“Very well!” the unicorn barked, causing Twilight to flinch across the table and nearly dropping her early morning coffee. She gaudily brushed a lock of her perfect mane (she was Trixie, of course it was perfect) from her face and slammed her hooves back onto the table for emphasis. “The Great and Powerful Trixie accepts your challenge!”

“Kindly stop doing that,” Twilight sipped her strong brew without a hint of emotion. “You are going to wind up leaving hoof marks on my table.”

“And the hoof marks shall learn to fear the name of Trixie!” the obviously magnificent Trixie crowed, thrusting a hoof into the air. “… Right after you explain to Trixie exactly how this works, again. Not that Trixie needs confirmation, of course,” she rolled her eyes sarcastically. Imagine, the Great and Powerful Trixie not automatically having the required information to be successful. As if.

“For the fourth time,” Twilight deadpanned, slowly setting down her cup of coffee with a clink! “It’s just a simple IQ test. The placement will assist in proper job placement, which you will likely find more helpful with –”

“Yes, yes,” Trixie replied drolly, inspecting the bottom of her hoof in boredom. Twilight’s eye began twitching, which was probably because of the enormous amounts of caffeine she was imbibing. That was definitely it. “The Great and Powerful Trixie shall pass your little test, Twilight Sparkle. Now that Trixie has returned with a humility and humbleness the likes of which have never been seen before, Trixie has all advantages!”

She cackled manically, throwing her cape over her shoulder of visual prominence and threw a flurry of vibrantly cerulean and lime sparks into the air.

Twilight was blatantly unamused.

“Actually, forget the paperwork,” Twilight stood crankily, and Trixie panicked.

“No, wait!” she pleaded desperately, every hint of pride leaving her as the threat of having nopony to pay attention to her arose once more. “The Great and Powerful Trixie cant totally be more humble, Trixie swears!”

“Trixie speaks in the third person far too often,” Twilight mumbled under her breath, but eventually let out a heavy sigh and eyed the mare’s star and moon speckled silk socks sitting forlornly on the edge of the table. Twilight had no idea what her attachment to them was for, but since she had gotten them from a ‘mysterious fan’, she had rarely taken them off. It had been difficult enough to get her to part with them long enough for the morning… and they sat directly over the large stack of paperwork that Trixie was supposed to have been doing for the past half hour, coincidentally.

“No, really, forget the paperwork,” Twilight started lowly, the gears turning. “You don’t have to fill anything out at all.”

“I don’t?” Trixie perked up immediately, promptly forgetting that she always spoke in the third person.

That was just how Trixie rolled.

“No, you don’t,” Twilight shook her head with a pleasant little smile. A miniscule violet flash danced momentarily atop her horn as she touched it carefully to the silk socks, and she was silent for a full five seconds.

Twilight then dusted her hooves with a satisfactory smile before she snatched up the pencils that Trixie had obviously not been using, and said “There. All done.”

“Done with what?” Trixie leaned over the table curiously to peer at the paperwork as Twilight began walking away from her. “Doesn’t Trixie need those pencils for the entry exam?”

“It is a standardized intelligence quotient – never mind,” the purple mare laughed suddenly as she pried open the front door. “You don’t need them! You just need your socks.”

“My-my present.”

“Your socks, yes,” Twilight beamed cheerily, slowly backing out the door. “I’ll come back in about thirty minutes to find out how your test went!”

And with that, Trixie was left completely alone (and a little confused) sitting at Twilight Sparkle’s kitchen table.

She rapped her hooves against the wood a couple of times, puffing her cheeks and letting out a long breath. Carefully holding her favorite socks, Trixie peered over the still blank paperwork and thought deeply.

Obviously, it was some kind of trick question.

“Come on, figure it out, genius.”

Trixie promptly dropped one of the socks, as it had been the one speaking to her.

“Egad!” Trixie gasped, scooting back as far in her wooden chair as she could without falling over.

“Brilliant,” the soft sock turned on the spot, lifting it’s brim and flapping it like a mouth as the reedy voice belted out at her again. “Egad. I’m a little surprised that you actually have the capacity to rise above monosyllabic blitherings.”

“You – can’t – but – I don’t – sock…!”

“I take that back,” the sock quipped bitterly. “You’re a doddering moron.”

“Take that back, too!” Trixie bellowed angrily at the sock, jamming a hoof at – well, she couldn’t call it the face. After all, the sock had no face. So, she pointed it at the sock’s pointed and slightly floppy tip.

But she was very menacing in doing so.

“Or what?” the sock spat back in a snarky tone. “You’ll wear me? I’m shocked that you can even manage to breathe without constant instructions.”

“Enough!” she tipped over her chair in her rage, standing at her full height and towering over the talkative sock. Unfortunately, Trixie could not actually tell if the sock was in any way intimidated, so she pretended that it was. She momentarily felt a little silly for pretending that the sock was intimidated of her.

Then again, she felt much more silly being insulted by a quarter of her own socks.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the sock apologized without a single hint of conviction. “I’ll try to speak more slowly for you.”

“Raaaraaraaaagh!”

“Down, Fido!” the comfortable antagonist shouted over her scream of frustration. “Argh! Fire bad, fire bad! Frickin’ neanderquine.”

With one swift movement, Trixie batted the unruly sock through the air with all her might.

All her might was apparently not enough to knock the silk sock much more than a few feet away, as it was not very aerodynamic. This turn of events only served to fuel Trixie’s righteous anger.

“Help! Help!” the sock screamed in terror as Trixie crashed into it, making a mad scrabble for the sock’s ‘mouth’ to silence it. “I’m a victim of mare-on-sock hate crime! It’s domestic abuse! Profiling!”

“Stop talking!” Trixie viciously throttled the soft sock, stars literally beginning to dance before her eyes from the sheer force of her shaking. At least the inlaid stars on the sock looked terrified, which was close enough. “Stop it right now!”

“PROFILING, I TELL YOU! PROFILING!”

“I don’t know,” Spike whispered, his head just below Pinkie Pie’s elbow. “I still say it looks like you messed up pretty badly.”

“Of course not, Spike,” Twilight whispered back satisfactorily, smug grin etching onto her lips as Rainbow Dash desperately struggled to stifle her snickers beside her in the bush adjacent to the library window. “Just because we can’t hear what’s going on inside her head doesn’t mean that the spell didn’t work.”

Spike watched in mild fascination as yet another number of books were coldly thrown to the floor, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or frown. It was clear that Twilight was enjoying the show much more than he was, which seemed rather strange, considering what her books were going through.

“Aren’t you even a little mad about the mess she’s making?” Spike muttered through his teeth as Trixie began kicking savagely at her floppy sock, which had somehow managed to knock her onto her back and into a pile of books.

“Oh, a little,” Twilight nodded with a hearty chuckle, eyes never leaving the desperately struggling unicorn, who strained to pull the sock from her chin.

“Then how come you’re laughing?”

“Because I’m going to make her clean it up, next.”

Spike suddenly found the situation much funnier.

“True about that head bit,” Applejack nodded solemnly, more disturbed by the violent display of aggression just a few feet away (and separated by such a thin sheet of glass) than anything else. “But you might still be wrong. She could just be completely bananas.”

“I second the motion,” Rarity said, far more interested in watching Trixie hatefully swing the sock crashing into bookshelf after bookshelf with profanity laden shouts. “Although my bets are still on the sock. What about you, Pinkie? Pinkie Pie?”

Pinkie Pie could not answer properly, as her other hoof was stuffed far too deeply inside her mouth to vainly suppress the endless stream of hysterical giggles.

“Doubling my bets on the sock, then.”

Trixie’s wail of anguish rang out loudly enough to be heard from at least half a block away.

“Tripling. Tripling my bets on the sock.”

Author's Notes:

This was a request.
I don't know why.