Hammerspace
By Alaborn
Standard disclaimer: This is a not for profit fan work. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is copyright Hasbro, Inc. I make no claim to any copyrighted material mentioned herein.
“Wake up, Rainbow Dash!”
The captain of Ponyville’s weather team opened her eyes. Flitter and Cloudchaser were hovering over her, scowling, their forelegs crossed.
“Can’t you see you’re interrupting something important?” Rainbow Dash said. She fluffed the cloud underneath her head and closed her eyes.
“Rainbow Dash! You assigned yourself one section of sky. ONE section! And you haven’t touched a single cloud!” Flitter said angrily.
“And there’s a royal guard contingent coming through at noon,” Cloudchaser added.
Rainbow Dash looked at the position of the sun in the sky and scoffed. “I clearly have another ten minutes to nap.”
Flitter and Cloudchaser looked at each other and nodded. They turned and kicked simultaneously, dissipating Rainbow Dash’s napping cloud. The weather captain’s wings shot out and she hovered before her subordinates. “It looks like somepony doesn’t remember who the fastest cloud bucker is.”
Rainbow Dash zipped off, her rainbow contrail tracing an erratic zigzag in the sky as cloud after cloud disappeared. Within seconds, she was back in front of Flitter and Cloudchaser, and not a cloud could be seen in the sky.
“Need I remind you? Ten seconds flat,” Rainbow Dash said, closing her eyes and crossing her forelegs defiantly. “Aww yeah,” she added, pulling out her sunglasses. She was about to put them on, but then she noticed they didn’t feel right in her hoof. What she was holding felt thicker and rubbery. She opened her eyes, and found herself staring into Gummy’s large eyes. The baby alligator blinked, and then opened his mouth, clamping his toothless jaw over Rainbow Dash’s muzzle.
Rarity stared at the ruins of her kitchen. Her eye twitched, and she gritted her teeth. Smoke drifted through the air, the curtains were stained with something red, and somehow batter got stuck to the ceiling. A blob of that batter dripped down, landing right in her mane. She growled.
At the center of the disaster stood a trio of fillies, shuffling their hooves nervously, contrite expressions on their faces. “We’re sorry, Rarity,” Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and Apple Bloom said in unison.
“I guess we’re not Cutie Mark Crusader crepe makers after all,” Sweetie Belle said.
“But look at the bright side. We cleaned up the strawberry explosion before it spread,” Apple Bloom said. She held up a dirty white cloth.
No, that wasn’t cloth, Rarity noted. That was the special silk that she wanted, no, needed, to complete her latest masterpiece. And Fleur de Lis would be coming into town this evening to pick it up!
“Of all the things,” Rarity said dramatically, “this is the worst... possible... thing!” She punctuated her last word by pulling out her fainting couch. However, she was not greeted by its plush cushions. Instead, she landed on something hard and convex, certainly not shaped to cradle a pony’s back. She rolled off it just as it exploded.
Rarity blinked. Sitting in the middle of her boutique was Pinkie Pie’s party cannon, and it had fired, decorating her boutique with baked streamers and propelled cake batter. Her jaw dropped as she saw batter dripping from every single item in her boutique. Then she fainted for real, landing with a thud in a pile of party favors.
“I guess that wasn’t the worst possible thing after all,” Sweetie Belle observed as her friends nodded.
“Is everypony ready to party?” Pinkie Pie shouted.
The crowd at Sugarcube Corner, a rambunctious group of foals celebrating the sixth birthday of one of their number, shouted in approval.
“I can’t hear you! Is everypony ready to party?” Pinkie Pie shouted, even louder. The foals responded with a chorus of high-pitched squeals. Behind the counter, Carrot Cake and Cup Cake winced.
“Oops!” Pinkie Pie chirped, as she pulled cotton candy out of her ears. “There, that’s better. Now I can hear! Let’s try that one more time. Is everypony ready to party?” This time, Pinkie Pie heard the cheers.
“And here’s a special cake for the birthday colt!” Pinkie Pie pulled out a rubber chicken. The foals laughed at the funny face Pinkie Pie made when she looked at the silly toy. She broke into a big smile and continued. “No, really, here’s the cake!” This time, Pinkie Pie produced a big boulder. More laughs filled the room.
Pinkie Pie kept trying, never pulling out the cake. She soon gave up any pretense that this was part of a show. She searched and found balloons, streamers, balls, wheels, carrots, mirrors, and a lot more, but no cake. As the pile of junk grew, the foals stared in horror. The birthday colt started sniffling, and then broke out crying.
Pinkie Pie felt her hair begin to deflate. “Please don’t cry. Please don’t cry! Auntie Pinkie will find your cake! She just needs to talk to Auntie Princess Bookworm first!” She turned her head. “Mr. Cake! Mrs. Cake! Please take over!” With that, she dashed out of Sugarcube Corner.
“What just happened, dear?” Cup Cake asked.
“I don’t know, sweetums. I’ve never seen Pinkie be Pinkie like that before!” Carrot Cake replied.
“Twilight Sparkle! Twilight Sparkle! It’s a super duper super emergency!” Pinkie Pie shouted as she ran into Golden Oak library. She comically skidded to a halt when she spotted Rainbow Dash and Rarity similarly pleading with the young alicorn.
“It’s just not there!” Rarity shouted.
“They were my favorite sunglasses!” Rainbow Dash shouted.
“Oh, there you are, Gummy!” Pinkie Pie said to the reptile perched on the pegasus’ head. Her pet blinked slowly, and then hopped into her mane.
“Let me guess, you’re also having trouble finding things you always carry with you?” Twilight Sparkle said.
“Nopey dopey! I’m finding lots of things, but not the things I’m looking for!” Pinkie Pie said. “And right now, there’s a colt who is missing his six tiers for six years birthday cake!”
“I’m still not sure why you all thought to ask me for help,” Twilight Sparkle said.
“If anypony can explain a problem with magic, it’s you!” Pinkie Pie said.
“If I recall my studies correctly, our communal problem does involve a peculiar and not well understood field of magic,” Rarity added.
“That’s partially right,” Twilight Sparkle said. Her horn illuminated, and she pulled a thick book off a shelf. “It’s not that this energy is not understood, it’s just that it’s considered so basic that few scholars consider it worthy of study.” She flipped through the book until she found the chapter she was looking for. The dense jargon and lengthy equations were well beyond the average pony’s understanding, but the illustration of a pony holding a brush was clear enough.
“All ponies share an inherent magic of manipulation, referred to as z-force. It is what allows one to hold a cup or turn a doorknob. With training, it allows a guardspony to use a spear,” Twilight Sparkle explained. “As this magic is equally strong in all types of ponies, and intuitively grasped by foals before they can talk, it is often ignored by scholars as unimportant.”
Twilight Sparkle flipped to the next chapter in the book. “This kind of magic is unique among the various forms of inherent pony magic in that is has an inverse, which is also intuitively understood by ponies. By directing the energy inward, one reaches z-space, a personal pocket of magical energy. For most ponies, they only use it to carry small items like coins. But with training, this field can be expanded, allowing one to access considerably larger and more numerous items.” She pointed to a series of illustrations, showing a pony and a large wooden mallet. “Because the original experiments into z-space used a wooden hammer as a focus, z-space is colloquially known as hammerspace.”
“So if there’s something wrong with this hammerspace, why isn’t there panic in the streets right now?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“If I had to wager, I’d say that the problem is restricted only to the more active users of hammerspace,” Twilight Sparkle responded. “Most ponies don’t carry around a couch or cannon.”
“What about me?” Rainbow Dash asked. “All I keep there is a pair of sunglasses.”
Rarity raised an eyebrow. “What was that, dear? A pair of sunglasses?”
Rainbow Dash grumbled. “Fine. Twenty-three pairs of sunglasses.”
Twilight Sparkle raised an eyebrow at that revelation, but didn’t respond. “I suppose you could show me an example. Pinkie Pie, can you pull out an eye patch?”
“Don’t be a silly filly, Twilight! There’s no more chance of an eye patch emergency here, ever since you learned not to look at the sun!” Pinkie Pie responded.
“Well, what other emergencies are you prepared for?” she continued.
“Oh! A hammer, for hammer-related emergencies!”
“What’s a hammer-related emergency?” Rainbow Dash asked.
Pinkie Pie smiled. “You know, like when a pegasus crashes through the library window, and you need to put up boards until it gets fixed?”
“Hey! I only did that twice,” Rainbow Dash countered. “This year,” she added quietly.
“Well, dear, what are you waiting for?” Rarity said to Pinkie Pie.
Pinkie Pie reached under a nearby couch and pulled out a bottle of... something. “Whoops!” she said as she quickly returned it to its hiding place. “See? No hammer.”
Rainbow Dash flew over and lifted up the couch. She frowned as she found nothing there.
Twilight Sparkle sighed. “Getting back to the issue at hoof, since the research materials I have about this area of magic are inadequate, I’m afraid I have no simple answer for you. I’ll need time to research and design experiments.”
“Or we could check it out ourselves,” Pinkie Pie suggested.
“What?” Twilight Sparkle said.
Pinkie Pie tapped the other three ponies on their heads, and things went screwy for them. There were feelings of vertigo, then a feeling like body and spirit being out of synch, and finally physical nausea. Then it all passed, and they opened their eyes.
The ponies stared at an extended plane of shadowy images, with a dull light of red-violet hue illuminating it. By concentrating, the shadows would form some semblance of familiar forms from Ponyville, and then return to haze. In contrast, objects, looking totally real, hung in the mist, occasionally shifting as if on the surface of a tossing boat.
“What is this place?” Rarity asked.
“Well, obviously, this is hammerspace!” Pinkie Pie said.
“But... but that’s impossible!” Twilight Sparkle protested.
“Of course it isn’t!” Pinkie Pie chirped. “Just look at that fancy book of yours, and you’ll see.”
Twilight Sparkle noticed she was still carrying her book on z-space. She flipped through the pages. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
Pinkie Pie dragged over a chalkboard. “You were not where you were supposed to be!” she scolded the inanimate object. “Now, Twilight, can I see the book?” Twilight shrugged and passed it over.
“Hmmm,” Pinkie Pie said as she flipped through the pages. “Hmmm. Hmmm. Okay, got it!” She picked up a piece of chalk in her mouth and started writing a series of incredibly complicated equations on the chalkboard.
Twilight Sparkle stared, mouth agape, at the equations. “How did you know this? This is extremely advanced arcane mathematics!”
“Oh, I don’t know that specifically, but I do know how hammerspace works, and so it was easy enough to figure out.” She pointed to the equations as she explained. “This one represents hammerspace, and this one the force to act upon it, so you just transform the equation like that, and then you go inside hammerspace!”
Twilight Sparkle blinked. “But this doesn’t work. You divided by zero here. You can’t do that!”
“Sure you can!” Pinkie Pie chirped.
“No you... oh, Celestia, not this again!” Twilight Sparkle resisted the urge to pull her mane out.
“Could we, like, do something here?” Rainbow Dash interrupted. “I don’t like the feeling of the air here.”
“And this color scheme is quite dreadful,” Rarity added.
“I’d like to, but I didn’t have time to draw up an experiment and a checklist for the experiment,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Pinkie Pie, I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“See how everything’s moving around?” Pinkie Pie said. “Isn’t it obvious? Hammerspace is out of balance, and that’s causing things to not be where you put them when you go looking for them later.”
“But how did that happen?” Rarity asked.
“Somepony put too much into hammerspace!” Pinkie Pie replied.
She then felt every eye upon her. “Well, don’t look at me!” she protested.
“I’m pretty sure almost everything here is yours,” Rainbow Dash said, holding up a pair of fake eyeglasses, a bag of confetti, and a bushel of kumquats. The others nodded in agreement.
“I’m very careful to keep my things spread out, and I always make sure to add more hammerspace when it gets too full,” Pinkie Pie explained. She grabbed a small sphere of utter blackness that was flying by. “Look! I have extra hammerspace stored all around Ponyville! You know, for hammerspace-related emergencies.”
Twilight Sparkle gasped. “You can’t do that! It’s one of the fundamental rules of magic!” she yelled.
“Don’t be a silly filly, Twilight! That only applies to magical spaces of different types,” Pinkie Pie stated. “Like, you don’t want to put a portable hole inside a bag of holding. That’ll open a portal to a strange world where everypony walks on two legs and has flat faces and eats meat!”
“Enough!” Rainbow Dash said before flying into the air. She watched from her pegasus’ eye view for a moment, and then returned. “There’s a pattern to this movement, kind of like a whirlwind,” she said.
“Perhaps it’s a reaction to the source of the disturbance,” Twilight Sparkle hypothesized. “Like the way water swirls when you drain your bathtub.”
“Ready!” Pinkie Pie said, holding a bucket of bath toys.
Twilight Sparkle facehoofed. “It’s just an example! If there’s a bathtub around, you probably stored it here. Rainbow Dash, can you lead us to the disturbance?”
“Sure. And let’s hurry. I think the whole system is shifting,” she replied.
The ponies walked through the strange shadow of Ponyville, occasionally ducking as a random object flew by. As they closed on the disturbance, the objects flew by more regularly. Soon, they were walking through a veritable explosion of party supplies, almost as if watching a slow-motion demonstration of Pinkie Pie’s party cannon in action.
“Whoa!” Rarity exclaimed, as a slight shift in the gravity caused her to stumble.
Rainbow Dash looked up at the pattern swirling overhead. “This way, and hurry!” she urged.
The two winged ponies helped Rarity adjust to the altered gravity. Unsurprisingly, Pinkie Pie remained steady even as she walked at an angle.
“We’re definitely getting close now,” Rainbow Dash commented.
Twilight Sparkle concentrated as her horn flared. “Yes, the magical forces are growing in strength. But I’ll need to see the source before I can analyze what’s going on.”
Soon, the only way the ponies could make progress was under a shield spell cast by Twilight Sparkle. Pinkie Pie squealed in glee and clapped her hooves as various fruits and baked goods created an artistic splatter pattern. Rainbow Dash grunted and pushed on.
“I think that’s it,” Rarity said, pointing to a looming dark mass.
“What is it?” Rainbow Dash asked.
Whatever it was made of, the magical energies of hammerspace shaped it into a monolith, a mysterious miniature mountain. And like the mountain they once climbed to face a dragon, it was unstable. Something falling from the mass called into memory an avalanche, but it certainly wasn’t shaped like a rock.
One of these items tumbled, landing at Pinkie Pie’s hooves. She picked it up. “Ooh, a book!”
“A book?” Rainbow Dash said. She peered closer at the monolith. “Are those all books?”
“Twilight, dear, have you been storing books away in your personal hammerspace?” Rarity asked.
“Well, the library has been receiving a number of extra books recently, and I haven’t figured out what to do with the old books yet,” Twilight replied, rubbing one foreleg against the other.
Another book tumbled off the monolith. Rainbow Dash picked it up. “The Iron Stallion of Stalliongrad?” she read.
Pinkie Pie joined in. “From Fillydelphia with Love! Canterlot Nights! Prench Passion!”
Rarity raised an eyebrow. “Romance novels, Twilight? I must admit to being a fan of the genre as well. Though it is curious. I don’t recall any of these titles on the shelves of the library.” She smirked at the now-blushing alicorn.
“Okay, okay, they’re my personal collection,” Twilight Sparkle admitted. “I always told myself I didn’t want Spike to find them, but in reality, I didn’t want anypony to find out I liked such frivolous reading material.” She looked up at the tower. “I guess I never realized how many books I collected over the years.”
“So what do we do now?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Easy peasy! We take these books back to Ponyville!” Pinkie Pie replied. She turned to Twilight Sparkle. “And then I’ll share my secret storage technique!”
“What’s that?” Rarity wondered.
“It’s a secret! For a princess’ eyes only!” She stared at Twilight Sparkle. “You will keep it a secret, right?”
“Of course,” Twilight Sparkle replied.
Pinkie Pie reached around Twilight Sparkle’s shield and pulled in a passing cupcake, offering it to the alicorn. Twilight Sparkle sighed. “Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye,” she intoned.
“Ooh, I can’t wait to show you!” Pinkie Pie said excitedly.
“Everypony, grab a stack of books, and let’s go home,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Uh, we can get home from here, right, Pinkie Pie?”
“Of course! All you need to do is hop, skip, jump, and execute a morphic transformation of the underlying z-space energy!”
Rainbow Dash and Rarity looked from Pinkie Pie to Twilight Sparkle. “That actually made sense,” the alicorn said. “Although I suspect the hopping, skipping, and jumping aren’t essential to the magic.”
“Spoilsport,” Pinkie Pie grumbled.
Once the books were collected, Pinkie Pie whirled around the others. The ponies endured another stomach-churning transition, and spilled onto the ground floor of Golden Oak library. Stacks of books tumbled to the ground around them.
“Is everypony in one piece?” Twilight Sparkle asked.
“I do believe so,” Rarity replied.
“So, is it fixed yet?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“One way to find out,” Twilight Sparkle stated. She reached behind herself, and pulled out a book. “This is the one I wanted to get.”
“Well, I for one am glad. That was a terribly tiring experience.” She fainted, right onto her couch.
“You do know there’s a couch right over there, right?” Twilight Sparkle said.
“That dreadful thing? Twilight Sparkle, as an aficionado of, ahem, sensual literature, you should clearly understand that a lady doesn’t faint onto any old couch,” Rarity replied.
“Well, it’s been fun, but there’s a bunch of hungry foals waiting for my cake! I hope it wasn’t squished in the maelstrom,” Pinkie Pie said. “Anyway, Twilight, you recover the rest of your books, and after the party I’ll show you my super secret way to let you to keep as many books as you want, without destabilizing an entire magical plane!”
“Thanks, Pinkie Pie. I’d like that,” Twilight Sparkle said, waving as her friend left.
“Well, I’d love to stay and chat, but I have a boutique to salvage,” Rarity said. Her couch again safely stored, she departed.
Twilight Sparkle looked at Rainbow Dash. “I’m sorry, Rainbow Dash. I’d love to chat, but I have a lot of work to do here.”
Rainbow Dash furtively glanced around. “Actually,” she whispered, “don’t tell anypony, but I wanted to borrow that Iron Stallion of Stalliongrad book.” She checked for spies one more time. “And I’ll totally deny it if you tell anypony I have it.”
Twilight Sparkle smiled. “We all can have our secrets.”
Twilight Sparkle was lost in her favorite task, organizing books. Hundreds of books were sorted into stacks. She sighed, remembering reading each book while soaking in the bathtub or while hidden under her down comforter, before they were unceremoniously filed away. And as each stack was finished, she covered it with a tablecloth, lest draconic eyes spy her secret. So it was no surprise she didn’t hear Pinkie Pie approach, even though she was hitched to a cart.
“Ready to safely store those books away?” Pinkie Pie asked.
“I am,” Twilight Sparkle replied, levitating one of the stacks into the cart. “Though I am curious what your secret is.”
Pinkie Pie grinned. “You’ll see!” she chimed.
Once the books were all loaded into the cart, Twilight Sparkle followed her friend as they left the center of Ponyville.
“Are we going to the Everfree Forest?” Twilight Sparkle asked.
“Nope!” Pinkie Pie replied.
“A cave? Wait, the cavern with the mirror pool?”
“Nope and nope! Keep guessing!”
“Is it something with your Pinkie Sense?” Twilight Sparkle guessed.
“Ooh, so close! But no.”
“Can I have a hint?” Twilight Sparkle said.
“Yep! Open your eyes!” Pinkie Pie replied.
The two ponies were standing in front of a group of nondescript buildings, not too far from the train station. It was just one of many businesses, more industrial in nature, that Twilight Sparkle hadn’t given a second thought to, no matter how often she passed by them as she traveled to the station. She looked up at the sign for this business.
“Ponyville Self-Storage?” she read.
“Yep!” Pinkie Pie said. She bounded up to one of the buildings. Retrieving a key from her hammerspace, she opened the lock on the large door and then lifted it up. Inside the storage space was party supplies, in an amount that dwarfed even Pinkie Pie’s grandest party by two orders of magnitude.
Twilight Sparkle’s eye twitched. “You... you use regular, normal storage?” she said.
“Of course! I mean, what pony would be silly enough to try to keep that much in their hammerspace?”
“But... this afternoon... I thought I saw....”
“Oh, that was just what I needed for this week!” Pinkie Pie chirped. She pulled out a thin ledger. “Every Monday, I check my Pinkie Sense and my patented Pinkie Pie Party Planner to see what I need to keep at hoof, whether it be party supplies or emergency eye patches. The rest stays here!” She closed and relocked the storage unit. “Follow me!”
They headed to a small office, where a burly stallion greeted Pinkie Pie. “How’s my favorite renter today?” he asked.
“Super duper, Mister Lock Box! And I brought a friend who wants to rent, too!”
The stallion nodded to Twilight Sparkle. “And a good day to you, Princess! What size unit would you like to rent?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “If you can see it, there’s a cart outside. It’s filled with books that... I don’t need to keep on hoof for my studies.”
“Sounds like a small unit will be enough for you. We rent them for twenty-nine bits a month,” the self-storage manager said. “All units are sturdily constructed, and warded against moisture and vermin.”
“That sounds fair,” Twilight Sparkle said. “The units are... secure, right?”
“Of course,” the stallion replied. “You have the only key. Your unit is safe, just as long as you keep paying rent.”
“What happens then?” Twilight Sparkle asked.
“If you don’t pay....” He reached down and pulled out a pair of bolt cutters. “Then I get to auction the contents off to the highest bidder.”
Author's Note
Next time, on Storage Wars: Equestria....
