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The Horrible Plan
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”Trixie”
“Is… Trixie dead?” The blue mare asked aloud in the third person, afraid to open her eyes and see the damage that had been done to her body by the fall.
“No. You’re safe right now.” Aurora’s voice rung through her mind, “And you know I hate it when you refer to yourself like that.”
Trusting her, she opened her eyes and was, instantly greeted with a lot of white space around her.
“Where are we?” Trixie asked, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the whiteness around her.
“We’re inside your mind,” Aurora said, “Safe and sound from the world outside.”
“Wait- where’s Twilight? And the rest of my friends?” She asked suddenly, standing up and taking a step backward, only to bump in to the mare standing behind her.
“It’s okay!” The small mare responded, placing a hoof comfortingly on Trixie’s shoulder, “Nothing is happening to them… right now.”
Turning around to face Aurora, Trixie felt a rush of happiness run through her veins at being able to see her dear friend once again. It almost mode her forget about the catastrophe going on in the outside world.
“It’s so nice being able to see you,” She said, her eyes beginning to water, “What the heck did you do?”
“As soon as Twilight threw us clear, I used a spell to slow time down by a huge amount.” She said, wrapping her arms around Trixie’s neck, “I can keep us here for a while like this.”
“I don’t suppose we could stay in here for a few weeks while I catch my breath, huh?” She asked the resident in her brain.
“I’m afraid not. I could give us an hour, but that would be it.” She said apologetically, pulling back from their embrace, “We should make the best of it, planning what we’re going to do next.”
Trixie tilted her head slightly, “Did you have something in mind?”
Aurora nodded slowly, frowning just enough to give her friend pause.
“What’s wrong?” Trixie asked, “Are we going to be able to beat her?”
“Yes… I think.” She said, looking away from her friend as she bit her lip, “But it’s not a plan you’re going to like.”
“Why do you say that?” She asked, walking around Aurora to find her gaze once again.
“I’ll die.”
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Twilight laughed to herself as she watched the Elements of Harmony writhe in their unconscious state. As soon as Trixie was clear of the tower, she used a spell to put them all in to a deep sleep, giving her the ability to feed nightmares into their heads.
“Dreaming is such a wonderful thing,” Twilight said aloud, making sure Luna could hear her, “You can experience the greatest adventure of your life in just a couple of hours. Or, in this case, you can experience a lifetime of horror. Enough to make you a completely different pony.”
“They are stronger than you think, Twilight,” Luna said confidently, “You won’t sway them.”
“You should know better than anypony what it means to give yourself up to chaos.” She returned, looking over her shoulder with a wide smile, “And if you are right, I’ll just force them to experience another hundred years of nightmares.”
Luna scowled as she spoke under her breath, “Please be stronger than I…”
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“No!” Trixie shouted, shaking her head as she turned away from Aurora, “I refuse to do that! Trixie would never forgive herself!”
“I’m sorry!” Aurora pleaded, tears welling in her eyes, “But you need to look at this from an objective place! If we don’t stop her now, she’ll hurt all our friends! Maybe even kill them all!”
Trixie exhaled, and shook slightly as she mulled over what needed to be done.
“But… you’d die…” Trixie said quietly, her voice breaking as she spoke, “I don’t know that I could live with myself if you left me again…”
The yellow mare sighed softly.
“Trixie, you need to listen to me,” Aurora said, her body blowing like tiny grains of sand in the wind, over toward her friend, where she reassembled, “I can’t tell you how happy I was to wake up in your head. But… I can’t stay in here forever. It’s not living, being in here all alone.”
“You’re not alone!” Trixie argued, shaking her head as her tears of happiness were replaced by a torrent of sad ones, “I’m here! The- the other ponies in town are here for you too! W-we could… we could see you all the t-time!”
Aurora shook her head simply, wrapped an arm around Trixie's neck, and placed her head in her chest as the blue meare she broke down
This was the way things needed to be, and both knew it. Neither needed to be convinced, but that didn’t stop them from both from hating the harshness of reality.
“We don’t have any time to spare. We need to get to your friends right now.” Aurora said softly, wishing that she could let her friend embrace her for a longer period.
Trixie didn’t answer for a couple of moments, as she tired her best to find composure. Her sobs lessened over time, and eventually stopped, being replaced by a silent quiver.
“W-where exactly do we start?” She asked, looking up to her friends’ face, putting more effort into remaining calm than anything else.
“Twilight’s power isn’t complete,” Aurora said, looking down to her friend with a soft smile, “The chaos from the elements has been suppressed by her baby.”
Sighing, Trixie pulled away, and cleared her throat.
“Okay. So she’s going to be weak until she gives birth?” She asked.
“No.” She shook her head, closing her eyes for a moment, “She’s worked out that she can enhance the chaos inside the Elements. And as the chaos grows, so does her power.”
“How is she ‘enhancing the chaos’?” Trixie asked, blinking and rubbing the tears from her eyes.
“Well… By inducing a dream state in your friends, she’s going to bombard them with negative imagery, until their personalities are fundamentally changed.” Aurora explained, waving her hoof, “In the same way that I’ve slowed down time, she’s used a similar spell, in conjunction with the usual time stretching effects of dreams, to give your friends year’s worth of horror, in a very short amount of time.”
Trixie blinked as she processed everything complicated that Aurora had just explained to her.
“If we can break the anti magic barrier, and stop her from growing stronger, I should be on even ground with her, for one more battle.” She continued, tapping her chin as she worked out the finer details of what needed to happen next.
“Wait- how do you know all of this?” Trixie asked, “No offense… but you weren’t this kind of genius before you moved in to my head.”
Aurora smiled and chuckled.
“You’ve spent a lot of time around Twilight,” She explained, “I’ve absorbed some of her intellect just by being around her. In fact, I’ve taken in all sorts of traits from the ponies that are in danger up in that tower… I sometimes find myself craving a huge party, or a night alone with Spike. It’s all very strange.”
Trixie was surprised, but knew that trying to work out the reasoning behind her attitude change would be nothing more than a waste of time.
“I sometimes find myself… well, losing myself.” Aurora admitted quietly, “As time has passed, I’ve felt less like myself, and more like some crazy culmination of the Elements of Harmony.”
Both fell silent as she said this for a few moments, before Trixie finally spoke up.
“So, how long would you even have left, before you stopped being you?” Trixie asked, focusing on a completely irrelevant subject.
“Don’t worry about it, Trixie.” Aurora said, smiling weakly, “That time isn’t going to come either way.”
“But- what then?” Trixie stuttered, “Your days with me were always numbered? Was is it my destiny to lose you so many times?”
Aurora felt a spike of anger run through her, probably coming from Dash, or perhaps Rarity.
“You got me twice!” She fired back, losing her own emotional control for a moment, “That’s more than anypony else gets! I didn’t get my dad back after he died! I never got to meet my mom! Don’t look this gift pony in the mouth!”
“I-I know!” Trixie said back, her tears once again running down her cheeks, “But if you had gotten your family back… you’d be saying the exact same thing that I am right now…”
Aurora felt a bit of stubbornness surge through her, likely coming from one of the Elements, “But I’m not in your position! And right now, nothing is more important than rescuing your friends, and saving Equestria!”
Trixie sighed.
“What needs to happen then?” She asked.
“Two things.” Aurora said, forcing herself to keep on topic, “We destroy the anti-magic barrier, and we infiltrate the dreams of your friends.”
“We can- wait, how do we do either of those things?” Trixie asked, wiping her nose on her arm.
“The anti magic barrier is nothing more than a spell maintained by Twilight,” She explained, relying on that very mare’s intelligence to defeat her, “If we cast anything stronger than the amount of power she’s putting into it, it’ll shatter. Anti-magic fields are vulnerable from the outside.”
“But… she’s way stronger than we are!” The blue mare pointed out, “How could we overpower her?”
“A large amount of her power has been dedicated to corrupting your friends,” She answered, scratching her chin, “If we surprise her with a burst of energy, we can smash through it, then, before she knows what’s happening, we jump into your friends’ dreams with a different spell I learned from Twilight.”
“And from there?” Trixie asked.
“We save your friends from their time stretched nightmares, and cut off Twilight from her new power source.” Aurora continued, looking Trixie in the eyes as she finished, “If everything goes according to plan, thanks to the time slowing spell she used, all of this will happen over the course of only a few seconds.”
The blue mare nodded.
“Then we take advantage of that initial shock.” She said slowly, sighing as she continued, “And I jump from your mind to hers, where I can use my copious amount of harmonious magic, to cancel out her copious amount of chaotic magic.”
“And then… both you, and the evil energy controlling Twilight, will die.” Trixie said, closing her eyes.
“…yes.” She nodded.
Trixie breathed in and out for a moment, opening her eyes and looking away from her friend.
“I wish I had more time to process this.” She said softly.
“We don’t have a moment to lose, Trixie. I’m sorry. But… are you ready?” Aurora asked.
Looking back to Aurora, Trixie gave her most determined face, and nodded.
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