60 - Three-Day Promise - Part Three
Letters From a Little Princess Monster
Three Day Promise - Part Three
“Hey, Scoots!” Archer bounded up to the schoolhouse steps and hesitated. “I mean Diamond Tiara. Dang, this is freaky.”
The bedraggled pegasus could do little more than glare at her adversary. Frayed feathers stuck out in all directions from her wings, and strands of dry grass seemed to be embedded in her mane so deeply that it would take a complete shaving to clean. Ignoring Archer for the moment, Diamond Tiara stumbled to her hooves after several attempts and turned to stagger into the classroom, leaving her small purple companion behind.
Twilight did not notice. She was reading, with three different books hovering in front of her nose as her head darted back and forth between them. Much like her companion, odd feathers and bits of hay stuck out of her wings and grass-stained coat, but she did not seem to be very aware of her surroundings, to the point where she gave an abrupt start when Archer touched her on the shoulder.
“Whinnyapolis! The Treaty of Plum Mountain! The year 1752 of Griffon Reckoning! Twelve!” Monster panted for breath with her eyes wide open as the books tumbled to the ground around her. “Did I pass?”
“Hey, Archer!” Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom came galloping up to the schoolhouse steps as Archer seemed poised between fleeing and dashing into the building. “Hey, Twilight,” said Sweetie Belle as she gave her little purple friend a quick hug. “Excited about your first day of school with us?”
“Duh,” said Apple Bloom, waving a hoof in front of Monster’s unresponsive eyes. “Hey, Archer. Has Scootaloo showed up yet?”
“Yeah, she—” Archer looked over her shoulder inside the classroom where the little pegasus was unpacking her saddlebags into her desk. “No, that’s DT. Here she comes.” She pointed down the path where Filthy Rich was walking alongside a perfectly coiffed and coddled little earth pony. The two of them proceeded slowly up to the steps where Filthy Rich stopped, picked the set of brand new pink saddlebags off his back, and placed them carefully on Scootaloo’s back, with great care as not to crush or wrinkle her brand new dress.
“Now be good at school,” said Filthy Rich with a brief kiss to the top of her head right in front of the shining tiara. “I’ll see you here this afternoon, and we’ll have ice cream before your meeting with your evening tutors.”
The little ponies stared in shock as Filthy Rich trotted away, then turned their attention to the painfully-clean and perfectly-dressed little pony he had left behind. Scootaloo had her lips drawn back into a thin line and her eyes wide-open with a little bit of a manic sparkle behind them.
“We walked from the house,” she said. “Slowly. The whole way. I couldn’t even trot because this dress is so tight. It took three hours for the servants to get me ready for school, and I swear they added ice cubes to the bath this morning. I can’t even touch hot water until the perm in my mane finishes setting up, and I’ve been trimmed and brushed so much over the last day I think I’m turning into Rarity.”
“You look good,” said Archer somewhat hesitantly. “Diamond Tiara looks a mess, though. I heard Rainbow Dash got her up before dawn and they spent the whole morning practicing flying before getting dropped off here. You know, I’m going to be glad when you two swap back and I can get some competent help on my paper route again.”
Sweetie Belle peeked into the classroom. “Yeah, I think Diamond Tiara’s looking forward to it too. She looks happy just to be on the ground now.”
“This sucks so bad. I think they used starch on my mane,” said Scootaloo, looking up at the near-rigid curl.
“Um…” Monster fidgeted. “School is taking forever to start?”
~ ~ ✶ ~ ~
Trixie walked down the middle of the Ponyville street with the wagon of newspapers behind her, trying to make sense of Archer’s scribbled paper route instructions across what could only loosely be called a map. The two of them had almost managed to complete the deliveries before school, leaving Trixie only a few morning newspapers to throw onto doorsteps in order to make the paltry salary that Archer was advancing her since Scootaloo was indisposed.
“Some street numbers in this town would be nice,” she muttered, winding up and letting fly with a newspaper only to see it unerringly vanish through the pane of glass next to the door instead, scattering shards of crystal across the inside of the mayor’s office.
“Buttercups,” muttered Trixie.
~ ~ ✶ ~ ~
A more mismatched trio of adult ponies had never been seen outside of the Ponyville school before, waiting for class to be over and their respective charges dismissed. Rainbow Dash sat somewhat uncomfortably on a white lumpy cloud and kept a downward eye on Trixie and Filthy Rich, who each seemed as tense as a wound-up thundercloud, ready to start spitting lightning and tornadoes at the slightest provocation.
“I hate you,” growled Filthy Rich, casting his eyes disparagingly to one side at the tired orange unicorn standing there.
“I know,” said Trixie. “Good things bear repeating, and you’ve told me that a dozen times so far in the last ten minutes. Just keep to the plan and you can hate me all you want with your daughter. Here she comes.”
“Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo almost tripped on the bottom step of the school, obviously still expecting to get a little bit of a boost from her absent wings. She bolted across the schoolyard and paused under Rainbow Dash’s cloud with several hops as if she were trying to make a trampoline just appear under her hooves. It was probably difficult for her, but Rainbow remained silent just as she had been asked while looking past the bouncing earth pony filly at the empty schoolhouse window.
“Come along, Scootaloo,” said Filthy Rich, putting a hoof over Scootaloo’s shoulder and carefully straightening her tiara. “I don’t have much time off from work and we need to make you presentable for your after-school tutor. We most probably will not even have enough time for ice cream.”
“B-b-but…” Scootaloo extended a hoof to the sky as Filthy Rich shepherded her down the path, managing to get one despair-filled glance backwards at her unresponsive hero before being nudged to a stiff walk.
“I know why he hates you so much,” grumbled Rainbow Dash, looking down at Trixie. “For two bits, I’d stomp all the hailstones out of this cloud right over your head.” The cloud let out a rough growl of thunder at that, seemingly expressing approval at the proposition.
Trixie did not even look up. “If… No, when this works, I’ll go stand out in the center of town and you can stomp all the hailstones over me you want. You can even bring along Scootaloo and have her help. Heck, sell tickets as long as you cut me in on the take.”
That settled Rainbow down to a brief grumble, matched by the cloud. “You know, if you weren’t a friend of mine, I would never have gone along with this.”
“Some friend.” Trixie sighed and sat down in the dusty grass of the schoolyard, but glanced upwards when a loose hailstone bonked off her slouched yellow hat.
“Friends are like weird relatives,” said Rainbow Dash, lining up her hoof on the edge of the cloud to find just the right spot to knock loose a single hailstone again. “You can’t really pick ‘em. Besides, we’re cool. I saved your life, and you saved the lives of a whole lot of my friends, and Twilight and Princess Luna. You’re awsome cool to be around, probably because so much of my awesomeness has been rubbing off on you. But what you’re having me do now? Not cool.” Rainbow Dash tapped the cloud and another hailstone bounced off Trixie’s hat. “Diamond Tiara cried in the middle of last night. I had to stay in my room and just listen, because of that stupid Pinkie promise you made me make.”
“Good.” Trixie did not even look up when another hailstone bounced off her head. “The more they want their old lives back, the less time this will take, and we don’t have much left. The clock is ticking, Rainbow. And speaking of time.”
A blur of fast-moving pegasus shot out of the schoolhouse door and skidded to a halt in front of Trixie, as Diamond Tiara looked frantically around, trying to look at anypony except for Trixie. “Where’s Daddy? He always picks me up from school on the first day.”
“You’re just a little late, Diamond.” Trixie’s pink magic formed around the little pegasus and floated her up to Rainbow Dash’s chilly cloud. “Scootaloo already went off with Filthy Rich for her after-school tutoring. She’s going to be busy all evening, and so will you. Rainbow Dash said she’s going to teach you all about hail today while I give Twilight some additional magic homework.”
“Really?” The little pegasus prodded the cloud she had been placed on with one hesitant hoof. “It won’t shock me like yesterday, will it?”
“No, but don’t poke it like that or—” A hailstone spit out of the cloud and bounced off Diamond Tiara’s forehead. “Yeah, that might happen. Anyway, see you later, Trixie. We’ve got a lot of work to do before sunset.” There was a blur of wings, a gust of cool air from the cloud, and Rainbow Dash was gone, along with her odd little apprentice.
Although somehow she still managed to get one last hailstone to spit out of the cloud as she sped away, even though Trixie caught it in her magic before it could hit her on the head.
“Am I going to miss her lesson on hail?” The moping little alicorn had managed to sneak up on Trixie and almost made her fumble the magical hold on the hailstone, which she managed to catch again after several abortive attempts.
“Yeah, you will.” Trixie pushed her hat back on her head and started walking toward the library with the little alicorn at her side. “I’ve got a special job for you this evening. What I’m doing is working, but I need one little push, something special to get Diamond and Scoots swapped back. I’m not sure what it is, but I’ll know it when I see it, and it will be all downhill from there.”
“Downhill?” Twilight Sparkle stopped moving, just standing in place in the middle of the street and breathing quietly. Trixie had not been exposed to Twilight for very long, but the experience so far had been extraordinarily intense, and the learning process accelerated accordingly. The little motion of Twilight twisting her hooves slightly into the ground and the faraway look in her eyes were dramatic tells into the little alicorn’s healing mind, and Trixie stayed stock still at her side while waiting.
And waiting…
“Menace,” whispered Trixie after a few dozen of the town’s inhabitants had passed, some with odd looks but all with that little spark of understanding and sympathy once they had spotted Twilight. “Do you want to tell me something?”
“Not sure.” Twilight’s lips moved and her eyes darted around, but no more words came out for several minutes.
“Do you have an idea?” Trixie pulled her notebook out of her yellow cape and crouched down next to the little alicorn. Sometimes the sections of an injured brain could be more damaged in the section controlling speech than writing, and with the way Twilight went through books, at least the reading section of her brain was healthy. Or at least that’s what Trixie had gotten from as many of the books on traumatic brain injury she had been able to understand. “If you can’t say it, maybe you can write it down.”
The pencil Trixie was holding in her magic was ignored as Twilight pulled out a complicated mechanical pencil with ‘Funland!’ written on the side. It wobbled in her magic as she touched it to the surface of a blank page, trembled for a moment, and broke the point off with a sharp snap.
“No words,” whispered Twilight. She straightened up abruptly and placed her short filly horn against Trixie’s before breathing out in a long, shuddering sigh.
The front end of a roller coaster car filled Trixie’s senses, with the loud clatter of the chain pulling it up the wooden mountain and the sharp pain of Diamond Tiara in her stolen body clinging to Trixie’s small purple foreleg. The pure blue of the sky flowed through her heart and a wordless song of ecstasy sounded over the dancing of thousands of invisible creatures all around her as they whipped flags and swirled around the rising coaster. Behind her, Scootaloo and Featherweight chattered, beside her Diamond Tiara trembled, and below her…
All Trixie could see was the drop straight down the steep wooden mountain as Diamond Tiara shrieked right in her ear. The roller coaster car dangled for a second as the rest of the cars began to crest the sharp hill behind her, and the distinct ‘whump’ of wings against metal echoed down the whole train as every pegasus including Trixie instinctively opened their wings into the protective shield of the cars, all except Diamond Tiara who was still frozen in terror and dislocating Trixie’s elbow.
And everything dropped, including Trixie’s stomach.
It took a few minutes of vigorously throwing up into the nearby ditch for Trixie to regain most of her previous good nature. Finally, once she had spit away the last bit of vomit and wiped her mouth, Trixie said in her most controlled voice, “Menace. Did Featherweight take a picture of that?”
“Yes.” Twilight Sparkle nodded slightly while trembling. “Got extra copies. Was afraid, but not. Weird. Wanted to capture it.”
“Fear can be like that.” Trixie took a deep breath and sat down right in the middle of the road. “In small doses, it’s fun, but if you let it control you, it will rule your life, just as bad as greed or pride.” A faint gurgle from her cape as she shifted positions made Trixie flatten her ears and scowl, adding, “Or booze.”
“Like Scootaloo. Afraid of losing us,” said Twilight.
“Everypony’s afraid of something,” said Trixie. “Scootaloo is afraid of flying because she’ll lose her friends here when she goes back to Cloudsdale with her parents. You're afraid of growing up and learning how to use your alicorn magic because you're afraid you'll destroy the world somehow. Diamond Tiara is afraid of losing her father and—” Trixie shook her head. “Well, the second thing will wait until we get Scootaloo and her back into their correct bodies tomorrow. You gave me just exactly what I need. Now, we need to get Rainbow Dash and see about adding a new flying lesson for you and the tiaraed troublemaker. Let’s go.”
They walked down the road, side by side for a while before Twilight asked, “What are you afraid of?”
“Um…” Trixie thought fast, but nothing came to mind except the obvious. “Losing you, of course.”
“You’re not lying?” Trixie managed to meet the little alicorn’s big violet eyes for a long while before she had to look away.
“I thought I was.” Trixie shrugged. “Maybe not.”
“Good.” Twilight kept walking alongside Trixie as they proceeded toward Fluttershy’s house and the flying practice area until she added somewhat hesitantly, “I trust you.”
“But you’re still worried,” said Trixie. “Don’t be. Tomorrow after school, your friends will be back in their own bodies. Nothing will go wrong. Trixie guarantees it.”
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What could possibly go wrong?
7429559 *checks story rating* even with a teen rating plenty could, though i would like to actually see this get resolved all nice and neatly. Monster/twily could use a a solid win and so could and i hate myself so very much for saying this but trixie could use a win
A Trixie guarantee is the very embodiment of the phrase "may you live in interesting times". There is a good chance that her word will be kept, but what will happen to get to that point...
I don't expect this to end cleanly...
Trixie stacks reasons for the two to not want their new body, but none to want back their old. She might have to soothe their fears to succeed.
...see, that's what we call "Tempting Fate". Don't do that, because that pretty much guarantees the outcome you don't want.
I really enjoy the way you're building this up and I look forward to seeing how it gets to the conclusion.
something go wrong......
7429739
She told it to Twilight though, which means that Twilight will now enforce her own belief in Trixie's words over reality and fate.
Wow. Making an ice cream promise you never intend to follow through on? There's low, there's cruel, and then there's outright abominable. No wonder Filthy's so furious.
Still, hopefully Twilight's idea will counterbalance Trixie tempting fate. Hopefully.
7429870 She still said it. That's all that matters.
THIS IS WHAT WILL GO WRONG!!! scontent.fyyz2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/l/t1.0-9/12654379_987335421356658_3818115149288002131_n.jpg?oh=70f9eef4daced9ef059eb6ff8973d65a&oe=57F0A1EF or scontent.fyyz2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13254321_1053076108115922_1778260230780063466_n.jpg?oh=8610ca78f609e9a00f654fbc38cba7b6&oe=581B4686
I'm rooting for Trixie
7426670 Since herd is the pony polygamy, unless there is an actual term for taking in just ONE more partner, then yes. three parties makes a herd.
7429559 I think Sir Robert Burns said it best.
"wait, are we supposed to be complaining? Sures seems that way, what do I have I can complain about..."
IMO, what Burns actually said was "The best schemes of mice and men to get laid..."
Censorship forced the change.
D'awww!
If it was a cuteness test she passed with top marks.
... somepony should teach the Great And Orange Trixie about this little thing called proportionality...
I honestly want to see this arc finish soon, it's interesting but the amount of sadness for Scootaloo and Diamond that's come with it has made it hard to enjoy. I want to see how Monster deals with the Smoke Snoring Dragon, Parasprites, and other stuff from the show. Plus, we need to see how the confrontation with the old hag Zebras goes. They're so close I'm waiting for them to make their move.
Trixie, you just HAD to say it, didn't you?
Still, evil plan is evil. But it is a necessary evil from how it seems.
Trixie also lets everyone hate her instead of little Twilight. That's... well, she's deflecting more hate towards herself than anyone would have expected. Awww, she has more and more heart with each passing moment.
7429870
Trixie is nothing else if observant about these kinds of things.
Also very much a fan of her threat management. She is probably my fav char in this fic.
7429559
Go wrong?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing will go wrong. The disaster has already happened—it is just that the consequences will take a few days to travel across the fourth dimension and catch up with you...
Well, I don't trust the author.
7460076 That's only fair. I don't trust the sneaky guy either.
8187657
Famous Last Words™
I believe Beatrix mis-spoke. I believe what she meant to say was...