//------------------------------//
// Case 2 
// Story: The Strange Cases of Twilight Sparkle 
// by DrakoGlyph 
//------------------------------//

	Twilight received the letter fairly promptly, from an exhausted Spike who had ran all the way up to the schoolhouse. She unfurled the letter, reading it and solidifying her plans. She re-entered the schoolhouse, determined to teach them the letter they were missing.
“Are you cooled down, Twilight?” Cheerilee asked.
“Certainly, _ut—“ Twilight stopped in her tracks. Her speech had changed unexpectedly. Instead of pronouncing the letter _, it was simply skipped over.
“Certainly _ut what?” Twilight looked at Cheerilee with a gaping mouth.
“Twilight? Are you okay?” Apple_loom asked.
“I’m… I don’t know, Apple_loom.” Again, the letter _ had vanished from her sentence. She _egan to panic, _earing her fears that something would make her look like a _uffoon. She was making herself look more like one, though.
“You look like you’re panicking, Twilight, do you need a paper ¬_ag to _reathe into?” Sweetie _elle inquired.
“I… what in the hay is happening here?” Twilight whispered to herself. The _lood was rushing to her face as she _lushed. She was em_arassing herself, she could feel it. 
“Perhaps you need to go lie down,” Cheerilee responded. “I’m sure that we can reschedule this speech for a more _eneficial time anyway.”
“_ut, _ut,” Twilight was racking her _rains, trying to figure out what was going on. Every time she tried to pronounce the _, it disappeared. “This makes no sense!”
“What makes no sense, Twilight?” Cheerilee was starting to grow concerned a_out the Alicorn in the room. “I’m sure Apple_loom, Sweetie _elle, and Scootaloo can help you get _ack home and into _ed.”
“I don’t think that’s going to help,” Twilight responded, “we’re missing an entire letter of our alpha_et!”
“I don’t see what you’re getting at, Twilight. The A_C’s have always _een like that.”
“Yet just a_out,” Twilight stifled another panic attack concerned her other attempt to pronounce the letter _, “four minutes ago you were telling me that they were the ACD’s!”
“What are you ram_ling a_out, Twilight? A letter of the alpha_et missing? That’s ridiculous. I studied teaching from a young age, I think I know how to teach a schoolhouse of foals the alpha_et without missing a letter.”
“I think… I think I’ll come _ack…” she dove out the door into a full-fledged panic attack as her _’s were all slipping from her. She flew straight to Fluttershy to take a nice soothing rest in her _utterfly garden.
“Oh, hello, Twilight,” Fluttershy said. 
Finally, some normal conversation, Twilight thought as she landed and walked up to Fluttershy. “I was wondering if I could spend some time in your _utter—“ The letter _ was still missing from her words! This was _ecoming quite the pro_lem.
“Oh, my _utterfly garden? That’s  fine with me. Perhaps you’d like to take a seat on the _ench out there and have a _reak from your Princess duties?”
All the missing _’s were _ugging the _ewildered, pony. She fled from _efore the _enevolent of her friends and flew straight to the Li_rary. Surely the _ooks would _e unharmed!
She looked through the shelves to find ‘Star Swirled the _eareded: The History of Magic.’ Upon finding that the _ was missing form the title, she tore it from the shelf and scanned through the pages, searching out the letter. Instead of every instance of the letter, there was a _lank spot.
Her _reathing reaching a dangerous climax, she was _eginning to get dizzy from the lack of air entering her lungs. She knew exactly what she needed to do: she needed to write Princess Celestia a_out this turn of events. She pulled out her quill and paper, _eginning the letter:

Dear Princess Celestia,

I fear that there is a crisis going on here in Ponyville. We seem to have completely lost the letter ‘_’

She stopped there as she realized the _ that she had just written had vanished _efore her eyes. She tried rewriting it over and over, _ut every time, it disappeared as all those _efore it. Frantically, she scri__led faster and faster, trying to write fast enough to make the _ stay. Soon, she escalated to greater forms of marking the page. She tried using magic to mark it, _ut that, too, disappeared from the page. She tried singing it into the page with a _randing iron, and again, the _ disappeared as the em_ers cooled.
Evermore curious, she placed coals out on the ground in the form of the letter _, _ut the coals disappeared. She tried to kick through them, _ut they were definitely gone. To where, she wasn’t sure. She would have to rewrite the letter without the second letter of her alpha_et.

Dear Princess Celestia,

I fear that there is a crisis going on here in Ponyville. We seemed to have completely lost a letter of our writing system. Furthermore, when we try to say the missing letter, it simply stays mute. Sooner or later, we will not have the capacity to distinguish the letter anymore, and as such, we will potentially sacrifice a large amount of our society to this forgotten letter. If it is happening to the second letter, what is to say that no further letters will find themselves disappearing as well?

Your Most Faithful Student,

Princess Twilight Sparkle.


Dearest Twilight,

I do not understand what you mean when you say that a letter of the writing system has vanished. As far as I am aware, I have used all 25 today. Wherever do you get that there was ever another letter in the system?
I sincerely think that you need a spa day to relax. Perhaps you can take tomorrow to do just that?

Sincerely,

Princess Celestia