Applejack had calmed down as she had begun to clean up. As infuriating as Dash could sometimes be, Applejack was sure that she wouldn't let her down. The apple family would need help getting the farm in running condition again and replanting enough of the trees that hadn't been destroyed to have a decent harvest. She hadn't expected to see Dash again so soon.
There was the soft thud of a rushed landing. "Hey AJ, what the hay happened here? What crashed over there?"
"Rainbow... yer kiddin' me right? You..." Applejack stopped herself. She could feel a powerful anger building inside her. She had every right to be upset at the cyan pegasus for what she had done, but then to come back and act like nothing had happened... it was enough to make her want to do something she'd regret. She glared daggers at Dash for what seemed to be an eternity as Dash slowly shrunk back and looked hurt. What was going on here? It was like nothing HAD happened. There was nothing in her eyes but innocence. She came to check on her friend and was asking questions about the scene in front of her.
"Rainbow ah... ah think you'd better go." Even if Rainbow Dash was completely innocent, Applejack couldn't fully suppress her anger. This was all Dash's fault, and she couldn't even get any answers out of her. Especially not now that she seemed to have forgotten the whole incident.
---------------------------------------------------
"Where's Spike?" Dash asked, looking around for any sign of the baby dragon and seeing nothing but books.
"He's over at Sugarcube Corner helping Pinkie with some kind of secret project."
"Oh, okay. Cool then. So it's just you and me here?"
"I'm pretty sure. So now, what exactly is so important that it couldn't wait for just a few minutes? And why in the wide world of Equestria couldn't you tell Applejack about it?"
Dash let out a long sigh. "Okay Twilight, I need you to stay calm and listen to me. I know I'm not the element of honesty, but I swear what I'm about to tell you is true and I need you to believe me. I ALSO need you to keep everything I'm about to say a secret, and I know you'll understand why. Are you ready for this?"
Twilight sat still, remembering the last time she tried to keep a secret and how that turned out. This seemed a lot more important. The purple pony put on a very serious face and stood up straight. "Okay. I'm ready."
"Twilight, I am the fastest flier in Equestria. I know I can be a little smug about it, but it really is true. It's also true that you are the smartest pony I've ever met, and the princesses aside you've got the most powerful magic I've ever heard of. Working together, we did the impossible."
"Dash I'm getting really confused here. What did we do? Teleport from Sweet Apple Acres to here? That's not all that impressive. I mean I guess it kinda is, most unicorns probably couldn't manage it, but it's far from impossible and doesn't require you to contribute at all."
"No, Twilight, not the teleport just now. Before that... er... AFTER that I guess." She paused and took a deep breath. "Twilight... I'm from the future. Using your crazy egghead powers and awesome magic, and my even MORE awesome speed, we were able to send me back in time."
"W w... what?" Twilight managed to stammer.
"I know, it's crazy. I can hardly believe it myself. But after getting a good look at Applejack I'm sure of it. And you told me that as soon as you understood that, you'd understand why we can't tell people about this. Disrupting the space lime continue or whatever. If we change the past, it wrecks the future."
The gears were visibly turning in Twilight's head. "Okay. So that leaves a very important question. Why did you come back at all?"
This time it was Dash's turn to slip into thought. "Because I had to, because I already did. If I try to understand or explain it any better than that I'm going to hurt myself trying. You're the egghead."
There was a very long silence before the spark of understanding flashed across Twilight's eyes. "You came back... because you came back?" Dash nodded. "So what's happening right now happened. And then later once I had worked out the details of what makes time travel possible, I knew I had to send you back in time so that you could talk to me about it, so that I could start thinking about time travel, so that I could send you back, so that you could show up and give me the idea in the first place?"
Rainbow Dash stood still, looking confused. "Um... yes?"
"So we caused a stable time loop, and I suppose I'm worried that disrupting it might cause some sort of paradox. I have to develop time travel and send you back to close the loop. And we had to get away from Sweet Apple Acres, because YOU were about to show up there wondering what just happened and you didn't meet yourself when YOU went there."
"Um... also yes?"
Suddenly realizing that she was about to invent TIME TRAVEL, Twilight Sparkle lost herself in a fit of giggling and hopping and glee.
I like.
I so called it from the crash landing. Maybe I just watch too much Doctor Who. Whatever, BRING IT ON!
Time Shenanigans. My one weakness.
Just remember, keep the loops stable. Otherwise dead Dashes start piling up. Dead Dashes are the enemy.
4542
Same here.
4567
I can't resist them either.
Twilight's reaction is very Twi', I think.
I so wanna see some art of Twilight as the Doc and Rainbow as Marty now
OMG TIME TRAVEL GREAT SCOTT!
I had assumed Rainbow had come from an alternate universe by pulling off a double rainboom and shattering the space between dimensions and then the story taking a "Doctor Whoof" turn. I like this better
Hold on a minute, isn't Rainbow Dash the element of Loyalty, not honesty?
20691 Never mind, silly me. I misread it. CONTINUE YOUR READING PLEASURE!
ahh no i get it, time science scares meh
Exactly, I knew I was right...why didn't anyone get it, it really wasn't TOO hard to figure out...actually I think it was pretty obvious...but hay, that's just me.
My brother has understood the mind fuck. How?
Damn, time travel, not dimensional rifts... Unless the time travel CAUSES dimensional rifts! To the next chapter!
the title reminded me of a video i saw called "double rainboom" where RD goes so fast she breaks a dimensional barrier and meets the Powerpuff girls.
4567
Dave
A stable time loop is actually the worst kind of paradox. Normally when you change history, you end up with two timelines, one with and one without the time traveler's meddling. But a stable time loop has the time traveller change history recursively. Imagine you kept a running count of how many times that the loop "looped." Just once, right? But what if you used the count of the time traveller? You see yourself from the future tell you "0," and increment it by 1. Then you travel back in time and tell yourself "1." And they tell themselves 2, and then 3, 4, etc.
Even if you tell them nothing new, the molecular interactions, the light you emit, anything you do to change history is left behind, to accumulate forever in that instant, and stable time loops only happen if you can change history. If you can't change history, it's just a harmless past-viewer. Stable time loops necessitate some transfer of information, history changing to "not" change itself.
People like to use stable time loops as a Panglossian sort of moralizing, to write stories preaching at us how arrogant we foolish, sinful humans/ponies are for daring to change our God given fate, but actually stable time loops are way worse than killing your own mother. They would instantly create an inverse singularity of infinite energy density, just from the flutter of your eyelash each time you go back. They would create an infinite amount of parallel timelines, so if changing history once is bad for the universe, a stable time loop would rip it to shreds! Or at least tear our local star system a new one.
8214111
Within the framework of general relativity with a single timeline, you're correct. However, 1) the nature of time travel by magical means, by its very definition, circumvents certain laws of physics, and 2) it is reasonable to assume that any time travel spell Twilight eventually uses would incorporate multiple safeguards against such effects, much like Star Swirl's time travel spell in show canon. And of course, there's another thing: multiverse theory's a bitch.