“Uhh… I don’t think it was supposed to do that.”
Time travel is complicated, Twilight knew that. She was surprised she was even able to make it to this point of experimentation without any consequences.
Twilight has been fascinated with time travel ever since Starlight used it against her a year ago. She wanted to improve Starlight’s spell to make it more stable and predictable, and with the help of Starlight, she did. Except she fucked up, really really fucked up, and now she was staring at herself. A 20 year younger version of herself.
The young Twilight confusedly looked up from the book she had been reading and noticed the older Twilight with wings right in front of her “Hi there identical twin.”
Twilight carefully backed up, keeping her eyes locked onto the younger version of herself, “Starlight, can you… put her-... me? Uhh, can you put young me back to her time!?”
Starlight frantically tried to quickly re-recite the spell once again, but her horn faltered, and when she tried to cast the spell it simply fizzled out into nothing. “There- There is not enough ambient magical force for me to do it again! It was all used in that first spell!”
Twilight took her eyes off, herself? and gave Starlight a pleading glance “Come on please, there has to be something you can do! If I come in contact with her there is a 99.9% chance that we explode into one million time shards, that will completely break today's to-do list!”
Starlight was about to open her mouth to respond but stopped, her eyes widened, and her panic quickly turned to horror.
Twilight felt something tug on her leg.
“Hey, identical twin what does this word mean?”
Twilight’s heart dropped. The room filled up with anticipation, as fear overtook both the mares.
But then nothing happened, and Twilight was surprisingly not in one million pieces, but instead in one very confused piece. Her eyes slowly darted from her own body to her own body again, but smaller. The younger self was tugging on her leg, pointing at a particular word in her book, ‘Penis-Fork.’
“Uhhh…” Twilight’s cheeks flushed red. Her attention shifted away from the fact she had not exploded, to desperately trying to maintain her filly hood innocence, “A very very bad fork, that you should not think about.”
The young Twi shrugged “Okay!” she jumped off of Twilight's leg and started hopping around the room analyzing the various magical and scientific devices within.
“Twilight!”
Both Twilights turned to Starlight, and simultaneously said “Yes?”
Starlight rolled her eyes “No, not you Twilight, the small one!” She activated her horn and focused her magic on the younger Twi. She cast a levation spell and lifted Twilight into the air, successfully stopping her, the older Twilight.
“Starlight! Don’t use that on me, use it on me!” Twilight dramatically pointed at her foal self who was currently on the top of a table, tapping a bottle filled with a glowy green liquid.
Starlight shook her head and reset the spell, she then refocused on young Twilight, this time powering up a freeze spell. “Don’t worry, I got this!”
Starlight fired off the freeze spell, and the magical ray zoomed right toward Twi, the right one this time. Starlight let out a breath of relief, “Finally! A success-” and before Starlight could even finish her sentence the freeze spell zipped right past the foal, made a U-turn around her, and hit the very angry Alicorn Twilight directly in the face.
Starlight’s yelped out an apology “Sorry!” she immediately aimed her horn towards the frozen Alicorn, who could not talk but was currently glaring bullet holes into Starlight. Starlight cast a undo spell, and this time the spell finally hit its intended target, the foal, who was now in the process of unscrewing the bottle.
“Oh for bucks sake!” Starlight instinctively rose her hoof to cover her mouth, silently praying the foal version of Twilight did not just hear her curse.
Her prayers were not answered, “Buck?”
Twilight activated her own horn and broke out of the freeze spell, and then immediately scolded Starlight “Starlight there is a foal here, don’t use that Bucking language!” Twilight then shut her mouth with her hoof, “Buck! Since when did I curse? Buck, I did it again!”
“What does Buck mean?”
Both grown mares ignored the foal's comment, as they broke down into bickering.
Twilight directed her annoyance at Starlight, momentarily forgetting about the 7-year-old Twi playing with the bottle “Since when did you have worst aim than a bucking drunk stallion!”
“I aimed it fine! It’s! It’s something wrong with the magic!” Starlight reached into her mind, trying to find some sort of explanation “If only I knew exactly what the problem was…”
“Buck magic, I’ll just grab myself myself!” Twilight turned her head towards the foal, and her minor annoyance turned to abject horror. The foal burped, she had drunk half of the bottle, filled with Celestia knows what. She could visibly see the green liquid dripping down her young face.
The filly spoke with slurred nearly incongruent words, “We have the same magic field…” and pointed sluggishly at Twilight.
The realization hit Starlight like a truck “Ohhhhh!, that’s why.”
Twilight could not care less about the exact reason why the spells Starlight cast failed, instead she was far more concerned about the fluids the filly had just put in her face. “Don’t drink that!”
She ran forward and reached to snatch the bottle out of the filly's hand, but was too slow. Twi shoved the large bottle’s finish into her mouth and dodged Twilight’s attack, “Weee, tag with my twin, let's see if you are good as my best big brother forever!”
Twilight slammed right into the wooden table, and yelped out in pain “Ow!, St-... Starlight what was in that bucking drink!”
Starlight bit her lips and then let out a nervous chuckle “Uhhh… I don’t know, Could have been anything… including glow-in-the-dark liquor…”
Twilight’s snapped her head to Starlight “There was bucking WHAT in there!”
“Sometimes I get bored Twilight! that's beside the point, right now we have to stop you!”
Twilight decided to ignore the implications this will have on her, now slightly stunted, brain development and focused her attention on stopping the bucking damage from getting any worst.
Twilight shook the pain off and started chasing her, smaller and more agile, self around the room. The filly jumped in between the various magical and scientific equipment, and Twilight would knock the items to the floor in her fruitless attempts to grab her, creating a massive mess, and adding to the absolute chaos. Starlight guiltily sat in the middle of the room, trying to think of some spell that will fix everything.
After about a minute of this, Twilight finally gave up, as years of neglected exercise caught up to her. She collapsed to the floor, huffing and puffing.
“Fine-...you win…”
The drunk filly ecstatically jumped up into the air “I love playing with myself!”
Twilight’s cheeks were flushed red, “Don’t say that!”
Twi tilted her head in confusion “Why not?”
“Uhhh… You’ll, you’ll learn when you are older!”
“Okay…” The filly paused for about 3 seconds, before saying “Okay I am older now, so, why can’t I play with myself”
Twilight was trying to think of a response when she was suddenly saved by laughing, not from Starlight, or the filly, but by a new mare who had just entered the picture.
The filly waved at the newcomer “Oh, hi teacher.”
Twilight and Starlight both spun around to the source of the laughing, and they were both shocked to find the tall mare behind them.
“Princess Celestia!”
Celestia looked between all three of them smiling, “Oh you finally noticed” Celestia levitated both Twilights towards her, “That was the funniest thing I see all month, you know you have to watch your mouth sometimes Twilight, who knows what you are putting in that poor fillies head.” Celestia placed them on each of her sides, “You know, it has been a long time since I have seen you this young.”
The young Twi cuddled up into Celestia’s fur, while Twilight sat nervously.
Twilight looked up to Celestia, praying that her former mentor had not seen too much of this disaster, “How- how long have you been here?”
Celestia chuckled “Oh me? I teleported here the second you two punched a foal-sized hole in the space-time continuum.”
Celestia looked down between both of them with a shit-eating grin “I think you both need to spend some extra time in magic kindergarten, so something like this does not happen again, don’t you think?”
The foal version of Twi could not be more ecstatic. Meanwhile, Twilight was completely and utterly devastated.
“Ya! Magic kindergarten!”
“M-... magic kindergarten…”
Celestia wrapped a hoove around each of them “Yup! Magic Kindergarten!”
Twilight was never going to mess with time travel again.
“So class why is saying bad words, bad?”
Twilight sat at the back of a class of magic kindergarten class, in a chair size for a foal. Twilight was a royal Princess, the Princess of Friendship no less, and now she has been reduced to a kindergartener, even if it was just for one day, it was one day too long.
The younger Twi, who sat in the front seat, energetically rose her hand “Oooo-, ooo- call on me!”
Cheerilee looked past the filly and pointed towards the sad Alicorn at the back, “You sitting in the back” She could not help but chuckle under her breath at the site of Twilight being one of her students. “Do you have the answer?”
The whole class turned around to look at her.
Twilight sighed, and spoke defeatedly “Because bad words can hurt other ponies' feelings, are inappropriate, and can threaten foals' innocence.”
Cheerilee smiled in satisfaction “Good, answer Twilight, you look like you are on track to becoming a Princess one day.”
Twilight was never going to touch time travel ever again.