That day was the hardest school day of my entire life.

Even during my days at Manehattan Middle School, my bullying was always contained to certain unspoken limitations, but the situation I was dealing with this time felt like an entirely new brand of persecution. The kids in Manehattan would say mean things to me, put me in my place if I ever stepped out of line and occasionally shove me to the ground, but they never went further than that. The kids here were specifically going out of their way to make my life a living hell. They were shooting spitballs into my hair during class, knocking my books out of my hands in the hallway, girls were flipping up my skirt, boys were pushing me into lockers, and I still didn’t know what was going on.

Once the bell for lunch rang, I ran as quickly as I could to the bathroom, avoiding as many taunting students as I could until I slammed the stall door shut and began sobbing as quietly as I could. I couldn’t let anyone hear me crying out of fear that everyone would know where I was and continue their onslaught, but after all I had been through so far, I could only hold back so much.

‘It’s only been half a day!’ I thought to myself. How much worse were things going to get before I could go home?!

Oh, no. What if there was another misunderstanding? What if my mom got another call home? I wasn’t safe anymore, either in school or at home! Just the thought of it made me cry harder, forcing me to bury my face into my legs before I could let out my desperate wails of sorrow.

Suddenly, the very next moment, I felt a message buzzing from my pocket. My immediate inclination was to grab it, but before I could move a muscle, my entire body froze in fear. What if it was somebody looking for me? What if they noticed that I wasn’t there and were trying to bully me through text messages? I didn’t want to look, but after a few moments, I felt a buzzing in my pocket again, leading my curiosity to take over for my better judgement.

“Trixie, I need to talk to you. Where are you at?”

Flash Sentry? No! I hadn’t seen him so far today, but I knew that he was just trying to lure me out. If I met him in the cafeteria, I knew he would just bring me over to his friends, pour school milk over my head and decorate my neck and shoulders with applesauce. I couldn’t take that risk. I had to stay where I was…

“Trixie, I’m sorry. I need to tell you that in person. Can you please just meet me by the statue?”

...But I knew I couldn’t stay there forever. My next plan was to wait for the bell to ring, run off campus as quick as I could and hide, but if Flash Sentry was waiting for me by the statue in the courtyard anyway, I no longer had any place to run. If he was being sincere, maybe I’d be able to figure out why people were treating me so badly, and if not, it would only be a matter of time before they found me. If there was one thing I learned from all my years of being tormented by Lulu Lemon, it was that waiting only pisses them off more.

After quietly opening the stall door and glancing around to make sure nobody was there, I snuck out of the bathroom as quickly as I could and started running towards the front door. If they started chasing after me, I would have to seriously consider turning into my magical girl form just to escape before they put me in the hospital. Luckily for me, though, I didn’t need to make that decision. After just a few moments, I had made it out of the school without anyone seeing me, finding Flash all alone in the courtyard while I hunched over out of breath.

“Whoa!” the boy said, rushing over to my side. “Trixie, are you alright?”

“What’s it to you?” I asked with malice in my voice, turning my head to the side to avoid eye contact. “Did you just call Trixie here to embarrass her?”

“No! No, nothing like that.” I raised an eyebrow, slowly turning my head until he was at least in my peripheral vision. “I really did just call you over to apologize. Look, I’m sorry that I got kinda mad at you yesterday. I realize now that I might have overreacted. I shouldn’t be the one who tells you whether or not you need help.”

This time, I looked straight into his eyes with a face caught between frustration and confusion. What was he even talking about?

“So this… isn’t about Cozy Glow?”

This time, it was Flash’s turn to raise an eyebrow in curiosity. “Who’s Cozy Glow?”

“Aha! Zer you are!”

Then, as if on cue, both of us turned our heads back to the front doors of the school, looking at a girl with her hands on her hips, staring down at the both of us. At least it looked like she was staring down at us. It was hard to tell with those large purple glasses over her eyes.

“Photo Finish?” the two of us said in unison.

“Yes. I, Photo Finish, have arrived.” The two of us stood there in silence until she made her way over to where we were standing, switching looks between the two of us. “I have been looking everywhere for you, Mädchen. I’m just glad I vas able to spot you running down ze halls before you made it outside.”

“You’ve been looking for Trixie too?” Flash said quizzically, which I was wondering wholeheartedly myself.

“Yes. I’m sure you also have somezing important to speak wiz her about, but I’m afraid zat my issue is more important.”

Flash looked like he had taken offense to what Photo Finish said, but I held up my hand to cut him off before he could get too angry. Photo Finish probably did have something important to talk about, at least if it had something to do with magical girls, which was the only reason I could think of why she would be talking to me.

“Is it something that Trixie can talk about openly?” I asked, to which Photo Finish nodded.

“Yes. I just need to know whether zose rumors about you are true.”

“What rumors?” Flash Sentry intervened. Photo Finish then turned to me, as if waiting for me to tell him that it was none of his business, but honestly, I needed to know what these people were saying about me more than anyone.

Then, with a sigh, Photo Finish slumped her shoulders and said, “Zer is a rumour around ze school zat you…”

I held my breath.

“...tried to kill a young freshman girl.”

“WHAT?!” both Flash and I shouted in unison, making Photo Finish back up with her hands raised.

“I’m only ze messenger here! I didn’t want to believe it myself, but it seems as though zose comments were inaccurate.”

Suddenly, I understood. Why everyone was so mad at me. Why my mother was so stressed that she almost took my life. They didn’t just think that I assaulted her; they thought that I tried to murder her in cold blood! But why…?

“Was this that Cozy Glow girl?!” Flash Sentry asked, his voice seething. “Why would she make up something like that?! I bet she signed up for the magical showcase! She knows Trixie’s gonna win, so she tried to sabotage her so that Trixie would drop out!”

“Oh, please,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Trixie may be intimidating, but I sincerely doubt that she would actually spread rumors because of that. I bet she didn’t even sign up for the--”

I was caught off mid-sentence by the face Photo Finish was making, holding her hand up apprehensively as if to deliver more bad news. “I’m sorry to say zis, but… Cozy Glow has indeed signed up for ze magical showcase.”

“You see?! That proves it!”

I knew that there was no way she had really spread a rumor like that for such a petty reason, but there was no way I could let Flash Sentry know the details of our conversation the day before. I still didn’t know exactly why Cozy Glow had said the things she did, and although I had a few hunches myself, I was really going off of blind theories alone. As much as I wanted Flash to help me find out more about her, it would probably be best to leave him out of the loop as much as I could, but Photo Finish, on the other hand, would be a completely different story.

“Do you know…” I began turning towards the girl in the glasses. “...what exactly she said that I did?”

Photo Finish shrugged. “All I have been told is zat you allegedly threatened her for signing up to be in ze showcase. I'm not sure how accurate zese claims are, but apparently you told her zat if she didn't take her name off of ze list, you ver going to kill her in a way ver nobody would know it was you.”

“None of it is accurate!” Flash Sentry exploded. “I can't believe her!”

I couldn't believe her either, but there was more to it than I understood. She seemed to think that I actually killed her friend, but I had no idea what the details were supposed to be. I knew for sure Discord knew about Divinity, and there may have been a chance that Photo Finish knew, but I didn't have any options other than to piece together whatever clues I could get.

“Photo Finish…” I began, making the girl’s eyebrow raise in curiosity. “You don’t happen to know about anyone named Divinity, would you?”

I was nervous saying the name in public, just because things like this were normally only spoken about in serious privacy, but the girl in the large, purple glasses simply shook her head without flinching a single time at the name. “I’m sorry, Mädchen, but is zis person supposed to be related to zese rumors, perhaps?”

I gave her a serious stare and said, “The Great and Powerful Trixie believes so,” to which Photo Finish’s mouth opened slightly, appearing to understand the subtle nuance to the context.

“Who’s Divinity?” Flash asked, giving me a weird look.

“Trixie doesn’t know… but from what Cozy Glow said yesterday, she might be involved in this somehow.”

“She sounds like bad news. Maybe I should find her and--”

“NO!” I screamed unintentionally, grabbing onto his shoulders with the utmost urgency in my voice. “You must promise Trixie to never, never go looking for Divinity!”

“Alright! Alright! I’ll stay away from her!” Finally, I realized what I was doing and let Flash go, brushing my hair to the side in embarrassment while he straightened out his leather jacket. “Is this girl supposed to be bad news or something?”

“I… I don’t know… But it sounded like she was really close to Cozy Glow…”

“Was?”

“...Yeah…”

Flash Sentry’s face cringed, getting the hint that whoever this Divinity girl was, she wasn’t alive anymore, and I hoped that I didn’t just give away that I might have had some kind of connection to her death. I still couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t comprehend it, even. What reason did Cozy Glow have to connect me with a dead magical girl? How did she even know I was a magical girl? I wish Discord could have told me more, but based on what everyone close to me was saying, nobody had any idea who this girl was or why Cozy Glow was blaming me for her death. I didn’t have a choice anymore. I was going to have to talk to Cozy Glow personally if I wanted to straighten this out.

Then, in the next moment, the bell rang, telling us to get back to our classes. The three of us looked at each other like we weren’t ready to go, knowing that once classes started again, I was going to receive another onslaught of persecution from my fellow classmates. The sad thing was, if I wasn’t on time, my mom would be getting a phone call right away, and there was no way I’d ever be able to recover from something like that. I may have wanted to run away on the spot, but I knew that I would have to return home and face my mother eventually, who would be less than happy about skipping my last three periods in school.

Finally, nodding my head, the three of us turned towards the front door of Canterlot High School, slowly walking back to the warzone just waiting to happen.

“Bitch.”

Once again, I was pushed into a locker by someone who just the day before I would have considered my friend. Fortunately, after all the crying I had already done so far that day, I was basically used to it by that point, even though every time it happened, I wanted to die a little bit more.

The school day was over, which meant that I had to find Cozy Glow before she left school if I ever hoped to make sense of why she was making my life a living Hell in the first place. I also had to make sure that I didn’t look like I was specifically looking for her, so just to make sure, I stopped at every girls’ restroom on the way to hopefully get away from anyone who was watching me. Honestly, I didn’t even know where I was supposed to be looking, but I had to find her no matter what.

Sticking my head out of the bathroom once again, I looked around to see if anyone was tailing me, and for probably the first time since school started that day, I wasn’t being watched. This just meant that I had to find her fast, but I also had to make sure that if anybody did spot me walking through the halls, I couldn’t be too conspicuous. Otherwise they would know not only that I was looking for someone, but also who I was looking for, which would probably end in a worse way than I realized at the time. Luckily, though, I didn’t have to wait much longer, seeing as how after a couple quick turns down the freshman corridors, I spotted a girl with pink skin and blue, curly hair walking down the hallway alone.

She didn’t do this on accident. She picked a secluded hallway so that we could talk without anyone getting in the way. She wanted me to find her.

“Cozy Glow!” I shouted, slamming my hand onto a locker beside me, making her yelp in surprise, turning around with an innocently fearful demeanor. “Trixie wants to talk to you.”

“Golly! You aren’t gonna try and hurt me again, are you?”

My fingers gradually turned into a fist until they dropped from the locker to my side, making me actually more mad than I was planning on being when I spoke to her. The whole purpose of talking to her was so that I could clear up why she had tried ruining my life, both in school and outside of school, but the moment I saw her, all the bottled up emotions came pouring out of me, exacerbated by the obviously fake tone in her voice.

“Trixie has just had the worst day of her life, and she thinks you might have an idea as to why.”

“Probably because of all the mean things these kids are doing to you, but then again, can you blame them?” The girl in front of me shrugged her shoulders, shaking her head with a vile grin. “After all the things I said you did to me, they were like putty in my hands. Now everyone at Canterlot High School knows just how much of a villain you really are.”

At this point, I was trying to hold back all the anger that had built up before I acted on the insurmountable rage boiling under my skin. I couldn’t remember a single time when I had ever laid hands on someone before, and I was doing my best not to let my feelings get to my head before I confirmed all the things she said about me.

“Who is Divinity?!” I shouted.

“Don’t you dare say her name!”

I smashed my fist into the locker beside me, quickly losing my temper as both of our expressions grew more and more enflamed. “Listen, freshman! Trixie has had enough of your games, so if you don’t tell me RIGHT NOW what’s going on, I’m going to--”

Before I could even finish my thought, however, my words quickly caught in my throat, not because of nervousness or magic, but because out of nowhere, somebody had come up behind me and wrapped their arm around my neck, lifting me into the air and preventing me from being able to speak.

“Was this girl causing you problems again?” the person asked in his hefty voice. I didn’t need to think twice about who the voice belonged to or why I was having such a hard time breaking free from his grip.

“Bulk… Biceps…?”

Once I said the boy’s name, his grip around my neck grew tighter, making it to where I could barely breathe between his arm and his chest.

“Ohhh, thank you so much for saving me~! I was so nervous that nobody would be able to find me in time!”

“Li...ar…”

Again, his grip grew tighter, now to the point where I would lose consciousness in a matter of seconds unless something happened to make him stop.

“You know, Trixie,” she continued, “you shouldn’t go around threatening people like that. If you’re really that scared about losing the magical showcase, you could have just told me about it. I would have let you win first place! I just wanted to try out showcasing my magic because I thought it would be fun! I never meant for anyone to get upset.”

Suddenly, the grip around my neck became a little more loose as Bulk Biceps began to cry theatrically behind me, making me roll my eyes before Cozy Glow returned to speaking.

“But… you know… after all that you’ve done, I just don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive you.”

“Then don’t! Trixie has done nothing wro-augh!!”

The restraint around my neck tightened once again, pulling all the air from my lungs, and this time, Cozy Glow didn’t seem too happy about hearing me speak. With our eyes focused, staring deep into each other’s pupils, she snapped her finger and said gently, “Kill her.”

Immediately, Bulk Biceps was squeezing at my throat with an intent to kill, overlooking the hypocrisy of what he was doing and blindly following the freshman girl’s orders. My eyes were beginning to water as I gagged, choking on his arm as my body flailed in a desperate attempt to pull air back into my lungs. Any minute now, I was going to be dead, but the worst part was that I knew exactly how I was going to be remembered. Everyone would believe that Bulk Biceps was a hero, saving Cozy Glow from some crazy narcissist who was only trying to gain popularity by winning some stupid extracurricular competition. Nobody would know the true story, and for that matter, even I didn’t know what Cozy Glow’s true intentions were.

With my body going limp and the lights around me beginning to fade, I started to cry on the inside, giving up all hope that I would ever make it back home. I never should have confronted her. I never should have lost my temper. Now I was going to die, all because I let my own ego get the better of me. Maybe I really was a narcissist, and maybe everyone would be better off if I didn’t make it out alive...

‘Good bye, mom…’ I thought just before the lights went black for the last time. ‘I promise, I really did try… I love you...’

Then, finally, my body went limp, and I stopped struggling. It was all over…

...or so I thought.

“OH, NO YOU DON’T!”

In the next instant, air returned to my lungs with my body falling to the ground. I quickly grabbed my neck as I began coughing all the built up saliva in the back of my throat, squeezing my eyes shut in pain while I bent over on my knees. Then, once I could finally process enough thought to figure out what had changed, I looked back to see Flash Sentry with a fist facing forward and Bulk Biceps pulling himself off of the floor.

Did he really just…?

Oh, dear.

“If you’re looking for a fight,” Flash said, rubbing his knuckles as he winced in pain, “then you’ve got one right here.”

Bulk Biceps, however, was not scared. The minute he was back onto his feet, he immediately puffed out his chest and released a loud, “YEEEEEAAAAAHHHH!!!” making both Flash and I flinch in fear.

I was thankful that he had saved my life, but if we didn’t do something quick, there were going to be two dead bodies by the end of this. He didn’t stand a chance in a one on one fight against the strongest kid at Canterlot High.

“Flash,” I muttered, backing away slowly. “You should probably run away now.”

“Yeah,” he said with a gulp. “You’re probably right.”

Then both of us immediately turned on our heels and began running away, but not without a scowling Cozy Glow pointing in our direction and shouting, “After them!!” Bulk Biceps didn’t waste a second, and we could only hope that with all that weight that he was supporting on his knees, he wouldn’t be able to catch up with Flash Sentry and me running for our lives.

Adrenaline was rushing through my body, pushing me harder than I had probably ever experienced in my whole life, but Flash Sentry seemed to be having a tougher time than I was. He didn’t have to deal with all the rigorous physical challenges that I had to deal with as a magical girl, after all, and his aptitude as a musician didn’t make up for the physical attributes that jocks like Bulk Biceps had.

Looking back, I saw that Cozy Glow’s lackey was gaining on us. His heavy weight didn’t seem to impair him from running at full speed, even though he was heaving with every step that he took. There had to be something we could do to keep ourselves from getting killed!

Then it came to me. After turning the next corner, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small, gray ball, making Flash freeze in fear.

“Trixie! What are you doing?! Let’s go!”

What Flash Sentry didn’t realize, however, was that I knew exactly what I was doing. I may not have been able to safely transform into a magical girl in public, but that didn’t mean I didn’t still have tricks up my sleeve.

“Feast your eyes on Trixie’s most famous illusion! Behold! Her great and powerful disappearance!”

Then, just as soon as Bulk Biceps had caught up with us, I slammed the gray ball onto the floor, creating a smokescreen that immediately hid us both from view. I had to hold my breath to keep myself from coughing, and fortunately I didn’t need to explain that to Flash Sentry for him to pick up on the clue and get himself out of there before Bulk Biceps could follow the sounds of his voice. I had trained myself to orient myself before every disappearing act so that I knew exactly where I was and which direction I needed to turn, but Bulk Biceps was going to have a much harder time navigating through all the smoke. Even if I set off a smoke detector in the process, it would be worth it if it meant we got to live to see another day.

Turning around, however, my heart stopped. Just when I thought I had managed to escape…

“Found you!”

...Cozy Glow was right there.

She then grabbed onto my arm, using her other hand to grab hold of her necklace with a red gem, a gem that looked oddly familiar.

“Let--urk--me… GO!”

“Oh, no! You’re coming with me!”

Before I could even question where, however, the lights around me started changing colors, swirling around each other and transforming the shapes of the images around me. The smoke was disappearing, my body was becoming lighter, and the air around me felt like it was being sucked through a vacuum, like space itself was disappearing behind us. This wasn’t the first time I had felt this happen before, though. In fact, I had been through this same feeling dozens of times over.

Then, as suddenly as it started, the colors surrounding us returned to normal, although normal at this point was all relative. We weren’t at Canterlot High School anymore. She had transported us to a different dimension, a parallel world, and to my surprise, it didn’t look a thing like Platinum City, which was what I was really expecting. It was barren, lifeless, deserted…

Cozy Glow, however, folded her arms and glared at me. “You know, I was so set on killing you that I almost forgot what I needed you for in the first place.”

I furrowed my eyebrows, placing my hands on my hips. “And what, pray tell, is that?”

“You’ll see. Come on.”

Cozy Glow then started walking away, but after all I had been through that day because of her, there was no way that I was just going to go along blindly with whatever she was planning.

“You used a teleportation gem on Trixie, correct?” Cozy Glow turned her head to the side, giving me a dirty look. “Where exactly are we? This doesn’t look like Platinum City.”

“That’s because we’re not in Platinum City.” Finally, she turned around and looked me dead in the eye. “We’re in Everfree City.”

Then, as if on cue, the searing pain returned to my head once again, bringing to my knees as I winced in agony. Discord had told me never to come here, but there were too many questions now, and I wasn’t leaving until I knew why he was so opposed to me coming here in the first place.

“And what did you bring Trixie here for?”

“You really don’t get it, do you?” With a heavy sigh, Cozy Glow folded her arms and sternly said, “You’re going to meet Autumn Blaze and tell her why I’m the only magical girl Canterlot has left.”

Author's Notes:

Starting this Saturday, I'm going to be doing the 12 days of Trixmas, where I'm going to be adding a new chapter to the story every day leading up to Christmas Day. I hope you're all just as excited as I am and that you're all enjoying Last Gambit so far! I'm planning to add a bunch of stuff that I think you're all really going to enjoy, so be sure to give the story a thumbs up if you're excited for the 12 days of Trixmas!