Magic Wands and Hourglasses: A Time Turner's Adventures Story

by Whammy

The Greatest Show - Part IV

Two stallions were ducked behind some crates, listening as a pair of disguised Changelings walked by, breaths held so as to not make a sound. Once it seemed the coast was clear, the two swung around the corner and made a dash for the storage tent that lay across the way. Hearing no sounds of alarm, they two took a deep sigh of relief as they trotted over to their targets; a large pile of crates simply labeled “Fireworks.”

“I think we should be safe for now. They’ll be preparing for the show so they won’t be coming here till near the end.” O’Hooves said as he started to levitate lids off the crates.

“Excellent, we should be ready by then,” Time Turner said, a slight struggle in his voice as he forced open one of the larger, more secured crates.

“I still think you’re asking way too much of Trixie,” O’Hooves said as he started to levitate the various fireworks around to prepare to set them up later. “She was never good at dealing with ponies mocking her, even as a foal, and she has a lot of pride in her magic skills. Having her fail on purpose might…”

“Look, I know it’s a lot, but I believe Trixie can handle it. I may not know have known her as long as you have, and there’s still a lot about her I don’t know, but I know Trixie has what it takes to really be a great and powerful unicorn someday,” Time Turner said as he turned around and hunched down. Quick as a whip, his back legs smashed open one of the crates, the contents spilling out all around him.

“There, much faster,” Time Turner said with a smile. O’Hooves rolled his eyes.

“And much more likely to get us blown to pieces,” he replied as Time Turner sheepishly grinned, remembering the contents of these crates.

“Anyway, I truly do hope that you’re right. The last thing either of us wants is for Trixie to have another breakdown…” O’Hooves said, his voice filled with concern.

“Speaking of which…” Time Turner said as he opened another crate, more gently this time of course. “I’ve got a sense something happened between you and Trixie. You both kept mentioning ‘that night she ran away’. It may be a little rude of me to not get the story from her but, well…” he said, trailing off as they both knew fully well that Trixie would probably be very hesitant to talk about any failures of her.

“No, no, it’s fine. I guess you ought to know now that you’re mixed up in all of this. It all started the night she asked me if she could perform by herself…”

----------

Several Years Earlier

“Trixie is too ready to perform on her own!” a younger Trixie yelled. She was clothed in a familiar star-studded hat and cape assemble, and O’Hooves knew that her eyes were glaring at him as he hunched over a box he normally used for the sawing-a-pony in half trick. All he could do in response to her was sigh as he talked to her with the “I already told you” tone of his that always bugged her but he couldn’t help but use in these moments.

“You’re not ready to perform alone Trixie and that’s final. Once you’ve learned everything I can teach you, then you can. Till then, just keep practicing your routines and…”

“But my routines are absolutely PERFECT! You said so yourself; nopony can use levitation magic as well as the Mighty and Majestic Trixie can!” Trixie shouted back, stomping her hoof in frustration. She apparently had yet to learn his reasoning, and he was starting to doubt she ever would. He turned around, a slight glare in his eye as he responded with a slightly raised voice.

“I thought I told you to not call yourself that off stage. In fact, I should have stopped you when you started talking in the third person but I thought it harmless. But nope, instead it seems it let you’re ego swell faster than one of the clowns’ balloon animals.”

“And why shouldn’t it? Trixie is going to be the best magician in all of Equestria someday; she simply wishes to let everypony know that,” she replied, proudly raising her head and puffing out her barrel. He could already bet that in her mind right now she was chalking up his reluctance to jealousy or something like it.

But that wasn’t the case; he was afraid that with an ego this large she wouldn’t be able to handle a bad show. It was always important that a showpony knew how to be graceful when making mistakes; after all, everypony has a bad night. Trixie, however, was such a perfectionist that she seemed to have convinced herself she could never have one. So if she did, well, he was afraid of what might happen. At this rate though it seemed one bad night was something she was going to need…

“It’s that cockiness of yours that’s keeping you off stage…but you know what, fine. I’ll let you have a show tonight. Here’s a list of a pretty basic routine; I want you to do every trick to the audience’s perfection. Pull it off, I’ll see about getting you a show. If you fail…”

“Which Trixie won’t of course,” she interrupted with a smug little grin on her face that said ‘I can do anything you throw at me’

“Right. As unlikely as that prospect may be, if you fail you will stop nagging me about it and get back to practicing like I’ve been telling you. Deal?” he said.

Trixie was suspicious of the slight twinkle in his eye, but she nodded her head and replied with a, “Yes,” as he floated over to her a list of acts to perform…
-----

The Present

“That sounds about right for Trixie, at least the way she was when I first saw her in Ponyville. And even since then she’s had a bit of a mouth,” Time Turner replied, laughing a little as he repositioned a firework. He mentally did a quick calculation in his head while waiting for O’Hooves to finish whatever it was he was doing; these things had to be positioned just right to work the way he wanted them too.

“Even when she was a foal she had a bit of a snarky streak in her, but by that point she was a full on narcissist. I gave her one of my more advanced routines in hopes that maybe a good bombing on stage would deflate her ego,” O’Hooves replied, using his magic to do the same thing as Time Turner in positioning the fireworks. A quick glance outside the flap showed them that the other half of the plan seemed to be working; ponies were slowly starting to leave the main circus tent with a look of disgust on their faces.

“I’m going to take it that she did more than ‘bomb’ on stage if she ran away afterwards,” Time Turner responded.

“Oh no, she didn’t run away for screwing up on stage. She actually did well enough, but it fell apart around the time she was supposed to begin the illusions and fireworks. As hard as she tried, the best she could do was some basic whizzing and firecrackers. That broke her confidence enough that she even started messing up the simplest of tricks. Being booed off stage is tough for any showpony, but Trixie didn’t really take it the way I had hoped…”

-----

Several Years Earlier

“YOU SABOTAGED ME!” Trixie shouted as she slammed her hooves on the door to the trailer. O’Hooves, however, was refusing to answer the door. He did, however, make sure to put on some extra-strength magical enchantments. When Trixie was furious like this, she had a tendency to blow up doors.

“There was absolutely NO WAY that Trixie could have failed those tricks! You did something to the equipment or were blocking Trixie’s magic or…,” she continued yelling. As her paranoid delusions were starting to get out of hoof, and would probably bring some of the circus security after her, O’Hooves finally relented and opened the door to find himself with a very angry pony breathing in his face.

“I did absolutely nothing to the equipment, and I wasn’t casting any magic. You failed because you weren’t ready, just like I said. That’s why I gave you an advanced list of tricks to show you that,”

“So you DID sabotage Trixie by giving her spells she couldn’t do!” Trixie replied, shoving a hoof right into his chest.

“I though the Mighty and Majestic Trixie could do anything?” he said, his face now showing a smug smile as Trixie stepped back with widened eyes before blabbering incoherently. She always did that when somepony had beaten her but she refused to admit it.

“F-Fine, you’re right. But Trixie is going to learn to do those tricks right now and prove to you Trixie could have done the show!”

Before he could say anything about the ridiculousness of the comment, Trixie was already galloping off towards the big top. He was about to go after her when he suddenly decided against it. She would just need some time to cool off, and she did that best by burning off magic and doing some tricks. After an hour or two she would do her whole routine and then come back and they could talk. He wondered if her parents had this much trouble with her when she wasn’t working at the circus…

After an hour passed, O’Hooves was comfortably reading through a newspaper, hoping to at least get in some relaxation before confronting Trixie. As he flipped over the news section, however, he noticed an odd glow coming out from the window. Getting up off his bed, he walked over and pushed back the blinds. His eyes widened as he spotted the circus tent was now ablaze, but the peculiar thing was that the fire was a rainbow of colors that sputtered off every few seconds and exploded…like fireworks.

“Trixie…” O’Hooves said as he put the pieces together. Without even a second thought he rushed out the trailer with a slam. Galloping off towards the circus, he spotted many of the other ponies running towards it as well with whatever they could to try and put it out. But a magical fire like this? Water wasn’t going to do it; they’d need magic like his. But that could wait; he needed to find Trixie first and, if need be, rescue her. Angry at her or not, she was still his apprentice and it was his task to look out for her.

Unfortunately nopony else had spotted her in the chaos, or they were too busy trying to contain the fire that they couldn’t even talk to him. His own search was bringing nothing, and he was just about to dive right into the inferno itself to find her when he heard sobbing coming from behind one of the crates. With hope pushing him forward, O’Hooves made his way towards the sound, finding himself faced with a Trixie laid out on the ground with her head buried in her hooves. For all she bragged about being powerful, for being grown-up and being ‘mighty and majestic’, she was still a filly at heart. He started to reach out to her, wanting to let her know he was still there for her.

“Trixie, thank goodness you’re…”

His voice caused her to jump up and turn around. The widened eyes and jittery legs told him that she was scared, and she had a right to be; he had been rather harsh. But as he tried to reach out to her, she backed away. It was slow at first, but eventually it was faster and faster until she finally started to turn around.

“Wait, Trixie, hold a moment! You don’t need to…”

“I-I’m sorry but I have to…”

She didn’t even finish her sentence before she started galloping away. O’Hooves tried to go after her, but his panic running earlier and his age started to catch up to him. He soon found the distance between him and her getting larger and larger, and his yelling was doing nothing. If he had the time to do so, he would have kept running all night, but the sound of cracking wood and cries of scared ponies forced his attention elsewhere as the big top began to collapse. Glancing at the disappearing figure of Trixie, O’Hooves muttered out one last “Good luck…”before turning to help put out the fire.

-----

“I sent out letters to some of my contacts, hoping to hear anything about her after that. But she just disappeared, gone. It wasn’t until a few years later that her name started to show up again as ‘The Great and Powerful Trixie!’. By then she had her own cart, was doing her own shows, and it seemed as if she had moved on. I figured it best if I stayed out of her life, and once the Changelings were in full control I simply didn’t have the motivation.

Time Turner took all the information in as he positioned one last firework. Looking out at the flap and the ever increasing amount of ponies flooding out of the big top, he figured it was almost time for the main event for the evening. Still, there was a little time to wrap up this conversation.

“As much as we would like it to be, unfortunately those sort of things just don’t go away. You can hide them, maybe even trick yourself into thinking you got over it, but eventually you’ll have to confront them,” he replied. For a brief second his thoughts turned to his own life and Clock Keeper, but he pushed it aside. That would be something he would need to deal with at his own pace…but after a sentiment like he just said that would have to be rather soon. Didn’t want to be a hypocrite after all.

“But anyway, enough about that because it seems we have guests! Hello there creepy Changeling clown things!” Time Turner said as he gave a little wave to the recently arrived party crashers.

“We should have known you two were involved. Trixie’s performance this evening has been rather…subpar. But luckily Big Top is offering to let it slide due to her being under the orders of some ‘bad seeds’. All we ask is for you two to surrender quietly so we can remove you…properly this time,” the lead one said as he glanced over with a look of annoyance at the smiling Time Turner.

“No! I have had enough of you lot and I will not go quietly! I will stand here and,” O’Hooves said as he defiantly stood forward, head lowered and horn blazing with magic.

“Surrender nice and quiet like,” Time Turner said as he bopped the magician on the head hard enough to send the horn towards the ground and hit some powder that had spilled on the ground when they were moving stuff. O’Hooves woozily raised his head as he watched Time Turner slowly walk towards the exit flap.

“Yep, you got us and our evil little hideout. There is absolutely nothing that we can do now. The jig is up, game over, and all that jazz. Come along O’Hooves,” Time Turner said with a smile as the clowns looked on in confusion. O’Hooves wanted to protest, but the look in Time Turner’s eye was telling him ‘Trust me’. That, and the sound of a trail of powder burning. Joining Time Turner in the smile, O’Hooves walked towards the exit.

“Yes, I do say we are done here Time Turner. Oh, and you there,” O’Hooves said as he pointed to the lead clown,”May we make a suggestion?”

“Prisoners do not get to make suggestions.”

“Oh you’ll really love this one,” Time Turner said as he stopped. About a second later the fizzing sound of the powder was over. What followed next was the very definition of chaos as the entire pile of fireworks began to go off, instantly tearing apart the tent as blazing trails of every color shot off into the sky.

“Run.”

Comments

[Whammy]

Ah ha, I promised you an update this weekend and I have delivered! Whew, sorry for the delay in this everybody ^_^"". But I made it a lot longer than I planned to make up for it, and added in that ending bit to deliver up for the next chapter which will basically be Trixie's viewpoint of the time period here (not the backstory, but the putting the pile of fireworks together). After that should be the finale, and the end of this part of the Magic Wands and Hourglasses saga. But don't worry, the story won't be over after that; I just need a break from writing Trixie and Time Turner and want to dip into some other story ideas that I've had. Some involve Trixie, some involve Time Turner, and some don't involve either! Not many, but there are some XD

[Giant Robot]

YESS the EXPLODING CIRCUS TENT! YOU DID IT, YOU DID IT!

[Shadow Bolt]

Saw this coming from a mile away.

[SuperChaosKG]

No, really, why do you want to sabotage the circus? It's a bloody circus and easy way to make a lot of food. What is the issue?

[Spirit Shift]

....run
Twas all that needed to be said