Never trust other ponies.
For far from the first time in her life, Beatrix Lulamoon, better known across the entire land of Equestria as The Great and Powerful Trixie, reminded herself of this well-learned truth, as she confronted her Manehattan agent, Bottom Billing.
"What do you mean," she said in a slow, measured tone, only the very slightest flicker of pale purple radiance playing about her horn, "by 'not quite Bridleway?'"
She was not threatening Bottom. The Great and Powerful Trixie did not make idle threats, and the last time she had made a non-idle threat she had been forced to vacate a small desert town two steps ahead of an angry mob. She had learned from that. Grown. Matured, even. Besides, she wasn't entirely sure whether or not the sheriff had gotten a warrant out on her, so she considered it advisable to avoid any similar troubles in the future.
Though it had been an overreaction on their part. The glow had been purely illusory, it had not been directed at the audience, and who knew that the tired old cliche about not shouting 'fire' in a crowded ... well, anyway, nopony had really gotten hurt. Some ponies just couldn't deal with a truly spontaneous performance.
"Now, Trixie," Bottom said in a placatory tone, sidling around behind his large faux-oak desk (the stain was clearly off the plywood on the lower right front corner, oddly enough in the shape of a hoof-print), "ya gotta to understand that only the most popular acts are gonna play Bridleway in Manehattan during the Summer Sun Celebration ..."
Bottom seemed uncomfortable. A short, stocky light tan earth pony with a chestnut-streaked gray mane and tail (obviously a dye job, and none too skillfully done), his eyes were shifting nervously, refusing to meet her own. Indeed, he seemed to be ... trembling?
Trixie considered these to be bad signs. She had often noticed that ponies had an odd tendency to get nervous around her when they were were planning or had already committed some act of betrayal, which given pony nature was an all-too-frequent event. Few Ponies, of course, were blessed with her own intelligence, integrity and force of will. She supposed that perhaps this might be a little bit intimidating to some Ponies, who might feel guilty about disappointing her. As Ponies often did.
"Excuse me," Trixie said sweetly, taking advantage of the excellent diction she had learned at her school, "but the Great and Powerful Trixie does seem to recall you writing me to come to Manehattan to take advantage of, and she quotes, a 'once in a lifetime opportunity.' Now, being the Great and Powerful Trixie, and thus by definition one of 'the most popular acts,' a 'once in a lifetime opportunity' would logically mean a Bridleway venue. Am I not correct in this assumption?"
There, that was reasonable. Rational. She didn't think her eye was twitching too much when she said it. Yes, that stamping and scraping sound had been her hoof on the floor, but if her agent was too stingy to pay out for good carpeting -- weren't there tax deductions for wear and tear to plant?
"Well," admitted Bottom, "you certainly can draw `em in and fill the gate box, when you don't cause more trouble than --" He looked into Trixie's eyes and recoiled. "Eh, when everything goes well, I mean. You've got a lotta talent, and a great act," the agent continued. "But Trixie, baby, this is Manehattan. Yer up against a lotta competition here. Ya gotta make a name for yerself, here in the Big Orange. Know what I mean?"
The Great and Powerful Trixie did. Her ears drooped a bit as she assimilated the information.
"So it's kinda good that I gotcher a gig at all, this time 'a year," Bottom explained. "This can be yer opportunity! Do good on this gig and I can getcher gigs on better stages, better neighborhoods. Who knows? I think yer good enough to make it onta Bridleway!" He gestured broadly toward the sky, as if getting onto Bridleway would constitue apotheosis.
Since Trixie basically agreed with this estimate, she nodded.
"All right, Bottom," she said more calmly. "So you've made The Great and Powerful Trixie an engagement a bit off-Bridleway, is that what you're saying?"
Bottom beamed, clearly glad that Trixie had forgiven him. "In essentiality, yes," he replied.
"So --" asked Trixie, leaning forward. "Of just how far off Bridleway do we speak?"
***
The great Island of Manehattan stands like a fortress in the waters of the Stormy Sea. Essentially an immense single outcropping of quarter-billion year old schist interspersed with gneiss and marble, the waves have beaten upon its obdurate rocks for tens of millions of years, wearing deep channels which can take the largest practical ships, even in this modern age of steam navigation. Shielded from the eastern storms by extensive sandbar islands upon (and sometimes over) which the ocean swells break, it is thus an ideal harbor and the obvious location for a great city.
Over four thousand years ago, the Ponies of the pre-Tribal Era, which some daring archaeologists persist in regarding as an "Age of Wonders," may have thought so. Someone certainly raised titanic towers, thousands of feet high, footing them a hundred feet and more deep in the solid schist, rearing over an immense surrounding city which at its height must have had a population numbering in the tens of millions of souls.
Alas, it is impossible to date these accurately, and most historians assume that this was the work of some pre-Pony civilization, perhaps even that of the near-mythical Eldren. The nature of this previous city might be better understood, had not the Cataclysm that ended that earlier age resulted in tsunamis, which modern scientists estimate as having wave heights reaching up several hundred feet, sending the towers toppling in twisted ruins. Only debatable ruins and tunnels remain now, far below the modern ground level, of that legendary time.
The known history of the island starts less than three thousand years ago, when the Sea Pegasi wiped out the savage minotaurs and took control of the island, bringing in Earth Ponies to farm the land and Unicorns to work as craftsponies. For two thousand years the towns waxed and waned with the sea trade. With the unification of Equestria, the towns grew to cover the island, merging into the single city of Manehattan.
Land space was dear. The ponies of Manehattan built higher and higher. For centuries the strength of wood and stone limited them to several dozen yards. Within the last century, steam-powered steel mills made steel-frame construction possible. Now, for the first time in some four millennia, new structures rear hundreds of yards into the air. They are small and flimsy compared to the titan towers of the lost city of wonders, but they are a sign of the new Pony civilization, and their shining spires beacons to the ships coming with cargoes from a hundred nations to the greatest city on the eastern coast of Equestria.
There are dozens of neighborhoods in Manehattan, many of them named after the ancient ports founded by the Sea Pegasi. Some are business districts, through the canyoned streets of which ponies swarm to contract the commerce of an entire planet. Some are the site of smart brownstones on shaded lanes, where the wealthy city-dwellers enjoy lives of luxury and sophistication.
Some, such as Tompkins Town, located just inland and west from the wharves at which dock the freighters in the trans-Stormy and coastal fertilizer trades, and enriched by the scents emanating from that agriculturally-vital yet oddly-unpopular industry, are rather less prestigious localities. Tompkins Town, proper, is a collection of tenement houses, factories and warehouses, huddling around a rather pathetic space of open greenery, distinguished by the name of Tompkins Square Park.
In that park, for the Summer Sun Celebration, had been erected an open-air bandstand and stage, for the enjoyment of the good citizens of the neighborhood, bought and paid for by the local party machine's district boss to help secure the votes of his constituents. This technique was safer and more fun than, while still not precluding, ballot box stuffing.
Entertainment would be provided.
***
I'm going to kill my agent, reflected the Great and Powerful Trixie, as she pulled her caravan-wagon up to a series of large tents hastily pitched by the outdoor stage, obviously for the benefit of the performers. I'm really going to kill him. She had been repeating this for the last five blocks as a mantra, as she had pulled east from Bridleway into increasingly nasty, smelly and rundown streets, teeming with increasingly nasty, smelly and rundown ponies.
When she had caught the first whiffs of the main local industry, this at first merely-whimsical mental mantra had been upgraded to a continuously running fantasy of murder by every means conceivable to normal sane ponies, and several conceivable only to very clever or very insane ones. Such as Trixie.
Direct telekinesis offered so many gruesome methods, ranging from simply lifting and dropping great weights on Bottom, to clubbing, slicing or stabbing him with all manner of implements, some of them even intended for use as weapons. There were also rumors of secret and very disgusting techniques of internal organ manipulation, rumored to be practiced by the decadent unicorn mages of the Dragon Empire far to the southwest of Neighpon.
Then there were poisons. Trixie was no alchemist, but she had studied some basic alchemy at her private school, and she knew how to make some nasty compounds out of commonly-available items. Some of them were even riding in her caravan right now, though she hadn't actually purchased them with murder in mind.
But what Trixie really liked, since it would involve the practice of her own magical specialty, was killing by means of illusion. One could do this brute-force, by convincing the body that it had been mortally-wounded, but that required a really-skilled mage and a really-stupid victim. Hmm, actually that might work on Bottom. He's clearly an idiot to be wasting the time of the Great and Powerful Trixie by having her play such a repulsive slum such as this vile little park!
However, that was not the elegant way to do it. Besides, it left easily-discernable magical traces, which any competent City Guard detectives might readily trace.
Far better to use illusion to kill through misdirection. Make someone think that there was planking over a hole bridging a hundred-foot drop, for instance. Or an elevator in an empty shaft. Or switching the labels so that someone drank weed killer instead of whiskey. Trixie grinned evilly as she imagined a hundred ways to kill Bottom.
She didn't really mean to kill him, of course. But thinking about it made her feel better.
Still, it was probably a good thing that he had given her directions instead of showing her to this place himself. Trixie frowned then. Could it be that he had anticipated her reaction?
More betrayal. When will the Great and Powerful Trixie ever learn not to trust anyone?, she inwardly wailed.
Clearly the Great and Sorely Abused Trixie is too nice. Too ... naive? She reflected on that. No, the Great and Sophisticated Trixie can never be accused of naivete. It is not part of her image. Too good for this sinful Earth? She thought about that, then smiled. Yes. The Great and Saintly Trixie is clearly that. How she suffers for her art!
Her good mood in part restored, the Great and Powerful Trixie unhitched her caravan and stepped up to the desk to register. She was, after all, the Great and Powerful Trixie, and this was a show. One in a literally-stinking slum, but a show nevertheless. And the Great and Powerful Trixie was nothing if not the ultimate show-mare.
How bad could things possibly get?
***
They met in the old warehouse. There were thirteen of them, the traditional number, and they were all wearing loose black cloaks and yellow-tinted glasses, the better to simulate the appearance of the beings they worshiped.
After the usual ritual, including the traditional messy and painful demise of a chicken, the leader addressed his followers.
"After a thousand years of waiting, the stars have at last come right. Soon comes the hour of prophecy. Soon comes the hour of our vengeance. Soon the hour of our delivery from the weakness that they call "civilization." He paused to cheers.
"Soon comes the hour of our greatness!"
More cheering.
"Soon comes the Nightmare!"
His twelve disciples cheered wildly. Each of them had their own dissatisfactions with the world, their own delusions that everything would be somehow better if law and order and sanity were swept away.
They are fools, the leader thought, but they are useful fools. They shall play their part in sowing disorder, in weakening this sick society so that it will be ripe for its fall. And then, I shall reap the rich fruits of the New Cataclysm.
Within him, his symbiont hissed in agreement.
"All hail the Shadows! All hail the Great Dark!"
"All hail the Shadows!" cried his coven. "All hail the Great Dark!"
Within mere hours, the leader thought triumphantly, this city shall perish in flames!