Ten Little Ponies

Sunset Shimmer finally regained consciousness as the gas in the room dissipated. She could breathe normally again. She pulled her fatigued body to the still unconscious Trixie and roused her awake.

“Trixie, wake up, we need to get out of here.” Sunset pleaded, nudging the showmare’s body with her head. Trixie remained still, seemingly lifeless. Sunset was reassured by the slow rise and fall of Trixie’s body, indicating that she was still alive. She appeared to still be under the gas’ lingering effects as she mumbled to life incoherently.

Sunset hoisted Trixie onto her shoulders and limped out of Twilight’s bedroom, despite the immense pain in her leg still present from her injury.

Rainbow Dash trudged up the stairs as best she could, wincing at every step. She passed an umbrella on her way up the stairs. It was speckled with blood. She found it strange but pushed the thought out of her mind. Her priority was cleaning her leg and finding her friends. Though, she wasn’t even sure how many of her friends were still alive, or if anypony was still alive at all. She eventually reached the zenith of the staircase and hobbled to the already lit bathroom.

Trixie became too heavy a load to carry on Sunset’s leg, so she set the magician on the floor and began to drag her by her cape.

Sunset Shimmer wasn’t even entirely sure where she was going or why she had been roped into looking after the comatose mare anyway. She just wanted to leave.

Rainbow Dash approached the bathroom, taking note of the water puddled outside the entrance, and walked in. She froze in terror, jaw agape at the site of Fluttershy’s lifeless corpse draped over the edge of the tub. It was clear she had met a watery demise.

Dash felt sick again as she backed out of the bathroom slowly.

Sunset Shimmer felt her legs beginning to tighten with exhaustion as she fought for breath through a mouthful of Trixie’s cape. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep pulling Trixie, she had yet to come to.

Trixie was left in her own thoughts; her world went blurry and everything sounded distorted and distant. Her head throbbed with every beat of her heart. The feeling was akin to being pounded in the back the skull by a hammer. It was unbearable.

She could tell that she was being dragged across the floor by somepony. She could barely make out the sun-kissed mare moving her along, she knew it was Sunset Shimmer.

“No, not this time, I won’t let you kill me, not when I’m this close.” Trixie mumbled beneath her breath.

Sunset Shimmer could faintly hear Trixie trying to speak behind her. She didn’t catch what she had said but didn’t bother asking her to repeat herself, it was likely just nonsense.

Rainbow Dash continued to back away cautiously from the bathroom door until she bumped into an unknown figure behind her. She tripped over it and stumbled to the wet floor. She shook herself off and looked for what had tripped her up.

Her eyes met the lifeless form of Trixie being carried across the floor by Sunset Shimmer. Rainbow’s eyes widened in shock.

“It’s you!” Rainbow Dash screamed as she ran, not wanting to look back.

“Wait! It’s not what it looks like!” Sunset confessed. She spit out Trixie’s cape and ran after the frightened Pegasus.

Rainbow Dash ran despite the immense pain shooting up her leg. Sunset felt the all too similar pain.

Rainbow reached the staircase and haphazardly descended the steps in a painful flurry. As she hobbled down, her hoof stepped on something that wasn’t a step. Her leg buckled as she began tumbling down, catching sight of the umbrella she had disregarded earlier bouncing its way down with her.

“Oh fuck!” Dash grimaced through clenched teeth.

Sunset Shimmer halted at the top of the steps; watching in horror as Rainbow Dash plummeted down the steps like a rag-doll. Time seemed to slow down in that moment as the umbrella reached the bottom first with the pointed metal tip facing upward.

Rainbow’s screams were silenced as the tip pierced her throat. She choked and spasmed; blood spraying from her neck. Watching the Pegasus struggle to figure out what was happening to her made Sunset’s stomach churn with horror and grief.

As the last vestiges of life left Rainbow’s body, Sunset Shimmer made another stark realization.

“Wait… that means…” Sunset slowly turned to see the malevolent smirk painted across the face of the heaving mare behind her, blood-lust emblazoned in her gaze.

“Three little ponies, one died on the run.” Trixie giggled menacingly through gritted teeth, eyes wide with rage. Sunset faltered backward and fell to the ground in shock.

“It’s… you…”

“Bingo!” Trixie exclaimed. “I’m the killer Sunset, it only took you so long to figure it all out.” Trixie mocked the fallen mare’s ignorance.

“But, why? I don’t understand.” Sunset asked, tears pooling in her eyes.

“Think of it like one giant, show stealing magic trick where I make nine ponies disappear… forever!”

“But… but I still don’t understand, how? How did you know? How could you have known? It’s not possible!”

“Guess you’re a lot dumber than I thought Shimmer. Since you have nowhere to run this time, I may as well monologue for a bit.” Trixie cleared her throat and began.

“Twilight invited me to the reconciliation banquet, so I devised a flawless plan to exact my revenge on her and her pathetic friends for humiliating me all those years ago. It’s just unfortunate that you, Gilda and Lightning Dust had to be roped into such an affair, but of course there was no way I could leave any witnesses, you understand. And I used the convenience of Twilight’s abode to throw the blame to her once this was all said and done. I did point all of that out to you before we went into her room, didn’t I?” Trixie scoffed with cocky fervor.

Sunset thought back to what Trixie had said.

“She knows this place better than anypony, and she invited all of us here under one roof. Call it a little on the snout, but nopony else would be capable of all this in such a short span of time. Nopony could have been here to set everything up, nopony could plan ‘sequential’ murders without knowing who would show up, it’s just not possible Sunset.”

“Once all those pieces fell into place, the real plan could begin. I rigged Twilight’s projector with my tape and an explosive, then cut the lights which simultaneously activated a temporary barrier around the castle preventing all unicorns from using magic for a short period of time. It was quite a gamble hoping nopony would try using magic again until my plan was finished. And I’ll admit it was a bit clumsy of me to drop my champagne glass when putting my little poem up, which I wrote myself might I add, but I took Lightning’s glass and refilled it quickly, placed it where I sat, and acted surprised when the lights came back on. And of course, I was quick to throw the blame off myself.”

“Well, then who’s drink is missing?”

“M…mine and Sunset’s glasses are s…still accounted for.”

“That’s all it took to clear my name and turn everyone against one another. After that, everypony began to pick themselves off according to plan, making it harder for you to unveil my identity. Oh, and all that stuttering, well it certainly wasn’t out of fear, I was just so excited that everything was going to fall perfectly into place this time.”

“What do you mean by ‘this time’?” Sunset asked, perplexed.

“Shush up, I will get to that soon enough. And of course I was going to say it was from stress and anxiety, I had to cover up my emotions somehow. As if I, the Great and Powerful Trixie would ever get ‘stage fright’ during a performance.”

“But you breathed in the same gas I did when we got knocked out…”

“Such a noisy audience you are, just shut up and let me finish!” Trixie asserted, stumbling slightly as she did so. Sunset noticed this brief falter.

“You see this lovely cape here?” Trixie twirled less than gracefully before shaking her head, letting the garment flutter behind her. “It works great as a makeshift gas mask. So while you were incapacitated, I was able to pick off the rest of tonight’s guests with ease. After I finished tidying up, I came back to the room just in time for you to wake up and ‘save’ me.” Sunset Shimmer started to notice a slight slur in Trixie’s speech and decided to keep her talking.

“B…but, how could you have predicted everything so accurately? How were you able to set everything up?” Sunset pried, with faux desperation.

“Fine, if you must know. Once I caught word that Twilight Sparkle had discovered time travel, I studied assiduously to master the skill. Once that was learned, it was just a matter of trial and error, fixing my mistakes, changing the order, until I finally… got it right.” Sunset needed to capitalize on Trixie’s noticeable decline in awareness. She just had to stall a bit longer.

“But your poem?!” Sunset blurted out.

“Hm? What about my poem?”

“It’s not finished yet. You specifically wrote that the killer would be killed…”

“And you will be!” Trixie cut the unicorn off aggressively. “Every! Single! Time! Every time I made it this far, every time I thought I had it right, it was you! You were the one to always figure me out! You were the one who always caught me in the act! You were the one who ‘killed’ my chances at success, time and time again! But now?! Now I will be the one to kill you!” Trixie began to sway, her eyes lidded as if she were a drunkard.

“This is it!” Sunset Shimmer thought to herself. “But if I caused you such a problem, why not get me first?”

“Because Sunset, I couldn’t, I never found an opening. But then, if I had, this moment… right now, wouldn’t taste as sweet. Just face it, I won, I have finally won…” Trixie could feel the pressure building in the back of her head, throbbing with pain, but it didn’t matter now. She was going to kill Sunset Shimmer. “You can’t possibly stop me now… not when I’m this… close.”

Trixie began to stumble and sway, nearly losing her balance entirely. The pain in the back of her head was becoming a nuisance in her shining moment. Sunset noticed the color beginning to fade from the magician’s face.

“I… will… win…” Trixie collapsed to the floor suddenly. She lay limp across from Sunset Shimmer.

The lone survivor picked herself up and limped over to the killer, checking for a pulse. There was nothing. Trixie was dead.

The killer was killed

“Your pride was always going to be the end of you. You just couldn’t help yourself, always trying to put on a show, no matter what. But this is the final act Trixie. You lose.”

And then…

Sunset Shimmer walked the halls of the castle, grief in her heart. What would she do now?

She approached the front door and, using her magic, forced it open, light cascading into the foyer as the sun rose over the horizon.

The warmth felt good on her skin. She held back tears and fought the urge to break down and cry. Instead, she wiped her brow and looked toward her new future.

She was finally free.

She had won.

There was one