Seduction of the Innocent
By Bumblebee Tuner
Chapter 1
The Great and ‘Marvelous’ Trixie Lulamoon
After completing her 10,000th performance at the local park and chasing off a foalish, red and black, newspaper vendor, with a cutie mark depicting a lightning bolt striking a microphone; Trixie Lulamoon, the great and powerful, parked her cart behind an abandoned warehouse at the corner of Ninth Street and Slumm and set to work giving out handbills. As she was standing beside what she assumed to be the local railway station, and had apparently chased off a local panhandler, you can imagine her frustration and complete surprise when practically no one in their right mind would approach her when she called out to them, much less paid any interest in her fliers. Admittedly, she was still feeling the backlash from her recent exposure to the alicorn amulet, and her brief stint as a prosecuting attorney facing off against Twilight Sparkle in a negligence-homicide case involving Rainbow Dash, which genuinely hadn’t won her any favors.
However, seeing as she was in Las Pegasus, and not Ponyville or Canterlot, that shouldn’t have made much of a difference. Of course, had Trixie known anything about Las Pegasus she would have known that they had no infrastructure for a functional public rail system despite the presence of more than a dozen station house casinos waiting for the tracks to be laid. At it’s current stage in development it was far from the entertainment capital of the world, because Las Pegasus was little more than a keystone village, with keystone cops, whose main job was to police and protect the military personnel, investors, medical staff, engineers, laborers, and researchers who worked at the mines, the test sight, the bucking dam, and groom lake. Naturally, the city wasn’t founded by people who were good at math, but those who possessed unusual common sense and had good business acumen. So, when Trixie was approached by a pony wearing a green burberry coat with a matching stockman hat she wasn’t expecting any underhanded shenanigans beyond the pale. She was wrong…and this simple mistake would be the one that cost Trixie her freedom.
Naturally, Trixie was Guarded. She had heard tales of door-to-door sales ponies, candy chefs, and toy-makers with some mental affliction or other social problems that would cloak themselves in such finery and then strip naked at the drop of a hat before playing with their slinky, super sucker, or ding-a-ling in the presence of a lady or unsuspecting foal. But, it was fast approaching the witching hour when she laid eyes upon her visitor and her suspicions of this pony’s potentially dark nature were pushed aside by the barbiturate effects of sleep deprivation. In fact, Trixie was elated that someone in this 24 hour town had taken an interest in her services at all, so she wasn’t particularly expecting any indecent exposure.
“Wuxtree-wuxtree kind sir.” Trixie cantered towards her visitor. Using the opening chant to the want it need it spell didn’t hurt to attract attention, and it was after all a common practice when handing out fliers. “You look like you could use a friend, and all of Trixie’s friends will be at the park tomorrow watching ‘The Great and Powerful Trixie’ perform her spectacular-”
“Why aren’t you at home in bed Trixie?” The Stranger asked.
‘Oh great,’ Trixie thought to herself silently as she moaned in frustration. ‘a social worker…’
“Trixie does not have a home, because Trixie lives in her cart. It’s warm in there and Trixie does not need charity. If you want to help Trixie, come to Trixie’s performance tomorrow and see her bring mystery, joy, and wonder for yourself. Trixie is no common clown, she is the best pony to summon happy smiles.” or sick smiles if you were into shadenfreude on a roman holiday. After all, Trixie’s sense of intellectual humor could not be outmatched, because it was only later in the evening that one could fully appreciate the true genius of her craft, and say to themselves _Oh yeah, I kind‘a get it now_ in mild amusement. In fact, Trixie was sure she was almost as funny as Maud Pie, a mare she had recently encountered during her journey through a nearby mining town called Pontypool. Obviously, she wouldn’t be borrowing any one liners from her new acquaintance (that would be bad form) but that wouldn’t stop Trixie from incorporating the prop gag where she used a hand mirror to check and see if she was still breathing.
Trixie got the sneaking suspicion that something hinky was going on, when the green burberry pony started pulling on her heartstrings and hypnotizing her with an old song out of Saddle Arabia “Follow me, to a place where incredible feats are routine ever hour or so-” She supposed turnabout was fair play, since she had used the opening rune of a want it need is spell to call him to her attention not moments earlier. He had lead her through the abandoned, if not unused, railway station. Down into an abandoned platform where her attention was drawn to a strange subway car. With headlights gleaming like a dragons eyes, the train pulled up to the two ponies with a menacingly evil hiss.
It was at this point that the cobwebs started to clear in Trixie’s mind as the adrenaline alerted her to the fact she was shaking her head no and without conscious choice. “W-Where are we going?” Trixie asked in trepidation, having regained some sense of self preservation, a moment too late to back away from the train car. Her body was betraying her with her backpedaling gate as there was a magnetic force pulling upon her and causing her to slide forward towards the open cargo door of the train.
The burberry pony then approached her from behind and to the right, got real close to her ear and whispered the answer to her question with cold breath that sent chills down Trixie’s spine. “Just, wait and see.”
Unfortunately, Trixie did not want to wait and see. she had heard about what Saddle Arabians did to their mares, even going so far as to cut off the horns and snouts of unicorns for infidelity imagined or otherwise. “Have no fear, everything has been arranged.” The voice of Trixie’s phantom companion making her ill at ease because she recognized it from somewhere, calling back memories of her misspent youth in Majima Preparatory Academy.
Trixie was horrified she was going to be the victim of every stereotypical burberry coated villain she was warned about. If she wasn’t already on the train she suspected whatever the green suited pony had done to enthrall her in the first place would still be compelling her to- and then it struck her like a ton of bricks.
“ELISE! Is that you?” Trixie Asked.
“You’re very Lucky I found you first Trixie.” The burberry pony removed her raiment to reveal a mousie brown bat pony with a blue-black mane, golden eyes, and a skull shaped hair-clip that matched her cutie mark. “Breaking a contract with a demon is very bad Trixie. The Demonic Grief Office will insist we wear collars now.”
“Marvelous, Simply Marvelous. Don‘t you ever scare Trixie like that again. I almost had a heart attack.”
“So…how is everything? You still want to be the God of magic?”
“YES! But The Great and Powerful Trixie is no closer to being God of magic than she was before she met you. Other than that; Everything is just dandy…”