//------------------------------// // 4: Trixie // Story: The Bon Supremacy // by CherryRush //------------------------------// Fillydelphia 21 Harvest, 1502 1900 Local Time Twister had been good for more than just intelligence, and by the time he had outfitted her with throwing knives, an armored trench coat, homemade pipe bombs, and an assortment of specialty crossbow bolts, Sweetie Drops felt thoroughly bad for breaking his wing. He'd even gotten her a backstage pass for the show, and as she loaded bolts into her repeater's magazine from a catwalk with a perfect view of the stage, she made a mental note to send him some candies as an apology when all this was over. She didn't know what to expect, but if Thunder and Lightning were involved, Sweetie decided she couldn't take chances - as much as she hated the idea of lethal force. Four standard steel bolts went into the long, thin box, and at the top of the magazine she slid in a thick red bolt Twister had referred to as a 'flaming banshee'. She started checking the calibration on her sight as ponies began filing into the audience seating. It didn't exactly look like it would be a packed crowd. Four, perhaps five caught her eye- coats and dresses that hid their cutie marks, the dull fur and glassy-eyed expressions Twister had identified as hallmarks of the Markless... But where were Thunder and Lightning? Thunder could be anywhere, and looking for him in the rafters would be a fruitless task with his dark colors, but his sister, on the other hoof, was normally easy to spot for those who knew her. She was big and muscular for a unicorn, and she'd always had poor marks in disguise at the academy. But she didn't seem to be in the crowd. Even if she couldn't see them, Sweetie Drops was certain that they would show up. Trixie was nowhere near as powerful as she pretended to be, but even she could hold off the small number of potential attackers in the crowd... and the duo hated to delegate besides. Thunder and Lightning had always loved the fighting part of their job, and they'd never had a taste for the subtler means of solving a problem. Their apparent absence didn't change the plan, which was to wait. Wait for the cult ponies to attack first, then catch them by surprise. While her primary directive had always been capture, she'd learned over the years that patience and a well-placed bolt could sometimes solve a problem more easily and quietly than trying to fight monsters. The lights went down, and Sweetie Drops loaded the first bolt with a pump of the slide running down the stock before sliding on the improvised disguise she'd used before - mirrored shades over her eyes and a black bandanna covering her muzzle. It was time for a show these ponies would never forget. "Welcome to the Fillydelphia Center for a show of mystery and excitement you'll never forget!" A voice called out from the announcer's box, and thin white smoke began to pour onto the stage from hidden fog machines. "Tonight you will be shocked and amazed by the marvelous acrobatics and showponyship of Ponei Fantastique, on the first stop of their new tour! You will see feats that no pony has ever seen before, all done without the aid of wings or magic! But first, please put your hooves together for our opening act, the Great and Powerful - and Reformed - Trixie!" The audience seemed to murmur in agitation instead of applauding, but Sweetie ignored them and focused her sights on the stage. A blue unicorn in a ridiculous pointed hat poked her head out from behind the curtains. "It's a working name!" she cried out in a tone of pique, and even if the stupid hat hadn't given it away, Sweetie Drops would have recognized the grating tones of Trixie Lulamoon's voice from anywhere. She held a special distaste for Trixie, and the irony wasn't lost on her that she was now saving her from a fate worse than death. Even aside from the torment that Trixie had inflicted on her and Lyra along with the rest of Ponyville (Sweetie Drops had been trained to endure worse, but Lyra still seemed to have nightmares sometimes about it), she'd always disliked ponies like that, showy and arrogant. It just seemed to run counter to everything Sweetie was. The curtains pulled aside and Trixie stepped out to more murmurs and a few scattered boos. Personally, Sweetie didn't blame them, but when it really came down to it, she was a monster hunter to her core; there were ponies and there were monsters, and you protected the ponies from the monsters no matter what you thought of them. As Trixie traded barbs with the front row of the audience and began to perform card tricks that even an earth pony could do, Sweetie Drops saw the Markless ponies start moving through the audience towards the stage, but it wasn't time to act yet. She had to wait, and even more than helping the Arrogant and Foolish Trixie, waiting was the hardest part of the job. "Always so patient, aren't you, Sweetie Drops? But you're getting slow- you didn't even bother to set traps." She nearly jumped out of her coat at a voice behind her, and she quickly rolled, crossbow up, to see a tall unicorn mare with pale grey fur, jagged, spiked blue hair, and a cruel grin - Lightning. Lightning opened her mouth to gloat more and started charging a spell, but Sweetie Drops didn't give her the chance. She quickly kicked Lightning's knee with her back legs, causing her to yelp in pain and her magic bolt to go wide and take out the safety railing. Underneath her, the act had stopped - the Markless had climbed up on stage and were advancing on a terrified Trixie, led by Thunder. Lightning's counterpart, unlike the others, was in full color - sharing the same colors as his sister, in fact. "You always did talk too much," Sweetie Drops said with a smirk to the dazed unicorn before rolling under the other railing and letting herself fall front-first. She aimed her crossbow in the middle of the group of attackers and fired, hoping Twister's special bolt lived up to his hype. The banshee was true to its name: halfway down, the red bolt burst into flames and started producing a loud screeching noise that clawed at Sweetie's ears and seemed to disorient the ponies below, though not so much that Thunder didn't manage to dodge. It exploded on impact with the stage, spreading fire across Thunder and his Markless minions, and the panic of everypony trying to put out the flames gave her the opening she needed to roll for a safe landing and cock the next bolt on her way up into a sitting position. Without hesitating, Sweetie Drops snap-fired at the largest of the Markless ponies, catching him in the throat and tossing the bow aside to spring up with her hindlegs and fling herself at the next one without caring to check if he was still alive. She'd have time for remorse later. The subsequent fight was short, dirty, and far more one-sided than the numbers would have suggested. Losing their cutie marks had done more than take her opponents' special talents; they seemed to move and react more slowly, and had lost their earth pony strength besides. With Thunder still busy with the embers of phosphorus in his feathers, they didn't have a chance against a trained agent with all of her faculties. But by the time she'd rolled onto the back of the last Markless pony and knocked her out with a quick pair of strikes to the temple, Thunder was back in the fight, and she just barely managed to dodge a thrust from a thin lance he'd produced from somewhere. Sweetie Drops slid off of the mare's back and back onto her hooves; she hopped and weaved around Thunder's strikes and did her best to get close enough to fight back. At the very least, the flaming bolt had evened out the playing field by scorching his wings. Thunder had been an expert at swooping hit-and-run attacks with his lance, but now it looked like he could barely fly well enough to use the weapon effectively. She jumped back and threw one of her knives, but he deflected it with a twirl of the long haft. Before she could throw another, she heard Trixie call out from the other side of the stage, "Behind you! Whoever you are!" Sweetie Drops quickly jumped aside without questioning, just in time to dodge a crackling bolt of blue-white electricity from Lightning, who had managed to get down from above. "Trixie will help!" The magician called out, before starting to pelt Lightning with small cherry bombs that popped loudly and released clouds of thick smoke that left Lightning coughing. Thunder hesitated, appearing momentarily undecided between continuing to fight Sweetie Drops and helping his sister, and Sweetie took advantage by throwing another knife that took him in the knee. "Just run!" Sweetie threw three more knives in a spread at Lightning and ran before seeing if they connected, grabbing Trixie by the coat with her mouth and half-dragging the unicorn along before she finally started running too. "What's going on? Who are all of you ponies?!" Trixie asked loudly behind Sweetie Drops. "Just shut up and follow me! Lightning's a good healer, we have to get out of here before they've recovered!" She led Trixie through the backstage passages, half trampling the stage hands and other performers before finally bursting out the back. "This way!" Sweetie Drops led her down the maze of back alleys and didn't stop running until they were at least a mile away. "All right," she said finally as she slowed down, breathing heavily. "Ditch the costume. We can afford to take a breather, but then I need to get you to safety." There was a time when she'd done twice this distance every morning, but she hadn't done endurance training in a long time - and Trixie, who had never done serious physical training, looked far worse off. She wouldn't feel completely safe until she'd gotten Trixie back to Twister's place, but there wasn't much choice but to let her rest. "What... what the hay... is going on? Why... are ponies... attacking Trixie?" The unicorn asked between gasps for air. Sweetie Drops rummaged in her supply bag for a bottle of water. "Take a guess," she said tersely, pulling her mask down and taking a heavy swig from her small tin canteen before offering it to Trixie. "Just pick one thing you might have done to make enemies." Trixie glared as she took the canteen with her magic. "Trixie is making amends for her mistakes. She doesn't appreciate your tone." "Yeah, well Sweetie doesn't appreciate arrogant half-wits who torture her friends." She glared at Trixie from behind her sunglasses. "If you'd run right off instead of jumping in to 'help'-" This she made sure to put in sarcastic quotes with her front hooves. "-I'd have been able to subdue them and get the information I needed for my real mission. Instead, I had to make sure Lightning didn't kill you." "And you call Trixie arrogant," Trixie said with an angry huff. "You would have been easily overpowered without the aid of the Great and Pow-" "Can we give it a rest with referring to ourselves in the third pony?" Sweetie Drops interjected. "I have someplace safe to take you, and you can be as annoying as you want once we get there, but for now you need to ditch the costume, put these on, and try to stay low-key. Alright?" She tossed some clothes down at Trixie's hooves. "Damnit, I left my crossbow behind, too." "Well Tri- I had to leave quite a few things behind," Trixie said in an annoyed tone as she started changing into the yellow dress and wide sun hat. "You hardly need it, anyway." She huffed at Sweetie and handed over her normal clothes to go into the bag, along with the empty canteen. "I've done many things I shouldn't have, but at least I haven't killed anypony." Sweetie Drops opened her mouth to reply and then closed it again after a moment, settling on a frustrated growl. "Let's just get moving." Trixie had a point, as much as she hated to admit it. Thankfully, the trip back to Twister's shop was uneventful. Trixie had remained true to her word and remained quiet, and the two of them blended easily into the background as they passed through the dwindling pedestrian traffic. She brought Trixie in through the back door and handed her into Twister's care. Twister may be scum now, but at least she'd be safe here. The real shop underneath Twister's, in truth an old, forgotten bunker from the ancient war with the Crystal Empire, was well-known to be neutral ground as a fortunate side effect of the information broker's openness with his clients. If Twister sheltered Trixie here, even the weird equality cult wouldn't touch her for fear of breaking truce and angering the rest of the underworld. For her part, Sweetie Drops settled down into Twister's small kitchen while he got Trixie squared away and thought about the night's events over a tumbler of apple bourbon that reminded her painfully of home. Liquor was another of her old, bad habits that she probably shouldn't get back into, but Celestia knows she needed a drink after all of this, and her hooves shook badly as she brought the glass up to her muzzle. In hindsight, she pitied the ponies without their cutie marks, and moreso regretted the ruthlessness with which she'd dispatched them. At least one had died a certain, painful death from a bolt in his throat, and she hadn't cared to be particularly gentle with the others. When fighting with hooves, there was a fine line between a knockout blow and caving in somepony's skull, and all she could do now was wonder where her confirmed kills were at now. And all of it for nothing. She'd lashed out at Trixie in the heat of things, spurred on by her dislike for the blue unicorn, but in truth it now seemed like a poorly conceived plan to begin with. "Are you all right?" Trixie entered the room and sat across from Sweetie Drops, helping herself to a glass of the bourbon without bothering to ask permission. She'd changed back out of her disguise, though now she wore a bandage wrapped around her left-front fetlock. "Trixie may have seemed ungrateful at the time, but you did save her. Your friend explained what almost happened to Trixie." Sweetie sighed deeply. "I don't... I don't have the will to fight with you right now. You were right, as much as I despise admitting that to you. The first thing I did when I had a weapon in my hooves again was kill somepony. Somepony barely capable of fighting back. And I was stupid to try and take on Thunder and Lightning by myself... I should have tried to think of some way to separate them instead of trying to rush in like some kind of hero." "That's what Trixie came to talk to you about," Trixie said. "You've had a setback, but now the Great and Powerful Trixie will help you find your friend!" She reared up a little in a dramatic pose, and Sweetie Drops sighed at her. "I'm better off alone," she said. "The fact that you annoy me aside, you..." She thought for a moment about how to say what she was thinking. "Under all the ego, you seem like a decent enough pony without that amulet on you. But trying to be my friend will only drag you down to my level. Twister here may be a dirtbag, but what am I? I'm a liar and a killer. I hurt ponies because it feels good and I tell myself it's for a greater purpose. I don't know why Thunder and Lightning are helping the Glimmerites, but I'm no better than they are at heart." Trixie frowned and put her good hoof on Sweetie's. "You act like Trixie has never done anything she regrets. She put on an evil, soul-sucking amulet and enslaved a town out of jealousy. Everything you've done has been to protect ponies." She pulled back and scoffed, taking on a smirk as she downed half the glass in a single gulp. "It's not like Trixie is asking to be your friend, anyway. The Great and Repentant Trixie still has one-hundred-and-twenty community service hours left to fulfill, that's all." Sweetie Drops wanted to argue, but she did need the help, and even a second-rate illusionist like Trixie had talents that could be useful. "Fine," she said after a moment of hesitation, "but we do it my way. No 'Great and Powerful Trixie' - you talk like a normal pony from now on. And you do what I say, when I say it." "Very well," Trixie replied. "But Trixie has- er, I mean..." She sighed. "I have a condition of my own. If you want my help, then you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Trixie's court-ordered therapist says that the only way to move forward is to forgive ourselves. Also, that wheels are not untrustworthy," she said with a little smile. "But we can keep that between us." Sweetie Drops chuckled a little, feeling a smile on her own muzzle despite herself. "Fine, then. Let's get started, Trixie. We've got a lot of work to do."