Spike set the thick and ominously bound book from Trixie's chest down upon the basement table, nervously glancing around at the candles arrayed in a spell matrix around it. They all were lit with sickly blue flames, sputtering darkly and casting odd shadows upon the room. The whole setup looked like some Tirekian ritual. "You know Twi, I think I left my... uh... my... I left my Rarity on the back porch; I'd better go get her!"
The little dragon ran for the stairs as fast as his stubby little legs could manage, hoping to escape whatever nightmarish ritual was about to occur. Unfortunately for him, he failed to remember that Twilight's reach was only limited by her line of sight. Any warning was too much warning. His spade-tip tail found itself caught in a magenta glow as Twilight floated him back to herself. She shook her assistant gently as she turned him around while hanging him suspended from his tailtip. "Forgot your Rarity? What exactly is that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing! I mean, I have just a few chores I need to do, I promised Rarity that I would be her pincushion again, and I really need to go!" Spike kept himself as calm as he could as he was slowly floated around to hang before Twilight where she stood in the center of the library's basement. The two of them had spent the past three days redecorating it into a practice stage with advice from Trixie.
His librarian caretaker and currently warden had temporarily dressed herself in a cape made of sheets and a turban made of pillowcases to 'get into the spirit of things'. Dozens of strange props had been set up for Twilight to practice various aspects of show magic to see what she was proficient in, including a rather prominent table with a certain hat sitting upon it. Spike was fairly certain Trixie was playing a prank on both of them. "Hey, Twilight, you don't need me, right?"
Twilight teleported to herself her checklist for the day, unrolling it with a thunderous clap of unrolling paper being cracked like a whip. She looked down it carefully, looking for any sign of Spike's supposed activities. "No, nope. Nothing left on here for you to do. Well, okay 'Test Subject for Magic Show Experiments' is on there but that's just sitting around waiting for me to do something for you or two you. It'll be your perfect day!" Twilight rolled the scroll back up with a practiced flick of her magic. The sound of rapidly flapping paper rippled through the air as it slurped itself back up. With a sparkle of pinkish magic, the scroll teleported itself to the desk drawer it had come from.
"Great." Spike's false smile dropped as soon as Twilight's back was turned. "Juuuuuust great."
""What was that, Spike?"
"Nothing!"
Twilight paused, and then shrugged. It wasn't worth arguing over. Spike was being a big worrywart, nothing bad ever happened when she was testing. Well, other than that time she had summoned that tentacle-chin thing by mistake. Princess Celestia had come in handy then. This was good for Trixie; teaching somepony else was one of the most relaxing pastimes on the planet!
"Now then, let's see. For my first trick, I shall perform the classic 'Rabbit from a hat!'" Twilight levitated Trixie's hat to a spot exactly beside the book of tricks that Trixie kept. Spike did his best to try and tune her out as she read through the preparation steps, only tuning back in close to the end. "And for the final step, chant something ominous and grand sounding. Okay... uh... Azaroth Noacim Zynthos?"
Trixie snickered as she spectrally watched, expecting some fun to occur.
And then a great many odd things happened all at once. As Twilight reached her hooves into the hat, the strangest tingling of magic ran down the back of Spike's head like the trickle of cold water. The second was the warbling fever pitch of Twilight's grunts of struggle as she buried her forelegs up to her forequarters into the seemingly endless depths of the hat. Then a horrible pressure built up around Spike's head as his vision went black for a moment. He could swear that he could hear Twilight directly above him mumbling something like "Come to Twilight, Angel!"
It was about then that his sight returned to him with unfortunate timing. After all, the sight of suddenly looking up past the brim of a hat you could never fit inside to stare between Twilight's forelegs into her suddenly terrified and horrified face would be enough to frighten anypony. So, Spike did the only thing that he could think of alongside Twilight. Screaming his lungs out trying to outscream her.
"Yes, Trixie has never had a magical accident quite like that one. I wonder why. It could be those words. Trixie always has... odd things happen with them."
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Rarity shook herself out once more, still feeling stiff from the seating in the observatory hidden in the spire of her residence. The farmtown fashionata made a mental note to rearrange her seating floor pillows. And maybe once she had saved Twilight, she could get her to teleport a couch up. She was always accidentally throwing the red, white, pink, and purple pillows every which way whenever she rapidly shifted between the portholes of the disguised and hidden room to observe a particularly gossip-worthy event going on.
A pity that Pinkie made her swear a Pinkie Promise to never reveal anything she observed unless she felt that somepony would come to harm through inaction. It wasn't entirely her fault for the Utter Flutter Incident. Alright, she might have sparked it, but she worked just as hard as anypony else to stop it once she realized what had happened. She knew so much about everypony in town, maybe more than Pinkie herself. Why shouldn't she use that knowledge?
"I dunno, Rarebear. I'm pretty sure I know more, but I only use my powers for good instead of evil."
Right. Amazingly, despite her chattering mouth, Pinkie was somehow more restrained in the use of the knowledge she acquired. Wait... "Whaaa-AAH-AH-AaaAAH! Pinkie! What are you doing in my observatory!?"
Pinkie manically grinned at her target, giggling with a few snorts of breath mixed in amongst her breathless wriggling laughs. The party pony wiped some tears of mirth out of her eyes as she watched Rarity calm down. "I'm just here to remind you that great observation comes with great responsibilities! Remember! Good, not evil!"
The Great Devourer, the Pinking Horror, She Who Must Not be Summoned flopped down across the tiny loft from Rarity. A beat later, she stopped in her twitching movements, and pondered loudly while tapping her chin with a hoof. "Oh, and I had a flippy tail, which I think means that somepony I know has come to Ponyville, but has never been in Ponyville before, which means a 'Sorta-New-Pony Party'. But how could I know a Sorta-New Pony if they've never come to Ponyville before? I think my brain needs a hug."
Rarity squirmed back, 'ick'ing slightly at the thought. Pinkie paused for another moment before turning to Rarity. "Wait, what are you doing here?"
Rarity fixed Pinkie with a deadpan glare as she picked up a stemmed glass of Earl Grey from the doorside table. It was going to be a long few minutes until she could convince Pinkie to go hunt somewhere else. "This is, as you should rather quickly remember, my place of residence." Rarity harrumphed delicately and tossed her mane. The fashionata's horn glowed with her sky-blue aura as she sipped from her tea and rearranged the pillows into two properly color-coordinated symmetrical nests for Pinkie and herself.
Pinkie 'oooh'ed in thought for a moment. That did make sense. It was Fashion Party Central for all of Ponyville, and where Rarity made her money. She joined Rarity in looking out one of the portholes of the tiny little observatory for a moment before she began rethinking what she had just heard. "Heeey, wait a second. That's not what I asked. Why are you in your observatory again?"
"Why, I'm observing, Pinkie darling." Rarity sipped from her gold-trimmed glass once more with dainty distain as she looked out her window. After moving the glass to one side, she leaned in closer to the window, close enough for her breath to fog the cooling glass.
The rough feel of Pinkie's utterly neglected mane brushing against the side of the fashionata's head nearly made her jump away reflexively to preserve her coat. Pinkie mushed her face against the glass as she tried to see whatever Rarity was seeing. "Why are we observing Twilight's tree? It's not going to sprout root tentacles and carry her off screaming into the Everfree, is it? I don't think I could take any more crazy."
She looked at Rarity once more as something struck her. "Hey, wait a minute; this had better not be another Utter Flutter Incident. You said you were going to stop observing after you made Fluttershy cry for a month." Pinkie pressed her face against the glass once more, smushing her face flat against the glass.
Rarity's magic slowly pulled Pinkie from the window so she could clean it up. Rarity's scrub cloth attacked Pinkie with all the fury of a Nightmare Moon, sending the pink pony spluttering in protest as they both turned their attention from the window, and what was happening outside. With their attention distracted by their antics, neither noticed the front door of the library opening to allow a cape and turbaned pony form to rush out of it. Or the hat held in her telekinetic grip, or the fact that she had an odd lump under her blanket cape.
Rarity finally finished up her work, smiling in satisfaction at the sparkling condition of her window as she turned her attention back to the window and the view outside. "Pinkie, have I or have I not been absolutely mum on anything I have discovered here over the past two years? Other than that distressing... incident." Rarity kept herself together, trying not to allow the irritation Pinkie was inducing in her get the better of her patience. Even if she was strangling the pillow beneath her with her forelegs hard enough to squeeze it's stuffing out.
Pinkie looked at Rarity funnily, fixing her with the slightest hint of accusation. "Mostly." Yeah, sure Rarity. Pinkie was born yesterday so of course she'd believe you.
Rarity snorted into her drink from a sudden inhalation, sweating a few drops of pure nervousness as she recalled several infractions in her promise. Nopony had broken a Pinkie Promise. Well, not that anypony could remember anymore, maybe. She quickly chucked to try and diffuse the tension for a moment, before continuing in a babble of nervousness. "I may have been slightly... weak at points. But! I have been resolute in holding to the spirit of the promise! I fear our dear Twilight is in the very heart of danger at this very moment!"
Pinkie shimmied back in shock at the proclamation of doom. "Gaasp! My bestest Party Testee Pony in trouble? My bested friend in the world! What's happened?!" Pinkie lurched back into Rarity's personal space, hooking a foreleg around the freaking fashionata and pressing their faces against the tiny pane of glass in haste.
Rarity fought the scrunching of her face to speak once more. "That fiendish enchantress Trixie wants to finish the job she started with that dreadful Ursa and destroy all of Ponyville for her humiliating defeat at our hooves!" Rarity screamed her worry at nearly the top of her lungs and jumped out of Pinkie's grasp to leap to her hooves while pointing a hoof accusingly towards Twilight's library. To Tartarus with dignity and decorum and nerves, evil was ahoof! It had to be the truth, after all! Trixie thought herself so clever, hiding her sinister plans so deeply, but Rarity would be the one to expose-
"Rarity, have you been reading kooky spy or fantasy novels again? Why would Trixie get revenge on Ponyville? Everypony other than you and the girls loved her!" Pinkie peeled her face off of the window worriedly. Reaching down under a pillow, she pulled out a magnifying glass and used it to try and peer through one of Rarity's eyes and into her brain. "I mean, c'mon! Didn't we just learn a lesson about preemptively judging ponies?"
Rarity pulled back from Pinkie's inspection, brushing aside the pink pony's concerns in the process. "Pinkie! She came closer to breaking apart Ponyville than even that diabolical vile Dr. Insano! She must want to destroy Twilight for floating that Ursa out of town!" Rarity pointed a hoof towards another window and the Everfree Forest beyond it where Snips and Snails had been so clearly bewitched into luring the starbeast from.
"Rarity, that's crazy talk. It nearly ATE her. She boasted about defeating one, yeah, but c'mon! She was an entertainer! She's supposed to tell wildly inaccurate tales to make us 'ooh' and 'aaaah' at their coolness! The only ponies she was sore with was you, AJ, and Dashie!" Pinkie made motions indicating that she thought Rarity's words were made of crazy as she spoke. As her white-coated friend harrumphed at her rebuttal, Pinkie frowned in frustration.
"PInkie darling, I heard Twilight talk about how 'we' had come back with Trixie's things! I didn't see her since I was tied up in Twilight's kitchen, but I swear I heard two sets of hooves" Rarity poked her chest, and then Pinkie's to indicate the number of ponies she meant by 'we'. She turned her head back to the library in worry, afraid to take her eyes off of it for too long.
Pinkie rolled her eyes, wondering when she had become the only sane mare in Ponyville. Rarity needed a hoof put down before a Super Sparkle Scenario took place. Because then she'd have to finally enact a Pie family oath-break on Rarity. "Rarity, you do know that since Twilight is supposed to be the bearer of magic and the example-pony of friendship, the not-brain twisty-turny explanation is that she's actually taking Trixie in because of the whole 'Oh no, my home went SMUSH! by Ursa Minor' problem, and offering her a place to stay until everypony is calm again, right?" Pinkie slowly slid the magnifying glass back underneath the cushion she got it from, turning her head back to the window again.
Rarity sighed in relief that Pinkie was at least paying attention, even if not in the way she wanted. Then she squeaked in horror as Pinkie turned around and caught her face between two pink hooves and squeezed it tight. "Wait-WAIT! Why were you tied up in her kitchen?"
Rarity choked and spluttered before pulling away roughly after a few moments. That tea down the wrong tube along with the deformation of her face did a number on her breath. "Not... cough- important, Pinkie darling! But don't you think that if Twilight was innocently offering Trixie a place to stay we would have heard about it by now? They declared her dead after all. If Trixie was innocent, she would have corrected that little legal mistake."
Pinkie opened her mouth and raised a hoof spluttering in protest at Rarity. After several moments of sticking her felt thoughts back to the velcro of her mind, she finally shut her jaw in a huff. "Fine. I'll go prove you wrong. When I go proof that nothing suspicious is going on, you are going to Pinkie Promise to drop it and leave it alone. Got it, Rarity?"
"If you find nothing wrong, Pinkie. If."
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"While this is a most interesting trick, perhaps you should settle for a less dangerous kick. While small subtle gestures are what you desire; for them your magic does not seem to be for hire." Zecora slowly pushed a forehoof into the hat, dislodging Spike with an expert motion and a yelp of pain on his part. The baby dragon's head reappeared with a pop between his shoulders a moment later as his zebra savior casually dropped the hat atop Twilight's head.
As Spike woozily wobbled to collapse besides Trixie's statue still awkwardly posed in Zecora's bookshelf alcove, the spectral mare snorted and harrumphed at the zebra's suggestion. Okay, so maybe less at the suggestion of the tribal shaman, and more at the ridiculous coat of paint that had been slapped upon her body, plainly visible even in the gloom of the hut. Bright orange and nearly neon yellow did not go with petrified unicorn. "Trixie does not do 'subtle'. That is slight of hoof and mind tricks, the domain of pegusi and earth pony performers. No, she is far more than that." The illusionary illusionist waived her hoof in dismissal of the zebra, considering her suggestion to be bunk.
Twilight wished she could dump some ice water on Trixie's head to calm her down. Something suitably ironic for the hothead and such. Wait... what? That made no sense whatsoever. Right, moving on from her faulty thought process before she got too carried away. Twilight stepped around Zecora's cauldron pit as she spoke, clearing her throat nervously. "Zecora, I wouldn't exactly call pulling a dragon out of the hat 'subtle'."
"Perhaps my metaphors need a class; trying to perform tricks with your magic is like putting too much juice in too small a glass." Zecora picked up the ladle for her cauldron, stirring a particularly nasty-smelling brew with exceedingly tender care.
Trixie grumbled as she used her magic to weakly polish all of the scales upon Spike's head that had been scuffed in their interaction with the... spacey-bridgy wormhole-teleportation effect of the failed rabbit pulling. For all that Spike squirmed under her telekinetic grip; he continued to let her calm herself with her polishing job until the tangled roots could be clearly seen in his scales. "Yes, the world does not need to keep reminding Trixie how unfair it is to her. Yes, Sparkle's cup runneth over."
Twilight's lip quivered for a moment as she tried to find something to say. Stiffening it as best she could, she continued edging around the fire pit of the expansive hut until she stood by Trixie's petrified form. Laying a hoof on the smooth and deathly cold shoulder, Twilight let a single tear squeeze out of the corner of her eye. "Trixie, if I could I would gladly give you any part of my life you wanted. Especially a good bit of my magic. Remember how I talked about bubbling myself the other day?"
"Yes?"
"That's a mental trigger that the staff of the Princess's school put into me to protect the other students." Twilight's breath hitched as she remembered far too many close calls with her magic, the jeering of ponies that only saw the seeming magic incompetence caused by her power and laughed at her. "I would have accidents whenever I had nightmares, or got scared, or couldn't focus. Accidents that could hurt ponies."
Twilight took a deep breath and looked into Zecora's mirror. She rarely, if ever just let her magic shine forth. She had only done it once within the last year; even the Ursa hadn't been enough to get her to let it loose. She opened her suddenly glowing eyes, letting Trixie look through them and upon the way the energy induced static in her coat and fizzled against the air. "My magic might be the strongest ever seen in a mortal. Or, at least Princess Celestia says I'm for certain the strongest this century outside of Cadance."
Twilight immediately choked off the flow of her magic when Spike approached her, whimpering at the feeling as it slammed against the physical confines of her body with itching and burning. Spike swallowed back his worry and dry throat, picking up where Twilight left off as he stroked her forequarters. "Yeah. She practices all the foal-grade tricks she does in order to improve her control. Like mustaches and bubbles that change a pony’s colors!"
As Spike stroked his nonexistent mustache, Zecora looked at Twilight in a new light, shuffling a book with a pair of wings and a horn upon its cover under her bed as she did. "If foal hood pranks are what you perform, perhaps they can be made to conform."
Twilight looked up as Trixie raised her illusionary body's head. They both blinked in slight shock at the obvious idea they had missed. Twilight quietly spoke first. "I have a book of all the tricks I've sort of gotten right."
"Trixie knows ways of combining cantrips."
Twilight dashed for the door as Trixie dispelled the illusion of her body. Spike hopped and waddled after them, desperate not to get left behind in the Everfree as he chased after them as fast as he could. Zecora stood in shock as she had remembered what she had meant to say all along over the course of their meeting. "Wait, you need to stop and hear! I have much to fear! Continue to mantle Trixie's life, and it is your soul that will be in for strife!"
Of course, there was no way that Twilight had heard her. This wouldn't end well, not a chance of it.
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The library was silent, it's master not yet home. Nothing disturbed the eerie silence of the library as it maintained its vigil. Not even the marching of the shadows of Solid Pink as she rappelled through the upper windows. Granted, Solid Pink really knew how to move silently, so of course she wouldn't disturb the silence.
Mmm. She loved night vision crystal lenses. They made everything sherbet orange!
The shadow mare crept along the ceiling; strung from it by a rope she had fastened in the library days ago in case of friendship intervention emergencies. As she thought about it, though, it was pretty fun in general sneaking around and seeing how many ponies she could trick into thinking that she wasn't there. It made the eventual parties funnier when they tried to figure out how she had done it.
Pinkie looked down to the library lobby, seeing that she was in a perfect position. The catsuited stealth mare began descending to the floor, carefully avoiding every beam of light streaming through the windows as the sun slowly set. After all, who knew as to whether or not the light beams were secretly motion detector beams. And if she tripped them, who knew what hideous and fiendish traps Twilight had installed into her library. Like turning her into a cactus! Ooh-ooh! Or zapped to the moon! Or zapped into a cactus on the moon doing the pony polka Fooor-Ever!
Pinkie looked up from the diagram of her inner dialogue she had made and wondered when Rarity had infected her with a case of the Crazy. She stuffed the velcro-lined felt board back into her mane and raised herself silently to her hooves. It was time for Pinkie Pie, Super Spy.
The pink mare looked left and right, trying to remember where Rarity has said that Trixie's things had been taken to. The basement? Pinkie dove across the room in a single leap, back flipping midair to avoid a beam of light in the process. Pinkie slickly slid across the polished wooden floor to disappear into the space directly behind the table with the horse head bust on it.
Nothing moved for a moment, the silence returning to the library once more. Fluff crept around the edge of the table, the unmappable expanse of pink curls and snarls that made up Pinkie's tail emerging from behind the table carrying a dart gun. Granted, it was armed with foam darts, but they were filled with Pie clan hot sauce! Everypony handled that stuff like it was a deadly substance!
Pinkie slowly stretched her head around the other side of the table, looking for signs of attack. Nope, no Doombots, Magic Munchers, Brain Basters, or other such legions of automatic doom anywhere. What the jip? Twilight's lair was lacking in lair-like defense systems! Lame.
All the same, Pinkie all but slithered across the floor, sliding slippery in her formfitting rubber suit across the freshly refitted and repaired planks of the floor. She slipped into the shadows of darkest darkness, vanishing without a trace into their tight spaces. Then like an eel, Pinkie rose up from behind a convenient fern pot by the basement door. Her hoof reached up to her face and clicked her goggles to fully active, bathing her eyes in a harsh orange glow.
Pinkie rose up onto her hind legs like a minotaur, using the wall to balance herself as she tippy-hooved closer to the doorway. With silent precision, Pinkie's tail flipped up and wrapped itself around the doorknob like an unholy mass of pink tendrils out to suck somepony's sugar and happiness out. The tail twitched, edging the door open with the ever so slightest sound of creaking.
The 'super spy' crept, squeezed and smooshed her way through the impossibly small gap she had opened without touching the door or doorframe. On the other side, she stuck a hoof into her mouth and reinflated her body with a mighty puff of air. She itched as she rebounded like an expanding balloon. Then again, she always itched when she defied physics. Hmm. Pinkie turned her attention back to the basement, looking down into the darkness as she returned to all four hooves.
It was dark in the basement, almost too dark for Pinkie to see anything even with her goggles. She needed to find a light to turn on. Preferably before her heart rattled its way out of her chest or before she sweated her mane off at the thoughts of whatever could be lurking in the darkness. The basement's furnishings loomed creepily in the narrow field of view of her goggles, barely visible as ghostly outlines that hinted at sinister plots and secret monsters out to make Pinkie stew!
Pinkie shuddered as she forced the thoughts out of her head. Despite the fact that it looked like Twilight could get a degree in Spookology, there was no way that she would leave anything that could gobble a Pinkie up. Even if the steps creaked at every hoof-fall, and the slightest breeze periodically wicked at the sweat upon her ears, and the monsters were-
Pinkie took ahold of her head and shook herself until she felt like candy was falling out. The library was an old building, with all sorts of... quirkiness. And being spooky was no proof of evilness. She could still hear the disappointed lectures from Princess Celestia that she hard received after the solar alicorn had found out about the treatment of the foreign dignitary in the Everfree. Whimper...
Pinkie finally found the light switch, flipping it on to illuminate the room. And she gaped in horror at what she saw. The party mare ran out of the room fast enough to leave a pink afterimage streaking in her wake unbroken to the front door, then returned with equal speed carrying a screaming Rarity in an utterly disheveled state above her head. "Rarity, Rarity! It's true! What has she done to Spike!?"
Claw marks adorned several of the walls, as if Spike had frantically tried to scratch them down. A spell circle took up much of the floor, still fizzling with arcane energies as sickly candles at each of its nodes smoked as they continued to slowly smolder. Worse was the bleached white skull of an adolescent dragon that propped open a sinister spell book that was bound in purple. The two mares screamed in horror at the thought that Trixie had already skinned Spike. Who knew what dastardly deeds Trixie was doing to Twilight right at that very moment?
"Ooh... darling little Spike was turned into a... a... a book holder!" Rarity pressed a hoof to her head as she fought back against the faintness that threatened to take away her consciousness.
"We've got to save Twilight while we still can!" Pinkie looked around, continuing to spot signs of Trixie's influence over Twilight in the gloom of the basement.
But the creek of the library's front door opening jarred them back to their senses. Two sets of hoof-steps slowly crossed across the unmaintained sections of the floor as faint voices could be heard plotting amongst themselves upstairs. Pinkie dove for the lightswitch, flipping it off with a click with her nose. Rarity dove in behind her and dragged her under the staircase, throwing a tablecloth over their forms to disguise them.
Creaking groaned through the still air as whoever it was opened the basement door. Thudding hoof-steps rattled the pair's nerves with each doom-prophesizing hoof-fall. Rarity shushed Pinkie silently and made 'jump her' gestures as the steps began crossing the basement floor, closer and closer to the hidden mares.
"FOR TWILIGHT!"