WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?

FIVE MINUTES LATER

The explosion that had occurred on Sweet Apple Acres was loud enough to be heard across Ponyville and while the rest of the townsfolk became even more frightened they were before, Rainbow Dash immediately flew towards the direction that the booming sound had come from and arrived there in a matter of seconds thanks to her exceptional speed. However, upon arriving at the scene, she became utterly horrified by her surroundings:

The entire orchard was on fire. The farm house had been completely demolished and was literally falling to pieces while still burning. Every single one of the apple trees had become charred and devoid of any signs of life whatsoever. Worst of all, none of the Apple family members were in sight and Rainbow was immensely afraid of the possibility that they had all perished as a result of this disaster.

Even though what she was seeing and thinking caused her to panic for a brief moment, she quickly snapped back to reality upon realizing that there was still a chance to save everyone in time. So, she flew as fast as she could towards the sky, grabbed the biggest clouds she could find, and placed them all over the burning farm before kicking them as hard as she could in order to pour as much rain on to the fire as possible. Once the majority of the flames had been extinguished, she began flying around the property, hoping to find the Apple family alive and well. After about half a minute of searching, she finally found her longtime friend Applejack alive, but she was anything but well:

She was lying on the ground with tears streaming down her face, with her eyes reddened from ongoing sobbing, and her entire body covered in her own blood, which was still leaking from a wound on her back that was caused by a sharp piece of wood firmly lodged on her spine.

Seeing one of her closest and oldest friends in this terrible state filled Rainbow's very soul with utter horror and disgust. Thus, she quickly flew towards her side and then frantically asked, "AJ!! Are you alright?! What's happened here?! Who or what did this to you?!"

Hearing all these questions made Applejack raise her head towards Rainbow, but upon seeing the cyan pegasus, the expression on her face became one of pure terror and she weakly pleaded, "RD... You... Y-you gotta get out of 'ere. She... S-she's gonna do somethin' to you. G-get away right now."

This only caused the look that Rainbow was giving to Applejack to change from scared to utterly puzzled, but before she could ask the orange earth pony what she had meant by those words, her ears picked up the rather loud sound of an apple being crunched. She turned around to see the source of this sound and became even more puzzled than before to gaze upon a unicorn with a broken horn wearing a clown make-up and sporting a red tuxedo who was leaning against a completely charred tree and eating a large red apple with one hoof.

As the said unicorn took another large bite out of the apple and started crunching the piece insider her mouth in a loud manner, she took notice of Rainbow staring at her with an incredulous facial expression before a bright smile appeared on her own face and she exclaimed with great excitement in her tone of voice, "Oh, hi, Rainbow! How's it going? Like what I've done with the place? I know the flames are a bit too much, but they do kinda add to the overall tone of the art piece, don't you think?"

Rainbow immediately recongnized that voice and although she initially became shocked to discover the unicorn's identity, thinking on her words caused an angry scowl to appear on the face of the cyan pegasus as she asked, "Trixie... You're the one who did all this?"

"Of course!" Trixie replied with unwavering enthusiasm. "Who else could create a masterpiece such as this? I mean, I'm definitely gonna try to one up myself in the future and there's a very good chance that I'll succeed one day, but you know what they say: you NEVER forget your first one!"

Then, she started giggling and this enraged Rainbow so much that she flew straight at her with an incalculable speed (creating an ear-deafening sonic boom as a result) and punched her in the face hard enough to not only knock her down, but also make her cough up blood. In spite of her severe injury, however, Trixie quickly got back up and continued to giggle, which made Rainbow even angrier than before and caused her to deliver another punch to her gut that sent her flying towards the tree she was leaning on earlier, breaking it in two in the process.

Unfortunately, this did nothing to deter Trixie in the slightest, as she slowly managed to stand back up and her giggles turned into legitimate maniacal laughter, making Rainbow both slightly confused and utterly infuriated at the same time. Therefore, she not only took another swing at Trixie with her speed to knock her down, but also started repeatedly punching the homicidal clown in the jaw. The latter, despite several gallons blood and more than few teeth dropping from her mouth, laughed harder with each punch, which in turn made Rainbow hit progressively harder.

Even after taking a dozen punches to the jaw and the jaw itself nearing the edge of breaking as a result, Trixie still kept laughing at the top of her lungs and this actually prompted Rainbow to have a brief moment of despair over how useless the beating had proven to be before coming up with the idea of shooting to the top of the clouds and then descending back towards the ground, intending make Trixie pay for everything she had done and put a permanent end to her abhorrent mockery. As for Trixie herself, however, she became immensely excited by Rainbow's sudden ascension and her wicked smile only grew wider with each second that passed during the subsequent descent. As the cyan pegasus came closer and closer towards her, she could not help but mutter to herself, "Come on. Come on, I want you to do it. I want you to do it. Come on, hit me. Hit me. You wanna hit me?!"

Rainbow responded by letting out a gutteral scream of pure unadulterared rage and when she was only a few dozen feet above Trixie, the clown exclaimed with utter impatience, "HIT!!! ME!!!!"

However, this only resulted in the complete opposite of the effect that she was hoping for, since hearing her exclamation caused Rainbow to finally snap out of her murderous rage and realize the full extent of what she was about to do. Unfortunately, pausing her high speed descent for only a couple of seconds was all it took for her to lose both balance and control before crashing into the ground half a mile away from her original target, creating a huge crater in the process. Trixie, meanwhile, became immensely disappointed by what had just occurred and after letting out a groan out of annoyance, she made her way towards the said crater in order to see whether or not Rainbow was still standing.

Then, much to her amusement, she discovered that the cyan pegasus was indeed lying on the ground, unconscious and horribly injured. Both of her wings had been broken in multiple places, nearly every one of her feathers were scattered all over the place, her entire body was covered in bruises, and there was even a large open wound on her forehead. While still irritated by the fact that her original plan had not gone in the direction that she was expecting, Trixie nevertheless felt somewhat satisfied with the overall result. So, she gave a simple shrug to the said result and promptly began her departure from the orchard, even going as far as dancing like a ballerina around the completely burnt apple trees as she moved along.

Unfortunately, her newfound happiness was short lived as she was suddenly hit by a purple magic blast of unknown origin when she was only a few steps away from the exit gate. Thus, she was flung a dozen feet in the air and upon landing back on the ground with a heavy thud, she let out a much louder groan out of annoyance than before and even shouted, "What's a mare gotta do for a minute of peace?!"

In response, the one who had shot her in the first place lifted her up with magic and then walked towards her to reveal themselves to be none other than Twilight Sparkle, who had an absolutely furious expression on her face. Immediately after reaching Trixie, she proceeded to yell, "Tell me who you are RIGHT NOW!!!"

Trixie's only response was letting out a sinister chuckle and asking, "You sure you can handle the punchline?"

Twilight had no time for games, however, as she proceeded to hit Trixie's face with a second blast of magic, which not only flung the manic unicorn an additional dozen feet away, but also burn her face just enough to cause the clown make up to melt away. Then, as soon as Trixie stood back up to face Twilight, the latter became both shocked and horrified to discover the former's identity, even collapsing on the ground in the process.

"No... No, it can't be..." she muttered with utter despair, to which Trixie maniacally laughed in response.

"Oh, but it is. In the diseased flesh!" she exclaimed before laughing so hard that it could be heard across the orchard while Twilight continued to sit in silence and hang her head in shame while also shedding a handful of tears.

"So, now what, Sparkle?" Trixie then asked. "Are you planning on taking me to the dungeons of Canterlot, the mental asylum in Manehattan, or the good old cemetery right here in Ponyville? In all honesty, I'm totally fine with whichever one you pick."

Upon hearing this, Twilight looked back at Trixie with despair, utterly clueless on what to do next.