This is the reconstruction of the remainder of Day 43 (The Confrontation) which was ripped out of my journal. I began reconstruction of this entry on Day 47.48 I completed reconstruction on Day 47 .48

Post-hoc: I'm finishing this entry now, but I swear I'm a total mess after that nap. I'm hungry again (finished off my supplies) and my muscles ache and judging by the flooring in here I think I may have had, um, some kind of "interesting" dream if you know what I mean (I know, I know, gross) even though there's no way I had time to dream (see below) so it's probably just my body rebelling against everything that's happened lately. Anyway, by the position of the Sun, I can tell that not much time has passed. It's kind of hard to believe with how enervated I feel again, but I think dark magic really drained my energy more than I'd expected. I'm also unusually horny at the moment, despite the evidence on the floor, so I'm not sure what to do about that.

Since it's still before noon, I should have more than enough time to finish the remaining rewrites. I need to get to Ponyville before Day 48.

When I left off, we were right at the climax of the story. I'd probably feel guilty about that if someone had to read this thing in installments! But I'm pretty sure you're not easy reading material, Journal, so I doubt you'll be much use except to Princess Celestia and maybe someday the historical section the Canterlot Archives. (I probably have a swollen ego again.)

My horn began to glow like fire, and for a moment I actually thought of aiming at Shining Armor's balls. I almost cracked a smile at that, however, so I tried to clear my mind.

"Bitches. Now," my brother ordered, smacking his own cutie mark with a hoof as he stood there in that odd reared-up manner. (For the record, given my experiences in alternate universes I knew I could stand up like that too, but it would just be weird.)

Post-hoc: Oh snap. I have a really weird theory all of a sudden. What if that's not my brother, but "her" brother? I mean, the other Twilight Sparkle clone in the world where ponies look like monkeys and stand up that way and wear way too many clothes? I mean, it doesn't fit that universe exactly (they're even even more prudish about sex there, and the portal is still closed), but some other universe with similar traits...?

Hmm. It's a very tempting thought, but it fits none of the data. There hasn't been any evidence of a double of any of the ponies involved in this mystery, or a disappearance for even a short period of time. So it just can't be alternates or changelings. But pony, I really wish it could. I would love for my dear, sweet brother to still be out there somewhere, just as normal as ever.

I can't think about this. It makes me too sad. However, I will remember the universe angle for later. Maybe that has something to do with all of this.

Having been summoned, the "bitches" (Rarity and Fluttershy, of course) calmly walked over to where my brother stood.

Rarity turned around and faced us, and knelt by my brother's right (my left) side, just in front of Cadance. "I'm sorry Twilight, but you knew this was coming," she said.

Fluttershy knelt on his other side. "I'm not sorry," she said, and grinned, looking straight at me, her eyes glowing red. I'm certain that fear showed on my face just then. "We're simply doing what's best for you and all of our friends, Twilight. You want to do things the hard way, and so that's what we have to do. Um, if that's okay with you, I mean," she said, with a blush. (I'm not entirely certain how to read Fluttershy's emotions anymore.)

Post-hoc: I just now remember something odd that I hadn't written about originally. After Rarity and Fluttershy walked up, Shining Armor looked kind of strangely past me, then a broad grin crossed his face. What was he looking at? I turned my head and looked back toward Applejack and Pinkie. AJ just shrugged. I still have no idea what that was about. Maybe he was just thinking of something.

"Oh, we're gonna do it the hard way all right!" said Rainbow Dash, chomping at the figurative bit. She was pretty angry. I've seen her be competitive but never this angry, and I was starting to worry it might affect her judgment.

Brother's horn glowed, and a force dome extended around all four of them. It glowed a second time, and there was a bashing sound at the door.

"They're comin' in, Twi!" said Applejack. Then, with enough force to make a very audible CRACK throughout the entire chamber, she thrust a forehoof down into the flooring, causing it to crunch and buckle. She copied the action with the other hoof, planted her forehooves firmly into the grooves she'd created, and firmly braced the door with her muscular rear legs. Another smashing sound hit, but the door held firm. In all honesty, it was probably holding more because of Applejack's strength than the iron bars and lasso.

"You can't escape, Twilight. We run the Kingdom," said Brother. "We planned for every contingency. In a moment, five garrisons will march through those doors, hopefully without hurting AJ in the process, and take you all prisoner. There is no exit. It's too dangerous to fly with the weather, and the train is blocked. It doesn't have to be like this, though. I would prefer we spend the next three days as friends rather than having to deal with your obstinance, especially since there is no need for anypony to suffer."

"That doesn't sound like a lot of OP-tions," said Pinkie Pie in a nervous, sing-songy voice.

"Twilight, do something. Power of friendship, or laser blasts, or whatever crazy unicorn junk you got up that horn-shaped sleeve of yours," said Rainbow Dash. "Or just tell me whose butt to kick."

Applejack grunted with each slam against the door. "Bucky and Kicks can't hold 'em forever, Twilight, I'm sorry. But I'll stay here until they mow me down. Y'all best do somethin' soon, if you're gonna do anythin' at all."

Okay so I was under a little bit of pressure. There weren't many options. Our strengths were Rainbow Dash's speed and flying ability, and my magic. Pinkie has a lot of strengths but they tend to be kind of random and I wasn't going to bet the farm on those just yet.

Journal, making life-or-death decisions is the hardest thing about being a Princess. Every day, some piece of me regrets ever having become one.

I sent a blast toward a stained-glass window, and Shining Armor countered with a shield. It ricocheted and blew a chunk of material out from the floor nearby (fortunately not in our direction). As I'd suspected, I would need to take him out first or I wouldn't get anywhere. While my brother is no match for me in a fair fight, he's still an outstanding mage, and all he had to do was slow me down for a few minutes. I didn't have enough time, so I did what I do best.

I improvised.

I took an educated guess that Brother's dome shield was not a full sphere, as that would have made it more unwieldy to forge and would have rooted it too firmly in the material plane. Mentally, I quickly calculated the exact angle it would take to rocket a spell directly below the imagined sphere, plus the angle required to bounce it off of a virtual support vector and end up inside the dome. Now, I didn't expect this would work on the first try, or even at all. It was one hell of a bank shot with only a few seconds to make the calculation.

The spell I chose was a portal, because it's virtual enough that I could get it to work, unlike a mana burst. My horn glowed and shimmered like crazy, and everypony in the room braced for impact. Brother strengthened his shield wall. I shot a burst of energy downward, which created a mana tunnel about the size of my hoof right next to me in the floor. Another mana tunnel appeared behind Shining Armor. Nopony saw it but me. I grinned. He looked worried. He recognized the mana tunnel but clearly didn't comprehend what was coming.

"Brother, you of all ponies should know better than to mess with Princess Twilight Motherfucking Sparkle," I said, showboating a bit. (In my defense, I was trying to get in his head like he got into mine. Plus, Rainbow Dash was there and she's fun to impress.)

Of course I didn't realize that, once again, I had said something ludicrous and stupid. Rarity and Cadance and Pinkie Pie (gee thanks Pinkie) all cracked up at once and started laughing. Dash facehoofed. Prince Shining Armor, on the other hand, smiled a gentle smile back at me.

"Twilie, I would be proud of you if you made love to Mother. She's an amazing ma—"

"Oh would you just fucking shut it!!!" I yelled, and launched a heavy blast directly into the hole.

The aftermath was immediate, and exactly what I'd hoped for. Brother collapsed from being struck in the back with the equivalent of a plasma bolt. I knew he was wearing armor, so he'd be fine, but it would sting in the morning. The others under the dome were momentarily blinded. The dome collapsed almost immediately.

"Master!" Princess Cadance cried out, dropping to lift him up. "HE'S YOUR BROTHER!!!" she screamed at me, teary-eyed.

"I'm not sure of that anymore. But he'll live," I said. I quickly mana-blasted out a stained-glass window on the southern side of the room. "Dash, Canterlot, now. Watch out for missiles," I ordered.

"On my..." she said, but I never heard the "way" because she'd already left.

"How dare you risk the life of our friend!" said Rarity.

"Call them off, love," Shining Armor said to Cadance, still lying face down and barely able to speak. "We have to stop Dash before she kills herself."

Princess Cadance nodded, her mascara running from tears, and suddenly the repeated smashing sound from the doorway stopped. Applejack fell to the floor, exhausted. I'm not sure how Cadance contacted the guards; it mystified me, but I was distracted at the moment. "They're going to try to take her down," said Cadance.

"She's doing what needs to be done, and any one of us would do the same," I said. "You have no hope of catching her."

"Twilight, she's not credible. I mean, I grew up with her," said Fluttershy, her face sad. "Nopony except the Princesses could possibly believe her and she won't get to them in time. She could be killed out there in the weather! You never should have done this..."

"Pinkie, Spike, on." Spike jumped on my back.

"Um, Twilight? Are you sure this is a good idea?" Pinkie Pie asked. "You do know I weigh about eleventeen times what you do, right?"

"Twilie, please don't risk your life too, it's not worth..." blah blah blah blah blah. I stopped listening to him entirely.

"I can use magic to support your weight. It will be tricky, but not impossible. Applejack! Come on!" I said. "AJ?"

I glanced behind me and saw AJ shakily rising to her hooves. "Twi, you know darn well you can't handle two earth ponies. I can't even believe you could handle one. Take Spike, and if you're sure, Pinkie. I'm stayin'."

"No!" I said, tearing up. "I can't leave you here!"

"She's right. I can stay too," said Pinkie Pie. "Just go and be safe."

"I am taking you all."

"No y'ain't, sugarcube. Look, we both know I'm already too far gone, and I'm feelin' it even now. I'm not just a burden, I'm a danger. Now GO."

"You're fine, Apple—"

"Twilight Sparkle! If you don't take Pinkie and Spike out of here this instant I swear to you I will come right over there and help your brother shove his thick incestuous stallion cock right up your Sundamn stubborn unicorn asshole. And then we can all take turns fuckin' each other and everypony can live creepily ever after so y'all best GIT before I decide to start stretchin' you out with my own four hooves!" she said.

But that's the thing about Applejack... she's a terrible liar. Still, I knew she was right that I had no chance of bringing them both, and Pinkie was in much better condition to travel. I slung Pinkie and Spike onto my back and started running for the window, blasting out more glass with a couple of small mana bolts so I could hop-and-glide just in case flying wasn't going to work after all.

"Twilie stop, please!" my brother said, but we both knew that wasn't going to stop us. I heard Cadance telling Applejack to calm down, and tried to put it out of mind as I spread my wings and jumped and all three of us fell like a lead ingot in quicksand.

Spike was screaming, of course, and Pinkie Pie was whooping with joy, of course. It took a second or two (which is a very long time when you're falling) to right myself and correct for Pinkie Pie's weight. My Moon that pony is heavy! I knew earth ponies were heavy, but this was something else entirely. It took all my magical focus to counterbalance her mass with gravity magic, and we were only ascending slowly that way. I was just as fatigued physically and didn't know how long I could continue flapping. Below us, guards were running and several were aiming some kind of a projectile weapon. They had large bags with them, I presume to break our falls after they knocked us out of the air.

The first projectile whizzed right by my left wing. I didn't have the mobility to steer free of them like Rainbow Dash would have (though in all likelihood she left the Empire before they even knew she'd taken to the air). The next two I had to block with magic, and each shield was simple and effective but we started to descend because I couldn't maintain all of the gravity magic at the same time. I was already at my limit.

"I'll jump," Pinkie Pie volunteered. "You can't make it with me. I'll aim for a roof, I'm pretty good at falling—"

"No. I have to bring you. I have to get from here, to there..." the wheels in my head turned painfully quickly (which was also eating up precious physical energy; brain power takes a ton of that, believe it or not).

"Eureka!" I shouted, just as we started to near the tops of houses with guards climbing up onto them.

Post-hoc: It's probably pretty clear by now that when I have to come up with a plan in not nearly enough time, I tend to come up with a crazy plan. Like, really super crazy, such as shoving my horn into somepony's mouth, or using dark magic while paralyzed, or teleporting in the middle of a dre—

Wait. I think I remember having a dream during my nap. I don't think I was asleep long enough to dream. It doesn't make sense, but I definitely had one. Horsecrap. I can't remember what it was about, but... I feel like it was very important. I need to address this after I return to Ponyville.

Anyway, crazy plan. Right.

I teleported all three of us much higher into the air, and we began to descend again. Faster this time, since I decided to use glide power (I was almost out of stamina reserves; remember, I hadn't eaten in over a day).

"Twilight, you can't shield us from the weather if you're using the gravity spell, can you?" Spike asked. "I don't want to say we need to come back for Pinkie, but-"

"Twilight, um, I think I need to be lower than this to jump. It would be fun, but then Pinkie splat would not be..." said Pinkie Pie.

I grinned. "We're not going through the weather."

Spike gulped. "Oh... shit."

"Spike, language," I said.

"Sorry, but c'mon you have been cussing up a storm lately. Gimme a break," he said.

"Wait," said Pinkie Pie. "What's shit, exactly? Is shit bad? Is this bad shit or good shit, because it sounds like bad shit... It's bad shit isn't it?" she said, speaking more to Spike than to me.

"I have no idea what Twilight has planned, which means it's probably something she's never tried before," said Spike. "And that usually means it's something nopony has ever tried before. Like, ever, in the entire history of Equestria."

"So hold on tight?" Pinkie Pie said, excitedly gripping my shoulders.

"Yep," I responded. "This might be a little uncomfortable. Try not to emesis."

"What's—"

"She means don't vomit, Pinkie."

"Oh! Whee...?" said an uncertain Pinkie Pie. I turned off all of the magic fields and we started dropping toward the buildings below.

I need to cover some theory now. Teleportation is a very difficult spell to pull off, but extremely useful, which makes it vital to practice. The manner in which it works is very complicated, as it involves triangulation in more than three-space in order to connect two points through a temporary magical field which emulates a wormhole around the subject (thus ensuring nothing else can go along for the ride), so a solid grasp of both higher mathematics and physics is required, as well as lightning-quick calculations if you're doing it on-the-fly. The main downside to teleportation is there is a severe distance limit past which point it becomes impractical in terms of the amount of magical energy required (the energy requirement goes up exponentially with distance).

The epiphany I had was realizing I could create a tunnel (this is a very rough analogy) between two very distant points by setting off a chain-reaction of teleports one after the other, each one occurring less than one-tenth of a second after the previous teleport. The teleport chain needed to be that fast or I wouldn't be able to do it in a cost-effective manner (the details, again, are complicated and don't fit the "tunnel" analogy at all). But clearly I couldn't set up a chain crossing dozens of kilometers because of the distance, right?

I'm actually pretty proud of this one! I think I'll call it the "Twiliport Loop". (Okay, maybe that name needs work.) My solution was to very carefully aim our forward momentum at the last moment toward the horizon, then prep five teleports. As each teleport went off, I had to re-trigger another one further ahead. The only reason this was possible was that the distance between jumps could be fixed perfectly. So, I'd basically be recasting the exact same spell over and over about a dozen times per second for maybe half a minute.

However, this wouldn't normally work because as we soar through the air, our momentum changes and I wouldn't be able to recalculate quickly enough (not even I can do differential calculus in a hundredth of a second, and that limitation has to do with neurons and the lightspeed barrier). The spell had to be identical! Like, in every possible respect except keyed to a relative metric. But that can only happen if the teleports are instantaneous, and I can't cast spells infinitely quickly.

Fortunately, a quirk of magic allowed it to work. The delay between castings wasn't because there was any gap in the teleports, but because the teleportation process itself takes time to register magically. It's a lot like how light "slows down" in a medium that conducts electromagnetism because of how electric charges can withdraw and return virtual energy from light... Hmm. Well, I can't explain that in any detail in less than two hundred pages so I'll assume you're already familiar with quantum electromagnetic theory, Journal. But it was kind of like that. We were slowed enough that I had time to cast spells, but the slowing wasn't because the teleports weren't instantaneous.

This meant we covered exactly zero distance between each of the teleports. In other words, we were never anywhere in the intervening space. Or, more accurately, we were everywhere in the intervening space all at once, and as such we weren't really at any one location. We were at all teleport locations at any given instant: less at one, more at another, nearly zero at some, but always at all of them, until we exited the last one. This was true even though I hadn't cast the teleports yet because (oops) I may have accidentally gone faster than the speed of light.

I should probably say something here in case a mage reads this someday. Don't do this. Seriously, don't try something like this unless you are completely certain about what you are doing. Going faster than c is not a good thing for reality. In this case, the magic time-drain caused a small second or two of buffer, which limited the effects substantially because the actual transit still fell within the limit. However, if I had done this over a significantly larger distance, or if I weren't well-schooled in Neighvikov's Consistency Principle from previous time-travel shenanigans (see below), it could have resulted in some paradoxical disasters. You know, the kind that unmake reality. The "bad" kind.

The effects that did happen were as follows. First, the participants went both forwards and backwards through time, and we aged for about thirty seconds when only a couple of seconds passed relative to Equestria. This applied to the three of us, one-half of a magic shield (see below), and a spherical volume of air; and also a corresponding amount of air travelling in the opposite direction. Please note that our aging was not an effect of our velocity, but an effect of the magic buffer interacting with velocity. Normally, time would move more slowly for us relative to Equestria if we were moving very quickly. And time actually did move more slowly for us. But we still ended up with much more of it, because we (technically speaking) resonated back and forth through multiple iterations of the tunnel: twice for each portal.

Second, causality was broken just a teensie-tiny bit. I knew the moment we started that we had already made it, but I still had to keep up the effort because I had no choice at that point (I was familiar with the paradoxes, as mentioned above).

When we hit the exit point, something interesting happened. First of all, we let off a sonic boom. Our eardrums would have exploded, except that halfway through the teleport process I somehow had the presence of mind to cast a shield around us. So we had approximately half a shield in transit, even though that isn't normally possible. I'm not sure what I was thinking at the time. I guess the shield was in case we were about to plow into something awful, but I knew it probably would not allow us to survive a collision with anything harder than a cloud. Still, it was a good idea and one that probably saved all of us from a horrible death. I could see the exit point the moment we began, so I already knew we would be going unexpectedly fast when we finally ejected from the "tunnel" and I guessed (correctly) it might even be faster than Rainbow Dash can fly. So while casting a dozen spells per second, and after forming a probably-useless shield while in a crazy non-existent location, I had about ten seconds to figure out how to slow down our cannonball-selves once we exited but before we died from massive impact damage.

I could have planned to divert our forward momentum upwards, or turn it into angular momentum or some other kind of energy, but I knew in either case the forces would cause me to lose consciousness and then we would all be screwed. I also didn't trust re-teleporting to normalize momentum because I didn't have the time to make the calculations safe. Now, I would have tried that if I had run out of ingeniously stupid ideas, but I came up with one last one.

Post-hoc: I'm not nearly as amazingly-smart as I seem, even though I'm bragging a little about how awesome this all was. If you were a mage thrust into a deadly situation, Journal, you'd come up with some strange plans, too. I'm just well-learned and well-practiced. Ponies actually don't "get me" when I study things I already know, like math and physics and thaumaturgy. Now do you see why I study so much? Magical study to me is like, well; athletic training for Daring Do. We're pegasi of a feather, in a way! (Okay, now I'm going overboard.)

As soon as we were travelling faster than anypony ever should have, I did a quick calculation and opened two portals, and that was that. Now, the details of this one I actually can't explain unless you've had years of thaumaturgy and physics. There is no good analogy that begins to explain it. I can explain what it must have looked like to an outside observer, though. It looked kind of like I opened a portal in front of us, followed by a second portal at the same time just in back of the first one (the moment we crossed over it) but with opposite momentum (both three-momentum and angular momentum if you want to be picky about it). So our purple shield-sphere wobbled in midair sandwiched between two portals looking as though we had split into two sets of ponies going in opposite directions (which, to be fair, we actually had) and we passed through ourselves over and over until the magical field's resistance to itself began to slow us down, and finally at some point the shields and ponies merged together and the portals and shield disappeared and we started to fall straight down, in the more natural sense (as in, the "normal" physics that should happen when you're not doing insanely stupid things with magic).

I blacked out while there were still two of me passing through ourselves (both of us were knocked out symmetrically, of course). Pinkie and Spike both claim the fall was about seven stories, which sounds impossible but Pinkie Pie survived it with minor injuries. Spike managed to ride me down like a glider, but we were both banged up in the process. We were in the hills to the northeast of Sweet Apple Acres, only a few hours journey by hoof, but in no condition to travel. Pinkie Pie and Spike found water and some berries and managed to nurse me back to consciousness, but I sat shivering (it wasn't cold out, so I think I'd made myself ill from the magical trauma of evocation overexertion) for a few hours before I was able to talk, and then walk, and then finally I could write, and that's when I finished this entry. Er, initially finished it, I mean.

Some other stuff may have happened, but... I don't think it bears mention anymore.

Post-hoc: In retrospect, I never should have done any of this, and I would not do it again. I should have submitted to my brother. Not because I wanted to, but for the safety of my friends. They were right. My actions were dangerous and selfish. I'm still glad that everything worked out, of course, but I can't do anything like this ever again. From here on out, my neck will be the only one I will risk. I'm sure that's probably too much as far as all of my friends are concerned, but I'm far too motivated to put things right. Once I talk to Celestia I'm sure we can all get together and work this stuff out.

Besides, I have some tough questions for her. I don't like what I've heard, and I'm not sure it's all lies anymore. I'm starting to feel like there's a lot more to this mystery than a cult or something called the Spring Order and some vamponies. I mean, I think there may be more than one side in play with questionable motivations.

Then again, maybe I'm just hoping that's true. If it were, I might be forced to choose between two imperfect sides. I could consider joining my brother again, and maybe everything would finally make sense again in his arms, no matter what that might mean for me. It disgusts me, yes; but I dearly miss the strength and security of Shining Armor's simple hugs. Somehow I have to win them back.