Sam took careful aim with his trusty revolver at his friend at the opposite room. "Now remember, Trixie," he said to the diminutive pony in his lap. "The goal is for you to curve the bullet's flight to get as close to Max as possible without hitting him."
Trixie flipped her mane up in playful disdain. "Of course. The Great and Powerful Trixie knows exactly what she's doing!" After the first month staying with them, her teeth had developed more fully and she no longer slurred her 'r's, much to Sam and Max's disappointment. "But...maybe a few could hit? Daddy makes such funny noises when he has to catch bullets with his teeth."
"That's my girl!" Max said happily.
Sam chuckled. "Well, one or two, I suppose. Just nowhere vital."
"Say Sam," Max asked, "any idea when we're going to get another case? Surely the local lawbreakers must miss our esoteric brand of personalized criminal justice. Besides, I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of copper Trixie will be."
"A Great and Powerful one, of course!" Trixie asserted.
"I mean besides that," Max smirked.
Sam shrugged to himself. It was true that they hadn't had a single case since a long while prior to Trixie's arrival in their lives. "Patience is a hard razor to swallow, little buddy," he pointed out. Truthfully, he was just as glad they hadn't had a case until now. It had given all three of them time to get used to Trixie's presence in their lives. Although he, too, was eagerly awaiting a case to see how Trixie would do with their usual activities. He hoped she would do well; he'd hate to have to leave her behind for her own safety.
Right at that moment, the phone rang. "I got it!" Sam and Max both cried out together. However, when they got to where the phone usually was, all they found was a note.
Leave Swiss cheese by the rat hole or you'll never see your precious phone alive again.
"Jiminy Christmas Eve in a padlocked sweatbox!" Sam cried out. "Some misguided ballsy felon has napped our phone!"
"Eerie," Max pointed out. "I just went cheese shopping! How did they know?"
"Be sure it's Swiss cheese, right?" a rat said from the nearby hole. "And be quick ab-wah!"
Trixie, having never seen this rat before, had decided to take a closer look at him by grabbing him with her magic and dragging him into the air. She tried to get a good look at him, but he kept struggling. "Hold still!" she plaintively commanded. "The Great and Powerful Trixie wants a better look at you!" She managed to see a beanie and a pair of dark sunglasses, but not much else.
"Jimmy Two-Teeth don't hold still for coppers!" the rat cried, still struggling, giving Trixie a brief glimpse of two buck teeth at the end of his muzzle. "Put me down! I'm afraid of heights!"
"Hold still before Trixie drops you!" Trixie commanded, making the rat immediately freeze.
"Hey!" Max said, coming up quickly. "Did you take our phone?"
"Uhh...no?" Jimmy offered unconvincingly.
Max grinned. "Trixie? Open window."
Grinning in response, Trixie made her way to the open window, levitating Jimmy towards it.
"Okay okay! Here!" Jimmy yelled out, coughing up the communications device in question, still ringing.
"Trixie's got it!" Trixie called, tossing Jimmy aside as she grabbed the handset in her magic. She winced as his screams of fear echoed from his fall out the window. "Oops."
Sam managed to get the phone away from her, much to her displeasure. "Hello? Yes? Great gouts of steaming magma on a beeline for the orphanage! We're on our way." He promptly hung up the phone.
"Who was on the phone, Sam?" Max asked.
"It was the commissioner, Max," Sam explained. "Multiple reports of malfeasance in the neighborhood."
"Oh joy!" Max cried happily. "That's my second favorite feasance!"
"What's your first?" Trixie asked curiously.
"Misfeasance(1)!" Max supplied quickly.
"How fitting," Sam mumbled. "But there's not time for that. We've got to get down to the corner store right away!"
Trixie smiled widely. "Trixie looks forward to guilting Bosco out of even more candy."
Their trip to Bosco's Inconvenience was uneventful, save for the sight of a strangely dressed, miniature graffiti artist. Once they entered, Sam went up to the counter to give a good impression. "Have no fear, simple citizens! The Freelance Police are here to keep the peace!"
"Violently if possible!" Max added. "You called?"
"It's just you three?" Bosco demanded. "Where's the SWAT team? Where's the National Guard? Where's NASA?"
"They're too busy spying on you," Trixie teased.
"I knew it!" Bosco proclaimed happily.
"Hold on, Bosco," Sam cautioned. "What's the problem?"
"I'll tell you what's the problem!" Bosco stated firmly. "It's a terrorist! A munchkin terrorist!"
"But Trixie hasn't even done anything yet!" Trixie whined.
"Not you, Trixie," Bosco offered comfortingly. "Him!" He pointed at the diminutive human figure dressed identically to the graffiti artist outside.
"Hey!" Max cried eagerly. "It's one of the Soda Poppers! It's Whizzer!"
"Trixie will get him!" she proclaimed. Bracing herself, she charged her magic and starting firing magic bolts at him.
With a cry of shock, Whizzer started running back and forth at amazing speed to dodge the bolts of magic, eventually trying to run out the front door. However, swerving to dodge the last bolt caused the last block of cheese on display to wind up in his mouth. Bosco's security system went off, and a boxing glove dropped down from the ceiling to slam into his head. "Time out for Number 1..." he groaned as he slumped to the floor.
Trixie posed proudly. "No perpetrator can escape the Great and Powerful Trixie-"
"What did you do to my store?" Bosco demanded in shock.
Trixie glanced around. Her bolts of magic had caused quite a bit of damage to the store, leaving smoking scorch marks, broken condiment dispensers, and overturned display cases all around. Swallowing, she looked up sadly at Bosco.
"Aww, it's alright," he hastened to reassure her. "Here, have some candy." He handed over another unwrapped lollipop.
Smiling happily, Trixie eagerly began sucking on it, rapidly losing interest as Sam and Max discussed with Bosco what, exactly, Whizzer had been doing that had got them called in. She eventually finished the sucker when discussion turned to Bosco's security system.
"Say, how come B-TADS didn't stop Trixie from shooting up your store?" Sam asked.
"And Whizzer?" Max asked.
"Because 'magic' isn't listed under its definition of 'weapons'," Bosco admitted sheepishly. "And since she's the only one who uses it, I honestly don't want to fix it. I'd hate to have her get punched in the skull by a machine."
Trixie smiled winsomely up at Bosco, pleased that his gooey eyed reaction proved she still had him wrapped around her hoof. "Got anything special for sale?" she asked.
"Well, I do have something rather interesting behind the counter," Bosco admitted. At Trixie's encouraging smile, he continued. "It's a tear gas grenade launcher."
"Oh, I want one!" Max announced. "Heck, I want ten!"
"How much?" Sam asked.
"That'll be $10,000," Bosco stated bluntly.
Frowning, Trixie pulled her hat off, reached inside, and pulled out a bundle of 100 $100 bills. "Is this enough? Trixie doesn't understand money here, so Trixie put a spell on her hat to handle her money for her."
"Trixie, where did you get all this money?" Sam asked.
"Playing gooder," she explained.
"Okay, now I'm curious. Just what did you do with a black marker, a piece of cardboard, and a clear box of thumbtacks to get so much money?" Max asked. "I wanna try!"
Trixie smiled. "Trixie played good with her feminine whiles," she proclaimed proudly, remembering.
When Trixie had left Bosco's store with those supplies the day after she'd arrived, she had wandered out to the side of the main thoroughfare. Seeing plenty of cars zooming down the way. Placing the box at the edge of the curb, she walked down the road aways before getting to work on her sign. By the time she was finished, her hoof and face both had black marker on them, and the sign was complete.
Hungi
Need Munies
4 Fud
Please Help
Setting the sign up, she set her hat out open end up, huddled beside the sign cuddled in her cloak, brushed her mane up to cover her horn, and then used her magic to knock the box of tacks over.
It wasn't long before the first car had to stop from a flat, and pulled up right in front of her. Looking up at the man who stepped out with sorrowful, hope filled eyes, and within moments a large sack of money had been dropped into her hat.
Within the next hour, nearly a hundred others had gathered to 'daw' over her adorable self, seeming to compete with each other for who put the most money into her bottomless hat. Internally, she smiled over how easy it was to work the crowd. Somehow, she felt she had always loved giving a spectacular performance.
She never noticed the light that had come from her flank under her cloak, nor ever wondered about the image of the wand trailing stardust that wasn't there earlier that day.
Trixie smiled as she stepped out of her memories in time to accept the tear gas launcher from Bosco. She knew as she slipped it under her hat that she was going to have fun with this...even if it was just a salad shooter loaded with onions.