You need to calm down. There is no way Trixie can stop you from telling on her, is there? It might be anxiety, fueled with panic from being threatened by Applejack and Rainbow Dash. Just explain to her what happened. She’s a scientist, she’ll believe you!

“Twilight, Trixie got to tell you something.”

“Yes?”

“I… I’m…”

This isn’t working. Why isn’t this working? You’re actually choking on your words. What the hell did Trixie do to you? Is there anything else that won’t work? What the hell? You are so close, just get it out!

“I’m grateful for your help.”

No! That’s not what you want to say! For fuck sakes! You’re so close, and yet so far.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. What kind of pony would I be, if I didn’t help you in your time of need?”

Think! There must be some way to tell her. If you can’t say it, maybe you can write it down? How the hell are you supposed to write something down with a hoof though? How did Twilight write stuff down again? Oh, right, magic or making Spike do it for her. Considering you can’t say it to begin with, that drops Spike of that list. It was a stupid lie you made up to get alone with Twilight, but maybe she can teach you magic? You just need levitation, how hard could it be to get that down? Ok, new plan. Suck up to Twilight, earn her trust and learn magic.

“So, Twilight Sparkle. How long do you think it will take for Trixie to regain her magic?”

“Well, that depends on the situation really. Did anything special happen before you lost the ability to use magic?”

“Trixie doesn’t know. The one day she could use magic fine, the next nothing.”

It’s not a total lie, considering that one day Trixie was herself, the next walking about in your body.

“Hmm, could I try something? It might be a bit personal though.”

Personal? How personal. She’s not going to read your mind, is she? Wait, what if she is? This might be your ticket out of here!

“Sure, Trixie trusts you, Twilight Sparkle.”

Ugh, this is really getting annoying to you. Having to talk about yourself in the third perspective isn’t something you enjoy doing, but maybe it will all be over soon. Twilight will find out the truth, and help you get home. Or you get locked up in some laboratory for the rest of your life. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all? No, just relax and let Twilight read your mind, or whatever it is she is planning on doing.

The mind reading theory quickly gets shattered when Twilight closes the distance between you two. What is she planning? You actually have to hold back from bolting away when she lowers her horn, and brings it against your forehead. The last time a pony did that, it brought with it excruciating pain. You can’t help shutting your eyes when Twilight her horn starts to glow. She’s not going to hurt you, is she?

Nothing seems to be happening besides an odd tickling sensation spreading around your body though. It’s a weird feeling, but not unpleasantly so. You slowly open one eye to notice Twilight her own eyes are closed, and she seems to be concentrating as her horn gives off a tiny glow of bright magenta. Just what is she doing?

“That’s odd.”

Odd? That doesn’t sound good.

“What do you mean?”

“Trixie, for some reason your mana reserves are low. Very low even.”

“What do you mean?”

“You got very little mana left. It’s as if all the magic got drained from inside you.”

“Inside me?”

“Yes, you do know that every living being in Equestria has magic inside them, right?”

“Uh… yes?”

Twilight stares at you, as if she can’t believe you didn’t know that.

“Trixie, that’s something you learn at magic kindergarten.”

“Oh… Trixie wasn’t such a good student.”

“Now, why don’t I find that hard to believe?”

You should get upset at that remark, even if it’s meant for the pony whose body you inhabit, but the giggle Twilight let out when saying it makes you forgive her instantly. This really is one weird moment. Here you are, spending time with your favorite pony, and while you can’t deny you’re enjoying it somewhat, you would rather have that she found a way to get you home. If only you could tell her the truth, but this magic blocker or whatever this is, makes telling her the truth impossible in the normal way. Oh, you better focus. She’s calling out your name.

“Trixie, are you listening to me?”

“… Yes?”

“Oh, what did I just say then?”

Crap.

“Um… something about having magic inside of me?”

“Trixie… I just explained the entire process, you didn’t listen to a word, did you?”

“Sorry. Trixie is just REALLY anxious to get her magic back!”

Twilight sighs before she tries to explain this magic business to you again.

“Every living being has magic inside of them, and uses them for their daily tasks. Earth ponies, combined with their natural strength, can crow crops at a faster rate, or use their strength for heavy labor. Pegasi use the magic inside of them to help them fly, as well as being able to control the weather and shape clouds. Lastly, unicorns have a closer relationship with magic, as they use it to cast various spells, or help them in their daily lives.”

You’re kind of grateful to Twilight for explaining all that to you, but truthfully, you couldn’t care less. All you need to know is how long it takes to regain your magic. If you have barely any inside of you right now, then it must come back to you soon, right? God, that’s so weird to begin with even. Do you just absorb magic like a sponge? Is it like breathing in air?

“So, how long till Trixie regains her mana?”

“On a normal case, I’d say two days. But in your case, it might be up to a week, if not more.”

WHAT? A week? Oh, hell no! You’re not staying like this for an entire week.

“Trixie doesn’t have that long. She needs her magic back, right now!”

“Trixie, you don’t seem to realize how bad this is. Your mana is at a very low level right now. Dangerously low even. If you attempted to use magic now, you could seriously injure yourself.”

So, that’s it then? You’ll be forced to stay here for a week, like this? No way! You can’t handle this anymore. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the mane six liked you, but with Rainbow Dash and Applejack out for your blood, you don’t want to stick around here and possibly getting hurt in the process. Should you just risk it? How bad can it be? Well, you’d need to figure out how to cast magic to begin with, but you rather risk getting hurt then being forced to stay like this.

Still, maybe you best ask Twilight for the possibilities. What if Trixie refuses to change back, because you injured her body? Then you’ll be stuck here forever.

“What kind of injuries?”

“At best you might just hurt or chip your horn, but in worse cases you might seriously damage yourself. Horn rot, becoming paralyzed for the rest of your life or in the worst case scenario, you might even end up killing yourself. You’d never be able to use magic ever again. That's if you even survive at all.”

That’s… a lot to take in. Magic was the final bet that you had to get this whole mess undone, and now you get told that you might end up killing yourself with it. That’s if you somehow manage to make magic work to begin with even. You can’t help it. You crash down as you start to feel depressed. This shouldn’t be happening, why can’t you just undo this mess? What did you do to deserve this? You’re an ass, you won’t deny that, but there are so many more people in the world who are ten to a hundred times as worse as you. Yet, here you are. Where did it all go wrong? Watching a cartoon about ponies, then having one magically appear in your dreams, that’s where. Had you known this would have happened, you’d have told Trixie to fuck off.

You’re so lost in your own little debate of self-pity that you fail to notice that Twilight is calling out to you.

“Trixie? Hey, don’t worry. You will be able to cast magic again if you just have some patience.”

If only she knew. The real Trixie would be able to use magic after recharging her mana, but you have no experience with this at all. How long will it take you to be able to use it? For all you know, you will never be able to use it, and you’ll be stuck like this for the entire duration of six months. What if that time period isn’t the end though? Who’s to say this wasn’t a permanent switch, and now you’ll be a pony for the rest of your life?

You should stop having self-doubts about this whole mess, but you can’t help it. You should think positive, maybe there is some way to recharge mana besides the natural way? A magic recharge potion shouldn’t be out of the norm for a world with magic everywhere, right?

“Is there a quicker way to regain mana?”

“I’m afraid not Trixie, all you can do is rest and let it come naturally.”

Nothing good is going your way, is there?

“So what is Trixie supposed to do then? Sleep all week?”

“Why don’t you stay here for the week?”

“Here? As in your house?”

“Well, yes. And maybe you can make some friends in town while you’re at it!”

You see what she’s trying to do. She’s trying to convert Trixie into being nice. Silly idea, but you suppose it fits for Twilight. That would be all fine and dandy, but you’re not Trixie. You’re also not confident in the least, and frankly, having an entire town hate your guts isn’t helping there.

“Twilight, this town hates Trixie.”

“That’s not true!”

If you thought you had the worst poker face, Twilight has you beat. She’s lying, and it shows.

“Trixie isn’t blind or deaf, you know. She heard what ponies think about me.”

“Well… They’re just afraid, that’s all. You did kind of try to take over Ponyville and nearly caused an incident to destroy our town.”

“And you think they will just forgive Trixie because she’s staying here a week?”

“Just be nice to them. I made some of my best friends here by trusting them, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

“But that’s just it. Your friends hate me.”

“That’s not true either. Pinkie Pie and Rarity seems to like you.”

“And Fluttershy and Spike seems scared of me. Not to mention Applejack and Rainbow Dash want me gone.”

“They’re… just confused. They both are under a lot of pressure and overworked, plus the events last month hit them both very hard.”

Ok, you need to find out what the hell happened here. If you are forced to stay a pony for now, the least you can do is try to make this as pleasantly as possible. If you can somehow make those two stop hating you, then you can just about deal for a week.

“What events?”

That might not have been the best thing you asked. Twilight is looking at you, and those eyes instantly change to wary again.

“Trixie, we nearly had a civil war in Canterlot. Surely you must know about that?”

Wait, what? A civil war in Canterlot? Is that why they don’t trust you? What kind of idiot would try to start a war in the capital where two princesses live that control the sun and moon respectively anyways? Drat, you can’t act like you know about it. With your horrible pokerface, she’ll see right through you. But you can’t act like you got no clue either. That would make her suspicious, and since you can’t explain why, she might think you’re working for ‘them’. Who is ‘them’ anyways? The group that rebelled? Think. There must be a way out of this. Trixie is a show pony, so… would that work?

“Trixie was overseas for her shows. She was very far away, and didn’t know about any of this.”

God, you hope she buys it. The last thing you need is to be suspected of treason against their crown, or whatever Celestia represents here.

“You mean to tell me that you haven’t heard anything about this at all?”

“No, I’ve only been here for two days.”

That’s the truth, even if it’s camouflaged. Twilight still stares at you in disbelieve and for a second you fear you just blew it. But she relaxes and lets out a sigh before explaining it all to you.

“I don’t even know where to start. After the changeling invasion in Canterlot, some of the more prominent nobles, who either seat in the council or have strong influences with them, felt that princess Celestia has lost her grip on ruling. So they tried to pass a bill that would have put her out of power completely.”

“Wait, Celestia isn’t the prime ruler?”

That’s a shocker to say the least. You had no idea Equestria even has a council, let alone that they could veto out their own princess. Isn’t Celestia something like a divine deity to them? She can move the freaking sun and everything.

“Trixie, you don’t even know about the council?”

“Um… Trixie doesn’t care much for politics.”

That’s actually true. You couldn’t care less which side ruled back on Earth as it didn’t benefit you in the least. As long as you had food and a roof over your head, then it was good enough for you.

“Princess Celestia has always allowed the ponies of Equestria to live their lives the way they want to. Only in extreme cases would she intervene, like say a bill that would benefit the rich and wealthy, but would strike against the rest of Equestria like raising taxes and such.”

You nod, trying to act like you care about this part. You need to know about this civil war thing, and if Trixie had a part in this.

“For a thousand years, it worked fine. Only rarely had the princess needed to stop a bill from passing, but lately some of the councilmembers has become corrupt. Fear from the changeling invasion, as well as the return of Nightmare moon and Discord has turned them against the princess, and even with princess Luna saved from the nightmare, and the reforming of Discord, they want princess Celestia to step down. Others felt that with all these things happening, they could show their true colors, and allowed their greed to show by raising taxes and upping the rent in Canterlot, that kind of stuff. Naturally, princess Celestia overruled those bills, and in turn those nobles turned to the side of the group that tried to overthrow the princess.”

“So Trixie assumes that’s how this civil war started?”

“Well, it didn’t, we found out before it was too late, but let me explain from the beginning. When the bill came to the council, the majority voted for the princess to stay. That caused a rift in the council, and some nobles felt that if they couldn’t do it the legal way, they should act by force. They hired bandit groups, as well as rogue groups of griffons and minotaurs to start a rebellion against the princess. They somehow even managed to get a pack of diamond dogs in on it.”

“But Trixie was in Canterlot, she didn’t see any damage.”

If she’s going to tell you that they already cleaned everything up, you will definitely feel inferior as a race. It takes humans months to clean stuff like that up. Damn overpowered magic.

“That’s because we managed to stop them before it came to that. You see, they build a tunnel from the inside of the mountain towards Canterlot. They got very close to actually invading, but spies loyal to the princess, as well as a few nobles only acting against her but were actually on our side, managed to warn us before it was too late. When they broke through the mountain, we were ready to take on the invading force, and capture them before they managed to do any harm.”

A tunnel? Didn’t you leave Canterlot like that?

“Trixie rode that tunnel to leave Canterlot!”

“After the invaders got caught, the engineers of Canterlot thought it would be less work to just leave the tunnel be, instead of sealing it shut, and as such put it to good use. They build it into a road, sealed off the hole that the diamond dogs broke through and blew up a chunk of the mountain to have an exit.

That would explain why the exit looked so cracked. To think that you rode through a tunnel that was made for military purposes. To start a war even. You always thought this world was peaceful, and only the mane six got into wacky adventures, but this puts a whole new light on their perspective. Still, if they got captured, that means it’s over right?

“So, it’s a good thing they all got captured, isn’t it?”

It really is. If they all got captured, it means Trixie didn’t do squad. Also means Rainbow Dash and Applejack hate you for another reason, but at least it’s not for helping in the assist of a near civil war.

“Well, it would be if we got them all.”

Shit. That means Trixie can still have been a part in all off this?

“What do you mean?”

“We captured most of the rogue groups and nobles, but a few key figures managed to escape during the commotion. It’s why we’re all on edge. They could come back to try it all again. Not to mention during all the confusion, more bandit groups attacked smaller villages, as well as towns located near the borders. The peace returned now, but it took a while. Ponies lived in fear of more bandit raids, and fled to Canterlot. They had to build a whole new section just for those refugees.”

That would explain that ghetto zone in Canterlot. Damn, you had no idea.

“But everything is fine now, right?”

“As fine as it could be, I suppose. Canterlot is still in a state of martial law, something that hasn’t happened since the lunar war, when Nightmare Moon terrorized Equestria a thousand years ago.”

So, not only do you switch bodies with a pony. You did it in the worst possible time. You’re so glad you didn’t try Celestia now. For all you know, she might have thought you were with those corrupt nobles, and ordered your capture. Still, did the mane six aid in fighting that invading force? Is that why Rainbow Dash her leg is in a cast?

“Did Rainbow Dash get injured during the invasion?”

“Well, yes and no. You see, they bribed ponies and used magic to confuse us. They feared that the elements of harmony would be a force too powerful to fight head on, so they lured us away one by one. Most of us saw through the deception before it was too late, but Applejack and Rainbow Dash had it the worst.”

“How so?”

“Rainbow Dash got attacked by an old friend of her. A griffon named Gilda. Well, that’s what she thought anyways. Turns out it was a magical cloak, to fool others into thinking you’re somepony or something else.”

“Like a changeling?”

“It works in a similar way, yes, but not quite. You see, a changeling becomes the pony they copy, so they can infiltrate other kingdoms, and work from the inside. This is more like a magical cloak to fool you into thinking they’re someone else. They stay the same, only everypony else sees them as the pony or other sapient being they impersonate.”

Wait, is that why you got scanned by those orb thingies?

“When Trixie left Canterlot, she got hit by one of those weird orbs, and here in Ponyville you used the same thing. What are those?”

“Oh, they’re an invention of mine. Both a changeling and the magical cloak leave behind magical residue, as well as maintain a small amount of magic to sustain the spell. The orb picks up that residue, and by using a small magical charge, it counters and undoes the disguise, thus showing the world their true form. We didn’t know it at the time, but a few spies worked into our midst. When we did find out, we had to make up a quick solution to make sure no other surprises where waiting for us, so I came up with the scanner orbs.”

She finished off proudly. Still, that’s quite a lot to take in. What happened to Rainbow dash anyways?

“Earlier, you were saying Rainbow Dash got injured?”

“The griffon impersonating Gilda damaged her pretty badly. One of her wings got slashed pretty hard, and for a moment it was feared that she couldn’t fly anymore.”

Ah. No wonder she freaked out over her wings earlier. Still, she flew earlier so it must have healed by now, right?

“But she’s flying fine now, isn’t she?”

“Yes, but it took quite a lot in the process. Princess Celestia herself had to heal her wing, and even then, she couldn’t undo it completely. She was forced to swap her injuries from her wing to one of her hind legs, it was that severe.”

That explains the cast. Geez, who would have known that it was so dangerous living here? You remind yourself never to get into a fight with a griffon.

“But she’ll be fine, right?”

“Oh, yes, don’t worry. Most of the damage got healed by now. Her leg will take a while longer, but there won’t be any permanent damage. It’s just that her pride got shattered pretty hard, hence why she’s so mean to you. Don’t take it personal though, she’s been short with pretty much everypony, even us.”

You can’t help but feel sorry for Dash. Flying, to her means everything, and to have that nearly taken away must have been horrible. You can almost forgive her for threatening you. Almost, but not quite, considering you did nothing wrong and she just took her frustrations out on you. Still, you found out what happened to Rainbow Dash, but what about Applejack?

“Trixie understands. And what happened to Applejack?”

“Applejack had a similar incident. They impersonated some of her cousins, and then tried to take her down in a fight. Little did they know just how strong Applejack is. She bucked them right into the hospital. Unfortunately, a section of the orchard over at their farm got lost in the process. And with so many refugees all needing food, the apple family has been overworked to not only supply Ponyville, but also the refugees. She’s stressed out, so you’ll have to forgive her if she takes it out on you.”

So, in the end, they’re just afraid you’ll cause problems, when they already got so much to deal with? You can deal with that, you suppose, but that still sits wrong with you. They have no way of knowing of course, but the last thing you want to do is cause issues. You just want to go home.

“So, if Trixie gets this right, they’re just upset at me for previous incidents?”

Twilight actually looks apologetic as she says yes. You sigh. This is going to be a hard week. But that doesn’t fix your problem in the least. It takes a week to regain your mana, or whatever, but then you still are basically a unicorn without any magical knowledge. If you ask Twilight to teach you levitation, she’ll go right back to being suspicious of you, but you need her help all the same.

“Twilight, Trixie is going to ask you something, but you got to promise not to ask questions.”

“Trixie?”

Just telling her that makes her look confused at you. God, you hope you don’t end up in a cell. Maybe you should attempt this in another way?

“Trixie will stay here and try to become friends with this town. But in return she needs you to teach her magic.”

“Teach you magic? But you know magic already, don’t you?”

“Trixie can’t tell you why or how, but she needs you to teach her magic, as if she has never done magic before.”

You can tell. She doesn’t know what to make of this. It’s vague at best, so you can’t blame her for being confused, possibly even thinking you’re trying to fool her one way or the other, but it’s the best you got. You just need one final push.

“Please.”

It’s one word, but it does the job as Twilight seems to relax.

“Ok Trixie, I won’t ask you why, but in return you need to be nicer to ponies, apologize for your past mishaps, and even try to make some friends.”

She smiles at you as she holds a hoof towards you. You give her an equal smile in return as you brohoof her. She looks confused for a second. Drat, should you have shaken it instead? She giggles at your act though, and you know everything is fine.

If you’re going to be like this for a week, then you’ll make this the best possible week ever. It’s going to be hard. Adjusting in a weird body is hard enough, but trying to make an entire town to like you after they think you nearly destroyed it, is going to be an extra challenge. Not to mention getting Rainbow Dash and Applejack off your back. But you can do this, you need to do this!

It’s time to make some friends.

Author's Note

Plot and foreshadowing everywhere!

It's not like this will bite you in the ass, is there?