An Extended Performance

by Jordan179

Chapter 6: Trixie's Great and Magical Show

Hours had passed, and the Great and Powerful Trixie was running out of tales.

She had always loved stories of the fantastic, the epic and the legendary. She had mined many of these for her own patter, including both versions of stories famous throughout Equestria and ones far more obscure. There were several she loved which White-Beard the Grey had told her, ones which she had never been able to find from any other sources, ones all the more effective for their obscurity. She was telling one right now, half-improvising both tricks and patter.

Right now she was doing one of White-Beard's best tales, the story of how the Nightingale, a noble unicorn mage, helped her beloved Brave-Heart the earth pony warrior, on the Quest of the Three Great Jewels of Harmony. Brave-Heart wanted to marry the Nightingale, but her proud father, the noble King Grey-Cloak (who himself had wed an Alicorn) demanded that he bring her a bridal gift, and said the only one that would do were the Three Jewels which their foe, the tyrannical Black Enemy, had stolen from the Unicorns long ago, and wore in his Iron Crown. Brave-Heart vowed to do so, though he knew that the quest was close to suicidal, because he loved Nightingale so dearly. But Nightingale, who was a very powerful mage, tricked her father by slipping away and joining him on this perilous journey, and using her powers against the Black Enemy and his many minions.

She had acted out most of the tale, with little figurines, bursts of illusion and misdirection, and the occasional firework. She had to be sparing with her fireworks now, because she had used up many of them in that first hour before she realized that the Sun wasn't going to rise on schedule. The story of Brave-Heart and Nightingale was a good choice, though, because it was a long yet exciting one: she easily could have written it out to book-length if her talents had lain in that direction. Plus, it had always appealed to her sense of romance, especially when she cast herself in the role of the Nightingale, as she always did in her little plays.

And ... when things were so terrifying beyond the stage, it was nice to think of White-Beard, and that maybe one or two brave ponies could stand against the worst kind of darkness. The Black Enemy was a fearsome Draconequus with a great fortress, many minions and mighty magics, but in the end he had not been able to stop two true lovers from winning a Jewel from his Crown. Trixie had never had a true lover; at most she had had a really good friend whom maybe she should have told "no" at a key point in her past, but she could understand how Nightingale might have felt about Brave-Heart. Beneath the bravado, and beneath the cynic under that, there was still a part of Trixie that was a little filly who wanted to believe in every sort of magic, even the sappy kinds. Perhaps especially the sappy kinds.

She had just reached the part where Nightingale had tricked her way past all of the Black Enemy's guards and stood before him in his throne room, while Brave-Heart watched hidden from his view.

"And the Black Enemy leered at the Little and Innocent Trixie, and was about to wreak some terrible harm upon her, when she opened her mouth, and began to sing. And her voice was clear and pure, as sweet as the song of the nightingale!" With that Trixie sang a few lines. She had a decent singing voice, though unlike Nightingale she couldn't actually do any magic that way. It sounded good enough for the crowd, though, especially when she put some tremulo into the amplification spell, and provided she stayed in her natural register and didn't try any difficult octave transitions. "And she danced gracefully for him ..."

Trixie performed a few steps of a mildly-erotic dance, knowing exactly at least in theory what the motions meant and why she was doing this... She wasn't about to do a whole hootchy-kootchy for this crowd -- that was beneath the Great and Powerful Trixie's high standards -- but the point that the Nightingale was being seductive was here important to the tale, "... and the Black Enemy watched and listened to her in fascination."

She'd actually rehearsed most this routine, though with a tamer dance, a couple of times with White-Beard. Her mentor had always chuckled at this point. He'd played the Black Enemy, and deliberately hammed up every part of his lines so that it played almost like farce. The exercise was for her to play her part straight without breaking down into uncontrollable giggling. They'd never been able to find a really good Brave-Heart, so they'd never gone as far as doing this play on stage.

It was coming up well considering the circumstances.

Orange flames were flickering to the south. Trixie had been seeing them for a while. They were burning buildings. Miles away, but not something on which she wanted her audience focusing. The wind shifted to that quarter, and instead of the stench of fertilizer and nitrates, she could smell smoke and burning wood and what she hoped was burning leather. Bad things were happening out there in the real world. Trixie shivered, almost considered ending her performance, then remembered that the show must go on.

"And as he watched the Sweet and Limber Trixie's beautiful dance, for a short while the evil lusts drained out of the Black Enemy's heart, and even he was charmed by her. And he forgot his plans to do harm, either to herself or to her people, and remembered fondly a time when he had once listened to an even greater and more beautiful Music, before he had tried to mar it." She wasn't sure what White-Beard had meant here, but he'd always told it this way, so she did too. Besides, the words made poetry in her mind. "And the cares slipped from his soul, and he and his court all fell into a deep sleep, and as his head nodded, the Iron Crown slipped from his head, and fell to the flagstones of his fortress, and for that moment he sat defenseless, his face almost innocent in slumber."

There was a flash of light from somewhere. Trixie wasn't sure where, but the fact that she hadn't yet heard the rumble made her think that it had been distant and powerful. She was too experienced a pyrotechnician to imagine that had been mere lightning. Her heart missed a beat, but her aura was steady, and she triggered a fusillade from her stage mortars.

"Behold!" she cried, as her shells detonated above and waterfalled behind her. "The Great and Powerful Trixie had put the Black Enemy to sleep!"

She heard the rumble now, deep and powerful, felt in her bones as much as heard in her eardrums. A warm wind ruffled her fine white mane. Something big had exploded. What in the name of all the gods great and small is happening to this city? she briefly wondered, but she had no time for such idle speculation.

The show must go on.

Like the Nightingale weaving words of magic with her song, Trixie wove her patter around her audience, and within her magic circle, sanity prevailed.

***

Eight hundred miles away, Celestia's champions were making their way into the Everfree Forest. They had survived the first two challenges of Nightmare Moon, and now were trudging through the dark and fetid swamp that a thousand years ago had been lovely little Greenvale. They knew nothing of what was going on in the wider world, and would scarcely have profited by the knowledge.

In the War Room under the Palace at Canterlot, Princess Celestia stood with her chiefs of staff and watched events unfold throughout Equestria. She had expected some general attack, but not on this scale! Reports were coming in from all across the land, reports of riots, fires, mass insanity, in city after city.

Something, she knew, was seeping down from space and driving mad her little Ponies. She suspected it was the same thing that had claimed her sister a thousand years ago, the Shadows whose power King Sombra had commanded, who had corrupted Luna, who were now slipping into the minds of even her loyal subjects. She was not sure what to do about it.

A single strong enemy she could have fought, but the only enemy answering that description was the one she must leave to her Champions, fight directly only should they fail. What could she accomplish against mobs of frightened Ponies, themselves perhaps innocent, stampeded by the dark Power that never fully showed itself?

She could reveal herself to rally them, but in doing so she would abandon the wards on this place, wards which she was now fairly sure were hiding her exact location from her mad sister. If she and Luna fought over a major city, the death toll would be terrible almost beyond imagination. Even if Luna didn't fly to the bait, there was a limit to what she could do without burning her own subjects to charred corpses.

For now all she could do was to wait in here, wait for Luna to either fall or triumph, and then respond appropriately to either eventuality. Everything was in the hands of her Champions now, and the full military might of the most powerful nation on the face of the planet could only hope to contain the disasters.

***

In the Command Center under City Hall, Mayor Orangetree was growing increasingly worried.

New riots were breaking out in every quarter. Fires were burning out of control. Water pressure was dropping -- the Guards had sent a company of pegasi out to round up some clouds, but it had been a dry spring over this part of Equestria.

Right now the forces of law and order, of safety and sanity, were holding the line -- but barely. There were almost no reserves left. Requests to Canterlot were met with the same information. On a national scale, everything had been mobilized, everything was committed, all that was left was a last reserve for a "final contingency," about whose nature Orangetree did not have the need to know.

He knew anyway. One of the many witnesses at Ponyville had talked, and the news had spread to the land at the speed of rumor, borne by unicorn message teleportation and pegasi wings.

Nightmare Moon had returned. The might of Equestria was massing to fight her. If they won, the crisis would end.

If they lost, the night might last forever.

He was the Mayor of the greatest city on Earth, yet he was as helpless before this cosmic disaster as the humblest street vendor in the worst slum of his city.

All he could do was pray.

So he did.

***

Many deeds were done on that longest night in Equestrian history. Most cowered, afraid of what might seep down from the star-haunted dark in which shone the impossibly-immobile full Moon, so terribly bereft of those markings to which a thousand years had made them accustomed. Some sought solace in the company of friends, family, lovers or spouses. Many marriages had their origins from that night, and a year later the obstetricians and midwives were kept extremely busy.

Some panicked, went out and rioted, though less than would have been the case for races less calm and cultures less kindly than were the Ponies of Equestria. There was looting, violence, arson, even the occasional intentional murder committed by the fear-maddened throngs. There was madness and suicide, and even among those among the maddened who survived, there were some who would never again look upon the world with entirely-sane eyes. Not all stories, even in Equestria, come to happy endings.

And some there were -- on the whole, more than those who went bad or mad -- who simply stuck to their stations, doing their jobs with quiet determination while the Heavens had gone insane above. Guards, Watch, Fireponies held their posts and did what they could to contain the riots, catch the criminals, fight the fires. Doctors and nurses tended to the injured, fought their good fight against death as if the world were not in the process of ending.

There was shame that night, but there was also glory in Equestria. Some Ponies worked together, and some fought alone, to stem the tide of madness.

Strangest of these lonely struggles was the one waged by one arrogant, obnoxious little unicorn on a rickety stage in a seedy little square on the Lower East Side of Manehattan, as she continued and continued and continued her act, long past her point of exhaustion. She filled the sky with fireworks, with lime lights, with bursts of coherent light from her horn, her illusions washing out the sinister light of the stationary Moon. She filled the ears of her audience with her skillful patter, weaving a web of imagination that let her audience forget the terrors beyond the charmed circle of her show. She filled their hearts with awe at her feats of dexterity, of misdirection, of carefully-timed and seamlessly-woven illusions both mundane and magical. And in doing so, she entertained them, fascinated them, distracted them from their fears.

In the process, she saved property, sanity and lives. Many a would-be rioter saw her act and stayed, comforted by an island of light and beauty and whimsy in a terrifyingly dark and empty Universe. That night, she was truly magnificent, a worthy heiress to her great ancestors -- even to the greatest of them.

She did this not out of love for her fellow Ponies, and still less for Equestria. She had little love for most other Ponies, and still less for any abstraction such as a nation-state. She was still, despite her high courage, a rather sour little creature, a potentially fine wine spoiled by a poorly chosen barrel. White-Beard the Grey had done his best to give her a moral compass, but it was a cheap one, and frequently led astray by various magnetic deviations.

Ironically, she did not even do it for the glory. Much as she craved glory, it did not enter her head that what she was doing could be seen as glorious.

Why did she do it, then?

Was it her own sense of duty, a sentiment that though she might have laughed at in the sober light of day welled up in her on this longest and darkest of nights, an instinct that she was part of a herd, that her own greatness and power made her a leader, and that as a leader it was her responsibility to keep her herd safe from the predators that prowled beyond their fringes? Was the one love she permitted herself for anyone still living and in her presence her love of her audience, of whoever had trusted their attention to her, cheered her, validated her own sense of worth?

Or was it a code she had learned from the one pony she had ever loved wholly and without reservation, a being who had been greater than she had known, and who had shaped this code for her because he knew that she really was great and powerful, and that with great power came the great responsiblity to use that power wisely? It was a code built around the stage, and her identity as a show-mare, and her belief in her own destiny.

It was a simple code. The most of it was about reliability, about professionalism. "Make the opening curtain. Give them a good show. Leave them wanting more. And remember, above all, that the show must go on."

So the Great and Powerful Trixie's show went on. Hour and hour, it went on, as madness stalked the streets of Manehattan beyond Tompkins Square. Mobs might riot, buildings might burn, the pillars of Heaven themselves might shake, but the show would go on. The world might be chaos, fury might reign outside her audience, but within Trixie's world was order, and the laws of Illusion. Her ego was vast, so vast that she flung her defiance at Reality, so vast that thousands of Ponies -- a far larger audience than that which she had begun the night entertaining -- now sheltered within its embracing wings.

The show went on, until Trixie had expended her last pyrotechnics, and the strength of her own unaided illusions must substitute. The show went on, until Trixie's prepared props were all used up, and she had to combine them in new tricks on the spot, using all the power of her great imagination. The show went on, until Trixie had channeled most of her magic, and worn out most of her voice, and the skin hung loose on her frail little frame as she used a dangerous technique she had learned from her Master, one he had warned her only to employ at the utmost need. She burned her own flesh to fuel her spells, and burned, and burned it.

And then, as she was at her weakest, when she scarcely had strength to continue another hour, another half-hour, when she was staggering on her hooves, her voice hoarse from her prolonged patter, things got worse.

They came.

***

In the Command Center under City Hall, a young Fire Captain was the first to realize the danger. He spoke to the Fire Chief, who gasped and sent him to speak immediately with the Mayor.

"What now?" asked Orangetree, wearily. The presence of the Fire Watch uniform couldn't be good. Nothing the Fire Watch had told him all morning had been at all good.

"Your Honor," the young Fire Captain said. "There is a danger."

"There are a lot of dangers this morning," the Mayor not unreasonably pointed out. "What is it this time?"

The Fire Watch pony pointed to the map. "District 13," he said. "Tompkins Town. So far, no riots, very few fires. We don't know why, but it's a very good thing."

The Mayor nodded. "Yeah. I don't see any danger in that."

"But we've been plotting the outbreaks of the fires. We're definitely dealing with an arson gang. Black-clad, a dozen or so, they come in and start fires, then they're out of there before anypony can stop them. They've done direct murders, too, when one or two ponies tried to get in their way."

"Terrorists, yes," said the Mayor. "I've heard about them. We'll get to the bottom of this when the crisis is over."

"We may not have time, said the Fire Captain. "See, we can track their movements by the fires. And look -- they're making for Tompkins Town."

The Mayor turned to the City Watch Chief. "Can't we send some officers in, stop them?"

"No, sir. We have only a couple of patrolponies in that area. The rest are all committed." She rubbed her eyes. "This has been a long night -- long morning. My ponies are near collapse."

"Same for the Guard," said the Colonel, examining his dispositions. "We're stretched too thin to stop these saboteurs."

"We have to stop them!" insisted the young Fire Captain. "If we don't, then it's all over!"

Orangetree frowned. "What do you mean, all over?"

"Look, Your Honor," the Fire Captain said, pointing again at the map. "Tompkins Town. The waterfront. The freighters. The factories. The stockpiles!" He was waving his hoof around, almost frantic now.

At first, Mayor Orangetree didn't get it. Then he remembered something that had happened at Gallopstown, a decade or so ago. On their waterfront. That had been a few thousand tons. Tompkins Town had tens of thousands of tons ...

His face blanched, his mouth gaped, as he suddenly realized how much larger was the industrial district at Tompkins Town.

"Oh, merciful sweet Celestia ..."

A moment later, the City Watch Chief and the Guards Colonel realized it too.

They gazed at each other in utter horror.

Unless they could get some of their forces moved quickly, the city was doomed.

***

Eight hundred miles away, Celestia's champions crossed the chasm and set their hooves inside the ancient Castle of the Two Royal Pony Sisters for the first time. Nightmare Moon prepared for the final showdown. The fate of the world rested on the outcome of this fight.

Under the Palace at Canterlot, Celestia stood tensely, her every sense outstretched. She could feel the power gathering at the old Castle, the world-lines, waiting to spread out into thousands of new timestreams based on every detail of what would happen there. She might have seen them had she gazed into her Pool of Truth, but she knew that at a moment like this, such a vision could bring only confusion, perhaps madness.

She had neither attention nor energy to spare right now for the reports of victories and defeats coming from a hundred communities across the land. Not even for the reports coming in from the greatest city in her Realm, the City of Manehattan.

Where all unknown to her, events were moving toward another sort of conclusion.

***

On the Lower East Side, thirteen black-clad figures gathered at an intersection. The streets were mostly empty here, the resident ponies either gathered in what they fondly imagined to be the safety of their own homes, or attending the festival which they could see plainly illuminated in Tompkins Square ahead of them. There, one lonely little figure stood on a stage, trying to entertain the throng she did not yet know were as good as dead ponies.

"Our operation is almost complete," the Night Stallion said to his disciples. "There is the mob we need to storm the factories. Ahead lie tens of thousands of tons of fertilizer products. Much of it already processed into ammonium nitrate, which is oh so dangerously explosive. They should be more careful with such toys, the good little Ponies of Equestria, so loyal to their Sun Princess and to their worthless, meaningless little lives." He chuckled, and his disciples laughed along with him, happily imagining what would happen next.

"Tonight, we shall level the waterfront, and light the fires that shall bring Equestria's foolish attempt at architectural splendor and hollow wealth down in rubble. Tonight, we shall strike a blow that neither this city nor this nation will ever forget. Tonight, we tear down the towers!

"There is nothing between us and victory. The minds of those ponies ahead are as weak as any others. They shall flee before us in fear and madness, they shall light the torches, they shall do what we suggest to their feeble wills. We shall gallop away victorious leaving chaos in our wake, and laugh as their whole neighborhood is flattened into flaming ruins.

"Tonight we triumph! Hail the Great Dark! Hail the Shadows!"

His disciples cheered, and they rode into the square, confident that there was nopony to oppose them.

Nopony, but one exhausted little show-mare ...

Author's Note:

Most of you will probably have identified the source of Trixie's little story. It's a ponified variant of "The Tale of Beren and Luthien," by J. R. R. Tolkien, ouf the Silmarillion. Trixie, of course, casts herself as the heroine, Luthien. In Tolkien's constructed languages, "Beren" means "brave," and "Luthien" a complex kenning which works out to "nightingale."

White-Beard was greatly amused by her re-telling, as should be evident.

Here's what happened on our Earth near Galveston in 1947. Estimated yield around a kiloton. There were a few thousand tons of ammonium nitrate in that industrial accident.

There are several tens of thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate and other nitrate-based chemicals docked at and stored in Tompkins Town. The yield will approach that of a U-235 fission bomb, spray flaming debris over the southeast part of Manehattan Island, and release a choking cloud of chemical smoke from the various plants. That's not counting the likely effects when the flaming debris ignites other chemical plants along the waterfront.

Neither the Fire Captain nor the Night Stallion are exaggerating. If those chemicals cook off, it will be the end of Manehattan as a major city for a generation to come.

And only one tired little mare now stands between the city and the final disaster.

Pray for her.

Comments

[Redric Carrun]

even her loyal subjects..

*double period

One exhausted little show-mare who learned from freaking Gandalf!
But yeah, okay, it doesn't look good.

... Looks can be deceiving~.

[Mysterious Wind]

Damn, go Trixie
Go!

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

What the genius doesn't seem to get is the fact that he is probably going to be too close to survive the explosion. I've noticed that a villain's fondness for mass slaughter varies inversely with the likelihood that they will be one of the masses slaughtered.

[Walabio]

> "Most of you will probably have identified the source of Trixie's little story. It's a ponified variant of 'The Tale of Beren and Luthien,' by J. R. R. Tolkien, ouf the Silmarillion. Trixie, of course, casts herself as the heroine, Luthien. In Tolkien's constructed languages, 'Beren' means 'brave,' and 'Luthien' a complex kenning which works out to 'nightingale.'"

"ouf" should be "of":

> "Most of you will probably have identified the source of Trixie's little story. It's a ponified variant of 'The Tale of Beren and Luthien,' by J. R. R. Tolkien, of the Silmarillion. Trixie, of course, casts herself as the heroine, Luthien. In Tolkien's constructed languages, 'Beren' means 'brave,' and 'Luthien' a complex kenning which works out to 'nightingale.'"

The Halifax-Explosion was even larger.

[Walabio]

7440375

¡Eeyup!
——

These terrorists did not plan this very well.