Watch magic tricks with Trixie, Roughshod, Wanderer, and Miss Irons: 6 Votes
Kestrel took a few minutes to herself to sip on her liquor and watch how the camp organized itself for the night before deciding where to move. Everypony first enjoyed the stew, the nightly staple of the Gang ever since Miss Irons joined the group, and filled out the time around it with friendly conversation and idle chit-chat. It was always a good way to wind down after the activities of the day, especially with something as tense as the conference job in the making, and was probably the thing that kept the Gang most grounded in reality. With the stress of living a life on the run constantly surrounding them, it was the simple things that kept them going.
As the meal began to end and ponies started getting antsy to do something else to pass the time before nightfall, Tumbleweed inevitably suggested playing a couple of hooves of cards, as he was wont to do. Roughshod and Trixie, however, weren’t that inclined to participate, and somehow the topic came up that Trixie was a traveling magician. Surely she’d have some magic tricks to show the Gang to pass the time? Though Trixie was hesitant at first, Wanderer’s gentle encouragement, and Roughshod’s not-so-gentle encouragement, managed to get her to reluctantly agree and set up the stage on the side of her wagon.
Figuring that seeing another of Trixie’s magic shows would be more interesting than playing cards with Tumbleweed, Silver, and Snapshot, Kestrel dragged over a stool and set it down at the end of the stage. At the very least, watching Trixie’s pull off her tricks would be more entertaining with alcohol in her than trying (and failing) to bluff her way through cards when the world started spinning.
Miss Irons and Wanderer sat side by side next to Kestrel, while Roughshod sat on Kestrel’s other side. Miss Irons’ usual stern look had been tempered with a raised brow of idle curiosity, while Wanderer gently strummed his guitar while they waited for Trixie to get ready. Kestrel noted that Roughshod seemed more interested in what was about to happen than she otherwise would have expected from the big stallion, but what she had recently learned about the stallion’s interest in the performer explained everything. Unfortunately for him, Kestrel knew that Trixie wasn’t going to step out onto the stage in socks and a slim dress like he was probably hoping for.
Finally, Trixie was ready, and she announced herself through the drawn curtains leading off of her wagon’s stage with all the flourish and fanfare she put into her real shows. “Fair gunslingers of the Tumbleweed Gang!” she began, launching into a modified version of the opening spiel she used in Rock Ridge. “Come one, come all, and prepare to be AMAZED by what you are about to see. Never before in all of Equestria has anypony ever seen such feats of magic and skill as what you are about to see today! From death-defying stunts, to feats of magic that would make Star Swirl the Bearded blush, to ancient arts thought forgotten for millennia, you will see it all! And now, raise your hooves in applause for the one, the only, the Great and Powerful Trixie!”
Kestrel nearly fell off her stool as a cacophony of fireworks blasted out from the side of the wagon, rising up through the trees before exploding into colorful flourishes of light. The noise boomed through the copse and across the lake, and Roughshod let out a holler of surprise and excitement at what he saw. Trixie burst through the curtain at that moment, wizard’s hat slightly askew on her head and covering her horn, and her starry robe fluttering behind her. As she strutted out onto the center of the stage, Kestrel noted that the magician certainly didn’t lack confidence despite how hesitant she had been to even do this before the rest of the Gang. Of course, she didn’t pay too much attention to Trixie’s arrival; she was more concerned with making sure Trixie’s fireworks hadn’t set any of the trees around them on fire.
Miss Irons and Wanderer gave Trixie a little bit of applause, and Kestrel clopped her hooves together to join in. Trixie stopped at the edge of the stage and looked down at the four ponies gathered in front of her and grinned, her natural showmare’s instincts taking over. “A smaller crowd than the Great and Powerful Trixie is used to, but it will do!” she proclaimed. “Especially since Trixie didn’t have time to think about what she was going to do beforehoof, so we’ll just have to wing it tonight!”
Her magic pulled out a deck of cards, which she shuffled together so quickly that Kestrel couldn’t keep track of them. Then, fanning the cards out with the backs toward her own face, Trixie pushed them out to Kestrel. “Let’s start with something simple, shall we? Go ahead and pick a card, any card! Using nothing but her own skill, Trixie will guess your card and make it appear before your very eyes!”
Shrugging, Kestrel leaned forward and plucked a card from the fan with the feathers of her wingtip. “Now, look at your card, but keep it a secret!” Trixie instructed her. “And let Trixie know when you are ready!”
“If’n you say so,” Kestrel drawled, looking at the card. Seven red diamonds greeted her, and she lowered the face toward the ground. “You want it back now?”
“If you would,” Trixie said, and Kestrel slotted the card back into the deck at random. Once again, Trixie shuffled the cards with impressive speed, before drawing one out seemingly at random. “Is… this your card?” she asked, showing Kestrel the four of clubs.
“Err… no,” Kestrel said with a shake of her head. Wanderer snickered off to the side.
Trixie, for whatever reason seemed unfazed. “How about this one?” she said, pulling out the two of hearts. When Kestrel again shook her head, Trixie laughed and tossed the cards into the air, where they fluttered off the stage and to the ground. “Oh, of course, you’re hiding it from Trixie,” Trixie said, and her magic pulled Kestrel’s hat off of her head. Kestrel tried to grab it but was too slow, and when Trixie gave it a vigorous shake, at least a dozen seven of diamonds fell out of it. “Are any of these your card?”
“I… yeah,” Kestrel said, scratching her head in confusion. “How’d you…?”
“A magician never reveals her secrets,” Trixie proclaimed with a flourish and a bow. She tossed the hat back onto Kestrel’s head, where it landed crookedly, while Roughshod, Miss Irons, and Wanderer all gave her impressed applause. Even a hoot and holler from Tumbleweed and Silvie joined in, where the card sharks had taken a moment out of their game to watch what was happening up on the stage. “And that was just a fraction of the Great and Powerful Trixie’s power! Only a simple card trick! She can do so much more!”
“Can you make Roughshod disappear?!” Silvie shouted from the card table. “I think that’d make all our lives better!”
That earned a chorus of laughs from the gang, even Roughshod himself. “I’d like to see you try!” he shouted up at Trixie. “I ain’t gotten rid of that easily!”
Trixie smirked back at him. “A matter of trivial talent for the Great and Powerful Trixie! Step up onto the stage and observe!”
Roughshod rose to the challenge, hopping onto the stage with a bound and shaking the wagon it was attached to. Silvie put her hooves into her mouth and shrilly whistled, while everypony else laughed and guffawed. Kestrel took a couple of deep swigs from her bottle of whiskey and leaned forward on her seat, waiting to see just what sort of tomfoolery Trixie was about to pull on them all.
“Stand right here, Rough,” Trixie said, directing Roughshod to the center of the stage. Then, walking around him once as if to fully survey the stallion, she paused in front of him and raised an eyebrow. “So, big fellow? Any last words before you disappear?”
The stallion laughed back at her. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere, sweetheart.”
“We’ll see about that.” With a flash of magic, Trixie tossed a blanket on top of Roughshod, and the stallion fought against the cloth for a few seconds out of surprise. Then Trixie turned back to the rest of the Gang. “Say goodbye, everypony!”
A flash of her horn, and then to Kestrel’s surprise, the sheet on top of Roughshod collapsed as if the stallion under it suddenly disappeared. The blanket crumpled onto the ground, and when Trixie picked it up in her magic, only the bare wood of the stage remained where Roughshod once stood.
“She did it!” Silvie shouted. “The damn bastard’s gone! Ha ha ha!”
“About time,” Wanderer joked, and Kestrel couldn’t help herself but laugh. That laugh redoubled a moment later when the stage shifted and lifted up as Roughshod crawled out from under it, rubbing his jaw.
“Ow,” was all the earth pony had to say about the trick.
Trixie only apologetically smiled at the Gang. “Trixie didn’t say how long he was going to be gone for…”
Kestrel laughed hard and took a few more gulps of whiskey while she was at it. “Oh, I needed that,” she said, grinning. “I needed somethin’ like that, that’s for sure.”
“I think we all did,” Wanderer said. Then he turned back to Trixie. “Well? What else you got?”
“Oh, this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Trixie said. “We’re just getting started!”
[NO POLL FOR THIS CHAPTER]