Trixie paced back and forth, occasionally glancing at the boiling pot. She couldn’t believe how nervous she was. She felt like she was going to have a full on panic attack. Imagine, her, the Great and Powerful Trixie, having a panic attack! So mundane, it was pathetic! But her performance had to be PERFECT!
She trotted out into the main area and took a look around. All the books had been moved to the back area, where they’d be safe and sound (not that she cared, but she had a feeling that that earth pony, Starbutt or whatever her name was, would show up and the LAST thing she needed was a pony having an aneurism over that.) Pinkie had setup all manners of decorations and treats on the shelves themselves, to be brought out when the time came.
She eyed a cupcake and reached out with her magic to snag it… only to remember with a sad sigh that she didn’t HAVE magic. Well, her year was almost up. She grabbed one of them off the platter and rolled the idea inside her head. Soon she could be a REAL performer again. She then glanced to her stage and let out a soft, gentle sigh.
The mayor’s idea. She’d had some craftponies come and extend it. While before it had been a bit rinky dinky, having been a quick setup one she’d used for her street shows, this new stage was almost twice the size and took up the whole back wall, with full curtains and everything. This place was beginning to feel less like a library and more like a full, proper bastion of entertainment. A place truly worthy of her brilliance.
Not that she, the Great and Powerful Trixie could ever be satisfied in such a small and tiny town. Why, she was born to travel, to perform only the greatest shows of all time! To tour Canterlot to Manehatten as Equestria’s, no, the WORLD’S greatest performer. But, she supposed this place was okay. For now.
The door opened and a small, brown colt walked in. “Heyyy, Trixie?” the colt asked.
The unicorn glanced over. “Hmmm? Leverpull, right?” she asked.
“Buttonmash,” he said quickly. “Did you get that book I ordered?”
“Oh, right. One second,” she said, trotting into the back room. She glanced around before settling on a small stack of items to be picked up, grabbing his small magazine and eyeing it for a moment. Video game tips and tricks. She rolled her eyes before gripping another book. She shrugged and walked back, tossing it to him.
“Yay!” the stallion said happily. “Thanks! You’re the best! Huh? What’s this?”
She shrugged. “You’re always getting those books on video games. That’s some book about some mare who gets stuck in virtual reality or… something. I don’t know. You’ll probably like it, though. Just make sure you come to my show tonight. Don’t forget about it with your new book,” she warned.
“Never! You always put on the best shows,” the colt said, looking over the book she’d picked out for him.
“Of course I do! For I am the--”
“Great and Powerful Trixie, the greatest performer in Equestria!” he cut her off, before trotting off.
The unicorn couldn’t help but grin. It seemed that the colts and fillies of this small town WERE learning to treat her with the respect deserved by one of her grand talents. Now if only a certain OTHER pony could remember to treat her as such.
A knock on the door made her dash over, quickly opening it. Her grin only grew when she saw the cloaked pony, their features hidden. “Yessssss. This is going to be the BEST performance of my life!” she said, motioning for them to come in.
------
This was all going to go terrible. There was no avoiding it. There was absolutely no possible way this couldn’t end disastrously. “Y-your highness, I just mean that, err, your presence might be a bit… grand for most ponies.”
“Nonsense,” Nightmare Moon said, shaking her head. “You and Moondancer have been speaking of this event for days. It has been a while since we have made a grand entrance into the village of Ponyville.”
Twilight gave Moondancer a pleading look. “Err… but your highness. There’s going to be a performance and uhhh… it’ll hardly be worthy of your presence.”
The ruler hummed, eying herself in the mirror. She did tower over the other ponies. On top of that, for once she did not wish to draw all of the attention to herself. She desired to see how the ponies would react, WITHOUT her being there.
“Perhaps you are right.”
The two ponies let out a sigh of relief.
“We will need a disguise. A simple illusion spell should do it.”
“Wait, what?” Twilight asked.
A moment later and the ruler was enveloped in a bright light. Then, in her place, stood a much smaller Nightmare Moon. Rather that a star filled mane, however, it was long and purple, with little white sparkles. “There. This should confound all who would believe us more than a normal pony, no?”
Twilight stared, her mouth open. No no no. She looked to her comrade, trying to find SOME way to get around this.
The unicorn just shrugged, a look of bafflement on her face. “But, err, hiding your grandiose presence, isn’t that a bit--”
“Nonsense. We will, for this night alone, be just a normal pony. This shall be quite fun.” She then coughed and cleared her throat. “I will have a lot of fun. Now then. Shall we? I am quite looking forward to taking the train. I have never taken it as a normal pony before. We shall, I mean, I shall enjoy looking upon my kingdom from this form.” With those words, the mare trotted out the door.
“We’re so doomed, aren’t we?” Twilight asked.
“Oh buck we are,” Moondancer said, shaking her head. “Oh, by the way. Your Starswirl the Bearded costume is amazing. You did such a good job, so historically accurate.”
“Thank you! I spent weeks on it. Your Mistmane is breath taking, I love how you got your mane to flow like that.”
“Thank you, it was a simple wind blowing enchantment, very popular in movies these days.”
“If you two are both done complimenting each other’s costumes, we should get this train wreck going,” Spike said, crossing his arms.
Twilight snickered, moving to pick up the dragon, who was DRESSED as a dragon, and toss him onto her back. “Fine, fine. Don’t worry, you’ll still get candy, either way. Assuming we all survive tonight.”
------
Moondancer couldn’t help feeling like it was a large cosmic joke the universe was throwing at them. They’d managed to make it all the way to Ponyville without a single bad comment. In fact, their ruler was having fun. She was at least the eighth pony tonight they’d seen in a ‘Nightmare Moon’ costume. She’d even been complimented on it a hoofful of times.
She’d expected drama, issues, somepony screaming. Or somepony telling them how the costume was in poor taste. Or literally any of a thousand things that could go wrong. Would go wrong. SHOULD have gone wrong.
But nothing was. Nightmare Moon’s ‘costume’ was fine, nopony was freaked out, worried or even the slightest bit concerned as their current ruler walked the streets amongst them, the same as any other pony. She was finding herself able to actually relax, without any large kerfluffles. Of course, she still couldn’t stop the spike of anxiety when they trotted towards the library.
Somehow, the powerful, strong tree that made up the library managed to look old and decrepit, the branches covered in webbing and she swore she saw… things scattering along the branches. She focused on them and rolled her eyes when she realized it was a couple of squirrels running about, making the leaves rustle while wearing cute little dark costumes to make them difficult to see. A clever trick, at least. A crowd had gathered outside, waiting for the show to start, even a few foals cutting back on their trick or treat time for the show. Correction. A LOT of colts and fillies. She couldn’t help being a little surprised at just how many were here, she’d have expected them all to be still getting free candy. Trixie’s show must have been quite the crowd drawer.
The small group walked to the tree and she let out a soft gasp. It didn’t look anything LIKE a library on the inside. The majority of the floor was taken up by rows and rows of chairs and, in the back, there was a massive stage. She couldn’t believe they managed to fit all of it in, but there didn’t seem to be much room for anything else. No wonder everypony was outside. The shelves that were built into the walls were covered in decorations of all horrific sorts, drawing another gasp from the mare.
“Hey, Moondancer! Twilight!” a voice called out, making the three ponies and dragon turn heads. Rainbow trotted towards them, in a wonderbolt costume. “Having fun?” she asked, a wicked grin on her lips. “Who’s your friend?” she asked, glancing towards Nightmare Moon.
“She’s--” Moondancer started.
“Radiance,” Nightmare Moon cut her off, drawing a look from her escorts. “A pleasure.”
“Hey, Radiance. Great costume you got there, look almost like her. Heh.”
“She’s a… fan,” Twilight said, giving her ruler an odd look. “I haven’t seen you in a while. Been enjoying the Shadowbolts?”
“Oh yeah. Been doing some things. Top secret, though. Can’t give any details. But it was awwwwwwesome!” Rainbow said with a snicker, then frowned. “Huh. I wonder if telling you it was top secret is bad? Eh. Whatever. I did a sonic rainboom, though. It was totally awesome. I’ll show you later, okay? The Shadowbolts almost dropped their jaws when they saw me do it.”
“Wait, an ACTUAL sonic rainboom? You can do that? But… they’re impossible!” Moondancer said, staring.
“I mean, theoretically, they’re possible,” Twilight said, frowning. “But in my classes on pegasus flight say it would require not just amazing--”
Rainbow groaned and motioned with her hoof, quickly cutting off the impending lecture. “Twilight. Guess what?”
The earth pony cocked her head to the side. “Wh--”
A terrifying crash echoed behind the group, making them leap into the air in fright, before crashing down.
“W-w-what?!” Nightmare Moon roared, her horn glowing.
Shadowfang towered over them, on top of a small thunder cloud. He wore a matching wonderbolt uniform. He snorted into his hoof while Rainbow roared with laughter. “Gotcha,” he said with a laugh.
“Oh, very funny!” Moondancer snapped, nervously glancing towards the hidden alicorn. However, the anger slowly faded from her face.
“I… see. This is a prank, yes?” the mare asked.
“’This is a prank’?” Rainbow asked in a teasing tone. “Heck yeah! It’s Nightmare Night! Best night for pranks! Oh, right. I’m Rainbow Dash, I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”
“… Your reputation proceeds you,” Nightmare Moon said, her voice cold.
“And this is my friend, Ferret,” she said, motioning to the other pegasus, who stopped chuckling immediately.
“It’s RACCOON! I mean, Shadowfang! And I’m not a, ugh!” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Oh! Your were-form is of a ferret?” Twilight asked, her eyes glimmering. “That’s amazing! I didn’t know--”
“It’s of a raccoon. And--”
“And oh my gosh he let me see it. And he is adorable,” Rainbow said, teasing him relentlessly.
“I am not adorable! I only showed it to you so you’d STOP saying how adorable it was! Which it is not! I am a big, scary were-raccoon when I turn!”
“Fluttershy literally had you eating berries out of her hoof.”
“That’s not fair! Fluttershy has… weird… things about her. Even before being a vampire!”
“Speaking of, where IS Fluttershy?” Twilight asked.
Rainbow sighed. “Ugh. She HATES Nightmare Night. She locked herself up in her cabin. Such a scaredy cat. Bat? Scaredy bat. Either way, you won’t see her tonight. It’s just us tonight. Applejack might be back later, but Sweet Apple Acres usually does some Nightmare Night thingies to scare ponies, so I wouldn’t count on it. Might swing by there after the show, it’ll be awesome. Pinkie is… well. She’ll be here later. Once the show starts, I’m sure. And Rarity got invited to some silly masked event. Some fancy, hoity toity thing. I don’t know.”
“Oh...” Twilight said softly. “Interesting...”
“We almost didn’t come, either,” Shadowfang said, lounging on his cloud. “But Rainbow beggggged.”
The other pegasus rolled her eyes. “No. I told you that Pinkie threw the best. Parties. EVER. And any show SHE helped setup HAD to be worth it. And I said you could come if you wanted. But ONLY if you helped me prank some ponies. Speaking of, let’s go get the mayor,” she said, before trotting off, the stallion dragging the cloud after her.
“… That was… an experience,” Twilight said softly.
“Radiance?” Moondancer asked.
“It would hardly be a… fitting disguise if you two gave it away, no?” Nightmare Moon asked. “We must keep ourselves hidden. Besides. This… Radiance may prove useful in the future. There is no telling when we will need to hide ourselves and move amongst the common ponies.”
Twilight nodded, another sense of dread washing over her. She could already feel the disaster looming.
Spike, meanwhile, just shrugged. “Kind of an egotistical name, if you ask me. Ponies might figure it out.”
Nightmare Moon paused, glaring at the dragon. For a few moments, the bard and student feared that he had stepped too forward, but then the ruler sighed. “No. You are right. We should have prepared such a name before arriving here. Perhaps when next we need a name for such an occasion, we will prepare it sooner.”
Twilight let out a sigh of relief. “So… shall we go and mingle?”
Moondancer nodded. However, her eyes were drawn back to the tree. “Your… highness.”
“Yes?”
“The year is almost up.”
“Year? What year?”
“Trixie’s punishment. Perhaps… it would be a good idea to return her magic tonight. If she is… I mean. You did say a year. And she hasn’t caused any more troubles as far as I’ve heard.”
“Apparently she’s brought up attendance at the library,” Twilight grumbled with annoyance. “And the turn over rate on the books.”
“See?” Moondancer offered. “So… maybe it’s a good time to return her magic?”
The ruler sighed and closed her eyes. Finally, she nodded. “Very well. If this show goes… well. We see no reason to not release her from her punishment. If she has learned her lesson, there is no need for us to punish her further.”
“Ponies of the night, please focus on me all of your sight,” a voice called out. From the doorway, a flash of smoke flowed out. Stepping from the cloud, a cloaked pony stood. “On this evening of great fright, you have all traveled here upon your own might...” the mare’s voice echoed through the crowd ominously, everypony going still and listening to the words. “You come here without error, to fill your hearts with terror. So without further ado, I merely ask a simple thing from all of you. Proceed within and fill the tree so tight that there would be no room even for a pixie… and prepare your applause for the Great and Powerful Trixie.” With those final words, there was a second flash of smoke and then the pony was gone.
Twilight stared for the longest moment, her mouth falling open. “Was… that...”
“Come on, let’s go!” Rainbow said, darting past with Shadowfang close behind.
The show was about to begin.