When Pattie was a tiny filly, she hadn't really realized how wrong it was. But now that she was older, she couldn't keep from thinking about it.
Sparks of magic snapped and crackled next to her ear, making her jump. "Wake, up, Pattie!" her father said.
"Sorry, father."
"We have a lot of work to do! There's no time for a nap. Have you prepped the cannon?"
"I'll do that right away, sir." Pattie Pony trotted to the cannon, and carefully measured out powder and wadding. Meanwhile, she heard her father doing his own job with the show's newest recruit.
"Good news, son. Today is the day you're fired for the first time!"
Pattie heard a young stallion shout, "I'm so happy! I've wanted to be in show business my whole life! And finally I get my chance!"
"Indeed it is, son. You just have to sign some paperwork and make sure you know how to put on this mask." Pattie heard the rubbery, squishy sounds of the mask going on over the stallion's head. "Okay, now the crash helmet goes on over the mask. Do you have any relatives we should send free tickets to, or notify if anything goes wrong? Tell me about all of them, and I'll help you fill out these forms. Great! Just sign here, and here. And you're done! This will be the most amazing night of your life! Just wrap yourself in this robe, and wait here for your cue. And when the trapdoor opens, let yourself slide down though it immediately."
When she was finished with the cannon, Pattie Pony went to the freezer, where she checked that the ice tray was completely frozen. The ice tray had channels that formed a giant snowflake shape, with lots of sharp spikes. Pattie dumped some meat into a large bowl, stabbed the giant snowflake into the meat, and put more meat amongst the snowflake's spikes until it was completely covered. She carried the concealed snowflake to the animal tent, where she opened a hatch in the manticore's cage and slid the meal through.
Pattie had her suspicions about where the meat came from. She didn't ask her father, because she felt the only thing worse than suspecting would be knowing.
The manticore licked the pile of meat, grabbed the pile in its mouth, and swallowed it whole.
Pattie Pony's father had taught her that the manticore must only be fed meals full of strong, sharp ice spikes, so the manticore would learn never to try to chew or crush its food, only to swallow its food whole. Otherwise one of Pattie's father's magic tricks wouldn't work right.
It was also best to feed the manticore right before the show, so the giant, carnivorous beast wouldn't have an empty stomach.
As she'd been taught to do every evening, Pattie checked the manticore's collar and chain. They looked perfect. The stinger was still well blunted by Pattie's careful filing earlier that week.
"Good boy, Dandelion," Pattie praised the family's working pet. She thought the manticore liked it.
***
In the night, the stage lights were so bright, the audience was like a dim, dark blur. But Pattie could clearly see the robed, masked, helmeted stallion walk across the stage and climb the ladder to the cannon's muzzle. He climbed to the top, slipped, and fell inside. Good enough.
With a thunderous boom, the cannon shot fire and smoke, filling the tent with haze. It was a great trick.
Too bad there hadn't really ever been a trapdoor.
Pattie's experienced ears listened for a thunk outside the tent, in an area surrounded by high fences and cloth barriers where her father never let her go. Over the years, she had come to understand what normally happened in that spot. As the saying goes, what goes up must come down.
Sometimes, when Pattie's father hadn't known she was watching, Pattie had seen her father coming back from there carrying meat for the manticore's food refrigerator.
For a minute, as the haze slowly cleared, nothing seemed to happen. Suspense built. Ponies started to mutter to each other. Somewhere towards the back, a filly screamed. Somepony shushed her.
Through the large gap in the tent's roof at which the cannon had been pointed, a robed, helmeted stallion descended slowly, supported by ropes. As the descent continued, everypony could see the parachute from which the stallion dangled. Ponies cheered. As usual, the trick had worked.
Sometimes Pattie wondered what she should do. But she was sure her father was the trickiest, sneakiest pony in the world. He'd already implicated her in his schemes, by teaching her to load the cannon and help in other ways since she was a tiny filly. Also, he was her only family in all the world. So what choice did she really have?
The descending stallion tugged his parachute ropes to steer towards a bull's-eye in the middle of the stage. He pulled off his crash helmet and threw it behind him. Pattie's father bowed, enjoying the audience's applause.
***
The next day, Pattie practiced outside on the grass. Her juggling kept going wrong as she dropped a ball, then another. That can happen when you're distracted with worry and guilt.
Her father walked up, and said, "Don't worry, Pattiekins. You'll get it. All it takes is time and practice."
In the sky beyond the nearest mountains, Pattie saw a rainbow-colored ring appear. She watched it grow. She let her juggling balls drop to the ground.
As a loud boom finally arrived at the speed of sound, the rainbow-colored ring spread through the sky. "Beautiful," Pattie whispered to herself. She had an idea. A new spell was part of it, but there were other parts too.
***
That evening, Pattie fed the manticore a smaller meal than usual. Afterward, just before the show, she put several sticks of butter in his food dish. She watched him lick up butter until his dish was clean and shiny again.
At the start of the show, after Pattie's father had gone onstage, she pulled the new stunt stallion aside, into a secluded nook. "Change of plans," she told the stallion. "We need you to hide here. Don't let anypony see you, not even the showponies. If my father sees you he'll be very angry with you for not hiding well enough. And when you hear the words I've written on this slip of paper, you pull this rope HARD."
"Aww, I wanted to be in the show!"
"This is one of the most important parts of the show. If you don't pull your rope on cue, it could cost somepony his life. This is VERY IMPORTANT. You must NOT get it wrong."
"Well, okay. If it helps the show, I'll do it!"
Pattie went to get her stilts, along with a spare robe, mask, and crash helmet. She disguised herself as a stuntpony disguised as her father, and cast a spell that she hoped would work.
On the first cue, Pattie walked out onto the stage. She almost tripped, but recovered before she fell off her stilts. It was hard climbing the ladder in stilts, but Pattie had been practicing showpony skills almost since she was born, and she succeeded. Finally she cast a second spell, and let herself slide down into the cannon.
She'd underloaded the cannon, but even with a short load reducing the blast's power, and the partial protection provided by her new spell, the sudden shock almost knocked her unconscious. She flew through the tent's hole and over the main tent. Finally she landed where she had planned to, on another tent's yielding top. She was dizzy, but her spell for increased resistance against deadly impacts and explosions seemed to have worked.
She watched her father leap from a catwalk over the main tent, and parachute down through the tent's skylight-style hole.
So far, so good.
Pattie trotted to one of the tent's support ropes, and slid down it to the ground. She stripped off her disguise and hid it, sneaked through the darkness to the main tent, and watched the show from the very back of the audience.
Her father was already starting the next part of the show, putting on green and pink plaid trousers and the world's ugliest Hawaiian shirt.
"In the history of Equestria, hundreds of ponies have been eaten by manticores," he said. "But very few ponies have been eaten by a manticore more than once."
He walked to the manticore cage at the back of the stage, and opened the main door. He walked inside, closing the door behind himself.
"Do you like my beautiful clothes?" he asked, clowning for the audience. Everypony laughed.
"Today I will provoke a manticore's attack...AND SURVIVE!" Pattie's father announced. He picked up a giant-size cologne bottle and sprayed himself. "Some ponies would say the secret to this trick is BAD TASTE."
Hearing those words, the hiding stuntpony pulled on a rope. A thread attached to the rope pulled on a catch in the manticore's collar. The collar came loose from the beast's neck, clattering to the cage's floor.
Pattie's father was shocked to see the collar no longer restricting the giant carnivore's throat. Now the manticore would be able to swallow a pony-sized meal. In the veteran showpony's last act, he tried to run.
The manticore thrust its head forward and down, seizing Pattie's father in its jaws. That much was a scheduled part of the show. The beast flipped its head back to try to swallow the showpony. That was also a scheduled event. What Pattie's father had not planned in advance was when the manticore easily swallowed the pony down its butter-greased throat.
In the back of the main tent, unseen by anypony, Pattie's flanks glowed with a new cutie mark. A wand symbolizing a new spell useful in death-defying magic shows. Curling around it, a shape that might represent a decorative streamer, or a ribbon, or one of the legal forms signed by ponies who had hoped to be "fired," but who had never given a repeat performance. Or perhaps one of the scraps of ugly cloth that would later be found in the manticore's droppings. Or the final shred of Pattie's father's last-minute hopes for his own life.
Pattie sneaked out of the main tent and left the showgrounds. She thought this might be a good time to take a new stage name and tour the provinces.
Whatever she did, she'd better start practicing her new name now, to make sure she never forgot it and used her old name by mistake.
"Trixie was born in a magnificent moment of magic," she said to herself. "The great and powerful Trixie first appeared into this world onstage, in a cloud of fire and smoke. And ever since that moment, the amazing Trixie's tricks have fooled and astounded even veteran magicians."
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Why not tell me something in this story you liked, something you didn't like, or some of both?
Please don't forget any upvotes and favoriting! Follows are nice too.
Should I have put a Dark Humor tag on this one (or at least tried to?)
Origin stories for Trixie can be fun. Here's a lighter-toned origin story that I enjoyed reading:
"Princess Trixie" by Emperor (link)
