Chapter 5 The Caper
It was now three o’clock in the morning. The streets where empty, save the exception of Trixie who was making her way back to the center of the city and a very loud Pegasus yelling at her.
“Don’t ignore me!” Lightning Dust demanded. “Hey! I’m talking to you! Where are you even going, you stupid unicorn?”
Trixie ignored her the whole time Lightning Dust ranted, and walked like she was on a mission towards the Crystal Heart.
Lightning Dust continued to follow Trixie, flying overhead while randomly yelling at her. Soon enough, they reached the Castle, and Trixie stopped. The sudden halt threw Lightning Dust off balance, and she crashed down against the hard crystal floor. Rising back to her hooves, she looked forward to see whatever Trixie was looking at.
“The Crystal Heart? Why the Buck are we here?” Lightning Dust asked while trying to keep balance.
“Yes, why are you here?” The Pegasus Trixie had meet earlier, still wearing his purple vest, stepped between them and the Crystal Heart. “I thought I made it clear that I wasn’t going to let anything happen to the Crystal heart. Not on my watch.” As he said this other ponies came form nowhere wearing purple Wonderbolt uniforms, looking very menacing.
“Wait, what?” Lightning asked confused. ”Where did you guys come from? Are those Wonderbolt outfits? Weird, I’ve never seen a purple variant. Wait, I recognize that style of vest! That’s an officer’s vest. Wait, how, who are you?”
The pegasus rolled his eyes “I am Commander Cannon Fodder, acting officer of the Wonderbolts’ undercover Security and Special Forces division.”
“I’ve never heard of that division, and I know everything there is to know about the Wonderbolts.” Lightning tried to counter with.
“We’re a relatively new division that was started not that long ago, and our formation wasn’t public knowledge.”
“Not public knowledge? That doesn’t make sense! Why wouldn’t you tell everypony, and how are you a Wonderbolt anyway? You’re missing a wing. I was the best flyer at that academy and I didn’t get in. This is so not fair.”
Cannon Fodder looked at Trixie with a tilted eyebrow “Is this really the best you can do? A drunken pegasus, really?” Trixie didn’t respond and only continued to look forward with a blank stair.
“Stop ignoring ME!!” Lightning Dust yelled.
“Commander!” a Wonderbolt on his left interrupted pointing his hoof to the sky. “The barrier, s-something’s wrong.”
Everypony except for Trixie turned their attention to the sky only to see small holes beginning to form in the protective barrier and steadily growing. Cannon Fodder could feel the temperature start to rapidly fall.
“That can’t be right,” he muttered. He looked to the Crystal Heart, it was still there, still shining its glorious light. Then he looked back at Trixie and raised his voice. “How are you doing this?”
She didn’t respond. Something was definitely not right here he could feel it. Even though the air was chilled he was visibly sweating, until he noticed Trixie’s shadow was wrong, it was eminently under her as if the light source was from above and not from the side, for everypony else’s shadows were stretched out as far as the eye could see.
“That’s not right either.” Cannon Fodder walked over to Trixie and extended his hoof out to touch the un-reactive unicorn only to have his hoof go throw her. The Trixie he saw then dispelled into a pinkish purple mist that quickly dissolved into nothingness. “An…Illusion.” His voice trembled.
“But that can’t be possible.” another Wonderbolt said. “Only her majesty could craft such a detailed illusion like that.”
“What? What’s going on, where’d Trixie go” Lightning Dust asked.
Before anypony else could say anything, Cannon Fodder rushed over to the Crystal Heart and tried to grab it, only to have it dispel into the same pinkish purple mist as his hoof touched it. With the Heart gone the light disappeared too, leaving them all in darkness.
“Oh, Buck Me!” Cannon Fodder said. He then quickly turned around and pointed at lightning Dust. “You…” But before he could finish, she zoomed of into the distance. “Oh, for the love of Luna. You three,” he told the Wonderbolts on his right. “Go after her. Everypony else assemble.” As he said that over twenty more pegasi appeared and landed in front of him as the three flew of after Lightning Dust.
“I could yell at each and every one of you for this. We had one job, ONE JOB! But we don’t have time for that right now. Squad Delta, Epsilon, and Gamma I need you to go to the Train station and work a constant parameter sweep of the entire City, no pony leaves until we find the Crystal Heart, you hear me, No Pony. Now go!” The Three squads flew off.
“Now when the rest of that Barrier falls, it’s going to get really cold really fast. Squads Alpha and Omega go out and inform the rest of the City and tell them to stay inside and stay warm. If we don’t find the Heart, it will be at least a week before Princess Cadance can get here. Everypony else with the exemption of Fleetfoot, go find Trixie!”
All of them except one flew away off to do there part. “Commander,” Fleetfoot said while trembling “I know that I’m still new to this division but, with all do respect this wasn’t my fault. I mean she got past all of us why just single me out?”
“At ease soldier, I don’t think this is your fault. I singled you out because I have a special assignment for you.”
“Really sir, what is it?”
“I need you to go tell our Princess, she needs to be informed about this immediately and you’re the fastest.”
“Princess Cadance?”
Cannon Fodder posed for a moment. “Yes, you should inform her as well. If we can’t find Trixie, we will need her to put up the barrier herself. But you know which Princess I first meant.” He said starring into her goggles.
“Sir, yes, Sir.” She saluted.
“Fleetfoot, I just have one question for you.”
“Yes sir.”
“Why are you still sitting here?”
“Sorry” she quickly said before darting off into the distance.
“Now then,” Cannon Fodder said to himself. “Trixie couldn’t have gone far.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The invisibility spell Trixie had cast on herself came down, and she was huffing and puffing from running up the last staircase was now out of breath. She found herself now inside the royal library inside the castle.
“Well I will have to hoof it to you Trixie” Sombra said. “That was very impressive, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Well of course it was impressive. You’re talking about the Great and Powerful Trixie here, and magic is my special talent,” Trixie boosted. “And that was only around seven complex illusion spell being casted on top of each other simultaneously. Trixie has done better. No, the real luck here was that foal Lightning Dust following me all the way her. It made it so much easier to grab this.” Trixie took the Crystal Heart out from behind her cape. “Alas, Trixie needs to get back on track, now where too?”
“Do you see that gap between those to bookcases? Channel your magic throw my horn shoot a beam at the wall. This will open a secret pathway.”
Trixie pulled out his horn and held it in her magical grasp. “Just channel my magic and throw it right? Just like an amulet or something. Trixie can do that.”
She pointed the horn at the wall and a blackened Green magic shoot out and covered the wall. The wall appeared to melt into an opening that leads into a hallway. Trixie look inside and her heart sank into despair.
“Another staircase.”
“What?”
“Trixie already had to run up three staircases to get here.”
“Well, I did think that was weird. I could have sworn there was five, and besides this one is going down anyway. You have no right to complain. Now hurry up, that opening won’t stay open long and we will be better off if nopony sees it.”
Trixie sighed and walked though the portal. It dissolved back into a solid wall behind her. She then looked down and began to go down the seamlessly endless black staircase.
“HAHAAH! Now that the entranceway is closed, we are home free. They will never find this place, let alone how to open the door.”
“Hey Sombra,” Trixie asked. “Now that we have all the time in the world it seems could you answer a question that has been on Trixie’s mind lately?”
“Of course, not that you needed my approval. I already told you that in my current state I have no chose but to answer your questions, and to answer them honestly, too. Although I do appreciate that you asked first.”
“When we first met you knew a lot about Twilight Sparkle, but the only thing you seem to know about any other pony is what you read off of there heart’s at that moment. So why do you know so much about her?”
“Well you see, when the Crystal Empire first reappeared, there was this one brave fool that stood against me. He was Twilight’s older brother Shinning Armor, and although I did not kill him right there, I did inject my dark crystals into his horn making him as useless as a mud pony. Useless to them, anyway. I could read his heart and mind whenever I wanted so I was able to know much of his past. His sister was a big part of his past, so through him, I knew her.”
“Okay, that explains that, Trixie guesses,” Trixie said as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
She looked forward and saw a strange door; she entered and discovered a room full of experiments and crystals of various colors. “What’s all this?” Trixie asked.
“This is my laboratory, where I perfected my dark magic and invented the Black crystals. This is also where the devise that will turn you into an Alicorn is located. Right over there in the back.”
Trixie went to the back and saw a large crystal structure mostly make of a familiar red crystal. There was a chamber like pod in the middle and above that was a Heart shaped hole.
“These red crystals…They look like and feel like the gem in the Alicorn amulet. How can that be?”
“Ah, so you’re familiar with my hoof work. You see, I am the one who made the Alicorn amulet out of these crystals. I always wandered what happened to that thing after I was defeated.”
“That thing made Trixie go crazy! Will this thing make Trixie go crazy, too? That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“The reason the Amulet makes ponies go crazy, is because I placed a curse on it so that only I could be the one who could truly wield it. It also will obey me over any pony else, so if somepony had gotten it from me, they couldn’t use it against me.”
“So if Trixie uses this thing it won’t make Trixie go crazy.”
“This device won’t make you go crazy. These crystals only amplify what is already there. Now place the Crystal Heart in the slot and step into the chamber. The devise will do the rest.”
Trixie sat down her cape and hat and placed the Crystal Heart into the slot, all the crystal in the device started to light up bright red and the entire room started to hum an evil melody and pulsed with great power. The chamber was filled with a jelly-like liquid. Trixie reached out her hoof to enter.
“Wait, just one minute please” Sombra interrupted. “Before you do this, could you do me one small favor.”
“Knew you weren’t doing all this for free. Alright, tell Trixie what you want.”
“Over there on that table is probably the last dark crystal in existence. If you place my horn on it, I could theoretically make myself a new body with it.”
“Well Trixie has thought about it and the answer is … no”
“WHAT‽ Why? Didn’t I do everything I promised?”
“Well, the thing is Trixie knows you’re evil, and even though Trixie is willing to do some very bad thing just to get what Trixie want, Trixie wouldn’t say that she is evil. Furthermore, if you got a body back, Trixie doesn’t even know what horrors you would unleash upon all pony kind.” Sombra growled with anger. “So now that Trixie doesn’t need you anymore…Get lost.” Trixie then throw his horn across the room into a trashcan.
“Now then,” Trixie turned around. “Time for glory.”
She reached out her hoof and touch the glowing goo, only to find out that it hurt as if her hoof was plunged into hot lava. It was to late to pull back as well, the goo moved up Trixie’s leg towards her, her screams of pain could not be heard. It covered her entire body and dragged her into the chamber where she experienced an agony like never before as the goo now covered her entirely both outside her body and inside.
“Hehehe” came an evil laughter from the trash “probably should have mentioned it would be horrifically painful shouldn’t have I? Oh well, I’m close enough that I don’t need her anyway.”
Sombra’s horn then lit up by its own magic and floated out of the can and flew across the room, embedding itself into the black crystal.
“Soon!” Sombra laughed as the crystal began to grow around his horn.