Pony Shore

by GoldenState3

A World Gone (Pony) Mad

Ronald Whitman nervously knocked on the door. He was squeezed into the hallway of the building in which his second favorite pony, Vinyl Scratch lived. He didn't know much about her, no one really did. While she had a substantial human fan base, she was a nobody in Equestria. Such a nobody, that she probably didn't even know how popular she was on Earth.

The door opened, and she appeared, her hair disheveled, her ears limp. Her eyes were red, or rather, the parts of her eyes that shouldn't have been red were red. She jumped a few inches back, and Ronald retreated a little to give the Unicorn a little more space.

She was scared, he decided. He'd brought sugar cubes for her, but that seemed silly now. This wasn't some animal, this was another person. Or rather it was the equivalent of a person.

"Mz. Vinyl Scratch?" He asked.

Vinyl shrugged.

"May I ask what this is about?" She asked.

"I represent Ponative Productions, and I'd like to know if you'd been interested in some television work?" He asked.

She got a look on her face. Ronald recognized that kind of look. It was a look that screamed "maybe I won't have to choose between food and rent this month." He'd been there, and done that. He'd been in the right place, at the right time during the initial Pony boom. He'd been an intern, and he'd been assigned to keep Rarity happy. It had been pure torture.

Despite that, he'd managed to gain connections all over Equestria. Connections that most humans didn't have. That's why he'd been able to get his career off the ground. Most Humans were only interested in bothering with important ponies, like Luna, Celestia, Mayor Mare, and the Wonderbolts. Ronald knew ponies all over Equestria, and he was able to turn this into being able to get access that most people couldn't. He'd been the one who convinced Applejack to let them film her family reunion. That had cemented his as the person to know when it came to ponies.

"What would I be doing?" Vinyl Scratch asked.

"You'd be a contestant on a new show, Pony Shore. Basically, you'd live in a house with eight humans, and three other ponies. You'd have to complete various challenges, and at the end of six months, the last person standing would win ten thousand bits, or the human equivalent." Ronald said.

Vinyl was everything he'd imagined. Her mane was slightly bluer in real life, and he longed to run his hand over her luxurious looking coat. He'd seen her once before, but that had been during the Royal Wedding. He'd been too distracted with having to keep Rarity away from Blueblood, and otherwise occupied. Rarity was extremely high maintenance, far beyond even how she appeared on the show.

Vinyl was studying him again. Her ears were twitching, and her eyes were darting around.

"No strings? I don't have to do anything for you?" She asked.

Ronald was a little taken aback. FIM promoted ponies as being innocent fun loving creatures, and here, one of them was asking if she was going to have to screw him to get a job on his show. He wanted to say yes. He wanted her, badly. Half the bronies on Earth would give their souls to be right here, right now. But, that would be wrong. He wasn't that kind of person. His parent's had taught him honesty, and decency. Besides, he wanted Fluttershy far more. He handed Vinyl a pony sized version of the contract, and left in a hurry.

Vinyl Scratch's head was killing her. She stretched one more time, before rotating her hooves off of the bed. She had to be careful, there were a few records on the floor, buried under the garbage and dirty dishes on her floor. She grabbed her sunglasses from next to her pillow, where they'd settled when she'd shaken them off of her head the night before. The light was still lit, and she used her magic to close the valve. She could barely pay her gas bill as it was, and that was without leaving the lights on all night. Still, she could barely afford matches too, so it might kind of wash out, who knows.

There'd been a crunch under hoof, as one of her records shattered into pieces. Oh well, remixes consisting of glued together records consisted of her signature style. Or rather, they would if she could ever get a job that let her have a signature style. Maybe with her appearance on Pony Shore, she'd be able to make a career for herself on Earth.

Vinyl moved towards the corner of her apartment that served as a kitchen. Her entire apartment, without the closet and bathroom was roughly the size of her foalhood bedroom. Her bed and turntable took up roughly half of the room, with most of the rest of it used to store her record collection, and the various bits of bric a brac that she'd collected over the course of her eighteen years.

She was at her table now, and she was studying the ever growing pile of bills. It seemed like the majority of her meager income went towards late fees, and interest. Her parents were always telling that she should change careers, they both worked in some boring government job, and they were always hinting that they could get her one.

Like most ponies, she'd been kicked out of the family house as soon she'd earned her cutie mark.

"Honey, how can you discover what your destiny means with us breathing down your neck?" Her mother had said.

She'd been eleven. She'd been able to get work, working as a DJ / clown at Foals Birthday parties, and the occasional cuteceañera. It paid the bills, well only slightly. But, Vinyl had big dreams. She'd always wanted to play the big speakeasies of Manehattan, or maybe Los Pegasus. But that took serious connections. You had to know ponies, and according to some rumors, you had to do ponies.

As soon as she was old enough that she wouldn't discourage customers from drinking, she'd gone out building connections. Well, that's what she called it. She was really just drinking as hard as she could and living in the moment. Sure, one day she might talk to the right person, and just maybe the conversation would turn to music, and just maybe she'd be able to mention her pet project gluing her broken records together, and then playing the resulting compilations. That's how she justified spending the money that she should have spent on bills on partying.

No! One day she would be successful. She just had to meet the right pony! Equesria's music magazines were filled with stories who'd made it big after stories like hers. That's what kept her going, day in and day out. Still, there was a little part of her, telling her that even if she made it big, she'd still probably need another job.

She picked a daffodil from the vase near her stove, and munched on it as she headed towards the shower. That human had told her to come to Earth today. Since this was an actual job, she was going to have to wash the smell of sick and alcohol that had accumulated on her coat over the course of her partying last night.

She stepped into the stream of cold water, cursing the cheapness of her landmare, and the in unit hot water heater. She'd always loved to take luxurious hot showers as a foal, but she just couldn't afford the gas to keep several gallons of water near boiling day and night. If she was feeling particularly bad, she'd turn up the water and then take a shower, but most of the time, she didn't bother.

She let the water run down her horn for a few seconds before she started to wash herself. She did some of her best thinking in the shower, so she took her time. She was wondering if she should wear clothes.

Humans always wore clothes in every picture that she'd seen of them. Twilight Sparkle and her friends never wore clothes. Or, rather they only did during special occasions. But, maybe things were different on Earth.

Not that she had any clothes. Oh well, they probably would have sent her clothes when they sent her the Earth money, and the information on where they wanted her to report to.

She turned off the water, and opened the shower curtain as her eyes darted around the bathroom, hoping to find a clean towel. There weren't any, so she made do with the least messy one she could find. She dried herself off, before wrapping it around her mane.

She returned to the kitchen, and consumed the last two daffodils. She didn't want to leave any food that could potentially go bad. She threw the towel on top of a pile of dirty dishes on the floor near her bed, and headed out.

She walked slowly towards the library. She'd never been inside before. She was afraid of Twilight Sparkle. She'd heard horrible stories about how she was. She didn't want to be converted into an orange with a Unicorn horn. That was probably Vinyl's least preferred death. Well, no actually. She'd rather be converted into an orange than die alone as some shriveled up old mare in some hospital bed.

She opened the door, hoping to be able to get through the portal without an encounter with Twilight or the dragon that she kept as a pet. Vinyl had an uncle who was a farmer, whose entire farm had been destroyed when a dragon had decided to take a nap next to his farm.

The dragon and the annoying filly that ran the boutique walked out. Vinyl was fairly certain that the dragon was eyeing the pony in what could only be considered a romantic way. That was gross. Vinyl didn't even want to think about it.

Thankfully, the purple terror was no where to be seen. The portal was just sitting there, unattended. Vinyl studied it. She wondered what she should do with it. Did she jump through, or did she have to do some kind of magic. Maybe she had to sacrifice a book. Her mind played over the idea of ritually burning a book, if only to piss Twilight off.

Finally, Vinyl did a little jump towards the portal. Instantly, something grabbed her.

"What are you doing!" Twilight said.

"Don't turn me into an orange! Please! I'm supposed to be there! I have a show starting today!" Vinyl begged.

"Really? Who'd give you a show?" Twilight said.

Vinyl knew that Twilight hadn't meant any harm, it was just her lack of social skills talking, but that didn't stop it from hurting. She wanted to tell that stuck up little thing off so bad. It wouldn't do any good. Twilight would take most of her insults as a compliment, and the few that even Twilight would accept as insults were so vile that she'd hear from Celestia when she got back.

"It's bad enough that I have to fend Lyra off of this thing once a week, I don't want to have to be dealing with you as well." Twilight said.

Vinyl levitated the envelope from the show towards the stuck up Unicorn. Twilight studied it, before letting Vinyl down. She levitated the letter back into her saddle bags, before sticking her tongue out at Twilight and jumping through the portal.

Twenty minutes later, she'd been unceremoniously dumped at some train station called West Falls Church. She was supposed to take a train to some place called Metro Center, where she had to take another train to some place called Gallery Chinatown, where she'd take a bus to a place called New York, and another bus to some place called Boston, where she had to show up at some hotel in some place called Back Bay.

She had magically written pieces of paper, containing the instructions, complete with maps. They'd at least given her that. Luckily, there'd been a human willing to help her buy a train ticket, as she couldn't reach the vending machine, and her magic didn't work here.

She had sixty human bits left. Unfortunately, humans used pieces of paper instead of coins for their bits, and the paper tasted awful. She'd wanted to throw up the first time she'd put it in her mouth. Of course, this entire world was dull and colorless. The station that she was at was almost completely white, with the entire sign coming from the route sign, and the advertisements, most of which contained a pony.

She'd seen Derpy in an advertisement for muffins, Rainbow Dash selling some giant streamlined train called the Rainbow Dash Express, and that wasn't including the advertisements for television shows. That would explain why she was getting so few shocked stares. People must have been to seeing on advertisements and TV, that they might just expect to see ponies in real life.

She'd gotten a few looks, and a few people had even approached her, most of them losing interest when they realized that she wasn't Rarity. Finally, a train came, and she got on.

The train car was a bizarre departure from the colorless train station. The floor was a horrible orange color that smelled of sick near the doors, while the chairs were another completely different dreadful orange color, intermixed with some yellow ones. Vinyl wished that Rarity was here, if only to see the disgust that the pony would have shown towards the cars.

The train wasn't too busy, allowing Vinyl to sit properly across two seats. She choose one of the yellow ones. Unlike her friend Lyra, she doubted that she had the physical flexibility to sit like a human. The train roared off.

Vinyl was having a hard time imagining the scale of the human world. She'd traveled in the human cart for almost ten minutes, at a fairly fast rate speed, and they'd still been in the city. They were still in the city, and still moving fast. Not even Manehattan was this big.

Everyone was leaving her alone, which was a good thing. Vinyl Scratch hated to admit it, but she was feeling way to vulnerable to do much talking. She didn't like feeling vulnerable.

Author's Note:

(Update so as to no longer imply that the FIM film crew was running around Equestria naked.)
This chapter is cursed! I lost two different massive edits on it now! Well, here is version 3.0!

Tune in next week, where we meet our next pony contestant, continue Vinyl Scratch's journey!
(Oh, and if you wondering about what powers Vinyl's turntable in a world without electricity, the correct answer is of course magic.)
Just a quick note:
Every FIM episode in our 'verse has an equivalent episode in this 'verse.

Note: The author does not recommend setting loose 3 and a half foot tall talking equines in the Washington DC Metro. Metro has enough problems as it is. Colorful talking horses would surely only make things worse.

(Yes, Fluttershy is taking a more direct route. She took the Rainbow Dash Express (formerly known as Acela))