//------------------------------//
// 25: 48 hours 
// Story: A New Equestria book the second 
// by ZeirMakavar 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 25
48 Hours.


"Indeed she did, I mean, it took us prodding and poking her for her to tell us any of her problems, ho ever slight." Rarity agreed, smiling as she spoke.
"I know, but... the way she spoke about The Teacher, it..." Twilight said, before sighing. "When we went to The Teacher's cave, it was so dark in their that we couldn't see... I should have noticed then that Rainbow... That The Teacher was taking over her mind... I ear that next time we meet, she might not be Rainbow any more..."
"I don't think she will." Sunset said softly, shaking her head slowly. "From what I could tell at our last meeting, there was things off about her. She kept glancing over her shoulder, as if... As she was looking at somepony, or some thing, that I couldn't." She continued, sighing once more. "If what Miss Heaven Star is right, then that means that something is The Teacher. Who only existed in Rainbow's mind. Until now."
"It's nice to see you made your own way here Red." Rourke said, laughing softly, standing behind where Sunset was sitting, which caused her to jump in shock. "Oh, did I startle you?"
"Of course you did you..." Sunset said angrily, before blinking a bit softly, looking over at the other ponies, who had confused looks on their faces.
"Um... Sunset, why did he call you 'Red'?" Twilight asked, looking from Rourke to Sunset, and back. "Do you... know him?"
"I do... or, I thought I did..." Sunset said, sighing softly. "Back a few of years ago, when we were regularly exchanging letters, as you know I joined the Ravenwood Academy."
"Yes, that was roughly around the time when things started to pick up here... for the worse." Twilight nodded, in agrement.
"Yeah, well both me, and... The Fluttershy over there, we were pulled into an elite group I guess you could say..." Sunset continued, looking over at Rourke. "That would be where I met Rourke, though at the time he called himself Pyro."
"I still do, you know..."
"Either way, I spent the next several months, gathering information on a variety of subjects, including subjects pertaining to Equestria's history."
"Wait... Equestria's history?" Rarity said, speaking up, looking at Sunset even more confused.
"How is that possible? Aren't the worlds separated?" Applejack asked, a confused look on her face as well.
"That's what I thought too." Sunset said softly, sighing. "But evidence began piling up to say they aren't. Or, at least aren't how we thought they were." She added quickly, before looking down at the floor for a bit, taking a deep breath. "So, I spent the time researching anything I could get my hands on, focusing on the link between the worlds. A few months passed, and The Arch-Duchess... she then revealed the existence of The Teacher to us, and what our goal is."
"So, you've known about... her, for a couple of years now then?" Twilight asked, a frown on her face. "Why didn't you warn us?"
"We did." Rourke said softly, before laughing. "We've told you from the beginning about The Teacher."
"What do you mean?" Rarity asked, looking at him now. "We only recently found out about this. And that it was infecting our dear Rainbow Dash."
"What do you think The Knights Templar were for?" Sunset asked, flatly.
"Wait... you mean to say... But... But we were told that Celestia formed them to... combat against..." Twilight began, before several of the missing pieces clicked in her mind. "Celestia knew about The Teacher the entire time... She... She didn't tell us anything... She..."
"She did it to protect us." Sunset interjected, interrupting Twilight. "Now, I don't know how much she knew, but I do know that she knew from the beginning who The Teacher was going to infect. Rourke here... He warned her about it."
"All the way back when she was a little filly."





Twilight sighed softly as she sat in her office, in the city hall. She looked over the updated map that the scouts had given her, detailing the new expansion to the capital, which the ponies had begun calling Lunar City, in honor of Luna, the founder of the small republic they now called home. From the looks of it, The Lunar Republic had three cities on the mainland of the continent, and a city on a small island a few miles off shore. This meant that she was in charge of what would have been a medium sized fief in the old layout of power in Equestria.
As well, she was looking over the census data that the taxponies gathered while gathering the taxes needed to run the cities, including the creation of Railways to connect them. According to this data, there was on average four thousand ponies in the cities, with at least five hundred of them being changelings rom the various hives. This meant that she was ruling over at least twenty-thousand ponies, with only four-thousand, five hundred of them having any military training. And most of that training was from the civilian guard back in Equestria.
"That's probably not going to be enough." Flash Sentry said softly, shaking his head as he spoke. "Well, most likely won't."
"Most likely? Probably? It won't." Twilight said, sighing. "The scouts that got close enough to get numbers, all report that Rai... The Teacher's army numbers in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds." She said, resting her head in her hooves with an exasperated sigh. "If we knew this was going to happen ahead of time, we'd have prepared better."
"Well... there is one thing we could try..." Sunset said, as she looked over a page from one of the reports.
"There is?" Twilight said, blinking in shock.
"Yeah but... There's a price." Sunset said softly, smiling wearily.
"What's the price?" Flash asked, blinking.

"We'd have 48 hours." Sunset said, sighing softly. "48 hours to remove The Teacher from existence, or our entire universe will die."