In her band’s apartment, Trixie placed her forehooves on the window frame. She looked outside.
There, unprecedented chaos. Cars and trees overturned by stampeding Earth ponies, windows and walls smashed by uncareful pegasi, light posts and mailboxes uprooted by unicorns unwary of their power—all accompanied with snaps and pow!’s. Rainbow Dash and...OK, another Rainbow Dash were there to round up these nerve-lost ponies, but panic reigned, and destruction followed in its wake.
Trixie had a horrified face under her snout, eyes shaky as they witnesses helpless former humans just like her. She watched civilization fragment before her, with these rainbow-maned ponies and their friends its last resort.
She saw the mess.
And smiled.
“The moment the Great and Powerful Trixie has waited for...it has arrived!” She raised a hoof to the air. She laughed, her roar reaching the sky. “Was it not enough to be the world’s only unicorn? Yet, now, Trixie can feel the magic everywhere! Limitless magic everywhere! Yes, the rule of Trixie as the Greatest and Most Powerful begins now!”
She hopped up to the window and stood on it, raising her forehooves and laughing at her triumph.
Due to safety reasons, however, no one noticed her showboating. They were quite busy with losing it.
“Have you lost your mind, Trixie?!” Fuchsia yelled at her the next morning, having found the magician proudly levitating seven stacks of cards all at once. The front door was still open.
“Quite the opposite!” Trixie proclaimed, putting on her hat and cape while still floating so many cards flawlessly. “Trixie has gained enlightenment! She sees life in a completely different way thanks to her new physiology and her, ahem, real magic!”
Fuchsia looked horrified, stepping back and hitting the wall. “Tr-Trixie, something’s off with you. Are you OK?”
Trixie raised a skeptical brow, lifting her hat with her glowing horn. “What makes you think otherwise?”
Her bandmate gulped. “I don’t know...like, how you’re taking this all too well?”
“Why wouldn’t I be taking it too well?” the happy magician asked back, smirking as she levitated the cards neatly to the dining table. That only left her wizard’s hat floating above her head. “Trixie has turned into a unicorn, a being infinitely more capable of magic than my mere human shell!”
Fuchsia’s mouth dropped. Mere human shell? Did she just hear those words come straight from Trixie’s mouth? “You’re kidding me, right? You’ve got to be kidding me. There’s no way you were just waiting to become a pony!”
“Trixie wasn’t waiting for it,” she admitted, inspecting her hooves like she was checking her fingern—no, her hoofnails. “But, after it came upon her, she wishes that she could’ve waited for it! To anticipate such a great destiny bestowed upon the Great and Powerful Trixie!”
Fuchsia was getting overwhelmed by Trixie’s uneasy joy. She looked at everything in the room, trying to find some answer to counter it, but not even the vase said anything to her. Turning to the merry magician: “You have n-no regrets over losing your old self? D-Did you even like being human?”
“She did.” Trixie then put down her hat, re-completing the wizard’s look on her. “Until she felt the pure magic of the unicorn!”
Like Wallflower, Fuchsia blushed, though out of anger this time. “You’re taking this too far!” Hit her own chest. “You know what I and Lavender suffered? We had to restart everything! We had to learn how to walk again, how to hold things again, how to do...everything again!” She screamed, kicked the table and breaking the fragile vase with a crack! “Are you telling me you just flew through it?!”
“Trixie did have a head start,” she said, then bobbed both her brows.
Fuchsia slammed herself on the face, understanding the brow signal. “Right. When you jumped through the portal to magic pony land to get some lessons from your pony self, wasn’t it?”
Trixie bowed down, hat lowered. “Trixie is always prepared!”
Fuchsia rolled her eyes then grabbed her proud friend by the neck. “Nevermind. It looks like I can’t convince you, so let’s just get to music magic with these…” held up her hooves, “things.”
She gulped.
“Twi said that music has some inherent magic or something. We can sing to defend ourselves…?” and sighed, smacking herself on the face again. “I sound ridiculous! Everything’s magic now, even music! What’s next? Magic books?”
As if on cue, Trixie levitated several books and made them float around her.
Fuchsia yanked her friend on the head, causing her to drop the books with a few thud!’s. “We’re going!”
Trixie smiled, half-closing her eyes. “Going to impress the world with my magic, my faithful assistant?”
“In the band!”
Early in the evening, standing outside school, Sunset and Sci-Twi were helping a bunch of new unicorns come to terms with their magic. Having gotten past basic levitation and telekinesis—as could be evidenced by all of their pupils levitating whatever they got, from flowers to boxes—the two divided the workload and went through each pony in quick succession, asking them about their talent.
“Sunny Flare,” Twi said when she came up to her, the former Shadowbolt a little nervous at her old classmate. “Your cutie mark’s the sun, so—”
“I still have no idea!” Sunny yelled, stomping the grass with her hoof. “What am I? A light bulb?”
Twi grinned, annoyed at confronting an abstract cutie mark. “Maybe your magic is related to light?”
“What do you think I am?!” yelled Sunny as she pushed her snout to Twi’s. “A night guard? I didn’t go to Crystal Prep to be a night guard!”
Boom!
Everypony looked up.
Fireworks the shape of Trixie’s face, glittering in the sky until they fizzled into nothing.
“So that’s what’s she been up to,” Sunset quipped with a chuckle and a shake of her head.
At someone’s front yard, Trixie bowed on the grass, receiving tons of applause from a modest pile of ponies. A few bouquets of flowers tumbled to the grass, Trixie picking them up with her magic as she made them glow magenta.
“Thank you! Thank you!” She faced the audience and blew a flying kiss to them, these new ponies clamoring with shouts and screams. Basking in the praise, she flipped her mane. “Was there any doubt?”
It seemed that the cheering would never end that night.
“Trixie.”
Nothing.
“Hey, Trixie.”
Nothing.
“Trixie!”
“Wuh!”
And the Great and Powerful Trixie fell down in a great and powerful way, cracking the living room's floor with her horn and getting stuck in it.
The sunken magician glared at Fuchsia, vision upside-down. “What is the meaning of this? Is this a mutiny you are staging?!”
“You’re daydreaming again,” Fuchsia said, placid despite the unfounded threats against her and the damage to their apartment's property. “Ever since that first performance of yours, your head’s been stuck in the clouds!”
“At least the Great and Powerful Trixie can manipulate objects with her mind!” Trixie said, pointing at her head and her stuck horn.
Fuchsia grunted. “I’m not your babysitter!”
“No, you are my assistant!”
Desiring peace instead of war, Fuchsia kept quiet and tried to pull Trixie out of the hole.
Only to fall over and get her horn stuck in the floor, too.
Trixie made a sarcastic smile. “Great. Now we’ve got to wait for my other, more charades-addicted assistant to come home.”
It was an eventful week for Trixie and her bandmates/assistants. On Wednesday, they’ve been asked to be the opening act for the new look Sirens. It was...jarring, to say the least, seeing a band worthy of tomato splats followed up by one of the best singing sensations known to ponykind. After an argument, the band decided to go hang their instruments for a while and resort to being assistants in Trixie’s rejuvenated magic show for the meantime. These attracted modest crowds, though not quite like that first outing at night.
Monday found Trixie pacing on paved paths, waiting at the park. She tapped her hoof around whenever she stood still, looking here and there, seeing not many ponies.
She was the only one. That should count as “not many”.
Then, a rustle from a tree.
Trixie gasped, spun her head to see the tree rock and roil. “Who’s there?!”
Smoke popped up, shrouding the tree in its ethereal grip. The smoke then cleared, revealing another Trixie leaning on the tree’s trunk.
Trixie yelped. “Tr-Trixie?!”
“You did ask Princess Twilight to bring the Great and Powerful Trixie over,” Trixie replied. She rolled her eyes, then, speaking fast, “She also told me to give you a nickname, so the ‘Great and Powerful Trix’ it is for you.”
Surprised by being appropriated with a clearly inferior name, Trix groaned and trotted up to her counterpart. “I am the Great and Powerful Trixie and you are just Trix!”
Trixie crossed her forehooves together and laughed. “Which one of us came first? You or me?”
“Well, I’m—”
And Trix’s mouth hung open.
“That’s the thing about your world,” Trixie said, smiling. “The Great and Powerful Trixie may not be the most competent expert in multi-dimensions and what not—that’s Starlight’s realm—but you...you are younger than Trixie.” Her smile widened. “You are the one who is new to this magic business. I’ve been perfecting the art form longer than you’ve been in high school! If there should be any basis for me calling you ‘Trix’, then that is it, and you should accept it, for I am the Great and Powerful Trixie!” and bowed.
Trix, however, did not want to give up without a fight. “Yeah? What can you do?”
Trixie answered with a haughty scoff. “What can the Great and Powerful Trixie do?” She began counting on her hoof. “I can do all the little tricks you can do and more. I can throw myself into a manticore’s mouth and survive, I can turn an apple into a teacup right before your very eyes, I can teleport a whole box of plates into your house if you give me a map and a ton of photos, and I can levitate—wait for it….”
Her horn glowed. Her whole body glowed. She floated above the grass and spread her forehooves in arrogance.
“Myself!”
Floated down to the ground, leaving Trix’s eyes twitching and blinking.
“That’s not even the half of it!” Trixie said with a turn of her head. “Of course, since you asked kindly for me—and because I’m feeling particularly nice—I’ve decided to accept your offer for...well, being a substitute assistant back in Equestria.”
Trix then pumped her chest, overjoyed at having that offer accepted. “Whatever it takes to master the various fields of magic. Trixie’s all in!”
Trixie clapped her hooves. “Perfect! Pack your stuff, because we’ll be on tour!”
Trix then smiled and shook hooves with her other self, which was an awkward idea in and of itself, but she didn’t mind. Two Trixies shaking hooves was a little ambition to her.
What she didn’t show, what she didn’t say back then, was how terrified she was at touring in an unfamiliar land.
Trix’s long time in Equestria ironically left no time for her to sightsee. She was there to learn about magic, after all. Meeting the eerily familiar inhabitants of Ponyville made her hair stand up. It made their hair stand up, too, though it's more out of having two Trixies in the same town. The magic show had usually been enough to offset one insufferable ego, but it might not be enough to offset two insufferable egos.
The Trixies then journeyed around in Trixie’s wagon. When Trixie was the one outside pulling the vehicle, Trix was left to examine the nigh-infinite amount of trinkets, devices, and knick-knacks inside. There were the typical wands, hankerchiefs, cards, smoke bombs, and so on. However, she also found books on magic with long titles and authors she’s never heard of. She opened them up, saw strange words and complex illustrations, noticing concepts, principles, properties—
This wasn’t the kind of magic she signed up for.
When she wasn’t poring over every single item in the caravan, she looked out the window to discover Equestrian landscapes. They were picturesque: rolling greens punctuated by fresh, crisp rivers and lush, bountiful trees. Sure, it looked an awful lot like the countryside back home, but that illusion was broken whenever she saw another party of ponies and their wagon traveling on the same road as her. A lone pegasus would sometimes move a cloud or two in the sky, and Trix would be fast enough to catch that. That’s not to mention the creatures that she didn’t recognize: cute parasprites, tiny breezies, even a chimera which she promptly screamed at.
As expected, the Trixies had to take turns in pulling the wagon, so Trix sometimes pulled the wagon herself. It didn’t feel exactly heavy thanks to sturdy wheels, but she could still sense the weight she was hauling. What appalled her, though, was being up-front about living as a pony. Being harnessed to a wagon like that brought down humiliation and shame upon her. She’s the Great and Powerful Trixie—she shouldn’t be treated like a workhorse! Yet, she was a horse going to work, no, already working by pulling the wagon, letting her other self lounge on her hammock or practice her lines for the next stop.
Speaking of stops, there were plenty of them and, therefore, plenty of shows. At first, they were solo acts with Trix merely the unlucky volunteer that just so happened to be traveling alongside her. “Sawn” into half, nearly hit by knives on a spinning wheel, her head and her hooves “separated”—that kind of magic. In between shows and during travel, when they were pulling the wagon together, Trixie would explain to Trix her, well, tricks. Over time, she was allowed to do more things like handling the actual volunteers from the crowd and then casting a minute spell into this or that act. Trix got better, becoming more prominent in the shows.
Then, she got to the good stuff. Not only was she a true assistant, performing two-pony acts with her counterpart, but she was doing tricks of her own. Sure, they weren’t headliners; otherwise, Trixie would’ve stopped the show since she wouldn’t be hogging much of the attention. However, they were cool card tricks, fooling the whole audience that this card wasn’t really this card, that a ten of diamonds wasn’t a ten of diamonds. It also helped that having two of the same pony perform magic tricks was a nice way to distinguish themselves from the competition.
Applause, flowers, and bits rained upon the Trixies.
The final stop was Canterlot, finishing the tour’s home run. The schedule after that was a day’s rest in the capital, and then a victorious return to Ponyville.
A month and a half had passed since Trix entered Equestria yet, in the night before showtime, inside the caravan—not a fancy hotel because Trixie had remained stubbornly loyal to her wagon—Trix lied down on her hammock, looking up at the cluttered ceiling, lost in thought.
Only a candle lit up her surroundings, casting everything in its orange glow.
A sigh escaped her lips as crickets chirped in the night.
Trix turned her head and her forehooves to the floor, grabbed her bag. Fumbled her hoof around the foodstuff, papers, and precious flowers with letters of thanks.
Then, she felt a hard, rectangular object.
Her blood pressure rose, eyes dilating. “Good!” she whispered to herself, beads of sweat running down her face. “She hasn’t taken it yet.”
She took the object out.
It was her cellphone.
Trixie reeled her head back, turned the screen on.
First thing she saw was her photos app. There were tons of pictures, the most recent ones being hidden shots of Equestrian crowds and audiences. With a hoof struggle, she scrolled up and saw older and older photos.
Then, she came across familiar creatures in them.
Humans. What she used to be.
There, she saw a video with a preview on it. The preview image was one of herself removing the tomatoes from her face, still wearing her magician’s costume.
She played the video.
Back at the backstage of Canterlot High, the human Trixie was ridding herself of the tomatoes from her face, wiping them off with two clean towels. The phone on the table rested on a trunk, recording her all this time.
“Trixie!” she heard someone shout. “We should just stick with the Illusions!”
“Never!” yelled a defiant Trixie, shaking her fist at an off-screen Fuchsia. “Get out of my sight! The Great and Powerful Trixie is unwilling to entertain naysayers!”
And Fuchsia was out, furious footsteps echoing across the gym.
Then, Trixie sighed, face still blotched in red.
She stared at her phone.
The only one standing by her side, the only one left.
“A-Am I a failure?” she whispered.
Leaned to the phone to hold it.
“All this practice, all this time...all for nothing? I-Is this what I-I’m w-working for? More than a hundred shows and this is what I get?”
Left with a whimpering Trixie, moaning as she finished cleaning herself from those tomatoes, those signs of disgust and disapproval.
Those tomatoes of emptiness….
“Trix?”
“Agh!”
And Trix the unicorn hid the phone under her pillow and waved the candle at the Trixie by the door, trying to distract her.
“What’s going on?” Trixie asked, face frowning not at the sorry face but at the candle about to burn the hammock. She remained polite, though, and kept a straight face. “You don’t sound so good.”
“There is nothing to be afraid of!” Trix lied, making it obvious by her phoned-in accent. “The Great and Powerful Trixie has—”
Phone levitated out from under the pillow under Trixie’s glow.
Trix yelped. “Tr-Trixie c-can explain!”
“Trixie needs no explanation,” Trixie replied, phone still floating by her. “She heard everything.”
Trix shuddered in place, holding the pillow like it was her armor. “Wh-Wha—”
“What is it?” Trixie asked, closing the door and locking it with her magic. She placed the phone down on the night table, trotted straight to her side. “You can be honest with Trixie. You can be honest with me.”
To stave off incoming disgrace, Trix laughed. “G-Getting help from myself? What more can I ask for?”
“I know, right?” Then, Trixie dropped the smug attitude. “Seriously, though. What’s wrong?”
Trix sighed. “Trix...no, I had tomatoes.”
A groan from Trixie. “Are you complaining about Canterlot—”
“You know what I mean,” Trix said in a deeper tone. “You know what tomatoes mean in the magic business.”
Trixie caught the meaning of it. Her ears retreated. “Oh. Y-You...you weren’t so lucky? B-But I h-had my time of failure, too!”
“At least you started out right,” Trix continued, turning away from her more successful self. “And you bounced back, to boot.”
She pointed at herself, wearing and showing an aggravated, unstable frown. “Fr-From the moment I began pursuing my dream as the Great and Powerful Trixie...it was all downs and barely any ups. Almost no one came to see my tricks. Only the bored bothered to make time for me.
“Then, people started talking behind my back. I was gathering a following so I was supposed to be feeling better, but the voices of dissent were noisier even when I wasn’t listening. It was all, ‘Ooh, magical Trixie! Magician Trixie!’ Which, yes, gave me publicity, but...negative publicity didn’t feel right.”
“You and me both,” Trixie said, looking down.
Trix looked out the window, seeing the rushing waterfall just outside Canterlot, the constant crashing of water coming back to her senses. “I...I was getting lonely. I had to be more pompous, more grand, yet they seemed to be coming just for the show a-and not for me.” Pointed at herself again. “It got easier when Sunset was reformed and when our Twilight arrived, but, really, we’re not the best of friends. Besides, being friends with them is taking the easy way out. They’re friends with everyone. It’s like they’re not even trying.”
She drifted off, wanting to throw away the tangent. “When I got the hang of things during the tour...I-I finally realized what it meant to have true fans, to have ponies look up to me as a role model, to not just have friends but to realize that there are ponies out there who appreciate your work, your talent, your love.”
Trixie snickered at being a role model.
Trix ignored that, still a fickle pony. “I-I was pl-planning to tell you after the tour...that I’m staying in Equestria for g-good.”
Trixie’s eyes widened. She stepped back, only to bump into a box of bowties and be surrounded in them. She fixed it all up with her magic, then continued with, “What?! Y-You can’t stay here for the rest of your life! Don’t you have other ponies in your world?”
“Exactly,” Trix said, swaying around on her hammock. “Thinking of them...how they would miss me. They’d start asking questions, start asking for me. I’d be r-robbing them of...myself and....”
Trixie lifted Trix’s chin up and lifted a wand. “Don’t you worry! You’ve improved, right? All under my guidance? Now, one last lesson is to follow the Great and Powerful Example of Trixie!”
“What would that be?”
Trixie raised her forehooves, holding two wands in the air. “Rubbing on other ponies’ faces ‘till they give up!”
Trix grinned then shook her hoof. They hugged each other, each enjoying the company of a Trixie.
“Let’s give Canterlot the best night of our lives?!” Trixie screamed.
“Let’s go!” Trix shouted.
And the two Trixies burst out of the caravan.
A week after the tour ended and after Trix returned to her home world, Trixie was in the Castle of Friendship’s kitchen, reading the local newspaper as Starlight whipped up a batch of cookies heating in the oven.
Then, the door blasted open, revealing Sparkle levitating a poster. “Trixie, you gotta see this!”
Trixie clapped her hooves in delight. “I knew she’d succeed!”
Starlight looked confused, removing her focus from the oven. “Who’d succeed?”
Twilight tapped the poster with her hoof. “The other Trixie!”
The art deco poster showed a stylized Trix in her magician’s garb, framed with wands, hats, scarves, coins, and smoke. There was a sticky note on it with the words: Theater’s sold out! Treat you out tonight?
“Ha-ha!” Trixie reared and whinnied. “Hooray for me and me!”
Sparkle rolled her eyes, still getting used to Trixie’s arrogance after such a long time.
Starlight sniffed the air. “Wait...the cookies are burning!”
Trixie grabbed the poster from Sparkle’s magic, hugging it while leaving Starlight to save the cookies from being overcooked charcoal.