Evil Empire

"This is it girls. The moment we've been waiting for!"

"LUNCH?"

"Ugh. The chance to get our true Equestrian magic back."

"Oh...right. But we can still go, have lunch afterwards? It's Chicken Wing Wednesday!"

Heavily in thought, Aria tapped one index finger at her chin, pursing her lips. "You know," she said, hesitantly. "Is it just me, or did all this happen before?"

"We don't have time for this." Clear traces of annoyance had mixed themselves into Adagio's voice. "There is Equestrian magic here, which we need to claim for ourselves. We can still deal with your déjà vu afterwards, and...uh..."

She suddenly got thrown out of her concept, as Sonata's eyes widened in shock for no apparent reason. "Are you okay back there?" Aria asked her.

"Déjà vus are errors in the matrix," Sonata swiftly replied in a mechanical voice. "That happens when they change something."

"Ugh..." Adagio once more buried her face in both palms. "Go back to sleep, Sonata."

"So we'll just go in and try the same thing we did yesterday? Some plan, Adagio," Aria asked her superior, more skeptical than ever.

"Nothing will go wrong, trust me on this one."

"That's what you said before. And we all saw how that worked out."

"Okay, well...yes. But the only reason we failed yesterday was that one girl and her witty attitude. But don't worry, I took care of her."

"Huh? You can't just put anyone under a spell all by yourself..."

"That's not what I did!" Adagio burst out furiously, before catching her breath again. "Let's just say, I...borrowed her coffee this morning, and enriched it a little. Anyway, are we good? I'd like to get this over with."

And with that, they opened the cafeteria doors, marching in somewhat more confident than yesterday. Adagio smirked, as her eyes fell onto the unsuspecting horde of her future minions. What could possibly go wrong?

Trixie didn't show up for lunch today. Not that Vinyl had initially been irritated that much, though she did gradually grow nervous about her absence, nevertheless. She had thrown around a few glances, but the powerful wizard of Canterlot was nowhere to be seen. In the end, Vinyl had decided to concentrate on her food, and not worry that much about the ones around her. She couldn't change the world anyways, and watching it all go to hell would just be plain depressing.

When the three girls from the day before stepped in through the doors once again, Vinyl hardly even noticed. Actually, she didn't even observe any of the confused faces around herself, when the others all turned towards the cafeteria entrance, as in some kind of hypnosis.

After all, Bohemian Rhapsody had just shown up next on her playlist. One did not simply listen to that tune without getting fully absorbed by it.

"E-hehe. I think something might have been wrong with breakfast this morning," Trixie observed with a giggle.

She presumed time somewhere around noon, but still didn't move from her safe spot. Lunch or not, the floor was lava. She kept sitting on top of the math room's bookshelf for hours, her head almost hitting the ceiling repeatedly. For reasons not exactly clear to herself, she had climbed up here after her first block, and nobody had come in ever since.

She let her legs swing around freely, carefully watching over the desks beneath herself with wide eyes. All of them were empty, of course.

All except one, to be precise. The one directly in front of her was occupied by a blue, bored-looking unicorn, who had just magically appeared out of nowhere some time back. The two of them even shared the same haircut, which was beyond Trixie's every reasoning.

"Sooo..." she began anew. "Another poor soul to crumble beneath the great and powerful Trixie's feet, huh? Don't think I'd give you the honor to sit by my side. We'll never be neighbors, you know!"

The unicorn remained silent.

"Not good? Okay, wait, how about...oh, oh! Wait! Fantastic!" She took a deep breath. "So you know, how they always let you wait for such a long time in restaurants? It's like...you wait, but they're able to wait for much longer, and you know why that is? They're much waiter than you'll ever be, since they are waiters themselves!"

The unicorn slowly rolled its eyes, but didn't laugh.

"Well, uh...and it's funny, because, you see, to wait is like...a verb. So you can't even be any more wait than anyone else already...uh...does? Anyhow, it doesn't make sense, you see."

Silence.

During the awkward pause that followed, Trixie suddenly started sobbing uncontrollably. "It's true...it's all true. I'm not great and powerful, and I'm not an actor. I don't even have a full-time employment, and the payment for those two years in Vietnam can hardly cover my family's upkeep, let alone the therapist. What do I do-o-o..."

The unicorn suddenly smirked.

"What? Trixie never said you're greater than her, though! How dare you, fool!" She stretched out her arms, legs crossed, head held up high. "If Trixie goes down, she'll at least go down with dignity!"

She started humming a melody to herself, upon which the unicorn quickly smashed a hoof to its forehead.

"You won't get me down here, you hear? Huh, rhymes...Anyhow, you can't, that's the point! They told me this ship is unsinkable, and I'll show you!"

Right then, as she tried leaning forward, the entire shelf collapsed, burying the girl under dozens of textbooks and office accessories. Judging from the noise it produced, she must have been heard clear across campus.

And it did indeed take less than five minutes, until the door to the corridors flung open. A middle-aged man stood in its frame, one word on his lips, as he caught the door knob, before it crashed into the adjacent wall:

"Allons-y!"

It was Time Turner, their halfway-insane, British algebra teacher, of course. Upon seeing the ruined furniture to his right, he squeezed his eyes shut in frustration. "Sweet Victoria, this'll take some bloody effort to clean up."

To his surprise, and slight shock actually, a light blue hand suddenly rose up from beneath the rubber. "Trixie is...okay," a female voice yelled, accompanying it.