Trixie's showboating skills start to get a little bothersome for the rest of the elements of harmony. So Twilight devises a plan with her friends to teach her a little humilty...with unforeseen consequences. Set in the Manehattanverse
Trixie has never been one to shy away from boasting and ego stroking. It certainly helps when you've suddenly become one of the most important ponies in the world in the span of a single night. But Twilight starts to think things are getting out of hoof for the showmare when she starts hoofing out autographs and getting news columns for things as simple as stopping a runaway baby carriage or fixing a broken carriage wheel.
So she decides to show Trixie what a real hero is like with a little help from her friends. Unfortunately for them, everything will go too according to plan. When a simple scheme to teach a mare about swallowing your pride turns into a race to save a reputation, a friendship, and perhaps an entire city, there's only going to be one question on everypony's mind at the end of the day:
With a wave of her hoof, Trixie sent a multitude of spinning fireworks off her stage, splashing gold and crimson sparks everywhere amongst the gray cloudy day. But the trick didn't end there. With a simple flicker of her horn, the noisy and cackling shards of light rang out in a multi-burst of color, condensing into fiery serpentine dragon, complete with roar and fire breath. It circled low to the ground, almost within reach of the crowd's hooves, before spiraling back upwards into one last explosion of rainbow sprinkles.
The audience that comprised entirely of colts and fillies cheered loudly as they stuck out their tongues to catch the falling confections.
"Thank you! Thank you! You are far too kind!" The showmare bowed again and again as Field Trip, the tall burnt sienna mare with a red velvet cap atop her navy blue locks ushered the students back towards her bus wagon. After perhaps her tenth grandstanding bend over backwards, she vanished in a cloud of smoke, cantering off her portable platform as it magically folded up back into her fully functional, all-in-one, custom made, form fitting, mobile studio and dressing room. At least that's what she called it to everyone who asked. To six of her closest and most fortunate of friends though, it would always be considered the wagon she slept in when there was no spare room and board at any of the theaters she performed at.
As her last tip poofed into her hat, she graced two lingering fans with her presence.
"Great show as always Trixie," the little purple dragon as he poked a straw into a fresh carton of orange juice for her. "I see you took my sprinkle suggestion. That was major mind blowing."
Trixie accepted the juice without a moment's hesitation. "Verily, the Great and Powerful Trixie can make ANYthing magnificent. Nothing is beyond the reach of a magician of her caliber!"
Spike raised an eyebrow with a smirk. "Oh really? Anything? How about a can of worms?" "A simple song and dance and they'll be a basket of pied piping nightcrawlers!" "A cup full of my toenail clippings!" "A splash of color and it's grade-A confetti!" "Week old drool from a manticore's mouth?" "Put enough of it in my ice box and you've got a life size figure of moi!" "Twilight's twenty-four hour study session bedhead!" "Well, you've got Trixie there."
"Hey!" barked the indignant lavender unicorn from the side as the two shared a laugh. Taking it in stride though, she brushed off the remark a second later with a momentary pout on her lip. "And for the record, Spike. It's more of a twenty one and forty five minute session. I do set an hour aside for lunch and take fifteen minute breaks every four hours."
Spike was about to retort with another witty quip when a large collective scream derailed his train of thought. Looking towards the source they saw what caused it. The reins of the school wagon that held all the students earlier had snapped against the tug of the pair of stallion drivers towards the peak of the inclined street, and was now careening out of control as other drawn carts and pedestrians swerved away from the runaway bus.
A voice among the bystanders cried out in alarm as it neared the bottom of the hill where an apartment complex lay. "They're going to crash!"
Trixie's eyes then caught sight of the building's neighbor, Fluff 'n Stuff's Pillow Emporium. "Oh no, they're not!"
In a flash and a bang, Trixie now stood directly in the path of the incoming two ton vehicle. Her horn glowed vividly, and with a poof the entire wares of the nearby shop were raining all around her. Another poof, and there was now one gigantic cushion that matched the size of the two story apartment shielding it. Trixie then dove away just in time for her newly designed catcher's mitt to make the third out of the ninth inning in an explosion of feathers. As the down settled, everypony poked their heads out of their covered hooves to see the bus stopped and nestled safely against the cottony barricade of fluff, it's contents unharmed.
A cacophony of cheers and gratitude filled the air as denizens crowded round Trixie from one side and a stampede of giddy foals exited the wagon toward her from the other.
"That was amazing!" "Incredible!" "Bravo! Bravo!" "You saved our lives, miss Trixie!" "Three cheers for the hero!"
Momentarily stunned by the sudden influx of adoring devotees, Trixie could not help but hold her mouth slightly agape for a moment. Never in even her most fantastic of performances had she driven a crowd this wild. In fact, the only thing that could compare to this bombastic adoration was the parade shortly after the defeat of Nightmare Moon.
But that had been for all six elements of harmony. This right here, the admiration, the praise, the recognition, this was only for her. As the celebratory cries washed over her and sank in, her lips slowly spread into a grin stretching ear to ear. She breathed in deep as if she was smelling the sweetest nectar from a field of marigolds, then rose on her hindlegs giving a hearty and haughty laugh.
"But of course! Was there ever any doubt?"
My Little Pony, My Little Pony
Ahh, ahh, ahh, ahhh…
(My Little Pony)
I used to wonder what friendship could be
(My Little Pony)
Until you all shared its magic with me
Great discoveries!
Tricks galore!
A rich slice of life,
And a heartfelt score.
Budding courage
It's an easy feat
And magic makes it all complete!
You have my little ponies
Do you know you're all my very best friends?
"Great, powerful, and courageous rescue: At 1:37 pm yesterday, a faulty stirrup tether almost resulted in a head on collision for a Manehattan west elementary class had it not been for the cunning ingenuity of our fair city's Element of Laughter, who brought everypony's smiles back in the blink of an eye as she single hoofily stopped the runaway wagon with zero injured," Blossomforth read from her tabloid as she walked into the museum with Twilight and Honey. "Wow! Who'd have thought? We're friends with a hero!"
"News flash Blossom, we're all kinda heroes," Honey pointed out. "Preventing a world of eternal cold and darkness does that to ponies."
"Oh, but, I just couldn't picture myself ever doing something like that ever again. Trixie on the other hoof, she just jumps right in! I'll bet if she had been with you that time in the Gate of Styx, she could have turned that rolling boulder trap into a gumball and then you wouldn't have had to risk fording the river of souls to escape and-"
She stopped at Honey's deadpan gaze. "I'm going to give your brain a chance to catch up and tell me what you did wrong."
"...ohhhh right. Not real." Blossomforth gave an toothy apologetic smile with just a hint of blush. "Sorry."
Honey regarded her apology with a meek smile as they approached the newly unearthed Tyrannosaurus Drake skeleton being pieced together by her commissioned staff. "If it makes you feel any better, I really did almost die on that expedition. But the river would have drowned me like any other body of water, it wouldn't have aged my body to dust."
"And of course it was your expedition team with a spare raft that fished you out instead of 'Charon the Ferrymare' right?" Twilight followed up.
"Oh no. Charon's real," Honey assured her bookish friend, who took a look of surprise as her grin evolved from demure to smug. "She just doesn't wear the cloak and hood, and believe it or not, she's actually a great singer-Hey! You two! No crossing the velvet ropes!"
A pair of unicorn colts, a tall, lanky, mustard yellow with very crooked mismatched eyeglasses and a stout, freckled, peridot with a satchel full of rolled up comic books, had ducked under the railing that set the barrier for the exhibits, and wandered closer to the assembled fossil.
"See Specs? Right from under here, it looks just like the Necrobeast, genus type Alpha II, from planet Groft in Star Trot issue #44!" the shorter one nasally affirmed. "Eh, I don't know Cutup," the taller one lispingly replied. "They're uthually three times bigger than thisth. If you asthk me, I'd thay it more resthembles Skelecleft's pet Dracolich from He-pony, volumes 4 to 6." "What? Do you need to change your lens again? This skeleton has a three prong claw structure, Skelecleft's Dracolich clearly has four!"
Blatantly touching said toes, the shorter one's taps for emphasis knocked a heel out of place. The skeleton rocked off balance and the workers on ladders instinctively clutched the nearest thing to keep steady. A cracking noise came from the neck joints, and before anyone could blink, the gigantic maw of the Tyrannosaurus Drake popped off and was barreling down at the two, who were too in shock to even cry out.
Suddenly, a puff of indigo smoke covered the impact zone, and in a matter of seconds, it gave way to reveal the huddle pair under a ribcage that had caught the descending skull inches away from their own. And beside the bony protective cage was none other than Manehattan's newest hero.
"At ease, citizens of Manehattan. The Great and Powerful Triiiiixie is here for you!"
The hallways burst in cheers again as the two colts squeezed their way out of the bones. Giddy with newly instilled fandom in their eyes. "That was amazthing! You're the mosth awethome unicorn ever!" "Yeah! You're better than Iron Mare, Captain Equestria, and The Jumbo combined!"
Trixie twirled about, posing every few other seconds as the cheers intensified. "But of course! Nothing could possibly come even remotely close to comparing against Trixie's prowess, grace, acumen, ability!"
"Not to mention humility," Honey whispered with a cupped hoof. Blossomforth giggled as Twilight looked on with growing skepticism.
"Is it just me, or is Trixie acting awfully arrogant lately?"
"Since when is she not?" Honey prodded, driving the point home as she pointed to a sudden burst of fireworks above the crowd in the shape of said mare.
"I suppose..." Twilight said, dismissing her concerns for the time being. The image of Trixie danced around sparkling anything it touched, and Twilight's lips admitted an amused smile. "She is pretty great though."
"Great and Powerful!" The image echoed.
Twilight's frown returned.
The lobby of Orange Hotel was bustling as ever as porters and bellhops scurried to and fro with luggage. The elevator dinged to open up for an exiting Orange Sherbet and Octavia.
"I must say, it's only been five lessons and Tangerine has taken to her viola like a fish to water! I just knew you'd be better than any tutor on my payroll."
Octavia shook her head. "Quality is not an act, it is a habit. If she has made such significant improvement, it stems from her desire to learn, not my ability to teach."
"Well, either way, I'd say a job well done deserves a little treat. I'm just going to pop into the kitchens for a moment and have Peppercorn prepare a few cannoli for you my filly. Would you like chocolate or vanilla?"
"Ooh! Ooh! Chocolate! Chocolate! That's my favorite!" piped up Spike as he and Twilight entered from the front doors.
"Spike, she wasn't asking you," Twilight chided her assistant.
"That's okay," Sherbet chuckled. "Spike can have one too. Octavia?"
"Well, if you insist." Octavia gave her lips a tiny lick. "I've always been partial to vanilla."
"Oh, uh, me too! That's my real all time favorite! I'll take vanilla too!" the baby dragon amended hastily.
Twilight kept her smirk to herself as the four entered the restaurant, which was just as busy as the lobby what with it being the lunch rush. In fact, it was so busy that many of the waiters and waitresses had to collect and stack used plates while delivering other orders, making their trays very heavy and crowded.
One in particular had collected a dozen leftover platters from a family of nine while a bowl of pea soup was perched on the other end of his hoof. In his rush, he had mistakenly tucked an edge of the tablecloth between the plates, and as he pressed onward the sudden tug of the cloth made him trip needlessly head over hooves. The hot soup sailed from his grasp high into the air towards it's appointed diner, Mayor Tux. Everypony in the room gasped and the poor mayor squeezed his eyes shut for the scalding that was about to befall his freshly pressed and cleaned suit.
*clink*
Another plate materialized in front of him and caught the bowl with naught a single drop spilt. It levitated down into the hoof of, you guessed it, Trixie.
"Never fear!" With a quick whirl of her cape, she stopped the rest of the flying plates in mid-air with her magic aura. They stood upright spinning, then each fell straight down. Trixie poofed directly under each them, rolling them from the tip of her forehoof over her shoulder and into a neat stack on her back. "The Great and Powerful Trixie is here!"
The dining room applauded loudly as she bumped the Mayor's soup over to his table. "Trixie! Trixie! Trixie!"
"Trixie can't hear you!"
"Trixie! Trixie! Trixie!!"
No longer did Twilight have a frown of nagging doubt on her face. Has she watched Trixie convey her fans like philharmonic conductor, a deep scowl of disapproval garnished her visage.
"All this over a bowl of soup? Next thing you know, she's going to get a key to the city just for fixing a broken cart wheel!"
"And it is with my distinct pleasure to award the Great and Powerful Trixie the key to the city in regards to her latest deed for our Manehattan, mending my Marecedes-Benz as it broke down in the middle of Main and Orchard, getting me to the monthly town council on time and avoiding what would probably have been the worst traffic congestion in the history of our fair city!"
Streamers and balloons filled the air as the stage magician illustriously accepted Mayor Tux's gift on his podium in front of the town hall, where practically every pony in Manehattan had gathered before to praise her.
With five exceptions.
Twilight mentally groused to herself, hooves crossed as she sat behind the stage with her other friends. "This is ridiculous. They're treating her like she's some sort of goddess. She just stopped a traffic jam for Celestia's sake! It's not like she vanquished Tirek!"
"Twilight, a poor self-image have thee that envies her fellow mare's accolades," Octavia chided.
Twilight just pointed to the mare flaunting and spinning the large golden key around her hoof like a basketball. "That is not how a hero is supposed to act!"
"It's not? Then how should she act?" Blossomforth asked.
"A hero...a hero...a hero should care more about the good her actions do, not the thanks she receives from it!" She turned to Honey. "You know what I'm talking about, that's the whole reason you have a second identity!"
"Twilight, I 'became' Honey Do because all the cameras and fans were interfering with my work. I couldn't do any excavating or documentation with a media horde breathing down my neck. I highly doubt that same problem applies to Trixie's case given her chosen profession." A series of fireworks nearly blinded her at point blank range as she turned to face the mare in question. "Though I will admit, the grandstanding does get a little annoying at some point."
"It's more than annoying, it's unscrupulous." Twilight then turned to Octavia. "Discretion is the better part of valor, she who keeps her head low avoids losing it, virtue is its own reward? Don't tell me none of these proverbs say the exact opposite of what she's doing right now."
"There is also a saying, to each their own pony. Far be it for me to judge another based solely on their personality."
Before Twilight could argue her case further, Trixie stepped up to the microphone. "Adoring public, Trixie is grateful for your endearing gratitude, as it should be for the most magical unicorn in all of Equestria! But she must admit, perhaps it is a tad overrated, as these past feats are a mere trifling endeavor as to my deeds outside this wonderful city!"
"Really?" the short yellow-green unicorn colt Cutup asked at the front of the crowd, wearing a T-shirt with Trixie's cuite mark on it. "Tell us Great and Powerful Trixie, what have you done before you came here?"
Trixie, delighted to have the bait taken so quickly, coyly flicked her hair to one side. "Well, for starters, the Great and Powerful Trixie is the only one in known history to have the magic strong enough to defeat the dreaded Ursa Major!"
"WHAT?!" Twilight's cry of disbelief was drowned out by the sudden explosion of neon as Trixie portrayed her story with magical visual cues.
"When all hope was lost, the ponies of Hoofington had no one to turn to. But the Great and Powerful Trixie stepped in, and with her awesome magic, vanquished the Ursa Major and sent it back to its cave, deep within the Everfree forest!"
The crowd oooh'd and aaaah'd at extravagant retelling as Trixie's image blasted the star beast into a wave of glitter. Twilight on the other hoof, was clutching her forehead in exasperation.
"You see? This is what I'm talking about! She lying to them and they're eating it up!"
"How can you be so sure she's lying about that?" Blossomforth asked.
"Do you even know how big an Ursa Major is? No pony can defeat one! I couldn't be able to best one and I'm the most magically talented unicorn I know."
"Really? I thought that was Trixie."
Twilight's face froze, her eye twitched, then she gave a few disgruntled sounds between an erk and an arugh. She recomposed herself, drew in a deep breath, and then marched right over to Trixie, who was in the middle of taking photos with little fillies and colts.
"Trixie, can we talk for a moment?"
"Ah, here to cash in on the perks of being the Great and Powerful Trixie's friend? Not to worry, Trixie will be sure that all the little ponies that helped her get to where she is now get credit where credit is due."
With that, Trixie groped Twilight against her side, and series of camera bulbs flashed before the purple mare's eyes. Blinking the spots away, Twilight blearily pulled her friend aside for one moment. "Trixie, don't you think you're getting a little carried away with this 'hero' title you're acquiring?"
Trixie met Twilight with a genuinely confused expression, then lit up with an aura of understanding. "Oh, Trixie sees now. Dear friend and companion Twilight, no need to worry. Our friendship is very important to Trixie, and she wouldn't want it to be jeopardized over something as trivial as this."
"Really? Oh, that's great!" Twilight was elated she was able to talk Trixie into toning it down faster than she hope-
"Rest assured, jealousy is but a passing phase. You still have your status as the princess' student to set you apart from the common mare. We'll be looking back on this laughing in our golden years, just wait."
"What?! Me...jealous!?" Before Twilight could cohere her thoughts again, she noticed her dragon assistant in a press coat and hat with a notepad in claw, scribbling furiously.
"Spike? Are you taking notes?"
Spike grinned eagerly. "Yup, I've been hoofpicked by Trixie herself to write her autobiography!"
Twilight was permanently beginning to lose her grip on tranquility. Even Spike was starting to buy into this? "Um, autobiographies are supposed to be written by the pony they are about."
"Perhaps for the everyday, off the street pony. But the Great and Powerful Trixie is far too busy saving lives to stop for menial tasks such as writing. That is why she had given Spike the honor of being her ghost writer," Trixie announced as she gave the little dragon a playful pat. "He writes down everything Trixie says, don't you Spike?"
"Don't. you. Spike," the ghost writer enunciated as he wrote the words on his notepad. "Got it!"
"Now Trixie can spend her energy on more important things, such as facing down danger no other pony has the nerve to do." She continued to banter as she cantered off with the entire crowd in tow, unaware her narrow-eyed friend was not following. "It takes courage, nerves of steel, but it also takes unparalleled wit, skill, and the occasional fashion sense. Yes, it's not easy becoming the mare that is Trixie, maybe impossible for some, but it's always good to dream."
Twilight stood in place for what seemed to be hours, even though it was just about a minute or so, before her other friends joined her.
"This is worse than I thought," she finally said. "Trixie is completely delusional. We have to snap her out of this before her boasting gets her into serious trouble or hurts somepony."
"Look Twilight, we all agree she's more full of it than usual. But I've dealt with this kind of thing before, it never lasts," Honey tried to assure her. "Maybe it would be best to just let her have her 15 minutes of spotlight and let it blow over instead of stewing over what could happen."
"No, once you think you're somepony important, it never stops. I've been to enough of Princess Celestia's banquets to know that. I'm not going to let my friend turn into a...a Blueblood!"
"A what?" Blossomforth asked.
"Uh...you're probably better off not knowing. Point is, a true friend doesn't just let a friend gallivant off doing something she knows is wrong, especially if that something could have a negative influence on her character."
"Twilight, if you are that concerned, perhaps you should try explaining clearly to Trixie your worries," Octavia suggested.
Twilight shook her head. "She's beyond reasoning at this point. I just tried talking to her a few minutes ago!"
"Aw, you tried once, and it barely lasted half a minute," Honey disputed. "Prime Minister Roosepelt didn't have the Pommel canal built in a day."
"He also believed in the philosophy 'spare the whip and spoil the foal'. Trixie is not going to stop bragging and showboating unless somepony shows her why it's wrong. As her friends, it's up to us to be that pony."
"Now Twilight, we all have our share of bad habits," Sherbet reasoned. "It's nothing to obsess over. And besides, what harm can boasting really do?"
She then felt a tug on her leg, and looked down to see a sight that made her do a triple take. "Tangerine? What are you wearing?"
Her little filly was dressed up in a miniature hat and cape identical to Trixie's. "Do you like it mom?" she gushed in full filly mode. "It's the standard uniform for the Great and Powerful fanclub! And one day, I'm going to be a magician as great and powerful as Trixie is, and beat an Ursa of my own!"
"Tangerine!" called Specs in the distance. "You're gonna be late for our firsth meeting!"
"Coming! I gotta go mommy. Great and Powerful Tangerine, away!"
Orange Sherbet watched what was once her polite and shy angel now turned full fanfilly dash off, then turned to Twilight with a serious look on her face. "Okay, I'm in. The sooner we get that humble pie baking, the better."
"Eh, what the hay. We could all do with a little less bluster in our lives," Honey stuck her hoof in as well. "We'll all be better for this in the end, right?"
Blossomforth was next. "If it does help Trixie, I'll do everything I can!"
Twilight looked to Octavia, who finally sighed and stepped forward. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
"Excellent," Twilight said with a confident smile. "And I already have a good idea how knock some sense into Trixie. Come tomorrow, there's going to be a real hero in this city."
A long lineup of foals, yearlings, and even adults were assembled before Trixie's stand, each with a cape, hat, poster, or some other form of memorabilia on hoof, waiting to be autographed.
"There you go," Trixie said as she levitated the holographic card of her visage to the filly at the front. "Someday, that card is going to be worth millions! So keep it safe, but make sure ponies can still see it."
Babs Seed gleefully stuck the card into her satchel. "Someday, I wanna be just like you!"
"Don't we all," Trixie puffed. She patted the filly on the head. "Dare to dream, little filly. Dare to dream."
Suddenly a high pitched scream drew everypony's attention upwards. Plummeting from the sky, a large popped air balloon and its earth pony aviator came into view from behind the Trade Towers. Everypony gasped as they watched the mare falling to her inevitable doom.
"Help! Help!" she screamed.
"Uh, sthouldn't you be helping?" Specs asked from the pile of merchendice next to Trixie as he noticed she was penning a colt's baseball cap.
"Trixie wagers that balloon has about twenty seconds, that should be just enough for one more." With a dot of the i's, she then vanished in a cloud of steam, pen still floating in mid-air for a few moments before it clattered to the ground.
Poofing into the predicted sight of impact, Trixie looked upwards to the incoming projectile. A scratch on the chin, one squint of the eye, and then the other, along with an exposed tongue on the side as she did a few mental equations, and Trixie gave two sidesteps to the left, and one back. She marked the spot on the ground in an X with her hoof. Then, raising herself to rearing height, she waggled her forehooves as her horn glowed. A large, industrial scale trampoline popped into existence right above the X. Trixie then stood backwards to the bouncing toy, eyes smugly closed and a hoof outstretched, ready to catch the passenger that would bounce off it.
"The tension is unbearable. Will the Great and Powerful Trixie succeed in her daring gambit?" Spike scribbled into his reporter pad. He vision was shadowed before he could draw his question mark. Surprised by the sudden and brief lack of sunlight, he looked up to see what had blotted out the sun.
Leaping from the top of one balcony to the next. A pony cloaked in a midnight blue mask and a deep purple suit caught the attention of everypony. A emblem with an M letter emblazoned on her chest coupled a long dark cape, and a wide brimmed fedora of matching colors completed the ensemble. From the edge of a rooftop, she peered down at the falling balloon. And with a magnificent leap, dove straight down at it. At breakneck speed, her cape unveiled a pair of wings that sprung out, pushing her into a full 90 degree turn as she came within level of the basket, scooping up the passenger in distress with her hooves.
As for the balloon, it continued to descend and hit the trampoline below it. With a spring and a bounce, the basket flopped upside down and right over Trixie's head, covering the mare in weaved rope and ripped cloth with a thumping crash. The dazed showmare lifted the weight of ten sandbags off her head and fought to get out of the colored entrapment that impaired her vision. "Huh? What just happened?" she asked as she found the edge of the cloth.
Regaining her sight, she saw something that made her jaw drop. The masked pony gently set the rescued victim on the safe embrace of terra firma. The large gaggle of witnesses crowded around the unknown savior, cheering and applauding. Then, with but a single vigilant glance around the area, the strange pony went as fast as she came.
"Great galloping gargoyles, that pony came outta nowhere!" "I've never seen such bravery in all my life!" "How gallant! How noble!"
Excuse Trixie?! was the only thought in the magician's head as Mayor Tux directed the ponies' attention to his speech.
"That's right! It would appear Manehatten has a new hero. A mysterious mare that has done well by our fair city today." The silhouetted remnants of said mare disappeared over the tall building in the distance as everpony watched her go. "I dub this new masked hero 'The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well'!"
Another round of cheers went around, but this time it did not go uninterrupted.
"Mare-Do-Well? More like Mare-Do-Steal-The-Limelight!" Trixie indignantly snorted as she made her way to the center of the crowd. "Have you ponies already forgotten? Manehattan already has a hero! A far better hero who would have made a far more successful rescue had that stranger not come along and interrupt her brilliant plan!"
The ponies all looked to one another with puzzled expressions. "Hey, what's the big deal Trixie?" one of them asked. "So she got to save her before you did. No need to go ballistic."
"Great and Powerful Trixie to you. And just why would some random nopony just decide to waltz and steal the thunder when that balloonist's life was already safely within Trixie's hooves? Hmm? Does somepony in this city actually believe the Great and Powerful Trixie would fail? That enigma may have you thinking the world of her, but Trixie can plainly see that masked weirdo is nothing but a greedy gloryhound!"
"You sure that's not the other way around?" came another voice from the mass.
Trixie gave an incensed huff in the direction of the voice. "Well, well, well, it seems we have some neighsayers in the audience. Well let this statement go on the record for any of you doubters here. The Great and Powerful Trixie hereby declares anything that Mare-Do-Well can do, she can do better!"
"Really? Can you fly?" rang a third voice. A round of laughter soon followed.
"Hmph! Just you wait and see! The next time that Mare-Do-Well shows her head around again, Trixie will be putting that stage hog in her place!" With that, she turned to leave, nose upturned. And then she tripped over a piece of rope still tangled in her hooves, prompting another bout of laughs.
Somewhere within the back of the crowd, a lavender unicorn walked away, content with the situation that had unfolded. "Phase one, complete."
Panic was erupting at the shipyards as a docking tanker's steam engine malfunctioned and the ship ran ashore against the stone reefs. Cargo and crew spilled everywhere. One large crate in particular broke away from the steel railing and targeted an elderly harborhoof overhead. Unable to hobble away in time, the old stallion squeezed his eyes shut.
However, the crate slowed to a stop just inches before him, wrapped in a bluish aura. Trixie, sweating profusely at the strain of the heavy object, still kept her bold smile as she appeared at the scene of the crisis. "Never fear! The Great and Powerful Trixie is-"
"Can you skip the chatter and save the rest of us now?" shouted a grizzled sailor, who was half buried along with half a dozen others under a large piece of hull.
"Ok, fine, skip the intro. You already know who Trixie is anyways." She slowly stepped around the old stallion towards the crew members. "Just give her a second to...find someplace safe...to set this heavy..."
Her hoof then touched the spilled contents of a nearby broken barrel of lamp oil. Slipping uncontrollably, she skidded off the edge of the dock and into the bay. Her head broke the surface with a gasp only to be plunged back down again as her heavy load followed suit.
By the time Trixie had pulled herself out, soaked to the bone in cold seawater, Mare-Do-Well was on the scene. Trixie grumpily spat the live fish half in her mouth out. "So, Mare-Do-Well, trying to show Trixie up yet again? Well she's afraid she's got the upper hoof over you this time. Whereas her magic could free those ship workers in time, there's little a pegasus' wings can do to assist. Why, you'd have to be a strong as an earth pony to even budg-" Her voice fell flat as she watched in shock at the masked mare who stuck her hooves underneath the half ton slab of metal, and with a grunt, lifted it up enough for the trapped ponies to crawl out. The workers cheered as the heroine set the slab down, but before any one of them could thank her, she darted off yet again.
"H-how? What? What kind of a pony is she?" she wondered out loud.
"Hey lady, need a hoof there?" Called the captain from side of the tanker. "You look like you're all wet!"
The crew laughed at the joke, but Trixie did not think it was funny.
The buzzing drone of power tools was apparent in the everyday humdrum of construction work for the ever growing city of Manehattan. Atop the steel framework of a building being made, a pair of hardhats sat down on one of the beams to enjoy lunch.
"Ohhh boy! Mealtime jackpot for me!" said the tan, bearded one.
"Yeah? Your wife pack you an extra slice of her banana cream?" the gray, long maned one inquired.
"Better than that, she packed me the whole pie!" the worker pulled out an enormous tin that at first glance would make you wonder how it fit inside the little lunch pail. "Want some?"
"Oh, you know I can't resist one of Meringue's pies. Hey Girder!" The stallion drew the attention of a third setting rivets. "Torchwield's got extra dessert! Why don't you put down your hammer and take your lunch break already?"
"Eh, just one more. Wanna keep this support even." The black, spotted stallion gripped the tongs firmly in his jaw as he procured one more hot nail from the bed of coals. Unfortunately, his hooves were not as steady as he tried to align his hammer with the molten metal.
"Ah! Hot rivet! Hot rivet!" he yelped as he accidentally struck a little low, knocking said rivet right into his face. Failing his hooves, his grip on his hammer loosened and fell from his grasp. "Uh oh..."
Down, down, down, the tool fell. Until it struck the foot of the bottom support beam. With a smack, a rivet popped right out. The entire structure creaked. Then like a chain reaction, one beam fell over the next, and the entire framework started to collapse. The workers below scattered as large pieces of metal and wood fell haphazardly.
Trixie arrived, horn at the ready. "Worry not, citizens of Manehattan, the Great and Powerful Trixie shall-ack!" Her hoof instinctively retracted as a large beam skewered the ground a hooves length in front of her.
Just then, a blur of midnight blue brushed past her into the avalanche of bricks and mortar. With a swift motion, the Mysterious Mare-Do-Well hoisted a panicked constructor onto her back and carried her towards the open streets. Trixie watched in astonishment as the vigilante seemed to perk up and nimbly dodge the incoming debris with but a twitch of her ear. In but a span of a minute, four were already a safe distance away from the falling structure.
Looking frantically around, Trixie's gaze drifted from her competition up the increasingly unstable stack of metal parts, and zeroed in on a young spotted stallion still up there, desperately clutching the side of a beam. With a determined look on her face, Trixie magicked up a large beam over a stack of bricks and stood on one end just as a cement mixer crashed down on the other end.
Catapulting upwards and landing on the top, Trixie pried the petrified worker off the framework and unto her back. "Trixie has you, now which way's the stairs?!"
"There!" cried the stallion. Trixie followed the pointed hoof, down and down the flights, all the while steel and wire colliding dangerously close to them as more floor fell away from all sides. "Look out for the- Watch out for falling- On your left! Agh! Your other left!"
The pair barely made it out in time as the integrity of the framework reached 100% failure. The stallion fainted dead away as he slid off Trixie's back, while the mare triumphantly marched forward to face her masked adversary.
"So, Mare-Do-Well, still think you can play in the professional leagues do you? Well, unlike Trixie, you bothered to miss one. Sloppy, sloppy."
*Splatter*
Trixie blinked away the fruity cream of the upturned pie tin that landed on her face. The other workers broke out howling.
"Not as sloppy as you it seems!" "Yeah. And if you're keeping score, it's still 13 to 1!" "Hey! I was gonna eat that!"
As the workers departed to get some cold drinks, Trixie seethed as she turned back only to see the vanishing shadow of the costumed champion disappear around the corner.
"What a surprise, running off again. Too scared of Trixie to match her on even ground?!"
"Mare-Do-Well does it again: Construction Catastrophe averted," read Blossomforth from her paper. "12:45 pm, the newest Hay and Stay condominiums extension faced a full week setback when a rouge rivet damaged the supporting framework of the building and caused it to collapse. Lucky for the construction team of Manehattan, Mare-Do-Well was on the scene, allowing not even a single casualty as she braved the danger zone to save over a dozen workers."
She set her paper down on Orange Hotel's lobby lounge table in front of the rest of the seated Manehattan six. "Wow! That Mare-Do-Well gets bolder every time I read about her. She wasn't even wearing the proper safety equipment when she went in there!"
"She certainly cleans up very nicely," Sherbet agreed. "Caring for everypony's safety. Almost makes me wish I was in a dangerous situation myself."
"Hmph!" Trixie sulked in the corner next to a large decorative vase. Her head resting on a haunched hoof, making her scowl appear lopsided.
"Is something troubling you Trixie?" Octavia asked.
"Mare-Do-Well this, Mare-Do-Well that," Trixie nasally mocked. "Is Trixie the only one here who sees that swaggered, self-serving meddler for the pony she is?"
"A great, wonderful hero who saves lives on a regular basis? A pony that everyone admires?" Honey ribbed the showmare.
"Trixie doesn't admire her. She doesn't think she's that great."
"She's...great."
Trixie zipped up, nose to nose with Spike the documenter. "Trixie did not tell you to write that!"
"Sounds to me like somepony's jealous," Twilight snidely remarked over the reading lamp.
Trixie gave her fellow unicorn a cautionary glance. "What? Trixie? Jealous?"
"Trixie is jealous," the dragon wrote down.
"Spike!" the irked magician snapped. The rest of the Manehattan six laughed.
"Correction: Trixie is very jealous."
"Like you said before, it's a passing phase," Twilight smartly continued. "And once it passes you'll look back and laugh and realize just how silly you were in retrospect. And maybe you'll come out a better mare for it."
"Oh yeah?" Trixie now put her face in Twilight's personal space. "Well answer Trixie this if you think it's just her being jealous. If Mare-Do-Well is such a 'heroic' icon, why would she hide her face under that ridiculous garb? Why does she run away from ponies she 'saved' without so much as giving a 'you're welcome'? What possible reason would she have to be mysterious unless she had something to hide? Some ugly, terrible secret? Trixie is not jealous, she is discerning. That masked mare clearly has some ulterior motive she is trying to play at!"
"Or maybe she's doing what a real hero should do," dismissed Twilight. "Exercising a little thing called modesty."
"Actions speak louder than words," Octavia chimed in.
Trixie looked from one member of the group to another as if they had been replaced by pod ponies. "Just what is wrong with you all? Doesn't the Great and Powerful Trixie consider you all her friends? Why are you taking some costumed freak's side over hers?"
"We're not taking anypony's side," Orange Sherbet assured her. "All we're saying is that her humility is admirable."
"Her humility is suspicious!" Trixie corrected. "Would you simply give out free ice cream and expect absolutely nothing in return? Mark Trixie's words, she's going to get to the bottom of this scheme even if she has to do it by herself! Which, by the way, shouldn't be a problem for a pony of her caliber. And the quickest way to do that, is to show that Mare-Do-Well who's boss!"
"Right, like the last three times you showed her," Honey teased. Everyone laughed but Trixie.
"Ha ha ha," she sarcastically snarked. "Go ahead, laugh. That's all anypony seems to be doing at Trixie lately. But this cunning mare still has an ace up her hat." Tapping her horn, she gave a smug grin. "She may be fast, she may be strong, but Mare-Do-Well doesn't have magic on her side! Trixie is, after all, the most magical unicorn in all Equestria, and that's how she shall show the world that she is a better hero than Mare-Do-Well."
As she took her leave from Orange Hotel, Twilight felt up the horn of her own forehead. "We'll just see about that, Trixie."
"Um, Twilight? How much longer is Mare-Do-Well going to stick around Manehattan?" Blossomforth asked all of a sudden. "Cause, Trixie actually seemed pretty upset."
"Just until Trixie can get it through her head that there's always somepony better out there, so there's no reason to go boasting the world about yourself."
"Great, that'll only take about an eternity and a half," Honey joked.
Trixie bitterly stomped down the street in a huff. "Grrrmph...even her own friends would rather Mare-Do-Well be their hero than her. Well, if that's how Mare-Do-Well wants to play, stealing Trixie's friends from her, then the horseshoes are coming off!"
"Fire!"
Trixie's attention shifted to the burning pottery shop two blocks down. It would seem that Clay Hooves, the shop's sculptor, had left the kiln running again one too many times. Already the flames had blocked off the pony's route of escape, and given their position in respect to the closest fire department in town, response time would take at least ten minutes.
"But Trixie can put this out in one." Quick as a whip, Trixie galloped to the nearby fire hydrant one shop down. "And for her next trick, Trixie shall now make this fire...disappear!"
Squeezing open the left hatch, a torrential geyser poured out from the hydrant. With a glow of her horn, the violent fountain became a mighty river directed straight at the shop. "Ahhh...feels good to be back in the groove. Trixie would like to see miss Mare-Do-Well do it this easily."
Leaning against the hydrant in a relaxed, pat on the back position, Trixie's hooves unknowingly pressed the right hatch release as well. A second watery blast from right behind her sent Trixie throttling down the street, stopping her right above an uncovered manhole. Two splashes followed, one was the living river breaking out of Trixie's magic aura and falling into a worthless puddle on the sidewalk, the second was Trixie acquainting herself with Manehatten's sewer system.
Clambering out of the underground stench, Trixie once again saw her accident had given enough time for her arch-enemy to appear. Mare-Do-Well stood directly in front of the burning building.
"Well, here to steal the show again? Too bad, as this is a problem only the Great and Powerful Trixie can handle," she called out from behind. "I suppose with your limited repertoire you could maybe use a raincloud to douse those flames. Oh, wait. Today's forecast by the Manehattan weather department called for sunny skies. There's not a thundercloud for miles! Too bad you don't have one of these!" Trixie rapped her horn. "If you did, you could just conjure your own rain, like Trixie is about-"
Mare-Do-Well flung off her hat, revealing a glowing horn. Within seconds, the sky darkened around Clay Hooves' shop, and a cloudburst flooded the area, extinguishing the blaze. Then, with a leap through the broken door, the enigmatic rescuer dragged out the singed burnt sienna body of Clay Hooves.
"Aahaah...thank you Mare-Do-Well!" he coughed. The nearby spectators cheered as the masked mare of mystery galloped off again.
Trixie just sat there, flabbergasted. "Magic? Mare-Do-Well...is magic?"
A passing mare from the dispersing crowd crossed in front of Trixie, stopping for a moment to look over the sewage covered mare.
"Trixie? *sniff sniff* Ewwww! You stink! *giggle*"
As she continued to pass by, a hot bubbling feeling grew within the pit of Trixie's stomach. However, this time a dark icy chill pinged at the tip of her heart as well.
Trixie slouched over one of the central park bench, watching the gaggle of foals that once sported her trademark cape and hat prance around playing in black masks and purple cowls.
"It's...it's not fair," she muttered in a low breath. "That Mare-Do-Well has a few lucky breaks, and suddenly everypony wants to be her. What about Trixie? Wasn't it just yesterday she garnered adulation everywhere she went? How can they forget about her so easily? All anyone seems to do now is laugh at her, just because she looks bad in comparison. Even her friends."
She closed her eyes, letting out a miserable sigh. "Is Trixie going to be alone...again?"
"Trixie! Miss Trixie!"
The showmare's head popped up and turned to face the graceful little figure of Sherbet's daughter. "There you are miss Trixie. I was searching all over for you."
"Trixie knew it!" the magician jumped off the bench and gave Tangerine a surprise hug attack. "No need to apologize, little manehattanette, even the Great and Powerful Trixie makes mistakes from time to time."
"Mistake? What mistake?"
It then dawned to Trixie that Tangerine was not here to re-establish the Great and Powerful fanclub. "Wait, why are you here?"
"To invite you to join me! Everypony is heading off to the thank you parade for Manehattan's greatest hero, Mare-Do-Well. Father is busy with a client, and I cannot seem to find mother anywhere, so I was hoping you could accompany me."
"What?! Mare-Do-Well...is getting her own parade?!" Trixie was infuriated. Going to a celebration for that...that saboteur to her life was the absolute last thing she wanted to do. "Why on Equis would you think that Trixie would go with you to that parade?"
"Because...you are my friend?" the filly ventured.
Trixie's train of thought hit the brakes. "W-what?"
"We are friends, are we not? Friends do things for one another to make them happy. Like how you always make me smile with that cookie behind the ear trick. A lot of ponies at my school have been doing nothing but talking about Mare-Do-Well for a while now, I can understand why, she is really great. But then I figured not a lot of foals have been going to your shows as of late, and thought you would like some company."
Trixie stared at Tangerine, her mind processing what had just happened. The icy tinge around her chest began to fade to make room for a warm glow. She could recollect now, all the towns and places she had come and left within a span of weeks, admired and adored through her feats of magical wonders. That had been her routine ever since she had acquired her caravan wagon, her symbol of independence and freedom. And yet, here she had been for months now, the thought of hitting the road for her next village hadn't poked her brain for the longest time.
Why was that? Because for the first time in her life, she realized she had a reason to want to stay. She had friends. Friends were...were a special kind of audience. The kind that cheered for you even if you weren't doing anything significant. You didn't need to perform or dazzle to make them like you, you just needed to be there, like how Tangerine was being there for her.
And right now...all her other friends...were with that...that...
"If you really do not want to attend, then maybe we could find something else to do together? Perhaps you can practice some new tricks on me?"
"Actually, Trixie thinks she will go to the parade. There's something Mare-Do-Well has...that she needs to get back."
"Welcome to Manehattan's first, but surely not last, thank you parade, in honor of our city's greatest hero, the mysterious Mare-Do-Well!"
The masked mare stood tall and strong on top of the moving float as Mayor Tux announced her arrival. As the procession went slowly down the street, ponies from both sides waved their banners and threw confetti, cheering for their hero.
"Mare-Do-Well!"
The celebration fell silent as ponies gasped and murmured to each other, looking around for the mysterious echo that called their mysterious star.
The bang of a blue smokescreen covered the area, and Trixie now stood directly in the float's way, her eyes steely focused on the mare up top.
"The Great and Powerful Trixie will no longer stand idly by while you proceed to take everything she has away from her!" She leapt onto the parade float, slowly climbing up the steps to meet her. "You want to play hero? Fine! You take pleasure in making Trixie look like a fool? Sticks and stones! But it will be a cold day in the molten depths of Tartaurus before Trixie surrenders her friends to you!"
Trixie pointed an imposing hoof right at the costumed mare. "Let us have it out! Mare to mare, once and for all! The Great and Powerful Trixie challenges you!"
A moment of tense silence passed, Mare-Do-Well just standing there and staring at Trixie. And then with an abrupt burst of speed, the confronted vigilante sprung off the rear end of the float.
"Oh no! There shall be no running this time!" Trixie scrambled after her adversary. "You will not brush Trixie off again! This must be settled now!"
The chase went on over several other floats. Finally, at the floral arrangement display, Trixie closed in just enough to give a tackling lunge at the fleeing pony. But then Mare-Do-Well stopped unexpectedly, bringing her head down to look at a rare hibiscus hybrid. Trixie ended up tripping over her backside at the sudden change in movement and fell head over hooves off the float and into a muddy puddle on the street. Everypony broke out in a raucous laughter.
Pulling her head up from the sudden impact, Mare-Do-Well poked her head over the side and saw her pursuer messily sprawled out on the pavement. With a quick leap, she was off the float and bending over the showmare.
"Are you alright?" came a muffled voice from behind the mask.
"GOTCHA!" Before she could react, the mysterious Mare-Do-Well found herself grappled, wrestled, then pinned as a blur of azure encompassed her.
"No more games, miss mysterious. The secret is now officially out!" Trixie seized the face of her opponent, ripping the cloth off. "Fillies and gentlecolts! Behold! Your mystery hero is none other than...BLOSSOMFORTH?!"
The two-toned white pegasus smiled meekly at her stupefied friend. "Hi Trixie."
A massive gasp sounded off from everypony. Trixie looked up from the pinned pony, and found there were four more Mare-Do-Wells surrounding her. One by one, they removed their masks for Trixie to see.
"T-twilight? Octavia? Auntie?! Dar-"
"And Honey Do," the archeologist saved. "That's right. The mysterious Mare-Do-Well was not one pony, but all of us."
"We all played Mare-Do-Well at different times," Twilight explained.
"Who else in this city could be fast enough to catch a balloon falling at terminal velocity?" Honey said.
"My gifted ears allowed me to portend the collapsing debris from the construction site via the vibrations in the air," Octavia added.
"I'm not as in shape as I was during my farming days, but if there's anything my family reunion taught me, that Apple strength is still inside me. Enough to certainly lift some steel ship plating off a couple of sailors," Sherbet spoke in turn. "Oh, and the outfits were paid for by yours truly as well."
"Custom designed by me!" Blossomforth chirped.
"And I used my magic to stop the fire," Twilight finished.
"..........why?" was the only sound that came out of Trixie's lips.
"You see, you should be more humble-" Twilight suddenly stopped, her smile vanishing as Trixie brought her face up.
There, on the visage of the azure unicorn, was the most pathetic and miserable look of pain, sadness, and betrayal. Her whole body trembled in disbelieving horror. "Why...would you do this to me?"
The five mares suddenly wore an alarmed expression at the feeble voice. Did Trixie just...break the third pony?
"How could you trick me like this...? Hurt me like this? I thought...I thought we were friends..." Trixie whimpered.
"T-trixie-?" For some reason, Twilight couldn't find any words. The sudden mood swing had caught her completely off guard.
"Do have any idea...what you've done to me?"
*SPLAT*
Twilight's emotional state went on a complete roller coaster as the left side of Trixie's cheek was now decorated by the stain of an overripe, mushy tomato.
"Hey Trixie! You just got your flank hoofed over to you!" came a jeer from the crowd.
The laughter started up again, harsh, and harassing. "All hail the weak and powerless Trixie!" "So much for being the most magical unicorn in Equestria, you can't even outmagic a librarian!" "Tell us, after beating the ursa, did you also sell the ponies of Hoofington the Hooflyn bridge?" "Looks like your swelled head just popped!" "Loser!" "Fraud!"
Trixie stared emptily at Twilight. A tiny dribble of tears leaked from her bloodshot eyes, dripping onto the pavement below.
"T-trixie I-"
A puff of smoke clouded her eyesight, and the next thing Twilight knew, she and her friends were watching the disgraced magician galloping away down the street, the mocking laughter continuing to follow her.
Twilight Sparkle paced around the floor of the Manehattan library for about the umpteenth time, her mind riddled with guilt and her eyes sore from a restless night of worry.
"Oh no no no no no...what have I done? This...how did...it wasn't supposed to turn out like this! How could all of Manehattan turn on Trixie for something we did?"
It had just seemed so perfect at the time. Mare-Do-Well would perform deeds of heroism without boasting or bragging, they then reveal themselves to Trixie, she would realize how silly she'd been in trying to compete for fame against her own friends, they'd all share a laugh and she'd be a better pony for it in the end.
So why hadn't anypony else seen it that way?
Twilight looked from one ridiculing face to the next, their seemingly cruel laughter echoing in her ears. A bubbling pit of fury started to churn in her gut. And with each laugh she heard, it continued to grow until she finally stamped her hoof so hard into the street, the pavement cracked.
"Stop it! STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT! STOP LAUGHING!! What is wrong with you all?! How can you just treat her like that all of a sudden?!"
"Hey, you started it," said young stallion from the front row. "Wasn't that the whole reason you all kept having her eat dirt? To show us all the 'Great and Powerful' Trixie isn't so great or powerful after all?"
"Yeah, you all pointed out how full of herself she was, and then showed us she really isn’t all that special!" said the mare next to him.
Twilight shook her head, not believing her ears. "Yes-I mean no-! But…she is special! I mean...she's...she's still Trixie! Nothing's changed about her!" she stammered as she looked at the crowd, who now looked confused and annoyed with her. "She's still a great magician that helps ponies! She can still do lots of amazing feats! We just...I don't...that is...all we wanted was for her to stop milking her popularity so much!"
"Mission accomplished. After what a sham you made her out to be these past few days, I doubt she's going to be popular for a looooong time!"
Twilight Sparkle just sat down hard on the cobbled path, her sore hoof's pain catching up to her. The laughter had resumed, but it all seemed muffled and distant as her thoughts went completely blank, her psyche still unable to comprehend how this conclusion, or rather escalation, had come about.
"I...I just don't understand. What went wrong? We were just trying to set an example, not humiliate her! At what point did everypony think that was what we were trying to convey?!"
The ringing of the bell broke her away from her ramblings, signaling that a patron had entered through the front door. She recognized the dappled pony as one of the Manehattan construction workers.
"Hey there, just looking for an architect guide. Don't want a repeat of last week's fiasco," he said.
"Oh, well. Maybe I can help you find what you're looking for," Twilight offered. Perhaps some actual work as a librarian would give her a clearer head to think with.
The stallion quickly sidestepped to the shelves before the unicorn could call for her dragon assistant. "No thanks, I'm quite familiar with the Dewhoof Decimal System and pretty sure you'd only make things more difficult for me."
Twilight was taken aback. "W-what? That's ridiculous! How can two ponies looking for the same reading material be less efficient than one? If nothing else, it helps."
"Yeah, if your definition of helping is making your friend and the mare who saved my hide look like a clumsy buffoon, I definitely would reconsider my doctor's prescription. Ah, there we go."
Twilight blinked at the worker who yanked a large manual out and into his saddlebag. Octavia had mentioned Trixie was quick enough to get one of the workers before her at the construction accident, this was him?
"But...but it was supposed to be for her own good! Just show Trixie what a real hero is like, so she could be more like one, that was it!"
"You saying what she did before you went all roastal on her backside wasn't heroic?" Girder questioned.
"She was signing autographs!" "So?" "She was bragging and swaggering for stuff as menial as preventing a pie from falling!" "So?" "She was embellishing tall tales just to get another cheer!" "Well they didn't hurt anypony did they?" Girder looked squarely at the conflicted bookworm. "Ever heard the term 'nopony's perfect'? To be quite frank, a large bulk of us already knew quite a few chunks of her stories weren't real. But you know what was real? That what she did do was help ponies. Big or small, she made lives better. If she got rewarded for it, it's becuase we thought it was praiseworthy, not her. You saying you got a gripe against the whole city at what we think is good and what's bad?"
Twilight gave her head an uncertain shake. "N-no..." "Did you want to be more recognized than your friend?" "No." "You think Trixie staged all those accidents to make herself look good?" "What? No!" "Then I don't see why you had to go and pull the rug right out from underneath her."
Twilight desperately tried to find a valid argument that could ease her guilt. "B-but what if she told one lie too many? What if she got so cocky, she'd end up causing a problem and getting somepony hurt?"
"Then that would be by her own doing, not yours. Like I said, lots of ponies already knew the more outrageous parts of her yarns were fiction, but we still applauded it all the same. Why? Because the parts that were true were things we really were grateful for, and the rest made a good story. But now, thanks to you, almost nopony will even listen to the real parts since Mare-Do-Well only drew their attention to the hot air surrounding it. That's all they see now. No one complained until you did. Sure, bragging's annoying, maybe even rude and improper sometimes. But it doesn't change the fact that the actions leading up to it saved my life, and my son's."
"Your...son?" Twilight asked.
"He goes to Manehattan West Elementary," the construction worker hinted. He helped himself to the library stamp as he performed a self-checkout. "That's worth a few fibs and autographs if you ask me. Heck, I'd love it if one of them were mine. Now if you excuse me, I've got a month's worth of construction to catch up on."
And without so much as a good day, the stallion closed the door on his way out, somehow leaving the library even hollower and emptier than before he came in.
Yawning to herself, Honey groggily marched across the halls of her museum to open the doors for the day. Mental note, for the next building upgrade, spring for that automated door system that unlocks itself at 6am.
When she pushed the doors open though, she was rudely greeted by a blinding light...that wasn't Celestia's sun. The steps of her museum were swarmed with reporter and camera ponies, a complete jumble of loud voices and flashing bulbs quickly descending into a mainstream anarchy.
"Miss Do, any comment on-" "-your role in the Mare-Do-Well incident?" "-giving up your archeological studies-" "Honey Do, are you and the other Elements-" "Is there a new candidacy for-" "What was your reasoning-" "-Element of Laughter-" "-your connection to-" "Why the secrecy for-" "Will you continue to-" "-Manehattan's new hero?"
It had been ages since Honey had to deal with a surprise media mob. And yet, in the back of head, she kinda expected this to happen ever since that day with the parade. If there was anything the presses loved to death aside from the groundbreaking discoveries, royalty, and publicity stunts, it was the juicy scandals. And what could be more juicy or scandalous right now than a falling out between the Elements of Harmony?
Still, despite the years of uneventfulness, she still knew how to deal with said newshounds in the best way possible. Backing up, and not giving the horde a chance to close in, she slammed the doors shut on them without a single word.
A couple seconds later, the door slid open a crack to allow a tan hoof to slide around and attach a 'closed' sign to the handle before slamming shut again.
"Ok, gang. Who's on lunch rush duty today?" "Uh, that would be Rain Gauge, but he called in sick today."
The team captain at the Manehattan Weather Center rested a hoof on her cheek. "Great...any coincidence that he also happens to be my ace storm maker and we're scheduled for a T-3 thunderstorm this afternoon?"
"I'll get lunch!" Junior Cadet Blossomforth volunteered. "Where're we taking out from?"
"Oh, how about that new Neighpon place that opened up three blocks down from 24th?" a mare suggested.
"Sounds good! That's also near my favorite bakery. Anypony want me to pick up some treats as well?"
"Sure thing, just don't get any banana cream pies! I kinda want to eat my dessert, not wear it on my face like a clown!"
Blossomforth's ears took an abrupt downturn at the guffawing seniors before them. "We kinda didn't mean for that to happen to her..." she interjected softly.
"Yeah...I guess you're right," said another stallion on the far end of the hangar, leaving a dead silence for about five seconds before he timed his punchline just right. "Cherry would have been much more hilarious!"
Blossomforth facehoofed, then surly departed the institute with puffed cheeks. "It was only funny the first time I heard it," she muttered to herself. "...and the tomato one yesterday wasn't funny at all."
"I'm terribly sorry, Florentine, but I'm afraid the menu was set weeks in advance. We'll have to wait until next soiree to unveil your latest dessert."
"But Madame Sherbert, my friend personally works for zee Herald. I have 'en inside source that says he will love it!"
Orange Sherbet allayed her pâtissière's objections with an inviting hoof. "Tell you what. I'll arrange a small get together with some associates later within the week at my office, and you can debut your cotton candy marzipan there. Is that good?"
"I suppose," the chef resigned. "Thank you, Madame."
As Sherbet exited the kitchens, she happened to glance upon an unfolding scene with her newest buscolt. The young stallion was attempting to make his work a little more fun by juggling some plates onto his cart. And while his captive audience was amused, his waiter was not.
"Might we move this along?" he suggested. "I do have a family of six to seat at this table."
"Sure thing, just let me grab the silverware." the rookie steward reached out a hoof while he kept his eyes on three wine glasses steadied with his tail. Unfortunately, what he thought was spoon turned out to be a pointy fork, that he gripped from the wrong end.
"Ouch!" He immediately seized up, and his performance came to a glass shattering end. The nearby patrons gave a small chuckle as the buscolt sheepishly went to fetch a broom.
"Looks like mister dinner and a show just pulled a Trixie," overheard Sherbet from one of the customers. Tempted to personally usher out the smart mouthed pony, she mustered every ounce of professionalism in her and decided not to dignify the mare with a response.
Instead, she proceeded to return to her lunch with her daughter, who was waiting for her in a the VIP booths. Hopefully some mother-daughter time would make her feel better.
"Mother? Can I ask you something?" Tangerine inquired as her mother sat herself back down across from her.
"Of course, Tangerine. What is it?"
"Are you a bully?"
The Orange matron half-choked on her cucumber gratin. "B-bully? Why would you ask that?"
"Because Babs told me what you did to Trixie was a lot like what many of the mean foals at her old school did to her," the quietly apprehensive filly elaborated. "She is not correct, is she? Because Babs also says bullies cannot be friends, and you are still a friend of Miss Trixie, right?"
Her daughter's words cut the rich mare deeper than the filly could ever hope to understand at her age. Putting decorum aside, Sherbet slouched over the table, resting her neck over a pair of crossed hooves. "Oh my little citrus blossom, how I wish I could tell you I was 100% certain..."
A somber and tragic tune exuded from Octavia's cello as she practiced in the unoccupied orchestra pit of the empty opera house.
"Really not helping the mood here Octavia," Honey called from onstage. There she, Blossomforth, Orange Sherbet, and Twilight Sparkle all sat in a circle on the cool hardwood floor.
"'Tis not my fault this theatre's upcoming performance happens to be Pintoliaccio, the sad clown," Octavia explained. "Though I will confess, the irony of said piece's underlying tone given our situation is not lost on me."
"Element of Laughter or Element of Laughingstock? It has been days since the Mare-Do-Well appreciation day incident revealed the hero rivalry to be nothing but a hoax planned against Trixie Lulamoon by the other Elements of Harmony to debunk her fraudulent celebrity status and... You know what? I can't even finish reading this one." Blossomforth folded her subscribed tabloid under her hooves and sighed, letting her bangs droop over her eyes. "We really messed up big time."
Sherbet lay flat on her back, her mane hanging loosely over the floor. "My own daughter compared me to a schoolyard ruffian the other day. I've never felt more low. And all the tittering Lyrica Lilac and Royal Ribbon are doing about it at my afternoon tea socials, even making fun of her name. I actually believe Lulamoon is a very beautiful last name, don't you?"
"The name is the least of our worries!" Honey shot up to her hooves and fumed back and forth. "I knew we should have just talked to her in the first place! I should have just gone with my gut and realized when this convoluted scheme had gone too far. But no, I just had to think this was a mere tit for tat exchange like the time she made my pith helm disappear for a full month. We just had to have a little laugh of our own. Well now the laughing won't stop!"
"How did things come to this?" Twilight hopelessly groaned. "It was just supposed to be a joke at worst, who could have possibly thought the ponies of Manehattan would be so judgmental over one little incident?"
"Technically, it was at least five. And given that it's been front page material for over a week now, I wouldn't say little either."
"Now you're not helping," Honey grumbled, snatching away Blossomforth's newspaper and crumpling it up. "Stupid liberal press and their liberal 'paraphrasing'. I just may have to get a third identity if this keeps up!"
"But why her?" Twilight rehashed her previous statement. "This was all our doing, our fault. We're the ones who pushed Trixie into this, why won't Manehattan blame US?!"
"Because it was not we who were disgraced in the eyes of the public." Octavia finally made her way up the stairs from the pit to join the informal circle. "Shame, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder."
"I can actually relate," said Sherbet. "When I first moved here with Mosely, I received numerous ridicules from my new socialite peers about my vernacular and posture. It was only after months of integration into the Orange Conglomerate did they finally see enough of themselves in me to stop gossiping at the dinner parties. Of course, I weathered the slings and arrows by my husband and his family. But Trixie..."
"Who does Trixie have?" finished Honey. "Not us, not when we're the problem itself. I mean, have any of you even heard from her since...you know?"
Everypony in the room solemnly shook their heads. Twilight then stood up, new determination, albeit small, working its way into her head. "Then if she won't talk to us...we'll just have to talk to her. She needs to know we will be there for her, we can at least fix that!"
"Uh, Twilight-"
But Twilight was galloping out the hall before Blossomforth could start.
"Uh, she does know my team has a downpour planned in less than an hour right?"
"Why didn't Blossomforth mention there was going to be a downpour around this time?"
Twilight trudged hoof deep in the sidewalk puddles whilst Spike did his best to walk directly underneath her. One moment she had ducked into the library to fetch her dragon assistant, the next she had jumped out into a wall of water. And while it only took her a second to magic up an umbrella barrier over her head, that one second was all the rain needed to give her a full body wash. It also didn't help that an umbrella spell wouldn't keep her hooves from getting soggy with each step she took on the pavement.
"Ugh, I can't see past three hooves in this torrent. Spike, how much further is it to the Bridleway district?"
The little dragon stuck his nose back into the city map. "We turned left at Maple, so...just past that intersection!"
A passing carriage sprayed a wave of muddy water over the duo just as Spike pointed. The umbrella spell didn't help at all.
I have a new appreciation for raincoats... the drenched unicorn thought to herself.
"Okay, keep an eye out for Pizzazz Amphitheater. That's supposedly where her next performance is scheduled for the week."
As Twilight scanned across the street parallel to herself, Spike made a cursory glance to the left of the walkway, and did a double take.
"Uh...found it. But I don't think Trixie's here."
Twilight turned to where Spike was pointing and gaped in disbelief. There was the said amphitheater alright. Alongside the sides of the building were posterboards of all the performers and actors playing. Quite a few of them had the showmare's picture on it labeled 'The Great and Powerful Trixie!'.
Overlapping her posters however, was a large strip of sticker tape with big large letters in red. SHOW CANCELED Also, on an unrelated but still shocking note, more than half of her posters had pencil mustaches, mule ears, goat horns, pimples and/or goatees drawn on the magician's face.
The doors of the Vaude-a-torium opened and closed for the exiting duo. "Nine theaters and not a trace of her!" Twilight openly worried. "Everypony we've tried asking haven't even seen her!"
"Actually, they just couldn't stop laughing the moment we mentioned her name," Spike corrected. "You're sure that 'take your mouth away' spell will wear off by the way, right?"
Twilight gave Spike a malicious smirk. "Eventually..."
Her horn then bonked into a wooden obstruction directly in front of her path. "Ow! What kind of inconsiderate pony would leave their carriage parked in an out-of-sight side alley where anypony could just bump into it?"
"Uh, Twilight, this isn't a carriage..." Spike squinted up at the large overhanging wooden banner with a crescent wand and stars decorated on it.
"It's Trixie's wagon!" Twilight exclaimed. Then a flash of lightning lit up the area, and her excitement dampened immediately. Graffiti decorated the walls of the show wagon along with an assortment of spray painted words.
FAKE PHONY FRAUD
"No..." Twilight whispered to herself. All her nerve seemed to freeze up as she climbed up to the door. She just stood there with a hoof raised for the longest time.
"Well?" Spike asked amidst the pouring rain. "I kinda want to at least dry off."
Twilight finally knocked. "Trixie?" she nervously asked with a soft tone, "Are you there?"
When no reply came, she reached out to knock again, stopped at the edge of the doorframe, pulled back, then after a few seconds raised her hoof again. This time the door slid open a crack as her hoof connected lightly. When nothing else happened after a few seconds, she turned to Spike. "I guess it's unlocked."
"Good, hope she has some spare towels in stock." Spike pushed the door wide open as he let himself in.
"Spike, wait! We can't just barge in unannou-" Twilight stopped to take in the insides of the magician's abode.
A bed, dressing table, closet, trunk of assorted props, fairly standard furniture for an entertainer on the go. They all had been depicted and bedazzled in Trixie's flashy stars and moon design with matching colors. Boxes of fireworks and fanfare instruments were set aside on the far corner. A tall vanity mirror took up the wall space in between. The left wall had nothing near or hung on it except some blue curtains and large signs along with a metal latch on top. Twilight then realized it was actually the folded stage Trixie used when she did street performances. Doubling in function as a wall, very clever design. I'd like to meet the pony that designed this cart. The rest of the interior walls had no paint or wallpaper but...
"Wow, even on the ceiling too?" Spike looked up to the gleaming smile of a Trixie photo over the bed. "Makes you wonder why she hasn't married herself yet."
There was one last thing that caught Twilight's eye as she gazed around the many faces of Trixie. Another desk, smaller than the dressing table. Unlike the rest of the furnishing, it didn't seem to be Trixiefied. It had a small second shelf with several knick-knacks and small award trophies. One or two framed pictures of ponies who weren't Trixie sat above several locked drawers to the side. Was this a personal study perhaps?
What drew the most attention to the desk however, was the surrounding wall around it. A bunch of article clippings and pictures were pasted together on it in a patterned mess.
"What's all this?" Spike wondered aloud.
"Looks like some sort of newspaper collage," Twilight determined as she stepped closer to take a read at one of the postings. To her surprise it wasn't an article on Trixie but-
"New escape act, Casket of Catastrophe unveiled last night by...Hairy Hoofdini?!" Twilight took a step back in surprise as her eyes darted to another article, this time with a picture of a dashing stallion in a black tux cape holding a black white-tipped wand. "Hoofdini pulls off the unbeatable Sultan Surprise...Dauntless Decent, conquered by the Great Hoofdini...The Rainbow Faint, Hoofdini most daring escape yet...this is a memorial to Hairy Hoofdini!"
"Who?"
Twilight looked at Spike with an incredulous look, like he had just grown a second head. "You've never heard of the Amazing Hoofdini?! He's only the most incredible illusionist in history! He's performed over 101 magical feats that no other unicorn has even come close to attempting. The spellworking used at escaping his deathtraps would have baffled even Starswirl the Bearded! He's...he's a genius!"
Her eyes twinkled as she squeed a giddy smile. "He's the whole reason I started studying magic in the first place! Well, that and Princess Celestia, but he worked on a totally different angle! I just had to know how he did it, how his tricks worked. I wanted...I wanted to be just like him!"
Spike looked at one of the pictures on the collage. "You wanted to sport a top hat and a waxed handlebar mustache?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Okay, not exactly like him." Twilight exited out of her adorkable schoolfilly state, but still held an enthusiastic tone. "But you know what I mean! Before I became Celestia's student, he was my number one idol!"
"What's his number now?" Spike asked.
"492."
Silence reigned as the little dragon half-lidded his eyes and gave a deadpan twist of the lips.
"Hey, he's still in the top thousand!"
"You have that big a list*?" In actuality, Spike wasn't that surprised.
"I've read up on a lot of ponies over the years."
"No kidding." Spike turned his attention back to the clippings on the wall. "So why do you think she has this kinda borderline creepy shrine to him mounted in her bedroom?"
"I think it's pretty obvious," Twilight conjectured, "that Trixie's an even bigger fan of his work than I was."
"I was more than just his fan..."
Twilight nearly leapt into Spike's little arms as she whirled around in a heart stopping moment to see azure mare they came to see in the first place, minus her trademark cape and hat. Her mane and tail hung limply over her body as it was drenched and saturated with rainwater. Her eyes seemed glazed and dark as she held a stiff, emotionless frown.
"I was his apprentice."
Twilight gasped in surprise. "You?! You're Hoofdini's heir? Omigosh, I can't believe this. I-I knew you were a talented magician, but you're telling me Hoofdini taught you all his secrets? How? When? Where? D-do you think you could show me a few? Like how the Mirror Maze Madness was done? I-"
Spike nudged Twilight in the ribs again. Dealing with lost composure was a thing he was used to on a regular basis, although it usually stemmed from the other end of the emotional spectrum.
"Oh, sorry..." Twilight blushed. "I kinda drifted on a tangent there for a moment, almost forgot why I was here in the first place. Listen I...I wanted to apologize for the whole Mare-Do-Well thing."
Trixie looked at her dolefully then leaned her side against the door, her back half turned to the purple unicorn. "Go on."
"Yes, I..." Twilight swallowed and licked her lips nervously. "I’m sorry that we embarrassed you in front of everypony and made you look stupid. We shouldn’t have done it.” She looked at Trixie and gulped as she noticed that the azure unicorn hadn’t moved a hoof. “And…ah…I’ll never ever do it again. None of us will. Uh, by the way, where's your hat and cape?"
"Packed away," Trixie answered in a monotone. "They actually get in the way when I'm pulling my stage for long distances."
"W-what?" A warning bell went off in Twilight's head. "P...packed away? Long distances? You're leaving?"
"I am a traveling entertainer after all. It's not like me to stay in one place for too long. I'm surprised I've stopped here this long. Must have been my attachments to this city."
Trixie clenched both her eyes shut and her jaw as if she’d pulled something. Slowly she looked at Twilight Sparkle with a painful scowl.
"Why? Why?! You're really asking me that? Why do you think, Twilight Sparkle?!" Twilight scrambled in a short backpedal as Trixie jerked her neck forward, her teeth bared. "Do you have any idea what you and the rest of your conspirators have done?!"
“I…we embarrassed you…and…I…” Twilight's voice faltered. She’d never had a friend mad at her before…not like this.
"You betrayed me! All of you! You had me lose every last shred of respect from everypony around me! I mattered to them because I was doing good things. And then Mare-Do-Well showed up and proceeded to show everypony how special I wasn’t. How I wasn’t strong enough...or fast enough...or magic enough…”
Twilight curled up, shaking, not knowing what to do or say to end this. "T-Trixie..." she whimpered.
"You know what hurts most? It was you girls who did it. I thought Mare-Do-Well was going to steal you away from me the way you all kept gushing about her. But I was wrong it the worst possible way." Tears started to become apparent over Trixie's face. "My whole reason for staying here...the ponies who I thought were my friends...who I didn't want to leave...were Mare-Do-Well!"
"We are your friends!" Twilight felt tears herself as she shouted desperately. "That's why I'm here aren't I? I'm trying to apologize Trixie!"
"For what? Do you even know what you're apologizing for?" Trixie roared as she wept. "Do you even realize what your actions did?"
“I… I…” Twilight cried, unable to look away, and incapable on answering her.
"You took away my fame, Twilight! Don't you get it! My reputation was everything to me! That's all I had, that's all any magician has! What is a performer without popularity? Have you ever wondered that? Without it, I have no one to come to my shows, I have no purpose to do anything, I have nopony who wants to be with me...I have nothing."
And with that she finally collapsed sobbing. And Twilight just sat there with her. “That’s… that not true Trixie. That’s not all that you have. You’re a great magic user…” But her praise made the mare slump even more.
"No, I'm not really that great...or powerful. When push comes to shove...I always fail when it's important. And when I fail...I end up alone, because nopony wants to be with a failure. Real magical unicorns would never fail. They'd be able to pass the entrance exam for Canterlot's School for Gifted Unicorns...they'd be able to save her master's life..."
"What?" The sudden tension provided a lull in the hysterics as Trixie directed the room's attention to a news clipping near the bottom of the wall.
Tragedy at the Pegasus Theatre: Hoofdini's last stand
"That's right..." Twilight murmured. "His big accident on the '97 Big Top tour..."
"You asked how I came to be the amazing Hoofdini's protégé? Well, it all started a little after I failed to pass the entrance exams for Canterlot's school of gifted unicorns. House Lulamoon wasn't the most wealthy or prestigious of nobilities, it was actually quite small, but we did have a long standing history of reputable spellcasters, powerful ones. That's probably why all the other unicorn foals followed me when I went outside to play or run errands, to see what defined one of the most powerful unicorn families in Canterlot. I was a leader to them. But when every other unicorn foal I knew had succeeded but me, they stopped coming. Instead they just passed me by on the streets talking with each other about what new spells they learned, leaving me out with nothing but my fantasies to play with, lonely unchanging fantasies with no one to share to. Being the first dropout in the family history was already disappointing enough to my mother, so when I had convinced myself that my talent was not meant to be squandered inside studying but shown off traveling the world, she didn't approve. Well, not that she didn't approve, she just didn't seem to care. I was ignored in the neighborhood, I was ignored in my house, so I guessed no one would even notice if I ran away."
"You ran away?" Spike interrupted.
"Not entirely," Trixie answered. "I did grab some things and sneak out of the mansion. But the way I was going, it was probably going to end up as another classic hungry and tired foal comes crawling back before she could even reach the edge of town stories...had not I met him.
I had just passed the Canterlot bazaar and was walking down an incline, when I tripped and tumbled down the hill. At the bottom, Hoofdini was putting on a little preview for his nightly performance at the Canterlot Thespian Halls. I happened to roll right into one of his custom milk can traps, and was locked inside. I was so startled at the snare, I must have used my magic without knowing, because a second later I was back outside and a small audience was clapping for me. Hoofdini was impressed as the initial surprise wore off him. He told me that the locks for the can could only be opened from the outside simultaneously, each with a self-changing magic combination. Five thousand others beside him have attempted to escape it on their own, and I was the first to succeed.
You can probably guess what happened afterwards. He escorted me home, we talked with my parents, he offered to train me. My mother still didn't care at that point, and I didn't care whether she cared. I was done trying to live her dream, I wanted to live mine. So having gotten formal permission to leave with him it really wasn't running away anymore, it was just leaving for a new life.
Five years...five whole years we traveled all over Equestria, and I saw how he garnered ponies attention. And he didn't just give ponies a show, he helped them. Like the Blue Diamond robbery case in Las Pegasus."
"I remember reading that, he was one of the special detectives they hired?"
Trixie nodded. "He easily cracked how the thieves bypassed the security, it gave the investigators a good lead. But more importantly, whatever he did, he did in confidence. And it inspired confidence in others, it inspired it in me. We had admiration, we had approval, and when we were just on the road, we had each other.
And then it all vanished, because one pony just had to show him up."
"The Steel Soul challenge..." Twilight whispered.
"Yes, in addition to being a magnificent magician and escape artist, he also exposed many scam artists who greatly overcharged ponies for lazy second rate techniques, ponies with no passion who took his profession just to trick easy money from the masses. He outdid their own challenges everytime, showing how simply it could be done and how unoriginal their moneymaking tricks were. But he only did it to performers who he knew had no love for the slight-of-hoof game. He was a hero to the magician world.
So it happened, one night on our tour with the Big Top circus. After finishing his act for the entire town of Neigh Orleans, a two bit conjurer barged into the ring, claiming him to be the fraud. Hoofdini accepted his challenge, the Steel Soul trial. His opponent demonstrated to the crowd with a mortar that he wheeled in that he could take a direct blast from a cannonball and not be hurt in the slightest, as if his body was made of steel. Hoofdini dismissed it was a simple substitution technique used on the ball along with a hidden chamber in the cannon that held a rubber one. But as he stepped in front of the cannon to debunk the stallion, I felt something amiss this time, some magic disturbance. And when the cannon fired...well...you know enough."
"It wasn't a substitute, a real cannonball pulverized him in the chest."
"He cheated...my master was completely correct about the hidden second chamber of the cannon. But what he didn't know was that the charlatan had used his scam earnings to hire a master teleportation graduate to sit in the audience, and use his magic to swap the fake cannonball with a real one in his bag, so that both chambers now had real ammunition in it. But the audience didn't know that, all they knew was that Hoofdini had failed. And I...I could do nothing to save him, I could only still there and watch as the pretender declared that a new legend had just been born...the pony who defeated Hoofdini."
She turned away from the wall, coldly looking into Twilight's eyes. "And they cheered. They cheered...they cheered for that greedy, selfish butcher! My master slipped into a coma in a hospital bed less than a week later from the shock of his internal injuries, broken in both body and spirit, and everyone celebrated that!!"
"B-but that's not true! I read the newspapers, he was caught within a month! He was banned from all forms of magic for life, never to perform again. He even got a prison sentence!"
"So got what he deserved, but did that change anything? Did it change the boos that were once cheers flung at the most important stallion in my world for doing nothing wrong as the paramedics dragged his mutilated body out of the tent? Did it change the fact that no one but I even knows he exists in that bed and have been his sole visitor in the past ten years?!
Did it change that after five years of trying to bring my name to the public, to gain everypony's adoration, that I was by myself once again...and nopony knew...or even cared?"
Trixie slowly walked past her back towards her door. "Have you ever been alone, Sparkle? Truly alone? I have, and it is the worst feeling possible. And now I am again. That's the life of a thespian, either you are famous, or you're yesterday's news, a nopony. That's why they're always moving, to keep their fame alive. And when you're always moving, there are things you just can't find...like friends."
"No, no...you do have friends...you have us..."
"Do I?" Trixie snapped. "Are you? Cause from my standpoint, Mare-Do-Well's the two bit conjuror, and the face behind her mask is the hired magic muscle that rigged the cannon. Guess what that makes me? This is one hoofstep of my master I never wanted to follow!"
With that, she stepped out once again into the pouring rain. Closing the door shut behind her, the ruined showmare clambered down and began to hitch the reins of her mobile home over her shoulders.
A brilliant flash and a pop appeared in front of her, and Trixie found herself completely in Twilight's full grip as the mare lunged forward to embrace her. "I'm sorry Trixie! I’m sorry I did it…I’m sorry I didn’t think how it’d hurt you!” Twilight said as she completely broke down, her tears matching the rainfall's pace. “I…I didn’t realize…everything.” Twilight rubbed her own nose as she brushed her mane back out of her eyes. "P-please...please don't leave Manehattan...I don't want to lose you. I don't care if you're too boastful anymore, everypony has their faults, everypony! We love you as you are! My friends...are the most precious things in my life now. I never had any before I came to Manehattan! Please...please...I promise we'll never do anything like this again. I promise we'll never abandon you, we'll never let you be alone! Just please...don't go off and leave...please forgive me..."
Trixie silently continued to shed soft tears beside the heaving unicorn. "...To be honest, I don't want to lose you either. You girls are also the first friends I've ever made as well. But...what kind of friends just go behind another one's back, put on a bunch of ridiculous outfits and gang up to humiliate me just for some self improvement kick? How can I...how can I trust you girls anymore? It's not possible...not like how I could before."
“We never meant to hurt you,” Twilight murmured softly. She gently stroked the sides of Trixie's pale blue mane. “You know that, don’t you?”
Trixie sniffled, relinquishing a weak nod. “But you did.”
"I know...I know now. I'm still so new to friendship. I should have gone with Daring's idea and just kept trying to talk with you. I was...I was just so used to how all my life in Canterlot, ponies became so ignorant when they started to act self-righteous, I guess I didn't trust you well enough to listen to me unless I did something extreme."
"Like how I ran away from mother," Trixie gave the weakest of laughs. "I...I guess I have embellished myself a little too much recently."
"A little?"
"Don't push, I still have a right to be mad at you all and will be regardless."
"..." "..." "..."
"Okay, a lot. I probably wouldn't have even listened to me. But I still wouldn't have gone that far!"
"Yeah, that really was stupid. I suppose we've both been pretty crummy friends lately."
Another moment of non-verbal communication passed between the two as they tried to figure out what to say next.
"Listen, I-" "Trixie-"
They both started at once, only to fall into an awkward silence. Then, just when you thought they had burned out all hysterics, they gave one last string of outbursts as they pulled together once more.
“I’m sorry!” They said at the same time, their voices quivering with emotion.
"I'm sorry I was such a pompous bragger and didn't listen to you!"
"I’m so sorry I went behind your back and came up with the Mare-Do-Well plan like a scheming nag!"
"I-I’m sorry I called you Twilight Snarkle!"
"I-wait, what?" Twilight put aside all sadness aside for the briefest of moments and pulled away to express her confusion. "When did you call me that?"
"Oh...right...I was alone for that. Well I'm sorry anyway."
Twilight let loose a smirk for an even briefer moment. "Seriously? Twilight Snarkle? Even Spike could have thought up a better nickname than that."
"Just what's that supposed to mean?!" called a voice from still inside the wagon.
The two shared a brief chuckle before lapsing into an uneasy silence. Twilight then cleared her throat delicately as she ran a hoof along the ground. "Listen...I really mean it when I say you don't have to change for us Trixie. That's...that's the thing about being a friend, right? Liking you for the good and the bad. I know I'm not perfect, especially since this whole mess, but...you'd still want to be with me, won't you?
Trixie grew somber again as she stared out past the lavender mare. "And what about the city? Even if I do still have friends, how will I live? All everypony’s going to think when they see me now is ‘look, there’s Trixie the loser’. I'll be nothing but something for them to laugh at."
Twilight sniffed and looked her in the eye. Her voice lowered as she mustered every last ounce of seriousness in her next choice of words. "Trixie, I swear to Celestia, I'll do whatever it takes...even if it takes the rest of my life...if I have to give up books forever, cut my horn off, or even become the next Nightmare Moon! I will get the ponies of Manehattan to stop laughing at you. I won't let them call you a fraud anymore. I will bring back...the Great and Powerful Trixie." She gave a hiccup in her throat, trying to keep herself steady. "I know that I have no right to ask you for this, but will you forgive me for... for hurting you, Trixie? Will you still be my friend?"
Trixie took a slow, deep breath. "If I do, can you do me one thing, Twilight?"
"Anything! You name it, it's yours!"
The smallest of smiles crept up from the mess of tears. "I want a violet and cornflower sandwich with a clover salad on the side. Fifteen no shows in a row has left me a little short on lunch money, and I don't fancy eating out of a trash can."
Twilight sniffed and rubbed her nose again, returning the fragile expression. "Of course...Great and Powerful Trixie."
As the cold rain continued to pound down on them, the two mares drew closer in their hug, sharing each other's warmth, forgiveness, and love.
"Here you are, and a nice cup of hot cocoa to go with it." Orange Sherbet placed the large tray on the table in front of her penthouse sofa, where Trixie sat, dried off and completely wrapped in a warm blanket. The rhythmic sound of raindrops pelting against the rooftop gave a soothing ambiance to the warm room, where the Manehattan six rested, waiting out the rain. "Feel free to stay here as long as you like," the Orange hostess added to her tired guest.
"Again, we're really sorry about all this," Blossomforth said. "We'll do everything we can to help you get back on your hooves."
"Trixie heard you the first fifty times," the azure mare said as she blew on her hot beverage. "And she is impoverished, not destitute. She still has a bed of her own to sleep on."
"Oh, you can't possibly mean to camp out in the streets in your wagon every night, I insist!"
"And just what is wrong with Trixie's mobile studio?" Trixie raised an eyebrow at her rich compatriot.
"Oh, nothing! Nothing at all. I just thought it might be...lonely sleeping like that!" Sherbet corrected. "And besides, I know Tangerine would just love your company."
"Trixie supposes that's a valid point, and she does like your filly. Still, don't go around thinking she's helpless just because of some rough luck."
"Verily," Octavia answered, wiping some crumbs from the scones they shared. "Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
Twilight sighed in contentment as she tasted a crumpet next to her renewed friend. Things were finally starting to look up. No more misunderstandings, everypony had made up, Trixie was even back to talking in the third pony. She had really missed that. "Never change, Trixie." She gave a light nuzzle against her friend's mane.
"Yeah, yeah. Warm mushies all around," Honey interjected. "But this whole mess isn't completely cleaned up just yet. We're all in agreement, right? We gotta figure a way how get Trixie's reputation back. Any ideas?"
"Couldn't we just tell everypony it was all our fault?" Blossomforth suggested.
"No dice. I know my media, they're in full propaganda mode right now," Honey replied with disapproval. "A direct apology will only give them an opening to turn one scandal into many."
"Maybe a comeback performance," Sherbet proposed. "I could arrange a citywide event with Mayor Tux, and we could devise a whole new routine with Trixie. Something fresh and spectacular that will make them forget this whole fiasco ever happened."
"Kinda hard to forget when the mere mention of her name sends everypony into a giggle fit," Spike pointed out. "She's been laughed off every stage in Manehattan, I don't think building a new one going to produce a different result."
"He's right," Honey agreed. "The ponies presently aren't going to give her a chance unless she does something truly spectacular. Something that could help every pony in the city."
"Something only she could do," Sherbet pondered.
"Something heroic," Blossomforth added.
"Something...unbelievable," finished Octavia.
The minutes ticked on by as they sat sat in silence. Then, Twilight jumped from her seat, her horn alight. "That's it! I know how we can make Trixie a hero again!"
Everypony leaned their heads forward in anticipation. "Really?" "How?" "Don't keep us in suspense girl!" "Care to share your idea with the group, today maybe?"
Twilight distanced herself a few paces away from the others, then turned her head to them with a wry smile. "Trixie is going to save the city...from an Ursa Major!"
Meanwhile, in the apartment complex above the Games and Gadgets toy store, a similar brainstorm was going on between two colts.
"Thisth isth terrible," Specs griped with a hoof propped against his chin. "We're the only two membersth left in the Great and Powerful fanclub! Even Babs quit our club."
"Technically, nopony quit," Cutup refuted from the podium made up of stacked boxes of comic books. "They just stopped coming to our meetings."
"Sthame thing," the tall bespectacled colt sighed. "What are we going to do? We can't let the Great and Powerful Trixie be laughed at forever."
"Eh, it's the classic antihero conundrum the way I see it," Cutup analyzed. "Like when Sleipnir was banished from the Eternal Herd for violating the truce with the Wovlengrad in part for protecting the mortal realms from Fenrir's invasion, or when Batstallion took the blame for Twinface's tyrannical rampage originated by the Prankster's chaos serum."
"I thought we both agreed that particular thpinoff wasth terrible," Specs mentioned.
"It was," Cutup agreed. "But the point is, if there's anything a lifetime of graphic novel reading has taught me, it's that every hero has their darkest hour before they return triumphant in a victory so incredible, it redeems them completely."
"Stho...what your thaying isth, if we want to help everyone sthee how amazing the Great and Powerful Trixie isth again, we gotta get her to do thomething big, big and life sthaving!"
"Exactly! Now come on! Use that B+ noggin of yours. What awesome exploit could the Great and Powerful Trixie do that no other pony could do?"
The answer came to them both at the same time. "THE URSA MAJOR!"
"Sthe thaid it herthelf! Only sthe's been able to beat one!"
"Yeah, like how she chased that one in Hoofington back into the Everfree forest! That's what we'll do! We'll find an Ursa Major, and then bring it here for everypony to see her defeat one and save the city!"
"Everyone will have to acknowledge her asth the greatesth unicorn ever after that!" Specs' smile suddenly disappeared as he scratched his head. "Uh, one problem...we don't have an Everfree foresth in Manehattan."
His stout companion joined him in pondering and pouting, then his eyes lit up. "But we do have a zoo!"
Luna's moon began to descend from the sky as deep within the cellars of the Equestrian Museum of Supernatural History, a line of mares sat under the dim flicker of headlamps.
Twilight circled around her friends and between several tables of maps, blueprints, and chalk diagrams. "Everypony got a clear grasp on their roles?"
"Pretty much." "Yeah." "Uh huh." "I'm also part of this conversation!"
"Great!" Twilight magicked up screen to project her mental image. "Let's do a quick run through one more time of Operation Reputation Rescue!"
"First, we need to draw a large portion of the city together. Essentially, the newsponies, Mayor Tux and the city council, and any other notable socialite have to be in the crowd. That's where Daring comes in."
A huge group of ponies crowded around a stall outside a bookstore, where Honey sat dressed in her pith helmet and explorer's vestments, holding a pen and a stack of Daring Do books.
"I'll be making an appearance as my adventurous alter-ego for a book signing at the Barns and Stable bookstore a few blocks down from the Equine's Gait Building. I know the mayor's a big fan, and Daring Do has been off the public radar for long enough to pull the media's attention. The streets there are also wide enough for something really big to come through."
The scene switched to a row of identical storage sheds. Octavia shimmied across the shadow of one, peeking around the corner to watch a worker pass on by. She silently signaled with her hoof, and Blossomforth somersaulted out in front of the door in a jet black jumpsuit, striking a Charlie's Horses kung-fu pose. She darted a quick glance back and forth as Octavia crept up alongside her, somewhat annoyed, and pulled a feather from her wings to use as a lockpick for shed doors.
"Meanwhile, Octavia and Blossomforth will sneak into the city warehouses off the south end of the industry district where all the holiday decorations and celebratory props not in use are stored."
The two mares lifted the storage doors open, and turned on the lights to reveal a line of covered wagons and decorated platforms.
"Our goal will be to 'borrow' one of the parade float vehicles."
"From there, we slink out and rendezvous with Auntie at the paper crafts factory owned by the Orange Conglomerate."
The pair pushed the wheeled platform onto an empty factory lot, where Sherbet awaited them with a pile of paint cans, sap adhesives, wooden planks, and colored paper.
"I'll have appropriated all the necessary art supplies from my factory's depot to design a very realistic Ursa Major float."
Between the three of them, the float soon took the shape of an astral colored bear with stars patterning its body. Octavia pushed out a large microphone and speaker around her size. Blossomforth then took the equipment and stuffed it into the Ursa's mouth.
"Complete with blood curdling roar, courtesy of my old friend's sound system."
Blossomforth gave a little giggle as she sat in the back and gave a mock roar through the microphone, which amplified her voice tenfold.
"Then, we wheel it out into the open, towards the crowd, where I will incite a panic using herd psychology."
Twilight ran through the streets in terror as the Ursa chased after her. Other ponies soon joined running along side her.
"After a minute or so of fanning the flames, Trixie will come out and do battle with our Ursa."
Trixie appeared in a puff of smoke in front of the float, where she shot a few blasts of magic at the paper-mache beast. The float turned and sped away from her after trading blows for awhile.
"She'll direct it out of the city and everypony who witnessed her feat with have to acknowledge her as a reputable magician again!"
Confetti sprayed the air as Trixie rose to her hindlegs, waving to the cheering crowd.
"Uh, wait a minute," Trixie cut in at the front as the magic screen faded. "Won't the ponies think something's up when they see you aren't trying to fight it off?"
"Way ahead of you." Twilight pulled out a jar from her saddlebags filled with vibrant blue flowers. "Blossomforth fetched me this plant from the botanical gardens just a while ago. According to their reference guide, it's an herb called poison joke. It secretes a magical toxin that upon contact, takes a living creature's strongest and most valuable attributes, and twists it around like a bad joke." She then proceeded to open the jar, rubbing its contents all over her body. "I won't be able to stop the Ursa because I will be magically incapacitated."
"And I-" Honey wrapped a large tape of bandages around her right wing. "-will be sporting a lovely cast at the signing, courtesy of my latest expedition to find the lost tribe of Ungulateda."
"This time," Twilight emphasized, "nothing can go wrong."
The Central Park zoo gates creaked as Specs pressed against it, but would not budge. "Aw, I forgot. The zoo's closthed on Thundaysth."
"Hold on, I just remembered a secret entrance I overheard about on the playground." Cutup waddled over to a dense spot in the bushes. "Ahhaaah...should be around...here!" His hoof parted the foliage to bring a small spot in the wall where some bricks had come loose. Much too small for an adult to squeeze through, but for a couple of colts, just big enough.
Well, maybe colts that didn't spend four out of five school day recesses just sitting on a bench with candy bars reading graphic novels.
"Oof!" Cutup's somewhat portly girth stopped halfway through the hole in the wall. "Uh, Specs? A little help here?"
"Okie dokie pal!" His more lanky friend came up from behind and started shoving as hard as he could. "Oomph! Wow, Cutup, what'dya eat for breakfasth today? A jar of cement?"
"Just push! I can feel it working!"
A couple grunts and groans went by as they made little progress. Finally, the glasses wearing colt backed up, adjusted his eyewear, and with a sidesticking tongue he lowered his head and gave a ramming charge to his friend's hindquarters.
Too bad he forgot for that brief moment that unicorns have a pointy horn on the end of their heads. If he had, the next moment would have been a lot less painful for other unicorn stuck in the wall.
"Yeowch!" Cutup rocketed out of the hole with Specs in tow as they tumbled into the zoo lot, smashing into a full trash can. Ice cream wrappers, leftover popcorn, and peanut shells decorated the two as they crawled out.
"Well this is another fine mess you've gotten us into," Cutup said as he wiped away the half-eaten licorice on his face, leaving a small black smeared mustache just above his lip behind.
"Thorry buddy." Specs picked up his glasses and noted the new headgear they both sported. "Who throws away a pair of perfectly good bowler hats anyway?"
"Nevermind that. Let's just hurry up and find that exhibit."
The pair plodded through the empty cobblestone pathways, looking to each habitat.
"Let's see...Manticore, nope...Amphisbaena, nuh uh..." "Ooh, I didn't know their aquarium had a new Cancer exhibit...ah! Cutup! Over there!"
They came to a stop at a huge pitted enclosure with a cave almost as large and wide as a ten story building. Around the railing, there was a large brass plaque with engraved information.
Ursa Major Also more commonly known as the great star bear, the Ursa is largest of the astral beasts in existence. Though omnivorous, it is predatory by nature, usually hunting lesser star beasts like the Pisces or Lepus in its natural habitat. A fully grown Ursa can reach a height of 1000 hooves and weigh as much as 3000 stones.
"Wooow, that'sth big," Specs read from the info board. "So, where is the Urstha anywaysth?"
"Duh, in the cave. Here, help me grab this ladder so we can climb down and fetch it."
The two colts gingerly climbed down into the forested pit and approached the cave's entrance. Now that they were at ground level with it, it seemed a lot bigger than when they first looked at it. Regardless, they entered the darkness of the cavern undaunted.
"Yoo-hooo! Urstha Major! Are you home? We need you come out stho the Great and Powerful Trixie can defeat you!"
"Don't say that, you mook! What animal comes out just so someone can beat them up?" Cutup jabbed his partner with a poking hoof.
"Good point. Uh, nevermind that lasth comment! What I meant to sthay wasth we got thome punch and pie justh for you outsthide in the city sthquare!"
Specs looked to his buddy, who had a 'really?' look on his face. "What? Everypony likesth punch and pie."
"Specs, we don't have punch and pie." "But maybe he'll come if we sthay we have punch and pie." "We're not having punch and pie!" "Okay...uh, about ice cream? Urstha's aren't lactosthe intolerant, are they?" "No, just...just stop. We don't have ice cream either! No ice cream, no cake, no pizza, nothing!" "Well...how about a Misther Goobar? I know you always carry one of thosthe." "THAT is my emergency candy bar, hooves off!" "But I'm not going to eat it, the Urstha is, and Urstha's don't have hooves." "Okay then, paws off! Point is, he's not getting my Mr. Goobar." "Well then, what are we going to- uh, Cutup? Where'd you go?"
By now they were so far in, absolutely no light from outside could reach them.
"Well that's just great. How're we gonna find an Ursa Major when I can't even see my own hoof in front of my face?" Cutup complained.
"Oh! Hang on! I got a light!" With a flickers and a strained grunt, Specs lit up his horn along with the whole cavern.
"Ah, that's better!" Cutup said with approval.
A large moaning growl suddenly emanated from behind, and the pair could distinctly feel what had to be a warm breath against them. The two unicorn colts turned to see a ginormous hulk of furry midnight blue rise to a hundred times their size.
And judging by it's bloodshot eyes and bared teeth, it did not look happy.
"Uh, Cutup?" "Yeah, Specs?" "Sthomething tellsth me we didn't think thisth through enough." "You just realized that?"
As the star studded bear reared up to full height, its two intruders did the only sensible thing they could think of.
"RUUUUUN!!!" "AAAAAAHHHH!!!" *RAAAAAAWWWRRR*
"Daring! Daring! Over here!"
Honey gave a quick wave to another photographer as his lightbulb flashed in front of the booth. "Easy there, press hogs. Save some space for the fans."
Meanwhile, towards the back of the line, a familiar pair of fillies stood side to side, each with a copy of Daring Do and the Ivory Idol, as well as a pair of tickets.
"I can't believe your mom personally knows Daring Do!" Babs gushed to Tangerine. "I knew she had a lot of big connections and all but, backroom passes for after the signing? Wowsa!"
Tangerine gave a bittersweet smile that her cousin echoed. "It is a shame though that Miss Honey could not make it. Mother says she is spending the entire day appraising the artifacts Miss Daring brought back in her curio room, and is not to be disturbed."
"Yeah, too bad. I'm sure they woulda just clicked, having so much in common and all that."
"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," Twilight said as she walked up beside the two fillies. "Daring and Honey know each other quite well on a personal basis." She barely hid a knowing smirk, turning her head away. "You might even say they couldn't be closer to each other if they tried."
Tangerine looked up to the bookish unicorn. "Um, Twilight? Your horn is floppy and covered with blue spots."
"Yes, yes it is," Twilight agreed nonchalantly.
"I got it! Twilight 'Flopple'! How's that for a good nickname?"
Twilight sighed. "Come on Spike, just let it go. I didn't really mean you weren't clever with-" she paused to note Spike was back in his journalist outfit.
"Spike? What are you doing?"
"Just getting ready for my role in the plan."
"Spike, I didn't give you a role."
"Exactly!" Spike put his claws on his hips. "You never include me in your crazy plans that just might work! I can be just as useful outside the library you know. Which is why I have taken it upon me to reestablish myself as Trixie's ghost writer! Every last detail of today's glorious epic return will be jolted down, word for word, by yours truly."
Twilight gave a giggle as Tangerine and Babs cocked their heads. "What'chu talkin' about Spike?" "Miss Twilight, what does he mean by epic return? Is Miss Trixie doing something today?"
"Oh, you'll find out soon enough," Twilight said with a wink as she saw an orange and a gray earthpony pair coming down the street. "Everything set Auntie? Octavia?"
Octavia nodded. "Blossomforth is driving it here as we speak. Any moment now."
"Mother? What is going to happen any moment?"
Sherbet leaned down to give her daughter a playful bop on the nose. "It's a surprise my little sweet rind, and it's one I think you're going to like."
Before Tangerine could ask further, a nudge from Babs alerted her they were at the front of the line now. "Come on! We're next!"
"Hey there squirts," Honey greeted. "Who do I make this out to?"
"Babs Seed and Tangerine Orange." The filly blew her forelock away as she pushed her copy up onto the table.
"The Ivory Idol, huh? Nice pick, that was one of my better outings."
"Ooh! ooh! Is there an opening for a junior adventurer on your next quest?" Babs asked. "Cause if there is, I could be your next Scootaround!"
Honey's face soured for a moment. "Please don't mention that little troublemaker. You definitely don't want to be her."
"Hmm? Why not?" Tangerine asked.
"Don't get me wrong, she's a good foal and all, even saved my hide a few times, but..." Honey looked to the book she signed and then passed it back. "Let's just say you need my personal extended edition to know everything that went down on that island." She rested her cheek on a hoof, muttering to herself. "Darn filly was way too impulsive for her own good..."
"AAAAAAAAHHH!!"
Everypony turned to see two colts racing down the street towards them. The ground shook moments later as a large piece of Luna's night in the shape of a bear came roaring from behind.
*ROOOOOOOAAAAAR*
"Wow! You really went all out on the details," Twilight mentioned to her two friends. "It looks so authentic and lifelike, I'll bet the ponies won't even need me to rile them up."
Octavia and Orange Sherbet just stared at the Ursa, eyes wide and pupils shrunk.
"Alright Daring, showtime!" Twilight broke out of the huddled whisper to stand on top of the table, arching her back and holding her front hooves to her cheeks. "Oh no!" she enunciated. "It's an Ursa Major! And it's rampaging out of control!"
As expected, the crowd dispersed, filling the air with loud screams. The extra noise only seemed to annoy the astral beast further, as it swiped aimlessly around, knocking a few carts aside
Twilight pulled her hoof up to her horn in an ailing and distressed pose. "Woe be to our fair city! If only I could use my magic to save us!"
"Um...Twilight?..." Sherbet finally found her voice.
Meanwhile, Honey stuck her head under the table's curtains. "*psssst* Trixie! That's your cue!"
Blue smoke erupted from the booth, covering the area all around. From the mystic blue mist, an azure unicorn materialized, her starry cape billowing in the breeze. "Fear not, citizens of Manehattan! And fear not, Twilight Sparkle! There is still one unicorn with the magic know how to deal with this beast!" She whirled around to face her captive audience, who stared in stunned silence. "That's right! The Great and Powerful Trrrrrixie...has returned!!"
"A hush falls over the crowd, could there be a ray of hope after all? In the form of their very own Trixie?" Spike scribbled down.
"Trixie! No, I mean, Great and Powerful Trixie! Thank Celestia you're here!" Twilight cheered. "We're powerless to stop this unfathomable menace! Please! Help us! Only you can prevent Manehattan from becoming a smoldering ruin now! You're our only hope!"
"Twilight..." Octavia's whisper seemed to have a note of urgency in it.
"Yeah! That'sth right!" Specs chimed in from behind the row of upturned flowerpots he and Cutup had ducked under. "The Great and Powerful Trixie can beat thisth thing! Justh like sthe did in Hoofington!"
"Give it to that Ursa Major good, Great and Powerful Trixie!" Cutup echoed his friend's encouragement. "Just like when the Fillytasic Four turned Professor Calamity into an inert hunk of metal!"
Trixie marched squarely up to the Ursa, staring it right in the eyes as she puffed out her chest. "Now see here, you monstrous brute from the untamed beyond! You think you can just waltz in here, knocking over whatever you please, harming anypony unfortunate enough to tread beneath your paws? Well think again! This is still Trixie's town, and these are still Trixie's ponies! And so long as she's here, the Great and Powerful Trixie will not let it or them fall prey to any Ursa!"
With a sly grin, she proceeded to pick up some nearby rubble and pelt the Ursa's face with debris. "Have at you, fiend!"
The Ursa roared again in discomfort. It slammed its paw at Trixie, who nimbly galloped aside.
"That's it Blossomforth," Twilight said to herself. "We don't want to make it look too one-sided."
"Twilight!" both Octavia and Sherbet hissed.
Trixie summoned up a few tiny thunderclouds and proceeded to fire lightning bolts from them. "And have a few of these!" She took off her hat waved her hoof over it, prestidigitating a flurry of bottle rockets. The Ursa roared in pain as the series of mini-explosions decorated themselves over its starry hide.
"And she gives it a left! And a right! Ooh! And a cross counter with the cabbage cart!" Spike narrated over his wordpad. Cheers began to grow from the spectators, encouraging the mare that was fending off the attacking beast.
"Still haven't had enough? Well then, get ready for the finisher! Trixie's super powerful ultimate spell combo, the-" *WHACK*
The large swiping paw finally caught Trixie in her monologue, sending her crashing into a cart of tomatoes.
Dead silence reigned, and not a soul stirred...until the constellation goliath roared again.
"Hey!" Twilight bounded right in front of the behemoth and shouted right up into its face. "What's the big deal, Blossomforth?! That wasn't part of the plan!"
"Twilight!" Her businessmare friend finally managed to raise her voice loud and sharp enough to catch her attention. "Blossomforth can't hear you in there!"
Twilight was befuddled. "What? Why not?"
Octavia pointed down the other direction of the street, fear evident in her face. "Because Blossomforth...is in there."
A wooden starry painted framework of a bear came slowly rolling up the lane. A tiny feedback screeched from its mouth as its arms stiffly moved from side to side.
"RAWR! *giggle* RAWR! RAAAAWR! RAAAAaaaaaaawwwwwrrrr..." The other bear grew silent and still as it stopped, face to face with its more realistic counterpart.
Twilight suddenly felt a growing pit in her stomach and a chill creep up her spine. "Wait a minute...if...that's our float..." Her neck creakily turned. "That would make this..."
The mighty bear swung its clawed paw at the large wooden newcomer, decapitating it in one strike, leaving behind a white, freckled pegasus squatting upon the open neck, a microphone clutched in her trembling hooves. "Rawr?"
The beast answered in return. *RAAAAAAAAWWWR*
"A REAL URSA!!" Twilight screamed at the top of her lungs!
Blossomforth abandoned float just in time to avoid being upturned with it as the Ursa heaved it deep into the streets, where it crashed against a large building, sending wreckage raining everywhere. In a matter of seconds, the screams of terror resumed and redoubled as a real danger suddenly became self-evident.
Amongst the scrambling of hooves to get away, Tangerine was bumped by a larger pony and stumbled to the ground, where the piece of paper she held flew from her hooves. "Oh no! My backdoor pass!" Hopping back on her hooves, she scrambled after the prized slip.
"Tangerine, look out!" cried Babs.
But it was too late. As the little Manehattanette bent down to pick up where her pass fell, a large blue paw picked her up. Fun fact, a filly's scream can actually exceed the decibels of an Ursa's roar when properly motivated.
Orange Sherbet looked to the nightmare unfolding before her very eyes in abject terror. "MY BABY!!" she screeched.
"Twilight! Do something!" Spike tugged at his infallible unicorn guardian legs like no tomorrow.
"Ah-ah-I'll try!" Twilight scrunched her face, an aura started to flicker around her horn.
But all that came out was a rather flatulent sound. Normally, the baby dragon would take this moment to fall laughing head over heels, but this was certainly not the time to chuckle at a magical faux pas.
"It's no good!" Twilight cried. "I'm still under the effects of the poison joke, I'm completely without magic!"
The world darkened before her as the looming shadow of the great star bear enveloped her. She turned to face the Ursa, their noses literally touching. A wave of hot breath poured over the disabled unicorn as her body seized up. Her mind went blank as all she could do was give an awkwardly big smile drenched in cold sweat.
And just like that, the Ursa now had two hostages in its paw.
"Let Twilight go you overgrown bag of fur!" Spike sprayed the captor's face with a burst of green fire. The Ursa blinked at its singed muzzle, then roared with such force, the little dragon went sailing back fifty hooves.
Octavia quickly fished him out of the busted pickle barrel he landed in. "I have no idea why I thought that would work," he muttered in a daze.
"In order to achieve anything you must be brave enough to fail." Octavia gave him a reassuring squeeze before placing him on her back. "I find what you did was admirable."
A goofy grin started to spread over the little dragon's face. "I think I know why I did it now..." he muttered to himself.
Trixie crawled out from the mess of produce in a punchdrunk trance. "Unn...anypony get the license plate of that chariot?"
She regained her senses by bumping into the severed head of their float. "Ahh!" She jumped back in surprise at the gruesome display that stared back at her with empty eyes, then noticed the other Ursa in the streets as it clawed the windows of a nearby motel. "Wait...what? Two Ursas? What's going on here?"
"Long story short, second one's real, plan's up in smoke, the city's in real danger now, and we got two mares in distress that need prying out of a mad bear's grip." Honey stripped off her fake cast and took off like a rocket. "It's go time!"
She whizzed around the falling glass shards and broken bricks like a goshawk. Swerving under the Ursa's legs, she looped around from behind a blind spot and peeked over the paw that held two ponies in its closed grasp. "Hang on girls, I'm getting you out of there right now!" She reached for one of Twilight's outstretched hooves and started to heave.
"Miss Daring, watch out!"
"Huh?" Honey reacted to Tangerine's warning just a moment too late. With a sudden spasm of movement, the Ursa swung the backside of its paw against the side of another apartment complex. It removed said paw to leave behind a large impact crater, with a tan and ashen gray swatted fly by the name of Honey Do in the center. Peeling off and falling to the ground, the final blow came for her in the form of a billboard that was knocked off the top of the building and followed her*.
Blossomforth, Trixie, Orange Sherbet, Octavia and Spike immediately rushed over to dig her out of the rubble.
"Okay...now I need a real cast..." she groaned with a slur, spitting out a few pieces of cement.
"Oh, this is bad! This is bad, bad, bad!" Spike spoke in a panic. "Twilight's powerless, Daring's down for the count, and to top it off, I'm out of notepad paper!"
Meanwhile, the Ursa's lumbering trail of destruction had reached the base of the Equine's Gait Building. Rearing up, the bear easily grasped the sides of the monumental skyscraper, and began to climb. The denizens of Manehattan could only gawk at a safe distance at scene before them, with varying degrees of worry and fear.
"Uh, why is it climbing the tower?" "Dunno, but for some reason I can't place my hoof on, it seems fitting and expected somehow." "Omigosh! Look! In its paw! There're a pair of ponies trapped in its grasp!" "This...this is it! This is the end! Manehattan is doomed! The horror! The horror!"
Everypony looked at Blossomforth strangely as she lay on the ground, playing dead. Opening an eye, she got back to her feet, smiling sheepishly. "Sorry, took a page from my penpal Lily there for a moment."
"I am not about to let the flower of my life become giant bear food! I will throw myself at the fiend and die trying to gouge its eyes out before I do!" Sherbet snapped with motherly indignation. She yanked Trixie forward by the neck. "Now come on! You must have some idea of what that thing's weakness is if you could beat one before, even if it was made up!"
Trixie just shook her head. "I-I don't! I can't! I'm sorry girls, I really wish that story wasn't a lie, but Twilight was right. There is no way to defeat an Ursa Major! I mean, just look at the size of that thing, and how violently it's rampaging!"
"Technically..." Twilight shouted over the din and across the increasing altitude in the Ursa's grip. "This isn't an Ursa Major...Woooah! This is an Ursa Minor, a baby! And it's not rampaging, it's probably just cranky because somepony woke it up from it's nap!"
"That's a baby?!" everypony chorused.
"I'd sure hate to see what an adult looks like then," Honey remarked.
"So what is she suggesting we do, rock it back to sleep?" Spike joked.
Trixie's eyes lit up at the comment. "That's it! We'll put it back to sleep!"
"Huh? I was kidding! How are we going put something that big to sleep?" the little dragon asked.
Trixie turned to Octavia. "Octavia, you know a lullaby or two on your cello, correct?"
"Yes..." Octavia looked upward towards the astral beast in the distance that dwarfed the former by at least fifty times. "But I doubt that music alone will soothe this savage beast."
"Yeah, no way she's going to able to play long enough before that cranky cub knocks her off the ledge," Honey affirmed.
"Which is exactly why Trixie says we're all putting it to sleep, so let her finish!" She switched to Blossomforth. "Do you know any plants that produce narcotic powders?"
Blossomforth answered hesitantly. "Uh...yeah, the botanical gardens keep a ton in stock. They grow a lot of it for the pharmaceutical companies."
"Go there and grab as much of the stuff you can, pack it in a huge sack, and bring it back here on the double!"
"What? But...uh...I can't buy those flowers without a proper ID. It's about some safety rule the gardens have about substance abuse or something-"
"Just go!"
Blossomforth scrambled towards the gardens as fast as her wings took take without another moment's notice. "Yes Miss Trixie, at once Miss Trixie, Ma'am!"
Trixie then addressed Orange Sherbet. "Auntie Sherbet, get your employees together and gather every mattress, pillow, and cushion in the city and haul them back here, got it?"
The orange mare gave a quick nod, but then pulled the unicorn in close. "Just so you know," she whispered in a deathly silent tone, "If my little Tangerine gets so much as a scraped knee from your scheme, that Ursa is going to be the least of your worries!"
The showmare backed up against her cellist friend, who quipped in return as the businessmare galloped off. "Tartaurus hath no fury like a mother scorned."
Clearing her throat with regained composure, Trixie turned to the final mare of the group. "Daring, do your wings still work?"
The tan pegasus flexed her feathered appendages for a moment. "Yup, nothing broken," she answered.
"Good, get the biggest bottle you can find, fly to the nearest creamery in the city, and bring it back filled to the brim with whole milk. Not 1% or half and half, it needs whole milk!"
"Trixie, I think I can see where you're going with this, but you're still missing one underlying fact." Honey hoofmotioned her slowly emphasized words. "None of us are even going to be able to get close to that 'baby' without it pounding us into horsemeat!"
"Leave that to Trixie," the magician clearly stated. Then proceeded to walk at a steady pace towards the Equine's Gait building. "Come along Octavia, Spike. We've got a long elevator ride ahead of us."
With one paw clutching the spire at the tippity top of the tallest building in Manehattan, and the other holding its two captives, the Ursa Minor roared an echoing cry that could be heard for miles around.
"Twilight..." Tangerine clutched her only companion's mane tightly, pulling it until it hurt. "I'm scared..."
"I...I..." Twilight tried to be the bigger mare for the sake of the filly, but she just couldn't quell her nerves enough. "I'm scared too Tangerine. I never thought it would end this way."
*Ding*
The three heads gazed down at the balcony doors that opened for a gray earth pony with a large cello on her back, a small purple and green dragon, and a starry caped azure unicorn. "Tis not the end Twilight Sparkle! Not while the Great and Powerful Trixie draws breath!"
The Ursa Minor growled at the newcomers, ready to snap its jaws at them.
"Octavia, start playing, now," Trixie commanded in a low whisper.
Octavia placed her cello in an upright position and began to strum a calming sonnet. As expected though, the bear was too incensed at the moment to listen.
"Well, this is proving to be effective," Spike half snarked, half worried to Trixie. "So how're you going to keep it from decorating the sidewalk with us?"
"Trixie is going to do what Trixie does best," she replied with a gulp. "Catch an audience's attention."
She hopped over to the opposite end of the balcony, flashing sparks at the Ursa's eyes. "Over here, baby bear! Trixie's not done with you yet!"
Irritated, the Ursa craned its head away from the playing musician and attempted to smash the magician. Its paw connected with the body, destroying it in a puff of smoke. There, from the settling blue dust, emerged six more of the same mare.
"Come on, find the real Trixie, win fifty bits!" they simultaneously chorused. The guessing game went on for several minutes with no success on the Ursa's end. Then, the cub did something she didn't expect, it huffed a mighty inhale and blew. A blast of air melted the copies away and sent the real deal sprawling against the wall.
Before she could recover, Trixie found herself pinned by the Ursa's free claw. Growling deeply, the Ursa leaned in. Sweating bullets, Trixie lit her horn again. A bouquet of flowers shot from her hoof and right into the Ursa's nostril.
*Ah..ahh...ACKPHEW*
The Ursa Minor leaned back, allowing Trixie just enough room to wiggle out. However, she then saw to her horror that the beast was starting to tip back a little too much. Eyes darting every which way, she finally rested them at some maintenance cables next to the emergency fire escape. Horn glowing again, the magician played the piper to the coil of thick wires as it uncurled itself, slithered over to the edge, and tethered the back of the Ursa's neck, barely preventing a freefall by split seconds.
"Yes!" Trixie breathed a sigh of relief.
The Ursa Minor bounced back to its grip on the ledge, grabbing Trixie in the process.
"No..." she uttered as she joined the same predicament her two rescuees in the other paw faced.
The Ursa Minor bellowed its triumph grouchily.
"Sorry Twilight," Trixie quietly moped. "Looks like Trixie came up short when it really counted yet again."
"It was brave of you to try, Trixie," Twilight called from the other end. "And...and if this is it for us, I just want you to know, even if no one ever remembers you as a hero, you'll always be mine."
"Mine too," Tangerine squeaked.
But as they closed their eyes, waiting for the Ursa's mercy to run out, the drone of a nose dive reached their ears. Blossomforth appeared from out of the clouds, pumping her wings as hard as she could, huge sack almost as big as herself grasped in her hooves.
Trixie's head immediately perked up with renewed vigor. "Just in time! Blossomforth, pour it out, now!" She then shot a commanding glance to Twilight and Tangerine. "Deep breath, and do not exhale!"
The captured trio took a huge gulp of air as the white pegasus hovered just above the Ursa's reach. Unzipping the slit in her pouch, she circled around her target, letting loose a steady rain of golden sand-like powder.
The Ursa Minor swung vainly at it's out of reach focus. After five or six swings however, it's movements began to slow. *Rrrraaaa-aaaaawwwwn*
It blinked, trying a bit to wipe the sleepy powder from its eyes. Then Honey arrived on the scene, landing on the roof with three full water coolers of milk on her back. "Oh great, I leave for five minutes and now you need saving."
"Minor hiccup," Trixie called back. "Did you remember to warm it up?"
"Uhhhh..." Honey snagged Spike by the waist and gave a quick yank of the tail. Green flames washed over the containers for a few split seconds. "Check!"
"Give some warning next time," the little purple dragon said as he fanned his tongue. "Egg and cheese breakfast burritos do not taste better coming back up."
Trixie levitated up the large milk bottles one at a time to the Ursa Minor's mouth. The cub, feeling the soothing warmth of a familiar beverage on its tongue, willingly downed all three. By now, the music had finally settled in its ears, and the cub was beginning to nod to the calming sounds, its growl diminishing into a purr of content.
"And now, the final blow," Trixie uttered under her breath. With a glow of her horn, the surrounding air in the sky above them switched to a midnight starry sky. Glowing stars and planets descended and slowly spun around the Ursa Minor to make a massive majestic mobile, which the cub playfully pawed at several times before its eyes shut for the final time today.
*Rrrrmmmm....zzzzzzzznnnorrrrre* *snap*
The makeshift tether gave way as the Ursa Minor relaxed its legs, releasing all foothold on the building. Everypony gasped as down, down, down went the cub and its three captives.
Several trucks pulled to a screeching stop around the Equine's Gait building. Orange Sherbet, along with several of her stronghoof cargo workers, exited the driver's side and bucked the holding doors open to let an avalanche of pillows and mattresses pile up in a mini mountain at the building's base.
They all jumped away just in time for the Ursa Minor to make contact with the newly formed crash pad. Feathers and cotton went flying everywhere. And when the white cleared, the Ursa Minor could be seen lying backside on a layer of queen sized beds, with two unicorn mares and a earth pony filly clutching each other with eyes closed sitting on its raising and falling belly.
Twilight was the first to peek an eye open. "We're alive?"
"Way to go Trixie!" Honey cheered as she and Blossomforth descended to ground level with Spike and Octavia in tow. "You did it!"
The gathering crowd began to cheer in a frenzy.
"SSSSHHHHHHHHHH!!" Each of the Manehattan six raised a hoof to their lips. "The baby's sleeping!"
An entire brass collection played fanfares later in the afternoon after the slumbering child was hauled back to its habitat at the Central Park zoo. Once again, Mayor Tux marched on up to his platform on city hall, where Trixie stood in a shower of confetti.
"Trixie Lulamoon, you have once again saved our fair city from utter catastrophe! And for that, I speak for everypony in this crowd when I offer you our utmost thanks and apologies."
The ponies continued to go ballistic as a small group of mares and dragon sat backstage, watching from behind the curtains at the showmare bowing again and again. "Anypony else getting a sense of déjà-vu?" Honey sarcastically remarked.
Twilight just shook her head. "It's what we wanted anyways. In fact, Spike, take a letter."
Dear Princess Celestia,
Today I learned that friends don't always agree with each other. Everypony is different, and those differences can sometimes make you see a pony in the wrong way. Sometimes, when you see what you think is a bad habit, and you try to change it without asking permission or talking it through first, you might actually end up making it worse or hurting the friend you wanted to help...a lot. And being hurt...is so much more painful when it comes from a friend. To quote another friend who quoted another pony, 'the road to Tartaurus is paved with good intentions'.
Damaging a friendship is easy, but fixing it is so much more harder. But if you're truly friends, if you truly trust each other, you'll be able to see past all the pain, sadness and anger, even if it takes awhile, and realize none of it was on purpose.
What's more, I've also learned something very important, not as a friend, but as a pony in general. At some point in all our lives, we ask ourselves many common questions. For the past few weeks, one such question like has been the topic of conversation for me and many ponies in Manehattan. What is it, that makes a hero...a hero? Strength? Ability? Virtue? Fame? The events leading up to this lesson have made me realize something. There is no true answer for a question like that. A hero, a real hero, is not a pony nor a concept that can be defined solely by one set of ideals. A hero, perhaps in the most broadest of sense, is just somepony you look up to. Whether it's saving a city from a giant bear, or just standing next to a pony when she's lonely, a hero is somepony who does things that inspire you to be a better pony than you already are.
In that way, everypony needs a hero, just like how everypony needs a friend. So if I see a friend who's maybe too boastful, too selfish, or maybe even ditzy at times, who am I to say he or she isn't a hero to somepony else who does? Everypony has their faults, learning to see past them and take a more 'moderate' approach to addressing them is just another quality that defines a friend.
Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle
"So to commemorate your brave heroics in the face of adversity, we would be honored to engrave your name into our city's hall of recognition!" Mayor Tux held out a golden plaque with inscribed words 'The Great and Powerful Trixie'. "May your legacy be remembered for generations to come in Manehattan!"
The audience stamped their hooves in approval. "Trixie! Trixie! Trixie! Trixie!"
“Yes! Yes, celebrate ponies of Manehattan! For the Great and Powerful Trixie has saved the city all by herself! She truly is the greatest equine who has ever lived!” She then caught a glimpse of the imploring eyes of a certain orange, green maned filly. "*Ahem* That is-" She got back down on all fours, a bit of a sheepish grin on her face. "She only did what any other pony would've tried, given the circumstances. And...perhaps she had...a little help this time."
With a wink of her horn, he curtains pulled back to reveal her five mares and dragon, caught in a stunned surprise as she stepped to the side. "So let's give a warm round of applause to Trixie's wonderful partners in the making! As their names-" her horn zapped her plaque to show six new names under hers. "-shall be immortalized in the Manehattan hall of fame with her!"
A spotlight flashed on top of the five ponies and dragon, as well as a few camera bulbs. They all gave an awkward, embarrassed smile at the sudden wave of adoration that overwhelmed them. But gradually their grins became more genuine as the sudden shock wore off, and they bowed/waved side-by-side Trixie.
"Spike, make an amendment."
P.S. While it's true you shouldn't try and showoff your talents every chance you get, having the spotlight shine on you every so often is actually a pretty good feeling, especially when you're sharing it.
In the town of Neigh Orleans, close to the outskirts where no traffic congested the road just off the shore, stood a modest hospital. Upstairs, on the second floor among one of the many rooms, a dark navy blue occupant lay upon one of the bedspreads. His eyes were closed in an seemingly eternal slumber, the only movement showing he was still alive was the slight rising and falling of his chest and the steady blip of the vital monitor strapped to his fetlock.
The door to the patient's room slid open, and in quietly walked a younger azure mare, who stopped at the side of his bed, looking down to his face for several silence moments.
"Hello master," she finally said. "It's been awhile."
Another tense moment of silence passed before she spoke again.
"So...another year has gone by hasn't it? This particular one has been a rather wild and action packed one for me, you know? I'm living in Manehattan now, yes, living. I know, it's rather unorthodox for a magician of my age to start planting roots, but what can I say? Everypony has a favorite place they want to be. If I recall, you were particularly partial to our performances in Whinnychester."
She gave a rub of her chin. "Let's see, what else? Oh, did you know we have two Princesses now? Apparently Princess Celestia had a long lost little sister who's been trapped in the moon this whole time because she went all evil and jealous on her. She broke out just a few months ago. Oh, don't worry, she's not evil anymore, I helped cured her. Oh yes, that's another thing. I'm the bearer of the Element of Laughter now. It's a pretty big deal if you're wondering..."
She trailed off. Words seemed to fail her as she racked her brain for something more to say. "You know..." she started at last. "I'm still taking care of the cape and hat you left me." She paused again. "Ten years...I'm still chugging along, making my name heard. Still haven't gotten my first movie deal yet but...well you know how the ponies in Applewood are."
She then magicked up a tiny plate with a lone cupcake. "Anyways, happy birthday. It's your usual favorite, Black Forest."
Then Trixie took a step back, placing the plate on the small desk tray next to the cot, and stood there in somber silence.
"I'm sure he's proud of you."
Trixie turned to the lavender unicorn stepping next to her. "Is there really any doubt?" she softly spoke with a smile. She looked back to the comatose stallion. "Master, there're some ponies I'd like to introduce you to. This is Twilight Sparkle, Octavia Melody, Blossomforth, 'Auntie' Orange Sherbet, Honey Do-"
"He can call me Daring," the tan pegasus mentioned.
"-and Spike." She breathed in a deep sigh before continuing. "These...are my friends."
"Are we really doing this?" Spike whispered into Twilight's ear from on top of her back.
"Recent studies have shown that ponies in catatonic states are still sensually active and aware of their surroundings to a degree, so it's not like we're talking to a brick wall," she whispered back. She then approached the sleeping unicorn. "It's a pleasure to meet you, I'm Twilight Sparkle. I've really enjoyed your work and...and I just want to say I'm honored to be one of Trixie's friends. She's so important to me...to us all."
"You know, I think I remember one of his shows back in Fillydelphia, back when I was a filly," the other pegasus of the group said. "He always used irises in his tricks if I recall."
"They were his favorite flower," Trixie explained. "He always told me they represented passion in the world of flowers."
"They're also pretty darn tasty," Honey chipped in.
Trixie and Blossomforth looked to Honey with a deadpan stare. "You get that one, but only because it's true," the azure unicorn said with a wry smile.
She then looked back to the bed. "I was there, you know. The last night he was just barely awake, they finally let me in. He mustered up his last remaining shred of consciousness to tell me one last thing."
Curious, Twilight edged her head closer. "What was it?"
"You're the daughter I never had, never give up your dreams, standard pep talk, yadda yadda yadda. You'd think he was dying with how melodramatic and sappy he was starting to act." Trixie then felt the linoleum around the floor a little with her hoof. "But there was one thing that stood out in what he said.
The life of a magician is a long and lonely road, and few survive it for as long as I've had. I owe much of my later years to you in that part. Therefore, I bequeath this last request to my apprentice turned master. Go out into the world, and make some friends. Only then will you be able to truly call yourself 'The Great and Powerful Trixie'."
Trixie took off her hat to look into it for a moment. "Ten years I've spent visiting this room, never quite understanding just what those words meant. This year I do though." She put it back on and looked to the others. "Because I'm not the only one here this time."
Twilight nuzzled Trixie close to her. "You'll never have to be again. From now on, we'll come with you every year, until he awakes up. He will wake up someday. I just know he will. And we'll all be there with you to welcome him back when he does."
Everypony shared in the hug, then a certain dragon's tummy growled.
"Um, I know it's his birthday and all, but...you'd think he'd mind if I took that cupcake?" Spike asked with a twiddling of his index fingers. "It's not like he's really going to eat it, right?"
"I think we're all overdue for some lunch," Sherbet said in return. "Come on, let's head into town a grab a bite before taking the next bus back. My treat."
"I hear their specialty gumbos are to die for," Octavia conversed as they all proceeded to exit the cemetery.
Trixie lingered behind for just a moment to look upon her mentor one last time.
"Thanks for everything," she whispered to the aged stallion. "And you were right. Now I really am...The Great and Powerful Trixie."
And she scurried off to catch up with her friends, leaving the clean white room with nothing but the slow beep of the monitor. If somepony was in there room at that moment, and looked very hard, they would be able to see perhaps the faintest of movements from the edge of the unconscious illusionist's mouth, as it turned the tiniest bit upwards, breathing out of faintest of a happy sigh.
