//------------------------------//
// Contrast - TheBrianJ 
// Story: Operation Westhorse 
// by PropMaster 
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Something wasn’t right about this.

Rainbow Dash slowly lowered herself down onto the small perch below her and looked around, trying to make heads or tails out of her surroundings. Far below her, the world was lit up. Lights in every direction, lots of motion, and noise. So much noise. Not even Manehattan created this much of a din.

Rainbow Dash dropped off her perch and onto the circular platform far below it. She could feel it moving under her hooves; there was a lot of movement coming from whatever it was she was standing on. She hadn’t gotten a good look at it; she had just seen the massive structure, and homed in on the large needle that reached to the sky. 

The whole structure seemed to be alive with activity. As she trotted along the platform, she could feel gentle vibrations coming from directly below her. And above the sound of the wind rushing by her ears, she could hear the unmistakable sound of voices.

She pressed her ear to the cold surface; there was no doubt about it, there were voices directly below her. Her curiosity was starting to get the better of her, and she started inching towards the edge to peek over. She wasn’t sure what kind of creatures could be lurking down there, and as eager as she was to find out who was down there, she had too many nagging concerns to rush in as she usually did.

She was just starting to peek out over the edge, when something cold batted the back of her head. Rainbow Dash turned skyward, only to start getting hit with a volley of raindrops coming from a rain cloud far above. Only seconds later, the few drops had turned into an outright downpour, and she suddenly found herself completely soaked.

Abandoning her quest to find out where the voices from, Rainbow scrambled up into the air and shot skyward, her eyes shut tightly as she sped through the cloud.

Though the sun had set below the clouds, the remaining warmth of the day was enough for Rainbow Dash, and she settled down on the top of the cloud to dry off. As she did, she carved out a hole in the cloud below her and poked her head through, hoping to get some sort of glimpse at what could have been inside the giant needle building.

It was directly below her, and she couldn’t get a good view of whatever lie below it. But as she looked around, she started to get a scope of the world around her. She pulled her head back through and carefully cut a circular patch of cloud below her, then gently flapped her wings until it had lowered enough below the rest of the clouds so she could look around freely.

Below her, things were lighting up more and more as the sun was lowering, but it was still just barely high enough in the sky to illuminate a lot of the world. Despite all the artificial light below her, she could also see large patches of green dotted throughout. It was the opposite of every town she had even seen in Equestria; the green was there, but it was dominated by buildings that stretched higher than anything she had seen before. And in the distance, she could make out a great mountain stretching high into the sky. Rainbow Dash slowly looked back and forth at the scenery before her: she had never seen anything quite like it, even in the busiest parts of Equestria.

Equestria… Rainbow Dash sighed. She missed home. Everything here was so different, so unnatural, so…

She stopped as she gazed towards the West. There were a few scattered islands, but most importantly, she could see water. A lot of water. And in the back of her mind, she knew that if she just kept flying that way, there would be more. This was no time to think about Equestria; right now, something was calling her name, she was determined to find out what.

She stood back up and stretched her wings out, then took off into the air again. The cloud below her dissipated as she kicked off of it, and she took one last look at the rainy scene below her before turning and flying West.