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(6)
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"Watch in awe, fillies and gentlecolts, as the Great and Powerful TRIXIE performs yet another feat of prestidigitation!"
Up on stage, a baby blue mare with a lighter shade of mane gestured dramatically into the air, gossamer lights and sparkling fire wheeling around her as she spun in place. Glowing with the tell-tale signs of unicorn magic, a long trough slid out from the right side of the sage and a low glass duplicate on the left. In the latter case, it was easy to see the bin was filled with clear blue water.
Trixie held up a hoof to her ear as she faced the audience.
"What's that?" she asked, making a display of listening not just to part of the audience, but to the entire crowd assembled in the theater. "Trixie can't hear you! You'll have to speak up!"
The crowd roared in a mix of cheers and shouts.
"You're telling the Great and Powerful TRIXIE that you know this trick?" She gasped and drew back, as if shocked. "That walking on water will not impress you?" With a swoop of her cloak, she revealed only her dark purple eyes. "Whatever is to be done, then? Think, Trixie, think! Ah HA!"
The showmare gave a sweeping motion of her hoof, and the glass tank floated higher and higher into the air, all while the metal trough rolled under it. A pair of pegasus assistants - mares in skimpy black costumes - quickly flew over, hitching the glass tank to a series of ropes hanging from the ceiling. Trixie's horn lost its magical glow as one of them gave the signal that the water tank was safely in place.
"A different sort of water walking then!" Trixie declared, pumping her legs as she ran in place. A few ponies in the audience whistled and Trixie took the occasion to strut around, showing off her figure with a few athletic flips and twirls. Shrugging off her cape and hat, she pointed up at the hanging glass water tank.
"The Great and Powerful TRIXIE is ready!" she announced, and her assistants tipped over the tank, releasing a torrent of rushing water. The veritable waterfall cascaded down and into the trough, splashing everywhere. A few audience members whinnied and jumped as some of the spray hit them; the rest of the audience cheered in approval. Everypony could see the water flowing out of one tank and then splashing into the trough below.
"Here she goes!"
Taking a galloping start, Trixie jumped right into the waterfall -
But instead of going through it, her hooves stuck to the rushing water! One leg over another, she scaled the waterfall, her face and mane getting visibly wet for her trouble. It was like watching a pony climb a rope, except the rope was running water. The crowd ooh'd and aah'd as she seemed to slip, falling a few inches before catching herself. Then it was back up the waterfall, right to the top.
Climbing at last onto the rim of the water tank, Trixie straddled the makeshift waterfall.
"The Great and Powerful Trixie!" a well dressed stallion announced as he ran to the center of the stage, a festive towel in his hooves. The crowd cheered again, clopping their hooves as the water tank lowered back down to the ground. For her part, Trixie didn't wait for it to descend more than half way before jumping through the air and into the outstretched towel. Drying herself off as the stage reset, she swept her foreleg across the audience.
"Thank you, thank you!" She tossed back her mane and walked up to the edge of the stage. "Now for everypony's favorite part of the evening! The audience challenge! Is there anypony out there tonight who thinks he or she has what it takes to out-dazzle the Great and Powerful TRIXIE?"
A dozen legs shot into the air as ponies stood, jumped, or even flew to get her attention.
"There must be somepony out there...!" Trixie pretended not to see them, only to keep scanning the audience. "If you want Trixie to pick you, you'll have to be a little louder!"
"OH! OH! OH ME! ME ME ME! OH! PICK ME!"
"You, sir!" Trixie winked, and a rose appeared in the hoof of a blue coated stallion, much to the annoyance of one bright pink audience member.
"Yes!" The cobalt pegasus, egged on by his wife, flew up onto the stage.
"And who are you, sir?" Trixie asked, floating over a microphone from off stage.
"Boulder Dash!"
"And you are blue," the showmare muttered, taking another look over the audience. "You wouldn't be related to another pegasus with a rainbow colored mane...?"
"No ma'am!" Boulder Dash grinned at the audience, waving to one enthusiastic mare with a camera.
"Well, then, what is your special skill?" Trixie asked, back to her usual showmare-level confidence. "TRIXIE shall match it with ease!"
"I break rocks off of mountainsides, ma'am," the stallion replied with a snicker. "Just like my name."
"I see! I don't think even the Great and Powerful TRIXIE can conjure up a mountain for us to break open-" Trixie paused for the laughter of the audience. "-but we may have something backstage. And here come Trixie's lovely assistants now!"
With a heave, the two skimpily attired pegasi pushed and pulled a stone block onto the stage.
"Why don't you show us what you can do?" Trixie prompted, trotting past the stone block and waving away her assistants.
"Sure thing!" Boulder Dash lifted off, and hovering in place, started to gather up water into a cloud overhead. Electricity began to crackle among the billowing innards of the cloud, building up until -
With a crack, a bolt of lightning hit the block of stone, splitting it down the middle!
The crowd clopped their hooves in approval, and even Trixie joined in, though very slowly and with choreographed haughty dismissal. A quick 'thank you' and she ordered the stallion back. She had some weather magic of her own, enough to even summon and charge up a lightning cloud... but no pony just wanted to see the same thing done twice, even if she thought she could put enough juice into it to break what was left of the stone.
Instead, her horn glowed and her eyes shut in concentration. Unlike the 'climbing waterfall' trick, this one was just a matter of the right spell and the right amount of power. Pieces of the blasted rock floated through the air and shot back together, arranging and slotting up like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The hardest part was soon over: putting the stone block (mostly) back together.
The crowd began to applaud, but she wasn't done.
Another spell, right after the first, so quickly it was like she hadn't paused in between - a flash of light, plus a loud clap of thunder, created the visual illusion of lightning without a cloud. Under that cover, in the moment when ponies averted their eyes, she used a simply division spell to roughly cut the block in half. It was actually quite draining, but the experienced showmare didn't let even a little strain show as she twirled for the audience, her cloak swishing around her.
Now, finally, she could use the more visible magic - unicorn telekinesis - to add a little spectacle to the show. Wrapping the two halves of rock in the glow of her magical field, Trixie directed them off the cart to spin around Boulder Dash, forcing the poor stallion to duck down and cover his head. A few revolutions, combined with a few theatrical pyrotechnics, and she flew the halves back over to the cart.
"Let's give Boulder Dash a hoof of applause, everypony!" Trixie said, not needing a microphone for her voice to carry to every corner of the theater. Extending a hoof to help the stallion back onto his hooves, she even planted a quick kiss on his cheek, much to the delight of the crowd... and the flustering of the pony's wife.
"The Great and Powerful Trixie thanks you for your attempt," she said, walking him back to the end of the stage. "But alas, don't give up your day job! Anypony else? One more!"
"MEEEEEE!!!!"
Four exclamation marks worth of pleading couldn't help but grab Trixie's attention. There was a pink earth pony standing on the edge of her chair, her mane poofed up like some sort of equine imitation of cotton candy. Her legs spun in dizzying circles as she either tried to keep balanced or just outdo the rest of the room in pure energy. Trixie hesitated to pick her on that alone. The hyperactive ones, the ones really, really eager to get on stage, were often also the ones planning to do something inappropriate or bizarre. It was just a fact of life on the stage.
Plus... there was just something a little ominous about this one...
Against her better judgment, Trixie could also see that the crowd seemed to be cheering for the crazy pink pony. The ponies around here had lowered their legs and started cheering for her to be picked. Trixie could sense it in the air, and what the crowd wanted, the crowd got.
"You, Miss!" Trixie pointed dramatically to the pink pony, wasting only a few more seconds in a production of searching the theater for a target.
"WOO-HOO!" One grasshopper-like bounce and she went from her seat to the stage, tucking into a confetti sprinkling ball along the way. That was... odd. Did she have confetti in her mane? It sure hadn't been in her hooves.
"And who may you be?" Trixie asked, floating over the microphone. "Let Trixie guess: your name is 'Sugar Rush?'"
"No! But that IS a great name!" the pony smiled to the audience, gleefully waving one leg in the air. "Hiya, everypony! My name is Pinkie Pie!"
"And what, pray tell, is your special skill?" Trixie directed a small sparkling light overhead, exploding it into a glittering cloud behind them.
"Ohhhh!" Pinkie's expression became coy, her eyes lidded. "I don't need my special skill to do something I bet you can't do."
Trixie's hackles immediately caught on the remark, but she kept up her facade. It had been a while since anypony challenged her on stage... well, anypony who she hadn't invited to do so ahead of time and as part of the act, anyway. Covering her thoughts with a noblemare laugh, Trixie tipped her wizard hat, flipped it end over end through the air, caught it, and retrieved a small juice box from inside. It was just a bit of trickery, but used on the fly it always delighted ponies. It was also useful for killing a bit of time and making a little show.
"Well, well, well!" she told the audience, sipping noisily from her juice box before tossing it to the crowd. "The Great and Powerful TRIXIE is all ears. What did you have in mind?"
"I'll need a prop," Pinkie said into the microphone.
"Trixie will humor you, so long as you do not bring anything too dangerous on stage." She winked at the audience. "You aren't going to swallow firecrackers or needles, are you?"
"I need a cake."
"A cake?" Trixie turned to the right side of the stage, a pair of long-burn fireworks spiraling wildly through the air at her command. They shot all across the stage and overhead before popping into twin sprays of harmless sparks. Just as her two assistants brought out a large single-tiered cake, covered in whipped cream, chocolate shavings and cherries.
"Can you cut it in half?" Pinkie asked, still toting the microphone in one hoof.
"Foal's play!" Trixie's horn glowed, telekinetically retrieving a sword from off stage. With a showy spin, she used it to slice the cake into two neat halves. With another artistic flourish, the sword bobbed and weaved off stage, 'bowing' to the audience as it made its exit.
"Let's see if you can do... THIS!" Pinkie stomped a hoof, on the stage, not even on the platter of the cake, and half of it flipped end over end through the air -
Onto her outstretched tongue.
A second later, both tongue and cake-half disappeared, the former retracting back into the pink pony's mouth. Trixie could only stare, instinct and experience alone keeping her jaw from going slack. Had she missed some slight of hoof, or had... had this pony just consumed half a cake in the time it took to nip the head off a flower?
"Mmmm! Black forest cake! Super Delicious!" Pinkie did a happy little pirouette and bowed to the cheering audience. "Thank you! Thank you!"
"Oh ho ho ho ho!" Trixie chortled, quickly deflecting Pinkie's applause and attention with her act. "A simple parlor trick! The Great and Powerful TRIXIE is not so easily impressed!"
Facing the remaining half-cake, Trixie felt her left eye twitch out of sight of the crowd. She still had no idea how the other pony had done it, eating something the size of her own head... like some kind of pink anaconda... but she could do this. All she had to do was make the cake vanish without being obvious about it. That wasn't so hard. Not for the Great and Powerful TRIXIE!
Rearing up, front legs pedaling, she stomped down, hard.
A discrete burst of magic sent the cake half flying - spraying a bit more whipped cream than she would have preferred - but still flying into the air. Watching it tumble, end over end, Trixie seriously considered trying to eat the thing. It was lunacy, but...
No, no. The risk of making a foal of herself was too much. Instead, she stepped back and tipped her wizard's hat. The cake fell right in and vanished without a trace. Trixie smirked, artfully flipping the hat through the air and back onto her head, snugly in place over her horn.
"The Great and Powerful Trixie, sadly, also has to watch out for her great and powerful figure!" she explained, to the audience's delight and approval. Thankfully. It never hurt to inject a little sex appeal into her shows. The theater filled with the sound of hooves clopping on polished mahogany.
"Aww. What a waste of perfectly good cake!" Pinkie bemoaned the fate of the lost pastry. "One more trick!"
As if! "Ah, now, now - I think you've had enough fun -"
"One more! One more! One more!" The audience, sadly, didn't share Trixie's inclination to get the competition off stage. There was only room for one spotlight per show, after all. "One more! One more!"
The crowd wanted it, so...
"If the Great and Powerful TRIXIE's fans demand it!" she extorted, indulging the crowd with a bow. She frowned at the pink mare. "...one more."
This was getting out of hoof.
The pink pony seemed to know how to play to a crowd, albeit in an amateurish sort of way. Was it that bouncy, bubbly personality? Was it the candy-cane sweet voice? The audience seemed to be eating this pink pony up. Cracking a joke about cakes and "empty calories" she asked for a table and a set of cups. Trixie's instincts were warning her to try and come up with a counter trick. Was this earth pony hustling her, on her own stage?
"The old vanishing balls in a cup, trick?" Trixie asked, sharing a laugh with the audience. "How old fashioned! Trixie recalls playing this game as a foal!"
Pinkie stuck out a bright pink tongue, making an annoyingly adorable 'nyaah' sound.
"I've got something much better than some boring balls!" She leaned towards the crowd, wiggling her eyebrows. "Can anypony guess what it is?" Her lips pinched together into a perfect 'o' as she listened to the shouts of the audience. "I heard cupcakes!"
"B-uu-t..." Pinkie reached a hoof into her mane. "I don't think I have any cupcakes left! Ummm... OH! Here's something good!"
Trixie watched, nonplussed, as the pink pony pulled three plates out of her hair. How - how was she...? Disgusting! A magic hat was one thing, a magic mane was another!
"Strawberry jam swiss rolls!" Pinkie licked her lips and tossed all three over to the table Trixie's assistants had brought out. Twirling like a top, she spun her way over to one side of the table, three rolls on three plates, with three large cups next to each one.
Snorting in disdain, Trixie made her way over as well.
"You know," she warned in a low, quiet voice. "Trixie will see you when you try to palm those rolls. This is the oldest trick in the book."
Pinkie just giggled. "Ready?"
"Trixie shall let you begin whenever you wish."
Sitting on her haunches, the showmare put on an unconcerned expression and posture, even as she sharpened her eyes and carefully watched the other mare. Pinkie slowly put one cup on top of each dish, covering up the slices of swiss roll.
"I missed your last show, you know." She nimbly switched two of the plates, just getting started; just warming up for the trick to come.
"At Hoofington?" Trixie asked, playing along. Conversation was part of the street magic. She knew it well enough herself. She had cut her teeth on street magic. "Canterlot Plaza? Or..."
"Ponyville."
"Oh. That town." Trixie's eyes watched Pinkie's hooves shuffle the plates, occasionally raising one of the cups to show that the roll was still there. "Did those two little idiots ever drag anything worse to the village? A black dragon, maybe?"
"Well... Snips and Snails didn't do anything bad after you left, but we did get attacked by Parasprites."
"Parasprites?"
"And a sleepy dragon."
"..."
"And Discord. Oh! And we had an outbreak of cutie pox! And the dam broke and the town was nearly flooded! And then another dragon rampaged through town, but he wasn't really himself at the time." Pinkie's conversation grew faster and more animated as she jumped from one disaster to another. "And there was this time when Twilight went back in time because she was worried about the future and there was a time loop or a paradox and she thought the world was going to end and..."
Pinkie's hooves stopped, hovering over the two end cups.
"And... how many rolls are there under these cups again?" she tilted her head to the left, big blue eyes full of what genuinely seemed to be confusion. "I forget."
"Urggh!" Trixie groaned, both at the distracting pink pony and at herself. She had been watching for palms, but even then, all that talk had distracted her. Especially mention of that 'Twilight' pony. The very same who had vanquished the Ursa Minor.
Still -
"The Great and Powerful TRIXIE has seen through your little trick!" she declared, pointing to the center cup. "All three are under the middle! Trixie can see the chocolate and strawberry stains on your hooves!"
"Ohhh! Oops!" Pinkie licked her hooves clean, much to Trixie's disgust. "Mmm!"
"Such foal's play!" Trixie's magic seized the three cups, lifting them off the platters. "Did you really think - wha-aa-ah!?"
All three plates were empty.
"Oh yeah!" Pinkie turned to the crowd, shrugging helplessly. "I remember now! I ate all three of them! Sorry, everypony!"
For just a moment, Trixie's vision turned red. Not pink. Red. How - how had she missed this cherry chatterbox not only palming all three rolls, but eating them?! Sputtering, her mind raced to find some way to turn the tables on her challenger: to humiliate her before she won over the audience.
The sound of laughing and hooves clopping snapped her out of thoughts of revenge.
Before she knew what was happening, the pink mare had taken one of her hooves in a hearty hoofshake. The tension ebbed out of Trixie's body as she realized, a little belatedly, that the crowd had enjoyed the show and that they were laughing in enjoyment and not in derision. The showmare took over, dispelling her inner turmoil and replacing it with the need to play to the audience.
"A splendid trick!" she declared, to applause. "The Great and Powerful Trixie salutes you!"
Taking off her hat, she briefly placed it on Pinkie's mane... only to pluck it off a second later, leaving a trio of doves behind. The birds took wing, signaling the end of the show. A bit of magic and the fireworks finale went off behind and in front of the stage, filling the air with sparklers and glitter-bombs. Bouncing off the stage, Pinkie returned to her seat and her table...
It took another pony pointing to her mane for her to realize something had been stuck into her pink curls.
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"I was about to say: you can have some... but I guess, help yourself?"
"Thanks!" Pinkie said around a mouthful of sweets and drop-candies. The very last one balanced cutely on the tip of her nose, her head bobbing left and right to keep it from falling.
Trixie raised an eyebrow in mixed annoyance and amusement. They were backstage; Pinkie had found the VIP pass not so subtly magiced into her mane and accepted the unspoken invitation after the show ended. The showmare returned to her couch, brush running through her pale blue mane.
"I didn't see any of your friends in the audience," she said, closing her eyes and relaxing in the post-show glow.
"My friends?"
"The farmer with the rope tricks, the rainbow pegasus, the unicorn with the fabric magic?" Trixie scoffed. "To say nothing of that little lavender powerhouse who handled the Ursa."
"Oooohhh!" Pinkie bounced over, still somehow balancing the last gum-drop on her nose. "Nope! I came here by myself!"
"Why?" the magician asked, plucking the sweet off the pink pony's snout.
"Well-ll-lll...!" Pinkie drew out the word for a vexingly long second or two. "I just wanted to see your show for myself! I didn't get to see you in Ponyville... I didn't even get to throw you a party!"
"Your friends didn't strike me as fans."
"Oh, they're not!" Pinkie assured her and Trixie coughed at the brusque response. "They don't like you much at all! They told me you were a big, smelly, no-good braggy-pants!"
Trixie frowned at the other mare. "Then why-"
"Everypony else thought you were funny!" Pinkie said with an innocent grin, popping out and over the back of Trixie's couch. "They said you put on a good show, even if you did... um... not get along with someponies. When I saw that you were putting on shows here, I just had to come see for myself!"
"And?"
Pinkie stuck out her lower lip in a pout. "Well, you are a braggy-pants, that's for sure! I don't think I could get away with calling myself the Great and Powerful Pinkie Pie!"
"Of course not!" Trixie declared with an imperious laugh.
"You messed up in Ponyville, but you're still doing the same thing." The party pony had a different smile as she spoke, one of admiration. "Making ponies happy." Then, tapping her chin and rethinking it, she added, "And making some ponies angry, too..."
The showmare closed her eyes and resumed brushing her hair. "It pays the bills. So..." she asked at length, "I don't have to worry about anypony making a scene while I'm on stage?"
"Nope!"
"Good."
The brush in her mane paused, wavering in her magic, as something else occurred to the magician.
"You're going to be at my next show, aren't you?"
"Yep!" Pinkie still hung onto the back of the couch. "I really, really loved being up there! The roar of the crowd! The bright lights! The cheers and the smiles! Nothing makes me happier than making other ponies happy! That's my special talent, you know! I just didn't want to spoil it when you asked me earlier!"
"... is that so?" Trixie's right eye opened a crack. She popped the last gumdrop candy into her mouth as she considered something. "Will you have a new trick for Trixie tomorrow?"
Pinkie's impish grin grew half again in size. "Will you let me up on stage?"
"You are strangely entertaining."
Her giggle proved infectious, and soon Trixie was laughing as well.
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NEXT
(7) Epilogue (aka "Is that who I think it is?")
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