Meg watched the parched landscape fly past the windows. The hilly terrain, steeped in shadows from the setting sun, was sparsely covered in half-dead plants—or at least they looked half-dead—clutching to life until the next rainfall. It didn’t look all that different from the southern tip of Nevada.

It would have been easy to believe they were back on Earth, on the way to Las Vegas, if not for the fact they were on a train. That made it impossible; Amtrak gave up running trains to and from Las Vegas, as they couldn’t compete with cars, buses, and planes, and when was the last time passenger trains offered private cars?

“I wonder what this switch does?” Rainbow Dash flipped it. The roof suddenly became invisible, along with the upper half of all the walls. “Cool…”

Meg looked up at the 360-degree panoramic view in shock. “What happened to the rest of the train?!” Not just the roof and walls had vanished, so had the other cars! They had the tracks all to themselves. Wait. There was no scorching wind blustering through the topless railcar, nor did they seem to be slowing down.

“It’s still there.” Rainbow Dash hovered higher and knocked her hoof against the invisible wall. “See? The illusion spell has made the rest of the train invisible to us, so we could have an awesome view.”

That was an amenity provided by no train on Earth, in any country.

“I’m not sure I can believe my eyes,” Steve said. “Or rather, not believe them.”

Dash rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m the one who has to explain magic.” She went over to the bathroom door, blindly searched with a hoof for the invisible door handle, then opened the door, breaking the spell in the area enclosed by the door frame and revealing the interior of the bathroom—which, Meg hadn’t previously noticed, wasn’t visible either despite the wall’s transparency. Neither was the compact bedroom visible behind its own transparent wall. Dash closed the door, restoring the spell.

“Learn something new every day,” Steve said.

“I thought we paid for panoramic views,” Meg said. “When I saw these small windows…”

Dash flew to the other end of the expansive, private car. “You certainly spared no expense for this.”

Meg gave an embarrassed shrug. “Well, what else are we going to do with our income here? We have no living expenses, because we don’t live here, and we can’t spend bits in our world, not yet anyway.”

“And on top of Meg’s salary as a Royal Advisor,” Steve added, “I’m now getting paid to lecture on physics.”

Dash helped herself to a bottle of hard cider from the minibar. “Yeah, Twilight mentioned that.” She removed the bottle cap and took a swig. “Really stirring things up, from what I hear. You know who would be proud.”

“Inevitable, really,” Steve said as he telekinetically grabbed a bottle for himself. “The old guard is often resistant to new ideas. A famous scientist in our world once said, ‘science advances one funeral at a time.’ Truer words have never been spoken.” He took a swig of cider from the bottle levitating in front of him. “At least Arcane Scroll is willing to oversee the experiments. We’ll see how that turns out. Not much I’m expected to do there, unfortunately, what with me being a magic-less human don’t you know.”

“Eh, don’t worry.” The pegasus took another swig. “Twilight’ll keep ’em honest.”

Meg stared into the distance. No point letting the view they’d paid for go to waste. It wasn’t much of an improvement at first, just more of the same desolate territory and clear blue skies. She looked forward, in the direction they were traveling, and… “Is that what I think it is?”

The others followed her line of sight. On the horizon was a patch of cloudiness, the only clouds in the visible sky—illuminated clouds, it was becoming evident, as the sun sank below the horizon.

“That’s Las Pegasus!” Rainbow Dash confirmed. “Only the most awesome cloud city in the world!”

Meg gave her a pointed look. “I thought Cloudsdale was the most awesome cloud city in the world.”

“Well…” Dash desperately searched for a way out, then found it. “Las Pegasus is the most awesome cloud city that lacks a Wonderbolt training camp!”

Meg didn’t care to push it further.

Over the next half-hour, as the sky turned an inky, star-filled black, they watched it grow closer, larger, and brighter. What was on top of those clouds couldn’t be seen, but it was certainly lit brightly. Copious amounts of light leaked out the bottom and illuminated the ground beneath, eternally depriving it of darkness.

But it became clear that wasn’t the only source of light under the clouds, for an upside-down tower hung from underneath, extending into a ball at the bottom. And hanging below that was a humongous neon sign proclaiming “Las Pegasus.”

“That must be the Troposphere,” Steve said. The hotel/casino portion of it was on top of the clouds, of course. Buy a ticket and you can descend in an elevator to the bottom and take in the view from the bars and restaurants, or experience the adrenaline-packed rides.

Meg was frowning. “At least it goes down instead of up. It’s not exactly the same.”

“You said you wouldn’t dwell on that.”

“I know… it’s just seeing it…” She exhaled. “Whatever.”

“It can’t be that similar,” Rainbow said. “For starters, your Las Pegasus can’t possibly be in the clouds.”

Which was kind of missing the point, but what point was there in arguing it? “You’re right, Dash, it’s not.”

The cloud city started to descend and oddly tilt away from them—no, the whole world was tilting! Meg looked nervously at Rainbow Dash. “What’s going on?”

“We’re climbing, obviously!”

Dash got blank looks in response.

“How else did you think we were going to get from the ground to the clouds high in the sky?”

“What… are you saying this train is flying?” The ground was getting farther away.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, waving a reproving hoof. “Trains don’t fly. We’re climbing a cloud bridge.”

“And the tilting?” Steve asked.

“It’s a steep bridge. Don’t want everything to slide backwards.”

“Ah, so we’re the ones who are tilted,” he deduced. “What if the engine fails?”

“I dunno,” Dash said, shrugging. “You need to ask a certain egghead questions like that. Me? I’d buck out a window and fly away to get help.”

Another train passed them going the other way, the only thing that wasn’t crazily tilted around them. Once it had passed, Meg looked down and saw the cloud under the other set of tracks. It wasn’t much wider than the tracks. “Well, I guess it gets the job done,” she said without much conviction.

Meg looked forwards at the approaching city. The minutes passed as she tried to spot the Equestrian equivalent of casinos, but without success. Either they weren’t that tall or they weren’t close to the cloud’s edge. Whichever, it was becoming clear she wouldn’t see them until they reached the top of the clouds.

The cloud city tilted back towards the horizontal as the train leveled out from its climb. They were finally in Las Pegasus. In the distance, at most a mile away, the casinos were lighting up the night sky. Numerous zeppelins were in the air, coming and going from the airport not far from the train station. Traveling by air might have been faster, but they’d done that enough times already.

The train slowed to a halt. A porter was already heading their way.

Steve flipped the switch, making the walls opaque again. He put on his saddlebags, then levitated Meg’s over to her. By the time they had their luggage by the now open door, the porter arrived.

“Greetings,” greeted the unicorn stallion. “Your ride to Planet Do is arriving as we speak.”

“That’s good to hear,” Steve commented.

The porter picked up all their luggage with his magic and carried them outside. Rainbow Dash and Steve followed. Meg stepped out last into the warm air. While far cooler than the ground below, it was still too warm and dry for clouds. Magic, she presumed. Why else hadn’t the clouds evaporated away?

A carriage, pulled by two pegasi, landed in front of them. The porter first put the luggage into the carriage, then opened a door and lowered a ramp. He tipped his cap as they entered the carriage. After securing the ramp and closing the door, he departed.

The carriage began to move and soon rose above the oddly solid cloud surface. “The level of service is quite impressive,” Meg said.

“Trust me,” Dash replied. “You’re getting what you paid for.”

“That may be,” Steve said, “but in our world, you can pay for first-class seats on a plane and still get treated like crap at airports.”

“Then why would anypony pay more for that?”

“Because you get treated even worse if you don’t.”

Dash’s eyes looked far away. “Yeah… they really cram you in tight in those flying machines, don’t they?”

“They certainly do,” he grunted.

The carriage headed straight for the strip—of course they’re all lined up in a strip—and as it so happened their destination was the closest hotel/casino. There wasn’t much of a view during the short trip. The carriage never got far above what passed for “ground” and the back of the hotel wasn’t particularly interesting to look at. There was just the highly stylized Planet Do logo with the eponymous pegasus above the name.

A few short minutes later, they touched down at the back entrance. A bellhop opened the carriage, waited for them to exit, and levitated their luggage onto a cart. “I’ll take you to registration,” he said.

There sure are a lot of unicorns for a cloud city.

A set of large glass doors, one of several, opened automatically as they approached. Inside, the carpet they stepped onto depicted an ancient, floor-spanning map, ending at ancient stone blocks stacked high, forming foreboding walls. Against one such wall—a wall pockmarked with numerous holes, the kind of holes that spat out poisonous darts—was the registration desk. Meg wondered how real the stone blocks were. How could clouds support the weight of such a massive building?

They continued following the bellhop. Rainbow Dash looked left, right, behind, even up, like a foal in a candy shop. “I wonder if we’ll see her here?”

“Daring Do?” Meg asked. “It’d hardly shock me if they have some ponies dressed up as her, but I can’t believe you’d care about that.”

“Or A. K.,” Dash quickly amended. “It’s possible. She owns a piece of this.”

“With all the other things on her plate, I can’t imagine she has the time to deal with day-to-day operations,” Steve said. “Or the inclination.”

“Yeah,” Meg said, herself looking around. “I’m sure she helps with the interior design, to set the theme and all, but beyond that? Probably just sits back and cashes the checks. Well… not ‘sits back’—you know what I mean.”

They reached the line for registration. Thankfully, it was quite short. They must have beat the other passengers by taking that carriage.

“Well, it’s still possible.”

They silently waited as the line progressed. A few minutes later, they had reached the front and a spot opened up. They walked over, with Steve pulling the cart with his magic.

“Welcome to Planet Do,” they were cheerfully greeted by a pegasus mare behind the counter wearing a pith helmet but nothing else. “Do you have a registration?”

“Yes,” Meg said. “A two bedroom suite under ‘Coleman.’”

“Please wait while I look that up.” The mare went to a row of filing cabinets against the back wall, selected the one that covered the letter ‘C,’ and searched it. She pulled out a folder and returned.

Opening it up upon returning to the counter, she examined the paperwork within. “This is rather unusual…”

“Is something wrong?” Dash asked, her eyes narrowing.

“What? Oh, no, not at all! Quite the opposite.” She checked the paperwork one more time. “Apparently, you’ve been given a complimentary upgrade to a luxury suite on the top floor.”

Meg blinked. “Has there been a mistake?”

The mare flipped through the papers once again. “No mistake,” she said. “It’s been approved by A. K. Yearling herself.” She looked up. “Do you know her?”

Dash bore a smug smile. “You could say that.”

“How did she even know we’re staying here?” Meg asked. “Is she here, at the casino, right now?”

“I wouldn’t know,” replied the mare apologetically. “Here are you room keys…” She hoofed them over. They weren’t the ubiquitous key cards back home, but they weren’t the old-fashion metal keys either. It was a cylindrical crystal of some sort, attached by a chain to a crystalline card that bore the Planet Do logo. “…and you’ll find the elevators over there. Your room is eleven-oh-two. Have an adventurous time!”

Steve picked up the keys and put them in his saddlebag. “This should be interesting,” he said as a bellhop came and took their luggage cart. All three followed.

“Did you have anything to do with this?” Meg asked the too-excited-for-her-own-good pegasus. “You were rather insistent on this casino.”

“Nope! How would I get in touch with her anyway?”

Before Meg could say anything, Dash flew off ahead to the elevators, leaving her to ponder their good fortune. It was a mystery worthy of a novel: Daring Do and the Unexpected Room Upgrade. Except in this case, the protagonist—or rather, her alter ego—was the one behind the mystery.

“It’ll be interesting to see how whales are treated in Las Pegasus,” Steve said.

Meg sighed. “Just like they’re treated in Vegas, I’m sure.”

“Give it a rest for a few days, please?” he pleaded.

They caught up to Rainbow Dash, who had already pushed the up button. There were four elevators. In due time, one of them chimed and its door opened. A griffon family of four came out. The bellhop went inside first, and the others followed.

There were only ten buttons, presumably for ten floors. Weren’t we on the eleventh floor? Before she could point that out, the bellhop took out a crystal cylinder, shaped like a room key, inserted it into a matching hole above all the buttons, activating a light next to it, then removed it. Restricted access, of course.

The doors closed, and the elevator began its leisurely ascent. It eventually arrived at the top floor, and the doors opened. The carpet gave the illusion of stone blocks, but the walls were painted a generic off-white.

Meg exited first and looked for a sign indicating the direction to their room. “This way,” she said. The others followed her down a corridor. The doors were widely spaced. Theirs was the first one on the left.

In the wall just next to the door was a slot to accept a cylindrical key. Steve inserted his telekinetically. Something clunked. There was no door handle. After a few seconds, Rainbow Dash impatiently pushed the door open with a hoof. The bellhop held the door open while the others entered.

Meg oohed as she took in the room. It was spacious, naturally, almost absurdly so. Two levels. Panoramic floor to ceiling windows that looked over the strip. A few floating clouds.

Clouds?

Rainbow Dash had already flown up to one, and was now looking down at them. “A room with its own clouds?” She squeed. “Awesome…”

Steve shook his head. “I’m not even gonna ask.”

The bellhop paused in unloading the cart. “We have unicorns on staff who can cast a cloud-walking spell on you if you so desire,” he informed Steve.

“What? No, that’s not necessary.” He looked at the clouds anyway. Ability to fly wasn’t required, for one of them abutted the upper level, and from that one the others could be reached. Presumably something held them in place. “I assume I don’t need that spell to walk between casinos?”

“That is correct, sir. The clouds underlying the strip have been rendered impenetrable, such that nothing will fall through them. But, I must warn you, the same is not true for the rest of the city. Pay heed to the warning signs.”

Steve nodded. “Understood.”

The bellhop resumed unloading. Meg and Steve trotted over to the window to get their first real view of the strip.

The buildings were smaller—Planet Do only had eleven floors, whereas a Vegas hotel would have double or even triple that—but perhaps that was only to be expected, as Equestria was not as populous. Meg scanned the casinos on the other side of the strip: Silver Lining Cloud, Cirrus Cirrostratus, Hurricane's Cloudfortress, Everfree Wild, and The Minoan. The Troposphere must have been on their side of the road. In the early evening each was trying to out-neon all the others.

The bellhop had finished unloading the cart. “Our chefs will prepare any meal you desire for your enjoyment here in this suite. If you choose to dine in one of our fine restaurants, remember to charge the meal to your room. All food is complimentary during your stay.” With that said, he departed, closing the door behind him.

“And we don’t even have to gamble millions of bits,” Steve said.

“Sure helps to know the right ponies,” Dash added.

“I wonder if they’d automatically give a room like this to royalty, you know, like Celestia or even Twilight, regardless of whether they had any intention of serious gambling.”

“Dunno, never heard of a princess staying in a casino,” Dash said. “Wouldn’t surprise me. That’d be cool, though; there’s room here for all six of us.”

Meg returned her attention to the street below… “Well, that’s different.” It wasn’t exactly a road. Instead of six to eight lanes of asphalt overflowing with traffic, there were a series of moving cloud strips—slowest near the casinos, fastest in the middle. Regularly spaced bridges allowed one to cross over them.

Rainbow Dash landed by her side. “Only the most awesomeness of pegasus cloud engineering!”

“Is this commonplace?” Steve asked. “Like, does Cloudsdale have this?”

“No need,” she replied. “We just fly around.”

And it was true. Most of the pegasi she saw were in the air, not riding the strips.

“And it’s super expensive to build and operate,” she added. “It’s more about making ponies go ‘wow!’ than being practical. Like that cloud bridge our train used.”

Meg resisted a groan. “Yeah, completely unlike our own Las Vegas—not.”

Dash tilted her head. “You’re being sarcastic, right?”

“Yes, Dash, I’m being sarcastic.” She waved a hoof at the window. “This is all too much like our own Las Vegas. Sure, our penthouse suites don’t come with indoor clouds—not that we’ve ever remotely gambled enough to be comped with a room, much less a room like this. However, it’s a safe bet they don’t have indoor clouds. But ignoring little details like that, it’s all too similar.” She turned to her. “Doesn’t that bother you even a little bit?”

Dash scratched behind her ear with a hoof. “Well… should it? I dunno. I guess it’s an odd coincidence.” She shrugged. “Should we visit your Las Vegas next, so I could see for myself?”

Meg walked away from the windows and towards the jumbo hot tub. “Sure. Why not. You’d love all the attention you’d get.”

Steve went off and put a hoof on his wife’s withers. “Seriously, just put that aside for now, okay? We’re here to enjoy ourselves.”

“I’ll try,” she said, sighing.

One of the knobs on the hot tub was labeled “rain.” She looked up. One of the clouds was directly overhead. “You gotta be joking.” She experimentally turned the knob. Sure enough, it started to rain. Not a drop fell on the surrounding plush carpet. “Nope, definitely wouldn’t have this in Vegas,” she said without enthusiasm.

“I gotta check this out!” Rainbow Dash flew up to the raining cloud and landed on it. The weather mare poked and prodded and gave it a few hops. None of it had any effect on the rain, perhaps by design.

After a minute or so, she leaned over the edge. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said. “Some kind of mixture of pegasus weather magic and unicorn magic.” She smirked. “Wait till I tell Twilight about this.”

“I’m sure she’ll find that fascinating,” Steve said, ending that topic. “Let’s see what pony slot machines look like.”

Twilight walked down the stairs of her residence, with two plaid pills in telekinetic tow. Sunset Shimmer and Moondancer waited patiently for her to reach the bottom. “Ready girls?” she asked once she had.

They nodded in reply.

She sent one pill to Moondancer and took the other for herself. After thinking of their destination, Meg’s Department of Energy office, she swallowed.

Desk drawers were open and empty, the bookshelves were empty of books, and the computer was missing. What in Celestia’s name… Twilight turned around. The door was open. It should’ve been closed and locked. It had been forced open. Sounds, unfamiliar voices.

“Uh, Twilight, Moondancer, I can’t see you,” a human Sunset whispered. “The magic generators must have been taken.”

Twilight checked. Upon finding a magic bubble, she switched off the invisibility. “Stay close to Sunset,” she whispered to Moondancer. “You’re her ticket home if necessary.”

“What do you think’s going on?” Sunset asked.

Twilight answered with grim determination. “I’m about to find out.” She removed her saddlebags. “Keep an eye on these.”

She poked her muzzle out the door. Nopony was to be seen, but the voices and sounds seemed to be coming from the direction of the testing vault. Did they get in? That’d be a lot harder than breaking into an office. After preparing some defensive spells for quick deployment, she trotted off in that direction, her hooves silenced by the sturdy carpet.

Were they staff? If so, that’d be a serious failure of background checking. She reached the junction that led to the lobby and paused to look at the main door. It was closed. How did they get in? It was a weekend, so they couldn’t have followed somepony in.

She began preparing offensive spells, just in case. Nothing too serious; these were magicless humans, after all.

Twilight turned a corner. The vault was open, the door blocked from closing by a book. There were few key cards capable of opening that door. How did they get one?

Taking a determined breath, she walked to the vault. Time to get to the bottom of this. There was clearly more than one in there, judging from the voices, but hard to tell precisely how many. She could hear stuff being moved around.

The door was opened by a man holding a large box, a man she did not recognize. An eager smile spread on his face. “Well lookie what we have here.”

Another was behind him, jostling for a good view.

“Whatever it is you are doing,” Twilight said, “I’m putting an end to it right now.”

They laughed.

The man put the box down, pulled out a gun and cocked it. “No, you’re not. You’ve just become another hostage, so don’t get any funny ideas. Those magic generators are all gone. You’re powerless, Your Highness. You can no longer threaten humanity.”

She almost rolled her eyes, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off them. I’ll play along, she quickly decided. Might as well take advantage of their false assumption and graze for more information. “What do you mean ‘another?’ Who else do you have?”

He held up a key card. “How do you think we opened this up?”

It had Meg’s face on it.

Her office had been emptied.

But they couldn’t possibly have taken her hostage. Twilight had seen them off at the train station. “Do you really need to lie to me?” She pointed a hoof at that key card. “There’s no way you have her.”

He shrugged. “You’ll be joining her soon enough.”

He stepped aside, and the other man, also carrying a box, left the vault. Their only way out was blocked by her.

The man waved the gun. “Be a good little pony and start walking.”

Twilight didn’t budge. She expanded her magic bubble to encompass both men. Her magic wouldn’t last long, but it didn’t need to.

First, that gun. She grabbed its barrel and bent it, rendering it useless.

Before they could react, she yanked them closer to her and magically bound them.

“I’m returning to the castle,” she yelled out and invoked the return spell.

The two men looked around in shock. Twilight magically glued their shoes to the floor as Sunset and Moondancer returned.

“I’ll repossess those, if you don’t mind.” She grabbed the boxes and put them aside, then she grabbed Meg’s key card. The man didn’t want to let go, but the alicorn’s magic was too strong. The gun went next; he couldn’t fire it, but he could still throw it.

“You can’t do this,” the man formerly in possession of the bent gun protested. He desperately tried to lift a foot to no avail.

“Why?” Twilight smirked. “Because I’m powerless?”

“What are we going to do about them?” Moondancer asked.

In response, Twilight yelled, “Spike!”

The baby dragon looked down from upstairs. “Yes, Twilight?”

“Letter to Princess Celestia.” She glared at the men. “I have apprehended two humans who were ransacking the Department of Energy office where Meg works, taking classified information and equipment. They claim to have kidnapped her, but there’s no denying they somehow acquired her key card. They also tried—pathetically—don’t write that word—to take me hostage as well, under threat of mortal injury. Please send a detachment of royal guards to take custody of them. Princess Twilight Sparkle.”

Spike rolled up the note and breathed fire upon it, sending it on its way. “You really should get your own royal guards someday. And some dungeons.”

“Later, Spike.”

“You can’t do this,” the other man protested, a man with a beard. “We’re American citizens. We have our rights.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Twilight said. “You’ll have your opportunity to exercise your rights when the FBI interviews you.” She looked back up a Spike. “Send a message through channels. They need to examine the crime scene ASAP. And get that door fixed, or something.”

“I contacted them while you were dealing with them,” Sunset said.

“Then let them know we have prisoners.”

Spike nodded and departed.

Twilight slowly walked around her prisoners. “Don’t be too surprised if they elect to let us hold on to you. I don’t know who you work for, or how big your organization is, or what they’re capable of, but I can promise this.” She came to a stop. “They will not be able to extract you from our dungeons.”

The bearded man spat. “You’ll learn nothing from us.”

Twilight looked at the wet spot on her immaculate floor, sighed, and looked back up. “You may want to reconsider that. Attempted kidnapping of a princess, never mind threatening physical violence, is a serious crime. We could choose to request extradition. You could have a prison cell in Tartarus right next to Tirek’s.”

He silently glared back at her. They both did.

“You think Celestia will want to interrogate them?” Sunset asked.

“We’ll find out soon enough.”