Murder for 'Briar

Trixie gazed through her curtain, trying not to disturb it while gauging her audience.

"Oh-oh-oh! is it time for the show?? Everypony BEEE QUIEEET!" Pinkie shrieked, leaping into the air, all four legs waving impossibly fast. She then seated herself next to Maud and Mud Briar, her "elbows" on the table and head on her hooves, eating their chips. Trixie had long since judged that the fat mare was quite rude.

Trixie stopped peeking and scowled towards her assistant. "Are we ready?! Everyone's waiting!" She hissed to the enormous backside to her left.

"We can't rush a birthday show, Trix," the annoyingly just-so lilac unicorn responded, her head buried in the complex electronic mess that controlled the lights. "I know how much it means to you that every show's perfect!"

"None of my shows are ever perfect! Hurry up!" Trixie demanded, dancing in place.

Today was the birthday of that insufferable bog toad, Mud Briar. Maud Pie - his special somepony, and Trixie's friend - had felt obligated to allow Pinkie Pie the honor of running the birthday party; indeed, her sister may have gone postal had she not been selected for this responsibility. Because the crazy pink broad was so busy, that meant that Mud Briar and Maud had to stay in Ponyville for a few days. Expecting a few guests from abroad, they'd rented a mid-sized villa with several bedrooms.

It was in this villa that Trixie had managed to set up a small stage for her show.

Trixie tried to avoid any expenditures in Ponyville whenever possible. She'd met the mayor one time and had already concluded she was as greedy as they come. The rental rates in this place made her shudder, and she worried Maud might have been taking a risk with her finances.

No, Trixie's faithful, loyal wagon which had never betrayed her, other than its walls full of gaps for the cold-as-Luna's-kiss wind to slip through and chill her to the bone, was good enough for her. The Apples even helped fix up her wagon when she stopped by. They were disgustingly generous. Trixie did not like to feel indebted.

Trixie'd grown accustomed to visiting this podunk town quite frequently, since her assistant over there had obligations here. Of course, the locals came to see her every week even if she did repeats. They'd both been invited, so it was convenient to do Maud a favor and perform one of her classics for Jerkbriar.

Her hat fell askew and she instantly adjusted it with her magic. Starlight had paused, so Trixie continued hissing. "While I doubt Mud Briar ever closes his eyes, your boyfriend is already asleep!"

The mare finally tugged her head back out. "Haste is why you keep blowing yourself up, Trixie," Starlight Glimmer admonished her. "And Sunburst is not my boyfriend! As for his condition... He's just suffering from blimp lag." She waved a hoof dismissively.

Sunburst had flown in from the Crystal Empire at Maud's request. Trixie rather doubted there was anything for Sunburst and Mud Briar to connect upon. There wasn't much for anypony to connect with Mud Briar on. Sunburst lived in the land of ice and snow and knew nothing about anything green. The idiot once tried to eat a poison oak and Mud Briar stopped him - the only time she'd ever heard him raise his voice. Trixie would be mortified if she owed that pouting prick her life.

Sunburst was currently snoozing, his dorky bearded head on the next table over from Maud and Mud Briar, unaffected by Pinkie's noise. Trixie & Starlight, Maud & Mud Briar, Sunburst, and Pinkie were the only ones in the room. Pinkie was now sitting quietly next to him with a huge grin, glancing at Maud with a cold sweat. Maud must have shooed her away somehow. Trixie knew from experience that all it took was a look; she herself had misread Maud's expression one time and would never make that mistake again. The learning had carved into her soul, like the words of an ancient language set in enchanted stone.

"Okay, Trix. Ready!" Starlight said, confidently.

"As we rehearsed." Trixie responded. "Don't mess it up this time! And one and two and three and WELCOME!" As light set one kicked on, clicking heavily with bright white and gold lights, Trixie swept the curtains aside and stepped out, knowing to hold her hat in place magically for just an instant, so no unicorns in the audience - a whopping four ponies, the only unicorn of which was asleep - would notice her attempt to keep the curtains from knocking it clumsily off her head.

Sunburst jumped up, his glasses popping off his head. He fumbled for them in midair - Pinkie caught them as they fell and hoofed them back. "Th-thanks..." he mumbled awkwardly, placing them back. He blinked as she also hoofed him a beard comb, then self-consciously began to groom his disheveled goatee. Pinkie tactlessly stared with wide eyes before she apparently remembered there was a magic show going on and went back to the head-on-hooves thing.

"Welcome to the GrRreat and Powerful TrRixie's Humble Birthday Admittedly Taken A Bit Seriously Magic Show!" she bellowed, gesturing grandiosely.

"Is humble a modifier for the birthday or for the show?" Mud Briar responded, as though she had been talking solely to him. Her eye twitched, but her smile did not falter. She would never admit this to anyone, probably, but she was deathly afraid of upsetting Maud Pie. She'd sooner slap Princess Luna across the face and see what happened.

"Today, o noble audience, it is you who shall be humbled!" she retorted, and Mud Briar nodded with raised eyebrows as though impressed with her wordplay. "You shall be shocked! You may be petrified! You will certainly be utterly aghast at the sheer nerve of the Great and Powerful Trixie as she performs yet another insane stunt no other pony would dare consider!"

"I believe many ponies have dared to perform magical tricks on stage," Mud Briar retorted. Maud was glancing at him. With the lighting like this, and her focus on her performance, Trixie wasn't sure what her look meant.

Starlight had been gradually fading the lights from set 1 to set 2. This one was red and pink, a bit more sensual; it was a good, warm lighting for when Trixie was talking a lot. Naturally, it was used very frequently.

"Today, the Great and Powerful Trixie shall make a pony... disappear," she hissed ominously. "I will need a volunteer! Someone who no one likes, perhaps, and won't miss." She waited for laughter that never sounded.

After a pause, Pinkie jumped up, waving and hollering. "Oh oh oh me! Everyone hates me! I'm no good to anyone!" she cried cheerfully.

"I do not believe any of those sentiments are accurate," Mud Briar observed.

"Very well! The lovely lady, next to the sleepy bearded stallion, please come on stage," Trixie said confidently, but she was already certain her trick was ruined; nothing worked logically when Pinkie was involved. Hopefully Starlight, the mad genius that she was, had accounted for this possibility and had somehow Pinkie-proofed the trick. If not, well, at least only three ponies and the saboteur would see her humiliation. Just a certain one would critique it, at great length.

Pinkie slowly, agonizingly, bounced up and down, gradually making it from her chair to the stage. Trixie soon seized her magically and set her onto the stage, then panted. Pinkie was the heaviest pony she had ever lifted. "Th-thank you for volunteering, Pinkie Pie, phew," she gasped very loudly.

There was a pause and a horrible grinding sound, wood against wood. Trixie cringed. Pinkie blinked, her wide eyes and bright smile unaffected.

"That sound is very conspicuous," Mud Briar noted.

Trixie cleared her throat meaningfully.

"It's heavy, Trix!" Starlight whispered back.

"Use your magic!" Trixie hissed in turn.

"Why are we whispering?" Pinkie asked, without moving.

"Oh, right." And a large, royal purple coffin quickly floated through the curtains, engraved with a frontal depiction of a pony, forelegs crossed, mouth fallen open - like a mummy who'd died horrifically. The aura around it vanished and it clunked onto the stage, making the entire thing shake.

"Ooooh. Terrifying!" Pinkie approved.

"Our lovely volunteer," Trixie said. Who could stand to lose a few pounds, she thought. "Will now enter the horrifying, bone-chilling, blood-curdling Skull Chamber!"

"Technically, as no skull is present on the exterior design..." Mud Briar critiqued, "It should be considered more of a..." He leaned forward and squinted. "... Mildly Distressed Mare Chamber," he finished.

"Huh? I don't feel very distressed!" Pinkie pointed out.

Mud Briar, your mare is about to be mildly distressed if you don't shut your daffodiling mouth. Trixie thought, but kept smiling. "If you would please enter the Sku -- um, enter the Chamber, Pinkie Pie!"

On queue, the lights rapidly swept, from one side of the stage to the other, from red and pink to blue and violet. Trixie was hoping she would be able to add music to this part someday.

"I would expect music," Mud Briar complained. Maud was definitely looking at him now, but he didn't seem to notice. Trixie wondered what the music of her hoof percussing against his nose would sound like.

Pinkie lightly trotted over to the Working Title Chamber, standing perfectly to one side of it from the audience's perspective, and knocked on it. Thoonk thoonk. "Nothin' in there," she observed. Trixie was surprised; that was actually a good bit. Trixie walked to the other side of the Whatever-It-Is Chamber and opened it slowly. It swung open in her own direction. Pinkie waved to the audience, saluted, and stepped inside, copying the posture of the mare on the lid. Trixie grimaced at her also copying its face, and closed the coffin like she was putting a bad dream in a jar.

She yelled very loudly. "Pinkie Pie is now inside of the Chamber!" She announced. She had to be this loud because the Chamber was supposed to be lined up with a trapdoor in the stage floor, which Pinkie would fall down while she was speaking. The volunteer's shrieks, as well as the loud click of the release, were muffled by the design of the floor and the Chamber, to a level she should be able to talk over easily.

"That is readily obvious given her having just entered it," Mud Briar noted. Ha! Got you there, snot-face! That is "technically" incorrect! Trixie gloated in her mind. If Pinkie hadn't done some weird Pinkie thing, she had already exited the Chamber before dumbness had exited Mud Briar's mouth.

"Trixie shall now recite an arcane incantation which shall banish Pinkie Pie from this world forever!!" Trixie called out, rather loftily.

"I hope not," Maud said. Trixie's heart stopped for a second, but she saw Maud was smiling and relaxed. Phew! She wasn't really going to banish Pinkie Pie to the world between worlds forever, but she was worried Maud might think she was going to, and then Maud would banish Trixie to the hospital forever.

The Chamber began to shake like someone was in it, which was by design. It had been a very expensive prop and Trixie was getting as much mileage out of it as she could.

Trixie began to recite.

"O power beyond light and darkness!
O power of life that does not bleed!
O power at the banks of the river of time! Trixie pledges herself to thee!
Thy mighty gift, through Trixie's hoof, shall banish the fool and smite the unworthy!
Let us together destroy the boundaries of reality...
X-ZONE!"

Trixie used this incantation a lot; she just swapped the name at the end out depending what she was supposed to be doing. She thought it would sound particularly cool if her trick was slaying a dragon or something. No one had ever called her out on reusing it, and it had taken her about a week of angry rewrites and crumpled-up notes, so she wasn't keen to make any more.

In the event that the Chamber had not properly released, which happened time to time, Trixie's long-winded incantation, which of course did absolutely nothing, allowed ample time for Starlight to solve the problem any way she felt necessary. On a good day, this was a few pissed-off yanks at a lever. On a bad day, it was a burning stage. Today must have been a good day, as nothing happened to clearly indicate a problem to Trixie.

"Let us see if it worked..." Trixie said in a low, sadistic tone, and slowly walked back to the Chamber. This was her second fail-safe. She was now very quiet so that Starlight could communicate to her a need to improvise if none of her solutions worked.

She heard Starlight tapping at the floor behind the curtain. She stopped and inclined her head, staring at the Chamber. Starlight paused, then tapped the Horse Code for "FTE", or Failure To Engage. This meant a prop did not do its job; in this case, the Chamber had never opened its trapdoor, which meant - to Trixie's mixed feelings - that Pinkie Pie ought to have been jostled around in the thing while it was shaking.

Actually, no. The Chamber's oscillation was not strong enough to overcome Pinkie's weight - or any pony's weight, even. Trixie turned her head to the crowd.

Pinkie Pie was in the back of the room, waving giddily. She put a hoof to her mouth. Shhh, the gesture meant.

Trixie blinked. That couldn't be right, if the Chamber had not engaged. But Pinkie couldn't be in two places at once, could she? And she was definitely not light enough for the Chamber to shake with her in it.

Screw it. If Pinkie was in there, she'd improvise a reason why and try it again. If Pinkie was in there and also in the back of the room, Trixie would eat her hat. Trixie slowly approached the Chamber and knocked. Toonk, toonk.

She opened the chamber.

No one was in there.

"SHE'S GOOOOONE!" Pinkie Pie shrieked, leading everyone to look to the back of the room. She trotted back to the table with Sunburst, sat down next to him, looked around at everyone, blinked three times, and suddenly began applauding. "Yaaaaay Trixie! She's the best!" she cried, smacking her hooves on the table.

Starlight poked her head out from the curtains to examine what was going on. She and Trixie shared a look. Trixie shrugged. Starlight sighed.

"At the beginning of this act," Mud Briar began, "I expressed my doubts as to your claim that this trick had never been dared before. Inference: That it is an original trick. And while I found your performance of it very impressive, technically it is a derivation of a classic routine, popularized by Hoofdini and presumably practiced well before his time in various forms. Thank you for the entertainment."

Trixie forced a grimace, bowed along with Starlight, and returned back stage.

"I hate that guy," Trixie muttered.

"Come on, Trix," Starlight said. "It's his birthday. You can put up with it for one day, right?"

"He's always like that," Trixie protested. "None of us can even talk to Maud."

Starlight nodded in sympathy. "I admit, they've been spending a lot of time together," She said. "Anyway. How did you make Pinkie disappear if the Chamber didn't open? I didn't blink her. You told me not to use unicorn magic for this trick."

"I have no idea," Trixie said, "But I wish I could make Mud Briar disappear so easily."

Starlight rolled her eyes and turned away, beginning to clean up.

Trixie put a hoof to her mouth.

Make Mud Briar disappear... she thought to herself, a smile creeping onto her face.