Sparkyll and Hyde

by Dragon Spire

Act II: Chapter Two

Act II: Chapter Two:
Hollow

Gifts were a wonderful thing. Store-bought, or hoof-made, they were items given to a recipient to represent love, compassion, and care.

But, like all pleasant things, they would sometimes be taken for granted and forgotten. Like an old sweater. To most, a sweater was just a sweater. It was good to snuggle up in on chilly autumn nights, and nothing more. But to a select few, it would be more precious than all the jewels in a grand kingdom.

A sweater, and by extension, all gifts, were all about memories. The day it was received, the day it was given, the days that would come of cherishing it . . . days that could have been. The thick, wool strands hoof-knitted to perfection were not unlike the fibers of an active brain - millions of them meticulously weaved, every last one of them vital to its structure as countless neurons were fired through them within the time of a thought being formed.

And if just a single strand became undone, so too would the whole structure break down, eventually.

But if put in the right care, such a gift could still be preserved nearly a decade later. If cared for correctly, such a sweater could still be wrapped around the owner like a mother's embrace. Not to replace that mother's embrace, no. But to remind that child that she would never leave; their spirit would stay with them in that sweater, eternally hugging them tightly to see to it that they never forgot that they were loved.

These thoughts, and more, made Twilight Sparkle realize that her own mother's embrace had slipped away - just like the snugness of the prized sweater that she'd worn since taking up her studies eight years ago - and abandoned her to the dark waiting for her. As the days passed, it outgrew her degenerating frame until the time came that she constantly tripped over the sleeves and finally, with all reluctance, tucked it away in a closet until she could regain lost weight.

The doctor bit down on the match to keep her teeth from chattering, and angled her head for the tip to strike the table's surface. Sharp squeals ignited from the match rather than flames in three different attempts, and on the fourth too much pressure had been applied, snapping it in two.

"D-damn it . . ." This would have been so much easier if she had claws like Spike's, or at least hooves that were steady enough. Sifting for another, she bit down, much more gently, and attempted another scrape at the table. A spark. A flame. Orange heat consumed the tip.

She carefully tilted her head so that it met the wick of the candle. Watched as flames jumped from one point to the other. Then opened her mouth and stamped on the fallen match, ignoring the hot bite in the flat of her hoof.

A pool of light soaked the area surrounding Twilight, the table, and part of her chaise. Her shadow was a scar in the small border encircling her from the midnight outside its range as she brought the candle close to her chest. The flame nearly caught the tuft of lavender hair a few times, yet she kept it near. Small, weak, only just the tiniest bit warm, but still perfect. Having this little bit of warmth gave her needed comfort.

Leaving the flame only briefly enough to slurp down the rest of her oolong tea with two careful hooves, she took the candle in her mouth, over to the reading area of her table, where her journal laid. The caffeine now vibrating in her veins would wake her up enough to focus.

She began to read. She wasn't egotistical, not in the slightest, but perusing her walk of life since fillyhood could only help distract her. Any distraction nowadays was a paradise; it helped her forget, if only for a while.

Besides, memories were a powerful force. They were just like books existing to remind, to express, and to encourage. They told stories of times long gone, of recent joys, or forgotten dreams. Memories, in their rawest form, had the aptitude to bring oneself together . . . or to break them down.

As each page brought her closer to the last, she found herself confronted with memories of the same ponies she was trying to escape from. If her eyes closed, she could see the fear laced in theirs as the light faded from them. If she cupped her ears, all she ever heard were screams for the mercy that would not be granted. They had cornered her in death, unrelenting ghosts with hooves pointed out in the same accusation that she'd once pointed with.

Quiet whimpers gurgled at her throat, and she slapped the book shut. This was a bad idea - she should have left it be. She tossed it aside, joining with the growing pile on the floor, all consisting of reading material that failed to put her mind at rest. Somewhere in the bottom of this pile was the very spell book of her idol, Star Swirl the Bearded. The dozens of forlorn attempts to delve into its secrets, as her mentor had suggested she do, and perhaps find some cure to her problem had finally put it there to be forgotten.

"Sorry, Celestia," she remembered having said aloud when she'd discarded it, "I've too much on my hooves to worry about the accomplishments of some wizard."

All this time spent trying to escape into her books was one big reminder that she should have been working instead. Should have been toiling over her journal to recreate the TS8 Formula. In another time she would have been humorously yelling at her own reflection for procrastinating like she did.

Trouble was, there was nothing to procrastinate from. Armed with the knowledge she needed to move forward, Twilight had prepared her equipment for operation, and primed her quills for recording results, albeit having to resort to clumsy hoof-writing nowadays. She had even the time to shine up every last vial so that her reflection jumped out at her.

She was ready. So the problem? Zecora wasn't.

A little over a week ago, just three days shy of the triple-murder and the city-wide lockdown initiating, the zebra had delivered the bad news that she was missing four of the remaining ingredients of the formula; that included the water from the Mirror Pool. As for the rest, the cold snap rolling in from autumn was making them scarce. Even if she found them, would they be untainted from the cold?

Much to Twilight's chagrin, Zecora promised to have them 'when she had them'. Her damn rhyming and evasive language easily registered as the fact that this search would take weeks at best. Not good enough. She needed those things a week ago.

All this desperation put the unicorn on the edge between calm and insanity, and fidgeting in a corner praying for her to search faster would tip her over the edge. She needed a distraction. One that had nothing to do with her work, or magic, or science. One that could at least make the voices go away.

Forcing herself from the table, she pattered in small steps to the chaise, briefly leaning into it to regain balance on stilt-like legs, and got to the bookcase. She selected the first book she could find that matched her requirements, which turned out to be an atlas.

There were rumors that Yakyakistan had a beautiful landscape around wintertime. It would be foolish to explore the land without prior knowledge.

She closed her eyes. A light tinkling opened them, and she saw the aura she'd conjured was attenuated; she could barely see its magenta color. Yet she pulled the book toward her, its weight making it drop slightly once away from the shelf.

It had nearly gotten into her waiting grip before the aura, like a flickering bulb, sputtered and died, the tome smashing her front hooves upon its fall.

"Owww! Damn it!" She shoved her own fetlock into her mouth to bite back more colorful words to accompany her injury.

"Having a little trouble with your magic?"

A whisper that made itself known in thick silence made the doctor jump as though a gunshot had ricocheted by her ears. She whipped around, staring into the chaise where the voice came from.

Nothing but darkness. The chaise lay empty, as always. She was alone.

But she wasn't alone. Never alone.

"Maybe you should stop drinking so much tea. All that stuff can fray the nerves - it's no wonder our little brother sees us as snippy."

She instinctively curled into herself and collided with the bookshelf. Books rained from the impact and punched into her head and spine. Twilight bit back a groan and a whimper. "You're not here. You're not real." Blood rushed in her ears, nearly drowning out the voice, but not enough.

"Ohhh, I'm very real. Realer than you could hope to be."

The voice came from her right, where the staircase to the first floor was. A small shape rose from the flight, horned head angled so both slitted eyes were fixed on her.

Nightfall.

"After all," the grey mare continued, "What point is there to living if one's time is spend in a gilded cage, hiding in the hooves of comfort, rather than taking this existence for all in all? Better to choose not to live at all, if that's the case."

She was not here. Scientifically and logically, she could not be here because she was -

Twilight locked the thought in the deepest cage of her psyche, where it could never take spoken form. She didn't want to say it. She knew it in the truest part of her heart, but she still didn't want to say out loud that this Nightfall Hyde was a part of her, same as her horn was part of her. Or, better yet, same as her OCD tendencies were a part of her.

The mare's look of annoyance implied that she heard her perusal. "You are denying the truth. Rejecting it, even."

"I'm not rejecting anything," Twilight mumbled. She couldn't find any courage to pull her eyes away from the fallen books at her hooves.

"But you are. Refusing to speak truth is just the same as rejecting it. Does Celestia accept the secrets of dark magic by refusing to speak of them? No." She turned away so that she walked to the table. "You can ignore truth, but it doesn't make it go away. I am, and will always be, you."

Twilight knew that. She was the epitome of her passion, of her despair, of every panic attack she ever suffered. But most of all, she was made of her rage. Every day that she had to bite back a sharp retort from the governors who tore her confidence down and persecuted her for what she believed was another day that her bitterness grew, until it became smart enough to name itself.

In a way, Nightfall was always there, same as she stood before her now.

Her other self nodded as she played with one of the Bunsen burners. "That's right. I have always been there. Perhaps not conscious as I am now, but it's still true." This time Twilight knew she could hear her thinking. "And all that stuff I'm embodied from? They all share something that makes them the same: all imprisoned in the unspoken world to preserve reputation." Snarling rumbled from her as she slammed a hoof on the table. The vials beside her jumped as Twilight did. She felt herself constrict until her legs pulsed with the blood struggling to pump through.

Nightfall chuckled, resting her head in her hooves. "But I digress. You really can't go blaming yourself. It's only the nature of a sapient to bottle up those things. It's how society works. Truly, truly, a broken, stupid system. But there's no reason to call you a hypocrite now, after so long of calling out those bastards for their prejudice when hiding our own. You chose that night, September thirteenth, to say, 'no more'. You set me free. You threw open my cage to embrace who we really are in our core."

Sucking in a puff of breath, she blew out the candle, ensnaring them both in darkness. Twilight shivered, remembering that night in full force. Her cries, the heat lancing in her bones, the soft chuckle of a demon gone loose. She got up clumsily and rushed past her other self, fumbling with another match before it dropped.

"Ah, yes. That was mean, wasn't it? Allow me." Her horn sparking green, a flint flew off and into the candle, relighting the room in a sickly jade glow.

How was it even possible that she could so easily light a candle now, then Twilight couldn't? When she first 'woke up' as Nightfall, she could barely levitate, as she as Twilight couldn't now. The tables had turned on her, so to speak.

Shutting out the alarm bells in her head, she pulled the candle close to soak in the heat. "W-why . . . why are you doing this?" the doctor shivered. "Do you think I want to be reminded of that night?"

Nightfall rounded the table and rubbed a hoof into the small of her back. Equally, she felt horror and calm as the knot in her back was smoothed out. "I know it was scary at first. I was frightened, too. But it was better for both of us. And I owe you everything for what you did just for me, sister. That's why I'm doing this."

"P-please don't call me that." She pulled away from her, death-grip still on the candle. Twilight had faced many fears in her short lifetime. Failure, letting her family and mentor down, the forces of the unknown - even the things conjured from her mind - just to name a few. But seeing all these fears take the form of a pony who was the cause of several innocents' deaths and city-wide panic infecting everyone who survived frightened her the most. And she - it - was calling her 'sister'.

Nightfall drifted closer. "Whyever not? We are so akin in our hopes, our goals, and our passions. I'm like the sister you never had."

"I have a sister. Cadence is my sister, not you."

She'd crafted her words in hopes of puncturing her, but the grey mare simply retaliated, "Cadence doesn't understand us. She doesn't get our goals, and she'd certainly show more gratitude for having her worst enemies disposed of. Shouldn't you, considering what I did for you?" She again latched herself onto Twilight, gently caressing her jawline. "Cadence doesn't know what fillyhood without a mother is like; but I do. Oh, I understand completely what pain it is to see the injustice of losing Mother and being denied our chance to get her back, over and over again."

"At least Cadence didn't have to resort to murder to get what she wanted."

"She was never pushed to such dire circumstances. We had to stop them. They shut us down, forbid us to continue what we were meant to do. They may as well have killed Mother themselves, so they thusly forced our hooves."

Twilight writhed from Nightfall's grip, accidentally nailing her in the face. But her body simply dissolved into ashen mist before reconverting five seconds later. So she really wasn't there. Either she really was dreaming, or - the more likely considering her lucidity - Nightfall existed outside the physical plane through her mind's eye, not unlike the workings of a madmare's disease.

"You're wrong!" she said. "They didn't have to die! There's always a better way!"

"Just like there was a 'better way' than to use the Alicorn Amulet to boost the formula's strength?"

". . . I . . . the amulet . . ." She dropped her hardened stare. "Well . . ."

Nightfall smirked. "Just as I say. Sometimes the easiest path is the best one to choose, regardless of what we're told."

"So you're killing innocents just because I made a mistake? How is that even remotely fair?"

"They weren't innocent!"

Twilight jumped back. The candle dropped and sent them both under the curtain of shadow once again.

Nightfall drew a sharp breath and said through gritted teeth, "Those two-faced liars were guilty as the prisoners of Tartarus, and I gave them their sentence."

"That doesn't mean we should be the ones to deliver it. That's not who we are!"

Her other self's hooves clicked as though turning away. "Is it? You would be surprised to find how many ponies would be aghast after a heart-to-heart with themselves like this one. Take for example our interest in sweet little Soarin. We never considered ourselves the romantic type until he came along."

"Knock it off. I don't feel that way."

"Oh, but you do." If she could see her, Twilight was sure she was eyeing her slyly. "Mother always warned us of days when we'd fancy the company of a handsome stallion. And we fell hard for Soarin when he came to our house with his injuries -"

"Injuries you caused."

"- I believe it's call 'tough love'. But he regardless came to us; he clearly couldn't keep his mind, or his hooves, off either of us. I wonder who he'll end up choosing - all I know it'll be a choice to die for."

Twilight caught heard the double meaning in her voice and stiffened. "Don't you dare drag him into this! He has nothing to do with us! He's innocent!"

"You don't feel 'that' way, hmm? If you stay out of it, I might consider," she replied harshly. Was she serious? Did she mean she'd spare his life if Twilight didn't interfere with . . . whatever it was?

She huffed. "What point are you trying to make with him, anyway?"

"You fail to realize, but he has more to do with us than you think. He's but one of the reasons I exist. Remember the lesson he shared the night of the Altrotta?" Twilight blinked, waiting for the 'punchline'. " 'The key thing about good and evil, each of us must choose'? Hmm? 'In our hooves, we have the power to choose, and what we want most to be, we are'?"

She thought about it. Sapient creatures discerned right from wrong with their natures, which also influenced them towards one or the other, depending on personality or situation. And the situation that led to this mess hinged on her fearing the formula would fail, and choosing to use the Alicorn Amulet!

Her other self's silhouette advanced on her. "Now you understand? You chose. The amulet was a conduit of your choice, whether to continue cowering under the hooves of those unrightfully in higher power, or to break from our chains and do something about them!"

"But . . . but I used it with good intentions! It shouldn't have created you!"

"No . . . it shouldn't have. Yet here I am. I only know what you know, so don't ask me why it didn't work as you wanted." Her tone was somber. Even if she was lying, she sounded like she really didn't know. "But I do know that its magic still courses through our veins for one purpose: to purge Canterlot of these pretenders!"

"I won't let you. I can choose to end this right now!"

Nightfall clicked her tongue. "You forget the power of choice and consequence, sister. Our actions are our own to choose, but consequence is the result of said choice; and as a scientific doctor, we don't choose the result we're given. And ours was me, the mare who put those fools in their place, the same mare who tells you now that it's far too late to turn back."

"But you still could have chosen to forgive the governors. They were just . . ."

Just what? Just doing their job? Just doing what they thought was right? They both knew she was wrong, no matter how she intended to finish that sentence.

"Forgiveness, and lack thereof, is exactly why we are separated as we are. We are the same, but you won't take certain measures to get what we want, even if you want to."

"You think I wanted the governors, my colleagues, to die?"

"I know you did," Nightfall chuckled. "From the inside out, and from every day you had to put up with them and their nonsense, you had a desire for nothing less than to see them gone. Don't think I didn't feel your gratification when we finally did them in."

She trotted to the drawer where the amulet was stored. And unlike Twilight, who felt herself tremble, she opened the drawer with no hesitation, seemingly welcome of its influence as she caressed the ruby against her face.

"Don't you remember that feeling, Twilight Sparkle? When we watched Blueblood writhe and scream and die? It's not every day you get to see someone you loathe quite literally scare himself to death." She set the artifact away. "And Fleur? Mmm, how she wriggled in our tendrils, same as her puppets struggling against their strings."

She was getting too close to Twilight again, taking deliberately slow steps as her glowing eyes lit her frame.

"N-no, I didn't . . . "

"Don't lie. I know you remember. We chased little Miss Melody down through those alleys and trapped her. Are you still rejecting the truth? Because I recall that you enjoyed every second of cornering her, of cutting open her face with our knife and watching her scream. And we screamed with her, sister. We screamed out of pure bliss to see her suffer for her wickedness!"

"Stop it!"

"You know you loved it. That feeling of finally unleashing all those pent-up thoughts that chained us to the wall . . . that was us. And we have never felt more alive than when we embraced the Alicorn Amulet's magic, just like how Soarin embraced us in his lost state -"

"Enough!" Twilight reared up and slammed her hooves into the floor, tile chips bursting and hitting her face. She opened her mouth to tell her she was wrong, that she didn't take perverse pleasure in slaughter . . . Yet her voice managed little more than a squeak. It felt . . . incorrect. The stab she'd get when she had to lie to her friends and her princess had become familiar as of late, and pricked at her now.

It was no question that she hated the governors. Every last one of them, even Sir Fancy Pants, who chose his wife's prejudice over her work, even when it hurt him. Having nothing but hate for them was natural when her mother, innocent in her own right, still suffered by their hooves just for what her daughter believed.

So it felt like a tight chain around her neck was broken when she heard herself say, "I wanted them gone. They all stood against me, so I wanted them out of my way." She breathed shakily. "And I couldn't find myself happier when they were finally gone, all of them. But not like this. I didn't want it to be like this." She murdered them. They both did, and took pleasure in doing so. The governors had their fates sealed the moment she chose the amulet's magic over her own.

She felt Nightfall stand beside her. She didn't bother shoving her away again.

"You see? Truth liberates." An aura encased her head to meet Nightfall's eyes. "And you realize that there are more out there, just like us, suffering the lies of their enemies. We can help them, Twilight. Hypocrites have run Canterlot has been run to the ground, and Celestia won't do anything to stop it, but we can. Together, our magic combined, we can stop it all. We can end all this nonsense of goodness versus evil.

"With our magic . . . who says we even need a TS8 Formula?"

Twilight froze. What did she say?

"That's right. We could have saved her from the very beginning. Our magic is strong, perhaps even stronger than Star Swirl the Bearded's. That is exactly why Celestia held us back. She's afraid of us. She knows that plucking Mother right out of her coma is the least of what we are capable of. We were meant to explore our true potential together, sister."

It could happen, couldn't it? Luna's Dreamscape spell wasn't impossible to reach, so long as they had enough magic to penetrate it. Which they did. And they could free her so easily, just as they'd promised her all those years ago. It was all either ever wanted: one unicorn family finally glued back together, as it should have stayed.

And Mother, wouldn't she be filled with pride to see her daughter grown into the mare she was . . . a murderer . . . who slaughtered five ponies . . . and used . . . forbidden magic for her selfish needs . . .?

Twilight shut her eyes tightly. "Are we . . . really so evil that we've become the ultimate hypocrite?"

She heard her retreat, as though flinching.

"Well? Are we?" She turned, walking after her. "Do you really think my mother would want this? A city in ruins because of you - because of me - and innocents murdered by her daughter? And what about that choices and consequences bullcrap? You're putting the choice in front of me, expecting me to think that the consequences won't negate that?"

"Twilight, if you just listen to me -"

"I think you know we can't both exist. No matter what I choose, we'd just fight for this body's control for the rest of my life. I chose evil once, and look where it took me. So, really, the only one that could possibly benefit from choosing it again is you." She sighed. "I was so stupid. I should have known better than to trust the amulet . . . over myself."

Her real self. The one that let her fears of failing consume her in that moment. But still the one that knew that Nightfall's intentions were beyond perverse. "I may have chosen wrong before," she cornered Nightfall into the table, "but I'll make the right choice when I finish my formula and get you out of my head. For good."

Nightfall fixed a curious eye on the doctor. A vast array of emotions crossed her face, indecisive of what thoughts to think out. Her hooves pawed at the ground in trembling strokes. Nearly a whole minute passed as she did this; Twilight was almost sure she had pinned her down.

But she then exhaled. Chuckled grimly. And said, "You're right. We would spend the rest of our lives fighting, wouldn't we? One sister ready for action, one too cowardly to do what she must. I was truly afraid you'd realize that. Because now I cannot allow you to walk away, Twilight Sparkle."

What came next happened so fast that Twilight couldn't blink. Purple-black tendrils, not unlike the one that killed Fleur, erupted from her being and charged at the doctor. One fastened noose-like around her neck, two around her barrel, and one with a death-grip on her horn. That tendril squeezed tightly, forcing a pained cry from her. She was slammed into the opposite wall, the impact tipping over the bookcase next to her.

"Mmph! Nightfall! What are you doing!" She thrashed all four hooves, but the tendril had her stuck like a bug on flypaper.

Nightfall waltzed over, scooping up the dropped candle and lighting it on her way. "Sorry. But if that's the way you feel, I can't let you live." She used one tendril to stroke her face. Twilight whimpered, feeling a trace cold as death where it touched her. She focused her magic again, but the other just chuckled, "Oh, do try, Doctor. Do try. It's not like you'll even get a spark our of that useless horn. And so long as I'm here, you never will. And I'm not going anywhere," she whispered playfully in her ear.

"What do you plan to do to me? You can't snap my neck like you did to Fancy - you'd just die with me!"

"Mm. I'd played with the thousands of colorful ways to kill you if that weren't the case - breaking your bones, disembowelment, perhaps even classic hanging, which is where you'll end up if you reveal yourself now. But I already figured out the perfect way to do it, and survive, myself."

Twilight glanced at the green flame of the candle she was holding. Revisited her pondering as to why she had gotten so weak. She hardly had the magical prowess to even light a candle like Nightfall could.

Magic. Her connection to magic. The doctors warned her that it was connected to her in a special way, that overusing it was especially perilous. They called the two-day coma she fell into as a filly an act of mercy from the Alicorns Above. What if that was how Nightfall planned to kill her? Was killing her now?

The headaches, the lack of appetite, the inability to teleport, to even levitate - it all connected to the symptoms she'd had in small cases of overuse!

And Nightfall, who when first awakening couldn't even perform levitation herself, was pinning her to the wall with tendrils made of raw magic.

She was leeching off her magic!

As horror crossed over her face, Nightfall unleased a howling laugh. "Now you get it? Your magic is a literal artery hooked to your life force!"

And she was devouring it to kill her in the slowest, most painful way possible! Consuming her magic was only half of the killing stroke: the other half was letting her know that so she could stew in her panic, knowing that nothing in her power except the TS8 Formula, which was practically unreachable now, would come to save her!

"But h-how is that even possible? You're me!"

"We've gone mad, Twiliy. Talking to ourselves, referring to us as 'we'? We're two parts of one soul, now. And if I, say, transfer your magic to my part . . . well, you already know what the doctors warned you would happened if your magic was exhausted."

And she intended to stand as the only Twilight Sparkle when this was over. Once drained, she would be trapped in the same abyss that Nightfall once occupied, no better than a rotting husk, malnourished of the magic that kept her alive. She, the side of her that her friends, princesses, and everyone knew, would be gone. Forgotten in place of Nightfall Hyde.

She struggled with the tendril fastened around her neck to breathe. "Y-you're a soulless monster. You don't care that you're killing yourself."

Nightfall hissed back at her, "So were you. 'I'll make the right choice when I finish my formula and get you out of my head for good'." Sneering, she slammed Twilight's head back into the wall. "You're right. We are the ultimate hypocrite. Because you're no better. You wouldn't hesitate to kill either, if you were pushed beyond your limits. The only real difference between us? I will be the one who survives." She withdrew the tendrils and let Twilight slump to the floor. She turned to leave.

"W-wait . . . Nightfall . . ." The mare paused midstride, not even bothering to turn. "Just . . . answer something for me . . . Fancy Pants . . ." She felt her ears flatten into her skull. "Did he really deserve to die? He made mistakes, but do you even feel sorry that you 'had' to kill him?"

He was just like a second father to her - to them. And though his own hypocrisy was clear, that didn't make the pain of losing him less stinging to her. It was unreal to think that Nightfall didn't feel likewise.

Nightfall didn't move for the longest time. Her hooves, one foreleg curled into itself in its cycle, didn't even paw at the floor again. But after a long stretch, she sighed. "To kill the stallion who was there for us when our real f-father couldn't, who still fought to let us keep the equipment after e-everything fell apart . . . it . . . k-killed me, too."

Sighing again, she drifted down the staircase, the front door opening and closing with the quietest click.

Comments

[Dash32]

youtube=http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HCBPmxiVMKk

Perfect song for this story.

[Macmeg13]

AND THE PLOT THICKENS!!!!!!

[HylianTabby]

I'm curious, is this meant to replace "Confrontation"? I ask because while this was really well written and I loved every second of it, it seems a bit early for Twilight and Hightfall to have their confrontation. From how the chapter started I was some what expecting "The World Has Gone Insane".

[Dragon Spire]

7650275 Replace Confrontation? Replace Confrontation! What madness would that be!

Okay, sorry. That was mean. In all seriousness, Confrontation is still going to be included. This first encounter is just here to explain Twilight's new peril and have Nightfall deter her from having too much hope. But Twilight is going to have to face her guilt soon. Think of this chapter as a prelude before the actual Confrontation.

(Also, I'm going to swallow my pride and say that I actually forgot about listening to TWHGI enough to implement it into the story. )