//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Destination Unknown (Rewrite) // Story: Time Travel Insanity // by Wr1tingN3rd //------------------------------// In the ordinary town of Ponyville, Twilight and her friends relaxed by SugarCube Corner. They ate, drank, and laughed. Of course, the pink party pony had invited them over. Meanwhile, there was a rainbow haired pegasus enjoying her meal. It was a chocolate cupcake with delicious vanilla-strawberry swirl on top. On top of the pastry were some toppings of thinly shaved dark chocolate and strawberries chopped in half. It was beautiful, surely something to appreciate and take your time eating. That didn't stop Rainbow Dash, where she quickly engulfed the entire cupcake, chocolate crumbs still on her muzzle. "Fanks for va cutcaphs!" she muffled with bits of frosting flying out of her mouth. "Rainbow, swallow your food," Twilight teased. A hint of red flushed on Rainbow's muzzle, before she quickly looked away and gulped down the food in one go. "What I was trying to say was thanks for the cupcakes, Pinkie," she stated, huffing as she made eye contact with Twilight. "You must really like that cupcake," Applejack commented, chuckling as she enjoyed her own frosted goodness. "I mean, come on, it's Pinkie's baking. She's amazing at what she does," Rainbow said, praising Pinkie's craftsmanship. Then, she quickly glanced at the clock, where it read 12:30. She was late. I should probably get going. Rainbow quickly stood up. "I gotta get going. I got something important to do." "Awww, but you just got here!" Pinkie whined. "Surely you could stay a tad bit longer?" Rarity asked. "Nah, this is pretty important. I can't miss this!" Rainbow rushed, giving a quick smile before flying off. "Well, darling, what could be so important-" she was cut off by a gust a wind as she saw Rainbow Dash fly into the distance. "The audacity of that mare!" "It's fine. Whatever she needs to do probably is really important to her, so we should leave her be," Twilight commented. "But darling, she does this every time! What is taking up that mare's time?" Rarity asked with a frown, before deciding that it ultimately wasn't worth going into discussion, and continued to enjoy the cupcakes at their disposal. Rainbow touched down in front of her house and quickly barged in, she had a job to do. Years of work she had put into this, and it would finally pay off today. "Finally, I can finish this thing..." she muttered to herself. She ran over to her bookshelf, which sat tall at around 6 feet, nearly touching the ceiling. Scanning the bookshelf of its contents, eventually she was satisfied and grabbed a book labeled "Quantum Mechanics - The Theoretical Minimum". Slowly, she pulled it outwards, where the ground beneath her feet shuddered and the bookshelf started to shake. Then, the door swung open like a set of double doors. Twilight would totally freak out if she saw this. Rainbow thought to herself with a smirk. Rainbow stepped on inside. The room was quite spacious, filled with gadgets and devices of sorts, with blueprints and mappings lining the walls. On these walls also stood trophies of her past achievements. Her Wonderbolt badge hung on the wall along with a spare Wonderbolt suit she had gotten from her dad. Tables also filled the room, each having a set of boxes filled with screws, nuts, and blueprints. By her main table, where she did most of her handiwork, was a blueprint laid out on top of the table. Besides it was a lamp, which lit up her bench completely while she worked. There was also a toolbox filled with all sorts of various useful tools. The most eye-catching thing, however, was Rainbow's hand-crafted 3D model design of a crystal, made of plastic and metal, sitting on top of the desk standing at a mere 2 feet tall by 1 foot wide. Right next to it, a battery that looked similar to a car's, but was much bigger and looked brand new, with a unique shine glaring off of the battery's label. Rainbow made her way over to the huge battery and picked it up. It was quite heavy. It felt like a 50 pound weight, threatening to drag her through her cloud floor and crash into the town below. Then, she walked over to her workbench, where she grabbed her trusty toolbox with her free hoof. Slowly and carefully, Rainbow inched towards her life's work. It was a giant box that towered over Rainbow and nearly touched the ceiling. It looked like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie. It was covered in protected wires, with large piping each having labels on them like Oxygen Supply and Nitrogen. Rainbow traveled around to the back compartment of the machinery, where she grabbed her screwdriver out of her toolbox and screwed opened the large panel that covered half of the wall. A blinding light shined into her eyes and Rainbow had to look away slightly, before squinting through the light to see what she was working with. It was the same crystal from her model, except it was twice as big. And extremely bright. It gave off an aura of all the colors in the light spectrum, slowly transitioning between each color, not that Rainbow could tell. She was too busy trying not to turn blind. Quickly, Rainbow placed the battery inside a secondary compartment area, where there was a spot reserved for the chunk of metal. Careful not to electrocute herself, she grabbed the thick wiring and connected them to the battery, a spark of electricity shooting out upon interaction. "Alright, now I just need to test that new code I was working on," she reminded herself. She worked her way back to the front, where the door automatically opened for her and a blast of gas rushed through the opening crack, making Rainbow squint. She took a step forwards where she saw a chair in the back wall of the machine, a light cushion providing the only comfort in the entire thing. Humming to herself, she sat down on the cushion, where a monitor popped up from the side wall, seeming to extend out slightly towards Rainbow, where she then pulled out her laptop. She then plugged in the USB into the USB port and opened up her code. After uploading her files, the UI popped up on the screen. Power: 1.21 Gigawatts (99.987%) Travel Destination: NULL Preparation: Not Started. Travel Destination: NO INPUT Rainbow then reached out to the keyboard to type in her destination. 5 minutes into the future should be enough for testing. She thought to herself before changing the travel input to her desired time. Then, she pressed enter. Preparing... Destinationnnnnnnnnnnnn... "What the hay is wrong with this thing?" Rainbow smacked the side of the monitor. It didn't help. "Hello-o? I thought I already tested this code like, ten times already!" she groaned in annoyance, before opening up her laptop once more, furiously scrolling through looking for her mistake, forgetting to click the very obvious Stop Code button. "Should be in here somewhere... aha! Gotcha!" she exclaimed, and quickly fixed her error. All of a sudden, the front door slammed shut on her. The lights started flashing red. "Oh, buck," Rainbow's eyes went wide and her pupils shrank to the size of a pin. She ran over to the door. "Let me OUUUT!" she screamed, banging on the thick metal wall blocking her only chance of escape. All of a sudden, the lights turned off, and the monitor flashed a line of text. Please fasten your seatbelts. "BUCK!" she ran over to the chair, but it was too late. She felt herself get shoved into the floor as the box seemed to fly up into the air, though she had no idea where it was going. The machine darted around the skies, left, right, up, down, and along with that, came a petrified screaming Rainbow Dash, who was lagging behind, hitting all sides of the machine as she was flung across the small internal space. Then, just when she thought it couldn't get worse, the power in the room seemed to get cut off completely, all sounds getting cut off and the room going pitch black. She tried to find grip, before managing to get a hold on something, probably the lose monitor from the side walls. Then, without warning, she was flung away from her grasp of safety and her head hit a sharp corner in the room, instantly knocking out Rainbow Dash. "Ya know Pinkie, I don't think Rainbow Dash was exaggerating about these cupcakes of yours, they're really good!" Applejack claimed and took a rather large bite out of her cupcake, smearing frosting all over her muzzle before wiping it off with her hoof. BOOM There was an explosion. Everyone looked up and saw that it came from Rainbow's house, where there was a strange box flying through the sky incredibly fast. Then, a painfully bright light engulfed the box and disappeared without a trace. "What in tarnation?!" Applejack spat out her food and the others had a similar reaction. "RAINBOW?!" Twilight cried out and teleported to the scene. "Wait, Twilight!" the others yelled out, but it was too late. They would have to find their own method of transportation. Twilight landed on Rainbow's front doorstep and furiously knocked on the door. "Rainbow?! Are you in there? Are you okay?" Twilight yelled out through the door. No response. "You know what?! I'll just let myself in!" Twilight gritted her teeth and kicked down the door. She sprinted down her hallway and found the bookcase, still open from before. What the heck? She thought to herself. It didn't matter, that would be a question for later. Right now, she needed to help her best friend. She galloped through the passageway and found a trashed room with papers all over the floors and walls. In the middle of the room was a gaping hole in the roof, easily able to fit her entire body plus more. However, the cyan pegasus was no where to be seen. "R-rainbow? This isn't funny!" she yelled out, her voice cracked. Tears started to form. "Rainbow, where are you?! I swear if this is some prank, I'm going to kill you!" She examined the room, looking for where her friend could have gone. That's when she found a journal, its pages ripped out on the floor next to it. She picked it up with her magic. Day #567 Today was a doozy. Worked on my code, like usual. I didn't think I would actually make any progress until I found that pesky issue! Took me three hours to find. Note to self: double check for spelling errors. Day #568 I should have seen this coming! A fuse completely blew out! Do you know how expensive those things are?! It took ages to fix it up, and it came right out of my savings! I swear, I'm going to be flat-out broke after this. Not only that, but I had to take the compartment apart layer after layer! And I nearly lost another fuse! I almost lost a hundred fifty bits right there! The journal went on and on, filled with more notes on Dash's work along with diagrams and specific drawings on ideas on extra things to put in, and sample code to remember for next time. Twilight stared in awe as she flipped through the pages and saw hundreds, maybe even thousands of journal entries. She's been working on this for a long time. What made her even more worried was the fact that there was a huge spot on the floor where the ground had molded in, as if it was carrying something extremely heavy. She was so confused that she almost didn't hear the obnoxiously loud beeping besides her. When she went to look, she found a device in the shape of a box. It had a handle for grip and had an LED on the top of it. Every few seconds, she'd hear a beep resonate from the device. Slowly, she picked it up in her hooves and the screen lit up. Destination: February 1st, 1978 Arrival: Unknown Power: 13.5% Crystal Condition: Unknown Passenger Health: Unknown Location: Unknown "Rainbow... what happened to you?" Twilight choked. Tears flooded from her eyes as she stared at the device in silence.