Mano a magical.

Quentin Drake shifted the podium and tapped the mic, he stood before a crowd of people several times his own age, at the lecture hall of Canterlot City University. He felt almost..."helpless" with all these grown men in suits and lab coats, as he only had his best white shirt and sweater with some khakis in need of a good press. Nevertheless, he adjusted himself and began.

Thank you gentlemen of CCU, and let me just say it is an honor for someone as young as myself to be able to speak before...."

Across town a different kind of gathering had assembled outside an RV parked just outside Canterlot High's parking lot the RV was midnight blue with decals of stars and moons across the side, a stage had slid out from what presumably had been at one time a spare room. Now a curtain stage took it's place.

"What do you think it's for?" A guy in a earth tee shirt and green head band around his head asked Octavia Melody as they stood outside the RV trying to make sense of its presence.

"Must be some kind of performance by the looks of it." Octavia replied. As she did, a low hanging cloud of blue and purple smoke drifted across the stage to the crowd.

"So you see, technology is the light, that has guided mankind through the darkness since we huddled around fires and developed tools, a perfect balance with our advanced brain development and gifted strength. So I hear you ask, what could possibly even compare to what we've accomplished in that time? Well...allow me to present." He said as he took hold of a large tarp covering something from their eyes.

"Come one! Come all! Come and witness the exotic and devine magnificence of the the dashingly daring duo of The Great and Powerful...Trixie!" With that, a light blue girl with snowy white hair and a magician's hat and cape decked in stars and moons appeared before the masses in a puff of smoke. She smirked at her audience as glowing blue arus illuminated from her hands and eyes.

"Lest you forget ME oh mistress of the mystic." Another girl said as she appeared beside Trixie in a swirling tornado of purple smoke, and I mean literally, a purple tornado appeared from behind the curtains of the stage and when it dissipated, a purple girl in a pleated plaid skirt and jumper, hair tied in a bun and glasses adding to the cuteness of her appearance, aided by the red and black witches cape and pointed hat on her head. "The tantalizing technique of Twilight Sparkle!"

Quentin Blake meawhile, lifted the covering revealing a metal skeleton with large hands and stomping metal feet, the whole thing was decked in wires criss crossing over it and hydraulic pistipns poised to power its massive metal muscles. "Gentlemen of CCU, I give you tje world's first fully functional powered automaton loader...or P.A.L." his presentation was met with applause as he stepped up into the center of the metallic suit.

"What do you hope to accomplish with your machine Mr. Drake?" Was the first question he was asked.

"For our first trick, my companion in curiosity and I will make our handsome and strapping assistant, Harvey. Be rearranged in the box of configuration." Trixie said as a young man in a sequined vest and purple dress pants rolled a wheeled box out onto the stage. As Trixie had indicated, it was her "boyfriend" Harvey Maxell.

"Thank you Thank you oh Great and Powerful Trixie." Harvey said happily as he got inside the box, as Twilight closed the lid and slid steel bolts into place locking him in. Harvey was sealed im tight and it was impossible for the box to be moved.

"The P.A.L. suit on a shipping yard, could do the work of a team of forklifts at a fraction of the energy cost, in part due to the protonicly charged ion battery packs that power the suit, in layman's terms, the suit's own motions charge a cycling set of its own batteries." Quentin said as he used a hydraulic arm to lift a block of solid steel that must have weighted at least five hundred pounds.

"In the logging industry, a circular saw attachment could...cut...the time to chop down trees and move them over land, gentlemen the possibilites for my power suit are limted only by innovation."

"As you all can see, my fellow students. The handsome and strapping Harvey is completely immovable in one piece, in the mystery box. Now behold!" Trixie said as lightning bolts struck from seemingly nowhere. The bolts wemt to her hands and the the box, causing it to be wrapped up in surges of electricity as it shifted. One section over the other like a game of three card Monte. The crowd ooooohed and ahhhed seeing the box which they KNEW had a person inside it disassembled then pieced together in different sections than before.

"Now prestigious scientific minds of CCU, to end this presentation, behold! The P.A.L. suit's greatest feature, a high density cutting laser so strong it can cut through twelve layers of steel, yet delicate and precise enough to slice this fifty foot hoggie I had special ordered for lunch for us all." Quentin said as caterers im pressed white uniforms layed out such a sandwich in front of the suit as the left hand retracted into the arm and was replaced by a red hot beam. The suit's controller brought the arm down as the sandwich was sesegmented by the laser until fifty foot long subs had been carved expertly, for a veey impressed assembly.

"And now, my fellow Canterlot High alumni, ne dazzled as I, The Great and Powerful Trixie and the Talented and Tantalizing Twilight Sparkle, have completely rearranged our assistant like SO!" Trixie gave the box a few taps before Twilight unxid the locks. The box flew open and everyone present gasped, a few screamed, as Harvey's head was now were his feet should have been, his torso was in the top box, his arms and legs detached bloodlessly but flopping around in the third, like dying fish.

"My cohort in captivating you all has seamlessly splinched our Harvey, but see how he neither bleeds nor suffers from pain from it." Twilight said as she closed it back up. "Now for my part, I Twilight Sparkle, will make Harvey Maxell vanish before your very eyes!"

"Shia Kazing!" Trixie shouted making the box tremble and the lid to fly off as if it exploded from the inside, the spectacle initially shocked the audience, untill they saw the disfigured Harvey was no longer inside! Making them all applaud and cheer for the Ilusionists skills.

"Thank you Thank you! You've been a lovely audience!" Twilight daid as the curtians closed as the girls took bows. When all was said and done, Trixie lifted a latch on the floor and inside stood Harvey, only said latch was several feet away from where the box had been.

"Seriously, how do you girls do it?" Harvey asked as the helped him out from the trapdoor, "it really felt like I was being rearranged and then teleported from the box to here." He said hardly believing the trick himself, and he was in it!

"Sorry Harvey, but you know thr first rule of magic." Twilight replied giving him a little kiss om the cheek.

"A magician never reveals her secrets!" Trixie finished adding a kiss of her own to Harvey's cheek. A cute little flip of her hat and a knowing wink to him topping it all off.

These two worlds would soon collide,

In a showdown for dignity and pride