> Manehattan-Mini Story: The Great and Dutiful Trixie > by Goldenheart > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > The Great and Dutiful Trixie > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Manehattan Mini-Story The Great and Dutiful Trixie In a remote jungle, far, far, away....... In the deserted jungles of Zebraca, there stands a small campsite with a makeshift tent, mad out of leaves and sticks. There also stands what once was a campfire, and scattered about the site are pieces of Zebracian cherry oranges. In the makeshift tent, lays a sleeping pony with some leaves covering her body. The pony in question is wearing a purple and night sky blue survival vest with some sparkles and stars on it with a jewel in the center of the neck collar. Its hat is also on the side, and it's also purple to match the vest. The pony is of a brilliant azure coat, and with a wavy two-tone cornflower blue mane. This pony in question is none other than The Great and Dutiful Trixie! Trixie is a wandering performer of Equestria by day to entertain many ponies with her unbelievable feats of magic. By nighttime, or anywhere else not populated by a nearby settlement, she's an archaeologist looking for ancient magical artifacts. She took up a job from Manehattan to find a jewel known as "The Eye of the Dragon". This gem can summon a spirit of an ancient dragon to destroy entire lands. Interested by this story, she decides to go to Zebraca and retrieve it to showcase it in the Manehattan Museum of Natural History. As she has her own pilot take her to the country to get this jewel, she finds out that no one is piloting the airship. The steering wheel was rigged with magic to go on some kind of auto-pilot. Trixie then had jumped ship to escape from the quickly descending airship with a parachute. As she parachuted down, she remembered that she forgot all of her supplies on the ship, just to see the airship then crash into a cliffside and explode. Afterwards, she has been in the jungle for 3 days and has to survive to find a habitable village and get the gem. On her fourth morning, she gets ready to search for the gem again, but feels pretty weak. She feels her head and find out it's pretty warm. She's got a fever, and not in a good place to have it. She has just a rough estimate of 10 hours before she can't progress any further. What is she going to do? Then she notices something out in the distance. She sees a temple further out in the jungle, and figures it could be the place she's looking for, and about time too. Trixie finally gets to the temple and decides that she needs to investigate and be sure this is the right temple to find the mystical gem. She proceeds into the temple and walks down the hallway. As she continues through, she enters a room with a large statue of a dragon stuck in the center. The statue itself reached to the very top of the room and it looks very menacing. As she starts to inspect the statue by circling around it, she sees a glimmer of light at the top. She decides to investigate this by getting something to get her to the top. She would be happy to use her magic, but with her fever, she wouldn't want to put strain on her body. She gets out a bunch of handkerchiefs tied together, like the ones for magic shows, and decides to use it as a rope. With a grappling hook at one end, she throws it to the top of one of the statues horns. She then begins to climb up the statue and manages to reach the top of the head. She then sees what made the glimmer, it's a ruby gem stuck in one of the eyes. She finally found the mystical 'Eye of the Dragon' and now can get it and get out of this jungle. As she removes the gem from its socket, she puts it away in one of her bags and proceeds to climb down. As she then reaches the bottom and undoes the rope, the temple begins to shake. As she tries to catch her footing from the rumbling, she sees the statue beginning to move and come to life. The rumbling stops as the dragon statue starts to move and it lowers its head to Trixie's level. "You who have dared to remove my eye, your ashes will blanket these ruins forever!", says the booming voice of the statue. The statue begins to swipe its stony claw down on her, but Trixie dodges away and begins to run for the exit. As she begins running, the statue follows her in pursuit and as it runs, the temple begins shaking from the pounding. After the first rumble from the statue, Trixie figures the second rumbling won't support it anymore. Trixie then sees the exit right within her reach. The statue then yells, "You will be burned and the eye will never leave these ruins!", as it then breathes out fire and pointed straight towards Trixie. Trixie sees this and picks up her pace as she feels the heat of the flames get closer and closer to her. She then makes a leap of faith and hops out of the exit and get out of the path of flame. She gets further away as the statue tries to get out, but is to large to do so. The temple then starts to collapse on itself as the statue then wiggles around to try and get away. It's too late and the statue then begins to get buried underneath rubble of stone of what now remains of the ancient structure. Trixie sighs and begins to walk off, but as she does, the rubble begins to shake. Then from out of the wreckage, is the dragon statue, only now it's larger and looks a lot like.....Spike? Confused and dumbfounded, Trixie tries to comprehend what's going on. "Give me back my gem Trixie, I was going to eat it!", yelled the statued Spike. He then breaths fire down, but as Trixie is still dumbfounded, she doesn't react in time and is then engulfed in flames. She the flails around as she tries to gets the flames off and wails in pain from the unforgiving heat. She the passes out from the all of the pain, and blacks out. ------------------------- Trixie then starts to feels her senses again and tries to move about. She opens her eyes and is starting to get her hearing back. "........really want to eat my gem from Sandy, please?" says a winy voice. "Sorry Spike, but you must save this for later, or else you'll spoil your dinner.", says a female voice, which Trixie suspects is Twilight. She opens her eyes fully and is now totally awake, and is now taking her surroundings. Trixie sees Daring on one side of the room in a chair reading to herself, and then sees Spike pleading with Twilight about eating a gem. She now remembers everything. She remembers that she, Daring, Twilight, and Spike are now on their way back home on the zepplin that Daring's friend Jarvis uses, and are about a few minutes away from landing, considering that they would be back in the afternoon. She looks outside and sure enough, she can sees Manehattan in the distance. Trixie then begins to wonder why she had that weird dream. She then feels something on her lap and sees a book. Titled, it's a Daring Do book called, 'Daring Do and the Eye of the Dragon'. Trixie remembers reading this book from a suggestion of Spike and she began reading it in the morning. She must have fallen asleep at some point and that explains why she had that weird dream. "That's the last time Trixie reads ever again.", says a very agitated Trixie.