Trixie's Terrible Thamaturgical Troubles

by Snowdrifter

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Author's Note:

Ok, this should be monthly, now that finals are over. I needed a comedy to balance the somewhat dark aspects of my other stories. So, inspired by this YouTube video of Tirek and Trixie, I decided to go off on a wild tangent - especially if that WAS all the magic Tirek could get from Trixie. More as it comes! Also, shipping may happen, but it may not. Dropping things on Trixie's head will be more fun... even though she's injured.

In which Trixie finds herself abused for my amusement and yours.I will try to make it funny starting in the next chapter or two. No Pinkie Promises though...

Celestia’s Horn, make it stop!

The pain was driving her mad. She’d collapsed and lay there convulsing, eyes rolled back in her head as the pain flared from her horn tip to her dock. She could feel her mouth working, but wasn’t sure she was making any noise. There was a scrabbling sound , and as her senses came to her, she realized it was the edges of her hooves flailing at the ground. Ground... that's a good thing, right?

“Whoa, there! Are you oka – no, that's a ridiculous question. It's clear something is dreadfully wrong. Do allow me to help you up.”

The headache was fading, and the first thing Trixie saw as her vision cleared were three… no, two blurry images of a smoking wreck of a hat. It had been a round, conical hat of dark purple, covered in gold and blue stars. It was still burning with a familiar green flame, like her fireworks. Ruined. A dapper, older unicorn stallion reached out his hoof and helped her stand, concern on his face. Around her, almost everyone else seemed to have recovered normally. A rust-colored earth pony was hooking herself back up to a pair of massive carts, while two young pegasi fillies took to the skies. Unicorns all around her started levitating debris out of the roadway. Likely from the battle with Tirek, a 20 yard long furrow full of molten stone that had once been one of the gently curving hilltops of Canterlot's Lower West Side seethed and smoked ahead of her. The 'lava' was slowly flowing out of the gouge, and rolling down the far side of the mountain as it started cooling.

But Trixie didn't feel like sightseeing. No, rather, she felt like someone had hit her horn with a ten ton hammer. Repeatedly.

“Thank you,” Trixie replied, shaking her head and blinking as triple images reappeared. Ok, shaking your head is bad still. Stahp. “Is it over?” Looking towards one of the many arched golden bridges, she spotted some blurry double images, a riot of color, seeming to drift in the air behind the rainbow wave as it traveled across Canterlot’s upper towers. And she recognized all four – no, both of them. At least her vision was clearing. Or she was hallucinating. Or both.

“Twilight Sparkle? Rarity?” She shook her head again, painfully, and the visions were gone.

“Quite right. I saw them as well, my dear,” The gentlecolt that hand helped her stand said. “I’ve met them many times, each a delight. Such a small world. And it appears they have saved it once more.” A slim, elegant unicorn mare slid up next to the gentlecolt.

“My, my, Fancy – is this another of Rarity’s friends?”

Trixie shook her head no, only to immediately regret it again. “Trixie wouldn’t go that far. But Trixie has ran into them before.” Cobwebs, metal and a strange taste in her mouth… does ‘puce’ even have a flavor? She was amazed she was still standing.

The older couple looked at each other and nodded, “Well, you seem to have suffered a magical surge,” the gentlecolt mused. “I suspect that rainbow of light restored everyone’s magic. Maybe you just weren’t ready for your powers to be restored? That’s the sort of thing you should see somepony in the magical medicine field about.” As he went through a small bag, his graceful companion examined the smoldering remains of the hat, and then looked up from it to the smoking trench in the hillside, only to shake her head ruefully at the damage.

“Irreparable. A shame, it looked quite unique…”

“It…was.”

“Here, take this card. It’s a nearby clinic. And give them *my* card as well, they should take care of you.”

“Um, thank you,” the Groggy and Miserable Trixie glanced at the card, managing to make out the largest of the letters,“Mr. Fancy Pants. It’s probably a very good idea.”

“Oh, Fancy, the poor dear can’t even see straight. Let’s take her there. It’s not far out of our way.”

The flames finished with the hat as the trio slowly moved away.

---

Trixie gritted her teeth as the tests went on. She found that in addition to blowing her hat off, she had a fine layer of soot over her horn and all over her face, which no one had mentioned yet. It was rapidly determined that she had somehow channeled an overload of magic into a fireworks spell that was only 68% illusion and about 66.6% real pyromancy. She knew the fancy mathematics would add up if the spell formula was visualized 4-dimensionally, but the gist of it was that she was lucky her horn hadn’t launched off her head like a rocket and left her skeleton in a smoking crater.

None of that explained why the same magical ratings tests had been performed a dozen times. Finally, the doctor came in and pushed his glasses up with his hoof.

“Miss Lulamoon, you had an R-Type, magnitude 8 magical flare. It’s, frankly, one of the few reliably reproducible ways to make a pony explode - once. How you survived it is quite beyond me. However, it’s clear that you’ve damaged your horn in the process, and that’s why you’re having headaches. Then the doctor adjusted his chart, “More importantly, we were unable to get a verifiable reading of your magic level. We suspect our manameter is faulty, since it locks up when we try scanning you. In fact, it hasn’t worked right all afternoon.

“Now, there’s a choice to make. You’ll need to either have a magic inhibitor ring placed on your horn for at least 2 months, or risk forever losing your magical abilities. If you over-stress your horn’s structure any more, it has a VERY high probability of ‘burn out’, leaving you with no unicorn magic AT ALL. The inhibitor ring will allow the horn to heal, but take you back to filly-level, limited magic. I’m talking Starswirl’s Primer stuff, like levitating no more than 5 lbs, casting light spells, and so forth. The rest of your power will go into a healing spell, helping to restore you. It’s guaranteed to restore you, and will also get rid of the headache caused by the harmonic dissonance between your magic and your horn. It will also make you a little drowsy all the time.”

Trixie blinked, slowly. "So, 2 months with no magic at all, and a limited workload with a guarantee at the end – or a constant headache and the risk of permanent loss of magic with every spell Trixie casts? Doctor Charts, The Great and Powerful Trixie is a traveling magician. How would Trixie make a living without magic?”

“That’s a difficult question. Look into work you can do without using a lot of magic. You are in good health otherwise. There’s no real limits there.”

Trixie tried to mull it over, but every time she closed her eyes to have a serious think about it, a hammering inside her head transformed her skull into an anvil at a blacksmith convention. She wondered if it would ever stop.

“How soon can Trixie get that ring?”

---

Once at the clinic, Fancy Pants saw to it that the disoriented mare was checked in. Magical surges occurred in young unicorn fillies and colts all the time, but it was rare indeed that an adult unicorn would suffer from one, especially one powerful enough to melt Canterlot granite. He had SEEN the bolt of raw plasma the pale blue unicorn had launched, and she was quite lucky to have not simply exploded from channeling that power. Having aided ‘Trixie’, as she had given her name, the couple returned to the business of trying to restore normalcy to Canterlot, passing by a faded series of posters on the wall to his right.

He continued for exactly three cantering paces before his mind connected the dots, and stopped so hard his horseshoes threw up sparks. His wife, Fleur, heard his sudden stop, and slowed down to a walk as she gave a curious look back at him

It was an old, tattered ‘Missing’ poster for ‘The Great and Powerful’ Trixie, urging anyone who had seen her to contact Princess Twilight Sparkle, giving several means to do so at the bottom of the poster.

“Oh, myyyyyy….”

Comments

[Frankie2]

I hope you don't abuse Trixie TOO bad. Having to use foal-level magic for a unicorn that relies on it to survive is a very dramatic event. I will keep track of this for now.

[HiddenMaster]

Huh. Well, this has the potential for hilarity.

Don't really have much to say otherwise, although the doctor's comment about reliable ways to make unicorns explode got a chuckle out of me.

I'll fully admit that I'm not the greatest judge of natural sounding dialogue for Trixie, but it just sounded slightly off to me. Then again, maybe I'm at fault here and just expecting far too much third person here. Regardless, I'd watch out for that, but otherwise this is a nice start.

Looking forward to more.

HiddenMaster out

[Snowdrifter]

6775870 I went through and corrected Trixie's unique dialogue, and caught some formatting and spelling errors in the process.

Two words: Proofreading!

Thanks, I hope to make this a good one!

[Emperor]

Poor Trixie. Going from what she says, I guess Equestria doesn't have that big of a social net for unicorns who overchannel, or she's just too prideful to accept the help. Given that this resulted from Tirek though, I would expect the crown to have a one-time exemption at a minimum regardless. If nothing else, Twilight will harass her until Trixie gives in and accepts aid from somepony