The Chrono Shifter

Chapter 2:

It was very silent for the first half hour, but you could tell (especially from Twilight and Princess Celestia’s expression) that they wanted to ask me and Ditzy questions about the doctor.

As Ditzy left for the kitchen to bring us a cake the doctor had wanted her to bring out while he was away, Twilight and Celestia began asking me questions.

“So…” Twilight began in a curious tone, “how long have you known this pony Minuette? He called you his apprentice, but I don’t remember any earth pony professors in Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns. How did you two meet, exactly?”

“Well…” I began, trying to remain calm. “I met him when I was a little filly. One day our friend, Lyra, invited me to Ponyville to see a filly she was really close to; probably the main reason she moved out there. While walking to her house, he accidentally ran into me. He apologized and said he was in a hurry, that he was on the brink of a new breakthrough. It was then that he noticed my cutie mark, which looked remarkably like his. He began introducing himself and asked me if I was interested in becoming his apprentice. At first I was frightened by him (he was a stranger after all) but then he gave me a card and told me if my parents thought it was okay, he would teach me everything he knew. Just before Lyra and I headed back to Canterlot, I asked him to come visit my parents. After a long conversation, they agreed that I could visit him on all my breaks. He taught me the wonders of science and the world around us, and we went on tons of adventures together. Those were some of the best times of my life.”

“I have to say,” Celestia began, with and intrigued looked, “I have never met a pony like him before. If Twilight hadn’t told me to come over here on your request, I wouldn’t have known he existed. From what I can tell with all these inventions surrounding us, he’s very gifted. The way you speak of him, I’m a bit surprised you hadn’t spoken about him till now. Why is it only now we have learned of this genius earth pony?”

All of the princesses’ eyes were aimed at me. Curious as to why I had kept my mentor a secret from them. “I was going to talk about him at some point. If anypony deserved to be recognized in Equestria it would be him, but he told me to keep this between us. He said he had no interest in awards or medals, and that all the attention would interrupt his work.”

“So why contact us now?” Princess Luna asked. “You can’t expect us to believe he asked you to have Twilight contact us all here just to tell us his plans to meet us in the future?”

“That might just be it auntie Luna,” Mi Amore Cadenza said. “From the way he spoke, it sounded like he really wanted to be sure you were ready to meet him. He probably asked for me so I could spread the word for my descendants to look out for him. He probably intends to give us some heads up on what happens in the future and knows we are responsible enough to not disrupt the time stream.”

They all looked at her and agreed on that theory. Ditzy soon came in with a cake, which Celestia looked eager to dig into. As we all enjoyed a little cake Twilight started asking me what kind of adventures we went on. I decided to go ahead and speak about our adventures; at that point, it didn’t matter if they knew about it.

For hours, I spoke about the journey we took to the center of the planet, aided by Daring Do; Twilight seemed to know about the adventure in one of her novels and flipped when she discovered the professor and student in the book was the two of us. I mentioned our trip to the moon with a new type of substance the doctor had invented; Princess Luna seemed very intrigued by that story. I had also mentioned a few mysterious islands we had visited. I, of course, also talked about the common things I had learned from him over the years. Near the end I had decided to ask Twilight an important question.

“I’m a little surprised that you let him use this device without much of a fuss. What made you let him go with his plans instead of destroying the device like you probably planned?”

She looked at me with a sheepish grin. After all these years, even when she became a princess, I had already known what she was going to say, I just needed to hear her admit it.

“It was my own curiosity,” she admitted, “He said what his intentions were and the scientist in me said it needed to be done.”

Everypony began to laugh at her response. Twilight gave off the brightest shade of red on her face, trying to regain her composure.

It at that moment we saw a bright flash of light and then saw that the chrono shifter had returned with the doctor in it.  He looked a hot mess. His mane was scruffy with dirt all in it. He looked as if he had been crawling around in mud and you could see scratches all around him. And you could tell his bowtie was barely on his neck; looking like something had tried to grab hold of him.

He collapsed to the ground and appeared unconscious. Ditzy and I rushed over to see how he was. As we approached him he wrapped his hooves around us in a big hug. After a moment he let us go and kissed Ditzy on the lips. She didn’t fight back as he continued and simply embraced it. As they continued to kiss, everypony was looking at one another with puzzled looks.

Suddenly, a timer was heard in the kitchen and the doctor let go of Ditzy and ran in. “Ditzy, my love, could come over here and help me? I need to prepare dinner for my guests.” Ditzy flew in with the biggest smile I had ever seen on her face.

As everyone sat down for dinner, everypony was observing the doctor. He shoveled in his meal as if he hadn’t had anything big to eat in days. Nopony knew what to say, but everypony wanted to say something. Eventually, Princess Celestia spoke up.

“I can see from the way you look that it was quite a journey. What exactly happened while you where gone and for how long was it?”

Doctor Whooves stopped eating and look up at everypony. “My word, how rude of me. I really do have some explaining to do, don’t I? First of all, I should inform you all I have been gone for around a week.” Everypony looked at him in shock.

“Second, I will tell you everything that happened on my journey, but you must not interrupt me as I explain. What I will say may confuse you and I’ll do my best to explain what I saw. After I’m done you can ask all the questions you want. Is that alright with everypony here?” Everypony in the room shook their head in agreement and the doctor smiled.

“Okay, let me start with when I first waved goodbye.”