The Time Ponies and the Cutie Mark Thief Vs. the Queen of Hearts

by My name is R

2 Research, Relativity, and Relief

>> Relativity.

They had proven, with much difficulty and more calculations than they could count, that Δt'=Δt/√(1-v²/c²) held true for any value of v. They knew this was important, they just had to figure out how…

They were on the cusp of success. Any day now... <<

---

“Alright, first concentrate on your destination,“ said Twilight.

Starlight concentrated on an empty table she saw on the other side of the library. “Check.”

“Then cast the spell, and you should appear in the location you're visualizing.”

A loud thump sound broke Starlight's concentration, causing her to teleport the table to her, rather than the other way around. “Aah!”

“That's odd, I wonder what it could be?” pondered Twilight as Starlight crawled out from under the table.

Thump thump! They both looked up at a stained glass window with a shadow on it that hadn't been there when they'd entered. “Hello!” called Twilight.

Thump thump! Twilight flew up to the window in question and opened it, revealing Derpy with her mailbags, hoof raised to knock again. “Oh, hello! I usually get letters by dragon.”

Derpy shook her head. “This is for Starlight,” said Derpy, pulling out a letter and holding it out towards Starlight, who was watching from the floor.

Starlight took the letter in her magic and saw it was from Time Turner. “Hey Twilight, do you mind if I go see to this and we finish teleportation later?”

“Not at all. What is it?”

“Oh, just somepony I spoke to last week. He wants to continue our conversation. Heh.” Starlight gave a huge toothy grin.

“Sounds great. I'm glad you’re meeting new ponies around town. We can practice teleportation tomorrow. Have fun!”

“Thanks. I'll see you later!” Starlight opened the letter as she headed out the door. It simply stated ‘I'm ready.’

And this sort of thing is why his club looks like a secret society. It just screams secret spy stuff. An entire letter for just two words, Starlight thought. At least it means he can probably keep this a secret. I don't want to give Twilight another reason why I'm a screw up. She's been very forgiving, but how far can forgiveness go?

---

After a short walk through the streets of Ponyville Starlight found herself on Time Turner's porch. She knocked and waited to see if he would respond this time.

The door swung open and revealed Minuette standing behind it. “Hey there! Are you Starlight?”

“Yes. I'm here to see Time Turner,” said Starlight, holding up her letter.

“Well come on in! He and Pace are in the basement. If you need to talk to him you can, but I'll be your partner for making the spell. The Doctor may be great with time and machines, but he can never seem to wrap his mind around spellcraft.” Minuette was talking a mile a minute as Starlight walked into the house. She saw the table had been cleared of the mechanical bits from her last visit and now held loose leaf pages with complex formulas and lots of tiny writing. Minuette leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “I think it's because he's confident science is superior.” She backed up and continued her loud cheerful chatter. “Which is silly. It's not a competition. At least he's willing to accept help, I don't know how he expected to bring time forward without magic. We use magic for everything.”

“Bringing time forward? How is that different from traveling back in time?”

“It had to do with how it interacts with other dimensions. Also that you can never bring time forward to you from inside of the place you are bringing time forward. He described it like a raft. You can only move the raft by pulling it from another body, like the shore. If you pull on the raft while you're on it you just break the raft. Then I asked him about paddling through the water, but he just said, ‘no analogy is perfect’.”

“Alright, let's get started on the dimension finding spell.”

“Yay! This is going to be great!" Minuette giggled and sat at the table. “I brought everything of Starswirl's work with other worlds I could find, but it wasn't much. Every time I thought I was close I just hit a dead end. I've heard some stories that say he could open portals to other worlds, but whenever I go looking there are no formulas. Either they were lost to time, or they're restricted.”

“I guess we'll just have to work that part out ourselves.” Starlight looked over at Minuette. “Think you're up for it?”

“Of course! This is going to be the greatest challenge since my dissertation. We're going to rediscover dimensional travel after over a thousand years. I wonder if we'll get a wing of the archives named after us. Isn't it exciting?”

“Well, for the time being I was planning on keeping this a secret. Don't need to cause a panic about a bunch of worlds in chaos.” Starlight looked down and lowered her voice. “Also, I don't really want to tell everypony I plunged Equestria into an era of fear, repeatedly.”

“Yeah that does sound pretty bad. It was an accident right?”

“Well, yes. But I did try to tear apart the group of friends who had saved the world repeatedly before they could save the world.”

“Hey, everypony makes mistakes.” Starlight looked up. “Although, most of us never threaten the whole world. I guess that makes you special.” Starlight rammed her head into the table and sighed.

---

After three hours Starlight and Minuette had a basic outline for what the spell was. They had yet to begin building the spell, but for spells this complex they had to be mapped out well before you could properly begin.

“I think we should probably stop there for today,” said Minuette. “Come back fresh another day.”

“I suppose, I hope it doesn't take too long though. From what Twilight said I don't know how long those worlds can hold out.” Starlight looked down. “I really did a number on them.”

“Oh! The Doctor didn't tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“We've already worked out a way to choose when we contact the other dimension. I helped him a bit with his previous efforts at bringing time forward, I told you about that right? Anyway we fixed it up so that it works, as long as you don't try to pull time forward further than you've already interacted with it. It's worthless for conventional time travel on it's own, but if used on another dimension you can go back until the last point somepony left that dimension.”

“So we can go to the point Twilight left each world?”

“Exactly! We have all the time in the world to figure out the dimension finding spell. Well, I'd like to finish the spell before I get all old and wrinkly, but you know what I mean.”

“Alright. Should we tell the others we're ready to stop?”

“Sounds great! I'll go tell Derpy. She said she'd bring muffins for everypony when we finished up.” And with that Minuette walked out the door.

Starlight walked into the back of the house. She hadn't seen Time Turner or Pace the whole time she and Minuette had been working on the spell, so she assumed they were still in the basement. When she got into the hallway she saw a pair of blue metal doors at the other side. There was a lever next to the doors labeled ‘Please pull to call box’. Starlight saw no other hints as to where the basement was, so she tried pulling the lever to see what happened.

Scrape! Starlight jumped back as a noise came from beyond the doors. Scrape! Scrape! She took another step back as the strange noise continued. Scrape! Scrape! She lowered her horn and readied herself for whatever would happen next. Scrape!

Then the doors folded to the sides, revealing a white metal box just big enough for two ponies to stand next to each other. There was another lever inside. Starlight relaxed and walked into the box. She pushed the lever from 1 to b1. The doors closed and she heard the scraping noise again. After about ten seconds the doors folded open and Starlight saw a small grey room with an open door on the opposite side. Inside she saw Time Turner and a blue Earth pony with an orange mane. She walked up to the door and said, "Hello! I came to tell you that Minuette and I finished up for today and Minuette went to tell Derpy.”

“Is it time for dinner already?” asked Time Turner, looking at one of the many clocks in the room. It read 6 o'clock. “My word, how the time does fly. Well, I think we can pack up for the day as well. I'd hate to miss Derpy's muffins.”

"I told you it was about dinner time half an hour ago! No wonder you kept starting on a new part, you forgot we were cleaning up,” said the blue pony, presumably Pace.

“Anyway, who'll wait for the second run?”

“I will," said Pace. "We wouldn't want you forgetting to follow us out.”

“Allons-y!” The Doctor began walking towards the box and Starlight followed.

After Time Turner had started up the box Starlight asked, “What is this?”

“It's a lift. I invented them to allow ponies to travel straight up and down. It uses less space than a staircase, so I didn't need to have as much digging done to have a large enough basement. Plus I'm rather fond of them.” The lift stopped moving and the doors folded open. Starlight and Time Turner walked into the kitchen while the lift closed and began its warbling descent.

In the kitchen Derpy was setting the table, while Minuette was taking the last chair out of the kitchen so everypony could fit around the little circlular table. “I hope you like muffins,” said Derpy. “I only made enough for everypony to have one, but I made them extra big to make up for it.”

Starlight thought back to the only muffins she could remember. Sugar Belle's muffins had been terrible, but was it because muffins were bad, or because of the sameness curse? Then she looked at the colorful soft plump muffins sitting in a basket on the table. “I’ve never had them.”

“Oh that’s just awful. Everypony should have a chance to try muffins! If you like them I'll be sure to send you a basket tomorrow.”

Perfect Pace walked in. “Well then, how about we get started?”

Derpy put a muffin on everypony's plate while they all sat at their spots. Starlight took a bite out of her muffin. "So, do you like it?" asked Derpy hopefully.

“They're delicious!”

“Hooray!”

Author's Note:

While I was writing this story I realized that I tend to write grey, which is the British spelling, despite the fact that I am American. You may have noticed that I spell it both ways in this story. This is because I am reserving grey for things which are British. For example, the Doctor’s workshop is grey, not gray, because he is British, or at least the pony equivalent thereof. Derpy is a gray pegasus, because she is not British.

Comments

[Golden_Reflection]

I like how you used the TARDIS design for the Doc's lift, and even had the bait and switch of it decidedly not being bigger on the inside because of the association with the TARDIS.

I am british, and to be fair the doctor can be however they are in your story as they can be however in the show itself. Constants that are there however is not liking violence, rules, and the phrase "demons run when a good man goes to war" (even though that phrase is Matt Smith's Doctor and not David's Doctor)

[Golden_Reflection]

Also, I half expected the TARDIS design would be used for the dimensional travel device, although it still could with the in universe explanation being something like "we're traveling up and down in time instead of forward and back, so I made it look like my lift!"

[My name is R]

11046028
I was inspired when I realized that the Doctor's workshop was similar in layout to the TARDIS interior. From that I decided he should have an elevator that had the outward appearance of the TARDIS to reach the workshop. I'm glad you liked it.
P.S. I used lift for the dual reasons that it is an older name, predating electric elevators even, and because again, he is British, so he uses the British words. It's those little details that I pride myself on. Doing the research to make a factually accurate story of time traveling magic unicorns.
11046030
You'll have to wait to find out, but I think you will like it.