“...so, Miss Direction,” Trixie said while lifting her hat, revealing a signed three of spades, “is this your card?”
Her assistant nodded as she peeked down at her stopwatch. “Five seconds. I think you’ve just beaten my record by a full second.”
She smiled and placed the card on the table. “Sleight of hoof isn’t too difficult once you learn it, and it’s even easier if you’re a unicorn.”
“I know.” Her assistant picked up the cards that were on the stage’s floor. “So what do you think about this new magician in town?”
“What?”
“The lanky creature… uh, what was his name?”
“Houdini?” Peppers Ghost asked, putting the linking rings around her neck. “What about him?”
“Don’t any of you think that we might be getting some new competition?”
Trixie raised an eyebrow. “Care to elaborate?”
“I mean, think about it. All of the greatest magicians have always been unicorns, right?”
“Of course they were all unicorns, but so what? It makes sense that those who can produce magic would be the most effective in this sort of business.”
“But that’s just it,” Direction pointed out, “we don’t even know what this ‘hu-mon’ -- if I’m saying that right -- is capable of. He and his troupe are a new species altogether. For all we know, this Houdini could walk through walls.”
The blue unicorn laughed. “Oh come now, do you know how ridiculous that sounds? How can something like that thing do anything better than the Great and Powerful Trixie? With my magic, I could teleport, escape straitjackets, and get out of seemingly dire situations. That thing looks like nothing more than a stretched monkey that left most of its fur back home.”
Her assistant nodded. “I suppose that sounds reasonable.”
“Excuse me, Ms. Lulamoon?” The three ponies on the stage turned to the new voice, a stallion wearing a reporter’s cap. “I’m sorry for interrupting your rehearsal. I’m with the Manehattan Times, and I was wondering I could borrow Trixie for a bit?”
She teleported herself in front of the dark gray unicorn. “And why, may the Great and Powerful Trixie ask, would you need her at this time of day? Do you need another interview?”
He shook his head. “Actually, I was hoping to ask if you could come with me to the prison for a while?”
“Prison?” The blue magician was taken aback. “Why would you need Trixie’s assistance with a prison?”
“Look, I know it sounds weird, even to me,” the stallion admitted, “but that Houdini guy is asking for every talented illusionist to come down to that place to show what he can do. I’m still not entirely sure exactly what he’s planning to do there.”
She hummed in thought, turning to her assistants and telling them to take a break until she got back from the demonstration.
One taxi ride later, the two unicorns pulled up to the Manehattan Pine Ridge Penitentiary, a fortress of concrete, brick, and barbed wire for the city’s most dangerous criminals. The pair walked through the gate and rows of security before finally reaching the front office, where Trixie found the human from the newspaper kneeling down to speak to the officer behind the office’s glass. The creature was surrounded by reporters and a few magicians that Trixie recognized as some of her other competitors.
“For the last time,” the stern pony behind the glass aid, “I am not going to lock somepony, or something, up for no reason. We only put criminals that have a committed a crime in here, Mr. Houdini.”
The thin creature folded its long arms. “Are you saying that you are not confident that your prison can hold me?”
Trixie pushed her way through to get a better look at the giant. Its mane was a little shorter than the usual stallion’s, but she could see that it was gaining some gray hairs. The nose was nearly as long and pointy as a crow’s break. Yet what caught most of her attention were the thing’s eyes that seemed able to pierce through steel. And to top it all off, she noticed the clothing it wore: a clean black suit and a tall white collar that seemed to tailor for a rich pony.
The officer raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious, sir? I don’t know where you come from, but here in Manehattan, we put our crooks behind concrete cells with walls as thick as your body. The doors and barred windows are made of enchanted steel that not even unicorns could cut through. The locks on the doors can only be opened from the outside with a special key, and they are fire, water, and magic proofed. If a pony is behaving badly, we also put them in magic-resistant chains. So really, not even you could get out, even if you tried.”
Houdini tilted his head to the side. “Is that a challenge? Alright.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a golden pocket watch attached to a silver chain. “How about I post bail and make a bet with you? This here is my mother’s watch. It still works, it’s encased with real gold, and the fob chain is made with real silver. If I can’t get out of his prison within an hour, the watch is all yours.”
He put the timepiece near the solid window’s hole. “Or, how about letting everyone in this city know that its police aren’t confident enough in their prison’s defenses to put a fella from another world behind bars, even when asked?”
There were murmurs all around from the reporters and magicians alike. ‘What in Equestria is he up to?’ Trixie thought.
The officer behind the glass took the watch and opened it. He looked back up to the human. “Are you absolutely sure about this?”
He nodded. The stallion sighed and told him to follow him through a door, leading to another room that was crowded with reporters and magicians. They watched the officer asking the giant to crouch down so that he could put hoofcuffs on him.
When he locked the cuffs around his wrists, Houdini snickered. “Really? Just one pair? Come on, put on another.” The officer’s face was twisted in confusion, but he grabbed another pair and locked them on the creature’s arms. “How about one more just to be sure?”
“Sir”, the gray stallion said, “you’ve already got two on. I doubt you’ll be getting out… but if you insist.” He put the third pair on him, but Houdini still wasn’t satisfied.
“Aren’t ya gonna throw some chains and padlocks on me?”
At this point, the officer was starting to get annoyed. “Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to prove here, but at this point, I’m certain that you’re never going to be getting out of those.”
Nodding, the human turned to the other ponies in the room. “Would the magicians here check to see if these are real cuffs?” One by one, the city’s illusionists examined each cuff that was placed on him. Some, including Trixie, inspected the cuffs with their horns. Sure enough, they were very real and very magic proof.
Once all that was done, Houdini asked them if there was any way at this point that he could get out of them. All of them, including the reporters, concluded that it was next to impossible.
The officer then proceeded to check the magician’s pockets, shoes, and even his hair to make sure that he didn’t have anything on him that would allow him to escape. He even asked to check inside Houdini’s mouth, who happily obliged.
The crowd followed the bounded human down a few barred hallways until they came to a cell with a heavy metal door. Trixie got a good look at the cell to find everything the officer had described: fully concrete with a barred window and door.
She saw Houdini being placed into the cell, with the stallion closing the door and locking him inside. “By the way,” he spoke, “if you don’t get out of by the hour’s end, you’ll be staying in there ‘til tomorrow for disturbing the peace.”
“Fair enough,” the human behind the door replied.
“And thanks for the watch.” With that, the officer and the crowd left the human to his cell.
_*_
“What do you suppose he’s trying to do?” Trixie turned to the pony that was addressing her. It was one of her rivals, a brown unicorn stallion named Card Trick. “Getting us all here to see him get locked up in jail, but what for?”
“Probably just making an idiot of himself.” She pointed to the door that led to the heart of the prison. “Besides, he still hasn’t gotten out.”
“I don’t know what he was thinking.” She turned to another magician, a newcomer by the name of Silent Hoof. Supposedly, Trixie had heard that she was good at sleight of hoof. “We all checked the hoofcuffs, and the cell was certainly real.”
“Unicorn or not,” Trixie added, “I don’t think he has any chance of escape. We all saw him get searched from his head to his shoes. There’s no way he’s going to get out in time.”
“Speaking of time,” the officer said, putting the watch down on the table, “it’s already been an hour.” He got up to open the door and head down to Houdini’s cell.
The other ponies followed behind him to the cell, where the officer unlocked it. “Alright Mr. Houdini, time’s up,” he said as he opened the door, “so it looked like you’re-- WHERE DID HE GO?!”
Magicians and reporters alike crammed together to see that the cell was empty of everything except the cuffs laying on the floor, all three of which were still locked.
“What?”
“No!”
“How?”
The crowd immediately started looking for the giant. Eventually, they ended up finding him at the officer’s desk, putting the watch back into his pocket. “What took you all so long?”