Magical Girl Trixie

“Help! Somebody! Anybody!”

Looking down at my magical phone, I could see myself getting closer and closer to the red dot in the center of the screen, and from the amplified hearing that I now had, it sounded like it was a little boy. I jumped from rooftop to rooftop, looking around my surroundings like a hawk, searching for the exact location of the boy in trouble until finally, I pinpointed a child, no older than seven years old, hanging onto a tree branch for dear life.

What was he thinking? There's no way a branch that small could support someone his age, and a fall from that height would easily break several bones, supposing he didn't fall on his head. How did he even get up that high in the first place?!

With tears streaming down his face, the branch gradually cracked, reflexively making him hold on tighter, which only put extra pressure on the already faulty tree branch. He could feel his body moving forward as gravity slowly pulled him down, and all he could do was hang on long enough for someone to miraculously save him. Unfortunately for him, though, the branch could no longer support his weight and severed along the trunk of the tree, sending him on a face-first collision course with the ground.

“AAAAAHHHHH!!!!”

Just before he impacted into the earth, however, his life seemed to pause in front of his eyes. As he looked at the ground beneath him, fearing that at any moment the nightmare would resume, leading him to hospital trip that he might not make it out of, he began to breathe fanatically with his heart racing at nearly twice its normal rate. Then, looking at his hand, he noticed a bright blue glow around the contours of his skin, making his heart rate soften as he observed his body with perplexity.

“Phew. I made it.”

As soon as he heard the voice, his body was being turned downside up with his feet gently and easily being placed on the floor beneath him. Finally, the light faded from his body, and looking up from his feet, he saw me, smiling down at him with my hands on my hips.

“I hope from now on you remember to only climb up what you can climb down.”

“Who…” he began, staring into my eyes with awe. “Who are you?”

“I am the savior of Manehattan, the vanquisher of evil, the Grrreat and Powerful Trrrrrixiiieeeee!!!”

Suddenly, the boy smiled from ear to ear, pointing at me with joy. “Are you a vampire?”

“What?! I look nothing like a vampire!” I then looked down at my outfit, trying to figure out where the misinterpretation could possibly be coming from. “Is it the cape?” I asked, holding the fabric, but the little boy just laughed and began walking away, waving goodbye as he bounced into a skip.

“Bye, magical vampire lady!”

“H-Hey! You could at least remember my name!” By this point, though, he was gone, leaving me with my shoulders slumped in defeat while my amplified hearing picked up the sound of Dreamdrop audibly choking back her laughter in the background. “Go ahead,” I projected with a sigh. “Laugh it up. I'm the Great and Powerful Magical Vampire Lady.”

Then, in the background, I heard both Dreamdrop and Paradox laughing hysterically at my misfortune. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Dreamdrop laughed so hard she legitimately began rolling on the floor.

“You--You thought it was your cape!” Dreamdrop got out between chortles.

Finally, though, Paradox jumped from her position and landed in front of me, visibly trying to keep herself from laughing any further as she wiped a tear from her eye. “I'm sorry, G&PT,” she said, moving her goggles back into place. “You have to admit, though, you did not see that coming.”

“Wha--? Do you get called a vampire too?”

“Nope, but to be fair, in a little boy's imagination, there isn't much separating vampires and magical girls.”

“Alright, I guess,” I grumbled under my breath, folding my arms. “Dreamdrop! You can come out now!”

“Hang on! Hang on! I think I peed a little. Let me check real quick... Nope! We're good!” The night-themed magical girl then leapt in front of me to Paradox's side, catching her breath from the earlier hilarity. “So! Let's see how many brownie points that got you!”

Pulling out my magical phone once more, I swiped until the screen changed to a balance screen, almost like a brownie point bank. Hitting the refresh button, the number changed from zero to twenty, making the girls “oo” in response.

“Twenty,” I said, looking up at the two of them for some sign of relativity. “Is that a lot?”

“For your first time, yeah,” Paradox said. “It's better than average.”

“What could I buy with this?”

“For twenty brownie points?” Dreamdrop said, sticking her tongue out as she thought deeply. “Oh! You could buy a cupcake from Sugarcube Corner!”

“Or a pack of emojis for your magical phone!” Paradox chimed in, pulling out her phone as I gave her a dull stare.

“...Seriously?”

“I dunno. You tell me.”

Suddenly, my phone began to buzz in my hand, showing one new message from Paradox. Opening the file, her message read, “ ”

“Is this what you spend your brownie points on?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Not usually. In fact, most of us try saving up for one of the more expensive magical items.”

“Like what? What are the options? How much do they cost?”

“Weeeeeell,” Dreamdrop began, “personally, I'm saving up for a wand. I don't know if you remember Storm Rose from before, but she has one. Her magic normally just lets her shock people, but with her wand, she can project that like an electric laser beam!”

“And I'm saving up for magic contacts that let me see people's underlying pasts,” Paradox chimed in. “Either that or their underpants. I kinda skimmed through the description, and knowing Discord, I wouldn't put something like that past him.”

“So, Discord makes all the magical items?” I asked.

“Yep! Speaking of which…” Paradox, upon looking at her phone, pointed at a red dot near where our location was. “This is new. Come on, girls! This looks like a good one!”

The three of us then jumped onto a nearby building and began leaping from roof to roof yet again, approaching the area where our magical phones picked up on somebody in trouble. Skidding to a halt, we ended up right outside an auto mechanic shop, looking around and searching for who needed us while trying to keep ourselves relatively out of sight from passersby. Then, as I peered through a nearby window, I saw four men sitting in wooden chairs that were spread out in a circle, all looking depressed.

“Girls!” I exclaimed quietly. “Come over here! I think I see something!”

“Where?” Dreamdrop replied, peeking through the other side of the window with Paradox close behind.

“Do you think we'll be able to hear them?” I asked.

“I think so, but we're gonna have to be real quiet.”

The three of us then shut our mouths and tried calming our breathing as much as we could in order to hear their voices coming from beyond the brick wall that separated us.

“It's a shame what happened to Ace Diamond,” one of the men said. “He had a wife and kids.”

“Yeah, we all do,” said another. “I'm just glad he managed to buy us another week.”

“Who do you think is gonna be next?” the third asked.

“Come on! Don't say things like that!” the final man replied. “We don't know if there even needs to be anyone else.”

Suddenly, a pair of lights began to turn a corner, making the three of us quickly jump to the roof of the auto shop as a luxurious, black Lamborghini made its way to the entrance. Peering over the edges of the building, we saw a large man with a cornrows haircut getting out of the driver's seat, moving over to the passenger's seat and opening the door for a beautiful young man in a blue suit. The man in the suite couldn't have been older than twenty-five years old, but the aura he carried about him had the confidence of someone twice his age.

Once the larger man closed the gentleman's car door for him, he made his way over to the auto shop’s garage door, knocking just loud enough for the people inside to hear. Within seconds, the garage door opened for the two men as one of the men from earlier scouted the area, finding nothing and quickly closing the door behind them.

“Well, that was bizarre!” Dreamdrop said.

“Come on!” said Paradox, standing up tall. “Someone might be in trouble! Let's head back down!” Nodding our heads in agreement, Dreamdrop and I followed the girl with the goggles as she leapt from the ceiling and made her way back to our original positions by the auto shop's window. Again, hearing them was still a little difficult, but we could just barely make out what they were saying.

“Alright, boys,” the man in blue said, speaking to everyone in the room. “Let's go over our results from last week, shall we?”

“Yes, sir,” said the first man, standing from his chair. “Last week, Ace Diamond was killed following a standoff with the police. He was carrying 300 pounds of methamphetamine in his car, all of which was seized by the authorities.”

“So, we're down 300 pounds of merch, then?” the young man asked.

“And one man,” said another man sitting down, who was quickly silenced by the larger gentleman with cornrows and his terrifying glares.

“Right. What happened to Ace was a tragedy, and I will make sure that his family is taken care of properly. Please, continue the report.”

The first man glared seeing the gentleman's lack of concern, but continued on. “We also have been asked by Fancypants in the Canterlot district if we would like to merge companies. Seeing as how the trade between districts is starting to get a little messy, we agree that it's within our best interests to merge before Fancypants pushes us out entirely.”

“And?” the gentleman in the suite seemed to chuckle. “What are the terms of the negotiation?”

The four men from earlier all exchanged looks that only they seemed to understand, and with a nod, the man standing up said, “He says that we can use each other's assets, continue our business as usual and feel free to sell to certain permitted sections within the Canterlot district. In return, he wants the ability to sell his merch freely in Manehattan and… he wants total control over both companies.”

“Wait… you’re telling me that he wants to take away my position?”

“These are lives we're talking about, boss. You’d lose your position after Fancypants drove us out of business! At least this way you have some kind of position when he starts moving his men into Manehattan!”

“No, I don't think you're hearing me! You're telling me that I'm going to lose my post because a couple of pussies are too scared to do their job? Don't forget whose paying for your motherfucking electricity every month! Don't forget who took you little bitches off of the streets and put you into stable jobs! You know what else? If you guys don't get your shit together, you're all gonna end up like Ace.” Looking around at the men one more time, he turned to his bodyguard and said, “Come on, Benchpress. I'm tired of looking at these chucklefucks.”

Just as he was about to open up the garage door, however, the fourth man stood up. “We figured you might say that,” he said, along with the others who were sitting down. “Unfortunately for you, though, this is nonnegotiable.”

Turning around in angry confusion, the gentleman exclaimed, “What?! What the fuck are you even going on about?”

“It's funny you mentioned that the same thing would happen to us that happened to Ace Diamond. You see, something you may not realize is that when someone dies, their autopsies go public.”

“Again, what the fuck are you even getting at? He died from a bullet to his fucking skull. What's there to analyze?”

“Not only that, but they found that he had piroxidene in his system. It’s a drug that's supposed to put you to sleep, but if you choose to stay awake and get behind the wheel, it would give you the same effects as drunk driving.”

“So what? You telling me that he was addicted to pills too?”

“Naw, we knew Ace. He would never touch the stuff. He also told us that you changed his routes to the most cop-infested part of Manehattan to do his delivery, two days after he was interrogated by police when his house was raided.”

“...What are you getting at?”

The four men all gave each other the same look as before and nodded their heads. Slowly and silently, the fourth man pulled out a sheet of paper, walking over to Benchpress and handing him the note. Upon looking over the document, his eyes went wide in fear, turning quickly to his boss for some kind of explanation. The paper was a prescription for piroxidene, signed by the boss on the day Ace Diamond died.

“Boss…” Benchpress said in disgust and fear. “You killed one of your own men?”

“No, Benchpress!” the boss said, holding his hands up. “These motherfuckers, they… they forged my signature!”

Suddenly, looking around at the four men standing up, they all had their guns taken from their holsters and were pointing their barrels directly between his eye sockets as he began to shake in terror. Then, turning towards his bodyguard for protection, he saw that he had pulled his own pistol out of his pocket and had stuck it into the gentleman's ribcage.

“Sorry, boss,” Benchpress said, “but I don't work for you anymore.”

My eyes went just as wide as the man in the blue suite who was shaking in fear, grabbing onto his bodyguard's jacket and pleading for dear life. In all my years of abuse, I had never seen a gun in person before, but now there were five, all pointed to the man in blue who was beginning to scream.

“Trixie,” Dreamdrop said, “I need you to use your magic right now!”

“What?” I said incredulously, switching anxious glances between the men and Dreamdrop. “W-w-what do I do? I've never been in a situation like--”

“TRIXIE!! USE YOUR MAGIC!! QUICK!!!”

Squeezing my eyes closed, I raised up my hands, making all five of their guns turn a bright blue before lifting them to the ceiling, just as they all pulled their triggers. With the ceiling pouring down a cloud of dust from the impact, the man in blue used this opportunity to break away from his bodyguard and run towards the garage door, and with her enhanced speed, Dreamdrop raced her way to the other side, using her strength to break through the locks and lift the door open. Then, once Dreamdrop made eye contact with the boss, she grabbed him around the waist and jumped to the ceiling as Paradox used her magic to blind the five men in the auto shop.

Quickly, I jumped to the roof along with Paradox, who then used her magic to shield our image and voices as the boss caught his breath.

“Are you hurt?” Dreamdrop asked with a panicked tone. “Did any of the bullets hit you?”

“What?” he asked, panting at a violent pace as he exchanged looks between the three of us. “Who…? Where…?”

“The three of us are magical girls,” Paradox said, answering the questions he probably wanted to ask. “We're on the roof right now. I'm using a spell to keep us hidden until the three of us can get you out of here.”

“You're out of your fucking minds,” he said, still shaking in fear and running to the other end of the roof, looking for some kind of ladder he could use to make a quick escape.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Dreamdrop asked fervently. “We're trying to save you!”

Suddenly, however, we began hearing the voices from below yelling as they started getting their heads back in order after the unexpected slip up in their plan. Looking down from the edge of the building, we saw the five men run outside, looking around frantically for their old boss.

“You helped him get away!” one of the men yelled, turning towards Benchpress.

“No!” the bodyguard cried. “Something pulled my gun! I couldn't help it!”

“You pulled something back there! I know you did!”

“How do we know you didn't try something back there? You wanted him to get out of there alive so that yo ass could live too!”

Paradox then quickly turned to Dreamdrop and said, “Get down there, quick! I'll protect you!”

“Right!”

Pulling her goggles off of her face, Paradox projected her magic onto all five men, who began screaming in their blindness until Dreamdrop jumped to the ground, pinched them on the neck one by one and put each of them to sleep. As soon as she was sure that she had accounted for all of them, she quickly grabbed their guns and jumped back onto the roof, wiping some anxious sweat off of her forehead.

“Whew! So glad that's over and done with!”

However, just as soon as they were about to celebrate their well-deserved victory, they heard the sound of a gun cocking behind them, and upon slowly turning their heads to the origin of the sound, they found the gentleman in blue with his gun pointed at his own head.

“What…” Paradox mumbled. “What are you doing?”

“It's over for me,” the gentleman responded. “They were right to try and kill me. Now I have nowhere to go. They're just gonna find me eventually.”

“That's not true!” Dreamdrop cried out. “We'll make sure you're safe! You don't have to--”

“Just stop,” he said, cutting Dreamdrop off with a trembling lip. “Just… stop…”

“But…”

Bang!

Suddenly, blood and brains covered the rooftop as his body fell backwards off the ledge and onto the sidewalk. I tried not to look, but everywhere I turned was either splattered in blood or decorated with parts of his head that had blown off after he fired his gun. Unable to control the vile smell or the overall nausea that arose from seeing his bloody aftermath, I crawled to the edge of the building, profusely vomiting until my throat began to burn.

The other girls were in no better shape, either. Dreamdrop's hands trembled, her eyes widened and her shoulders twitched while Paradox pulled out her phone, continually tapping the refresh button while hopelessly waiting for the red dot to appear on the screen again.

“He's dead…” Dreamdrop murmured, still shaking uncontrollably. “He's dead… I just watched a man kill himself… and I couldn't save him… He's dead… and I… I couldn't…”

Before she could even finish her statement, she buried her face into her hands and began sobbing uncontrollably as the sound of sirens began to approach from the distance. Quickly getting to her senses, Paradox put her arm around Dreamdrop and said, “We have to go. Dreamdrop, we have to get out of here now.”

“HE'S DEAD!” she wailed, too distraught to cooperate.

Upon realizing the severity of the situation, however, I wiped the remaining bile from my lips and used my magic to lift Dreamdrop to her feet, pulling her arm around Paradox's shoulder so that we could get out of there before any of the men woke up. The last thing we needed was to see another gun go off once the police arrived. Once we jumped away to the next building, though, I looked back at the ground beneath us to get one last glimpse of the rotting corpse of the man we couldn't save.

***

We didn't end up making it far from the previous location when the three of us decided it would be better to go our separate ways. We could regroup tomorrow once things had cooled down a bit, and we definitely needed to take a night to forget about doing anything magical girl-related.

Once I got home, I immediately transformed back to my normal self, opening and closing the front door as quietly as I could just in case my mom had decided to come home from work early today. Night had fallen by this point, and I'm sure she didn't want me to think I was getting into more trouble than I already was. Then again… I couldn't imagine how I could have possibly gotten into more trouble than I had already experienced that night.

Walking into my bathroom, I put my magical phone and glasses beside me on the sink, turned the faucet on and splashed some cold water onto my face, hoping that it would help reduce how pale my skin was at this point. Instead, though, I just saw myself the way I normally did: wearing a distraught frown with water dripping down my cheeks.

“Rough first day, I take it?”

I shrieked at the sudden sound that appeared out of nowhere, but looking around my environment in every direction, I couldn't tell for the life of me where the voice had come from.

“W-who's there?” I asked, turning towards the door.

“If you really wish to find me, first you must answer these riddles three…”

“D-Discord?”

Suddenly, the spirit of chaos emerged from my phone, putting his hands to his snake-like hips in aggravation. “Oh, for goodness sake! Why doesn't anyone ever let me ask the riddles?!”

“What are you doing here?”

“Here? Oh, Trixie, I'm everywhere!” The draconequus smiled, putting his hands over his face. “I always have my eyes on you.” Then, pulling his hands off of his face, his eyes were now missing from their sockets, and upon looking back into the mirror, I saw an eye resting on each of my shoulders, making me yelp in surprise. “You see?” he said, putting his eyeballs back where they belonged. “Now, tell daddy Discord all about what happened today.”

“If it's alright with you, I'd rather not,” I replied, wiping my face off with my towel and putting my glasses back on. “Today was… well… I guess you saw what happened today.”

“Which part? The part when Lulu tried following you home or the part where your mother welcomed you home with not-so-open arms? Or could you be talking about--”

“I get it, Discord,” I said, picking up my phone and walking back into my room. The last thing I wanted was for him to bring back the imagery of before and have me vomiting in my toilet all night. “Today sucked. I'm just sorry you had to be with me when it all happened.”

“To be fair, you did almost save that drug lord. You managed to save him from five bullets, yet the sixth one is always so difficult, isn't it?”

“But I couldn't do it! He's dead because I couldn't save him! I wasn't a good enough magical girl!”

“So you're saying that Dreamdrop and Paradox were also not good enough at being magical girls?”

“What? No!”

“Because it hardly seems fair for you to take all credit. You can blame yourself as much as you want, but that doesn't make it your fault.” I wanted to retort, to come up with some kind of excuse as to why he was wrong, but the more I thought about it, the less I could argue with his logic. “But that's in the past, and you said you didn't want to talk about today anyway. What would you like to talk about? Makeup? Clothes? Boys?”

My face went red at the sudden embarrassment I felt from the proposed topics, especially that last one. “N-no! That's OK!”

“Oh! I know what will cheer you up! Tomorrow we're having a special gathering in Platinum City! You'll get to meet any magical girls you didn't before, and I arranged it before school so that you won't have to run into you-know-who-lu Lemon. Doesn't that sound like fun?”

A small smile broke through my lips as I giggled gently. “Yeah,” I said. “That sounds like lots of fun. Thank you, Discord.”

“Oh, perfect! I knew you would be excited! Well, I'd love to stay and chat some more, but you have homework to do, don't you? Oh, and the answers are 6, 32, 29 and a half, y=mx plus b, and x equals negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4ac divided by 2a. Toodles!”

Quickly pulling out my math homework and plugging in all the numbers Discord said, I found that he was right about every single one. I would have to ask for his help every time I did my homework.

Bzzt! Bzzzzt!

Looking down at my phone as I put away my completed assignment, I saw that I had two new messages, both from Dreamdrop, which made me unknowingly smile to myself.

“Hey, Great and Powerful Trixie! Listen… I'm sorry about today. Most days aren't like that, but now you know firsthand how dangerous being a magical girl can be. I'm sorry that you had to go through that, and I'm sorry about how I handled myself at the end there…”

“New topic! So Discord told you about that meetup tomorrow, right? I don't know about you, but I'm suuuper excited! You know, there were a couple girls you didn't get to meet, including Marrow. She's the best at being a magical girl, and I think you can learn a lot from her! Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow! Oh, and if that one girl gives you any more problems, we'll take care of it for you! OK. I'm really going to let you go this time. Bye!”

I rolled my eyes and grinned at her silly message, but honestly, for the first time ever, I felt safe. Even though today was the most terrifying day of my life, I also made my very first friend, and from the sound of it, I was going to make even more. I nearly experienced my own death twice today, and I saw my first actual death right in front of me, but even despite all that, I felt like I had a group who would keep me safe no matter what.

Upon completing the rest of my homework, I clicked off the lights and tucked myself into bed, and for the first time that I could remember, I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

“Marrow,” I said to myself as I dozed off into dreamland. “I wonder what kind of girl she is.”

Then, my consciousness faded, and I gently and peacefully found made my way into a deep slumber. Now, if only I had remembered to close my window blinds…

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