“...They’ve done it!” Big Bucks exclaims, clutching his top hat to his chest as though he might faint. The four grandmares slowly extricate themselves from the glass-sided water tank. The feathered headgear that started so perky and bold now flops against their sides, sopping wet, as they cheerfully wave.

In an instant the captivated audience goes from dead silence to raucous roars, no longer burdened by the weight of witnessing mortal peril.

Not that the grandmares were in any real danger, Trixie wryly notes as she stomps along. She wouldn’t ruin the perilous performance like some frightened filly, heavens no. The glass tank is specially designed to keep the heads of those inside clear of the water while soaking every other inch, and the tiny bit that seeps through from their ornate headpieces completes the terrifying deception. The horns of the showstallions had remained unlit throughout the entirety, adding to the uncertainty; after all, most unicorn magicians utilize their magic to complete their sleights and illusions, a technique her sire vehemently opposes.

“All done using instructions we gave them,” Jack Pot continues, exaggerating every aspect of his character as Big Bucks offers towels, “…with our minds!” As though the grandmares did much at all. Eager stomps meet his melodramatic manner; he gives a long bow as the four grandmares shuffle off the stage. “And, for our final act?” He motions for Trixie to join him to the confused chatter of the audience. “You may have seen her performing in Canterlot, Manehattan, and Ponyville: my little filly, returning after three years on the road! Trixie Lulamoon!”

Trixie - ready for this moment, having suspected her sire would call her out - sweeps her starry purple cloak so it billows behind her as she leaps to the stage, showing off her star rod and moon cutie mark. She grins at the applause, striding toward her sire to exchange a brief nuzzle, only for him to flick her flank with his tail as she turns to the audience. Her smile widens, inwardly appalled at his immodesty - she’s in a herd! - and waits for the cheers and wolfish whistles to subside.

“Thank you, thank you.” She takes a deep breath, used to the lack of amplification; for the duration of the trick, her horn would remain unlit, a proof to her sire she can and has followed in his hoofsteps. Even as she (greatly) prefers magic-based tricks that utilizes her Generosity magic to its fullest extent.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie has traveled to many distant and exotic locations,” she tells, weaving the story as she pulls out her battered box of playing cards from inside her cloak, leaving a set of six specially prepared cards in easy reach. “At every place she performed her spectacular feats of magic she had those who most appreciated her performance sign a very special deck of cards.”

She stands on two legs and fans the cards out to the audience, showing off the signatures on each (most forged as best she could recall, as the real deck perished in an astral-ursa caused fire) and that every card is present and in a random order. On some they can barely make out the card underneath, while others lack a single signature. She gives the cards a real shuffle - one hooved, of course - and continues flipping the deck around to form intricate patterns as she speaks. “So, to continue that tradition, I ask you.” She turns to her sire and Big Bucks. “What is your favorite card?”

“Knave of hearts,” Jack Pot answers with a salacious wink at her, drawing bemused chuckles from the audience. Big Bucks booms out, “The three of clubs!”

Trixie nods at each, quickly locating the two cards and passing them over along with a thin black pen. She slips the six of spades fourth from the top along with a specific nine, prince, and princess. Any shuffles from now are false shuffles, or ones that leave the top four cards the same, or simple cuts repeated in pairs, giving the appearance the order is constantly being rearranged. Jack Pot squeezes his signature next to half a dozen others while Big Bucks has only Quill Jillette’s to avoid. They place their cards in the middle of the deck; she covertly keeps a break while she tucks the pen away.

She bombastically commands, “The Great and Powerful Trixie requires the use of your hat!”

Big Bucks tentatively pulls the large top hat off his head, exposing his horn. “Careful,” he warns. “Anything put inside has a tendency to… disappear.”

Trixie exaggerates a gasp. “Disappear? What do you mean?”

Big Bucks nods solemnly. “They… vanish.”

“...I see.” Trixie gives a worried gulp, and very carefully holds the hat as far away as she can, squatting down to slowly set it on the polished floor as an impromptu table. She explains to the audience, “However, this deck is not the only wonderful and marvelous artifact I acquired during my travels. In fact, due to all the time spent on them, and the Great and Powerfulness of my performances, my very horseshoes were imbued with magic!”

Murmurs spread among the audience, many never having heard of magical items being created this way. A complete farce, of course, but they lap it up.

Trixie nods as though that might convince them, and it sometimes does. “However, the nature of this magic is difficult to detect, and even harder to figure out.” She holds up her front hooves, the steel of her shoes gleaming. “With these, I can make any card I wish appear! Behold! The six of spades!”

She seems to pull off the top card of the card, though actually grabs the princess of hearts, and proudly displays it for all to see. When the audience laughs, she twists it around, muzzle scrunching up in distaste. “What? No, let me try again!”

She replaces the princess to the top of the deck, carefully deals the three of clubs from the middle as though it is the first card - it lands face down on top of the hat - and announces, “The six of spades!” while brandishing the princess of hearts again.

“Impossible!” Trixie stamps a hoof in frustration as the audience guffaws, again replacing the princess. She deals the noble from the center. “Six of spades! Six of spades! Six of spades!”

Four cards - including two cards matching those concealed in her cloak - now rest on the top hat. “Six of spades!” she calls one last time, this time letting the princess of hearts go and revealing the top card - the six of spades.

“But that’s not all,” Trixie continues, the scattered applause quickly dying. “The real magic comes from this one here.” She lifts her left rear hoof, balancing on one hoof so the bottom faces the audience. “And trust me,” she reassures with a huff and shake of the head, “it was not easy to figure out.”

She puts the remaining deck of cards away inside her cloak, then withdraws a Pull Off, a farrier’s tool to remove shoes, and wiggles the sharpened head between the loosened metal shoe and her hoof. A quick jerk rips the shoe the rest of the way off, the sharp nails pointing out.

“This Great and Powerful shoe, when dropped, will rearrange the cosmos!” Trixie holds an exaggerated grin for a second before giving a reluctant shrug. “Other times, it will merely rearrange the order of the cards. But not something as trite as the black cards on the bottom and the red cards on top. No, it will order the cards from least to greatest! Behold!”

Trixie swaps the shoe and Pull Off for the six cards on the hat and fans them out for all to see: three of clubs, noble of diamonds, and nine of clubs in her left hoof; prince of diamonds, princess of hearts, and six of spades in her right. With a careful grip she takes a deep breath, flicks her hooves to the side to conceal how she slides the middle card to the top while turning the cards over, and mashes the two piles together so that the three goes on the bottom, the six comes next, then the nine and noble followed by the prince and princess. She drops the pile on the hat and picks up the shoe and Pull Off with one quick motion.

“Behold!” Trixie carefully angles the shoe when she drops it at the corner of the cards. The shoe flips over the stack of cards as it bounces off the springy hat - she deftly catches it on the way back up - and reveals the cards, perfectly sorted.

The audience gamely stomps, though it’s more muted than Trixie likes. She forces herself to keep grinning.

“Oh? Are there some neigh-sayers in the audience? That claim because the Prestidigitatious and Dextrous Trixie touched the cards, that is how they reordered themselves?” Trixie nods along as though she agrees with them. “Very well! To prove Trixie’s Great and Powerfulness, behold!”

Trixie wriggles out one of the nails from her shoe. “Big Bucks! Can you verify that this is, in fact, a standard Mustang M-X seventy, two solid inches of steel?”

He takes the nail, testing how far it bends. Jack Pot tests the sharpness of the point, wincing.

While the stallions inspect the nail Trixie picks up the cards with the same hoof holding the Pull Off and slips them both into her cloak. She replaces two cards, the six and nine, with two identical versions that have a slit cut on the bottom of the card. She comes back with the cards and a soft-headed hammer.

Big Bucks nods, returning the nail to her, his mouth opening in shock at seeing the hammer.

Trixie again holds up the cards, showing the sequential order. While keeping the faces to the audience at all times she performs a series of cuts - bottom half to the top, middle two to the top, and the top card to the bottom - that gets the cards in the right order: three, noble, prince, six, nine, princess.

She replaces the shoe against her hoof, places the edge of the cards against the shoe, and slams the hammer down, piercing the cards and quite literally nailing them to her shoe.

Jack Pot winces at the sound of cards tearing, Big Bucks startles backward, and at least one audience member throws her hooves in the air as she faints.

Trixie calmly gives the cards a tug left, right, and down, showing they are firmly nailed to the underside of her shoe. She fans the cards out, revealing the order is the same as before. Then, with a flourish, she pushes the cards back into a stack - hiding during the flourish how she tugs the cut six and nine out just enough so she can slip them between the three and noble - and pushes them back in.

“Down goes the shoe,” Trixie narrates as she stamps her hoof on the ground. “Behold!”

She lifts her leg and fans the cards out with some difficulty, the bulging head of the nail keeping them tight, and reveals them again in sequential order. “Are these your cards?”

The stomps come without restraint as Jack Pot and Big Bucks nod, astonished. Or at least pretending to be. Trixie bows, flicking her cloak back with the same motion that replaces the hammer, flips Big Bucks’ hat back on top of his head, and waves to the thundering audience as she trots off to join the grandmares on the hidden side of the stage, the curtains closing behind her.

As soon as she leaves the stage her measured walk turns to a giddy prance. She did it! Not that there was any doubt, of course; she had performed the same trick during the balloon ride over. A quick flash from her horn removes the cards from her hoof and repairs the tears, the cards returning to their spots under her cloak.

She keeps that elated feeling the entire trot to the dressing rooms. The grandmares impatiently wait outside, one marked by a top hat and the other by three stars. Their congratulations are muted, constantly glancing past her, something considerably larger obviously on their minds.

“We’ve waited years to get called as assistants,” Auntie Applesauce confides to Trixie. A hearty shudder ripples from her wrinkly face to her sagging flanks, an itch that no amount of cream could scratch.

Something Applejack said briefly crosses Trixie’s mind, something something overexertion, something something. But the stallion would be doing most of the work, though it’s quite likely been years since the elderly grandmares have gotten their hearts racing. And while her sire certainly isn’t an eager colt any more, she doubts he’ll fail to satisfy both mares.

Big Bucks arrives first, Jack Pot not far behind. The hefty stallion slips between Apple Rose and Goldie Delicious. “Well done, everypony!” he booms, casually draping a violet foreleg over each mare’s back. Their grins grow ever wider, exchanging leering glances.

“You ain’t so bad yourself,” Goldie Delicious purrs, white tailing curling around his hind leg like one of her cats. It slides higher, and he gives a little jolt.

Big Bucks idly examines the hoof around Goldie’s neck, doing his best to play off his excitement. “I’ve picked up a few tricks here and there.”

“We know a few tricks ourselves,” Apple Rose tantalizes, swishing her mane back and forth, looking a lot more like she did on the dance floor than the walk down the hallway. “Let’s make the magic happen!” She pushes open the door to Big Buck’s dressing room, the stallion sandwiched between and not minding at all how he is led into his room, the door slamming behind.

Auntie Applesauce’s eager stance turns to a heavy sigh of disappointment as Jack Pot walks past her, his attention solely focused on Granny Smith and Trixie. She recovers quickly. “Ah’m going to find that pegasus porter,” she explains to nopony in particular, “and we’ll paint the town candy apple red!” Granny Smith gives her a quick wave, more of a shooing motion if anything, not taking her eyes off Jack Pot. The bright green mare trots off, leaving the three of them alone.

Wait, Trixie thinks, suddenly self-conscious. Why did she-

“Quite the progress you’ve made with your hooves,” Jack Pot notes as he sidles next to Trixie, wearing an impressed grin. His jacket is draped over his back, a certain disheveledness to his look now that he has finished performing, a rugged appearance Trixie finds appealing, much like Doug after a few hours working with her. Or any of the other stallions she invited to her wagon, though they were generally a bit buffer. His muzzle twitches, a sly grin that leaves his eyes sparkling with desire. “Care to show your sire a few more moves?”

Trixie meets the question with a roll of her eyes. “You knave,” she calls, playing on his name, belying the crude nickname with a smirk and half-laugh. It’s not that she’s surprised at the offer, or even terribly offended; after all, her sire has been ‘entertaining’ his assistants in this manner for as long as she can remember. She always harbored a certain envy of the mares he met up with after a show, and his offer is more than a little tempting.

Jack Pot merely snorts. “Just hoof-stuff, then?”

“Daddy,” Trixie petulantly whines, not that it ever got her out of her practices when she was a filly.

“Princess Luna returned,” Jack Pot asserts with a hopeful shrug. “Maybe some of the Lula-Moon customs could come back, too.”

“I’m in a herd,” Trixie asserts, not retreating at the gentle press of his withers against hers.

“Oh?” Jack Pot sounds surprised. She’s not sure why; she sent him a card. She did send him a card, right? He pulls away just slightly, enough to no longer press against her, and she finds herself missing the contact. “And how is that going, then?” He glances at her barrel, but not in the leering way he was before, now measuring and calculating.

“Ah’ll be inside,” Granny Smith interjects as she brusquely pushes past Jack Pot and into the three-starred dressing room.

“No foal yet,” Trixie explains, slightly put out at the admission. He doesn’t relax, or really react at all. “Next year. Otherwise, it’s been…” She wants to say it’s going well, great even, yet she’s reminded of Applejack’s edicts about Honesty. She wishes the mare was with her, to back her up at least. “...Good. They’re certainly stricter than life on the road,” she continues with a rueful smile that turns to a long sigh. “Less after-parties and more regular parties, when I’m able to put on a show. Which happens less and less now that I’m teaching ponies and other creatures about Generosity.”

“Teaching?” Jack Pot pulls away so he can look her straight in the eyes. “Are you putting your skills to use in your… classes?” The last word rolls off his tongue slathered in vitriol. “You know how important practicing is, and if you’re not fulfilling your mark?” He pauses for a split second, gathering energy like a storm brewing over the Everfree. “You could have been performing in Manehattan, or Canterlot, or even back here if you wanted, but instead you’re stuck in a trifling town like Ponyville?”

Trixie huffs. “It’s not-”

“No, no,” Jack Pot cuts off, waving away her indignant rebuttal. He loses the edge in his voice, wistful for what might have been. “That was too harsh. What you do with your life is your decision. You made that clear when you left to tour the world, or at least Equestria.” He offers her a glum, half-hearted smile. “You always thought there wasn’t enough room in Las Pegasus for two azure-coated unicorns performing magic tricks.”

“What would it be like if there were four, or even six?” Trixie giggles at his horrified gasp. He always acted so over-the-top. “Okay, okay, four foals might be pushing it.”

“I’d say,” Jack Pot says, fanning himself while catching his breath. “One would be best. Maybe two, if you spread them out. Any more and you aren’t able to spend enough time with them, to best focus their efforts.”

Trixie snuggles next to her sire. “I… I mean, the Great and Powerful Trixie appreciated all the time you spent with her.” She twists to wink at him. “…Even if I didn’t show it at the time.”

Jack Pot plants a chaste kiss into the thick of her mane. She sighs happily. “And now you’re spending your time… teaching?”

“Generosity,” Trixie confirms. She rolls her eyes at his genuine look of disgust. “No, it’s not about teaching them stage magic. Even if that is my talent, and you know it.” She sticks her tongue out at him, and he sticks his right back at her. “Besides.” She takes a deep breath. “Celestia knows my foals will… probably struggle with that.” She gives him a hopeful, if strained, smile.

He musses with her mane. “I would be honored to help,” he answers her unasked question. He cracks his neck. “After all, if I got the best stage magician aside from Hoofdini-”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie is second to no mare,” Trixie rebuts with a broad grin.

Jack Pot gives her a questioning glance. “...The best stage magician in Equestria?” Trixie coughs. “The world?!” Trixie nods eagerly. Jack Pot takes a deep breath. “If I got the best stage magician in the world to put her talents aside and learn real hoof magic, then-”

“Ah ain’t gettin’ any younger in here,” Granny Smith shouts from inside the dressing room.

Jack Pot offers Trixie an apologetic smile. “...What the Gold Horseshoe Gals ask for…”

“...They have been long supporters,” Trixie concedes. She gives her sire a quick peck before waving, her cutie mark pulsing and making her wish she wasn’t leaving.

Next Chapter: Ch. 162 - Mutated Growth, Part Eight Estimated time remaining: 6 Hours, 31 Minutes