Third Time's the Charm

by Lightning_Colt

Rating: teen
Tags: Random, Princess Celestia, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sad, Main 6, Romance, Original Character, Spike, Adventure, Tragedy
Length: 1860

After seeing Lightning's picture in a 150 year old book; Twilight, Lightning and Rainbow Dash travel back in time to speak to Starswirl the Bearded to find out why. However, Starswirl the Bearded is not what Twilight expected

After seeing Lightning's picture in a 150 year old book; Twilight, Lightning and Rainbow Dash travel back in time to speak to Starswirl the Bearded to find out why. However, Starswirl the Bearded is not what Twilight expected and just to make matter's worse, something went wrong with the time travel spell, and it it up to the trio to work together to try and fix it.

Published 2014-02-07 03:00:04 UTC
Last updated 2014-02-07 03:00:04 UTC

Chapter 1: Wibbly Wobbly

“Wha- Wai- Whoa!” babbled Lightning as he looped and soared through the air.
“That’s it!” encouraged Rainbow Dash as she hovered a few feet from the ground. “Now try doing a corkscrew double barrel roll, finishing into an upside down air power slide” she said folding her hooves expectantly.
Lightning nodded in confirmation and beat his wings hard, gathering up speed. After a few seconds of acceleration he swivelled around until he was flying sideways and then began to pull around into a circular pattern. As he completed the first circle in the corkscrew he began to rotate around, to perform a barrel roll at the same time.

“Now be careful Light!” Rainbow shouted, holding her hooves around her mouth to make herself heard. “It’s when you start the second rotation of the corkscrew and the barrel roll at the same time that most…” Before she could finish her sentence she saw the blue colt start to wobble and struggle against the g-forces. She opened her mouth to finish her warning but before the words left her mouth, as Lightning spun out of control and was flung off into the distance. Rainbow watched as the blue colt disappeared and breathed a sigh of exasperation as she flapped her wings a bit harder and flew off in the direction where her pupil was fired.

“Twilight, this is the third time you’ve reorganised the library this week!” Spike moaned as hundreds of books floated around the room, random books shooting off, and resting on shelves.
“Pick a system and stay with it!” he complained as he sat in a chair, with a bowl of ice-cream.
“Huh? Yeah… sure…” mumbled Twilight though she wasn’t really listening to what the dragon was saying as she scanned the names of books that floated in front of her.
“Tasty Teas… goes under T, Moments in Magical History… in M” She muttered under her breath as she continued sorting through large dusty books.

Spike had just started to tuck into his second bowl of ice-cream as a blue blur smashed through the wall, and knocked floating books flying as it crashed into the bookcase on the opposite side of the room, causing the books to topple of the shelves and land in a huge pile on top of it.
Twilight turned around at the sound of the chaos happening behind her and her jaw dropped at the sight of the pandemonium that was her library. She scanned the room, taking in its new arrangements and her eyes stopped on spike who met her gaze and quickly hid his bowl of ice cream behind his back.

“How the hay did this happen?” Twilight asked. Spike didn’t say anything and simply pointed at the hole in the wall and then pointed at the large pile of book at the opposite wall. At which point Lightning’s head popped out of the pile of books and spat out a small, red covered book, his eyes rolling in their sockets. A dusty, tattered book lay sprawled on top of his head as though he was wearing a hat.
Twilight opened her mouth, about to demand an explanation, but she was interrupted by a light blue blur that zoomed past her and smashed into Lightning’s pile of books. Twilight ducked for cover as more books were launched around the room.
Rainbow’s head popped out of the pile, a large brown book lay open on top of her head.
“That was awesome!” She yelled “I mean you didn’t do the trick but you sure made a flashy finale” she complemented as she reached up and pulled off her book hat. She threw the book away but as twilight opened her eyes, the same brown book arced in the air and smacked her in the face.

Twilight swiped the book off her face and threw it away, the book smacking Spike in the face. She stomped to the pile of books containing the two pegasi, a look of crazed confusion on her face.
“Lightning?! Rainbow Dash?!” She glared “look at what you’ve done to my library!” she said loudly, pointing a hoof at the complete disarray that used to be a library.
“I was teaching Lightning some tricks, but he lost control on a corkscrew double barrel roll” Rainbow explained as she pulled herself out of the pile of books and held out a hoof to help lightning up.
“Do you know how long it’s going to take me to sort all these out?!” Twilight demanded.
“But you were sorting them anyway!” yelled an exasperated Spike and lay down on the stair he’d been sitting on.
“Oh well if that’s the case” Lightning began as he pulled himself out of the pile of books. “Rainbow, you wanna continue showing me some tricks?” he asked.
“Ohnonononono.” Twilight interjected as she jumped and skidded in front of the Pegasus before he could escape, “you made this mess you can clean it up!”
“What? That’s ridiculous! You were already sorting, why do I need to sort it, just for you to sort it again!”
“Hey guys,” Rainbow said.
“I don’t care! You should be responsible for your own mess!”
“Guys” Rainbow said again, slightly louder
“I still don’t understand why the books NEED TO BE SORTED TWICE!” Lightning shouted, putting emphasis on his point.
“GUYS!” Rainbow Shouted as she shot into the air and dived down, landing between the two bickering ponies.
“What?!” They both replied in unison.
“Why is Lightning in this book?” She asked before Lightning and Twilight slammed into her on either side to look at what the Pegasus was talking about.

On a dusty page Titled ‘A Brief History of Time’, half way down, there was an illustration of a pegasus with a messy, swept back mane that looked very similar to Lightning’s. Both Rainbow and Lightning slowly turned their heads to look at Twilight, who looked back at them blushing.
“What?!” She cried out, her cheeks slowly flushing to a deep red colour.
“Did… Did you draw this?” Rainbow asked as she looked at Twilight awkwardly.
“Wha? No! I would never deface a book!” She defended, her cheeks still blushing.
“You’re the only one who could’ve done it! The other girls aren’t gonna read this book and we’ve only known Lightning seven months!” Rainbow Accused.

“Wait, what’s the book?” Twilight asked, craning her neck trying to read the cover.
“Don’t try to change the subject!” Rainbow objected. But Lightning who had only just manage to tear himself away from the page closed the book and showed the cover. The cover had a blue pointed had, that was covered with stars and a moon, bells sat upon the brim of the hat and one lone bell hung from the tip of the hat.
“Starswirl the Bearded’s notes volume II” Twilight read aloud.
“But… How...? Why...?” Lightning stammered.
“Well according to Starswirl the Bearded, ‘Ponies assume that time is a strict progression of cause to affect, but actually, from a non-linier, non-subjective point of view it is more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey...stuff’”
“Wibbly Wobbly?” Rainbow asked.
“Timey Wimey?” Twilight asked.
“Stuff?” Lightning added as they all looked at each other.

“Well yeah” Spike spoke up “Something that you’ve done in your future that happens in the past means that it’s both happened and not happened yet. Plus it closes the circle, you go back in time because you saw lightning’s picture in a book, you do the thing that gets lightning’s picture in the book for past you to then see in the future to repeat the process over and over again. It’s simple really.” Spike finished, folding his short arms and Twilight’s jaw dropped.
“My brain hurts” Rainbow complained.
“Spike, How?” Twilight started.
“You really think that being an assistant in a library, that I wouldn’t read a book every now and again?” he boasted as he walked over to Twilight and pushed her jaw up, closing her mouth.

Twilight shook her head of her confusion and her mind began processing the new information.
“Wait, what year was the book published?” she asked
“Uh, the 852nd year of Celestia’s reign” Lightning read aloud.
“Hmm” Twilight pondered, stroking her chin with a hoof. “We still don’t know how to travel back in time 150 years” she exasperated as she dragged herself over to a futon in the corner of the room, and slumped down onto it.
“Hey what about that time travel spell that you accidentally made yourself freak out with.” Spike suggested, chuckling to himself.

Lightning looked to Rainbow Dash with a confused look.
“One day Twilight was visited by her future self, and she warned her about something that a catastrophe would occur the following Tuesday. Then Twilight went crazy and started trying to disaster proof the whole of Equestria. And when the disaster was supposed to come, nothing happened, and when nothing happened she used a time travel spell from the Starswirl the Bearded wing of the Canterlot library to go back in time to try and warn her past self not to worry, but past Twilight kept interrupting her before she could finish her warning, starting the crazy streak again.” Rainbow whispered quickly to Lightning who nodded and looked back at Twilight who had gotten up from her futon and started searching through a pile of books.

“When I had my adventure with time travel I immediately started researching everything I could about time and paradoxes.” Twilight began nonchalantly, “I couldn’t have changed the warning no matter what because I’d already seen it happen. If I hadn’t warned myself, I wouldn’t have gone crazy and I wouldn’t have gone back in time.”
“And yet I haven’t found anywhere any evidence of a fully sustainable time travel spell” she said angrily, tossing a book across the room. As she threw more books away from herself Spike’s cheeks inflated and a green flame burst from his mouth, a belching sound accompanying the fire. The fire morphed and turned into a sealed scroll which floated towards Twilight.
“My dearest Twilight” she read aloud “I recently found these books and thought of you and your recent studies of time and thought these may help. I hope that that they do, Princess Celestia”.

As Twilight finished reading three books launched themselves from within the folds of the scroll and landed on the floor in front of her. Twilight’s horn was engulfed in her people magic aura as the three books floated up into the air and hovered in front of Twilight’s face for her to read. As she flicked through the pages a grin started to grow into an elated smile and she started hopping around the room chanting “yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“These are Starswirl the Bearded’s private journals!” Twilight beamed as she ruffled the pages and inhaling deeply. “You can just smell the history” she said waving a dusty journal around.
“There has to be a section about time travel in here” she said as she engrossed herself into the journal’s pages.