//------------------------------// // One Small Step // Story: Finding Space // by dancing mop //------------------------------// Twilight's study was a mess. Books, scrolls, papers, and quills were strewn about the floor, forming piles and stacks that a pony had to maneuver around in order to get anywhere. Having known her friend for as long as she had, Rainbow Dash was not surprised in the least. She had originally flown in through the eccentric librarian's window, planning to rouse her friend for an early morning flight practice, as she had for several weeks, only for Spike to drowsily redirect her to disaster of a room. "Twilight? Are you ready?" She called into the maze of scholarly pursuit, "It's time to go!" The alicorn in question was in no hurry to respond, engrossed as she was in a rather dense-looking book. Her mane appeared frazzled and unkempt, and her feathers were a ruffled mess. Rainbow pressed the issue, stepping around a roughly shoulder-height pile of books. "Come on, Twilight, I got over here early so you could get some more flight practice. Let's go!" Sensing no response forthcoming, Rainbow sighed. Rolling her eyes, she forcefully shoved an inkpot across Twilight's writing desk, out of line with the other two. Twilight's ears perked up at the sound, and she swiveled around to check on the disturbance, revealing some very noticeable lines under her eyes. Noticing her friend, she exclaimed, "Oh! Rainbow, I didn't see you there!". Looking around sheepishly, she apologized, "I've kinda been up all night. I wouldn't have noticed you coming in." "Let me guess, studying?", Rainbow deadpanned, as Twilight strode over, yawning and rubbing her tired eyes. "You bet!" Twilight responded, sliding the inkpot back into place, "I've been reading up on atmospherics. I think I found a way for us to get as high as we did yesterday safely!" Rainbow waved her off, "It was cold, and we couldn't breathe. Grab a scuba tank and a parka." "It's a little more complicated than that, Rainbow. The lack of atmosphere at that altitude results in a sharply decreasing level of barometric pressure." Twilight announced, settling into a lecturing tone. "Huh?" "There's no air pressure. The hose leading from the tank to your breathing unit would burst. Not to mention that flying in heavy cold weather gear would be extremely difficult." Rainbow slowly nodded. "Okay, so, what do you have in mind?" Twilight levitated over a small stack of books, sifting through them in mid-air. "Lets see, where did I leave it?" A piece of paper fell out of one, with a crude drawing on it. "Aha! There it is!" Twilight set the books aside, and cleared a space for the paper on her desk. Spreading it out, she began to explain. "It's an airtight suit, with integrated air tanks, and a thermal insulating layer. See?" She asked, pointing enthusiastically at the paper. Rainbow Dash peered at the paper, squinting her eyes and tilting her head, and simply shrugged. "I'm not seein' it, Twi.", she said, and added, with an embarrassed smile, "Uh, Twilight?" "Yes?" "You're not really good at drawing." "What are you talking about?" Twilight replied, indignantly, "Here's a pony, and this outline is the suit, and these are the air tanks, and then this line around the head is the helmet." She added, pointing to each feature. "I dunno, Twi, this looks like a potato with some sticks in it, and a couple of massive tumors on top, with ripple effects around it." "Well, well FINE! I'm not good at drawing, OK?" Twilight shouted. "How about you try it!" Backing up under the verbal onslaught, Rainbow Dash replied, "Alright, alright! I'm sorry!" Seeking a change of subject, she asked, "So, how are we gonna get these things, anyway?" Twilight relented. "I hadn't really thought about that." She mused, tapping her chin with a hoof, "I guess we'll have to make them ourselves." she shrugged. Rainbow raised an eyebrow at this. "I dunno about you, Twi, but I'm not too good at making suits, or really anything with, uh, fabric." "Well, I think we both know somepony who is." * * * "Ooooh, it's a spacesuit, isn't it?" asked an excited party pony as she studied the drawings Twilight had given her, having stopped the pair in the street just outside the library. "You guys are into that stuff now? Oh boy! I can't wait to show you the one I made!" "Actually, Pinkie," Twilight began awkwardly, "We were heading over to Rari-wait, what was that last part?!" Pinkie grinned even bigger than before. "I made a spacesuit years ago! I wanted to throw a party that was out of this world! Get it? But then I said 'Pinkie, you can't literally have a party out of this world, like in space! How can anypony get up that high?', So I just made the next party I had be out of this world, as in really good." "Oh!" Rainbow shouted, "That was Applejack's birthday party, what, two years ago?" "Yup!" Rainbow smiled, remembering, "Yeah, that was a good one." She and Pinkie burst out into a fit of giggles. "Heehee! Look Rainbow, I'm flying! Hahahaha!" "Oh yeah, and she, heeheehee, she tried to, ohahahaha!" Twilight gave them a quizzical look. "She tried to what? Wait, who? Who are you talking about? What happened? What?!" She asked, growing more confused by the second. Rainbow, clearing her throat, related the best she could, "Well, you see, Applejack was trying out this thing, and she, well..." she trailed off, waving a hoof noncommittally and glancing at Pinkie. The pony in question smiled wistfully and shook her head. "I dunno, Rainbow, she wasn't there for Rarity's thing. I don't think she'll get it." "Yeah, it's not as funny then. Sorry, Twi, I guess you had to be there." Rainbow apologized, with a pantomimed shrug. Pinkie glanced back at the drawings, pointing. "By the way, you should probably put a reflective coating on the glass of the helmet. You need something to keep your head warm. And you forgot to cover up the tail, silly! What happens when it gets all icey-ed up? Oh, and these air tubes need to be shortened, so they don't mess with your wings." she said, flapping her arms awkwardly to demonstrate. Twilight could scarcely believe what she had just heard. Sharing a surprised look with Rainbow Dash, she asked, "Pinkie? Those are actually really good points. How do you know so much about engineering?" "Well, you needed help making these suits work, so I shared some super-smart engininggery knowledge with you." Pinkie swooped closer, "And now I'm gonna help you make them!" She exclaimed, throwing her hooves in the air in a celebratory fashion. Twilight frowned, "Uh, Pinkie, that didn't really answer my-Ow!" she shouted, receiving a jab to the shoulder from Rainbow Dash, who gave her best "just go with it, it's Pinkie Pie" look. "Great!" Cried Pinkie, grabbing both her friends and dragging them down the street, "C'mon! You've got to see my workshop!" "Workshop?" asked Twilight. Rainbow just shrugged. * * * Pinkie's workshop proved to be a large storeroom in the back of Sugarcube Corner, which the eccentric pony had converted to her own purposes. A small section of the room was filled with baking supplies, neatly stacked on shelves, which was partitioned off from the rest of the room by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The fence sported a large, pink sign, that in bold letters, pronounced: "Secret Lab. Keep Out!". The seriousness of the sign, and the barrier it was attached to, was slightly offset by the smiling pinkie face that dominated half the sign. Beyond the fence was, to put it lightly, a mess. Random parts and schematics littered the ground, walls, and a number of haphazardly put together shelves. There was even a pink, candy-constructed contraption hanging from the ceiling, which Twilight recognized as Pinkie's flying machine. The three ponies were barely able to find space on the floor in which to walk. "This is ridiculous." Rainbow commented, "Twilight has her study, Rarity has her 'Inspiration Room', and now this?" She snorted, "Am I the only one who knows how to keep a house clean?" Twilight sighed, "Rainbow, you live in a cloud house. You can't keep much up there anyway." "Whatever. I still keep it clean." Said Rainbow. Wading through a pile of junk, she asked, "Hey, is this the party catapult?" "You betcha!" Pinkie cried excitedly. "The...party...catapult?" Twilight asked, confused. "It was my first portable party idea!" Pinkie winced as she and Rainbow shared a knowing look. "The cannon is much better." Twilight rolled her eyes. "You know what? I'll just take you word for-Ooh, what's this?" she asked, pointing to a maze of electrical wires, lights, and switches. Pinkie zipped over, proudly displaying her work. "This is one of my newest inventions! It lets me throw my voice reeeeaaally far away!" She began fussing with some of the wires and throwing switches, as she continued, "You remember when Rainbow left for the Wonderbolts Academy, and I was all worried, cuz I thought she wouldn't remember me, and then she didn't write for days and days, and then I got really worried, and then we went up there to give her a care package, and then-" She stopped abruptly as Twilight shoved a hoof over her mouth. "Yes, we remember. Go on." she removed her hoof, and Pinkie continued. "Wellll, I thought if I could just talk to her while she was there, then I wouldn't have to worry. So I tried yelling up to her with a megaphone, but she didn't say anything back. So then I thought 'Silly Pinkie, she doesn't have a megaphone, so she can't yell back, but yeah, she probably didn't hear you, either'. But then I thought, 'Wait, Pinkie, what if you could just shoot your voice really really far, like in a big beam of magic? Then you could talk normal, and she'd hear anyway'. So I came back here, and built this!" Twilight nodded, following along. "Okay, so, how does it work?" "Easy! You just flip this switch here, and talk into this little thingie here, and this little gizmo turns your voice into magic, and shoots it across to the machine over there!" Pinkie explained, pointing to a slightly smaller contraption at the opposite corner of the room, which slightly resembled a phonograph. "And it's all ready to go?" "Yeah!" Twilight settled in behind the machine. "Okay, Rainbow, could you go over there, and see if you can hear me?" "Sure thing." Rainbow flew over, and set herself up in front of the other machine. "Ready when you are, Twi!" Twilight prepared to speak into the machine. After fidgeting on her hooves for a few seconds, she took a deep breath, and whispered, enunciating clearly, "Rainbow Dash, can you hear me?". As she spoke, a light on the top of the machine softly pulsed in time to her words. "Whoah!", Rainbow called from across the room, "That's so cool! Your voice is coming right out of this phone thingie!" "Really? It works?!" Cried Pinkie. Twilight gave her a sidelong glance. "You didn't think it would?" "Well, I couldn't really test it out by myself. I can only be in one place at once, and I know cloning myself is a bad idea." Rainbow flew over just then. "Pinkie, that was awesome!" she yelled. Pinkie grinned, stepping over to a tarp-covered box. "Just wait 'til you see this!", she said, throwing the tarp off, and revealing a glass case holding a space suit. "Ooooooh!" Cried Rainbow and Twilight in unison The suit was constructed out of a metallic material, colored pink, and had angular designs painted on in a darker, nonmetallic purple, much in the same style of a Wonderbolts uniform. The helmet was a sleek oval shape, with a glass visor mounted smoothly in the metal back. A bulge in the suit ran down from it to a large set of air tanks on the back. These were painted the same purple color, and had clearly been customized for better aerodynamics. The whole suit, including the tail, had what appeared to be armored pads beneath it, in a segmented pattern. "Okay, this is about twenty percent cooler than that last thing." Twilight groaned, "Really? You had to say it that way?" "Duh! It's my catch phrase!" "I thought you were still working on your catch phrase." Rainbow shrugged, "Eh, it's good enough for now." Pinkie bounced in place excitedly. "So? So? What do you guys think? Huh? Huh?" Twilight smiled. "Pinkie, this is amazing. Can you really show us how to do it?" "Absotively Posilutely! You guys are gonna need your own suits if we're going to space!" Twilight consulted her other friend, "Rainbow? Do you want to stay and make our own suits?" "You bet! There's no weather scheduled, so I've got all day! Let's do this!" "Yippeeeee!", Cried Pinkie, "This is gonna be sooooo much fun!"