*snort*
Starlight was barely into her second cup of tea—when an enormous firebomb erupted outside her bedroom window, and she was already tired of it.
Nevertheless, she took a calm sip. Even as the thunder from the explosion was accompanied by a chorus of screams.
An even calmer sip: a splash of blue lasers flew into the sky, raining the side streets of Ponyville with featherless, first-degree-burned pigeons.
“Please! F-forgive me, everypony!” a very familiar voice hollered, followed by a tiny sniffling sound. Immediately, the sky outside Starlight's window flickered dark purple, and frogs zig-zagged across the troposphere trailing flame and napalm. “Trixie doesn't know why any of this is happening!” The mare's desperate shrieks reached a higher octave, followed by the hint of a baby sneeze. A chunk of some poor apartment building was sent twirling towards the misty heights of Mount Canterlot in the distance. “Just stay back and Trixie won't hurt anyone!”
Starlight sighed. She leaned lethargically back in her desk chair, staring at a calendar hanging on the wall in front of her. Beneath an oily-muscled firefighter stallion, the days lay mostly bare—except for Sundays. A neat loop of hornwriting eloquently repeated “Don't kill her~" five times in a row. And then there was an addendum on the last weekend of the month that read: “Consider switching to boxers.”
“Ah—Ahhhh—Ach-CHOO!”
Outside, a giant bipedal creature with a bifurcated horned hat and a matching brassiere stood one hundred meters above the rooftops of Ponyville. She malevolently twirled a magic staff crowned with a jeweled crescent moon while cackling: “Ahhh! After ten thousand years, I'm free! Time to Conquer E—”
“ACHOO!”
The monstrosity instantly transformed into a million inert pinballs that collapsed, splashing every which way. This tsunami nearly crashed through Starlight's window when a dainty grunt from the distressed showmare outside made the entire deluge vanish. Such a eucatastrophic event was simultaneously accompanied by a waltz of duck-shaped clouds that rippled across the heavens before raining raisin cereal over the Everfree Forest.
“Ughhhh! Somepony... anypony...mrmmfff!” Trixie's voice was muffled by what could only be the umpteenth faceplant of the past ten minutes. She briefly turned into a giraffe—which made her dotted blue coat visible through Starlight's window for the space of a second—before her snout slapped awkwardly against the edge of a telegraph poll and she shrank back into a flailing ponyform. “Aaaaackies!” A noisy thump, and she could be heard moaning in the street. “Pleeeeeease make it stopppp...!”
Starlight sighed again. Her lazy eyes drifted back to the calendar colt: his rippled muscles peaking out from under the yellow flame retardant coat, his manure-eating grin, bright white teeth that reflected immersion-breaking studio lights.
“Trixie?” a voice that could waddle entered the afternoon fray. While frightened ponies galloped away from the chaos, his clawsteps bounded closer. Daring. Or perhaps stupid. “Holy guacamole! Why's your nose all glowy—”
“No! Spike, don't!” A white mane tossed amidst flailing limbs in Starlight's peripheral. “Stay back! Don't touch Trixie's—”
Starlight was already taking her third sip of tea when her ears rang with the inevitable mating cries of cybernetic hyenas. They were extinguished from existence just as quickly as they were birthed, leaving nothing but Spike's gasps to fill the nightmarish void.
“Whoah! What happened just now?!”
“What, did you trade your eyes for those dinky wings of yours?!” Starlight's friend huffed. “Can't you see that Trixie is cursed?!”
“Uhm... I can see that your nose is cursed...”
“But that's the cutest part of Trixie! Why else do you think I keep it turned up so dang much?! It's to keep it further away from the riff-raff!”
“But what I want to know is how it got cursed—”
A pillar of flame rose up into the sky, morphed into laughing court jesters, then fell back to sea level as rainbow confetti.
Starlight took her fourth sip, admiring the firefighter's fetlock size.
“Gaaaaaah! What did Trixie just tell you?!”
“But I didn't touch it that time, Trixie!” Spike sputtered. “You did!”
“But it's so itchyyyyyyyyyyy—!”
“Trixie, a day when touching your nose can transmute matter into energy and then into clowns and then back into energy is not a season when you should be touching it! I mean, haven't you been reading the newspapers?! Get with the times, girl!”
“Go fetch Twilight Sparkle at once! She's a magical pretty princess! Surely she can fix Trixie's nose!”
“I'm afraid she's off on a diplomatic mission to the Hippopotamus Kingdom.”
“And tell her to bring Trixie a tiara while she's at it!”
“Something... to do with a lecture on the dangers of weaponized defecation—”
Ponyville exploded again, this time with slightly more winged toasters.
“Trixie! Stop. Touching. It!”
“Trixie caaaaaaaaaaaan't stopppppppppppppp! It's so fuzzy and cute and Trixie misses ittttttttt!” She then proceeded to sob, which made the windows and doorframes rattle at an alarming frequency.
Starlight had to press her teacup hard into her saucer to keep it from clattering. She blew a tuft of mane hair out from her face and muttered to the walls: “Pump-action...? No, automatic.” A tense nod to the calendar. “Double-barreled.”
“Hey! Wait! I know!” And the draconian voice waddled closer. “I bet Starlight can fix this!”
“Surrounded on all sides by six-toed cats.”
“Hey! Starlight!” Spike clamored and struggled to climb into view of the windowframe. Then—with a scaly blush—he remembered he had wings and levitated in clear eyeshot of the resident unicorn. “Do you have a cure for cursed noses that break the laws of physics?”
“No, but if you hum a few bars I'll fake it.”
“It's Trixie!” Spike pointed out into the street. “Her nose is glowing and causing stuff to explode every time she so much as touches it!”
“Nice synopsis,” Starlight droned, not bothering to make eye contact. “Shoulda led with that.”
“Huh?”
Starlight facehoofed, rubbing her tense eyelids. “What... color is her nose glowing?”
“Oh, blue!” Spike smiled—then blinked. “Er... maybe cyan?” He turned to look back out into the street, leaning one arm on the window frame as his other hand scratched his chin. “Possibly azure. Technically, what color is Rainbow Dash's coat? I mean, like, in color theory—?”
“It's more of a—” Trixie could be seen hiccuping in the middle of the street. A tuft of white mane hair flew loose, flopping over the center of her muzzle. A flash of light, and this birthed a yellow submarine in and out of existence, the concussive force of which shoved Trixie to the ground so that she flailed on her back like some adorable fuzzy pill bug. “—late spring night cerulean!”
“In other words, bluer than not blue...” Starlight finally stood up, trotting over to glare out the window frame. “...now I wonder why that would be...”
“Rnnngh... Starlight...!” Trixie's nose twitched. Black portals opened up on either side of her and exchanged tentacle shakes before blipping into ineffectual static. “Save the lecture for another time and just help Trixie—!”
“Now why would I want to lecture you, hmmmmm?” Starlight propped her chin against a pair of forelimbs—which were smugly leaning against the bottom of the window frame. “Tell me, Miss Great and Powerful Magician. What type of Equestrian spells leave a blue mark?”
“Uhhhhh...” Trixie fought and fought and fought and fought not to sneeze. Her eyes darted left and right. “...s-security spells.”
“And why might a pony suddenly find herself accosted by the mark of a compromised security spell?”
“Uhhhhh... uhm...” Trixie's eyes darted faster and faster, the pupils shrinking. Sweat formed along her brow. “Because... of... a s-security breach?”
“And who might have gone breaching some local security spells?” Starlight's jaw hardened. “Well, Trixie? Care to answer that?”
Nervous, shivering pony faces peaked out from every window and balcony of downtown Ponyville, drawn briefly to the curiosity of the lingering moment. Over a hundred set of eyes stared at the showpony lying on her back and encumbered with nasal sorcery.
Trixie curled her forelimbs to her heaving chest, awash in perspiration. “I... uhm... I-I'm sure that... uh.... Trixie has a perfectly reasonable explanation for—”
“Trixie, who was it I spoke to last night—the only pony in all of Equestria I spoke to yesterday evening...” Starlight's eyes narrowed on her best friend. “...explaining how I had placed a Level Ten Master Wizard Security Spell on my underwear drawer the morning previous, because of all of the 'mysterious' break-ins I had observed as of late, followed by my freshly-laundered intimates being found tossed haphazardly all across the bedroom floor?!?”
Silence.
Spike's blinking eyes wandered from Starlight to Trixie.
A uniform gaze of dull shame issued out from every observing pegasus within a stone's throw of the scene as Trixie hesitated for ten seconds... twenty... thirty—
“Well?!?” Starlight grumbled.
“Pfffft!” Trixie scoffed beneath her glowing nose. “You think a Level Ten Master Wizard Spell can intimidate Trixie?!”
“I'm gonna count to ten...”
“You know how I am with challenges!”
“One...”
“Besides, Trixie can't help it! They smell like vanilla and strawberries...”
“Two... ...”
“And jogs in the park. Sweaty jogs in the park.” Trixie's nostrils flared, producing a celestial aura that framed her sweaty, beady-eyed expression. “CanIjustborrowonepairforthesummer?” A deep, sensuous gulp. “M-maybe the pink ones?”
Starlight levitated a rubber band from her desk, squinted one eye, and took aim. “...Ten.” Thwppp!
The strand flew like a bullet out the window, through the street, and landed squarely on the ridge of a fuzzy blue nose.
Two VTOL engines manifested along Trixie's flank, and a sled team of flying squirrels charged for the horizon, dragging her shrieking figure into the sky: “Trixxxxxxxie forgiiiiiiives youuuuuuuuuuuuu...” And she blasted off again into a tiny star blip.
Exhaling, Starlight leaned back from the window, gazing skyward. “There's your fetish tag.”
“Ugh...” Spike ran a scaly hand over his drooping face. “...when is Genfic gonna drop already...?”
Starlight squinted at him. “What the heck's a 'Genfic?'”
Spike spun towards her, snarling: “Why do ponies own panties?!?!?”
