//------------------------------// // No Time Like The Present (II) // Story: Yesterday's Entropy // by NorrisThePony //------------------------------// Time Elapsed: 3hrs 4min Next Temporal Displacement: 17m4s per ½h The Ponyville-Canterlot Express engineer let out a great yawn and checked his wristwatch, blinking in surprise to see that it was only eight o'clock. The summer sky was already growing dark with the hints of sunset in less than an hour. A few stray drops of rain streaked across the trains windshield, while the headlights illuminated the sharp curve that they were about to tear through. He didn't exactly feel extremely comfortable traveling so close to the edge of Saddle Lake Gorge at such speeds, although the chance of derailment wasn't what concerned him. What was more troubling were the actual curves themselves, and how they concealed whatever lay beyond. So then, it came as quite the surprise to the engineer when, upon looking up from his wristwatch, he was met with the sight of three mares in the middle of the train tracks. The orange one appeared to be arguing with the white one, and the pink one was simply staring directly ahead at the approaching train with a blank expression. In a frenzy, the engineer threw on the brakes, knowing full well he did not nearly have enough distance to stop. "Whaddaya mean ya can't TELEPORT? Twilight can!" "Well, I am not Twilight! Do I even look like Twilight?" "So...are we just going to sit here and argue?" Pinkie Pie called backwards. "Because, like, the train is right there...and it's moving pretty fast..." "No." Applejack said in response. "We're jumpin' into the gorge. I reckon it's our only chance." "Well it's a quite slim chance." Rarity mused, looking down at the river far, far below. Much of her sentence was drowned out by the screeching of the train's breaks, forcing her to almost scream her last "But I suppose 'quite slim' is superior to certain death." "That's the spirit, Rarity!" Pinkie Pie said cheerfully, before leaping over the edge of the tracks into the gorge. "Geronimo!" Applejack reluctantly followed suit, while Rarity stood peering over the edge in complete shock. Suddenly, the piercing sound of the train horn split through her thoughts and she turned to see the steam engine mere feet in front of her, before her world exploded into white. A dull, ringing sound followed, and Rarity realized with a start that this was the only sound she was capable of hearing, and all she could see was the same unfiltered whiteness. She had just enough time to wonder if she had just been hit, when Twilight's screaming voice jerked her back to her senses. "Are you three INSANE? Have you absolutely lost it?" "Twilight dear, is that you? What in Celestia's name..." "Why were you three in the middle of the train tracks? Or, maybe a better question...HOW did you three end up in front of the train—" Twilight stopped abruptly as she realized what the answer was, and facehoofed so hard she had to check to make sure she hadn't injured herself. "Of course! Oh, how could I have been so stupid! I totally should have seen this coming!" "Yeah, ya really should've." Applejack muttered irritably, picking herself up from the dirt ground that she and Pinkie Pie had slammed into immediately after being teleported to safety. "Oh...my, are you okay?" Fluttershy asked, helping Applejack to her feet while Rainbow Dash did the same with Pinkie Pie. "Are any of you hurt? You hit the ground pretty hard..." "We're fine!" Pinkie Pie assured. "So, did you girls already make it to Canterlot? Can we fix this crazy problem now?" "Are you kidding?" Rainbow scoffed, folding her unfurled wings which were missing quite a large amount of feathers. "I tried to warn Twilight we wouldn't make it, and sure enough we had to turn back after less than ten minutes of flying before one us croaked from exhaustion." "Are you alright, Fluttershy?" Pinkie Pie asked immediately. "Umm, well, actually..." "Pfft, are you kidding?" Rainbow Dash intervened. "Fluttershy was great. It was this earthbound egghead who we had to turn back for!" "I...I was being too impulsive." Twilight sheepishly admitted. "I didn't mean to put anypony in danger. I'm really sorry..." "Well, as much as I did not appreciate getting hurled into the dirt and nearly killed by the Ponyville Express, all seems to be well now, with no harm done." Rarity consoled. "Which, considering your timing, is quite miraculous." "I'd say." Pinkie Pie agreed, watching the thin plumes of smoke rise from the slowing train someways down the track. "So, do we have another way to get to Canterlot?" "Well, we can take the train for another thirty minutes before this situation happens again, that should be enough time to make it to Canterlot. If not, I can compensate the distance by teleporting us backwards." "Alrighty." Rainbow was once again rising to her feet, and letting out a great yawn. She appeared to be the only mare not completely exhausted. "Say, Twilight...since we're probably going to be facing this problem eventually....what would happen if, when we jumped back in time, there was, like, a tree or something that was only there in the past, and we end up in the same place?" "Into the same place as the tree? Well, unless you're Fluttershy...I wouldn't recommend it." "...Ew..." Was Rainbow Dash's disgusted response as she processed exactly what this meant. "Yep. So let's hope that doesn't happen. Now, we need to get moving! Our next jump will be...uhh..." Twilight paused for a split-second. "Seventeen minutes and four seconds. And after that, we'll be going backwards. We can't let that happen." With that, Twilight unfurled her wings and glided down to the train tracks below, followed closely by Rainbow and Fluttershy, and teleporting Rarity, Applejack and Pinkie Pie down the cliff. The six mares sprinted down the tracks towards the halted train, which to everyponies horror had already started inching forwards as the crew saw that they had, in fact, not hit the three mares on the track. "Wait!" Pinkie Pie screamed after the departing train, which was quickly speeding up. Pinkie's cry was instantly followed by five other voices, but they were all easily drowned out by the sound of the screeching wheels and thunderous steam engine. "We can't loose that train!" Twilight panted, watching the distance between them and the caboose quickly increasing. "Rainbow!" "Already on it, Twi!" In a flash, Rainbow Dash was off, easily closing in on the departing train. Within seconds she was at the engine car, staring at the engineer who looked at her with shock and fear. "Hey, buddy!" She screamed into the open side window. "You mind slowing down for me and my friends?" "Sorry, lady!" He shook his head firmly. "We don't exactly take hitchhikers. Besides, I'm under strict instructions from Princess Twilight Sparkle that we're not to stop for anything unless it's an emergency." "I...know that!" Rainbow replied impatiently, her voice slightly wavering as she gasped for breath. Under any normal circumstance, she probably could have kept up with the train for miles, but given the fact that she had just flown for half an hour straight at a significantly swift speed and taken less than a five minute break to recover, she was not totally surprised she was already short of breath. "Look, Princess Twilight herself wants you to stop the train! I should know, she told me to chase after you. Those ponies on the track are her friends!" Rainbow Dash immediately took a deep gasp of air upon finishing her sentence, and continued panting heavily as she struggled to keep up with the speeding train. "I'm very sorry." The engineer again shook his head. "But Princess Twilight and her friends are here, riding in the caboose. Besides, those ponies were in front of the train, not behind it...so even if they fell out or something, your story still doesn't make sense." "Argh! No! You don't under—" Without giving her a chance to respond, the engineer reached over and, after giving Rainbow Dash a genuinely sympathetic stare, shut the open side-window, muffling the pursuing pegasi's furious protests. Rainbow continued pounding on the glass and flying after the train, but it was evident even to her that she was slowly but surely sagging behind it. After some time, the train engine was now far ahead of her and the empty caboose only a few cars behind. "Alright then...different tact." Rainbow huffed, cutting back on her speed just enough to get herself oriented directly beside the caboose, carefully planning how she would board the speeding train. "If you're not going to stop for us, then I'll have to make you—" The loud blaring of the train horn tore her from her concentration, and with a start Rainbow broke her gaze at the side of the train and instead faced forwards. Ahead, the engine of the train tore into a narrow tunnel dug into the side of a mountain, definitely too narrow for her to fly alongside it. In a panic, Rainbow did the only thing she could think of to avoid crashing into the mountain and tore straight into the air at a ninety degree angle. "That...that was close..." She wheezed, hovering back down to the tunnel. The red lights of the departing train disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel, and Rainbow collapsed to the earth, too exhausted to worry about her pride at the moment. From within the tunnel, the train horn once again sounded, the mocking blare echoing off the stone walls until it reached Rainbow Dash's ears as dozens of separate tones. She groaned with disappointment and frustration at the sound, and groggily rose to her feet and started walking the opposite direction down the track, back to where her friends would undoubtedly be waiting. When she finally caught sight of them down the track, they were running towards her at a light sprint, enough to conserve their energy but still swift enough that it took only a few minutes for them to regroup with Rainbow. "What...happened..." Fluttershy said, gasping for breath. "Did you catch up with it?" "That wasn't the problem." Rainbow replied dejectedly. "He refused to stop for us. He didn't believe me when I said I was friends with Twilight, and I couldn't exactly use 'time-travel' as a way to prove I was telling the truth." "He didn't recognize you as the Element of Loyalty?" Twilight's ears perked up in curiosity. Ever since the Tirek incident, it seemed like they couldn't go anywhere without somepony recognizing them. Then again, she had been the one featured on the majority of the newspapers, despite her frequent insistence that Equestria would have fallen without her friends. "That's odd..." "Twilight...do you think this is a matter of importance?" Rarity inquired, clearly detecting the wariness in Twilight's voice. "Oh...no, I don't think so. No, it's probably nothing...So, you lost the train?" "Geez, Twi, I'm really sorry. It's that tunnel that did it in the end. I sort of freaked out when I noticed it, I was paying more attention to the train than where I was heading." "Well, I imagine it's at least an hour walk to Canterlot from here." Twilight sighed, looking ahead at the winding tracks and dark tunnel ahead. The sun was just beginning to paint the sky orange, and it looked like in less than thirty minutes it would be well below the horizon. "We should get moving." Time Elapsed: 3hrs 53min Next Temporal Displacement: 4h33m per ½h When Twilight and her friends finally tore into Canterlot City, the sun had already set, and night had begun to fall. Twice. At this point, they had all grown quite used to the ruptures in time, and could almost feel them approaching without any aid from the double-bell alarm clock or any of Twilight's notes. Oddly enough, the feeling was unanimous amongst all six mares, even though Twilight had been the only one aware of the skips to begin with. Now though, it seemed like they could all agree on when they were about to skip backwards a full minute before it actually happened. Try as they might, nopony could think of any logical reason why this was. Immediately upon entering the city through the main gates, Twilight began sprinting through the shopping district of Canterlot, occasionally knocking some poor pony down as she raced towards the Royal Quarter of Canterlot city with one specific task in mind. Her friends followed closely behind, and together the six of them had crossed Canterlot in roughly five minutes. In front of them lay the large, wooden door that led to where Celestia (or, more than likely at this hour, Luna) would be hosting the Royal Court, hearing out both the trivial and severe problems that the citizens of Equestria had concerns about. Twilight wished desperately for the court to be deserted, as it usually was in the evening, as she pushed open the large door to the main hall of Canterlot Castle. "Oh my." Luna said with a light chuckle as she watched the six mares fly into the room and skid to a halt on the floor in front of her. "Princess Luna!" Twilight gasped, ducking into a bow, her friends following suit. The Night Court was indeed deserted, the only other ponies in the room being four royal guards, two at the entrance they had come in from, and the other two beside Princess Luna's throne. "What a relief it is to finally be here!" "Ah. I take it you ponies have traveled far?" Luna said, noting the dirt and mud caked on each pony, and the sticks protruding from Rarity's once-fabulous mane. Her tone, albeit welcoming, contained the tell-tale traces of unfamiliarity which caused Twilight to become more than worried as Luna continued. "And what might your names be? And...my...are those..." Luna had stopped speaking all together now, and had stepped down from her throne and started stepping towards Twilight Sparkle. Her alert and shocked eyes were scanning her guests thoroughly, before settling on Twilight's wings and remaining fixated there. "But...but that's impossible." She finally whispered. "How can you be...surely Celestia would have..." "Princess Luna, surely you recognize us! I'm Twilight Sparkle! Celestia's prodigy, and the Princess of Friendship!" "I haven't the faintest clue who you, or any of your friends, are." Luna said bluntly, her voice now having escalated from suspicion to full on hostility. Twilight turned around to look at her friends, who were all looking just as confused as she was at Luna's unfamiliarity at seeing them. Luna was not exactly the most social of the Equestrian Princesses, and, in truth, she had only directly interacted with the Elements of Harmony several times, but the thought of her being completely oblivious to their existence was simply too ludicrous to be considered the truth. And yet... "Wait here." Luna commanded sternly, before turning and storming back to her throne, where two bat-ponies in the Royal Guard uniform were standing on each side. They looked at their leader with anticipation as Luna whispered instructions to them, casting the occasional backwards look at Twilight and her friends. "What's going on?" Fluttershy whispered. "I...I don't know! I think we might be...under some sort of scrutiny—" "Silence!" Luna screamed from her throne. "Actually, wait. Twilight Sparkle, was it?" "Y..yes, Princess? Have I done something wrong?" "Why do you take me for a fool? I believe it is quite obvious what is wrong! It isn't everyday I have an unknown alicorn Princess show up to my Night Court claiming to be in relation with myself and my sister when in fact I am quite certain neither of us have ever seen you in our substantially long lives. Now then, I want to hear an explanation, right now, as to where you obtained such power." Twilight blinked several times in sheer disbelief, opened her mouth to explain, promptly closed it again, and racked her mind desperately for some sort of logical reason why Luna shouldn't know herself. "Psst, Twi!" Pinkie Pie said, doing her best to ignore the evident flare in Luna's temper. "My Pinkie-Senses are going crazy. I think we're about to jump back again—" Luna rose suddenly from her throne once again, obviously furious at being interrupted in her own Night Court. Just as she was about to speak, however, a brilliant flash suddenly exploded where Twilight Sparkle and her friends had been standing.Just as suddenly as it had appeared, the flash vanished from existence completely, leaving nothing in its place.