//------------------------------//
// Penn & Teller & Trixie & Technicalities 
// Story: World's Shortest Crossovers:  The Anthology Series Of Doom 
// by Estee 
//------------------------------//

The very large man briefly rubbed his goatee, then leaned towards the much shorter personage sitting on his right.  He whispered to his silent partner, who made a quick sketch on the notepad.  Both of them momentarily glanced backwards, and each took in the universally-stunned visages of the audience.

They made themselves look at the half-smirking female on the stage and in doing so, had to mutually adjust their sight lines to be a lot lower than usual.

"All right," the large man said.  "So we've ruled out trapdoors."

The blue unicorn mare nodded.

"And obviously there's no way it was sleight of hand," he continued, "because..."  And trailed off right there.  He had a naturally commanding presence, seldom looked or sounded awkward, and therefore wasn't all that good at it.

"Because," the mare finished for him, "no hands."

He nodded.  "Which would bring us down to this."  He stood up (which took a few seconds), and his partner did the same.  "We're going to show you this sketch.  If this is what you used, then we win.  But if you didn't, then that's our last guess.  You will have officially fooled us.  You'll get the trophy and two months from now, you'll open for our show."

The mare's tail curled up a little.  The half-smirk got wider as the two men came onto the stage, and became a full smile when the smaller one placed the well-rendered image of mechanisms in front of her eyes.

"On my honor as a magician," the mare told them, "that wasn't what I did.  Not even close."

The large man took a very deep breath.

"Wow."  There was a lot of sincerity in those three letters.  "Wow.  It has been a while.  A lot of performers have come up here, and a few have gotten past us, but this is the first time neither of us has even been in the right ballpark.  It's going to be fun having you opening the show --"

She wasn't really listening.  She was watching the trophy's platform descending from the ceiling, and it wasn't coming down fast enough to suit her.  The mare's corona ignited, and a flare of energy collected the token of her triumph.

Several hundred people gasped.

"-- what was that?" the very large (and extremely stunned) man said.

"Magic!" the mare proudly said.  "What day should I be at the hotel?  I'll need some time to set up."

"...magic," the much smaller one said, and incidentally did so for the first time ever.  (The resulting gasp was nearly as loud.)

"Of course!"

"Real magic," the larger one slowly tried.

"Yes.  Because I'm a magician.  So.  For my calendar?"

The big hand went through the field, grabbed the trophy.

"That's cheating!" he stridently declared.

"No, it isn't!" the mare shot back, now using the energy to pull.  "You said to fool you!  With magic!  And you thought it was just mechanisms and distractions and tricks!  So I fooled you!  I won!"

"But it isn't the right kind of magic!" he insisted as he leaned backwards, putting his weight into the tug-of-war.

"Yours isn't magic at all!  You're just being jealous!  I won!"

The big man released his grip, all at once.  The furious mare levitated the trophy until it was floating at her side, panted from the effort.

"You're not being fair..." she weakly said.  

One hand came up, stroked at the goatee.

"You know something?" he told her.  "You're right.  I'm not."

Everyone looked at them.  Partner, audience, camera crew.

"So...  I won?"

"I'm not sure," he admitted.  "Not within the rules as we normally use them."

"But --"

"-- there's someone," he cut her off, "that I really want to introduce you to.  But only if you'd happen to be interested in making a million dollars..."





The very old magician with the bushy white beard brought sharp eyes up as the big man made a summoning gesture towards the darkness at the right edge of the stage.

"All right," James Randi rather skeptically said.  "Let's see what this 'discovery' can do."