Chapter 6: Even Illusions Hurt
It was about one o' clock when the light blue unicorn and white Earth pony walked together out of Manehatten's park. Trixie's cape swayed with the wind as she walked forward. As usual, Surprise bounced alongside her, carrying both books on her head. The weather outside was quite sunny and the sky was clear.
“So, what are we going to do today?” Trixie turned and asked Surprise, who kept that wide grin on her face despite losing her wings.
“Practice spells from these books!” Surprise looked up toward the books on her head. It was like her mane had something in it that made the books stay without falling off. It was perhaps unexplainable physics that shouldn't really be questioned unless somepony wanted a headache.
On the other side of the park where they emerged from the carriage, Trixie led Surprise down a few blocks through another part of the city. Surprise thought the journey there was getting boring, so she thought of something to talk about.
“So, Trixie,” she started. “What do you think of me?”
She merely rolled her eyes. “How can Trixie put this delicately... you're an inconceivably strange filly in a mare's body that hardly comprehends the concept of maturity and tact. You lack understanding, and your intelligence is limited. You seem to have a habit of thoughtlessness for your actions, which proves vexatious in the end. Is Trixie going too fast for you?”
“Nope!” Surprised shook her head. Trixie wasn't sure if she really understood all of that. It was as if Surprise was either really ignorant of her message, she didn't really get any of that and assumed they were all compliments, or she really didn't care about all the bad things she was saying.
“Nopony will ever understand you. I will prove that now. What do you think of the Great and Powerful Trixie?” Trixie asked as she put a hoof to her chest.
Surprise stopped hopping. “Why, you're so cool! You can do so many cool magic tricks! Not that I've seen any, but you talk about it a lot, so I assume they're cool! You may be a meanie sometimes, but I know you don't mean that seriously! Or maybe you do. You're probably just insecure, but I don't blame you! You had a troubled past, but hey, you can always make your future better! You just need determination, and I believe you have that. And with me by your side, I just know we can show Equestria how Great and Powerful the Greatest and Powerfullest pony is!”
She kept displaying that big grin. She noticed that Trixie had a rather dumbfounded look on her face, and her smile dropped as she raised an eyebrow. “Trixie? Are you alright?”
Was Trixie underestimating this oaf? No way could she understand all of that. Not with her... Trixie took a few more seconds to look at Surprise, gauging her mindset. The white mare was still staring back at her.
Oh, forget it. Apparently, she has a bit of an intelligence level in her. Better watch out for any tricks.
Her face returned to a neutral expression. “Yes, well, let us move on. We have some magic to practice.”
She moved forward without another word. Surprise shrugged her shoulders and followed behind.
About fifteen minutes later, they stopped to see a rather big field just outside the city. Nopony was around, as it was an area of Manehatten ponies didn't really go to often, if at all. There wasn't a single pony around, which made it a perfect spot to practice her magic with no interruptions.
“I don't get why we have to come here. Couldn't we just practice in the park?” Surprise asked with a raised brow.
“Simple. As you know, Trixie had to remove your wings so the magic she had contained into keeping them on you wouldn't drain me. Trixie needs it to practice these spells. What does this have to do with us being here where nopony can see us? Remember, you are nothing but a clone of Pinkie Pie. If they saw you really didn't have wings, they knew you would be trying to hide from those who would send you back to that pool you mentioned. How would they know? You look exactly like her. The only difference is your colors, which are just an illusion, see?”
With a flicker of her horn, Surprise's colors started to flash. The white on her coat started shifting between that and pink. Her mane and tail did the same between yellow and magenta, her eyes from purple to light blue, and her cutie mark from purple to yellow and light blue. Surprise gasped as she noticed what was happening.
“Ok ok, I get it! Just stop doing what you're doing!” She looked around in fear, as if expecting somepony to appear and catch the act, inevitably sending her to her fate back to the Mirror Pool. Trixie nodded, and her horn stopped glowing. The colors changed back to the white, yellow and purple color scheme.
“So now you see why Trixie had to remove your wings and bring us here where nopony can see us.”
“Yeah, you're right. You're such a genius, Trixie!” From that, the unicorn smiled and flicked her mane.
“Trixie is a genius, isn't she? Now then, let's get back to business. Drop the books.”
Surprise tilted her head forward and the books slid off her mane. Trixie looked between both books. Each one had an interesting cover, and were equally as tempting to read.
“So we have Illusory Compositions: Everything You've Wanted To Know About Illusions, and Advanced Magic Theories. The second one doesn't seem to have quite the flair Trixie expects, but it is better than nothing. We'll start with Illusory Compositions.”
Surprise nodded, and placed her hoof on the second book, sliding it to the side to get it out of the way. Using her magic, Trixie lifted up Illusory Compositions and opened up to a few pages ahead.
“Let us start with something simple, shall we? We'll try this trick here.” Her eyes scanned the page. It showed a depiction of a unicorn, one that looked closely like Star Swirl the Bearded. The unicorn looked like he was using magic on a pony's ears. The image under it showed the other pony's ears glowing a bit brighter. Trixie flipped the page to read on. The next picture showed the ears extending while they were still glowing. The final image on the page showed the pony's ears were now that of a rabbit's ears.
“So, apparently this spell can change body parts into animal body parts.” Trixie read on. “'This spell wears off after about five minutes or until de-spelled unless a stronger unit of magic is applied, in which case, the spell can last up to about twenty minutes.' How magnificent. Let's try it.”
“Ooh, I can't wait!” Surprise exclaimed, bouncing up and down out of excitement and anticipation. “I get to see awesome magic at work! This is going to be so fun! What kind of animal parts are you going to give me? A bear? A bird? A bunny? A cat? A chicken? A dog? A...”
“Surprise!” Trixie yelled, and that shut her right up. “Calm down. This is nothing to get excited about. Now, since Trixie is feeling generous today, Trixie will let you choose what you want. Pick a body part, and an animal.”
“I get to choose? Yay!” She jumped up into the air where she hung for about three seconds before landing back on her hooves. “Ooh, what to pick, what to pick...”
Surprise put a hoof to her chin in thought. Then she came up with something. “Give me cat whiskers!”
Trixie raised an eyebrow. “Surprise, we are trying something new here. However, it also must be presentable enough to show to a crowd of ponies. Trixie doubts they would be impressed by a pony having cat whiskers.”
“Aww... but wait, why not try it just to test out the spell?”
“You have a point. Alright, we'll see if it works, then move on to something more impressive.”
Trixie's horn glowed, and she focused on Surprise's face. After a few seconds, the sides of her nose started to glow as well. Thin white lines appeared and stretched out of her muzzle. After the spell was complete, Surprise saw the whiskers, and squealed in delight.
“This is so cool! I'm like a catpony! Half cat, half pony! Or maybe not. All I have is the whiskers. Ooh, can you complete the set?”
Trixie scoffed. “What are you going on about?”
Surprise just appeared directly in front of the unicorn in a kneeling position, practically begging. “Please, give me cat paws and cat ears and a cat tail! I want to be like a catpony! Pleeeeeaaaaase?”
Trixie narrowed her eyes at the Earth pony, who just quivered her lip in desperation. She had that sad look on her face that any filly would give whenever they were pleading to get what they want. Trixie had to admit, she looked a bit cute doing that, but it was still pathetic. However, to see a pony actually begging for something to her gave her a bit of satisfaction, almost like somepony begging for mercy under her hooves. To this, Trixie smirked.
“Alright Surprise, since you are pathetically begging, I shall do this just for you. But only for a little while.” She started to perform the spell again, but this time her horn glowed brighter, presumably due to the spell affecting more than one part of Surprise's body. Her ears, hooves, and tail were all glowing white at that point, and began to morph themselves. Her ears started reshaping, the base of her hooves bended around and her puffy tail shrunk immensely. In seconds, after the glowing stopped, Surprise now had cat ears, cat paws and a long, yet puffy cat tail.
When Surprise saw the result, she made a loud gasp. “Oh my Celestia, I'm a real catpony! I'm the first ever catpony!” She bounced around on her new cat paws, though she clumsily slipped and fell face first into the ground. She wasn't used to having paws yet, so she had a bit of difficulty landing on them.
Trixie even chuckled a bit. “Trixie must admit, this is amusing to watch.”
After she got back up, Surprise had a thought. She smirked and faced Trixie. Trixie was now wondering what Surprise was doing when she saw her lowering the front half of her body down toward the ground while raising her rump into the air. But Trixie was familiar with the little furry creatures. This was the position cats took when they were about to...
Suddenly, Surprise lunged forward and pounced right on top of the unicorn, which caught her completely off guard. Trixie fell onto her back with Surprise on top. She was purring like an actual cat, and even tempted to meow which sounded almost like an actual cat's meow.
“Surprise, what are you doing? Get off of Trixie!” Even with the demand, Surprise snuggled against Trixie's body. The feeling of a cat rubbing against somepony's body was nice, but when the cat was actually a pony, it was just plain weird.
“You don't like kitty cat Surprise? She's pretty fun to play with!”
Trixie's horn started glowing, and it grabbed onto Surprise's cat tail. As soon as the magic tugged on it to attempt to pull off the white mare, she hissed and her claws extended in reaction to the pulling, and they dug into Trixie. She yelped in slight pain from the claws digging into her.
“Surprise, your claws! Retract them now!”
“Well, stop pulling on my tail! It hurts!”
No matter what, Trixie just kept on pulling on her tail. Surprise just wouldn't let go no matter what to the point where she was actually managing to scratch Trixie's body. “Surprise, stop!”
Trixie stopped pulling on her tail, and she let up on her claws. She slowly and carefully stepped off Trixie a few feet away. The unicorn proceeded to stand up, putting a hoof over one of the areas where Surprise had dug her claws into. Small scratches could be seen, and Trixie winced in slight pain.
“You could not keep yourself under control enough to not cause harm to me?!” she yelled, which caused the Earth pony to lower her head.
“I'm sorry... go ahead. Take them away.”
“Gladly.” Trixie's horn glowed, and all of the cat parts from Surprise disappeared. “Let us hope we don't run into a problem like that again. Let us move onto a different spell. This time, from the other book.”
Trixie set Illusory Compositions aside for later. Surprise picked up Advanced Magical Theories and brought it to the showpony as she grabbed it in her magic and flipped through more pages. The tome was slightly larger than the former book, which meant it should've been more promising in the long run. At least, that's what Trixie thought.
The pages looked a bit more authentic, as if they were much older than the average spell book. There were even a few pages in the back that used the same type of paper ancient scrolls were made out of. “This looks promising.”
She flipped all the way to the back to look at a few spells. There were kinds of spells that Trixie never knew even existed. One such spell explained the magical properties of gravity, and how a unicorn could take advantage of it. Another explained the physical properties that shaped a pony's body, and how that could be changed to shrink said pony. They all looked pretty complicated, but that wasn't going to deter the Great and Powerful Trixie from learning at least one of these spells.
It was then that she found the perfect spell. One that would not only show ponies that she could be the most powerful unicorn in Equestria, but one that could also make Surprise happy as well. It explained a spell that could make deep illusions a reality. But even that required a deep understanding of theories that shaped the understanding of how the body of a pony works.
“This is perfect. This spell will make Trixie legendary! Surprise, take position.” She stomped her hoof, and the white mare stood directly in front of her with a hoof to her forehead as if to salute. “Here is a spell that can make illusions true and real. Do you know where Trixie is going with this?”
“You're going to give me back my wings, and make them into real wings and not just an illusion?”
Trixie just stared at her. “How did you guess that correctly?”
“Just a hunch!”
The blue mare shook her head in response. “Surprise, you surprise Trixie sometimes.”
“Well duh, that is my name! At least, it's the name you gave me! But why would you make my illusory wings real? Would you really turn me into a real pegasus?”
Trixie sighed. “Let us face facts. You are a real nuisance. You have always been since we met this morning. I have always resented your actions because of it. However, Trixie has gained a new insight where she has actually placed trust in somepony else to assist her. That would be you. No matter what I did or said, you still accepted me and my orders without question. This makes you loyal to Trixie, and Trixie respects that.”
“But of course! You're my--”
“Friend,” Trixie interrupted. “Trixie has heard that plenty of times. But there is another reason. Remember, you don't want anypony figuring out you're another one of those Pinkie Pie clones. The one thing that will make them know it's you is your overall appearance. They would be seeing a Pinkie copy as an Earth pony. However, if you obtain wings, for the most part, they would think you were just a totally different pony that bears a resemblance to her without relation to that Mirror Pool incident.”
Surprise nodded her head in full understanding. “Got it!”
“Wait, there's more. If this works, Trixie will display a feat so amazing, she would be legendary around Equestria! Think about it, a rising showpony with Great and Powerful magic to wow the audiences everywhere. Now then, are you ready?”
“Whenever you are!” Surprised exclaimed.
With another flicker of her horn, Surprise's sides started to glow. A few seconds later, and her wings flared out once more.
“Now, let's do this.”
Trixie focused on her target steadily. Surprise stared back with a face of determination. Their gazes met for a few seconds before Trixie activated her horn. From what Surprise could observe, Trixie closed her eyes and bared her teeth, which she guessed was either from the intensity of the spell she was casting, or the pain from the earlier scratches. She noticed a bright purple haze pouring out of the unicorn's horn and slowly making its way towards Surprise.
The haze gradually covered Surprise for a while, and Trixie kept up the magic. It was wearing her out, but she was going to make sure this spell worked. She was sweating and even breathing a bit hard, but didn't give up no matter what. After a bit of time, Surprise's wings were being brightened as the haze started seeping into them. After her wings fully absorbed the light smoke, a bright flash emerged from her. The flash lasted for about ten seconds before it cleared to show her now flying into the air with her wings involuntarily flapping themselves.
Once she regained control of them, she began to fly around. It felt as normal as ever until she started to fly even faster. At this point, she would clumsily fall to the floor due to illusory wings not having the full power of real wings. This time, she had perfect control over them. Once she realized this, she beamed and flew all around in different directions, performing many different tricks. She was having a lot of fun, and it was a nice change of pace from what she was going through being with Trixie all day.
“This is fun! Thanks so much for this, Trixie... Trixie?”
She hovered in the air as she looked down at where Trixie was standing. A large cloud of dust had appeared where she was. When the dust cleared, Surprise could only gasp at what she saw.
“Trixie!”
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Great chapter.
Ooh, cliffhanger!
Also, semifinal? Feels like the story barely started. Hopefully you can kick off a sequel. Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
3119580
I kind of had a different direction to go with the story, but after talking with a few friends, decided it was probably a bad idea, so I moved to this direction instead. And my story was supposed to revolve around Surprise trying to build a friendship sort of thing with Trixie, which is something that I plan to show in the last chapter.
Sorry if this didn't yield the result I wanted to get from my readers. I at least hope you enjoyed the story when it comes to its closing.
I have another story planned in the works if you read my blog posts (though most likely you'll only see it if you follow me). As for a sequel to this story? I was thinking about it.
3119743
Maybe I should elaborate, so I don't sound like I'm complaining about things I don't mean.
This story is clearly about Trixie gaining an unexpected friendship in Surprise. It's not untreaded terrain ("The Braggart and the Bug" did the same), but that doesn't mean it's bad - they make a very fun duo. I was expecting/assuming there to be more of a background plot building up, something that could only be dealt with by the combined forces of an egotistic showmare and a renegade party pony, so I was a bit surprised when you said the next chapter would be last, as no secondary plot had been given chance to develop.
But this is just because I tend to read between the lines and dreamed up bigger things, not because of you failing to meet any kind of expectations. Heck, my one fanfic to name is a page of rambling nonsense that goes nowhere in terms of plot, and no one's complained to me about that.
Anyway, there's plenty of sequel potential (presumably, unless the story ends with them getting killed or something), because I and probably many others would really like to see this dynamic duo take on all sorts of adventures together.
3119829
I see you made some really good points there. I fully understand it.
I'll tell you a little something, an idea I had about a month ago. Before I had the idea for the next story I planned to write (not counting A Spa To Ourselves), I planned on making this story, An Unexpected Surprise, the start of a series of stories. Suppose the second story in the series had them meet the real Pinkie Pie? That was sort of an idea I had before, though I'm not sure if something like that can come into fruition based on my future plans.
I have this story to finish, then I am focusing on my bigger story I Dream of Twilight Sparkle, then I am making another one, this time focusing on romance between two characters that don't get shipped often. The idea of another story in the Surprise series either won't happen, or might take a long time to write.
Don't get me wrong, I loved writing this story. But I have other things I'm really wanting to do more that's higher on my list of things I want to write.
3119974
That could certainly be interesting. Pinkie would be elated to meet a pony exactly on her wavelength, while Surprise would be terrified that her cover might be blown. But everything would pan out pretty well, and it looks like it's smooth sailing... and then, before she leaves, Pinkie says something to the effect of, "It's good to see that you made a life for yourself, too."
You write what you want, I read what I want. You can't rush inspiration.
3120157
That's... not a bad idea, actually. That can really work if written well.
3120385
Obviously, one would have to be leading the readers on a bit. But it suits Pinkie pretty well; having hidden depths and obfuscating ignorance is all part of her style.
There's also the option to have them put on a cameo in another story. Assuming Trixie isn't playing a very relevant part in that story, she could show up as a minor role in a scene, along with Surprise. I find that a lot of readers enjoy little continuity nods like that. I know I do.
3120468
Well, I have already added a reference to another story of mine somewhere in this story, so I don't see why a cameo can't work. It has to make sense, though. Can't just have them randomly appear for no reason without an explanation for why they're there (unless I actually go through with expanding the series).
In case you haven't noticed it already (or you don't get it), the reference is in Chapter 4 when Surprise finds a book on Jinn, which is also a book found in Chapter 6 of I Dream of Twilight Sparkle. So I can add little things here and there to anyone who actually reads all (or most of) my stories.
Ach, what happened to Trixie?!