The City of Dreams

As Spike the dragon began to regain his consciousness he became aware of a searing headache ravaging his brain; to put the pain into context, it was somewhere between being rammed by an out of control train and being struck by lighting. Each pulse forced Spike's bones to shudder, each throb was a nail in his forehead. It was the worst the little dragon had felt in his entire life, but for some reason Spike was having a hard time figuring out why he felt like this.

Did I fall down the stairs in the library? No, that wasn't it. Did AJ accidentally buck me to the moon? Nope, Applejack would have made sure where her hooves would have landed, and the farm pony would never hurt anypony, so that couldn't be it. Did Rainbow Dash or Pinkie pull another prank on me? That was probably it, but somehow Spike felt that wasn't it ether. Then what in Celestia's mane happened to me?

Then it all came back in a flash, Twilight and the others had been trapped in another world because of a trap that Discord had made. He had been summoned by the royal sisters and forced to pair up with the culprit to rescue his friends. He had been out in the badlands with the trickster god when they both had entered a freaky portal that was supposed to have brought them both to his friends. It all made sense now, and the harsh headache was joined by a feeling that Spike didn't feel all too often; anger.

"Discord!" Spike screamed at the top of his lungs.

"Sheesh, no need to yell. I'm right here," a smooth voice said from the shadows nearby.

Spike opened his eyes to find himself in a dark and humid room. There wasn't any real source of light, yet there was enough so make out the silhouettes of some rocks; the light came from several dozen tiny crystals embedded in the walls. As Spike's eyes wondered around the semi-large room he found that he wasn't alone. In a corner of the room a tall figure was leaning against one of the walls, staring at where Spike was lying on the floor with his bright yellow eyes.

Spike's blood began to race as the rage he had began to pump into his body. What happened next was unexpected, as Spike pulled himself off of the ground so that he could face the one responsible for putting him and his friends in this mess, his legs buckled and Spike lost control of his balance. With a startled yelp Spike fell face first into the solid ground.

"Ouch! I felt that from all the way over here," Discord snickered from where he stood above Spike's body.

Spike rolled his body over so that he was looking back up at his enemy, "Discord, what have you done to me?"

"Oh, nothing special, I just changed our bodies a tiny bit so we can blend with the locals!" Discord said cheerily, "And I must say, I'm quite proud of myself for my handy work. Here, see for yourself," the dark figure reached out his hand into the air and conjured up a small orb of light with a snap of his claws...or what had been claws.

"Wait, what!?" Spike's eyes went wide with shock as the darkness vanished from Discord, revealing that what he said was true. He was no longer the patchwork of animal limbs and wings, but something that Spike had never seen before. His body was tall as usual, but this time he stood more upright and straight. His body was covered in brown and yellow suit that covered everything from his neck down to the black suede shoes he wore. The light also revealed that the horse head that the mad spirit once owned was replaced with something else, a roundish pale fleshy thing was in its place. On top of the head there was a white mane with dark grey streaks running along the sides, and on the chin the same goatee was there, but shortened. Oddly enough Discord didn't look like a five thousand year old man, but somehow had managed to appear young and youthful...despite being an alien creature.

"W-what are you?" Spike heard himself ask.

Discord looked down at himself and shrugged, "Oh, I guess you don't know what a Human is. Well, I made us into them for now."

"Wait, you just said 'us', right?" Slowly Spike turned his eyes back down to himself and he let out a gasp of horror. His scaled dragon's body was no more, and instead was this "Human" thing that Discord had said he had turned them into. The first thing to hit Spike, was that his beloved tail was gone, along with his carefully maintained spikes on his head. His body was covered with clothing, except that he was wearing a purple and green hoodie instead of the suit that Discord was sporting. Spike's legs had grown extensively longer than the pair he had before, and they had been covered by a rough black material. Finally, Spike lifted his trembling arms into the light and saw that his talons had been replaced with a pair of pinkish hands; they reminded him of a Minotaur's, except that he had an extra finger on them.

"W-why d-did you do this to me?" Spike whimpered, the loss of his body had shaken him more than anything; there had been much pride in that small body of his.

"Like I said, it's so that we can blend in. Honestly, this form is so bland and tacky. If it wasn't for the fact that the Humans would be scared out of their minds if they saw us I wouldn't have done this."

"But why would these Humans be afraid of us?" Spike asked, his mind still reeling from the shift in appearance.

Discord let out a heavy sigh, "Good question, I'd have to say it's because this world doesn't have any creatures like us. In fact, this one time I was here the Humans sent an army of these funny metal men to attack me."

By now Spike had shifted and had sat up off of the cold ground to face his company, "That sounds really bad, but why would they do that?"

Discord sat down with Spike to keep the conversation at eye level, "I don't know why they did that, even after I tried to help them. Back then their land had gone through a drought, so I decided to be nice to them, so I gave them a gift."

"A gift? Discord, what did you do?" Spike frowned.

"Eh, If I remember it right I made it rain cheese for a week or so. With that those people wouldn't starve, but what do I get in return? Torches and pitchforks, I mean, how rude."

There was a brief silence as Spike stared disapprovingly at Discord, who in return, put on a face of pure innocence with his new face. The silence was broken by a heavy rumbling that was soon fallowed by the sounds of heavy machinery running overhead. "What's going on!?" Spike yelled over the racket, but Discord didn't reply in words, instead he just put a finger to his lips and motioned for his companion to be silent. A second later the rumbling had intensified and a train came barreling through the room only a mere meter away from where the pair was sitting. As fast as it had come, the train had left the room.

Once the noise of the train had passed, and the dark room settled back down again Discord rose to his feet once more. Spike on the other hand could only sit there and stare straight ahead, slack jawed and shaken up way too much to do anything. Discord saw this and huffed an annoyed sigh that his traveling partner was paralyzed by such a simple thing.

"Broke your mind already? What a shame, and here I thought that you'd last a bit longer," Discord shifted back up to his feet and looked down at his chaperone.

With a snap of his fingers, the two were teleported a short distance outside the dark room to a nearby park bench. All around them the hustle and bustle of an amusement park continued as if a man wearing a suit and a young boy hadn't just popped into existence right in front of them. Families and groups of friends strolled past the bench, food stalls released mouth watering smells, and amusement rides chimed their little jingles in the night air. All of this was a treasure trove of fun for the god from another universe, but Spike was being such a party-pooper, with his mind getting frozen and all.

Eventually, Spike decided to come back to reality and saw everything that was going on around him. He nearly had another brain break, except that a wad of cotton candy was shoved into his gaping mouth. The once-dragon-and-now-a-real-boy sputtered as he removed the wad from his face. "What the heck Discord?! And where are we?" He demanded.

"Oh you and your questions!" Discord said brightly, a huge grin on his face, "Why not just go with the flow of things, and let bygones be bygones."

Spike snapped a glare back at Discord's carefree smile, "No, tell me where we are NOW."

The smile faded a bit from the spirit's features, but he didn't let Spike's sour attitude bring him down completely. Discord lifted himself from the bench and walked a bit in front of where Spike was sitting. He faced a white castle not too far away and spined on a dime to face Spike with outstretched arms. From behind the castle's blue tiled spires several comets shot into the sky, a moment later they exploded into bright flashes of lights, lighting the starry sky up with a rainbow of colours. The smile on Discord's face spanned his whole head, "Welcome to the most magical place on Earth!"

With a rush of her feathers Rainbow Dash managed a final loop before she decided that the crowds had had enough of her sheer awesomeness. From up above the seven bi-pedal creatures that huddled around in a group looked like the size of ants, among them Dash could still spot the different coloured manes of each of her friends. She couldn't hear them from her height, but she could imagine that they were all cheering for her, which brought a warm feeling of happiness in her.

Deciding to head back, the former Pegasus swooped down in a spiraling dive at the crowd; the wind tugged at the clothes that she wore as she gained even more velocity. The cheers and shouts of encouragement met Dash's small pink ears; with that little boost from her best friends in the whole wide world Rainbow tucked her wings in and shot even faster towards the ground. At the very last second she unfurled her azure wings and pulled up just in time to escape crashing into the ground.

An elated whoop escaped Dash's lungs as she flared her wings and came to a full stop on the dirt driveway of the Hartmann's residence. Dust was kicked up in the air, and for a moment no one said a word as a half dozen or so jaws hung slack to the ground. For just a bit longer Rainbow bathed in the shock and awe that her awesome flying skills had generated.

Then out of the blue somepony decided to break the silence, "Whoo hoo! That was great Rainbow Dash!" Everyone's eyes darted around until they all found the source of the praise; each of them had a mild surprise to see that Fluttershy was the one who had let out the loud cheer. The warm feeling of friendship, and a good dosage of adrenalin, made Dash beam with pride.

After the silence had been broken everyone, except for William, surged towards the blue winged girl. "Please guys, that wasn't even my best flying out there! You should save the worshiping until later when I'm at one hundred and ten percent!" Dash had to admit though, she always loved it when ponies, and in this case Humans as well, acknowledged her radical levels of pure epicness.

Will on the other hand hadn't joined in on the circle that had formed around the Pegasus girl, instead he chose to hang back and watch the show from a distance. Rainbow noticed the lack of his presence amongst her adoring fans and looked across the multicoloured heads of her friends to lock eyes with the young human male.

"What? Didn't you like my show?" Rainbow called out to Will, "Or are you just ashamed that you can't even reach my levels of flying?" The laughter and cheering from the girls quieted down as the challenging words flew over their heads.

The corners of Will's mouth turned upwards into a peevish smirk, "Oh, I'm sorry, was my mind supposed to have been blown by that? Honestly, I've seen a pigeon fly better than that, " the pilot scoffed.

The crowd was stunned by the retort, and they turned their attention back to the rainbow coloured girl, waiting to see how she would respond. Twilight knew that the crimson that began to emerge on Rainbow's cheeks wasn't a good sign, and she slowly motioned for the rest of the girls to back away with her. "What did you just call my flying? Eh, monkey boy?" The words were outwardly calm, though it was plain as day that Rainbow was holding herself back from tearing out William's throat.

"Well, lets start with that you botched an Immelmann turn by forgetting that you needed enough speed to complete the half loop, so you had to shorten the maneuver to a point where you just barely recovered," Will stated as he approached the smaller figure, "Then you got even more sloppy with the way you set up your flashy stunts, and as a result you bled too much speed in between them. Instead of wasting your energy, you should have planed each maneuver so that they could improve the next one." Rainbow was now quivering with rage as Will continued berating her skills, but at the same time she was also shocked that he had managed to pick up on the mishaps that she had made, and only skilled flyers like the Wonderbolts could have noticed the errors; this only added oil to the fire and her face heated up even more.

"Finally, you did something completely stupid and reckless; you risked the safety of the crowd when you swooped in on them at the end. It may be fun and all, but the well being of the people you're trying to impress is a number one concern," and with that Will finished criticizing the girl. He took a step back and folded his arms as he waited for RD's reaction to what he had said.

Much to Twilight's surprise and relief her friend managed to control her boiling anger. Instead of a blood bath the girl leveled her eyes at her challenger, "Well then, if you think you're so much better then why not show us what you've got?"

Ten or so minutes later Rainbow Dash found herself holding a water hose and spraying a jet of water across a dusty field. She looked down at the green tube in her new human hands, the water pouring out almost instantly evaporated as the sun's rays cooked the land. A short distance away in both directions Fluttershy and Applejack were doing the same thing as RD, holding hoses of their own. She realized as she stared up at the eggshell blue sky above that she had no idea what watering some dead patch of earth had to do with flying.

"What the hay am I even doing!" She cried as the hose was thrown to the ground.

"Like I told you, we need to water the runway in order to keep the dust from being kicked into the air," a soft voice came from behind Dash; the surprise sending the prism haired girl rocketing into the sky with a yelp.

"Oh, sorry about that!" Liza yelled from her wheel chair, "I didn't mean to scare you!"

How in Luna's mane did she sneak up on me like that? With a wheel chair no less! Rainbow Dash pondered as her Human feet landed on the dirt once more.

"When the propeller on the Sparrow moves at full speed it's going to knock a lot of dust into the air, if that happens chunks of dust or rocks can get blown into the engine, or worse, blown into someone unlucky enough to be nearby. We need to dampen the ground enough that that doesn't happen, but too much and we'll create enough mud that we'll have a huge mess on our hands," the blonde Human explained as she picked the hose back up and offered it back to Dash.

"This seems a bit much for just a simple take off," Dash noted as she resumed watering the runway, "It never takes this much effort and caution when I fly."

The long lavender and magenta coloured hair that could only belong to Twilight came bobbing over to the duo. "Liza, I have some questions about the fundamentals of what's going to happen; can you help explain them to me?"

"Sure, I don't see why not."

Twilight took a moment to pull out a pen and note pad from a pocket hidden in the folds of her skirt. She licked the nib and readied herself to take in as much data as possible. Liza let out a short laugh as she saw Twilight's determined and eager expression, "Alright, what do you want to know?"

"First thing on this list is: how in the hay does that thing fly? It doesn't work like anything I've ever seen back in Equestria, and though I've flown in a hot air balloon and airship before I've never in my life seen anything like that." Twilight  pointed towards the hanger; the gesture was unfamiliar to the former equine, what with all those spindly little digits where her hoof used to reside, so the end result was Twilight just aiming her whole arm to point . Liza turned her head towards the rusting hanger and observed her brother toiling over ever inch of his precious little creation.

"Well, we Human's don't have wings or magic spells like your kind does, so if we want to fly we need machines to help us along. About a hundred years ago us Human's finally managed to make a machine that can bring us into the skies; the Sparrow is just that first flying machine's descendant." Twilight nodded along as she listened to the mini-lecture, scribbling along in her notes with a look of pure joy.

All that eggheadedness didn't interest Rainbow Dash as much as her friend so she decided to resume her work, but she still found herself still lurking around close by as she watered the dust in front of her. "An airplane keeps itself in the air with it's set of wings. The way that each wing is shaped allows it to alter the air around it; the bottom is flat while the top is curved in a tear drop shape. This shape creates a low pressure zone above each wing, and since the air pressure below is relatively higher it pushes the wing into the air."

Twilight lowered her notepad and scratched her dark purple hair in confusion, "If what you say is true, then you'd need to be going really fast in order to maintain altitude; but I can't see how something can go so fast without the use of magic. How can this be?"

A wolfish grin passed Liza's features as she glanced over at where Rainbow was standing nearby, "Trust me, it can go that fast." Somehow the way that the girl in the wheelchair had said that made the hairs on the back of Dash's neck stand up on end. It wasn't because she was unnerved or anything, no it couldn't have been that, it must have just been a chilly breeze that drifted by...in the middle of a desert...yeah...

"Really? Then how can it?" Twilight said as she resumed her note taking.

Liza lifted a finger and pointed at the four blade like objects that were sticking out of the Sparrow's nose. "You see those? That's what's called a propeller, and as the name implies, it propels the aircraft. As it spins around, it creates a torrent of air that's blasted back along the body of the air plane; kinda like a fan, but it pulls instead of pushes. The blades of the propeller are angled so that they cut into the wind, generating thrust."

"Oh how fascinating! I can't wait to see it fly even more now!" Twilight squealed with glee as she stashed the pad for later documentation."Maybe I can use this information back in Equestria when we finally return home."

"Heh, well I don't think you have to wait too long, it seems as if my brother's almost ready on his end." Sure enough, some commotion and movement over at the hanger drew everyone's attention to the rusted hollow building a few meters away.

Pinkie Pie watched over Will's shoulder as he worked on his little thingy ma-bobber, her eyes sparkling as she saw all the shiny metal pieces housed in the front of the contraption. It was so pretty in there, despite all the icky black and grey gunk of course. There were bright red tubes, colourful neat little bundles of wire, and most of the surfaces were polished so much that Pinkie could even see her wibbly wobbly reflection in them!

In a corner of the workshop a small radio played an odd song that the pink inter-dimensional pony hadn't heard of before, In it a stallion with a high voice sang in accompany with the tune. Pinkie liked the music that passed by her ears, and Will did too it seemed, his lips moved silently as he mouthed out the lyrics as he worked on his machine.

"Hey," Pinkie said as she tapped the Human on the shoulder, causing Will do jump in the air and do a funny little dance as he dropped on of his many tools.

"Holy! What the heck, you nearly shocked me to death there!" The young man panted as he clutched his chest with his right arm.

"Oh don't be silly, how can a tap shock you to death?" Pinkie giggled, and she put a finger to her chin, "But now that you mention it, I wonder if I ran across like a gazillion rugs and then tapped somepony, would that shock them enough to kill them? But I don't want to hurt anypony, so I don't think I'll do that. But what happens if I accidentally ran across a rug shop and tapped someone my mistake? That'd be horrible! I should never tap somepony ever again!" Pinkie's smile had gradually wilted until it was replaced with tears that streamed down a crying Pinkie.

Will had absolutely no idea as to what was happening in front of him, one minute he was busy prepping his plane for takeoff, and then the next he had inadvertently caused Pinkie to suffer through the guilt of killing an imaginary innocent person with static electricity. Somehow, though he didn't know how exactly, he was responsible for the crying pink mess in front of him. A pang of guilt crossed his heart as he saw Pinkie wail into her hands.

"Ummm...if you really want to, I guess it's okay if you want to poke me. I'm pretty sure I won't get hur-" Will was cut off as Pinkie sprang up and gave the grease stained Human a humongous hug. She giggled as she began poking a confused Will all over. It took several seconds before it clicked in Will's mind as to what had really happened.

"You set me up didn't you," he deadpanned.

"Yeppers!" Pinkie grinned back, continuing with her barrage of pokes.

A soft chuckling came from the other end of the hanger, apparently Rarity had been watching the whole episode and was highly amused by Pinkie's antics. "Oh, don't look so sour dear, Pinkie's just being Pinkie. She only wants you to have a bit of fun and smile."

"Yeah, well, I don't think my spleen is having much fun at the moment," Will glared down at the pink mess of curls and Pinkie decided that her blitz could be resumed another day and retreated with a sheepish grin.

"I found out that if Pinkie Pie truly is sad, her hair seems to uncurl for some reason. Otherwise, the darling is just fine if she looks as jovial as she is right now," the refined posh accent seemed to be totally out of place in amongst the grease and oil of the Hartmann Hanger.

Will gave a nod of appreciation and resumed his work. The preparation for the show was nearly complete; the fuel was loaded, the engine was in perfect running order, and all the control surfaces responded like the well oil machine that it was. Taking a step back, Will couldn't stop the pride that swelled in him at the sight of the Sparrow, even if he had tried. The MK.24 Spitfire had been his pet project since several years ago when he had first ordered the kit; every strut and every bolt had been put together by his hands, and nothing could beat that feeling of accomplishment.

"It sure is a beautiful...what ever it is...do you think you'll be really be able to out fly Rainbow in it?" Rarity asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I sure hope so. Even though I said those things back there, that little show she did was pretty impressive. I may not have a pair of wings stapled to my back like she does, but I think I can do something just as amazing with my baby girl."

Rarity gasped and looked slightly shocked at Will, "I never knew you were a father?" She said, a hint of mischief lacing her words.

"Oh har har," The twenty year old rolled his eyes as he walked over to the Sparrow and closed the cowling that protected the custum Rolls-Royce Griffon engine. Releasing the chocks holding it in place Will began to push the aircraft along and out into the open. The sun shined down on the waxed blue airframe and caused the Sparrow to shimmer and sparkle.

A small gathering had formed as the rest of the temporary residents of the Hartmann household were drawn the the glimmering spectacle of Human engineering. Rainbow was among them and Will locked in on her as they both began a stare off. "We've all seen what you can do feather girl, but now it's my turn."