“So, where exactly is this restaurant again?” Miss Direction asked her boss. The twins had noticed that as soon as rehearsals for tonight’s show were over, Trixie suddenly decided that she should take them to lunch. What was even stranger still was that despite the lack of a full house last night, the blue unicorn seemed oddly confident.
“We’re not too far,” she said as she turned a corner. “We just need to get across Times and the place should be right on the other side.”
The trio entered what the city claimed was the busiest place on the planet. The street was known very well by its residents, is the place where lost tourists roamed, traffic jams occurred for those unlucky enough to be traveling by cab, vendors sold their wares every dozen yards, the homeless would beg, pickpockets would steal, groups protested, and the occasional street performance.
As soon as the unicorn and her assistants stepped into the river of equinity, they immediately noticed two things. There was a huge crowd gathering near the foot of a crane, and Mr. Houdini was being secured to a straitjacket with the help of a couple of Pegasi police.
“What’s going on?” Peppers asked curiously.
“Is that Houdini?” Direction inquired.
“More importantly,” Trixie added, “what’s he doing here anyway?”
Thinking that lunch could be put on hold for a little longer, the three ponies approached the cluster of ponies around the human, noticing that the police ponies had just finished checking his straps.
“Now we need to get those legs tied,” they heard one of the officers say as they now focused on securing Houdini to the hook of the crane. Soon, ropes were wrapped around him several times before the police tied his hind legs to the metal claw that began to hoist him up.
“Oh, I get it,” Trixie nodded. Her two assistants turned to her with questioning looks. “He’s going to escape from the straitjacket.”
“Hello, Manehattan!” Houdini cried after the crane lifted him as high off the ground as possible. “Ready to see something amazing?” The crowd below cheered in anticipation. “Hey you magicians out there, can you do this without your horn?”
And the everypony on the street saw the slender human wiggle and thrash around upside-down on the hook of that metal arm, moving similarly to sea serpent out of the water. No one could help but watch him contort and turn violently. To their amazement, he managed to pull one of his arms over his head while the tight fabric slipped over it. Once that was done, he rocked back and forth, apparently trying to get the long fabric around his hands and hooked onto his shoes. It took a few tries, but he was finally able to when the audience below noticed his hands unbuckle in a few places before it slipped off of him. With his arms outstretched and his jacket in one hand, the crowd cheered at the impossible feat.
Dropping the jacket, he then set to work untying his legs. Before he did so, he swung himself over to the metal arm of the crane, hooking an arm around it before undoing the knots. Like the loony jacket, they slipped off, allowing Harry to climb his way back down to the ground.
“That was incredible!”
“That was really cool!”
“It’s fake!”
This got the crowd and Houdini’s attention. “Who said that?”
A cherry-red stallion stepped forward, who Trixie recognized as Hoof Cuff, one of her many rivals in her field of entertainment. “I said it,” he announced, “and I bet that little stunt you pulled off was all staged. Hey, I bet that jacket isn’t even real!”
Houdini raised a gray eyebrow. “What’s this? Do we have a doubter in our midst?” He strode up to the stallion, looking down on him. “And just who might you be?”
“Hoof Cuff,” he said with a smug smile. “I’m a magician too, and I can say that the so-called jacket you put on yourself is only made to look like that, and your ‘escape’ was all just an act.”
“This is fake?” Harry questioned as he picked up the thing that was wrapped around him only moments ago. “Then, Mr. Cuff, how about I give you a challenge? If you wear this same jacket, get tied up by them,” he pointed back to the police, “and escape the same way I did, then I’ll admit defeat.”
Cuff’s grin grew wider, “Done.” With that, the police quickly put the straitjacket on the unicorn stallion while undergoing adjustments to make sure it fits nice and tight.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Houdini added, turning to one of the officers. “Did you say that you have a ring that stops unicorn magic?”
“Uh, yea, I have it with me,” the officer said, producing a stony ring with strange symbols written along.
“Put it on him,” Harry ordered, seeing the stallion’s eyes widen. “If it’s so easy, I guess it would be fair if you weren’t allowed to use your magic to escape, seeing as I don’t have a horn.”
“N-now wait a minute,” Hoof interjected, but was cut off when the police officer placed the ring on his horn.
“Go on,” Houdini leaned back on the crane, “try to escape as I did.”
The stallion started sweating, but with everypony watching, he realized he didn’t have much a choice anymore. Even though he wasn’t hanging upside-down as the human had done, he still found himself struggling to move his forelegs around. Even trying to pull it upwards didn’t do him any good.
“Augh, come on!” He cursed when he fell over onto the sidewalk, still struggling to get free. Finally, he stopped moving around and tried to catch his breath. “Okay, okay… it’s real… let me out.”
“You see,” the human helped the stallion up, “no one can escape from a real straitjacket as the Great Houdini can.”
The police lent a hoof in unbuckling the jacket, freeing the embarrassed stallion as he left with his ears folded back.
“Okay, even Trixie will admit, that was an impressive trick you pulled off.”
“Oh, hello again.” The human knelt down to the unicorn. “Like the little show?”
“As intriguing as that was,” she said as she pointed to Hoof Cuff, “did you really have to do that to him? It’s not that I blame you, even Trixie doesn’t like him, but was humiliating him like that really necessary?”
“Hey, he tried to call my escape an act, so I let him have a try. While most of the things I do are tricks, I do tend to use real stuff in them. Besides, it showed him who the real expert in the art of escape really is.”
She was taken aback. “That is brutal and humiliating… I think I’m beginning to like you already! Speaking of which…” Trixie took off her hat and briefly showed Houdini that it was empty, before reaching in and producing two silvery tickets. “You wished to see Trixie’s show, so here are two for tonight. That is if you don’t have anything else planned.”
Harry took the tickets before putting them in his pants’ pocket. “I think I could cancel my show for tonight and give everyone a rest before the big show for that Princess lady.”
“Very well. I promise to give you my best performance,” Trixie replied as she turned back to her dumbfounded assistants.
“Forgive me, but did you just give him tickets to our show?” Peppers questioned.
“Yes,” Direction nodded,” isn’t he the one that’s threatening our careers?”
“Ladies, relax,” Trixie said as they began walking away. “Perhaps it would be wiser to win him over. Think about it; if in some way we become partners, friends, what have you, we might share our tricks with one another. We could dominate the magic scene in Manehattan. Perhaps all we need to do is be nice to him, and he might return that same kindness. So don’t worry. I don’t believe this will be the end of anyone’s career after all.”