Spike, who had been transported backstage, ran and shoved Trixie out of the way as the 500 pound motorcycle came crashing to the floor and the masked magician disappeared in a puff of smoke.

“What was that?” Trixie asked.

“It looked like Jack Pot,” Spike said, “or his ghost.”

“You really think it was my father’s ghost?” Trixie asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“Well, thank you,” she said. “You saved my... life...”

“It’s been a long time, Trixie,” he said at last.

“It can’t be! Spike!? Is that you?”

“You remember me?”

“Remember? How could I forget?”

Trixie was convinced that it was Spike, but she performed a test to be sure: she reached into his ear and pulled out an egg. Everyone gasped at the display. Then they applauded when she cracked the egg and a white dove flew out of it.

“It is you!” she cried, throwing her arms around him in a tight embrace. “It really is you! I have never been able to do that trick with anyone else!”

“Oh, Trixie, it’s so good to see you!” Spike told her.

“I can’t believe you’re really here!” she replied.

“Trixie, you know this guy?” one of the street magicians asked.

“This handsome man is my former assistant, Spike Drake!” she replied.

“Drake?” another illusionist asked. “The same kid who turned a Bentley into a Lamborghini?”

“The guy who survived walking through the spinning blades of a giant industrial turbo fan?”

“The man that caught a bullet... with his teeth?”

“None other,” Trixie replied.

“I don’t believe it!” many of them shouted.

“Trixie, hand me that bottle of wine and that spool of thread,” Spike said.

“Spike, you don’t mean...” she began.

“Mm-hmm,” he said with a nod. “We are going to convert these nonbelievers!”

Trixie handed Spike the spool of red thread and he pulled out a sewing needle that had been stuck through it. He dropped the needle into a nearby wine glass and he topped it off with a little vino. He wiped the glass on the napkin and offered the glass to Trixie.

She took the glass, drank from it, and swallowed the wine. Then, Spike picked up the spool and unraveled a length of it. He broke it off and proceeded to gather it into a small wad before handing it to Trixie. She balled it up with her fingertips and placed it into her mouth, teasing it with her tongue.

Then, with a clap and a wave of his hands, Spike got Trixie to open her jacket and expose a little flesh. The needle was embedded in her breast! A few careful tugs with her fingertips and the others watched her pull it out along with the length of thread—a trick with a high level of shock value that required a very brave assistant.

“Still not convinced?” Spike asked them.

Before they even had a chance to answer, Spike grabbed the edge of a tablecloth and pulled it out from under all of the utensils that littered the table. He pulled the tablecloth out and everything that was on top of it still stood in one piece. Spike and Trixie took position on both sides of the string quartet. Then they covered the quartet with the tablecloth and quickly removed it. Everyone could still hear the music but the quartet had vanished. Spike and Trixie lifted the tablecloth again and when they brought it back down, the quartet reappeared, still playing.

Everyone gasped and then cheered.

They had made the entire quartet disappear and reappear.

As the applause died down, Discord ran in.

“What happened?” he asked. “I heard a crash from outside.”

“Sorry,” Trixie apologized. “I’ll try to keep it down the next time someone tries to kill me!”

“She’s not lying,” one of the illusionists said. “We all saw it. It was the ghost of her old man, Jack Pot! Maybe it would be a lot safer if one of us headlined in her place. At least until this blows over.”

“Nice try, Prance,” Trixie said. “But I’m not giving up my show in Las Pegasus because of some ghost.”

“There’s not going to be a show!” Discord stated. “I’m cancelling until I find out who, or what, is responsible for this damage!”

And then he stormed out.

“Wait!” Rarity exclaimed. “Where’s Fluttershy?”

“Sis?” Zephyr Breeze called out. “Sis!”

---

Fluttershy had fled backstage and was hiding under one of the tables in the Green Room (a little place that served as a waiting room for performers when they weren’t onstage). When she finally decided that it was safe to come out, the scary magician that had shot fireballs in the theater appeared between her and the exit.

“Pick a card,” he said. “Every card!”

The masked magician threw several razor-sharp playing cards at her as she took cover behind one of the sofas.

“Impressive,” said a sweet, feminine voice from behind him.

The masked magician turned and saw Pinkie, Spike and Applejack standing right behind him.

“I can barely shuffle,” Pinkie added.

“Our turn to deal,” Applejack said.

She reached for her lasso, but before she could grab it, it seemed to come to life. It slithered like a snake before it wrapped around her legs, then her wrists, hogtying her, and stuffing an apple from a nearby basket of fruit into her mouth for good measure. Pinkie tried to tackle the ghost, but it pulled its arms up in front of its face, and when it did, two cables snagged Pinkie and coiled around her. The ghost of Jack Pot continued to throw more cards at Spike, and Spike ducked behind the same sofa Fluttershy was hiding behind.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Fluttershy shook her head and buried her face into his chest, wishing that the chaos would end. And it did. The ghost of Jack Pot disappeared in an explosion of fire just as the rest of the girls entered the Green Room.

“What happened?” Twilight asked.

“The ghost brought these cables to life!” Pinkie replied as Twilight helped her get free.

Twilight took a closer look at the cables that had attacked Pinkie and noticed that they were leaking water.

“That’s odd,” she said.

“The ghost was hovering over there, by the costume rack,” Pinkie told them.

Spike and Fluttershy came out from behind the sofa and tried to free Applejack from her lasso, but Appleack was still stuck to the floor.

“The ghost’s got AJ!” Pinkie exclaimed.

“No, the floor does,” Fluttershy said. “Her belt buckle is stuck.”

“It’s like the floor is magnetized,” Twilight added. “And the cables that attacked Pinkie are hydraulic. When water is forced through them, they move. Discord said that this theater was designed for Jack Pot, remember? These elaborate illusions are probably built right in.”

“Uh, Spike...” Rarity attempted.

“What?” he asked.

Rarity was pointing and staring at Spike’s midsection. Spike looked down at himself and saw that one of the ghost’s playing cards had pierced and sank deeply into one of the buttons of his vest. Any deeper and it would have pierced the skin. Sunset helped him remove it.

“Hey guys, look what I found!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed.

They all turned and saw that she was holding something in her hand.

“The mask the ghost was wearing!” Sunset stated.

“Whoever was wearing it probably ditched it so they could slip out of the theater unnoticed,” Dash said.

“That, or blend in with the people inside,” Twilight added.

“Like a couple of certain magicians who want to steal the top spot from Trixie,” said Zephyr Breeze.

“You mean Prance and Teller?” Soarin asked. “Maybe, but what about Discord? He seemed to take his sweet time getting to the theater after the motorcycle hit the stage.”

“Why would he want to sabotage his own resort?” Zeph asked.

“Well, Discord doesn’t own the place,” Trixie explained. “He’s just the general manager. He was losing his shirt and he sold to a big conglomerate, who then sold it to Gladmane, who ran it before Flim and Flam.”

“So, maybe Discord wants to ruin the hotel out of spite,” Rarity suggested.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Soarin said. “Zeph and I will keep an eye on Discord.”

“Well, then you better hurry because he’ll be heading for the sauna,” Trixie told them. “He always goes there whenever something like this happens.”

“Great! We’ll check out the other illusionists,” said Sunset.

“And Spike and Trixie can have lunch and catch up with each other,” Pinkie added quickly.

The gang nodded and went their separate ways.

Twilight pulled Sunset aside and asked, “Why did you say we would check out the other magicians?”

Sunset held up the card that had penetrated the button on Spike’s vest.

“Like casino dealers, and you, a lot of magicians use personalized decks,” Sunset explained. “The patterns on the back are like fingerprints. All we have to do is match it to the magician. We find a match, we’ll have our culprit.”

---

Soarin and Zephyr Breeze kept their distance from Discord as they followed him to the spa. Once he was inside, he went into the steam room just like Trixie said he would. Soarin and Zephyr disrobed, wrapped towels around their waists, and followed him in.

“Who’s there?” Discord asked.

Soarin and Zeph saw that he had a towel wrapped around his head as well as the one around his waist.

“He can’t see us,” Soarin whispered. “Maybe if I disguise my voice, I can pump him for a little info.”

Hanging out with Rainbow Dash, who was capable of creating almost perfect duplications of the voices of all of her closest friends, had allowed Soarin to learn how to do impersonations of just about anyone.

He sat down, cleared his throat and said, “Thank ya! Thank ya very much!”

“Tex?” Discord asked.

“Uh... yeah,” Soarin replied.

“I tell you, Tex, Las Pegasus has changed,” Discord said. “I gotta sneak off just to take my steam bath.”

“I know what’cha mean, boss,” Soarin replied. “Viva Las Pegasus, kickin’ it ol’ school, T.C.B., takin’ care of ‘bidness’!”

“You said it, Tex!”

“Say boss, ya know anythin’ about this ghost ‘bidness’ with that magician fella?” Soarin asked.

“That’s no ghost!” Discord stated. “First of all, Jack Pot would have to be dead in order to be a ghost.”

“What?” Zephyr Breeze asked. “He’s not dead?”

“Who’s that?!”

Discord removed the towel from his face and scowled at Soarin and Zephyr.

“Get out of here!” he shouted as he chased them out of the sauna. “And your Tex impression stinks!”

---

Spike and Trixie had lunch in the theater with the other magicians after a cleaning crew removed the motorcycle from the stage. They were served pelee island caviar, followed by a lovely lobster tail, and for the main course, ever-so-gently seared Kobe beef medallions. Trixie couldn’t even begin to express just how happy she was to see Spike again. As she sat across from him, she thought that Spike had not aged one day from the time when he was her stage assistant. And he was still the nice guy she knew. There were so few nice guys left in the world. Spike told her that he missed her every day and he apologized that he never wrote. He also shared that he had started playing guitar and piano again (even though he hadn’t played either since he was a little kid).

Spike held up the spoon he had been using to stir his cocoa and he proceeded to bend it with his mind. Trixie watched the spoon as it bent right before her eyes.

“How did you do--?” she began.

“A little something I picked up while I was in the Orient,” he replied. “The trick is to not focus on the spoon. In fact, tell yourself ‘there is no spoon.’”

Then, still using his mind powers, he proceeded to bend it back, and it became straight as it was before.

“I have to say, I’m surprised,” Trixie said. “I never expected you to become a card dealer. Had I had known you were in Las Pegasus we could have met up sooner... Same old Spike. You haven’t changed at all, have you? No. You’ve gotten even cooler. I had no idea you were a Gate Holder.”

“How do you--?”

“The International Casino Dealers’ Guild only issued thirteen of those cards, and you already have two. You really do remind me of your mother. She alone achieved the dream that every dealer strives for: to collect every Gate and become the strongest—Double R, Role Ruler.”

“That means a lot to me. If I could be even half as good as she was...”

“You can do it!” she told him. “I know you can.”

“I really am sorry that I left,” he apologized. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“Spike, you have nothing to be sorry for,” Trixie said. “If anything, I should be the one apologizing. I never meant to drive you away... not to Jockeypan... Just answer an old friend one question.”

“Shoot,”

“What happened that made you come back?”

“A painful memory... And a promise,”

“I’d say you’re keeping that promise pretty well. And for what it’s worth, Dad would have been proud of you,”

“You too,”

“Now, I want to know all about Horseolulu,” she said, changing the subject. “I’m thinking of touring there in the future.”

“Oh, great sunsets,” he replied. “Only one a day, but they’re working on it.”

“Weather really good?” she inquired.

“Sometimes it rains, sometimes the Sun’s out,” he answered. “A little more picturesque than most, but there are some mighty pretty places.”

“How about the native people? Are they as glamorous as the travel posters make them out to be?”

“Sometimes it rains, sometimes the Sun’s out,” he repeated as he took a swig of his cocoa.

Trixie sighed. “Why can’t we be besties again, like we used to?”

“Besties? We’re not kids anymore,”

“You’re right. You’re not that little boy I used to know,” she said as she placed her hand over his. “But I’ve loved that little boy since he and I were kids. He never gave up on me... You never gave up on me... I love you, Spike. I loved you then, I love you now... and I always will love you. I always will.”

“There you are!” said a voice.

Spike whirled around and saw Fleur standing next to him.

“Playing hard to get,” she said. “I like that in a man.”

“Do you mind?” Trixie asked.

“I heard about your little act this morning,” Fleur told her. “How dare you perforate my pin cushion of love! En garde!”

Fleur grabbed a scimitar that had been laying on one of the other magicians’ tables as Trixie reached for her wand.

“Ladies, don’t fight over me!” Spike shouted.

Fleur put down the sword and Trixie pocketed her wand just as Soarin, Zephyr Breeze and the other girls entered the theater and approached them.

“Well, what did you all find out?” Spike asked them.

“We followed Discord into the sauna at the spa,” Soarin reported, “and he said that Jack Pot’s not dead.”

“What?” Spike and the girls asked.

“I don’t believe it myself,” Zephyr added.

“Well, there goes the ghost theory,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Ghost theory?” Twilight asked. “Wait until you hear what we found out. But first...”

Twilight pulled out her personal deck of cards and started shuffling. She was going to try to impress Spike by performing a trick that street magicians used to mystify their (unsuspecting) victims into believing they had freakish powers.

“Pick a card,” she said after she shuffled the deck, “any card.”

Spike, remembering the events that had transpired in the Green Room not even a few hours before (almost being stabbed by a razor-sharp card), didn’t want to. But then he decided to upstage her again, hoping she might take the hint.

“Your card is... the Three of Clubs!”

“No,”

“I mean, the Five of Spades,”

“No,”

“The Jack of Hearts?”

“No,”

“The Seven of Clubs, the Eight of Clubs, the Six of Spades, Nine of Diamonds, Ten of Diamonds, any Diamonds, is it a red card?”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, and NO!”

“I give up,” Twilight said. “What’s the card?”

“‘This deck is guaranteed by the manufacturer to be free from defects,’”

Twilight scowled Spike.

“He drew that one on purpose!” she thought.

She then tried a close-up trick that was another favorite among street magicians. She pulled out a crisp one-dollar bill. Then, she folded the bill in half, then in half again. One more fold and after grasping it in her fingertips, she began to unfold it, miraculously transformed into a fifty-dollar bill.

“You must have performed at a lot of kiddie parties,” Spike commented.

“If you think you can do better, then please, be my guest,” she told him.

Spike took Trixie’s top hat and placed it, open end up, in the center of the table. Then Spike swiped Twilight’s deck from her hands and dropped into the hat.

He looked at her and echoed, “Name a card... any card.”

“Seven of Spades,” she said.

Spike stood up from his chair and looked down at the top hat full of cards. With a wave of his left hand, the cards shot out of the hat like water from a geyser. Then, using his right hand, Spike pulled a pocketknife from his back pants pocket and stabbed a card in midair, right through the middle, and held it up to Twilight’s face. Twilight gasped. It was the Seven of Spades, just as she had requested—a classic card trick with a dangerous twist.

“I know. I’m just that good,” he said, pulling the card from his knife and sitting down again. “Now, what did you find out?” he directed at Sunset.

“We didn’t find a match to the cards that your attacker used,” she replied. “So, unless he’s using a different deck, we have no leads on his identity.”

Spike took his seat again as the next act was about to come onstage. There was still one more lead to follow—someone Trixie knew from when her father was still alive; someone who had worked with Jack when Trixie was a child.

“There she is!” Trixie whispered. “Dad’s former assistant, Obscurity.”

Obscurity was a platinum blonde with blue eyes, red lips, and dressed in a black leather corset, matching bottoms, and black nylons.

“Please welcome the comedy-slash-magic style of Flipside,” she announced.

Wearing a yellow suit jacket, polka-dot pants with a matching bowtie, big red shoes, and with thinning orange hair, Flipside looked more like an ex-circus clown than a magician. And when he spoke, he sounded like the duck from all those insurance commercials mixed with the most annoying parrot on the planet.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!” he said rather loudly. “I’ll have you know, I learned everything I know about magic from my ex-wife. She made my bank account, my car, and my house, disappear! Now, I’ll need a volunteer...”

He selected a girl from the audience, and she looked like she knew what was expected of her. The illusion he was about to perform was one of the classics of magic. It was a trick they had all seen before and one that dated back over one hundred years: The Multi-Cube Box.

First, Flipside walked around the curiously constructed cabinet. Then, he opened the four doors on the front of it to show the audience that there was no place to hide inside. As he opened the doors, the audience could see that cabinet was actually made of four separate boxes that had just been stacked on top of one another. And each one was a different color: blue on the bottom, green and orange in the middle, and red on top. Now, as we all know, magicians are known to put their assistants in danger for the sake of entertainment. And Flipside was no exception. As soon as his volunteer stepped into the box, he closed and locked the doors behind her.

“She’s pretty well put together,” he told the audience, “but that doesn’t mean I won’t tamper with perfection.”

Flipside opened the top panel to show that the girl was still inside. She was, and she did not look happy. In fact, she looked like she knew what was coming. He closed the door in front of her face, relocked it and opened the door just below, which showed the audience her bust. He closed it and opened the third one, showing her hips; and finally the bottom, her feet. Flipside called for Obscurity and she handed him three solid surgical stainless steel blades designed to separate each section of the box.

Then, he began to insert the blades into the box... and the girl inside. He inserted the first blade into the cabinet at neck-height, separating the girl’s head from the rest of her body. Then he slid the second blade through her torso (with a bit of a struggle) and the third blade just below her knees.

Once the blades were in position, Flipside slid the two middle sections of the box to opposite sides, away from the top and bottom portions, dividing up her assets (as if the girl in the box hadn’t had enough abuse). Then he pushed the two center sections back into place. Even with her chest and hips back where they belonged, the girl was still divided by the steel blades. Then, Flipside proceeded to take the whole box apart, one piece at a time.

He lifted the top box (the red one), removing the girls’ head and shoulders, once again dividing her into four separate (but equal) sections. He placed it on the floor until he decided what he was going to do with it. Then he followed suit with the other three sections.

“Now, I will attempt to reassemble my volunteer,” he said. “Unfortunately, I seem to have forgotten which box goes where. Oh, well! I’ll give it a try, anyway!”

He started by placing the blue box on the bottom. Then he placed the red box on top of the blue box, the green box on top of the red box, and the orange box on top of the green box.

“Now, let’s see if she’s still inside,” Flipside said. “And what condition her condition is in.”

He opened the bottom box. There were her feet; where they should be. He opened the one second from the top (her chest), so far so good; then the top box.

“Uh-oh,” Flipside said. “What are her thighs doing up there?” he asked. “And what is her head doing down below?” he added, opening the final panel.

He had deliberately put them back in the wrong order.

“Time for another try,” he said casually.

He closed the doors and took the box apart again. This time, he put the green box on bottom. Then the orange box on top of that, the blue one after that, and the red box on top of the blue one.

He opened the doors and his volunteer was in even worse shape than before. But she was still breathing (as impossible as that seemed).

“Seriously, I just got this trick,” Flipside told the audience. “Like, help me out here!” he gritted through his teeth at Obscurity.

“He’s not the only one who needs help,” Spike whispered to Trixie.

Learning from her boss’s mistakes, Obscurity began to reassemble the box: blue on the bottom, green, orange, and red on top. One by one, she removed the blades—first the one at the top, then the middle, and the bottom.

“I hope she’s got it right,” Zephyr Breeze said. “It’d be a shame to mess up a perfectly good body like that.”

Obscurity unlocked the doors and the girl stepped out, still alive, her body in one magnificent piece. For someone who had seemingly gone to pieces, she appeared unharmed, but she was clearly not thrilled.

---

Obscurity’s dressing room was furnished with two sofas, a glass top coffee table, and a bed against the back wall big enough for four. A long countertop stretched along the wall to the right, with a mirror hanging above it, and directly across from it was a long closet, with several partitions dividing it. There were three stools spread out, evenly spaced, in front of the counter, and a door, just beyond the bed, in the back that most likely led to the bathroom.

After the show, Spike, Soarin, Zephyr, Trixie and the girls went backstage to find her. Trixie knocked on the door, and Obscurity told them to enter. Once inside, Pinkie told her how impressed she was by the show.

“Wondering how it was done?” Obscurity asked.

“Mirrors and cleverly disguised mannequin parts,” Spike spoiled it. “As soon the trick began, and we saw the girl from the audience step into the cabinet before Flipside locked the doors behind her, she was simply getting comfortable. When he slid the center sections of the box to opposite sides, we were not looking through the cabinet, we were looking at mirrors. I’m going to guess you had screens set up to the right and left sides of the box that were identical to the wall behind it. The mirrors created an image that filled in the center sections so that what we saw an exact duplicate of what we thought was behind it. So from the front, it appeared that we were looking through the box to the back wall. And when it appeared that her chest and hips were being dragged off to the side, they were actually staying in place, right behind the mirror. And the ‘solid steel’ blades are really flexible sheet metal. When Flipside inserted the blades, the girl inside simply bent them down, away from her body with her hands and legs. And the cabinet had secret compartments hidden inside that gave her access to the whole box. That’s how the middle portions of her body appeared to move to opposite sides.”

Obscurity was speechless.

“After the boxes were slid back into place, your ‘volunteer’ concealed herself by simply curling up inside the bottom box, just before the top section was taken down,” Spike went on. “One by one, the levels were removed. And the reason the boxes were all a different color was to help Flipside correctly reassemble them, which would help if he wasn’t colorblind! He also turned the boxes around while reassembling them so that the mannequin parts were in front while the volunteer hid in the back. The first door that reopened, those were the mannequin legs, as were the torso and thighs. The only reason her head popped into the box second from the bottom was so that she could give Flipside that confused look.”

“But there were blades between the boxes,” Rarity interjected. “How did her head manage to appear in the box second to the bottom?”

Rainbow Dash thought for a moment, and then came up with the answer.

“Secret panel in the bottom blade,” she said. “It easily folded out of the way so that she could reveal her head above the bottom box. As soon as the doors closed again, she closed the panel and hid again. With the red box in place, the illusion was made believable and we were convinced that her head had been inside the whole time.”

Spike nodded. He knew that there was a secret compartment at the bottom of the box. And below it was a trapdoor containing two mannequin feet identical to the volunteer’s.

“You put the boxes back into their original positions, seemingly ‘reassembling’ her,” Applejack added. “But before opening the door, you gave her enough time to stand back up, completing the trick that she had been divided up and put back together.”

“And the girl from the audience was a shill,” Spike concluded, “all to make the illusion seem convincing. And it was... for a brief moment. But maybe next time, you might think about picking someone who can at least look excited while they’re being cut into fourths.”

“Who are you?” Obscurity asked, almost indignantly.

“Spike Drake, the Defier of Death, stage assistant to the late, Great Jack Pot and his daughter, the Great and Powerful Trixie!” Spike boasted. “I’m sure you’ve at least heard of, if not seen, some of my better-known stunts: walking through solid steel and concrete walls, turning a Bentley into a Lamborghini, surviving underwater without drowning, making gorgeous women materialize, levitate, disappear and reappear in the blink of an eye, and survive being sliced, diced and taken for a ride.”

Obscurity didn’t believe him, and Spike didn’t care if she did. But he was still going to prove he was who he claimed to be, if nothing else, to get back in her good graces. After all, they still needed her help if they were going to find out the truth about what happened to Jack Pot.

He was going to attempt to impress Obscurity with a very dangerous game of Russian roulette. But instead of a loaded gun, Spike was going to use the blade of his deadly sharp pocketknife. Spike knew the facts he was presenting to Obscurity weren’t going to be enough to convince her, but he knew it would be enough to start. The girls could all see just how perilous the trick was that Spike was about to perform. And he hadn’t even gotten to the threatening part yet.

Even though Spike was a trained professional in the use of knives, there was still a serious risk of disastrous results.

He placed the blade of the knife point up in a circular base on the coffee table. He asked Trixie to place ordinary Styrofoam cups over the base with the blade in it as well as three more identical bases, to hide them from view. Then he asked her to mix up the cups, like in a shell game, so that the knife would be impossible to detect. Spike even turned his back to Trixie, to prove that he wasn’t cheating. She lined them up, and then mixed them. Once Trixie was sure that she had them good and mixed, she turned Spike around.

He was going to find the knife, eliminating cups one at a time, by crushing them with his bare hand. He crushed one cup, and the knife wasn’t there. He crushed the second cup, and the knife wasn’t under that one either. He was down to two cups, a 50/50 chance. Fluttershy and Rarity couldn’t bear to watch while the rest of the girls couldn’t look away. One, two, three...

Spike had managed to keep his hand intact.

“How did you--?” Obscurity asked.

“How did I find the razor-sharp blade without impaling my open palm on it?” Spike asked. “Look at the base holding the blade.”

She did. Then she looked at the other three. All of them were identical. Except she noticed something stuck to the bottom of the base with the blade.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Fishing line,” Spike told her. “That’s how I could tell it apart from the others, even after the cup covered it.”

Even when Obscurity knew it was there, the line was very difficult to see. Spike had added a dramatic pause to heighten the tension, but he knew where the knife was.

“Now you know the secret,” Spike said. “And you can use it in your next show if you want, if you tell us about Jack Pot.”

“I don’t know what you expect me to tell you that I’m sure you already know,” she replied.

Spike told her about Trixie’s performance earlier that day and the appearance of her father’s “ghost”. Then Spike put forth a theory that he had recently thought of.

“Faked his death?” Obscurity asked. “No. Jack couldn’t walk away from the spotlight. He loved magic too much. He wouldn’t have left me to scrape out this excuse for a living with a hack like Flipside.”

“Hey! I resemble that remark!” Flipside shouted as he passed by the open door to the room. “And what is this? Oh, more kooks who think that Jack Pot is still alive? Well...”

He blew a big raspberry at them and stormed off.

“Oh, don’t pay any attention to him. He’s just jealous,” Obscurity told them. “Once gentlemen like Jack Pot came onto the scene, guys like Flipside went out of fashion pretty quickly. Look, Jack isn’t coming back. Here, if you don’t believe me, this ought to convince you. It’s the footage from his last stunt.”

---

Applejack’s office, the Eye in the Sky room, had forty monitors piled on top of one another in rows five across, and they showed almost every inch of the resort. Everything that happened in the casino and the hotel was taped and beamed to this command post. Spike and the girls went there to watch the tape that Obscurity had given them. It was a recording of what was originally an exclusive, live nationwide news report.

“From making everything from groups of chorus girls to national landmarks disappear to being encased in a giant block of ice for a week, Jack Pot has made magic crazy-fresh for a new generation,”

It is without a doubt that Harry Hoofdini was the greatest escape artist who ever lived. In fact, one of his many titles was “the Handcuff King.” Since then, thousands of magicians have repeated his death-defying escapes. This was one such trick. First, Jack was put into a straightjacket. A real straightjacket (just like the ones found at any “good” asylum/mental hospital), virtually impossible for almost anyone to get out of without some kind of help. The straps were securely fastened and then Jack was bound to a large spinning wheel. First his feet were shackled, then his waist, and finally his neck.

“Now, strapped to this giant Roulette wheel by his lovely assistant Obscurity, he’ll attempt a daring escape from inside this historic Las Pegasus hotel as it’s demolished by a ten-ton wrecking ball and two tons of dynamite!”

Obscurity spun the wheel, sending Jack Pot into a spin, and she and the reporter and her cameraman fled the building just as the crane with the wrecking ball started up. The wrecking ball knocked a hole into the side of the hotel as the Roulette wheel stopped spinning. The wrecking ball was already demolishing the building and it was rigged with explosives. Jack had less than a minute to get out. After the wrecking ball had done its job, the timers on the explosives were activated. The tension was mounting. Jack had only a few seconds left to escape. As Jack struggled with the straightjacket, the building began to crumble.

Then it collapsed in a cloud of smoke.

“Jack Pot is still inside!” the reporter screamed. “This is horrible! Stop the camera! Stop the camera!”

Soarin, Zephyr, and the girls stared in complete silence as Spike looked at Trixie, half expecting her to throw herself into his arms and cry into his chest.

“I hate to say it, but Obscurity was right,” Soarin said at last. “There’s no way Jack could have gotten out of there.”

After witnessing that, almost everyone was convinced. But not Spike.

“Applejack, rewind to the beginning,” he said.

She rewound the tape, and then played it to the point when the building began to come down.

“Now pause!” he said.

She stopped the tape and a little white line appeared at the top of the pile of rubble in the video.

“What’s that?” Pinkie asked.

“It’s a line around computer-generated effects,” Spike explained. “Sometimes you see it in music videos.”

“What are you saying? That’s not real concrete falling down on Jack?” Rarity asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Spike stated.

“Well, if it is layered over the original image, I should be able to strip it away,” Applejack said.

She typed a few commands into the computer and the concrete disappeared.

It was a digital image!

Once the concrete was removed, Spike studied Jack’s movements in the video more intently. The first thing he noticed was that while Jack was being buckled into the straightjacket he kept his arms stiff and away from his body, giving him enough slack to eventually escape. But Spike knew that, even using that technique, getting out of the straightjacket would not be easy. That part of the trick required lots and lots of practice.

And practice was something that Jack Pot had a lot of.

Once the Roulette wheel stopped, Jack made use of that extra slack. He not only escaped the straightjacket and his shackles, but he went down through a trapdoor in the floor. Then the video cut out.

“This must have been prerecorded before the building actually came down,” Spike said, “and then spliced into the broadcast to make it look like it was happening live.”

“So what do we do now?” Fluttershy asked.

“We have to find Jack Pot,” Spike told them.

---

It was a long shot, but Spike decided to follow one last hunch: a dark and spooky tunnel beneath the theater’s stage that led to Jack Pot’s old storage room.

It was a large chamber filled with a collection of old magic stuff: saw horses, suits of armor, a bed of spikes, an old player piano, solid steel rods, massive chains, a guillotine, an old milk can, a giant Chinese lantern, a cannon, two thrones, a pair of oak wine barrels, Hoofdini’s old steamer trunk, disappearing cabinets, the Box of Pain, “The Assistant’s Revenge” restraining rack, and other medieval torture devices as well as wooden stockades and iron cages. And on a nearby table were an ornate candelabrum, an antique lamp, a tambourine, and heavy leather straps with chrome buckles.

“Kinky,” Spike thought.

Twilight saw an egg-shaped apparatus made of forged bands of iron and secured by hardened steel pins. Looking at it, she couldn’t help but think that there was barely enough room to make the tight squeeze.

She reached out to touch it when a deep, sophisticated voice said, “See with your eyes, not your hands. Those antiques are priceless.”

The gang looked into a dark corner of the room and a tall, thin man with light gray hair, moderate violet eyes, and dressed in a purple suit and a yellow cloak emerged from the shadows with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

“Agh! It’s the ghost of Jack Pot!” Fluttershy screamed.

She dove, head first, into the open steamer trunk and the lid slammed shut on top of her. The man removed his cloak, held it in front of his body, and slowly raised it up. He lowered it to show that he was still there. Then he raised his cloak again, and when he lowered it, he was not alone. Right beside him, was Fluttershy. He had teleported her from Hoofdini’s trunk.

“It is Jack Pot!” Spike shouted.

“Father!” Trixie cried.

She catapulted into his arms and they shared a warm embrace.

“I thought you were dead,” she said.

“I’m sorry I disappeared on you like that,” he apologized as he released her. “But I’ve been watching you perform. I’m so proud of you.”

“You mean you’re not trying to keep her from performing in your theater?” Rarity asked.

“My theater?” Jack replied. “Oh, you mean that celebrity funhouse upstairs? No, I’m not all about all that. That’s why I left; to get back to street magic. I’ve got some amazing new tricks in the works.”

As Jack spoke, he reached into a nearby trashcan and pulled out a crumpled soda can. With a wave of his hand and a shake of the can (to prove that it was empty), the dents began to disappear. Another gesture and Jack pulled the tab and broke the hermetic seal. And then he poured himself a drink. The gang could have sworn that the can was empty and discarded. But it wasn’t.

Jack had grabbed what appeared to be a discarded soda can. But upon closer inspection, Spike could see how it was secretly prepared. A tiny puncture near the top of the can released just enough soda to create an air pocket inside of the can. And before all of the liquid escaped, the hole had been sealed with a tiny piece of waterproof tape.

As for the pop top of the can, it had been covered by a small circle of black paper. From a distance, the paper created the illusion that they were looking into an old, empty can when in reality the top was still factory sealed. As for the dents, they had been bent in, creating the impression that it had been crushed and discarded into a pile of garbage.

When Jack shook the can, the movement caused the gas bubbles inside to build up pressure. As the pressure increased, the air inside the can expanded and caused the dents to pop back out. Then Jack discreetly removed the piece of black paper, revealing the untouched seal. Finally, he flipped up the tab, broke the seal, and poured out the remaining soda.

It was a common trick among street magicians, using a seemingly ordinary, everyday object and the power of science.

“Well, if you’re the real Jack Pot, then who’s that?” Rainbow Dash asked as she pointed to the ceiling... and at the ghost that was masquerading as Jack.

The ghost threw a fireball at them as they ran out of the chamber. The ghost flew after them, but Jack snapped his fingers and a whole flock of doves flew from his hands. The gang pursued the ghost as it flew back down the tunnel and through the door that led back to the resort. Then it started chasing them again. It chased Pinkie, Fluttershy, Soarin, Zephyr Breeze and Rainbow Dash through the restaurants’ buffet lines, it chased Jack, Rarity, Starlight and Twilight through the casino, between the rows of slot machines; and then it chased Spike, Trixie, Sunset and Applejack into the “Big Dive” skydiving simulator.

---

The crew eventually escaped Jack Pot’s “ghost” and returned to the theater to find Flipside performing again. This time, they watched his show from backstage, out of sight.

“Obscurity’s working for Flipside?” Jack asked. “That jerk was after my secrets for years.”

“With Obscurity by his side, he may finally have them,” Trixie said.

“But he sure doesn’t seem to use them,” Sunset added.

“Unless he’s saving them for a surprise performance,” Applejack put in.

As Spike watched Obscurity and Flipside, he suddenly had an epiphany.

“Oh my Faust... That’s it!” he said. “I am such an idiot!”

“What?” Trixie asked.

“I can’t believe I didn’t see it before!” Spike tried to contain his voice. “How could I have been so stupid?!”

“What?” they all asked.

“Did any of you know that Jack Pot is right-handed?” Spike asked them. “When all the other magicians did their tricks, they all used their right hands,” he recalled. “But the masked magician that attacked us, the one pretending to be Jack’s ghost, threw cards and fireballs with his left hand. That can only mean one thing: the ghost couldn’t have been any of these guys because none of them are left-handed. There’s no way you can trick someone with such a stupid cheat. Still, that’s not enough to explain how the ghost was able to recreate several of Jack’s tricks. We need to draw the imposter out into the open. And I know exactly how we’re going to do it! You up for it, Jack?”

“A chance to save Obscurity from Flipside? Definitely count me in!”

Later that day, Spike asked Flim and Flam to make a public announcement on the resort’s personal TV channel.

“Jack Pot, the magician the world watched perish three years ago will return tonight, seemingly from the dead. Is this for real? We don’t know. But we do know, we reported it first,”

---

That evening, Spike changed into his old black magician’s suit from his days working with Jack and Trixie. He was surprised that they had kept it all these years. He was even more surprised that it still fit! Several of the other girls were getting dressed too, to help with the act. Sunset, in particular, wore a costume that was little more than a black leather bikini with fishnet stockings and knee-high, patent leather boots. Looking at her, Spike see could almost everything!

“Can I be your assistant?” Pinkie asked.

“I’m sorry,” he politely refused. “But I’ve got something bigger in mind for you. Right now, I need you,” he told Sunset.

“How do I look?” Trixie asked Spike.

“With that outfit and those heels, the other girls don’t stand a chance,” he said quietly. “Applejack, you ready?”

“I’m not coming out!” she replied.

Sunset reached behind the changing panel and pulled Applejack out by the wrist. She was wearing the same outfit as Sunset, but with a black cowboy hat and cowboy boots.

Spike took her hand in his and said, “Just follow my lead and you’ll be fine.”

---

Jack Pot took his position behind the curtain as Soarin introduced him.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back the master of magic, the ambassador of illusions, the grandmaster of hypnotism, the king of the impossible, the one, the only Jack Pot!”

The curtain went up, and Jack was met with a booing audience.

“I don’t blame you for doubting it’s me,” he told them. “But I intend to prove it the only way I know how: by astounding you... Using an empty wine glass, a simple deck of cards and my bare hands! But first, I shall require the assistance of at least one lovely young lady.”

The women in the audience started crawling over each other, trying to get onstage. Jack chose Fleur, and no, she was not in on the trick. Jack rifled through the deck to show her that the cards were of the standard playing variety. He fanned out the cards and asked Fleur to pick two at random and show them to the audience. Once she had selected them, he turned his back and covered his eyes with one of his hands. Fleur showed the audience her cards: the Ten of Spades and the Ten of Diamonds. Jack asked her to place her cards back into the deck anywhere she’d like. Fleur complied and Jack shuffled the deck to be sure that her chosen cards would not be easy to find. Then he dropped the deck into a clear glass wine goblet. A few magical gestures with his fingers, a jiggle of the glass, and the Ten of Spades began to rise, then the Ten of Diamonds, and the audience applauded as Fleur returned to her seat.

“Next, I will make the first of my assistants appear, seemingly from nowhere,” Jack said.

He walked around a large open-sided cabinet on top of a large, wide pedestal that had been set up onstage. Nothing above, behind or below it, and it was empty. Then, to further prove that it was empty, Jack walked up the steps and onto the platform. After stepping down, Jack grabbed a cord that was hanging from the top of the cabinet. He pulled the shades down, one after another.

And when he raised the shades, Spike appeared, standing inside the cabinet.

Spike stepped down as Jack untied his cloak and held it out to Spike, who took a corner and they raised it in front of the pedestal. They lowered the cloak and there was Trixie, standing on top of the platform. Jack helped his daughter down from the pedestal and asked her to help Spike raise the cloak again.

A few magical gestures from Jack and Spike and Trixie lowered the cloak. When they did, Applejack appeared standing on the pedestal. She stepped down and the cloak went up a third time. A few more gestures from Jack and when the cloak was lowered again Sunset appeared alongside them. Jack had conjured up a parade of beautiful women from out of the blue; a giant version of a classic trick.

Then Jack allowed Spike and Trixie to take over. Spike was going to make Trixie disappear while she was in midair. First, Spike cast a spell over Trixie (or so it appeared). Then, he removed his cloak while she took a seat on the bench behind him. She laid herself across the length of the bench and Spike covered her with his cloak. Then, she began to rise, floating off of the bench. Trixie floated higher and higher into the air. Then she stopped. Below, Spike waved his arm under her to prove that there was nothing supporting her. Then, he reached up, grabbed the cloak, pulled it down, and Trixie was gone.

Spike had done it! He had successfully levitated Trixie and made her vanish while she was in midair! The audience cheered!

“For my next trick, I’ll turn two of my assistants into tigers!” Jack declared.

Sunset and Applejack stepped into a large cage that had been set up and Jack locked the door behind them. Then, he and Spike covered the cage with Jack’s black cloak. Then, Jack began to levitate the cage into the air, making it impossible for anything (or anyone) to get in or out. The curtain fell and two white tigers appeared in the cage... but Sunset and Applejack were nowhere to be seen. The cage levitated back down and Spike let the tigers out of the cage, and he walked them to Fluttershy backstage.

“And now for our grand finale...” Jack Pot said.

Using Jack’s cape once more, he and Spike folded it out, over and over and over, until it was over two stories tall. Spike waved his hands and motioned to Trixie (who had been up in the rafters since her disappearance) to drop the now enormous cloak, revealing a full grown female giraffe.

The crowd roared, demanding an encore, as the giraffe was escorted backstage. That’s when the ghost appeared in an explosion of smoke and fire.

“Impostor!” it shouted.

From up in the sound booth, Zephyr Breeze shined the spotlight right into the ghost’s face, temporarily blinding it.

“And for our next trick,” said Spike, “we’re taking you down!”

“Well, enjoy mine first,” the masked magician replied, “because it’ll be the last you ever see! Or, should I say, never see?”

Spike briefly recalled a fight he’d had with another street magician. Their fighting styles were relatively similar: very little, if any, hand-to-hand combat, with heavy reliance on their tricks. Illusion and misdirection were their weapons of choice, and so Spike had to counter them with his own magic... and tricking himself into seeing more than just what was in front of his eyes.

“I’m gonna make you disappear!” the imposter said. “Permanently!”

The ghost started to float when Pinkie, who was backstage with Fluttershy, saw a big metal switch on the wall marked “Caution: Magnetic Polarity” in big red letters. She flipped the lever down and the ghost of Jack Pot quickly descended.

“Ha! The ghost is grounded!” Rainbow Dash proclaimed.

“Thanks to magnets in its shoes,” Twilight told them. “The same magnets it used to levitate.”

Spike looked up to the rafters when he heard Trixie scream. She lost her balance and fell over the side. He held out his arms and he caught her bridal style.

“I knew you’d fall for me,” he smiled, “sooner or later.”

He set her down as a squad of Las Pegasus police officers stormed the theater with Discord leading the pack.

“Ah, Discord,” Spike said. “You’re just in time to meet the real culprit. I think it’s time we pulled the curtain down on this fraud!”

Spike pulled off the magician’s mask to reveal... Obscurity!

“Jack’s former assistant?” Soarin asked.

“So that’s how the ghost knew all of Jack’s tricks!” Sunset said.

“All the other magicians seemed like obvious suspects, but without their assistants, some of them, like Flipside, couldn’t perform even the simplest tricks,” Spike explained. “The biggest clue was the ghost’s body language: having mastered Jack’s walk and movements, it passed itself off as an almost perfect double... except for one major detail: Jack’s not left-handed. That meant the ghost had to have been someone who was close to Jack: hence, Obscurity.”

“But why?” Jack asked her.

“Because after you ‘disappeared’, I was supposed to step into the spotlight!” Obscurity replied. “I knew all your tricks! I would have made millions! But Discord wouldn’t hear it!”

Spike and Trixie scowled at her. In the world of magic, stealing tricks was the most unforgivable crime.

“So you wanted to ruin Discord,” Fluttershy said.

“That’s right!” Obscurity replied as the officers cuffed her. “And I would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for you!”

“Well, you’ll have plenty of time to develop a new act where you’re going,” Spike told her. “Just so long as you don’t try any escape tricks!”

Realizing the theater was still packed, Jack, Spike, Trixie and the gang all turned to face the audience.

Spike shouted, “Thank you, Las Pegasus! You’ve been a wonderful audience! Good night!”

The crowd applauded one more time as the curtain fell and Discord pulled everyone aside.

“I want to personally thank you all for everything you’ve done,” he said. “Especially you, Spike, for luring Jack out of retirement. He’s agreed to perform at the resort a few times a year.”

“On my terms,” Jack reminded him.

---

Later that night, in the ballroom, Spike impressed Trixie with another of his personal favorite tricks—a trick that had been amazing kids at birthday parties for years. He picked up a small metal pan (that was solid on the bottom and all the way around). Then, with a single match, he lit a small fire inside the pan and quickly covered it with a metal lid, smothering the blaze. He removed the lid to reveal a fully cooked lobster dinner for two.

Dinner was served.

It was a trick that Trixie herself had performed dozens of times before. She would smother the fire, remove the lid, and reveal something totally different. Usually a dove, some flowers, or a small rabbit would be inside, but this was the first time she’d seen a full course meal. Either way, the secret was still the same.

Pinkie served them and systematically removed the dirty dishes as they ate. She returned to the kitchen and Trixie asked Spike something that had been troubling her for years. He thought it was about the fire in the pan.

“I know about the chemically treated flash paper,” she said. “I taught you that trick. I’m talking about the water chamber. I saw you plunge into that tank. How did you survive?”

“Well, it was much easier than I made it appear,” Spike said. “First off, the handcuffs weren’t solid as you were led to believe. They were specially rigged to pop open in an instant. Cuffs like that are almost always used in underwater escapes, to minimize the risk of danger. They only add more drama to the act. Then, when your dad lowered me into the tank, I displaced some of the water with my body. In order for anything to float, it has to weigh less than the water it displaces. That, in turn, left me with more space to move freely. But I was suspended upside down, so I did have to hold my breath while I was underwater. It was a tight squeeze, but I had just enough room to turn myself right-side up. Since hundreds of magicians and assistants have lost their lives performing water escapes, a breathing tube was concealed in the top of the tank, just in case something were to go wrong. You know as well as I do that whenever a magician attempts to pull off a death-defying trick, safety features are always built into the design. That tube and a hidden air hole were added protection in the event of an emergency. Once I was upright in the tank, I could reach up and take a breath if I needed to. But I didn’t. Also, the padlocks were real, and they were never opened until you unlocked them... because they didn’t have to be. The top of the case was loose and unsecured. All I had to do was climb out.”

Trixie stared at Spike in amazement.

“I could have escaped anytime I wanted to, but regulating my metabolism by fasting and living in an oxygen-rich environment for the last 24 hours had prepared me for that stunt. My heart was still beating even before you checked my pulse,”

Trixie gave Spike a relieved smile and they finished their meal.

Meanwhile, when Pinkie was in the kitchen washing the back of the empty metal pan, she noticed a second pan hidden inside. It was slightly smaller and it fit snugly into the original pan. Until it was needed, the second pan was secretly held in the lid by special metal spring clamps. The pan snapped into the lid and was held by the springs until it made contact with the outer pan, thus releasing the springs and the secret inner pan dropped into place.

“So, that’s how he did it,” she thought. “Well played, Spike. Well played.”

---

Spike sat in the hot tub at the base of the rumbling waterfall at 10:00 o’clock that night. He had completed his greatest performance to date and pampered Trixie with a gourmet dinner. It had been a long day and he was looking forward to a relaxing soak. Suddenly, smoke (not steam) started to form around the hot tub. Then he heard “Magic Man” playing from somewhere overhead. The smoke cleared and Trixie appeared, beautiful as ever—another classic appearance done with smoke, but definitely no mirrors. She took a moment to show off her dark blue one-piece, which was suitable for the pool, beach or even perilous illusion, and clearly designed for sex appeal... It didn’t get much sexier than that. Trixie glanced over her shoulder at Spike and smiled at him. She was always eager to please. Spike hoped that Trixie realized that she was about to get wet, and, for her sake, the fabric would not shrink. She walked down the steps and into the hot tub.

“Go ahead, honey,” Spike thought, “take a dip.”

A small gasp escaped Trixie’s lips as her toes made contact with the bubbling water. She gave herself a moment to get used to the heat before lowering herself further into the tub until she was completely submerged. She came back up and wiped the water from her eyes before they embraced. Now that she was soaking wet, she was ready to take Spike on. She inhaled deeply, then exhaled as she prepared for what she was about to do. She was ready to go the distance.

She felt her nipples harden as she put her hands on Spike’s chest. As they kissed, Spike placed his hands on Trixie’s rear and gave her a nice squeeze, earning another gentle gasp from her as he rubbed. Trixie pressed her breasts against Spike’s chest as they deepened the kiss. Their kissing grew more intense as Spike scooped her into his arms and gently swept her through the water. With the water slowly churning around them from the waterfall, Spike slipped a hand onto her shoulder and pulled down one of her swimsuit straps.

Trixie pushed him away with a playful smile. She swam backwards until she was several feet away, and then pulled down the other strap. With only her head and shoulders above the water, she tossed her swimsuit onto the ledge of the hot tub, and then stood with her arms outstretched. Spike tossed his own swimsuit away and Trixie swam back to him. They pressed their naked bodies together and kissed passionately once more, drifting toward the waterfall so that its cascading currents splashed onto their interlocked bodies. Spike went red when Trixie spun around and gently started rubbing her rear against his shaft until she felt him stiffen. Trixie rubbed against him one more time and smiled again as she felt Spike twitch. Spike felt his pleasure as Trixie turned around again, wrapped her arms around his neck, and they shared another hot kiss.

Then, Trixie stood up and walked to the shallow end of the hot tub. She bent over, pressed her breasts against the tub’s wall, lifted her rear out of the water, and opened her legs as far as she could. The sight of her from behind was so hot that Spike struggled not to cum. He positioned himself behind Trixie and entered her slowly. Her warm walls hugged him tightly. He couldn’t wait to be all the way inside! As Spike kept going further and further, Trixie let out little whimpers. When Trixie felt him stop, she could tell that he was afraid to hurt her. Then he slammed into her, his hands on her hips, pulling her back to meet him with each thrust. Trixie moaned, her head thrown back as Spike worked his magic. She came hard and fast and Spike howled as he felt the bliss overtake him, and she milked him for all his worth.

“The perfect way to end a day,” they both thought.

Trixie snuggled against Spike, her head on his shoulder. She was almost purring when she smiled up at him. It was her first genuinely happy smile since she pulled that egg out of his ear.

“I feel great,” she said. “And beating Obscurity was actually a lot of fun.”

Spike nodded as he looked up at the stars.

“The sky is so beautiful,” she added as she wrapped her arms around him. “I’ve been alone for a long time. I’m so glad you’re back, Spike.”

Spike smiled and said, “Me too.”

Next Chapter: Roll Ruler Estimated time remaining: 16 Hours, 41 Minutes