//------------------------------//
// Sixty 
// Story: The Moon Also Rises 
// by Nicroburst 
//------------------------------//

It is close. So close, now. My Seers have reported something different—a vastness, an expansion of their capacity. They dare not reach too far, and I am loathe to push them overmuch.

I feel something different. An entity. A consciousness, slumbering in the depths.


Sixty


TRIXIE PASSED the folder over the desk to the waiting sergeant. It wasn’t tremendously thick, no little scraps of paper fell from it as he took it. It didn’t need to be.

“Huh,” he said, opening and looking at the first page. “Well now.”

Trixie waited.

He flipped through the photos, quickly reaching the back. “This’ll do nicely. We don’t usually get tips quite this . . . thorough.”

“My pleasure,” Trixie said. “He’s staying at Mason and Third, at the moment. If you hurry, you might even catch him.” She turned to leave.

“Hold up!” he called. “There’s a reward for this guy. Reckon you’ve done more than enough to earn it.”

Trixie ignored him, walking out the door and onto the streets of Manehattan. Boiler was a nasty one, she’d be happy to have him behind bars. The file, however, hadn’t told the full story.

It would, eventually. Trixie was quite done with taking the law into her own hooves. She’d learnt better, learnt to trust not in her own sense of justice, but specifically in her own fallibility. There was a peace in that, too, in the idea that she might never reach her goals. She wondered what Cumulus and Brash might have thought about that.

For now, though, she had another target. Boiler’d typically stuck to small gangs for small jobs. For this last one—the one that’d gotten him square in the eyes of the police—he’d have needed something more. Somepony a little bigger, with a fair bit of pull.

Trixie smelt blood.

She reached an intersection and turned, pulling her scarf tight around her neck. She had a destination in mind—a little-known diner in the heart of downtown. She glanced around, checking that nopony was watching her, and gathered energy to herself, her horn briefly sparking azure in the morning light.

Her teleport took her to a shaded alcove, the door inset a foot into the wall around it. She’d scouted this area specifically, she needed to be unseen and in place well in advance. Fortunately, her talents lay in that direction—she quickly covered herself with an invisibility spell before stepping out.

The diner would normally play host to a number of professionals going about their day, but some time back Trixie had noticed a backroom that was perennially unoccupied. Some snooping had revealed that a certain businesspony—Big Tones—liked to take a late breakfast there, most days, keeping a low profile via a series of back door entrances. She slipped in, following the open doors and absence of dust on the ground. It took some doing to get the illusions just right, but she was able to open and close the door to the back room without drawing attention.

This was her gamble. She suspected a connection between the two—further theorised that there might be a link of corruption keeping Tones in the game. If she could be in place, here, watching, when it happened . . .

Big Tones was already here, wolfing down a plate of pancakes while two large stallions wearing suits stood guard by the door. She took a position by the fireplace, and waited, trusting to her magic to keep herself hidden, and silent.

It took some time, but eventually the door burst open, a nopony scurrying in to be immediately accosted by the guards. He thrust forward a scrap of paper, protesting, and, grabbing at a bit thrown onto the ground in front of him, scampered.

Big Tones scanned the paper—then paused, went back to the top and read it again. Cursing, he strode across the room to the fireplace by Trixie and made to thrust it into the fire.

Trixie froze time.

It took an incredible toll on her, but over the course of a second, the scene playing out slowed down, exponentially approaching zero, until each actor was still, each moment extended into an eternity. They looked like paintings, almost—magic replacing light, substituting its sense for her eyes. She couldn’t see, but she could feel, and that was enough.

She could feel the grain of the paper in his grasp, the strength of the grip he had on it. She could feel the impressions left by the quill tip, digging into the material. Slowly, she traced them out in her mind, forming letters and then words.

Boiler caught. Found evidence. Might want to lay low for a little while.

Interesting. She hadn’t expected the corruption angle—she’d thought, perhaps, he’d have somepony staking Boiler’s place out. This note, the way it was worded, implied that it had been written by somepony on the inside.

Trixie knew what the evidence was already. She’d planted it.

She let go of her grip over time, and, moving quickly, followed Tones as he made for the exit. She slipped after them, catching each door on the backswing, slipping around their tracks by inches.

Once on the street, he caught a carriage, so Trixie settled for tagging it with a spark of magic, nestling the bolt up against the inside axle.

She found a cafe and bought a coffee, resting her hooves on a stool by the counter as the steaming liquid warmed her from within. It wouldn’t take all that long for Tones to reach his destination—wherever that was. Trixie still felt the little thrill of excitement that accompanied these sojourns, this was the first real anything she’d had on him since she’d come back to Manehattan.

She sipped away, waiting. It wasn’t her first time around, and, if she had her way, it’d be far from her last. Something akin to duty, she felt, a responsibility she accepted for their existence in the first place. She’d played that moment over and over again, in her mind’s eye. She thought she’d spend her life trying to atone for it—and that was okay. She felt . . . anchored, by it, in a peculiar way. Given a purpose.

Tones’ carriage came to a stop on the edge of the city. Trixie didn’t know the area—just that there was a lot of development, construction, out that way, the suburbs giving way to the rapid expansion of the metropolitan. She paid, thanking the staff, and found a secluded spot to continue her pursuit.

The carriage continued on, circling back towards the city. Trixie let it go, her mark fading, and looked around the street for tracks. He wouldn’t be far, she knew, but neither would he be right here.

Was that . . .? A whiff of something pungent, she recognised it almost immediately from his back-room breakfast. Concentrating, Trixie formed the idea in her mind. This was a new one, actually, and not a terrible idea for a stage show. The magic trickled out of her, shaped by will and a natural talent, coalescing around the lingering scent and highlighting it.

A haze of azure, hanging over the area. She was in the middle of it—she couldn’t see the trail from here. She walked to the side, reaching the edge of the cloud and turning to see it disappear down a side alley.

Trixie grinned.

Big Tones’ hideaway was a small house amidst a number of small houses, indistinct from those around it. Trixie crept up to a window, listening carefully.

“I don’t care how,” Tones was saying. “Just get it done, idiot.”

“The alibi will hold,” somepony said. “It’s important not to overreact.”

“Screw you. I’m not going to sit back and do nothing.”

Trixie peeked over the windowsill, invisible. Tones was pacing, back and forth, while another pony Trixie didn’t recognise sat at a table.

“Then do something smart.”

“Ponies need to know not to mess with me,” Tones said, smashing his front hooves together. Trixie quirked a lip. “We’ve got to set an example. Make sure they don’t get away with this.”

Quietly, Trixie retrieved her camera from her bag, and snapped a shot of the two of them. The unknown ponies’ face was away from her, but she’d get a shot of him soon enough.

“Take your time. There’s no need to rush.”

“Like shit. What’ve they got on me?”

“A few documents, is all. A photo of the two of you together. Uhh, at a restaurant. And an agreement I know you didn’t sign.”

Tones sighed. “Somepony’s framing me.”

“Seems like it.”

Tones growled, punching a wall, hard. The whole house shook, dust shaken loose from the ceiling to drift down over them. Trixie paused, mouth opening slightly. That . . . wasn’t normal. That was Coromantic.

Well, then. That changed things, if only slightly. The trouble was, prisons wouldn’t hold a Coromancer, not for long—not even one as nascent as this guy. He probably thought himself just a little stronger than everypony else—a little better. Without control, the teaching Twilight provided . . . Trixie could see, she thought, how that might lead a pony here, to this suburban hideaway.

“Well, they’re going to pay. I want to know everything, you understand?”

“Yeah, I got it. Try to relax. I’ll keep you in the loop, okay?”

“Mm.”

Trixie snapped a few shots of the apparent police officer leaving, before resuming her stakeout. She wanted proof—incontrovertible proof of the connection between Big Tones and the crimes Boiler had been caught committing. She wasn’t satisfied with misdemeanours, with implications.

Boiler had been a petty thief, akin to Trixie herself, from back in the day. Not harmless, but far from a pressing threat, too—part of the underworld that Equestria was learning to deal with, day by day. That was, until last week.

A crime gone wrong, or something worse; Trixie leaned towards the latter. What started as a snatch and grab had quickly turned into a fight that left two bleeding out—response fast enough to save just one. She didn’t know what the turning point was—not yet.

But she doubted it was coincidence that at the same time as the city pulled all its enforcement over to the street brawl engulfing Boiler’s small troop, Big Tones’ had hit three warehouses by the docks, leaving two engulfed in flames and the third conspicuously empty.

The police agreed with her, but their hooves were more or less tied—they had to respond in force to Boiler, and without anything more than circumstantial evidence, they couldn’t spare the ponies.

But as the hours passed, it seemed Tones was more in control than she’d thought, content to sit still, cooking himself a meal and spending most of his time reading, or pacing, stiffly, his body rigid.

Eventually, she retired for the night, leaving a magical mark on the hideout and on Tones’ himself, hidden underneath a ward.

Her hotel room was a small thing, cramped, just a bed and a desk with a tiny bathroom taking up one corner. She unfurled some parchment, penning a quick letter to Twilight, letting her know the situation, sealing it, and leaving it with the staff at the front desk to send. It’d be a few days in transit, and by then Trixie hoped she’d have what she needed to get a prosecution—and a proper one, too.

She slept unevenly, tossing and turning. The hotel wasn’t the quietest, and her room far from the highest: the city at night just seemed to keep on rolling, the soft sound of carriages and voices pulling her from fitful sleep at every other hour. Finally, the light of day spilled through the edges of the her blinds, creeping upward to play over her sagging face.

She groaned, pulling herself out of bed and giving herself a quick wash. Breakfast was a croissant and an apple, with a takeaway cup of coffee floating beside her as she headed out.

Her marks were still together. She doubted she’d get anything else from the hideout, and she was suddenly suspicious of letting the police know where it was. Might be useful if she wanted to drive Tones’ out of his bolthole, but not yet.

Instead, she took a long look at the face in her photographs, sculpting it into her spells, and with a few quick pulses, donned it as a mask.

Celestia, sometimes she loved her talent.

Strolling, Trixie entered the police department, smiling at the receptionist. “Hey,” a glance at the nameplate on her desk, “Bets. How’re you doing?” She nearly giggled at her voice, pitched deeper than her own, and quite clearly off, going by her recollection. Nothing for it now.

“Mornin’, Wheat,” she replied. Aha. Trixie suppressed a giggle.

“Say, I was thinkin’,” she said, mimicking the mare’s drawl, “how’s about you and me catch a show tonight? I’ve got two tickets an’ a table at Straw’s . . .”

Blushing, “Why, Wheat, I never thought- I’d love to!”

Heh. Perhaps a little mean, Trixie thought, leaving through a window in the stallion’s room. She should send some flowers as an apology to Bets.

Musings aside, it was good to put a name to the face. Even better, she sensed her mark moving—Tones heading out, against advice. He wouldn’t do that for just anything—this was what she’d been looking for.

She followed the mark, teleporting to it and freezing time when it came to a proper stop. Tones was halfway into a tall building—Trixie let him rush forward, until he unlocked the door to an inconspicuous office, rushing inside.

She froze time again, and spent some time wandering around, looking through the documents there. Mostly receipts and long lists, she recognised a few names here and there, connecting crimes from months ago she’d thought solved. A proper empire, run not entirely out of this little room. There were still too many pieces missing.

She took the more important files and let the scene play out, watching Tones’ shred through the majority of the paperwork here, only relaxing when he was done.

Was this enough? Certainly, if she wanted to bring him down—to watch the police collapse on top of him like a house of bricks, see Wheat sell him out to save his own skin. Trixie wanted more. She wanted to grasp the full picture, as ugly as it was, bring it to light.

She could find that information in Big Tones’ mind, or Wheat’s, or Boiler’s, for that matter. She’d done worse. But now Trixie hesitated, held back, with a staunch refusal even to consider it. She took photographs of Tones’ movements, documented his paperwork massacre. She followed him back to the bolthole, just in case he was planning to meet somepony there. Alas, no such luck.

Wheat, then. She found him in downtown, on patrol. His partner was the boring sort, not much of a conversationalist, and Wheat did little to hold his attention anyway. Instead, they walked in silence, heads roaming, glancing around.

They stopped a few times, but though Trixie took her time poking around their business, they were never out of line—all just check-ins, chats with business owners, or responses to noise complaints and the like.

And that was Trixie’s day.

Back in her hotel room, washing down a dinner of oats with a little milk, she mused. She could be at this for months before something slipped through the cracks—stirring the beehive hadn’t done much more than confirm her suspicions. She needed something useful, and that meant the status quo, that meant following them when they weren’t looking over their shoulders. She’d made a mistake.

She shook herself, turning her mind elsewhere, horn flashing as a spell came to the forefront of her awareness. She’d been practising this every day for the last few weeks, but it was still draining, still took all her concentration to cast, and too much concentration to maintain. She suspected it always would.

She lay back on her bed, eyes closed, and drifted off into a hazy slumber, the spell active, flickering beside her. She’d sleep later, properly, once she’d lost it; for now she pushed herself to maintain it even through a light doze.

Over the next week, Trixie kept to this routine. Slowly, Tones lost the edge that had marked his movements, he grew comfortable heading out into the city for luncheons, and became more open with his business. He couldn’t simply vanish for too long without losing his control—that, she had been able to count on. So after six long days of nothing, Trixie got her break.

A few of Boiler’s little crew had gotten free, and somehow tracked Tones down. Trixie herself had been loitering across the street, watching for ponies coming and going in the apartment block Tones was currently using. So when she’d recognised the faces heading in, she’d felt a spike of alarm, and quickly moved herself after them, not wanting to have to teleport into an occupied room blindly.

They’d stormed past the guards, kicked down the door, and filled the room, angry faces and loud voices all of them. Trixie, following, slipped her camera out and started taking shots. It was almost too easy, she thought, idly. A good thing, then, that virtually no unicorns could manage proper invisibility—let alone time stops. Satisfied, she put her camera away, and focused on another spell. This one was a little different to her usual fare—an application of illusion magic she’d only recently begun to master.

Reproducing voices was easy, she’d done that all the time back in the day. Reproducing voices accurately, however—that was a fair bit more difficult. Nor was it even that useful, in her current line of work—the first time she’d tried it, triumphantly listening along with the police to the overheard confession, she’d been laughed out of the room. It wasn’t exactly proof, after all.

In a different context, though . . .

“Aren’t gonna let you have him take the fall for this,” one of the hotheads was saying. “It ain’t right.”

“Yeah! We’s stuck our necks out for you.”

Tones shrugged, sitting back down. “And I’m supposed to do what?” he said, affecting calm. Trixie could see the nervous little twitch of his back legs, hidden from the rest of the room. “Boiler knew the risks. It’s done.”

“No way.”

“We took a risk. Now its your turn. Step up.”

Tones scrunched his muzzle up. “You little shits already got paid. The hell else are you looking for?”

It was, she supposed, a story being repeated all across Equestria. The biggest response she’d felt—after everything, all the panic and pain and loss—was fear.

It wasn’t a fear of each other, as she might have speculated, though that undoubtedly played its own, small, part. It wasn’t even a fear of the Outside, the big, wide world suddenly exposed to them. It was a fear of the future, of the vast change brought upon them. Instability—layoffs and redirection of labour, societal shifts that brought towns to economic powerhouses and cities to their knees.

These ponies had been happy, before. They’d had work, perhaps a little shady, but stable enough to feel the firm earth under their hooves.

“If you’re looking for somethin’ else, I can dig around,” Tones said, and Trixie mentally upgraded him a few ranks. “There’s a security detail next week, still need bodies for.”

A beat, then, “What’s the pay,” Trixie spoke, magic projecting the voice so that it came from the middle of the group, the voice a mix of each of the three, such that anypony could have spoken. They glanced at each other, but nopony shot the words down.

Tones was smiling, broadly. “Pay’s good,” he said. Was that a trace of relief in his voice? He leaned forwards, now, his front legs propped up on the desk. “Fifty-an-half, for a few hours work.”

Trixie raised her eyebrows. That was good, better than good, even. Too good—she’d think he was overplaying his hand, if this group were any wiser. A set up? An empty promise?

But they took the bait, a spit-laced-hoofshake sealing the deal. She stuck around as they left, musing.

It was an obvious stakeout, and tempting. But the clock in her head was prodding her, every day an implicit failure. She’d been ready—at least, she thought so, there was no real way to tell—for a few days now, holding off out of a peculiar sense of hesitation. She’d have waffled about Manehattan for weeks longer with this case, refusing to admit it quite so bluntly, had she not just had an example shoved in her face.

She was afraid, too.

In the end, who did she want to be?

 She could make quite the career out of this penitence. She had the knack of it, mistakes due to a lack of experience. Her personal crusade, pushing back against the Boundless’ of the world. There would be more, she knew, now, so many more. She was even suited to the work, it made a certain sense to her. It was safe.

But there was more she could be doing. She knew that—extrapolated it from long discussions with Twilight, with Rainbow and even Rarity, and their experiences in the far-flung past. Coromancy was meant for more than stalking about the city. She could be more.

Once, Trixie would have jumped at that chance. Now, she dreaded it.

She teleported, first back to her hotel room where the spell she’d been fuelling all day was still lying, as lifelike as it had been this morning. Then to the police station, badgering her way into the chief’s office with a few minor tricks and a saved favour, playing the conversation back to him and sharing her theories on Boiler’s employment. She kept Wheat’s true colours to herself. She wanted to shake the beehive once more, see which way they ran

Finally, she teleported to Canterlot. She hadn’t been back here in months.

The street was nearly empty, the buildings white stone on either side. The high wall stretched down the block, slight blemishes marring its surface. She came to a tall arch, gilded gates replacing the wall for a few feet, the plaque high above.

What would Cumulus and Brash think? She thought she knew, somehow. As if their voices hadn’t been lost at all, but were instead with her, floating around in there, whispering encouragement.

In their memory, then.

Trixie gave the orphanage a little smile, twisted and full of hope. Then she vanished from the street in a little pop of azure light.


***


“Rainbow? Trixie. I’m ready.”

Rainbow knocked at her window half a second later, causing Trixie to jump, dropping the phone. She hurried over and opened the window, letting the cyan pegasus in.

Rainbow immediately picked up the phone. “Yeah. Yeah, she jumped about a foot. I know, right? Heh.” She hung it up, and turned to Trixie, who was blushing something fierce. “Ready?”

“Ye- just . . . yeah. Let’s do it.” Trixie took a few deep breaths. This was it. Everything she’d been working towards the last few months. Every bit of practice, every exercise, every time she’d had to slow herself down, control her emotions and reign herself in. All to get this right, to make this chance count.

She nodded, and Rainbow scooped her up, effortlessly carrying her out the window. She’d refused to let Trixie find out if this would work ahead of time—said it could doom them to failure just as equally. Operational security, she’d said. Need-to-know basis.

And Trixie could see the logic. If he wasn’t there . . . well, then he’d never be there. And that, simply, was unacceptable.

Rainbow flew them up, high into the sky. Hovering there, she could see miles around, the countryside of Equestria spilling out before her, all unbounded woods and endless plains. Green, she thought.

And then they were flying in truth, the wind rushing past her ears, deafening her, her eyes bleeding tears, blinding her. The acceleration put a pit in her stomach, made her feel weightless. There was a great boom! resounding, and she flinched away, forcing her eyes closed and holding onto Rainbow for dear life.

It was probably only a few seconds, though it felt a lot longer, but Rainbow was patting her on the shoulder, speaking softly. It took Trixie a little bit to parse the words. “ow, it’s over, we’re here.”

She searched her memory. This was their greatest fear—their potential downfall. Rainbow had avoided Jumping back in time for just this reason, the same reason Luna had lost memory of Typhus upon her return. Entering the Veil was not something to take lightly.

They had prepared. She had an artifact, made for her especially by Luna. She had her own strengths, as a Sage. She was ready to give months of her life to this, should it go poorly—should they become stuck.

But the shard of metal in her grip was pulsing, softly, and Rainbow looked down at her with some degree of care, instead of confusion. “We made it.”

Trixie let out a shaky breath. “Yeah. I guess we did.”

It was a constant pressure on her, beating at her mind with a single-minded relentlessness. It would be so easy to let down her guard and be swept away—to be happy, again, blissful and ignorant. With a grimace, she pushed her will forth, spreading her awareness across herself and Rainbow, her resolute determination.

Rainbow relaxed, her shoulders coming down. “Thanks,” she muttered, turning to look up.

They stood at the base of Canterlot. Trixie nodded, gathering herself once again, before Rainbow glanced at her, shaking her head. “I’ll take us. Come on.”

Wordlessly, Trixie agreed. Rainbow swept her up, carried her high aloft. Trixie scanned the city, finding one of the houses she knew. They touched down, there, a few ponies noticing and rushing towards them—Rainbow’s fame coming back to bite her.

Trixie let them in and shut the door, locking it behind her, then showed Rainbow the trapdoor leading down into the Canterlot Undercity. They disappeared within, flashes of photography catching just Trixie’s tail through the windows.

The tunnels were dark and winding, but Trixie knew the route—had walked it a thousand times in her nightmares. She found the room quickly, and hid both herself and Rainbow in a corner, veiled.

Shining Armour was brought in not long after that. Bound to the table, watched, interrogated. She saw it again, with Rainbow steady beside her. Not touching, but there, nonetheless, another heartbeat to race alongside hers.

She had to be careful, oh so careful. An illusion wasn’t sufficient, here, it would not stand up to the brutalisation and the aftermath. She needed to convince everypony—herself, Boundless, Twilight, even Shining Armour himself. It needed to be convincing for weeks afterwards, through the funeral, the internment. She swallowed.

The spell came to her easily—she’d practised it daily for months. It formed just underneath Shining Amour’s skin, materialising as a thin layer of magic, wrapping through his dermis. She held it, let it mingle with his tissues, and waited.

Waited for the knife to come down.

She caught her own magic as it parted his flesh, worked allow it free passage, kept it from interfering with her own spell. She caused blood to spill out, holding to her own sense of disgust, her own sense of violation, to reproduce the cells underneath, the wound already sealed but blood still pouring out, Shining Armour choking, now, as she cut off his air supply with telekinesis and sent little pockets of air bubbling out through his throat, closing her ears, as best she could, to Twilight’s scream.

Rainbow caught her as a wave of pure force washed across the room, Twilight exploding into lavender light. Trixie couldn’t avert her eyes, almost losing the threads of magic in the wake of Twilight’s incandescence. Rainbow buried her head in her shoulder, quivering.

She let Shining Armour open her eyes, sent a spark of panic to him, inflating the weakness that he felt as he was slowly choked unconscious. She traced a gleam in his eyes, catching Twilight’s attention, and then, with a heart-wrenching tug, wove the illusion of fog over those wide eyes.

That wasn’t the hard part.

The hard part, Trixie found, was standing there, for hours, as first Twilight, and then Cadence grieved. Watching, as the mountain shook underneath them—remembering how she’d stared up, flinching at every tremble in the ground. Listening to Rainbow’s frantic, desperate attempts to comfort her, and feeling Rainbow tense against her.

Eventually, a moment came where their attention was diverted away. She lashed out with magic, suddenly desperate to get away, to be done, nigh blinded by her tears, transporting the body away from the scene and substituting it with a construct of her own. It was good—good enough to fool even Luna, so long as she was nearby, so long as she fed it with her life.

And so she did. She could accept no less. Her penance, manifesting as devotion, a single-mindedness that saw her through days of grief—through Cadence’s heartbroken confessions and one-sided conversations, through the funeral, and the dedications of everypony Shining Armour had known and loved, Celestia herself interning the body in the ground.

It took two weeks. Within days, Trixie was exhausted, by the end she was almost insensate, capable of no speech, no action beyond Rainbow hoof-feeding her. The spell drew from her more than emotion, it drew the very will to live, all her desires and dreams and fears. She simply had nothing left.

Until, finally, Rainbow slapped her—hard—and told her to let go. Trixie stared at her, dumbly, with Shining Armour watching over the both of them. “It’s time to let go,” he said, not unkindly, and, as the words penetrated her consciousness, she fell immediately into a deep sleep.

Rainbow took them home.


The End of Part Five