“And for my next trick, the Great and Powerful Trixie will perform her greatest feat yet!”
Trixie disappeared, the smoke clearing too early to reveal her running offstage to the right.
Starlight Glimmer watched from the crowd, sipping from her favorite cup. Trixie had been working on a new routine for a while, but was mum on the actual details.
Grunts of strain came from the stage as Trixie re-appeared from the right, pushing against a giant crate of fireworks. Much larger than her usual stash, Glimmer couldn’t help but worry about a few of the rockets being black with pony skulls and crossbones stamped on the side.
“For this trick,” Trixie declared, “the Great and Powerful Trixie will need a volunteer! The strongest pony in the crowd!”
She scanned her audience, and pointed out to a large shadow in the front. “You there! Come on stage!”
Bulk Biceps lifted above the crowd, already hyped. He threw himself onto the wooden platform, making sure to show off his muscles to the audience.
Trixie faced the audience as she talked. “You seem like a pretty strong pony.”
“Yeah!”
“Strong enough to, say, move this big box of fireworks?”
“Yeah!”
“Then go ahead! Push it as hard as you can!”
Bulk screamed with joy, throwing his entire mass at the box. It didn’t budge. He beat his wings, throwing what wingpower he had into his push. The box remained stubborn. He finally ran back, getting a running start and then throwing his entire shoulder at the box. He continued to struggle, finally pitifully beating at it with his hooves.
“Pretty hard, huh?” she asked. “Would you like some help?”
He nodded, fat tears in his eyes.
Many more ponies were called up to the stage, trying to help Bulk Biceps move the crate even an inch. They knew it was possible; they’d seen Trixie push it on stage. Even when Applejack came up to assist, the box remained obstinate.
“You see,” Trixie explained as the ponies continued to push the box, “this box is invincible to normal ponies. However, the Great and Powerful Trixie knows its secret, and will defeat it in front of your very eyes!”
She shooed her volunteers off the stage, walking behind the crate. It slowly rose, Trixie coming up from below it, balancing the giant crate on her hooves.
“S-see? Nothing is beyond the Great-”
The box crashed down on her. The stage groaned, and a second later the wooden floor of the stage gave way, the crate going halfway in before hitting the ground underneath. The impact set off one of the fireworks inside, and soon a fireball engulfed the entire makeshift theater as ponies ran for cover from the wayward rockets.
Starlight did her best to protect the ponies threatened, but as the arsenal of fireworks emptied itself, her thoughts turned to the magician.
“Trixie!” she called out, running to the burnt husk of the stage. She lifted the blackened crate from the hole.
She saw her worst fear. There was barely anything left. Nothing but a smoking crater. And in its center...
The color drained from her face and she stumbled backwards, unable to believe what had just happened. The Great and Powerful Trixie, her friend, was dead.
Glimmer had been wandering Ponyville in a depressed haze for the last few days, still in shock. The first pony to truly understand her had her life snuffed out, just like that.
Twilight had told her they would do everything they could to make sure she got a proper burial, even have Celestia give her eulogy. But that wouldn’t bring her back. Nothing would.
She sat at one of the trees in Ponyville’s park, blankly staring ahead. This was the greatest pain she’d ever known; a deep, dull wrenching abyss in her soul that would never heal. She couldn’t even work up the effort to cry most times; a part of her had died with the showpony.
Trixie walked by the tree, a half-finished sandwhich floating in front of her.
“Hi Starlight,” she said.
“Hi Trixie,” Starlight Glimmer flatly replied.
Between the shock, grief, the first seeds of an evil plan being hatched to abuse time magic and reverse Trixie’s death, and more grief, it took Glimmer a good ten minutes to process who she'd just talked to.
When it hit her, she sprung up with a wild gleam in her eye. “Trixie?!”
By then the magician was well out of sight. Maybe it was all a hallucination, but she had to make sure. She ran from the park, headed towards the site of Trixie’s wagon.
When she arrived, she brought her back hooves down and screeched across the ground upon seeing the sight of Trixie in the window of her wagon, reading the newspaper while finishing the remains of the sandwhich.
The grief in her heart melted, replaced by pure joy. Her vision became blurry, and her heart nearly jumped into her throat as she ran over. Trixie only noticed her at the last second, and the surprise from Glimmer’s sudden bear hug made her drop her sandwhich.
“Trixie!” Glimmer sobbed, “I couldn’t—how did you—I was so—”
Trixie tried to hide her disgust and/or surprise. “Uh, hi?”
She'd had completely broken down, her words incomprehensible as she just cried her way through the suffocating hug. Minutes passed until she was finally finished, looking up to her friend with red eyes and a runny nose.
The showpony still kept her reserved demeanor. “Um, Starlight? Are you okay?”
Glimmer sniffed. “What do you mean, ‘are you okay’? I thought you died!”
Trixie stared at her with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah. Obviously. You don’t really survive a box crushing you and then exploding.”
Glimmer shook her head. “Wait, what?”
“I can’t tell you how the trick works, trade secret and all that, but yeah, I kinda messed up at the end. Totally ruined the routine.”
“Th—the routine? You were crushed! I saw your corpse!”
Trixie rolled her eyes. “Duh. No need to rub it in. Besides, I know what I did wrong and I’ll get it right next time.”
Glimmer’s elation faded to confusion. “Trixie. Did you…did you come back to life?”
“Okay,” Trixie muttered in an annoyed tone, “is this some weird Ponyville holiday called State the Obvious Day? Did Pinkie invent it?”
“Trixie!” Glimmer shouted, “Ponies don’t just come back to life!”
Trixie sighed. “Oh, so now it’s Opposite Day? What’s gotten into you?”
Glimmer needed a new approach. “So after you died, when did you come back?”
The unicorn tapped her chin in thought. “Hm. Actually, now that I think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever actually died in Ponyville before. Maybe you weren’t used to my return time. Sorry about that. I guess it was a day after I got crushed?”
“A day?!“
“I know, a whole day, right? Really inconvenient. I dunno, how long does it usually take you?”
“Trixie! Ponies don’t just, come back after they die!”
“What are you talking about? You’ve had to have died plenty of times.”
“What? I’ve never died!”
“Lucky you. Sadly some ponies have to work for a living, and sometimes you have to spend life to make life. I think I read that in a book.”
They were going in circles. Glimmer’s patience ran dry, and she yanked Trixie from the wagon with her magic.
“Hey!” Trixie protested, “What are you doing?!”
“We’re going to Twilight’s and figuring this out.”
Trixie stood still as Twilight studied the readouts from the machine she was hooked to. When they’d first showed up at the castle doors, the Princess of Friendship was almost as overjoyed at Trixie’s survival as Glimmer was, but her glee very quickly turned into scientific curiosity.
“I don’t get it,” Trixie complained, “Is this a prank?”
Twilight looked up from the readout. “Trixie, I need you to tell me about the first time you died.”
She laughed. “Oh, everypony remembers their first time. I was just starting my magic act for the first time, and my wagon fell on top of me when I stopped to camp.”
“Anything else?”
“I came back a day later? My wagon was wrecked too, which was probably the worst part. Too bad those don’t come back, right?”
The doors to the throne room burst open to Starlight Glimmer, a stack of old news clippings suspended next to her. “I’m back!” she announced, “and I think you’re going to want to read this!”
She plopped the stack onto the map, pulling one of the clippings and holding it in front of Twilight. She grabbed it and read it aloud.
“Mare perishes in failed water stunt?”
Her eyes drifted to the picture, showing Trixie floating in a chained-shut glass tank of water, legs wrapped in rope and tied to a cinderblock at the bottom. Her tongue floated outside her mouth, two X marks in place of her eyes.
Trixie nervously shifted on the seat. “Escapology’s a lot harder than it looks. Learned that the hard way.”
Twilight grabbed another clipping. “Magician bites it by swallowing swords?”
The picture depicted Trixie’s corpse on its back in the middle of the stage, ten swords lodged in its mouth.
“Should have stopped at nine.”
“Showpony’s iron maiden becomes a coffin?!”
She looked at the picture, and instantly regretted it.
“Not my best work.”
Twilight put down the clippings. “Trixie. How many times have you died?”
Trixie looked up, pondering. “Why would I keep count of that? I guess a few dozen since I started touring? Few times I got burned at the stake as a witch. One town did it twice. Jerks.”
"So when you tried that trick with the Manticore, what was that?"
"If I didn't do it right, I'd lose a whole day. Motivation to do the stunt correctly. Good thing Glimmer was there to help, huh?"
Twilight smiled through the grit of her teeth. "Sure, Trixie! Anything else you want to add?"
Trixie was completely oblivious to the aura of anger building up around Twilight. "Hm. Not much. Fred-"
"Who's Fred?"
"The manticore. Fred probably ate me...three times in practice?"
It was Glimmer’s turn for questions. “Trixie, do you not understand the power you have?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Other ponies can’t do this, Trixie. When creatures die, that’s it, they’re gone. Forever.”
Trixie took her time to process this. “…Seriously?”
“Yes! How do you not know this?”
“I just assumed everypony comes back. It’s not like I ever stayed around long enough in one place to keep track of ponies reviving. So you’re saying I’m the only one who comes back to life?”
“As far as we know. Are you absolutely sure you don’t know why you can cheat death?”
“…I’m actually Great and Powerful?”
Twilight threw the news clippings into the air and jumped off her seat. “I give up.”
She walked out of the room, slamming the double doors behind her.
“Still,” Trixie continued, “finding this out about myself opens some very interesting paths in the world of stage magic…”
Starlight Glimmer stood in the crowd, one hoof held to her face. Why did she show up?
“Come one, come all, and be amazed at the literal death-defying act of the Great and Deathless Trixie!“
Trixie appeared onstage in a puff of glittering smoke. On both sides of the stage was nearly every weapon known to ponykind; crossbows, rockets, spears, bombs, a manticore on a catapult, a live tesla coil, a cannon, and a wide assortment of other deadly devices pointed directly at her. She stood in the center, next to a large lever.
“With a push of this switch, Trixie shall exit this mortal coil and return to you all in a day’s time!”
One of the ponies in the back heckled. “I thought you were gonna drink lava!”
“That’s Friday’s show. Now behold!“
Trixie kicked the lever, and all the weapons around her fired at once.
She was killed instantly.
The crowd went wild.