The Time of Storms

As she placed the steaming mug of vile-smelling brew on the marble table in front of Rainbow Dash, Twilight took theopportunity to scrutinise the interloper pretending to be her friend up close; it was odd how every detail was almost perfect, yet they had managed to get the age so spectacularly wrong. She even had the same odour as Rainbow Dash, for Celestia's sake: that peculiarly airy scent that clung so deeply to her, an aromatic testament to her thousands of hours spent travelling through the skies of Equestria. If she, it, was a Changeling or another shape-shifting species, Twilight knew it was imperative that she figure out what their plan was before anypony else came to harm.

Rainbow Dash delightedly wrapped her hoof around the cup, enjoying the warmth that thrilled through her, and brought it to her lips; she inhaled deeply, savouring the pungent fragrance rising from the dark brown liquid within. With her eyes half-closed, she said to Twilight, “Princess Celestia gave this blend to you as a castle-warming gift, even though she knows that you don't drink coffee.”

“How did you know?” asked Twilight, trying to mask the surprise that she so keenly felt as she took a seat opposite her. Applejack was still hovering uncertainly behind the impostor, presumably ready to tackle her to the ground if she tried to escape once her ruse was uncovered. “I never told you, uh, Rainbow Dash, about that.”

“It was my idea,” Rainbow Dash said, offering Twilight a tight grin before taking a sip of her drink and sighing in satisfaction as the zesty taste tickled her tastebuds. “It's my favourite flavour, from Saddle Arabia, and I wanted to make sure that you had some waiting for me when I got back home.”

Looking at each other again in obvious befuddlement, it was clear that Twilight and Applejack's thoughts lined up perfectly regarding the doppelgänger: it might not be Rainbow Dash, but it sure acts like her.

Applejack slammed a hoof down on the table, almost putting a dent in its smooth alabaster surface and startling Twilight into sitting bolt upright just as she was beginning to slouch. Rainbow Dash seemed to take no notice of her eruption, contenting herself with her drink instead. “Listen, whoever or whatever you are, I want to know what's going on here. I just saw my best friend get vaporised by lightning – saving my life in the process – and then you show up here moments later pretending to be her. Was the storm something to do with you? Was it a Changeling, or somepony else's, plot to replace one of us?”

Leaning forward, Rainbow Dash replaced her half-empty mug on the table and said, “All right.” She gave Twilight a significant look. “You were mostly correct about the storm. It did activate my weather magic and I was teleported somewhere … or rather, somewhen. I wasn't displaced in space, but in time, Twilight.”

“But that's-” she stopped, pursing her lips, catching herself before uttering a word that had ceased to have much meaning considering all the things that she'd seen and done over the past few years “-very, very unlikely.”

“Where, or rather when, did you end up?” Applejack asked sceptically, still not believing a word of this. She leaned on the back of Rainbow Dash's chair, eyes transfixed on her greying mane.

“I was still in Sweet Apple Acres, but twenty-five years in the past,” Rainbow Dash replied, turning to face Applejack. “Obviously I didn't know that at first and I kept calling out for you, but when I found a young Big Mac and a young...er Granny Smith, it started to click that something wasn't quite right. I thought it was because of the storm at first, that it had made everypony younger or something, but when I got back to Ponyville to investigate and found a newspaper … well, to cut a long story slightly shorter, I learned that I'd somehow ended up travelling back in time.”

Despite her desire to remain aloof, Twilight found the story concocted by Rainbow Dash to be intriguing; from her own experiences, she knew that time-travel was indeed possible. She'd gone through dozens of loops – each of them depicting progressively more dire fates for the future of Equestria – during her battle with the wayward Starlight Glimmer after all. She shuddered inwardly. Even after all this time, even though things had worked out just fine, it was still difficult to think about all those versions of her home where things had gone so badly wrong.

All those versions of her friends who didn't get their happy endings.

Not helped by the sudden revelation that there was an unknown force out there, this storm of which Rainbow Dash spoke, capable of sending ponies on journeys through time. It was the kind of thing, should it fall into the wrong hooves, that could prove to be incredibly dangerous.

“What did you do after making this discovery?” Twilight asked softly.

This drew a questioning look from Applejack. “You don't actually believe her, do you?”

“I'm keeping an open-mind, like I said,” replied Twilight, raising a hoof to indicate to Applejack to remain calm.

“I took a page out of The Book of Twilight as a matter of fact,” Rainbow Dash said with a small smile, taking another sip of her almost-forgotten drink. “I flew to Canterlot Castle to speak with the princess. I figured that if anypony could help me out it would be her.”

“And she believed your story?” Twilight asked, raising an eyebrow.

“She did.” Rainbow Dash inclined her head slightly. “In fact, it wasn't the first time that she'd heard it either. She's been aware of the storms for hundreds of years now. That she knows of, anyway, at least a hundred or so pegasi have been displaced by them.”

“So it really does only affect pegasus ponies?” Twilight furrowed her brow, deep in thought.

“Yeah, it's something to do with our unique weather magic, but don't ask me to explain the nitty-gritty of it,” said Rainbow Dash, fiddling with her hooves. “It's pretty much random where – when, sorry – you end up, too. I was luckier than most to still be relatively close to the present. What I think of as the present, that is. Others, well-” she felt her expression turn momentarily morose and she shook her head. If there was a fate more awful than being cut off from your loved ones by the cruel, uncaring barriers of time, then she didn't want to know about it.

“Why didn't Princess Celestia ever say anything to me about them, then?” asked Twilight curiously, wondering out loud. “I mean, if they're so powerful, so dangerous, you'd think that they'd be mentioned somewhere in the archives. I've never read about anything even remotely similar to one of these … time storms.”

“They're one of a few things that Celestia has classified as top secret,” Rainbow Dash said, adjusting her posture as her back began to seize up. The things they DON'T tell you about getting older. “Because of the possibility of screwing up the timeline beyond repair, she didn't want Sombra, Tirek, Chrysalis or anypony else to have access to a potential form of time-travel. If any of them were able to figure out how to harness the storms, how to control them, then you could kiss the Equestria that you know and love goodbye.”

That, at least, made sense; having seen firsthoof the devastation that could be caused by somepony misusing a time-travel spell, Twilight understood why Celestia wouldn't want there to be any information regarding it in the public domain. “Couldn't she have used Star Swirl's spell to send you and the others home?”

Rainbow Dash shook her head. “Because I'd travelled in time using unnatural means, it did something to my body that made it impossible to use the spell successfully. Some kind of-” she screwed up her eyes in concentration, trying to remember the exact words that Celestia had used “-magical interference wave. It didn't work on any of the other affected pegasi either. No, the best that Celestia could do was offer to resettle us.”

“Resettle?” asked Applejack.

“She couldn't very well let us return to our homes with our knowledge of the future,” said Rainbow Dash, her tone barely above a whisper, “otherwise we ran the risk – even accidentally – of making changes in the timeline. Since I wasn't allowed to go back to Cloudsdale or Ponyville, I ended up staying in Canterlot until … well, until I caught up with the present.”

Twilight wasn't slow in detecting the audible note of sadness in Rainbow Dash's voice. “Have you … been alone all this time?”

“Not alone exactly.” Rainbow Dash sighed softly. “But yeah, I was pretty much forbidden – for fairly obvious reasons – from forming close relationships with anypony. Just in case,” she added dryly for emphasis.

Even Applejack's expression had softened somewhat at that. “It must've been terrible, sugarcube,” she said, placing her hoof on Rainbow Dash's tensed shoulder before she even realised what she was doing. Not that she'd ever shown any inclinations in that direction, to be suddenly told that you couldn't become involved with anypony for fear of the repercussions must've been difficult for Rainbow Dash to take.

Rainbow Dash smiled warmly, dabbing at her suddenly moist eyes with a hoof, grateful that Applejack was finally beginning to warm up to her, if not necessarily believe her story. “The days weren't so bad. I got to hang out with Celestia a bit, give her some pointers-”

“-Pointers?” asked Twilight incredulously, her eyes going wide. “You gave Princess Celestia pointers?”

Suppressing a snicker, Rainbow Dash said by way of clarification, “Nothing too on the snout or anything, Twilight. With Nightmare Moon's return imminent, she was obviously a bit worried about how things were going to turn out should she fail to free Luna from her clutches. I, uh, may have been the one to suggest to her that a certain purple unicorn would have a very important part to play in the future.”

“You're saying that you're responsible for Celestia inviting me to try-out for the School for Gifted Unicorns?”

Rainbow Dash favoured Twilight with one of her trademark obnoxious grins. “You're welcome. If you've ever wondered why she's always seemed so calm whenever things started to get a little bit chaotic, or why she's had such a high degree of confidence in you, well, now you know.”

Applejack and Twilight exchanged glances, shaking their heads as one. “So what now?” Twilight asked, and she wasn't really sure who she was directing the question toward. This entire night had been incredibly tiring for all involved, and the morning wasn't going to get any easier. She baulked at the prospect of having to explain all of this to everypony in town.

“I think we could all do with a good night's sleep,” Rainbow Dash said sagely, noticing that her friends could barely keep their eyes open any more. Adrenaline and coffee were all well and good in the short term, but they could only do so much, and their effects were already beginning to wear off. The promise of getting to sleep in her own bed again for the first time in twenty-five years – to say nothing of seeing Tank again after so long, though from his perspective it would only have been a matter of hours since she'd gone out flying earlier that evening – had her practically salivating. Stretching out her creaking limbs and fighting to suppress a yawn, she added, “Everything else we can sort out later, yeah?”