Tantabus, Chapter 8 (Sunset) · 2:47am Jan 10th, 2016
Tantabus
8 - Sunset
September 23rd, 5:30 pm CST
At the tail end of my last diary entry, I promised to describe how I put the Cowardly and Worthless Trixie back in her place.
I just don’t know what went wrong.
I went to her apartment and knocked on the door. She was sleeping—sleeping!—after what she had witnessed, and her snores were practically shaking the walls. I pounded on the door until I woke her up.
Surely, diary, under those circumstances I should have had the upper hand?
“Trixie!” I demanded as she opened the door. “How dare you spy on me!” There, right from the top, I let her know that I was in command of the situation, that I was not going to be intimidated, that any advantage she thought she had over me was null and void.
“Stop,” she mumbled. “Trixie has a great and powerful headache.”
And...I stopped. I had to.
She forced me.
It was magic—as much magic as an alicorn would wield, and I was utterly powerless against it. Every muscle in my body locked, painfully. I could not even breathe, but because it was magic, I felt no need to breathe.
I...I almost cried from how much power was coursing through me.
And...and she had no idea what she had done! “Trixie thanks you,” she said, as if I had a choice. She stretched like a cat, and then turned her head back to look at a clock. “3:45? I’m late!” she cried, rushing back inside.
I still couldn’t move.
“Mother, why didn’t you wake me? Mother, Mother where are you?”
Typical, I thought to myself. Yet another CHS student with a worthless parent. I tell you, that is the most distinct difference between the human and pony worlds: the majority of ponies are raised with love, if not by their families than by their communities, while every human student I’ve met is either an orphan in fact or have such rotten parents that they are orphans in the only way that matters, deprived of love.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Sunset—Trixie didn’t mean to see what was obviously an accident, so you don’t need to worry about Trixie one bit! Now, Trixie’s got a party to attend, one that will make her dreams come true!” And with that, she closed the door and made her way down the stairs.
Less than a minute later, I heard her coupe pull out of its parking spot and plunge into traffic.
Gradually, I felt the effects of the spell fade until I was finally able to break free. I wasted no time breaking into her apartment.
I found nothing, absolutely nothing, to explain the sudden surge in Trixie’s magic. That girl was nothing but a fake her entire life—how could she not only gain, but master, that much magic in less than a day?
I found Trixie’s event organizer and called Snips and then Snails. “You have a new mission, Doofuses. You are to go to Twist’s house as soon as possible. She’s having a birthday party, and Trixie’s the entertainment. Plant yourselves somewhere where nobody can see you, especially Trixie, then point your cell cameras at her—I want to see everything that she does.” I made them repeat the address to me three times each before I dismissed them.
Then I cleaned up the signs of my break-in and sat myself in the apartment lobby to wait.
I wanted to go down to that party myself, I really did, but...I was afraid.
Afraid of Trixie. Can you believe it?
The Dumbtastic Duo finally showed up at 5. Of course they failed to get a decent video of her. At least they weren’t spotted. And I got some clear audio, accompanied by a blurry video of the rear gate to Twist’s house.
From the recording, I could tell that Trixie was doing her act, and Apple Bloom’s little posse was watching. Only the act was actually working, and the audience was applauding what she was doing! She announced each trick in advance, and from the reactions, she apparently delivered on every promise. She levitated Scootaloo high enough for her blurry shape to briefly appear on camera; she cut Sweetie Belle in half, accurately described her stomach contents, and then put her back together; and she briefly teleported Apple Bloom to a beach on Tahiti, where she came back with a fistful of black sand! For one brief moment, Trixie was the greatest and most powerful magician on the entire planet.
And then she tried to pull a rabbit out of a hat and it all went horribly wrong. With a very familiar distorted scream, Trixie was no more.
The girls, of course, panicked, and soon drew the attention of everyone else, who of course failed to witness any of what had just happened. My minions were forced to withdraw at that point (cartoonishly bumping the gate open along the way), but they told me that Applejack dragged off the three girls in her truck, that Twist’s mother declared that Trixie had obviously left once she realized she wasn’t going to get paid for showing up an hour after the party had ended, and that Trixie’s car was still parked at the cafe across the street. At Snail’s urging, the pair waited until things had managed to settle down, and then they filmed a final video of the back yard taken from over the fence—Trixie’s rather expensive magical equipment was abandoned, something she would never do, the sand of Tahiti was clearly visible in a little pile, and a wisp of smoke was coming out of her trademark hat.
I hate to admit it, but I have no idea what’s going on. It’s human magic, fueled by the Element of Magic, but I can’t piece together the pattern. And teleportation still shouldn’t be possible.
I’m going to call it a night, diary. Maybe a good night’s sleep will help me to get to the bottom of this.
Stop making this so good and then not publishing it ahh! Seriously publiiish
3676152
It's obvious: Angel ate her.
Oh dear. The odds of Trixie's survival are diminishing by the chapter. And Sunset's scrambling to reclaim some semblance of control could lead to even worse outcomes due to her haste. This could prove very messy...