Out Of Place

by BudCharles

The Show Must Go On

Twilight Sparkle watched on anxiously as Gold Star lit up his horn. The colt took a step back, pretty much walking into the wall behind him, before blasting a nearly blinding beam of magic light at the other side of the room.

Twilight’s mane was blown into her face as a shockwave rippled through the entire building. Twilight brushed it away to reveal that instead of the front yard, Gold had opened a portal to Doughnut Joe’s store on the other side of Canterlot.

Gold Star quietly mumbled a “sorry”.

---

“I don’t understand!” Twilight thought aloud. “You did great on the pop quiz, the flash cards, the four-page university-level exam, you had literally everything right!”

Gold Star stared at the ground, now covered in the remains of a book too close to the beam of magic. “I guess you were right, it’s just too hard, I’m just not good enough to do it.”

“Are you kidding?” Twilight said confidently, lifting Gold Star’s chin up with her front hoof. “You got into the final of the biggest magic competition ever!”

“Yeah, then Trixie had to save my flank because I couldn’t even get a fire extinguishing spell right.”

Twilight thought about pointing out the anatomical errors with the colloquial use of the word “flank” but quickly dismissed the idea.

“Don’t be silly, you just need more practice with precision magic – and I just need to find the right way for you to practice, so you know what that means?”

Gold Star just gave a confused “uhh…” in reply.

“It means research! Take me to your library!” Twilight said with a smile.

Gold Star smiled back at the idea of more magic research and happily bounced out of the room, seemingly forgetting about the fact he turned his room into a landfill. Twilight followed along as they headed for West Canterlot Local Library.

---

“Errrrrgggghhh!” Trixie groaned as dramatically as possible before collapsing in the least majestic way possible on the castle floor. “Thank Celesti – uh… - thank you that that’s over!”

The almost glowing white princess standing next to her opened her mouth, about to speak, but was cut short by Trixie’s ongoing complaining.

“Can you believe that one stallion thought it was worth wasting Princess Trixie’s valuable time to talk about his relationship problems?”

“Well that is your job” Celestia answered, as gently as possible.

“Ugh, Trixie doesn’t care! At least she can finally get on with a nice, calm, sensible lunch break!”

“Well, there is a small issue with that,” Celestia continued, “Twilight had organised a diplomatic lunch in the Dragon Kingdom today, so Luna and I will be having lunch there and… you’ll be included as well.”

---

The light, jingly sound of Trixie’s magic was followed by loud gasps of shock as she attempted to lift up a sandwich and place it in her mouth.

“What?” Trixie demanded in frustration, spitting out what was going to be a very nice lunch. “What’s wrong with picking up a sandwich?”

More gasps sounded across the long rectangular table, dragon ‘officials’ pausing in the middle of table-top brawls and food fights to stare in shock at Trixie’s behaviour.

“Trixie,” Celestia whispered quietly, “it is customary for dragons to eat with only their mouths, claws and magic are to be used only for throwing food.”

“Oh.” Trixie replied quietly.

“Hey, Tinsel!” the large orange dragon across from Trixie called out in an attempt to break the awkward silence, “how about an arm wrestle?”

“The name is Trixie!” came a very unimpressed reply.

“Whatever, whatsyourface, arm wrestle?” the dragon repeated, reaching his tomato sauce-covered arm towards Trixie.

“Uh… Trixie would rather not actually” the pony said, squirming a little at the thought.

More gaps of horror.

“Seriously?” Trixie complained.

“Arm wrestles are kind of like hoof shakes for dragons,” Celestia explained, “it is customary to accept them. Not doing so can be seen as a sign of distrust and disrespect.”

“Well Trixie doesn’t care, Trixie will not get sauce all over her perfectly good hoof!”

“Hey, it’s your weird pony food!” the dragon argued back, “deal with it!”

At just the worst moment, the glorious King Spike walked into the room, dressed in a comically oversized cape. The dragons and princesses all turned and bowed to him in reverence – well, all except Trixie.

Trixie realised too late she was supposed to join them as a dragon caught a glimpse of her and called out angrily, “HEY, SHE’S NOT BOWING!”

That was the final straw. The table devolved into an uproar as an angry mob of dragons surrounded Trixie and threw her in front of Spike.

“DUEL! DUEL! DUEL!” the crowd called out eagerly.

Spike frowned uncomfortably.

“Sorry Trixie,” he stated, “if I don’t go ahead with this it’d probably mean war. I’m afraid I have to challenge you to an official dragon duel.”

---

The local library was about the size Ponyville’s used to be, though not part of a tree. It was packed with ponies, though being a library it was still quiet.

Drawing very little attention to themselves, Twilight Sparkle and Gold Star trotted contently over to the magic section. There was no place the two of them would rather be.

“Ooh” Twilight blurted with a smile, using her magic to lift Practical Teaching Methods for Precision Training towards her. Gold Star located his favourite book in the library, 101 Most Awesome Magicians of All Time and sat down to read it next to Twilight.

Too late the two of them heard a stallion call out “hey, isn’t that Trixie?”

Within seconds, Twilight and Gold Star found their reading spot surrounded by a noisy and excited crowd, pointing cameras and pieces of paper in their direction and asking for pictures and autographs.

“I’m not Trixie,” Twilight tried to protest, “there was a spell that went all wrong and –”

It was no use. The crowd were far too excited over “Trixie” being there to listen to her.

Twilight lifted Gold Star onto her back and tried to make it out the exit, only to find herself confronted by another gathering crowd.

“Show us a magic trick!” a filly up the back called out.

“Yeah! We want magic!” added a stallion up the front.

Soon the whole crowd joined in the chorus.

What in the hay does Trixie like about this? Twilight thought to herself. She sighed and decided to give in.

“Alright, one magic trick, but that’s all.”

The crowd cheered wildly!

Author's Note:

Just to let you know, in the first story of this series Spike became the king of dragons. I know that seems rather... well, out of place (hehe), to just throw that in to this story but I can't just ignore my own prequel's canon, sorry :P

Anyway I hope you still like the rest of this, and I might do something useful with the Spike as king thing at some future point in a sequel to this sequel to a sequel but right now it's just there XD Heck I might as well make my own season the way this is going XD

Comments

[DracoDarastrix]

You know with all this chaos looming at the horizon it makes me wonder why Discord isn't watching this with a bag of popcorn. I mean Twilight going to do a magic show while Trixie is going to do a duel against Spike, well it seems pandemonium is knocking on the door.

[BudCharles]

6585425 Omg yes XD Discord would love this XD Maybe he had something to do with that experimental spells book :P