Trixie's Greatest Trick
by theworstwriter
First published
The mechannics of a magic trick are much less important than the context it's done in.
This is the story of two ponies who happen to be in love saving Equestria. That's a fairly generic premise, but more specificity will only make it sound worse. Let's go down the list.
First-person? Check.
Chapters are way too short? Check.
Chapters are published out of order? Double check.
OC as the narrator? Check.
OC shipped with Trixie? Check.
Details on the shipping kept light enough to not satisfy people looking for a shipfic or apply the romance tag, but heavy enough to bother those against the ship? Check.
Poorly written? Triple check.
Time travel? Oh you best believe that's checked.
Peppered with references nobody's gonna get? Check.
There's no way this could possibly succeed. Let's do this.
0 - Setting the Stage
So Luna looks up at the moon and smiles, Trixie’s on the floor, eyes closed and chest heaving, and I’m standing there gawking like an idiot. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as relieved as anypony else that we aren’t all doomed, but something’s bothering me. A little itch in the back of my brain that won’t stop screaming about how there’s an element that doesn’t add up. Then it clicks.
Trixie’s still wearing the red cape. I start hyperventilating, worrying my head off that the universe is gonna be torn asunder, when Trixie peels an eye open and smiles at me with it. She lifts one hoof a few inches off the ground and does a little wave. “Ta-daa,” she rasps, and with a soft glow the red drains right out of the fabric, leaving behind the starry purple we all know and love. I stare blankly for a second or two before the second click.
I collapse in a heap of laughter. Oh, she got me good she did. That’s one for the history books. Or, it would be. Should be. Whatever. Easily the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen anypony pull, and after all the nonsense that’s gone down recently, that’s saying something. In fact, it’s so damn good that I think it’s worth slogging through an explanation so you can understand. I’ll try to keep the theatrics to a minimum and only embellish the truth when absolutely necessary. Trixie’s the showpony, not me. I love that mare so, so much.
Y’know, I never used to believe in that “love conquers all” stuff, but I don’t think I have much of a choice anymore. Not after today. Er... yesterday. Next Tuesday. Whichever it is. Oy vey, I have no idea how to go about explaining this.
I would start at the beginning, but that’d turn into a mess real quick. Can’t very well start at the end either. This is gonna be real tricky to manage properly, but I’ll try to tell this little tale in an order that’ll make some sense. I'll probably fail.
This is the story of how Trixie and I fell in love, destroyed Equestria, saved Equestria, and saved Equestria again. But not exactly in that order because time travel ruins everything.
16 - A First Meeting and a Reunion
Somepony knocked on my front door. I set down my little shovel and stood up, trotting around the house rather than going through it, and when I reached the front door I saw a beautiful azure mare with a faint cornflower blue mane standing there, oblivious to my presence. Generally when a pony knocks on a door they expect an answer from that door rather than a space to the left of it.
I cleared my throat, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Can I help you?” I asked.
She whipped her head to face me and shot me a devilish grin. “You most certainly can.”
Raising an eyebrow and receiving no response, I set out to run through some basic introductions. “My name’s—”
“Trixie knows your name, handsome. How could she forget?” One of her hooves brushed through her mane. “Come along now. You promised Trixie fine dining.”
“Excuse me?” I gasped.
Her mouth flattened into a thin and thoroughly unamused line. “No games, Euro. We’ve done enough damage already.”
The world around me blurred as I shook my head back and forth, trying to clear away some of the confusion. “Hold on a second here. How do you know my name?”
Trixie took a step back, her ears drooping. “This isn’t very funny.”
“Nopony’s laughing,” I said, hard and blunt.
Her eyes shot all the way open. “What’s today?” she demanded.
A bead of sweat ran down the side of my face. This mare was clearly bonkers. Just my luck, too. The first looker who’s talked to me in ages and she’s a nutcase. “Tuesday.”
Her pupils shrank. “...No.”
“Lady, today is Tuesday whether you like that or not.”
She scrambled toward me and threw her hooves on my shoulders. “Trixie has... I have made a mistake. Everypony’s probably in a lot of danger now.” Her eyes slid around, scanning in every direction. “We have to go. I’ll fix this... somehow. Just come with me,” she said.
I pushed her back a little ways. “I’m a busy stallion. I don’t have time for whatever it is you’re trying to sell me here, and I think we’d both be happier if you left now.”
“No. No, that won’t do at all. Come on, we need to get you out of the way before you show up.”
At this point, I was starting to worry. The crazy mare was a unicorn, and for all I knew she was gonna put that horn of hers to sinister use. My leg muscles started to coil, readying me to buck her in the face and run, when suddenly I got knocked to the ground by something falling on me. I twisted my head as much as I could the heavy lump on me, only to find myself staring into my own face. Just before I (or the other me) could let out a girly scream, *wham*. Trixie whacked me... er, the other me, upside the head with a big rock. He went limp and I shoved him off of me.
I pointed down at myself and opened and closed my mouth a few times, not able to decide whether I should stare at Trixie or myself. Finally, I settled my gaze on the gorgeous mare. It seemed like the best option. “That’s me,” I said, pointing at myself.
“You do have a gift for stating the obvious,” she said with a smirk.
“But I’m me.”
“Yes. And so is he. You’re both you. Now, are you going to come with me before you wake up? If we’re lucky, your skull is thin enough that that blow made you forget the last few confusing seconds.”
I blinked a few times. “But... I’m me.”
“And so are past you from the future and future you from the future, both of whom have very important roles to play today. I’ve got no idea what you’re doing here, though, so I’m getting you out of the way. It’s all very complicated and only somepony as brilliant as me could possibly keep everything in order, so we agreed you’d let me handle it. Now are you going to go back on future you from the past’s word?”
“Um... no?”
Trixie sighed. “You’re lucky I like you so much.”
I failed to suppress a blush.
“Actually, Trixie just had a brilliant idea.” That devilish grin from earlier resurfaced. “The fewer jumps, the better, right? Trixie needs you to go to Ponyville and find a mare named Twilight Sparkle. She should have a cape and a hat that belong to Trixie. Retrieve them.”
I—not me, but the other me on the ground—started to stir. I didn’t know what to make of all that, but I knew I didn’t want to be there when I woke up. So I ran. I ran sorta southeastish. Ponyville was sorta southeastish, but I couldn’t tell you whether that factored into my decision or not. I was a little out of it, what with the thinking I was losing my mind and all.
31 - Celestial Resynchronization
I looked back and forth between the sun and moon. We could do this. It was going to be way too close for comfort, but it was possible.
I turned back to the magical orb and gave it the mightiest stomp I could muster, breathing a sigh of relief as it shattered into countless pieces. I turned toward Trixie and nodded. Her horn flared, Luna began to stir, and I looked back up at the celestial trainwreck that was about to unfold. The moon moved forward. The sun moved back.
My face fell. It wasn’t possible. There was no way she would be conscious in time, there was no way Trixie could do it alone, and it was all my fault. I opened my mouth to say something - I don’t remember what - and Trixie just shook her head. A few tears escaped those gorgeous magenta eyes of hers before the magical glow atop her head shifted and brightened, reaching down toward Luna. Contact was made, and an unimaginably enormous wave of power surged from the Princess to Trixie and then to the moon. I was knocked on my flank, and for a moment it seemed like we were going to be okay. The moon slowly lurched to a stop... and the sun kept going. Of course stopping the sun and moon was impossible for a mortal, no matter how great and powerful. It was foolish to think otherwise.
I hung my head. Trixie fought back her liquid sorrow, trying to maintain an air of dignity in what would be her final moments. She knew we’d failed, and she knew that wasn’t acceptable. But she also knew there was a way out. So she grunted and strained and pulled with all the strength she could dig out of the Princess and one hundred and ten percent of the power she could find inside herself. She pulled as if the lives of every pony in Equestria depended on her being able to make the moon move just a little bit backward. They basically did, although it’s entirely possible there would have been a few survivors.
The sun blazed on, unflinching and uncaring. For a few seconds, I still didn’t think it would be enough. Luna’s eyes fluttered open, but there was no time to explain anything. There wasn’t even time to wait for Luna to be awake enough to have things explained to her.
So Trixie pulled harder.
I know she and I both like to embellish, but believe me when I tell you her horn was glowing as bright as the sun that was about to end us all. Her cape billowed heroically in the... I guess the winds of magic? It was definitely billowing, I’m just not quite sure why. She was set in a low and fierce pose, her cape was flapping about, her horn was shining, the sun and moon looked like they were just inches apart, and a groggy Luna was flopped uselessly on the ground. It was a pretty intense scene. I wish I could have painted a picture of it.
The moon moved.
With impeccable eyesight and unwavering focus, it was possible to see it trace out its normal arc in reverse - albeit at the most agonizingly slow pace imaginable.
The sun marched on as the last few seconds ticked away.
It got closer.
And closer.
And closer.
I imagined a faint sizzling sound as the surface of the moon cooked in the heat of the sun. The scorchmarks would never go away. The sun drew closer...
And the spell wore off. It would’ve been impossible to tell if it had, but I like to think time stood still for a moment there as the universe shifted gears. The sun moved back the way it came, forward toward tomorrow.
Luna stood, Trixie collapsed, and the glow faded. The moon was let go and it resumed moving steadily at a pace that matched the sun’s exactly. Luna’s gaze flitted about, her eyes widening five-fold when they landed on the sun/moon pair drifting across the sky.
She gawked for a minute or two before shaking herself out of her stupor and lighting up her horn. She pushed the moon back at a rate that easily outclassed Trixie’s attempt by a dozen orders of magnitude and before long, the sun and moon were at the proper distance again.
She turned to face me with a heavy frown pulling down on her muzzle; her eyebrows weren’t very friendly either. “Explain.”
10 - Knowing is Half the Battle
The ashes scattered in the wind. Trixie remained silent as her jaw dripped downward. A few times, her mouth twitched, as if to start speaking, but nothing intelligible came out. For once, I had left her speechless, albeit not in a good way. The completely dumbfounded look on her face was almost cute before I started to think about what she would do to me once the righteous anger registered in her mind. Luckily, my future self had left me a gift that I had a hunch was meant for exactly this moment.
I reached into my pack and pulled out the blanket, unfolding it to find a plush red cape and a hat with a lump in it. Ensconced in the hat was a mostly-translucent orb, carrying just a hint of a very striking blue color. After stuffing the orb back into my pack, I prodded Trixie and offered her the costume.
At first, she just stared and blinked. I started to sweat a little. And then she smiled.
“Trixie supposes this replacement is adequate. Trixie thanks you... which one are you, again?” she asked.
“Uh... present from the future... after the past, I think.” I raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
She fidgeted in place a bit. “Trixie may have placed a bet with one of you. She must regretfully admit she has lost.”
I grinned stupidly. “Neat. What’d I win?”
“Trixie owes you nothing,” she scoffed, turning her head to one side and closing her eyes. She looked back with one barely open eye, but her nose still turned up. “Trixie owes a later incarnation of you something that isn’t any of your business yet, and she’s considering nullifying the agreement. Since you just inadvertently learned in the past how the bet would go in the future, there’s no risk to you.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but was cut short by the same bizarre *vwoomph* sound I still wasn’t used to. A portal appeared next to me and I stepped out. “Hey, not to cut this short, but you gotta go meet Trixie, and Trixie owes me something,” I said to myself.
I shook my head, knowing better than to try to understand. Even if I did ask myself, I wasn’t likely to know. “And what do I have to do?”
“I just told you. You have to meet Trixie,” I said.
I slowly turned and looked at her, then back to myself.
I got the message and slapped myself upside the head. “Right. The first meeting. You need to go make a good impression on Trixie.”
“Trixie agrees. She has appointments of her own to keep, and if you want to impress her you’d best get moving.”
I rolled my eyes. “Great. This isn’t confusing or stupid at all and I totally know what I’m doing.”
I glared at me. “We don’t have to. Trixie’s the brains of the operation and the real star of the show, and don’t you ever forget it,” I snapped. “From her point of view, everything makes perfect sense.”
“I know she’s pretty, but you don’t have to lay it on quite that thick,” I retorted. Turning to face Trixie, I pointed at the hat and cape. “Alright. Just make sure that when you meet me for the first time, you aren’t wearing those. Because you weren’t when you... already did. Or something? Space-time preservation mumbo-jumbo, I dunno.” I looked at myself. “Portal already lined up?” I nodded to me. “Off I go, then.”
Right away I saw two things worth paying attention to. Trixie’s old hat and cape were stuck in a nearby tree. Without thinking, I reached up and grabbed them. Glancing left and right for some clue as to when or where I was or which direction to go, I found a perfect answer. A distraught looking Trixie, sans-costume, scrambled across the countryside as if in search of something.
I ran a hoof through my mane and checked my breath, before arching an eyebrow and whistling. “Looking for something?” I asked in my deepest and movie-starriest voice.
Trixie frowned. “Not now, Euro. Trixie is looking for Trixie.”
I frowned, too. “Which Trixie are you?”
“You don’t recognize greatness when you see her?” she said with a scowl. “You were just conversing with Trixie a few moments ago. She was... unaware her appointment would be so temporally proximaI to yours.”
“I better get a nice reward out of all this.”
“You’ve got plenty of ‘reward’ coming to you when you find Trixie, and again when you win your stupid bet, but for now Trixie must depart.”
“What, allergic to teamwork?”
“Trixie has no need for assistance,” she huffed, “but even if she did, you’d be of no use here. Trixie isn’t looking for the same Trixie you’re looking for. Your time might be better spent assisting yourself over there,” she said, pointing off into the distance.
Stifling a groan, I began the trudge to go meet myself.
34 - Two Things, Actually.
“So Euro destroyed the orb and Trixie kept the sun and moon apart while Luna recovered,” Trixie said.
“And even though we might have accidentally almost destroyed Equestria one or two times, the second time we actually did you a favor,” I added.
Celestia regarded the two of us a with a stern squint. “Not possible,” she blurted. “I hate to be so blunt, but you,” she said, pointing at me, “wouldn’t have had the strength to break it and you,” she said, pointing at Trixie, “aren’t organized enough to manage all that or magically gifted enough to pull it off. There are very few ponies that powerful, and I tend to keep tabs on them.”
Trixie cleared her throat. “The Prodigious and All-Powerful Trixie can demonstrate, if it would please your highness.”
Celestia regarded her with a puzzled look. “You can’t be serious.” She turned to face her sister. “Do you know how few ponies have traveled through time? Touched the heavens? Both?” She returned her gaze to Trixie. “Do you have any idea?”
“Do you have a better explanation?”
That familiar old *vwoomph* rang out from a space just to my left, and Trixie stepped forward in her original costume to stand beside herself in her new one. The two showmares drank in the stunned silence, almost imperceptibly posing in place beneath flowing red and purple capes. “Trixie would guess between three and seven,” she yawned.
I smiled. “Oh good. You can do it instead! I’m sure Trixie could use some rest.”
“Neigh. The feat is all the more impressive if done when not in peak condition. Trixie will prevail. Trixie only appeared here to give her highness a little nudge in the right direction. She really must be going. Trixie’s return to the finally properly wound future should be the last time travel.”
“The last one?” I blinked a few times. “As in, after this, we’re done and everything gets to make sense again? And we can finally go get that dinner!”
“Trixie hopes it is worth the ridiculous wait.”
Trixie winked at herself. “The wine is excellent,” she said before trotting back into the portal and disappearing.
Luna clapped her hooves together. “You see, dear sister? They speak a reasonable approximation of the truth.”
“If she can really move the moon without aid when already drained... just—” Celestia sighed and put a hoof to her head. “Just show me. I hope you’re right so that I can wash my hooves of this entire incident.”
I chuckled. “I hope she can so we can get off this monster of a roller coaster before it explodes.”
“The ride has ended,” Trixie said. She exhaled slowly and took a deep breath. “There will be no more knots in the timeline from here. Everything is correct.”
After a short silence, I grabbed her hat and lifted it off of her head. I kissed her softly on the forehead, just to the side of the horn. “You’ve got this.”
She nodded. “Trixie knows.”
I clenched her hat tightly to my chest, trying to muffle the sound of my desperately beating heart. The end was in sight. Our stupid, stupid adventure could come to a close and we could live happily ever after — or whatever ridiculous jazz you want to call it. Really, I had no reason to be so nervous. Even if Trixie failed, which she wouldn’t, this was just a formality. An epilogue. The real trials were over and nothing else could go wrong.
Trixie grunted and sweated and strained and pulled and the moon inched just a smidge backward. Celestia smiled, but my heart kept hammering away. Had we forgotten anything, I wondered? We couldn’t have. Everything was good and right and... the wine was excellent! Future Trixie from the future after the future had said so.
And then, with a crack of thunder, the laughter started.
26 - Deus Ex Globus
We both breathed long sighs of relief and shared a smile. After a silent moment, I suppressed a chuckle. “You realize what this means, right?”
She narrowed her gaze into a playful glare.
I let my smile slink into a grin.
She frowned. “Come on! Really? After that?”
“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to go double or nothing,” I chided.
Slumping back in acknowledgment of her defeat, she frowned. “Later? Can we eat first? Our food should be right when we left it.”
“Alright,” I said with a nod, “I’m pretty hungry, anyway.”
In an uncaring swirl of temporal nonsense, we were both whisked right into our ignorance. We sat back down at the table and leered hungrily at our still-steaming food, not noticing the retrospectively obvious oddity. The steam didn’t move right. Then the waiter trotted backwards to our table, turned to face us, picked up our plates, and trotted backwards away from us. He carried our food back into the kitchen.
We were both too dumbfounded to say anything. Trixie caught on first. She jumped up and galloped to the window. Motioning me over without taking her eyes off the moon, she realized what we’d done. I was a little slower on the uptake and needed her to point at it and glare at me for a bit before I figured out what she was trying to tell me.
The moon was moving backwards, and a faint hint of sunlight sparkled on the horizon. Some of the other ponies in the restaurant gawked at us briefly before calmly ejecting food from their throats to their plates. Trixie blinked us out of there and over to a secluded hilltop where we could freak out in peace. After a few decidedly unpeaceful minutes thereof, the sun rose. From the west.
“Okay,” Trixie said, “so time is flowing backwards. That’s... not a disaster, right?”
I shrugged. “Are you sure we aren’t the backwards ones?”
She dragged an exasperated hoof down her face. “Trixie doesn’t think there’s any way to tell. Forward and backward are relative.”
The sun kept rising, gradually brightening the night. Day. Whichever. I looked around us at the swaying grass and the drifting clouds. “Sure,” I said with a nod. “So, it doesn’t matter then, right? If we just reverse ourselves, we’ll go the same direction as everything else and we won’t know the difference.”
Trixie slumped to the ground and covered her head with her hooves. “Trixie doesn’t know how to reverse time.”
I blinked. “Oh. Well maybe we can ask somepony like Twilight for help?”
Trixie moved a hoof out of the way and looked up at me. “Can you speak and understand backwards?”
“No.” I hung my head.
“Trixie will just have to get practicing,” she mumbled into the dirt.
I pulled the door shut behind me as Trixie and I stepped out into the street. “That Twilight is too smart for her own good.”
“Trixie is just as smart,” she growled, “and if Trixie spent all her time in a library, she could be just as knowledgeable.”
“Easy, I didn’t say you weren’t,” I assured her. “I’m just saying that Twilight is smarter than she’s prepared to handle. She’s just as likely to get herself into trouble as she is to do something worthwhile when she puts her brain to use.”
Trixie harrumphed. “Trixie supposes she can agree to that,” she spat with a flick of her tail.
“Now then, is that all we needed?”
“Trixie thinks she’s ready.”
I nodded. “Alright then. You flip us back and then we go settle things.”
“Settle things?” Trixie rolled her eyes. “Fine. Quadruple or nothing.”
I tossed her a smirk. “You can’t be serious.”
“Trixie doesn’t play games.”
“Alright then. Hope you’re ready to lose big.”
Trixie’s horn started to glow. “Trixie is prepared for whatever you throw at her, but she assures you that she won’t be losing anything today.” A soft light emanated from the orb in my bag, but I didn’t consciously notice and payed it no mind. With an audible pop, the world vanished in a blinding light. When I could finally see again, I strained my eyes squinting at the noonday sun over Canterlot, trying to determine which way it was moving. Trixie just glanced around the streets, noting that ponies were trotting forward rather than backward. She tapped me on the shoulder and pointed them out to me.
I grinned sheepishly. “Well that didn’t seem too hard.”
“Nothing is too hard for the Great and Powerful Trixie!” she shouted, standing on her hind hooves and throwing her forehooves into the air. Some fireworks went off. Neither of us really noticed the sun sliding ever so slowly backwards.