The sensation of tilting and Bumblebee falling off of my body brought me to wakefulness pretty quickly. Everything was tilting, and a beam of sunlight moved across me as things levelled out. A glance to what was becoming up showed a hole, big enough to ride through, with the edges still glowing slightly orange. “Okay, that’s a thing I can do.” I quickly noticed that my mask wasn’t on my face, and looked around for it. I found it, broken in two, on the ground. “And I can breathe in here.”

After everything levelled out, lights started turning on, illuminating an industrial pathway easily big enough for me to drive on, a huge array of windowed pipes, and a lot of shipping containers. One pipe near me had something white and fluffy flowing through it. The label next to the window had an arrow indicating the direction of the flow and the word ‘Stratocumulus’ on it. I was about to keep looking when I did a double take. The letters were in English. Not Equestrian, but actual English.

More labels around the area changed the source of my growing confusion. Less and less was I thinking about the writing, but more about what each label was. Cirrus, rain, hail, snow, dust, wind threads, fog, liquid rainbow, sand, sleet mix, cold air, and more. Amusingly, all the labels for hot air had an X scratched through them and ‘Politics’ was written in black marker underneath.

“Okay, where do I go to blow this thing up?”

"I would rather you didn't do that, whoever you are," a male voice said over an intercom system. "You see, this alpha weather machine is my domain. I just got it out of the ground, and I will not let you just destroy it!” I looked at the myriad of pipes around me, somewhat bemused. "Okay, you can break one cloud pipe, but ONLY one."

"Hmm, nah. I don’t feel like it right now. Maybe later. Who are you, anyway?"

"I am Brain Storm, the greatest pegasus to ever exist!" He boasted as I started walking down the path, pulling Bumblebee alongside me. "I am THE certified genius that all other geniuses look up to! There is nothing I cannot make! No problem I cannot solve! Why, I'm practically A GOD!"

"Yeah, I'm definitely going to have to fight him." As I walked along the path with Brain Storm's maniacal and egotistical laughter filling the air, I found myself in what looked like a residential area. Even though the whole area used to be tilted and stuck in the ground, nothing looked like it had been affected. “Hey, what’s this place?”

Brain Storm took a few seconds to finish his laughter and compose himself before answering. “Ah, you’re in residential area 3. Feel free to explore, do whatever you want. Nobody’s there to stop you, so go ahead and take whatever you want. I’ve got everything I want and need in my lab already anyways.”

I tested a door, one among many, and found what looked like an apartment inside. Somehow, despite having been sharply tilted and left untouched for who knows how long, everything still looked fairly clean. “Everything looks good. . . I’m not smelling anything rotten either. . . Still not going to the kitchen.”

While I was inspecting a stand with a large, curved blue rectangular frame on it, Brain Storm showed just how much oversight he had when he boredly explained what it was. “That frame you’re looking at can show very high quality moving images with sound, and even collapse into the base for easy travel and transport.”

“So it’s a collapsible big screen TV then?” I was getting excited about the object. It was wider than my outstretched arms, and looked about half my height without the base. “How do I collapse it?”

“There’s a button on the base. All you have to do is press it.”

I looked down at the base and saw a few buttons on it. Power, channels, volume, input source, and folding were all present. Just before I pressed the button to fold it, a device next to the base caught my eye. Like the TV, it was light blue. The buttons on it made it clear that it was a remote for the TV, and even had a fold button on it. “Hmm. . .” I pointed the remote at the base, pressed the fold button, and watched as the whole frame expanded into a lot of segments, folded together, and slid into the base, which also folded up a bit. “Woah! That’s awesome! I want one!” A glance between the remote and folded up big screen TV gave me an idea. To my delight, the remote slid into the open side of the base easily, making it a neat cylinder.

“Like I said, take whatever you want. You may want to grab a bag or two, though. If that fascinated you, there will be more you’ll want.”

“Good idea!” I gently picked up on the TV and found no wires. “How are these things powered?”

“Magic. Do you want a more in depth explanation?”

“No, you don’t have to explain it.” I looked around for a bit, TV in hand, for something to carry it in. A box, held shut with black tape that said ‘SuperShop Elite’ in fancy red letters, caught my attention. “SuperShop? Is that. . . I’ll just say it’s like Amazon.” I set the TV down and tore open the box. Inside was a fairly large, bubble wrapped white and yellow backpack. As I tried it and found that it fit me fairly well, I also felt a bit confused at why ponies would even have backpacks like it.

When I opened the backpack, I saw a piece of paper inside. Curious, I took it out and read it. “Dear Firebrand, Thank you for ordering our newest hyperstorage backpack. Now you can store even more than before for school, work, or vacation!

“With a shrink factor of three, weight reduction enchantments, and sturdy construction, you can carry up to two tons of whatever will fit through the opening with no problems at all. And with new safety features, you don’t have to worry about shockwaves from breaking the enchantments when it’s turned inside out.

“We still advise you not to put hyperstorage items inside other hyperstorage products.

“If you have any questions or concerns, contact SuperShop customer service from our ethersite homepage.”

“Ah, SuperShop,” Brain Storm nostalgically mused. “I got so many things from them before, like-”

“Oh shut up and just let me be already, would you?” I snapped at him.

“Well, fine, then,” he huffed. “See if I ever help you again!”

Content that Brain Storm was at least not talking to me for a while, I put the TV into the backpack and nearly lost my grip as it shrunk down to a much smaller size. “Nifty.”

After cleaning out the living area of more nifty things, I found an office. It had a rolling swivel chair that was almost comfortable enough to fall asleep in, and I decided that, if I got it home, it was not going in the Carne Den office. On the desk in front of the chair was a fancy setup. The QWERTY keyboard and mouse with side buttons fit my hands perfectly, which confused me more than the backpack did. The tower was little more than a frame with a small panel of buttons on the front, and pressing the power button made a blue orb of light appear inside the frame. The same shade of blue lit up the keyboard, mouse, monitors, and some speakers between the monitors. Soon, the monitors were showing an expansive home screen with folders of shortcuts in the middle. There were five folders dedicated just to games. “Huh. Gamer. Gaming stuff’s always good.” After testing out the speakers with a few song snippets, I turned all of the items off, collapsed the tower, monitors, and speakers, and put them into the backpack, along with the keyboard and mouse, which didn’t fold up.

To my pleasant surprise, the chair also collapsed into a smaller travel size. The seat, arms, and base all moved to fit into the back, which folded up to the size of a small briefcase. It even fit into the backpack with no problem. I took a moment to admire the fact that, short of a desk, I had pretty much everything I needed for an office or gaming setup in the backpack, and still had more room.

I continued poking around and found a bedroom. I tested the bed and found the mattress to be a bit too hard for my liking. The pillows and blankets, though, were incredibly comfortable. The blankets even warmed up when they were on me. I almost fell asleep when I remembered why I was there. “No time for lazy.” I got out of the bed and shook some sleepiness out of my head. “I will take that blanket, though.” After folding up the blanket and putting it and some pillows in my backpack, I opened the wardrobe, and saw a massive collection of clothes. “Definitely a mare that lived here. And a showy one at that.” All the dresses were bright, showy, and suggested a thin body. I knew none of them would fit me, but I gathered some up anyways. "Rarity will like this." A few of the dresses lit up when I touched them, and I started getting ideas. “Maybe she’ll make something free for this stuff?”

After putting a fair amount of the wardrobe in a few clear plastic containers, I slid them into the backpack. Already, a lot of the main area was getting full. There was still room for more things, especially after a bit of rearranging and moving some stuff to other areas.

I scoured the apartment a bit more, finding and grabbing a book style tablet that was still in its box, a multicolor desk lamp, and a collection of magazines on a variety of things Rainbow would find awesome and Twilight intriguing. With all that, and some more reorganization, the backpack was at capacity. "This is enough."

With my new backpack filled, it was time to leave. Part of me really wanted to go through more of the apartments and loot more stuff, but at the same time, I knew I had enough new things and had to fight Brain Storm. The full backpack helped dissuade the idea of more looting as well. Soon enough, I reached a compromise between the two ideas: driving around for a bit to just look at the place.

There was a restaurant I saw called The Mexicolt Inquisition. "Huh. I wasn't expecting that."

"NOPONY EXPECTS THE MEXICOLT INQUISITION!" A loudspeaker shouted in response.

The Lights Out Furniture Store had a cardboard cutout of two ponies wearing pillow armor and having a hardcore pillow fight in the window. The sign on the door promoted a sale on comfy chairs and pillow fight tickets, Thursday at 9PM. "Well, that's a good way to get business." I could just imagine the ring being little more than a few king size beds put together.

I found a golden heads up coin on the ground and managed to fit it in the backpack. "I could make a fortune off of this. Maybe." I didn't necessarily need the bits, but each one helped. If nothing else, I could give my employees a nice bonus.

"Thunderstruck Glider Shop. Closing soon. Gee, I wonder why?"

I made a short trip into the Iron Pumping Gym to make a pit stop but before I left, I decided to test my strength and warm up a bit before the fight, so I did some heavy duty lifting. The burn in my muscles felt good, and I was also getting psyched for the fight. "Bring it on, Brain Storm!" A series of signs lit up, pointing me towards the weather testing chamber. “Well, thanks.”

Author's Notes:

I had fun coming up with the high tech devices. Besides, who wouldn't want a collapsible gaming rig like that?