Weak and Powerless
A copious amount of blue smoke concealed Trixie as she tip-toed out from behind the curtain. The goal was to create a sense of wonder, give the illusion she had somehow emerged from thin air. It usually got the crowd worked up, however slightly. Sure, they knew it was a trick, and a simple one at that, but it at least opened their hearts and minds for what was to come. Sometimes even the stupider colts gasped with awe and disbelief. Today however, the crowd was not in the slightest impressed. Standing on the center stage as the smoke dissipated into the sky, Trixie cleared her throat nervously. With as big a voice as she could muster, she declared, "I am the wonderful Trixie Lulamoon! And I am here to wow you."
The only response that came from the crowd was the drawn out yawns from a couple of colts. A foal got up to leave but was quickly pulled back by her mother. Trixie sighed, blinking a couple tears out of her eyes and then widened her stance. She lowered her front half and with a heavy push off the ground, she rose to balance on her rear legs. "Focus Trixie…" she muttered to herself. "You can do this, old girl."
Blue smoke appeared before the blue unicorn. Trixie waved a hoof through the cloud, causing it to dissipate and reveal she was now holding a bouquet of midnight blue roses. It was a simple trick, sure. It didn’t even require actual magic, just some sleight of hand. She was hoping to start small and work her way up. She just needed to break down the walls of boredom and then she could really wow them with something magnificent. She smiled and presented the bouquet to the crowd. "Tada!"
Blank, bored faces stared at her. Still smiling, she closed her two hooves together, compressing the flowers into nothingness. Then spreading her arms, a flutter of butterflies emerged and took to the sky. She allowed the butterflies to climb higher and higher before her hoof cut through the air. The butterflies turned to flower petals and dropped to the ground. "Walla!"
A trio of stallions got up to leave. The foal, once more sensing her chance, attempted to sneak away from her mother's side. The mother noticed but instead of pulling the youth back, got up to leave with her. "W-wait, wait," Trixie said quickly. "May I please have a volunteer? May the great and powerful Trixie please have a volunteer? Please? Anyp-pony…"
One of the stallions, at the insistence of his friends, trotted forward. With a grand leap he was on the stage and towering over the quivering unicorn, who was literally shaking in her cloak. Trixie wasn’t the smallest mare in all of Equestria but she was absolutely miniscule standing beside the draft horse. By the spade on his flank, she assumed he was an earthmover or miner, which would explain the rippling muscle beneath his obsidian coat.
"May I ask your name, gentlecolt?"
"You can call me Jack," rumbled the black pony.
"Jack? Let's give a round of applause for Jack!"
His two friends gave token claps, followed by a couple others in attendance. Trixie smiled, however slightly. It was a start. "So Jack, what sort of special talents have you got?"
The black stallion shrugged and gave a passive glare to his friends who were snickering in their seats. "I'm pretty strong. I work as an earthmover."
"Wonderful!" Trixie said. She turned her back to the stallion and her horn began to glow. Slowly, the blue smoke appeared from around her and collected a few feet off the ground. The smoke compressed and then exploded. A truly massive boulder fell from the sky and crashed onto the stage. A few ponies who were attempting to leave were actually knocked off their hooves. Trixie bounced as she turned and smiled sweetly up at Jack. "You think you can lift that up?"
The black stallion shrugged and trotted forward casually. He braced his upper body on the boulder and then pushed onto his rear legs. After a precarious moment, he found his balance. Jack gripped the boulder tight to his chest as he squatted low and with a mighty hoist, managed to pick the boulder up. He stumbled a time or two before he regained his balance and stretched his body to hold the boulder above his head. He was panting and groaning gently, but the feat of strength actually got the crowd to applaud, just as Trixie had hoped. They may have their reservations about clapping for her, but were much more willing to give their heart to one of their own. Now that they weren’t afraid to clap, maybe she could earn their admiration. The black pony set the boulder down where it had been before and looked to Trixie.
"Heavy, huh?" Trixie asked.
The stallion nodded. "Very heavy."
“Think you can break it up into a thousand little pieces?
Again, the black brute only gave a passive shrug. He spent a moment knocking the boulder with one of his hooves and listening closely to how it groaned and whined. At last finding the spot where the boulder was weakest, he turned his back to the great rock. His right rear hoof punched back, striking the boulder in the sweet spot. The boulder whined a moment, before it practically imploded into a thousand little pieces, just as Trixie had asked.
“Earth walkers are brutes, that much is known,” Trixie began. “They need their muscles and sinew to do their heavy lifting and all they can ever do is destroy. But us unicorns, we are something special. The strongest brute in all of Equestria is no match for the power of even the weakest unicorn’s mind!”
Trixie turned to the shattered pieces of rock and braced all four hooves in the ground as her horn began to glow. Blue magic embraced the fragments as she tilted her head up. The fragments spun and twisted in the air. Bit by bit, the boulder began to take shape, but when it had reached about half its size, Trixie found she needed to place it down. She cringed and her eyes swiveled to the crowd. Then turning back to the hunk of rock, she focused, and made the boulder nudge and wiggle slowly. She lifted it into the air again, perhaps four feet off the ground, and added a few more pounds of mass to it before it came crashing to the ground.
"Come on, old girl," she muttered. Her horn glowed and the blue embraced the boulder. Slowly but surely, it began to rise. Slowly… slowly… the boulder faltered several times, but she gritted her teeth and continued to struggle against it, fighting it, forcing it to rise and reform. She made a show of sending the boulder fragments into the crowd and then pressed them into shape. Trixie was shaking something fierce. The black pony took a few hesitant steps back as the boulder came to float directly above Trixie, casting a shadow over her. Blue light emerged from the boulder’s cracks, glowing brighter before it suddenly extinguished and the cracks in the boulder were suddenly gone. She opened her eyes, and she smiled wide as she shouted, "Tada!" A sense of pride swept through her like she hadn’t felt in months. She would have Jack break the boulder again, and then reform it into a statue of Princess Celestia. And then into a statue of the demon Discord! And then into her own image! She felt unstoppable! She felt filled with pride! She felt…
One of the stallions stood and shouted, "Ursa's behind you!" and Trixie felt her grip on the boulder suddenly slip. A moment later, she had been crushed between the boulder and the stage.
The black stallion was quick to lift the boulder off Trixie and throw it aside effortlessly. Then, reaching down into the crevice, he bit at Trixie's nape and hoisted her out of the large hole. He placed her on a solid part of the stage before taking a few steps back. Trixie was shaking. Aware of how dangerous a frightened unicorn could be, he found it prudent to keep his distance.
The crowd was alive with laughter and slurs. The things they called her brought tears to her eyes, and she tried to back away but found her tail pressing against the curtain. Of course, she could just go through the curtain, but her mind perceived it as an iron gate. "P-please…" she said, voice meek. "Stay in your seats."
"I want my money back!" came a shout.
"This is a free show…" Trixie mumbled. "If you will just… sit down… the show can go on…"
She took a step to her side when a half-eaten apple came flying through the air. She just narrowly dodged the thrown fruit. "Please," she said again. "Just calm down. Everypony… please stay in your seat. I… I have a trick that… Please… could everypony just go home? I'll be back tomorrow, same time. I just… Please go home!"
She bowed her head, closing her eyes to block out the sounds of laughter. Something hit her on the crown. Somepony threw something, perhaps an apple core, perhaps a rock, but it hit Trixie square in the crown and she felt a trickle of pain in her fur. When she opened her eyes to glare at the offender, she only saw white. Her eyes were glowing a brilliant blue as her body began to quake and a moment later there was a blinding flash of blue magic that engulfed the entire area. And when the light faded and her eyes regained their focus, only after several blinks did she notice all the ponies in attendance had disappeared without a trace. She looked to her side, to see Jack was still standing there, quaking with raw terror. She would be lying if she said it wasn’t amusing, to see an earth pony so utterly terrified of her. It actually made her smile. “They’ll be fine,” she said. “I just teleported them somewhere else. Maybe back to their homes, maybe under the sea. Now would you please head home. I’m afraid the show is over.”
Trixie sighed and headed back for her carriage. She could break down the stage tomorrow. Heck, a mob of angry ponies would probably do it for her. And then she would pack up her carriage and head for another town, hopefully one that had never heard of Twilight Sparkle before.
Her new carriage was remarkably sparse. Among her possessions was a vanity mirror/desk/multipurpose table, a mattress in the corner, and her favorite arm chair. She had sold off almost all her spell books, but a few of her most precious remained hidden safe beneath her mattress. She could no longer afford the oil for a lamp, so she stockpiled candles that might have a little life left in them, and used them as best she could. She rarely used magic anymore. Even her performances had become increasingly mundane.
Trixie took a seat at her desk and stared in the mirror, at the tired reflection of the mare that stared back. She gave a long sigh. She did try to smile to see how she would look, but the glow she used to have in her cheeks had long faded and now she just looked ugly no matter how she contorted her lips. She tilted her head back, proud and strong. "I am the Great and Powerful Trixie!" she shouted. Thinking it over, she said, "I am Trixie Lulamoon, here to wow you of your senses!" Thinking it over once more, she said, "Ladies and gentlecolts please, would you turn your attention to me! For a feast for your eyes to see, an explosion of your fantasies!" She sighed, and set her head down. "By the moon, even I don't want to be at my shows."
For several pained moments, she forced herself to stare at what she had become. She took a deep breath. "Pop-u-lar…" she started to sing, lifting her head, a touch of tears trickling down her cheek. "I used to be pop-u-ooo-lar. Ponies came from miles round… just to hear the sound… of my vooooice…" She paused and then her face contorted into an angry stare. "Who the buck would sing at a time like this?! That prissy troll Twilight Sparkle, that's who! So I played a couple pranks on her friends, made a couple boasts, whoopi-de-do! What about that blue pegasus?! How much of a jerk is she to everyone around her? 'Oh, look at me! I can't go thirty seconds without everypony's attention on me. Hooo-yah, time like a brat! Whoooo!' Oh and by Celestia, the pink one! Is she really that stupid or is it just an act? You know what? I'm happy that I left the village. If I were still there, right about now the pink one would break down my door with a cannon and sing a song about the joys of home invasion. Yeah, that'll be a minute and a half of my life that I'll never get back.”
For several moments, Trixie stared at herself. “But Sparkle is the worse… Twilight Sparkle…"
Trixie turned with a glare and with a puff of blue smoke, a shimmering mirage that resembled a certain purple unicorn was suddenly before her. "You know something, Sparkle? Not all of us get a free ride! Not all of us have parents who loved and adored and kissed our scraped knees and tucked us in at night! Not all of us got to attend the most prestigious magic school in all of Equestria and get tutored by the princess herself! Not all of us get to spend all our days studying and reading spells while all our bills are taken care of. Some of us actually have to work! Some of us have to use our magic to put on a show so we can fill our belly! Not all of us are born special, some of us have to struggle and strain for a quarter of what you fall rump backwards in to! But what would you know about that, huh? Nothing! Because you live in your own little world with your circle of friends and don’t care about anyone else!"
She sighed and turned back to the mirror. The illusion of the purple pony disappeared with a sound like shattered glass. "But I don't get another feature in the story, do I? I'm done with? Fine, alright! I was a troll. So is everyone else. But since I'm not a part of her little circle of BFFs, I'm the villain of the story and that's all I can ever be? I deserve all this? My whole life gets thrown in the dumpster? My house is destroyed! I didn’t summon the Ursa!" She sighed, and rested her head down on the table before her. Tears trickled down her face, no matter how much she blinked them away. She lifted her head, and asked one simple question to the tired, crying mare that stared back at her.
"…Was I really that bad?"