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Alright, so the tests are done and the results are in. According to the fine folks in RIDES, my transition back to Equestria after the dimensional displacement incident didn't exactly go as smoothly as everypony else who got caught up in that mess.

Evidently, and this is just a theory at this point, but when I transitioned back to Equestria, a piece of me got left behind and is now floating somewhere out there in the space between realms. The scientists aren't sure if it was part of my consciousness or my thaumic energy or what, but something got left behind.

That something is apparently still connected to me and is trying to find its way back. That seems to be the reason I keep seeing flashes of several realities I've never experienced. It sounds insane and I have my doubts, but apparently, this phenomenon isn't entirely unheard of.

Though rare, this kind of displacement does happen from time to time, and sometimes the creatures involved (yes, it's evidently happened to other races before) come back altered or missing something. In my case, if their theory turns out to be correct, the only thing I can do is either wait for the missing bit of me to find its way back, or wait for RIDES to come up with another solution.

The safest option seems to be to wait it out so that's what we decided on for the time being. The visions, as unsettling as they are, don't seem to be harmful to my wellbeing so yeah, I'll just follow their advice and wait to see what happens for now.

In other news, the Princess has seen fit to return the crazy alicorn version of me to her own Equestria—mysterious magical table and all. I don't know all the details as the actual process fell under RIDES jurisdiction. I mean, hay, the only reason I know is because I just so happened to overhear the news from one of the RIDES researchers during the downtime between my tests.

I was able to find out why the Princess kept the psychotic alicorn captive for so long. Evidently, the Princess spent the whole time interrogating the other Twilight. What she was looking to find out I have no idea, but it wasn't exactly a good look on Princess Celestia's part.

Don't get me wrong, I've done my fair share of interrogations (whether I wanted to or not) but... I don't know. Just feels like the Princess should be above that kind of stuff. That's what she has us and the Royal Guard for. Maybe it wouldn't bother me as much if it wasn't, y'know... another version of me. It was no wonder my poor, insane doppelganger from another reality tried to escape.

Thinking back on it though, I probably should've known that's what was going on behind the scenes. I think I might've suspected as much, but just kind of brushed the idea aside because I expected more from the Princess. Having talked to her face-to-face and talking to Sunset, I know Princess Celestia isn't as squeaky clean as she leads her little ponies to believe—far from it.

That mare probably has more blood on her hooves than the entirety of the Royal Guard put together—and I'm talking the ones that actually participated in those brutal campaigns back in the day. Mentally, I know what kind of mare she truly is, but when you look at her, it's just... really hard to accept.

And again, the fact that it was me she was working over just makes the knowledge worse—even if it was my alternate self.

But all that said, I think I'm getting ahead of myself here. I learned way more about the Princess than I ever wanted to know and I guess it's just been on my mind. I talked to Spike about everything we discovered once the RIDES researchers let me go.

He and I both agree that, as crazy as my other self was, she was ultimately a victim in all of this. She didn't deserve to be imprisoned and potentially tortured for information. I don't know for sure if that's what happened during her questioning, but that's usually what our interrogations devolve into, as much as I hate to admit it.

Still, I am glad she was able to get back home. She'd clearly been through a lot, even before she arrived in this Equestria. I really hope whatever info the Princess finally got out of the other Twilight was worth the poor mare's suffering. Sunset knows about the situation too, and she isn't too happy with her mentor.

She doesn't seem as bothered about it as I am, though. When I talked to her about what I found out, it seemed like she was disappointed, but not entirely surprised. It wasn't until then that I remembered she and Spike had actually found out where she was being held. I guess she just put two and two together.

I know I'm just rambling at this point but I really needed to get all of this out of my mind and onto the page.

I've talked a lot about how the other Twilight is gone now but I haven't really followed up on what her deal was. While the Princess wouldn't tell me what she was trying to find out from Alter-Twilight, she did discuss the details of her arrival and how she wound up in the Umbra's dimensional prison.

As it turns out, the other Twilight's appearance in this Equestria was not due to the dimensional anomalies caused by the Eye. Apparently she was dropped here by some kind of time related spell gone awry. Her arrival in this time and place happened by pure chance. The table itself was a dimensional anchor of some sort. Not sure why she used a table of all things, but it is what it is I suppose.

Alter-Twilight's violent psychosis was evidently a result of two factors. Once factor was her uncontrollable leaps into what seems to be thousands of dystopia variant Equestrias. I don't like what her ending up here says about my own Equestria, but I won't dwell on it too much. I've already got enough on my plate to worry about without having to question everything I knew about my world—at least anymore than I already have.

The other factor—and the one I think affected her the most—was witnessing the apparently brutal death of her draconic companion. This also explained her weird obsession with Spike. I can still remember that horrible, heartbreaking wail she let out as the RIDES team carried her away that day. Now I find myself wondering if she'd just lost her very own Spike right before she was thrown into this timeline. It's a frankly distressing thought and I haven't really been able to get over it since I found out how she really got here.

That mare was a broken mess and it's a wonder the Princess was able to get anything out of her at all. What makes it worse is that we had the means to heal her mind magically. I asked the Princess about it and she told me that was the first thing they attempted to do. But no matter what was tried, nothing stuck.

Some spells were able to clear her mind for a short time, but most just didn't work at all. It was actually during her moments of clarity that she tried to escape. From what Sunset and Spike told me, there's actually an entire prison facility hidden deep within the Crystal Caves below Canterlot Castle.

It should be noted that we have your standard variety prison in the actual city. We also have the dungeons in the castle itself, though they're not really used anymore—not for holding criminals anyway. Come to think of it, it's said that Tartarus was a prison of sorts too. And now there's this prison deep below ground. Why do we have so many prisons? When I asked the Princess about the facility in the Crystal Caves, all she would say was that it was meant for 'a particular kind of threat to Equestria'.

See, this is just more of that off-putting sketchiness I was talking about before.

Anyway, it was this underground facility where Alter-Twilight was being held, and it was from here that she managed her inital escape. According to the Princess, she somehow managed to bypass the wards keeping her imprisoned and fled the facility. Mind you, she was both magically and physically shackled and still got out.

That alone was incredibly impressive I have to admit. Even Princess Celestia and the Royal Guard are still trying to figure out how she did it. Not only did she manage to escape the facility and make her way into the massive crystalline caverns, but she actually found a way to get help, and this is where things get interesting.

The Princess naturally led a ponyhunt through the caves to find the mare. I guess she was able to get pretty far because it took awhile for the search party to actually find her. My royal alternate made it past the old mines and way deeper into the more unknown parts of the caves by the time they finally did find her.

As a side note, nopony really knows just how deep those tunnels go. Even the Princess has yet to explore the true depths of that place and from the way she talked about them, I think she's afraid to.

The Princess herself eventually cornered the mare in a small dead end cave. Only the cave in question was more of a small shrine, at least that's what it looked like to the Princess. She hadn't known it was there before then and was just as surprised to see it as I was to hear about it.

The shrine itself wasn't anything super opulent or spectacular. In fact, it was apparently kind of shoddy, looking like it was hastily slapped together in a day. I didn't get any more details than that, but the real surprise was the altar at the center of the shrine and what the Princess found there.

Sitting on the altar was a small red crystal. Not just any small red crystal, mind you, but the exact same type of crystal as the one Rarity and I found in the Crystal Mountains. It was the same crystal that acted as a gateway into the Umbral prison, just on a much smaller scale. Needless to say, this came as a shock to the Princess who, at that point, hadn't given me my assignment in the Crystal Mountains yet.

Princess Celestia also found my other self passed out and completely unresponsive in front of the crystal, which I'm assuming made things easy. She, along with the rest of her Royal Guard retinue, took the fugitive alicorn back to the facility and that pretty much wrapped up her first attempted escape.

There's a bit more to the story though. The Princess recognized the crystal but she didn't know how it worked or what it would do. She chose to leave it while they restrained the other Twilight and she only came back for it after making sure the crazed mare was secure. The crazed mare in question only woke up once they were out of that shoddy shrine.

Unfortunately, the spell keeping the mare sane had already run its course so the Princess couldn't get anything about what happened out of her. In fact, it wasn't until I came back with my report about what happened in the Umbral prison that she fully pieced it together.

She'd already discovered the general location of the larger red crystal and had meant to assign the mission to seize or destroy it at some point in the near future. The discovery of the smaller crystal in the shrine just pushed her plans further up the list. As for why I wasn't given any details about what I was getting into...

The Princess just didn't have the details to give it seems.

She knew the red crystal was a prison for Rabia and her ilk but that was about it more or less. Luna was the one mainly handling that whole situation and apparently she didn't tell her sister much about what she was doing. She had no idea Rabia could communicate through the crystal or allow ponies in.

Her order to seize or destroy the thing was a precaution more than anything—a knee-jerk reaction if you will. She saw the smaller crystal, saw what it did to my alternate, and realized there might've been some connnection. Turns out she was right because we figured out that the other Twilight's brief trip into the Umbral prison lined up with her arrival at the shrine.

We don't know how the smaller crystal worked with the larger and we'll probably never find out now. We don't know how it transported the alicorn me to the prison, but what we can surmise is that she wasn't truly, physically there at the time. In the end, we were all left with more questions than we had when we started.

Still, it's probably best both crystals were taken care of—remaining questions or no. Not sure if I entirely believe everything the Princess told me, but I do agree that it's better to be safe than sorry. It also turns out that the airship pilot had orders to enact a search and rescue at his own discretion if he felt like anything was amiss. Evidently, this is standard procedure for all ships acting in the agency's interest.

Speaking of my harrowing journey in the mountains, I ran into Rarity while I was being tested over at RIDES. She's a RIDES agent now—well, a RIDES agent in training. I thought they'd taken her in to reflection deflection her memories away but I guess that's not what happened. We didn't get a lot of time to talk, but according to Rarity, they tried to do just that, but she refused.

Instead, Rarity, the crazy, determined, persuasive mare that she is, practically demanded RIDES to take her on as a field agent. RIDES gladly acquiesced, naturally. She told me that she'd rather use this chance to help others in similar situations. She wanted to hold onto those experiences and use them to become a stronger mare.

That, and she felt like her previous life hadn't been going anywhere for a long time now. She'd found herself in a years long slump and thought this might be just what she needed to get her life back on track. I was shocked at first, but as she explained her reasons, I realized I shouldn't have been surprised at all. That's just the kind of mare she is and I admire her for it.

I did have some doubts about her qualifications and said as much, but she just laughed that dainty laugh and replied 'well that's what the training is for, right?'. And I mean, yeah, but most ponies would need to have some kind of expertise prior to signing up for this kind of thing—especially RIDES.

As far as I know, I got into POUT based on my general intelligence, diligence, and borderline obssesive need to know things. Presumably. I'd like to think the first two things were a bigger factor anyway. I'm not too worried about Rarity, though. I get the feeling she'll do just fine. I mean, if Prism Streak can get a job in SMILE and do well enough to be trusted with an extended undercover op, then Rarity shouldn't have any issues.

Most importantly, I was able to apologize and thank her for everything she did for me. I was afraid I'd never get the chance so that was nice. The training process for a RIDES agent is a lot more extensive than either of the other agencies combined so Rarity will be busy for a long while. That said, we both promised we'd find some time to hang out at some point.

It also seems the Princess' decision in handing Rarity over to RIDES instead of POUT was simply priorities. RIDES handles victims of dimensional or temporal incidents and POUT handles the OOPArts. Even if the RIDES agent who'd taken Rarity were to find that journal, he would've given it to me anyway. I though there was more going but it was all just procedure.

The fact that RIDES already knew about Rarity was also easily explained. RIDES has methods and devices specifically made to track down the source of a time loop. It's a slow process because of the nature of looping time, but they get closer and closer to the source with each loop that occurs. I thought it was strange that they didn't track Rarity—or maybe the journal iself—to the Crystal Mountains.

I mean, that's where she was and she told me she brought the journal with her. This too was explained by the Princess as a simple case of not being able to make it in time. By the time I finally resolved the issue with the red crystal, RIDES lead only went so far as Rarity's shop. The explanation sounded a bit iffy but I didn't press any further.

Frankly, the only thing I care about is that the whole thing is done and that Rarity and I are safe and sound.

Getting back to the situation with my alicorn alternate, well, there's not really much else to say honestly. We found out that the other Twilight's ability to contact Spike had less to do with her own power and more to do with Spike himself. Well, specifically it has to do with our unique magical connection.

Even as an alicorn with way more thaumic energy than I'll ever have, that Twilight and I share the same fundamental thaumic signature. With that being the case, it would stand to reason that if I could telepathically reach out to the little drake—and after some testing it turns out I can—then she could too.

She felt Spike's presence from her prison, even through all the magical wards and enchantments. She'd tried to use that connection to have him help her escape, but that didn't exactly work out for her in the end either. After that failed, the Princess cut the mare a deal. Tell her what she wanted to know and she'd send the traumatized alicorn back home.

Not sure why that wasn't the deal initially, but at least she kept her word. I wasn't there for the actual transition, but I heard about it from one of the researchers that sent her back. I am glad the other me was able to return to her Equestria safely, but I couldn't help but wonder. How would that Equestria fair with that Twilight in her current state?

Being an alicorn, she likely has a lot of political power and we weren't able to heal her broken mind in the end. All we could do was send her home. I do feel like the Princess could've done more if she wanted, but I don't know all the circumstances. All I can do is hope for the best for her.

Who knows? Maybe the ponies in her realm can do what we couldn't. Maybe, if the Princess Celestia of that Equestria has the power, she'll be willing to do more than ours did.

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The Unofficial Records of a Mare in Black - the7Saviors

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