to the characters: Pineh was a party animal, Jack was a “Honest Abe”, Twymond was a complete book worm, but my superior in academics, Raferty was a snob, but very giving of himself, and Malisty was the shy guy in the corner, but was a volunteer at the animal hospital down the street from his house. Somehow, even though I had teased the people who had openly admitted to being bronies until I became one myself, they still hung out with me, and I, along with my friends and Malisty’s parents, are the only ones who know what Malisty’s voice sounds like since we are the only guys he talks to. Anyway, that’s the basics of my life.
There is one day that sticks out in my mind and that’s the day that everything changed. It was a normal old Monday morning; nothing special right? It was math and elective day so it would have been a very easy day for me: I would cruise through SAT Math, breeze through Calculus I, have fun arguing in Debate and blast through tutorials and I was home free. Well, it didn’t work that way. We had gotten a new student named Reingo. Anyone with a pulse and at least two brains cells could tell that he was not exactly the most social of people or the best looking for that matter; he always wore a hood, he had one seriously deformed back, he had the creepiest voice, and on the top of the cake, he would sometimes walk on all fours like it was normal, and when someone saw him do it, he would simply get upright and walk right again. I had a lot of suspicions of this guy, but so did everyone else, so I didn’t do anything rash. The thing that got me though was that he would always want to sit next to me at lunch, in class, in study hall; if there were seats, he wanted the ones next to mine. He would always just stare at me, or at least I think he was because he could have been staring into outer space, and then start to take notes. He would sometimes fumble the pencil or pen he was using, and on one occasion I caught him using his mouth to write. I may have done some weird stuff, but that doesn’t even seem possible, if you ask me. 
Anyway, that one Monday morning, he was up to his old antics again; the usual staring at me, taking notes about me, sitting next to me thing, but he had drawn the attention of Lance, the new starting QB for the school’s varsity team, and apparently Lance wanted to stir some fire. He came up to me during lunch and said, “Hey Rainbow, why don’t you tell that loser to get lost, or do you like the attention of losers?” “I don’t care if he sits by me and takes notes about me as long as he doesn’t bother me, which he hasn’t.” I replied back, but then he really got me by saying, “Maybe you should just go to Oquestmia, or whatever that place is called and be with your little pony friends there.” Now I may be tough, but Lance was definitely stronger than me. I, however, didn’t care and landed one right on his cheek. That lit his flame and he charged me up like a bull. My friends had seen what happened and attempted to come to my aid, but without missing a beat, Reingo comes in and stops them, and basically leaves Lance to do as he pleased. I got good two or three licks before a teacher came and stopped the fight. I got three-days suspension because I made the first strike and Lance got two days for retaliating.
I went through the rest of the day and was on my way home, when out of nowhere came Reingo. He came up and looked like he wanted to talk but I didn’t so I pushed him aside. The freakiest thing occurred at that moment; I had shoved him at least 3 feet in the opposite direction then started sprinting, but in some miraculous way he jumped up at least fifteen feet in the air after making one of the most realistic horse neighs and landed on all fours right in front of me and stood up. How that was even possible, I couldn’t discern, but it just didn’t seem possible. He had a look of horror on his face like he did something he wasn’t supposed to. He didn’t say anything but just started walking away. I went home that night with more and more questions about that Reingo character. Some included, “How the heck could this guy jump fifteen feet in the air, land on all fours, and not be dead or alien?”and “If he is actually able to do that and I wasn’t just imagining the whole ordeal, what is he taking or doing to where he is able to do that?” These questions just racked my brain and the more I thought of it, the more it seemed like Reingo might not be all that human. I decided to confront him about it tomorrow because I still had a lot on my mind as it is: I had to tell my parents that I had gotten suspended for three days for starting a fight and I know that wouldn’t be very happy that I had started a fight. As soon as I got home, I told them and at first they started to yell at me, but then they started acting nice and my dad said, “Well at least your growing out of that girly phase of yours, and three days could get you some needed relaxation time or if you wanted you could come help me at the shop.” (Dad was a gun shop owner). I declined his offer to work at his shop and said that I just wanted to be alone. At least I got the suspension thing off my mind. Now I have three days to think about Reingo. I went out of my window to my little private place of the roof. I usually do all my thinking and planning here, and me and my friends sometimes come up here when we hang out. Well I was thinking long and hard about Reingo, and about my life as it stands, and about what Lance had said at lunch. “Maybe you should just go to Oquestmia, or whatever that place is called and be with your little pony friends there.” If only it was that easy. It would be better to just go to the great land of Equestria and just live in harmony with all the ponies there and never have to worry about criticism, but seeing as that would be virtually impossible because of the fact that Equestria is a fictional place, I would have to deal with it.
It was after a little while that I remembered that there was going to a meteor shower that night. I went inside and got my snacks, and sat there for about an hour or so. When it finally got dark, I saw a single star go by, then three more, then a whole river of stars went hurtling by like the sky was on big race track and the stars were having some sort of celestial 5k run. It was beautiful, but then I thought, “Hey, it wouldn’t hurt to wish.” I wished that I could go to the land of Equestria and not have to worry about people putting me down because of the fact that I’m a brony. I knew it wouldn’t mean much, but at least I have something to keep me going. It was about 11:30 when the shower ended, so I just took a quick shower of my own and went to bed. 
I had the weirdest dream that night: I was walking around in some random open field; nothing in sight for miles and miles except open field. No hills either just plain flat field. Then out of the sky Reingo and about three other guys that looked like Reingo came falling down on the ground, landed on all fours and stood up. Then in unison started singing, “Now a rainbow's tale isn't quite as nice as the story we knew of sugar and spice, but a rainbow's easy once you get to know it with the help of the magic of a pegasus device. Let's delve deeper into rainbow philosophy far beyond that of Cloudsdale’s mythology. It's easy to misjudge that floating city with its alluring decor and social psychology, but with all great things comes a great responsibility, that of Cloudsdale's being weather stability. ‘How’, you ask, ‘are they up to the task?’ To which the answer is in a simple facility. In the Rainbow Factory, where your fears and horrors come true, in the Rainbow Factory, where not a single soul gets through.” While they are singing this I’m running for my life, but while I’m running I look back and see Reingo and his doppelgangers are growing wings, with which they use to follow me with. I was running and running for what seemed like forever and all the while the flying Reingos were singing their song about something called a Rainbow Factory and that apparently it was a horror house because your fears came true and “not a single soul gets through”.
When they finally finish their song, I woke up in a random park, and from the sun I can tell it’s about 7:30. I wonder to myself if I might have sleep walked all the way to a park, but that wasn’t my main thought. My main thought was why I couldn’t recognize the park I was in when I woke up. I looked around for some street lights or something, but there was nothing in sight but some trees and a road that led through the park. It was weird that I couldn’t recognize the park because even if I had sleep walked all the way to a park, I could pretty much map out the town around my house for about 50 miles. All the parks in my mental map did not have any resemblance to the one I was currently in. The only thing I could do was follow the road and see where it went. As I followed the road, I began to see houses and farms and such. I also started to see some horses with very big eyes walking around, as if they were animated in real life, and I had some suspicions when I thought I heard one talk. As I continued on the road, there were more houses and horses with huge anime eyes, and now some had horns and some had wings. I thought I might still be dreaming because it was almost like Equestria with unicorns and pegasi. I went along with the thought that I was dreaming so that when I heard some quiet whispers, I wouldn’t take notice to them since I was dreaming. I thought since this was a dream, I would visit Twilight’s place because, hey, what brony wouldn’t? I kept walking through town and finally found the library where Twilight lives. I politely knocked on the door, and when she came to the door, she flipped out, rushed me in and started to ask questions like, “What are you?”, “Where are you from?”,  “How come I’ve never seen your species before?”, etc. I gladly answered all her questions to the best of my ability, because she asked some very specific questions such as, “If you’re a human and I’ve never seen your kind before, how is it that you are able to stand on two hooves, or hands in your case?” Needless to say I could only tell her that as babies, humans learn to walk of two feet, not hands, and then start to learn to run and so on. She was very fascinated by my answers because after each question I answered, she would jot something down then look at me with awe, then ask me her next question. This process went by for what seemed like hours, and at the end of it, I told her goodbye, since I still thought this was a dream. She said, “If this really is just a dream to you, then let’s preform an experiment.” Then out of nowhere she hit me in the arm with her hoof, to which flinched and asked what she did that for. She then concluded that since I had felt pain that I was not dreaming. I had a similar plan and pinched her. She asked why I did that, and I concluded that if I had been dreaming that she would melt away. She nodded and agreed, but I didn’t care, because I had one small predicament I had at the moment. I WAS IN EQUESTRIA TALKING TO TWILIGHT SPARKLE! All the bronies in the world would give an arm and a leg and maybe even more just to be in the position I was in for even ten minutes! I was in the land that bronies dreamed of and I thought I was following suite by dreaming of it, but no, I’m actually in Equestria. I tried my hardest not to show it, but I was flipping out in my head. I mean, ya I’m a normally serious guy, but come on. Who wouldn’t be totally stoked that they were standing not only in front of a fictional character, but a fictional character of a mass cult to which some of the followers are brainless idiots over. This was probably the only moment in history both past and future where a human being was able to go to a mystical land that shouldn’t even exist. Even if you were to think of the multiverse theory that states that there might be other universes, how would I be able to get from mine to that of the My Little Pony universe? It would take millions upon millions of millennia just to find even one other universe if more than one even existed.
Anyway, though this was running in my head, I thought it would be nice to introduce myself. “I’m Dash, and I’m from a place called Earth. No need to introduce yourself, Twilight Sparkle, personal protégé to the great Princess Celestia and representative of the element of magic.” She had her mouth open by the end of it and asked how I knew so much about her, and I said that from my world, there is a television show about her and her friends as they discover the magics of friendship. She then asked what a television was, and for about 3 hours I was explaining pretty much everything that I knew about the history of humans, and later in about the show itself. She seemed fascinated when I got to the part about how the “audience” of the show knew almost everything about all of her friends and of the other ponies in Equestria. She would jot down more notes and just look in awe with the vast amount of knowledge I knew of Equestria. She quizzed me at the end of pretty much anything having to do with her friends, and I’m 100 percent sure some of those questions were for personal gain. At the end, she told me if I needed a place to stay, that I was welcome in the library. As if on cue, Pinkie Pie just barged in and started to ask Twilight if she would mind organizing a birthday party for Rainbow Dash, when she suddenly saw me, and did her trademark gasp, and ran off. I knew what was gonna happen, and I knew it would be good. Twilight knew this too as she started to talk about how Pinkie Pie was gonna throw a big party for me because I was new to Ponyville, and she wanted me to have lots of friends, to which I stopped her and told her I already knew. I thought of where the party would be, and Twilight must have had the same thought and we both decided that it might as well be at Sugar Cube Corner. We went outside and saw it was dark, so we didn’t take our time in getting over to the shop.
As soon as we walked in the door, “Surprise!”, and there I see Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, who didn’t seem to notice me come in, and all the ponies in Ponyville or the ones who cared to be out this late at night. Everyone was just staring at me with blank faces and everything was silent for a good 5 seconds, then Pinkie Pie said, “Welcome to Ponyville! I’ve never seen anything like you so I thought, ‘maybe that thing doesn’t have any friends’ and that’s I went ‘hhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuu’ which was when I came here and started to make a really awesome party for you so that you wouldn’t feel all lonely. I should probably introduce you to my friends. You probably know Twilight since you were in her library with her, but here’s…”, but I stopped her and named her friends and their elements, including Pinkie Pie’s. That again caused silence, but after a while she wanted to know how I knew all of those things, to which Twilight gave a basic summarization of what I told her that took about 10 minutes to describe, and while she told the summarization, all the ponies in the store came around me and Twilight to listen and hear more about who I was and where I came from, and how I knew so much about everybody. I was just looking around and seeing all the faces with their eyes on me with awe, when I then saw Rainbow Dash just sitting alone in the corner, or floating as it would be, and as soon as Twilight had finished her summery, before any questions were asked to me, I gently walked over to her and said hello. The moment she saw my face, she…flipped…out. The look on her face was like I was the man about to kill her and she had no way of defending herself. She screamed at the top of her lungs, “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here! How did you get here? Look, I know you probably hate me, but it was just what I was told to do, Dash.” “Hate you? Why would I hate you? In fact you’re probably my favorite of all your friends and… Wait I didn’t introduce myself yet to you.” She looked serious for a second, and then said, “You haven’t figured it out yet have you? Well I can add awesome impersonator to my list of things I’m good at.” “What do you mean?” She looked almost amused. “You seriously don’t recognize me? You don’t remember me jumping at least fifteen feet in the air after giving that neigh. You don’t remember me holding your friends back while I let Lance beat you to a pulp. Dash, lemme tell ya something you might find a shock: You might call me Rainbow Dash, but you would better know me as Reingo.” A little spark went off in my brain and in the timespan of about five seconds, it all came together. The deformed back, the antisocialism, the walking on all fours, the neigh, the jump: it was her and I didn’t even know. That spark, however, turned into a fire aimed at Rainbow Dash. “How could you? Even after I stuck up for you after Lance called you a loser, even when it really bothered me when you would always sit right next to me, even when you would stare at me and take notes, which embarrassed me to new heights because everyone thought you were stalking me. How could you do that to me?!” It was then that I charged head long at her, pinned her against the wall and held her there. Twilight intervened and said, “Dash, Rainbow Dash, what is going on between you two? Have you two met before?” Rainbow Dash was the first to the first stab at that one.
“Ya I knew him before he even got here. Ya see, I had gotten some orders from my boss at the weather factory to take a survey on humans. He told me they were on a planet called Earth. I didn’t know what they were, but I gladly took the task. I didn’t know how to get there so I got asked for help from some of the guys in Cloudsdale to help me get to the planet Earth, which was wayyyyyy across the universe, according to my boss. Apparently, the only way there without having to cross a lot of ground was through magic. Now as everypony knows, pegasi can’t use magic. Well I got one of the guys to order a magic amulet that allows anypony to teleport to wherever they wanted to and back but only got to spend one month in the place they went to. Well I used it to get to earth, and I then made a disguise of a human teenage boy, and went to the high school that Dash went to. I heard about Dash and thought to myself, ‘Let’s see if this Dash is like The Dash.’ From what I saw, he was a lot like me: a great athlete, loyal to his friends, willing to stand up against those of greater power. He was my equal in human form. It was until he got to be labeled as something called a “brony” that he started to change. He didn’t play football anymore, he didn’t have his friend around, that by the way, spent a lot of time together (she was referring to my girlfriend), he was being teased about being a brony, whatever that is, and I even heard some people call him “Rainbow”. I didn’t understand why they did this, until I secretly snuck into one of the meetings he had with his friends. They were talking about us, guys. They were talking about how each of us had certain personalities and greatnesses, and other stuff like that. It was amazing how much they knew about us. That’s about the time when poor old Dash got picked on by Lance at lunch, and when he started to fight Lance, and when I stopped his friends from helping him. Dash, I know you must hate me for doing that, but I had to survey everything about humans, and that was too important not to see: The physical violence you showed towards each other. I wanted so bad to just shove my hind hooves in that guys face, then run back home, but I had my job to do. Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to hurt you, which is why, on the day I was to go home, I was going to tell you who I was, but you pushed me away. I was so mad at myself I couldn’t help but let out a neigh and jump to confront you, but I couldn’t. Not after what I had done to you. So I just left you alone. It was about 10:30 that I saw the meteor shower. It was beautiful. I mean we have meteor showers here, don’t get me wrong, but they are nothing compared to the one of your world. In ours, it’s only in one section in the sky and only last for about 15 minutes, but yours was all over the sky and it lasted for about an hour. It was marvelous and I could feel my heart racing, yearning to join those stars in their race across the sky, but I couldn’t. It was in the middle of the shower that I went by your house where you sometimes hang out with your friends. I saw how you looked at the sky the same way I did and I heard you wish upon the stars of wanting to come to Equestria and wanting to escape the criticism for being a brony. I knew how you felt and how it must hurt to be criticized for being a brony, whatever that might be. I knew that the pain of also being beaten up in front of a large crowd. I wanted to take away your pain. I wanted to tell you everything but then my amulet started acting up and took me home. When I got home, my boss questioned me about what happened, and I told him about you. After that is a blur, but I somehow was at my house in Cloudsdale and then today happened. Please forgive me Dash; I’m so sorry I did what I did.”
The story was a lot to sink in. I had been watched by my favorite of all the ponies, and I didn’t even know it. I was being surveyed and didn’t have a clue about it. I was sitting by the pony I most represented as her, ”equal in human form”, and only saw her as an antisocial human teenage boy. It was such a shock to me, and I’m sure to Twilight and everyone else in the room. It was both nullified my anger at Rainbow Dash and made me wonder why her boss would want me surveyed. It didn’t make sense, but I didn’t want a perfectly good party to go to waste, so I simply said, “Rainbow Dash, I forgive you. Now isn’t this supposed to be a party? Let’s have some fun!” At this Pinkie Pie brought out Vinyl Scratch, a pony who was supposed to be the DJ of the party, and the party livened up. I got to have chats with all of Twilight’s friends: With Rarity, I got to talk about the elegance of America and all the other countries on Earth, and she seemed drawn into every word I said. She asked if she could make me a suit, and not willing to look a gift horse, or in this case, pony, in the mouth, I accepted her offer. I got to talk about parties with Pinkie Pie and how they were sometimes very wild on Earth. She asked me for tips, and I gave my party dude’s motto: If I spike the punch, you’ll lose your lunch, but spike me back, then the party is whack. She seemed to love my motto and started telling everyone about it. Applejack told me all about Sweet Apple Acres and how she would work for all the apples in Ponyville. I told her that I had to work to keep good grades. She didn’t seem to care till I mentioned football. Man, was she into football. It took me about 20 minutes just to explain the game to her. At the end she asked me if I would be willing to show her how to play it, to which I gave the old spit-shake to acknowledge that I would. My talk with Fluttershy was longer than I expected because if I know anything on Fluttershy, it’s that she’s , well, shy. However, she took the initiative to learn more about me and what kinds of animals there were in my world. I told her of birds and lions and tigers and all sorts of animals. When I got to horses, she seemed a bit intrigued that there were ponies that couldn’t speak, use magic, or fly. I had a good time talking to her because she was the nicest about me being human. If I had to have my guess, it seemed like she liked me a lot, which I thought was nice. I had talked more with Twilight because she wanted to know if there were any types of magic in my world. I told her that any magic we had was mainly smoke and mirrors, but that nature itself seemed kind of magical. She asked who raised the sun and moon. I told her that the Earth rotates around the Sun and the moon is a satellite to the Earth and that nobody raised it; it just came as the Earth turned towards the Sun. She didn’t seem to believe me and said that there must be someone else behind the Sun’s rise and fall, but she didn’t press the matter. Finally, I got to Rainbow Dash. She didn’t seem to want to even look at me, she felt so ashamed, or so I guessed. I told her that I forgave her and it was probably for the best that she didn’t reveal herself to me. That seemed to get her attention. She told me, “Hey, you know something Dash? Your one pretty cool guy. Tell ya what? I’ll take you on a tour through Cloudsdale and the weather factory where I work. How’s that sound?” I gladly accepted and asked when we would go. She said after everyone left. I told her that was cool and then enjoyed the best party of my life. I taught the ponies how to shuffle, how to do the cat-daddy, how to dougie, and more. The party got even crazier when Pinkie had decided to take my advice, and spike the punch with some sort of potion she got from Twilight. Everyone was all happy all of the sudden and that’s where I blacked out. 
After about 5 hours of sleep, it was about 6 in the morning and Rainbow Dash was knocked out cold. I thought I would wake her up so she could take me to Cloudsdale. When I woke her up, she seemed a little too groggy for just a night of partying. It looked like she was like a zombie: Only able to talk in grunts, but after a while she came to and she agreed to take me to Cloudsdale. On our way there, she started talking in a quiet voice about how great Cloudsdale was and how prestigious it was. After a while, she got quiet and I asked about the weather factory and what it was like. She seemed to flinch at the question but she said it was a great place. She told me she was sorry. I was asking her why she was sorry, but I had a sudden sharp pain to my head, and I saw only darkness.