Rainbow Dash tossed and turned in the hay. Light streamed through the metal grate surrounding her. It was well after midnight, but that was meaningless here. They had lights, brighter then the brightest lantern that shone constantly, non stop. For some crazy reason, they even put them on buildings and signs. The brightness was everywhere, and Dash couldn't take much more of it. She looked up at the sky, and even it was an odd purple color. It looked too much like the color of Twilight's coat, so she quickly averted her eyes. She didn't like thinking about her friends, that was way too painful.
She sighed, and stretched her wings. They didn't work here. Whatever magic allowed Pegasi to fly was absent from this place. That didn't stop her from dreaming of flying. Flying here would be incredible. More awesome than anything she'd ever imagined. She imagined flying along on her back, with nothing below her but the lights.
She'd have to be careful. They had artificial birds here, machines that made a horrible noise in their struggle to be airborne. Unlike a Pegasus, who could easily become airborne, these machines had run for miles before they could pull themselves into the air. She wondered what it would be like to fly in one of the machines, then decided that she could never do it. Flying was something personal. She had to be doing it herself in order for her not to be scared. Rainbow Dash would let no one else fly her somewhere. She was either going to walk, ride or fly by her own two wings.
She imagined herself, high above all of the lights. They'd look like a blanket of stars, and she longed to soar along, like she was flying among the real stars. Even in Equestria, she couldn't fly among the stars. This would probably be the next best thing.
That wasn't the only radical thing that flying in this place could give her. There were buildings here, taller then the tallest tree. Where she was right now, Las Vegas, she'd heard a man call it, had more of those buildings then she'd ever imagined possible. What's more, they were lined up perfectly. Just the thought of blasting along the main road, just barely above the height of the funny metal things that men moved around in, the strange signs with their moving pictures blasting by on the left and right. No pony had ever done anything like that before.
As it stood, no pony ever would. Rainbow Dash could glide here, and that was the absolute limit. Even that was dangerous. She'd never really appreciated how much of her flight relied on magic before. Thinking about it, it was a silly thing. Pegasi clearly weren't built for flight. She had wings and all, but that just made her a pony with wings. In a world without magic, that didn't amount to much. She weighed way too much, and that weight was distributed all wrong. Gliding took absolute concentration, and very careful positioning. She refused to try it without a mat below.
The whole not being able to fly thing gave her serious problems with her fans. They expected to see the world famous Rainbow Dash flying high above the convention floor. That was the number one question asked of her during VIP meet and greets.
"Fly for us!" somepony, err someone would demand.
The crowd would soon be echoing this demand. She'd be surrounded by fifty to a hundred men, all pressing ever closer to her, and demanding her to fly. Her agents and body guards would have to rush in.
"The USDA is currently in the rule making process for setting the safety standards for Pegasus flight. Till they've completed that process, we can't allow Rainbow Dash to fly." Her agent would say.
That would calm the crowd down, but it killed the magical energy that had filled the room. Dashie could tell that's why people had come to see her. They wanted to see her fly. Without being able to fly, she wasn't Rainbow Dash.
Dash had heard things, well actually overheard things from the men who brought her food and water. They'd talk about rumors that been spreading, about how she was just a regular pony, with something called contact lenses, fake wings, and a speaker to allow some unseen man to do her voice. She'd heard other things on convention floors. Most of those seemed to be about how she was something called an animatronic. Dashie had no idea what that was, but from the way the people she'd heard it from talking, it had to be some kind of machine.
She'd have gone after them there and then, if she hadn't been signing autographs in her pen. Dash could barely make it over the fence that made up her enclosure on the convention floor. It wasn't something that she could do instantly as a spur of the movement thing. Even if she tried, the men that always surrounded her would stop her. They made it very clear that some unmentioned law mandated that she stay in the pen while on the convention floor.
Dashie loved her fans. That's why she chosen this life. The man that had come to Equestria to offer Rainbow Dash and her friends the chance at stardom had showed them pictures of their fans, the stories that these fans had written about Dash and her friends.
The shear numbers had amazed the ponies. She remembered how Fluttershy had hidden under the sofa just from the size of the crowds in the pictures. There were more men that loved the little ponies then there were ponies in all of Equestria. Dashie reminded herself that these fans were just a tiny portion of the total number of men in the world. There were billions of them, she'd heard from some man. Her mind didn't do numbers on that scale, although this place had given her practical experience in very large numbers.
Seeing those pictures had changed her life. From that second, being a Wonderbolt had seemed as provincial and small as being the fastest, most awesome pony in Ponyville. There was a world out there, a world with more ponies, err people then she'd even imagined possible. Most importantly, they loved her. People would stand in lines hours long just to get a picture onto which she'd scribbled. Not even the Wonderbolts had fans that devoted.
Rarity had been the only other pony tempted by the offer, but she'd decided against it when she learned that she'd just be putting her name on a line of clothes that some men had designed without any input from the Unicorn. Applejack was too busy with Sweet Apple Acres, and Twilight refused to live anywhere where her magic didn't work. Pinkie would come over for a few days, throw a party at a large convention, and go back. Pinkie was too impatient to sit for hours and sign autographs.
She relaxed a little, trying to get comfortable. She longed to sleep in a proper bed, not this intolerable hay. There were more laws against that. Those laws were very clear. Horses had to be kept in a horse trailer. Dash had spent the first few months protesting that she was a pony, and not a horse, but there didn't seem to be a difference here. The first few nights, the nice man Gina who worked as her agent had smuggled her up to its hotel room. She'd been caught on the third night, and they'd been kicked out of their hotel. From then on, Rainbow Dash had been stuck in the trailer.
It was a nice trailer. It had been intended too house a human as well as a horse, and that meant that it had a proper bathroom. That was a real blessing. She'd spent a few weeks in living in the human part of the trailer, that had allowed her to sleep in a bed, and gave her most of the trappings of civilization. But, inspectors from the USDA had ended that. They'd fined Gina thousands of something called dollars, and insisted that Dashie slept in the horse part of the trailer. They'd made it very clear that if they ever found her in the human part of the trailer again, Gina would face something called "Federal Charges."
She didn't know what that meant, but judging by what little she knew of men, and Gina's reaction, Federal Charges were something really, really bad. They'd pulled the bed out of the human part of the trailer then. They didn't have to, Rainbow Dash didn't want to cause anyone any trouble. She liked being famous, and she could sense that if she got Gina in trouble, that fame might be ruined.
She stood up, and studied her surroundings. She was in what the humans called a parking lot. This was a small one, compared to the parking lots that they usually parked in. She was on a side street, between two giant hotels. in front of her, was the massive golden building where the convention was. A white cliff of building blocked her view of most of the main tower, but she could still make it out, taller then the tallest buildings in Canterlot, and gleaming in gold light.
She could smell the smell of human food coming from the building. She knew that humans ate meat, and that's probably what she was smelling. The smell disgusted her. Gina had assured her that cows and the other animals that humans ate weren't able to think like her, but it hadn't made it any more disgusting. At least Gina had been willing to avoid bringing meat anywhere near her. Not all of the men that helped her were that polite.
Off to her right was the truly awesome street along which most of the hotels sat along. She watched as the men went about their business about it, unaware or uncaring about the time. Ponyville would have been deserted by now, and even in Canterlot, there would have been very few ponies wandering around.
She wondered what had drawn this many men here. While she imagined that they were all here to see her, that wouldn't explain why this place had existed before she'd decided to grace it with her presence. This was a strange place, in the middle of the desert, just like Apple-loosa. But, unlike Apple-loosa it seemed to have been there for a long time. Off to her left, the city seemed to get much less glamorous, and just looked old and worn out.
She heard a train horn off in the distance, another reminder that this wasn't Equestria, with its candy themed trains, with their whistles. Trains here were massive things, grimy and dirty. One of her first nights, the parking lot for the trailer had been near train tracks. She'd jumped every time the horn had sounded. She hadn't calmed down till the terrible roar of the trains had faded off into the distance. She hadn't gotten any sleep, and she'd been ashamed at how she'd treated her fans the next morning.
This wasn't a world for ponies. Everything was made for the men that towered overhead. Even the children of the men were generally taller then her. Celestia, the tallest pony she'd ever met would probably only come up to the middle bit of the average man. Even the horses and ponies here were bigger, which meant that her life was difficult. She was in a wrong sized world.
Dash made another nervous lap around the trailer. She flexed her wings, making sure once again that she couldn't fly. Of course, the wings did nothing. Well almost nothing. They'd blown the straw around, which meant that she was going to have to gather it back up, and form it into some kind of bed if she wanted to at least pretend to be comfortable for the night.
She settled back down, wondering why she was still staying here. She was nothing here, just an animal. Sure, she was earning bits, more bits then she could ever spend in a lifetime, but she really wanted to see her friends. Maybe she see if they'd visit. There was a chance of that. No a good one, but still a chance.
One of the strange metal things pulled into the parking lot, and a group of men got out of it and walked towards her. These men were young, probably roughly her age, if not a little younger. She didn't know much about men, but she was sure that these men looked like most of her fans.
Two of them were heavyset, with one of the fat men having long hair. The fat one with the long hair was also wearing glasses. The second fat man had a bald head. The third man was tall and thin, and it also had long hair. The approached the trailer slowly, as if they were expecting someone to stop them. Finally, the tall thin man approached.
"Hi!, my name is Sarah. We were just wondering if you were the real Rainbow Dash?" the man asked.
It had a higher pitched voice, like Gina, and Rainbow Dash wasn't sure if that was an indication that the man was mare, like it would have been with a pony. Actually, did men even have genders? That was a question that she'd never definitively answered.
"We don't have enough money to meet you tomorrow, so we figured that you know that we'd you know see you tonight. Well that's not it. Rodney here wanted to see if you were real, or just a fake like people are saying online." Sarah said.
She looked depressed now, like Dash's lack of a response was eating away any hope that there was light and goodness in the world. Dash studied the group again. These were definitely her fans. She had to say something.
"Of course I'm real!" She said, striking her most dramatic pose. "There ain't another pony in the world awesome enough to even pretend to be me!"
The group pressed closer to the trailer, this was something that they would want to remember, something that they wanted to talk about. The heavyset man with the long hair had wandered around to the door of the trailer, and soon all three were hanging inside it with Dash. This was why she was here, she thought. For the fans and adoration. In Equestria, she was just another Pegasus. Here, she was something special and magical. That counted for something.