Chapter One: The Murder Inception
The question that sometimes drives me hazy; Am I, or the others crazy?
- Albert Einstein
The Great And Powerful Trixie couldn't sleep.
The Great And Powerful Trixie was tossing and turning in her Canterlot hotel room, while Doctor High Hope slept beside her. How he could sleep was beyond The Great And Powerful Trixie. After the day the two of them had spent together, she felt she wouldn't go to sleep even if she didn't see… HER face, every time she closed her eyes.
The Great And Powerful Trixie had met Doctor High Hope on her recent journey to Appaloosa. There, she had an unfortunate accident during the course of her performance, and the good doctor looked her over.
The doctor, for all his weaknesses, was good at what he did, and soon found a problem in her. A rare, though not unheard of, form of brain damage.
The Great And Powerful Trixie did not empathize well with other ponies. She was the only one in her world. Ponies naturally made friends. Ponies shared special connections with their friends, even before they met. Friends shared laughter, and tears, and made each other better people. The Great And Powerful Trixie was not like every other pony.
There was a word for The Great And Powerful Trixie. That word was sociopath.
Doctor High Hope was nervous, especially when Sheriff Silver Star did a background check. The Great And Powerful Trixie was a well known performer, but it turned out that every time she preformed several ponies were publicly humiliated.
Yes, The Great And Powerful Trixie was Equestria's most infamous serial humiliator.
Doctor High Hope thanked Celestia that most ponies couldn't even conceive of the notion of killing another pony, and thus The Great And Powerful Trixie could only feel power over others by humiliating them.
The pair of them had made their way to Canterlot, and that's where they were now. Doctor High Hope was of very good standing, coming from a long line of medical ponies. She was surprised by him being in Appaloosa, but he was needed more there, than in Canterlot. He was renouned enough to ask for an audience with Princess Celestia, to ask for the Elements of Magic to heal her.
The Great And Powerful Trixie tossed and turned. She still saw HER face in her mind's eyes. She could still see HER upstaging her, in front of a whole town of ponies. She would see HER in her mind’s eye, every time she tried to dream. She'd never felt more humiliated.
Doctor High Hope took The Great And Powerful Trixie to the Canterlot prisons this very afternoon. He wanted her to see what would happen if she didn't allow herself to be exposed to the elements.
The inmate they went to see, one of the very few, was Fleetarigan Pie. Or as his guards mockingly called him, 'Meaty Fleety Pie'. He used to be known as Fleetarigan the Equestrian. He used to be a doctor too, a brilliant one. He was a friend of Doctor High Hope. Until they discovered he was killing ponies, and mixing them into cupcakes to eat. Hence the 'Equestrian' part in his name; it referred to his diet.
The Great And Powerful Trixie got out of bed. She knew sleep would be futile tonight. Even if she tried to dream, her dreams would be tormented by HER face. She couldn't get HER voice out of her head. She looked more at the book on her nightstand.
The book was written by a wizard named Pepper Cobb. Pepper was a Unicorn, born to the Cobb family, back in the days of Starswirl the Bearded. The Cobb family were all earth ponies. This was before the days of Celestia when Earth Ponies could give birth to Unicorns and Pegasi without suspecting a betrayal of marriage.
Cobb was kicked off the farm. She joined with the other ponies who were outcasts from society, and they became outlaws, who stole from the wealthy and powerful to give to the poor and needy. The Great and Powerful Trixie personally thought she was an imbecile.
But she could do that with only a stealing cutie mark. The Great and Powerful Trixie had a dream cutie mark.
She shut the book and looked at the pegasus sleeping in the bed next to her.
Doctor High Hope was hoping she'd see Dr. Pie languishing, and change her ways. But The Great And Powerful Trixie was not so easily put off. Doctor Fleet Pie made sure of it. Her visit was… very enlightening.
The Elements of Magic hadn't worked on the Doctor, and she asked why. He told her that the elements utilized harmony for their magic, and he was already harmonious. He was still friends with the friends he had before his imprisonment, even if they were disgusted with him. He was still loyal to them when they needed help, and one of his friends, a palace guard named Silver Starling, still came to him for help. He was kind and honest to those who were polite to him, and he truly did become a doctor to generously help people, and the reason he was caught in the first place was because one of his intended victims escaped, and he respected the effort put into it enough to let her escape. He even laughed once in a while. He already knew the elements, like most ponies, and so they neither 'cured' him, nor turned him to stone.
She had asked why he would do it then. If he wasn't a sociopath like she was, why bake ponies into cupcakes?
He directed her to his cutie mark. It was a trio of shining gems that matched a statue in the Canterlot Gardens, save they were atop a blazing sun. The earth pony was a winner, had been ever since he was a foal. He may not have been a sociopath, but he had a sociopath’s pride, the gut knowledge that he was the best and the brightest.
Why eat ponies? To see how long he would get away with it. To prove how much smarter he was than all of Manehatten and Canterlot, even when ponies were disappearing every day from both heavily populated cities.
The Great And Powerful Trixie stared at Doctor High Hope as he slept. She wasn't the best. She wasn't the brightest. But at least she could dream she was.
Until SHE came along.
SHE had turned the tables on her, humiliated her. And Doctor High Hope wanted her to be cured? With HER help?
She levitated a pillow from her bed. Taking the sheet off the pillow, she hovered it over High Hope's face.
The Great And Powerful Trixie had never considered killing somepony before. Maybe Dr. Fleet Pie was a genius.