Trixie steps into the bright, sunny streets of Ponyville, walking up to her new - well, slightly preowned, but still - wagon, levitating the boxes of supplies from Barnyard Bargains inside. Their selection had been… as she suspected. A little lacking for her needs, especially in the pyrotechnics department. Filthy Rich had given her a pamphlet for Cater Construction, though they might be a little too industrial. Pinkie Pie must have a supplier, though; maybe she could catch up with the party pony, find out who her source is. Unless it’s all home grown, from a rock farm or something.
Speaking of Pinkie Pie, all this shopping has made her hungry. And, after going through all of the stores in Ponyville - at least the relevant ones, since she hasn’t opened Trixie's Tricks and Ritzy Shticks yet - it is around lunchtime. And Trixie deserves a reward for her hard work! Testing out the hammock she bought certainly doesn’t qualify.
The bell above jingles merrily as Trixie steps into the already crowded bakery. She huffs as she stands in line, which isn’t moving at all. Pinkie Pie looks to be the only pony running the store, several rows of multiple scraps of paper each that probably have pony’s orders scribbled on that she isn’t actually referencing. She just reaches for ingredients, or bounces from one spot to another, or flat out disappears into the back. Trixie sighs, grabbing a bag of pretzels from a nearby rack and resigning herself to wait in line.
The bell behind Trixie rings, a horde of fillies on their school lunch break entering. “Ugh,” exclaims a pink filly, her silver friend rolling her eyes. “I knew it. It’s so crowded, that’s why nopony ever comes here.” Trixie recalls the filly as Diamond Tiara as she continues, “Too bad they have the best food in town, or I’d totally take my business someplace else!”
“Hey, Lemon!” yells Scootaloo from the back of the pack, “Go run the register or something. I’ll save you a seat!”
“Fine,” groans the yellow filly, squeezing past the dozen or so fillies all streaming towards the one open table in the place.
Trixie raises an eyebrow; other booths have four unrelated ponies crammed in, and one table just happens to have twelve open seats?
“It’s in a state of eternal ‘dibs’,” comes a voice from beneath her. Trixie looks down at Lemon, the filly pointing a hoof at the table and then at the bag of pretzels. “At least for lunchtime. Did you want anything else, or just that?”
Trixie magically flips a bit for the bag, Lemon grinning as she catches it with her tail. Lemon goes to the next pony in line as Trixie mulls over where to sit. She frowns as she sees Sweetie Belle pulling out a sack lunch from her saddlebag with her hooves. Then she opens the bag of mixed vegetables with a hoof, and cleans her hoof off with a napkin, again holding it in her hoof.
Pinkie Pie delivers several trays of food to the table, despite the fillies never ordering anything. And there having been a line that now stretches out the door. Though none of the other ponies say anything, merely continue waiting patiently in line. Maybe Trixie will have to do something like that, order ahead. If the food is as good as that filly thinks it is.
Trixie sits down at an empty spot at the closest table, paying no attention to the stallion next to her. If she did, she’d find that he is paying as little attention to her, and it would probably have bothered her. Instead, she watches Sweetie Belle as her magic tears open her bag. Her brow furrows as she chews one of the pretzels; why is this bothering her so much? She saw the same thing after her show yesterday, when the fillies had all come up and asked for autographs. And then Sweetie Belle contorted her body in a way no unicorn should have to in order to roll the paper up and stick it in her saddlebag.
Is she doing it, not using her magic because she is sitting with… eight other earth ponies? Nine, counting Lemon? And two pegasi, neither of which have left the ground since they got here? Compared to most pegasi she’s ever dealt with, who have the same relationship with the ground that she has with her previous amours? Stay at short as possible to get the job done, and then get away as soon as she can?
The bag crunches in her magic, a scowl on Trixie’s muzzle as she realizes she finished off the bag of mini pretzels far faster than she would have liked. Maybe she’ll grab some more to eat at the Apple’s, they have plenty just laying around. But, if she enjoyed the pretzels so much that she ate them so quickly, why is there still a sour taste in her mouth? She didn’t eat another one of those muffins, did she?
The fillies, having finished their meal nearly as quickly as Trixie, get up to head back to school. Lemon tries to evade Pinkie Pie, but the pink mare gets the better of her as she tries to slip out the door. One reluctant nuzzling later and the twelve are heading back west, four in front and eight behind, a few smaller ones struggling to keep up.
Trixie quickly trots after the group, calling out, “Sweetie Belle!” before the group can get too far away. The filly turns; Apple Bloom and Scootaloo stop while their other sisters continue along their way.
“Yes?” Sweetie Belle asks.
“The intrigued and inquisitive Trixie wishes to know why you don’t use your magic more frequently.”
Scootaloo and Apple Bloom trade nervous glances as Sweetie Belle merely nods her head. “Oh.” She glances back towards the pack of fillies retreating under a cloud of dust towards the schoolhouse, saying just loud enough for Trixie to hear, “I… I have to get back to school.”
“Surely you have the time to answer just one simple question,” Trixie says, drawing closer as Sweetie Belle turns to leave. She whispers, “Do the other fillies tease you about it?”
“N-not like that,” Sweetie Belle says, choking back a sob. “Just leave me alone!”
“Wait!” Trixie calls as Apple Bloom and Scootaloo hesitate, unsure of whether to intervene. “What did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything!” Sweetie Belle spins around, her eyes blazing. “You just went around, performing the coolest magic show ever! And when I went home, trying to do it too? Well, guess what? I couldn’t move around even an empty roll of toilet paper, much less a fake hoof! And forget about me doing it while channeling another spell to hide it!”
Sweetie Belle chokes up as her sisters nuzzle her, barely eking out, “I didn’t even do it to try to get my cutie mark. I just wanted to be like you!” She turns, galloping away, tears streaming down her face.
Apple Bloom and Scootaloo trade worried looks for a brief second before Scootaloo turns and runs after her. Apple Bloom sighs, one hoof rubbing against the other as she says, “Ah’m sorry about that, Trixie. She didn’t mean it.” She too turns, her hurried pace catching up to the white unicorn.
Trixie watches, stunned. She has had fillies and colts come up to her after shows before, and tell her how much they liked it. Maybe tell her how cool it was. Maybe even they guessed at part of a trick, but to see through her deception for the entire routine? And nopony had ever said they wanted to be like her. And, sometimes, when an act hadn’t gone well, and she needed to lay low for a few days? She didn’t know if she wanted to be like her, either.
And what did Apple Bloom mean? That Sweetie Belle didn’t want to be like her? Or that she didn’t mean to hurt Trixie’s feelings?
Trixie turns back to Sugarcube Corner, a slow pace as she ponders. If this is what having friends is like, where you care about their problems and have to work to make it better, then maybe she is better off like she was before she came to Ponyville.
Trixie walks around her parked wagon, glancing up at an oddity in the corner of her eye. A scowl spreads over Trixie’s face as she sees a mass of blue defacing her new wagon. Scribbled lines, curved and wavy all across the front, a giant bear standing above a tiny unicorn. This side of the wagon was hidden from view when she was in Sugarcube Corner, and she had seen nopony around it when she came outside. Trixie spins around, stomping towards and glaring at the various merchant stalls and ponies milling about. And they did nothing while this happened? Maybe even joined in!
Well, she’d be repainting it anyway, completely covering the gross caricature of-
She pauses as she takes in the image from further away. What first appears to be a giant Ursa Minor terrorizing the small unicorn is actually sound asleep, a bandage covering his foreclaw. Two other ponies flit in the background, one hovering above and the other behind with a much smaller glow around her horn.
Trixie stomps forward; who had the audacity to do this without her permission? Not that it isn’t good work, but Trixie demands only the highest quality! She spots a line of writing at the bottom. What first appears to be a signature instead merely says “Can Improve”. Could she?
Trixie sighs, looks down at her own hoof, thinking back to watching Doug play with the pencil. Can she get that same sort of dexterity? Oftentimes a trick using telekinesis has to be disguised or the audience knows right away where to look. Same with the tell-tale glow of teleportation - now there is a giveaway, and oftentimes kills any sort of wonder. If Sweetie Belle wants to learn magic from her - well, stage magic. But performing magic tricks with no magic?
She begins pulling the wagon home. Or, at least, to Sweet Apple Acres. Her normal routines don’t involve an extraordinary level of magic, just used in a superbly subversive way. So maybe she wouldn’t go for her usual repertoire of summoned flowers, or recoloring items to match a coat or what a pony had picked. Trixie parks next to the Carrot House, hopping inside to think. She sways back and forth in her hammock, the shuttered side facing where the sun will eventually set. But, what kind of tricks did she have that would work?
A knock comes at the door to her wagon; Trixie opens an eye to glare at the offending sound. “The Great and Powerful Trixie thought she was not to be disturbed until after school,” she grunts out, rolling over in her hammock. It is comfortable, but not as broken in as her previous one. Well, only one way to fix that.
The knocking resumes, a muffled and hesitant voice saying, “Um, Trixie, it is after school.”
Trixie groans, getting up. No partial way to open her door, and she isn’t sure if she likes that or not. Always something she can change though. She inspects the wooden door frame. Easily replaceable, though it might be a slight difficulty finding the same wood. Eh, or she can just borrow Applejack’s tools. She’ll need to build a lot of new cabinets and boxes for the larger wagon anyway.
“Um, well, if you didn’t want to talk,” the voice says, barely audible. Trixie opens the door, seeing Sweetie Belle slinking away. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo both come up to console her.
“Hey, Sweetie Belle,” Scootaloo says, “I’m sure we can find some other traveling performer who can help you out. They’re probably way better than Trixie, too!”
“Yeah!” pipes up Apple Bloom, “We don’t need that lame Trixie, even if her performance was pretty cool.”
All three sigh, turning back to take another look at the wagon. They gasp as they spot Trixie standing in the doorway, quickly huddling close and whispering to each other.
Apple Bloom whispers, “Do you think she heard us?”
Scootaloo glances up, quickly darting back down. “I think so.”
“What do we do?” whispers Sweetie Belle.
All three turn to look up as Trixie walks up to them, “I can still hear you, by the way.” She stays focused on Sweetie Belle: the white filly turning her pink and purple locks to look at her. “Sweetie Belle…” she says, trying to figure out how best to say this. But she never has trouble with this! She just speaks her mind!
“Y-yes?” comes the hesitant reply.
“You aren’t using your magic.” Fine, blunt and to the point. Serious face. Trixie would have smirked if she thought it would go over well, but her keen ability to read the scowls on the other fillies keeps her from pushing too hard.
“Well, yeah,” Sweetie Belle says with a frown. “You’ve seen my sire. My magic is terrible.”
Apple Bloom stands up, her muzzle set sharply as she stares down Trixie. “You better not be making fun of her!”
“Yeah!” Scootaloo exclaims, joining Apple Bloom in standing between Trixie and Sweetie Belle. “What do you know about not being able to do magic?”
Trixie sighs, glancing back to her destroyed wagon. “It may surprise you, but the Great and Powerful Trixie was not always as… refined with her magic as she is now.” She sits down, the three fillies gathering close. “She was originally supposed to go to Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. But, after passing the entrance exam by the skin of her horn, Trixie… struggled.”
“Really?” Sweetie Belle says, glancing towards Ponyville. “But you did a great job yesterday.”
“Yes, Trixie showcases the best of her abilities during every show to the amazement and occasional belittlement of others. But,” Trixie leans in close, as if to disclose a closely held secret, “even Trixie has limits. They might not be as powerful as, say, that Twilight Sparkle, who can levitate an Ursa Minor by herself. But Trixie knows how to best utilize her limited repertoire! And,” she continues with a smirk, “Trixie can show you how you can do the same.”