Author's Note

Constructive criticism is more than welcome. For any typo, don't hesitate to send a PM!

Greetings, my sleepyheads!

Trixie took her place at the folding table that had been settled in the grass, next to her wagon.

She was now sitting on a wooden garden chair; one that was as foldable as was the table. So were the random ideas that regularly popped up in her mind. Such Trixiesque concepts could be either converted into reality when they were theoretically feasible (but only when pigs could fly), or folded back into bad memories after they backfired as spectacularly as most of her shows did (pigs generally DIDN’T fly).

One such random idea had pushed the showmare with quite an imagination away from the urban chaos in Ponyville, seeking a calm and peaceful place for her artful voice to thrive, where no unwanted sounds would trouble her newest endeavor. Lost as she was in this corner of the countryside, on the side of some deserted dirt track that was bereft of the big cheering crowds Trixie normally couldn’t do without, the site she had chosen to conduct her experiment of the day was simply the greatest.

A Grrrrreat AND powerful idea, I humbly confess! was her thought on the matter.

On the other side of the muddy road, slowly swallowed up by the lush vegetation surrounding it, was a crumbly old youth hostel building with decrepit, tatty facades. It stood out sadly like a work of architecture designed by Rarity’s evil clone, besieged by some even older trees that yet seemed a century younger. Kind of similar to what Trixie looked like when she’d awake from a nightmare in which Twilight had beaten her hollow at Hide-and-Seek…

Due to a lack of customers, the neglected facility would probably go out of business soon. Who would give an Ursa Minor’s ass about it? Not the showmare for sure.

As a first step, Trixie had to run some quick tests on her brand-new equipment: a state-of-the-art sound recorder, one she had driven a hard bargain for, but still paid over the odds for at the same boutique, and from the same seller as a certain Alicorn Amulet. Certified 100% guarantee that nothing would go wrong.

Trixie tested its sound quality for the first time, saying a few sentences to have them recorded. She then pressed the play button to listen to her own gentle voice, but couldn’t hear anything as she had forgotten to turn the device on while recording herself. A blush of embarrassment turned her face a slight shade of purple, and she felt thankful that nopony had been watching her being the butt of her own jokes.

She’d have to renew the operation a second time, not without facing some difficulties as she struggled to get the Celestia-damned thing to actually work. This time though, her voice was successfully recorded when she spoke again in a very low tone of voice…

“Greetings, my sleepyheads!”

…for a result that would be referred to as a tiny bit too inaudible. I swear on Starlight’s butt that I will not quit now! she mumbled. Let’s do this again.

She held her breath for a brief moment, focusing on her simple task, and spoke again.

“Greeeeetings! Greeee-t-t-t-ing, ting, tingsss-gs-gs-gs!” she whispered sensually with expert grandiloquence, putting emphasis on consonants with the highest tingling potential. “Greetings, my sleepy heads. My sleepy head, my… sleepy-sleepy-sleepy-sleepysleepysleepysleepy-py-py-py heeeeeads!”

She paused her vocal purring for a few seconds filled with more dry mouth sounds, as she softly exhaled and blew into the mic, then resumed her sweet whispered monologue.

“I hope you’re doing good, my lil, lil, lil sleepyheads! Me? I’m doing grrrrreat! Great and p-p-p-powerrrrrfully great, thanks for asking. And today, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’rrrrrre gonna do something veeeery special. Today, not only will I help you go-go-gogogogogo to sleep, but it’s also going to be a great and powerful sleep! Gr-grrrr-great and powerrrrrrful.”

For the third time, she’d listen to herself again. As she did so, her gaze traveled to the derelict building across the road again. Inside of it, the lights were all out. Staring into its dark, open windows easily compared to throwing herself, body and soul, into a black hole where she’d meet a fate worse than death: finding herself in a void where nopony would ever excitedly clap their hooves in appreciation of her performances again. This gloomy sight brought cold sweats to her skin.

Therefore, Trixie quickly took her eyes off of the dull frontage, and sought comfort in the perfect melody of her own tingles-inducing voice.

She listened to it yet another time, then lost control over her eyelids, and slowly, she… she…

*insert snoring sounds*

When Trixie awoke from her slumber, she had no idea what had happened. In front of her, the grass had been mysteriously flattened, bearing scars of war like it had been stamped on by a flock of horny ponies while living their best lives. The yawning showmare shrugged it off as a merely acceptable work of wind art from a Weather Control Pegasus who’d gotten seriously bored, but the truth was…

*Half a nap earlier*

Wandering Hoof, a lonely pony thief on the run from a patrol of Canterlot Royal Guards, makes a quick stop on the side of the dirty track and stumbles upon Trixie by chance. The magician-turned-ASMRtist was lulled to sleep by her own voice moments ago. Drawn to the snoring mare’s expansive-looking sound recorder, two one-bit coins sneakily replacing both his pupils, Wandering Hoof attempts to steal Trixie’s recorder. Upon hearing said whispered voice however, curiosity gets the best of him.

He listens to it, thinking it might help him figure out the recorder’s true worth before he tries to resell it, but he instantly drops asleep on the glass…

A few moments later, the patrol in pursuit eventually catches up to the thief. The guards look down at him confusedly as he sleeps soundly without a care in the world, like he was just cast a spell to make him stop giving flying feathers. They look up in the sky, but can’t locate the flying feathers in question; he really stopped giving any. Unable to explain what just happened, the guards investigate the potential source of the fugitive pony’s unexplained doze in their quest for answers, lending an ear to a weird-sounding machine’s sensual but captivating song. The sound is odd, but it’s still a welcoming change from eavesdropping on Princess Cadence and Shining Armor’s fun time behind the walls of the Canterlot Castle.

They end up falling fast asleep on top of each other…

A few moments later, episode two (The Moment Later Strikes Back), a random background pony happens upon the scene. Her name’s Octavia Melody. She’s merely wandering by, until she sees Trixie sleeping with a heap of visibly-spellbound equids in front of her. She might not want to investigate any further – who is she to judge an artistic performance? But still, entertainment ponies must stick together, and she just can’t leave Trixie like that, at the mercy of a potential malevolent passerby who is not sleeping.

She comes in closer, raises an ear and falls asleep…

A few moments later, episode three (Return of the Moment Later), Vinyl Scratch is next to reach the live sleep orgy. She can’t hear anything thanks to a pair of headphones protecting her ears from Trixie’s sleep-inducing ASMR. A recent remix of Pinkie Pie’s mega-hit “The rappin' Hist'ry of the Wonderbolts”, which topped the Ponyboard Hot 100 chart this week, is blowing her eardrums up.

She stops by to pick Octavia up and carries her away from this madness…

*Half a nap later*

The sound recorder was running low on battery, and as a consequence, Trixie’s ASMR stopped playing its deadly-soporific tune on a loop. The guards woke up with an embarrassed start, got up indignantly, gathered their miraculously still-not-stolen weapons, along with whatever was left of their dignity, and returned to Canterlot with a tied-up thief to hand over to the claws of justice. Never would they try to spy on other ponies’ intimate breeding activities ever again…

Trixie emerged from her own slumber soon afterward. By mutual agreement with her ego, she’d choose to go easier on mouth sounds thereafter; the Slumberous and Sedative Trixie was a bit too good at it. Otherwise, she’d have spent so much time trying to finish her work, with her being interrupted by her own naps so often, that Starlight would be done with all her friendship lessons by then.

She noticed that a window’s lights were on now, radiating a single, pale square of yellowish glimmer on the youth hostel’s facade. Unbeknownst to her, Octavia would be showing her own kind of private, customized gratitude to Vinyl for saving her earlier. After all, had the cello-playing pony been caught by journalists in the act of camping in the open with some sedated fans, her reputation would’ve been ruined permanently, and she was only repaying her savior in her own way.

Yeah, entertainment ponies DID stick together…

“Anyway…” Trixie murmured with mild annoyance at the lost time so far. “If I’m not using my mouth anymore, maybe some tapping or scratching will do the trick. Let’s see…”

She walked to her wagon’s entrance, brought a small bag from inside it, dropped it on the table, sat back down, searched the bag… and pulled a Zap Apple out of it. One of the many items the tightfisted, part-time-broke traveling mare had been gathering over the weeks, one hand-to-mouth journey at a time. If Equestria had a lost-and-found kingdom, Trixie’s bag would be rewarded the official title of Nationwide Embassy. But as soon as the showmare got ready to tap on the Zap Apple’s multicolored surface, with the tip of her hooves, a familiar country voice cut her short:

“Hold it right there!” Applejack cried out from a few meters away.

Trixie simmered slightly in self-imposed silence, rolling her eyes. Of course…

She was growing more bothered by the sudden realization that this empty piece of countryside land wasn’t so devoid of inquisitive lifeforms after all, but chose to keep it professional. She acknowledged the farm pony with a wave, then smiled innocently from ear to ear, her enameled, shiny-white mouth producing a squeaky toy sound as though she’d been possessed by Pinkie Pie’s spirit.

“Sorry Trixie, Ah sure didn’t mean to interrupt y’all an’ all, but may Ah ask ya where in tarnation didya find ‘em apples?” Applejack asked, pointing a wary hoof at the rainbow-colored fruit. “Ah only know one place where one can find ‘em, an’ it’s in mah farm. Wouldya care ta do some explaining?”

Trixie’s cheesy smile melted like a scoop of hidden-secrets-flavored ice cream under a sun of indiscretion. She wrapped her forelegs frantically around the Zap Apple-turned-My Precious like the ambitious showmare was aiming for the Acapony Award for best Gollum impersonation, and nothing less.

“Trixie is very sorry, Applejack, but a true magician should never… well, you know… reveal where her secrets come from? R-right?”

If Applejack was doing her best to hide her suspicions that Trixie might have stolen from her, she did it poorly. Be that as it may, the orange mare knew that the showmare was no Marestein to begin with. All it took was a little misunderstanding, or just Trixie being Trixie, and the blue pony would be quick to try and bite into something that couldn’t be eaten raw. It mostly was a question of public health.

“Unless ya plannin’ to turn it into jam yerself, I recommend ya don’t eat it…” she warned coolly.

Trixie’s blank, ceased-to-function stare was the only answer she could come up with for a couple of infuriatingly-long seconds, as if framing her Error 404 self would buy her some time to actually process the meaning of Applejack’s words. As her own silence put crushing pressure on her, Trixie quickly followed through with her reaction, a normal one, when a relieved sigh of the deepest intensity came out.

“So that’s what you’re worried about?” she spoke up, only to smile dumbly afterward in relief. “Don’t you fret no more, for the Wise and Foresighted Trixie knew about this fact. Of course, Zap Apple can’t be eaten raw!” she lied. “If you truly want to know, Trixie was planning to use it for some ASMR tapping.”

Applejack lifted a confused hoof up to her chin, looking broken-down inside. “Say what now?” she blurted out skeptically like ASMthingummy what’s-its-name might have been something to eat.

Trixie started from the beginning: what ASMR was, how she had found out about it, how she could profit from it, and how she intended to use it to conquer the world of entertainment and make herself richer than the filth of the Filth. This did nothing good to improve Applejack’s terminal phase of confusion.

In most cases, Trixie’s grey matter was a peanut gallery where swarms of terrible decisions drowned her brain cells out. Every now and then though, in between the waggles of short-sighted stupidness, one single brilliant idea won the upper hoof. Her awkward smile turned confident, if not a dash subversive, as she drew on her trickiest resources to switch gears in her favor… with an even slier subject in mind:

“You know, I had no idea that such a unique variety of colorful apples existed in Sweet Apple Acre.” She spoke more honestly this time, grabbing her flamboyant possession and displaying it gracefully. “Far be it from me to spread false rumors, but judging by its rainbow colors, which are quite reminiscent of another Element Bearer with an attitude, one could start to believe that this apple was a… gift for her. From you.”

*Insert fifty shades of red*

Applejack’s facial fur went full blushing mod like it was Hearts and Hooves Day all over again. Oh no…

She was taken aback, her heart nearly skipping a beat and jumping up her throat, where it collided with a river of saliva suddenly swallowed the other way round. The cornered farm pony narrowed her eyes and looked daggers at Trixie’s expanding smile, all the way to her damned soul, giving her best ‘how on Rainbow Dash’s flank does she know about us?” face. Her left eye twitched convulsively, under attack from a growing anger at a special somepony for leaking such confidential intel, to Trixie of all ponies.

Trixie smiled all over her face in contentment (and from successfully guessing a secret relationship that she had no clue about the second before, based on the sole randomness of her suppositions). Her smile soon mutated into a mischievous grin, then into a victorious smirk. “Now, how about YOU do me some explaining, Applejack?” she sneered.

The orange mare had no time to justify herself. Instead, she’d have to give the cause of the leak a piece of her mind, then scold her, spank her, scold her again, and comfort her. And start over again.

“Sorry, gotta go!” she exclaimed.

Before leaving in a love/hate hurry, Applejack snatched the Zap Apple from Trixie’s hoof - one she would totally stick up a beloved Pegasus’ ass ASAP. In a blink of the eye, she was gone.

Trixie let out a pouty sigh. I was out of battery anyway…

“Let’s try again.” Trixie decided.

She rose a careful hoof above the newest target of her tickle campaign: a rock. Just a simple rock, previously picked up while on her way to her current location. Just. A. Rock.

Her watchful eyes performed a 360-degree check for hazards across the countryside. From now on, any sort of danger was to be reckoned with; the pony-related ones being labeled as enough of a compulsory reason for a no-go. The showmare checked again. Nopony in sight, nothing to report, all clear for the show. The now-relaxed blue pony breathed more serenely, then turned on her fully reloaded voice recorder. Time for some tingles!

Her hooves took over from here, descending upon the unfortunate piece of rock, tapping and scratching it for the enjoyment of everypony’s ears, all the while being rocked to sleep by Trixie’s mouthy delicacies, her smearing noises, the clicking of her tongue, and her mundane telling of random daily-life stories and anecdotes in whisper language to complement her sleep-inducing speech.

For a moment, Trixie could almost feel it herself: the euphoric, arousing sensation of a pleasant electrical current crawling under her skin, the tingling statics that oddly felt similar to carbonated bubbles in her veins like sparkling cider had been pumped into them, the exquisite and divine flow of tingles triggered by the tapping of the edge of her hooves onto the rock’s firm surface, the looming shadow of her imminent death threatening to-

Wait, what now?

The temperature was dropping to a freezing-cold level. The sweet sunlight was no more. Celestia’s Star still shone brightly in the sky, but its dimmed warmth had been relegated to distant memory. When Trixie dared take a direct look at the source of the shadow that had suddenly, and coldly darkened her surroundings, what – and who her eyes met with forced her heart to sound a Persian bluish gray alarm.

“H-Hey, Maud!” she greeted her, waving a sweaty, shaky hoof in doing so.

The apathetic Earth pony took a step forward, only stopping half a meter away from the showmare. Her half-closed eyes spoke on her flat mouth’s behalf, as dryly as could be. From these weird times back when Trixie’d been a temporary worker at the Pie Family Rock Farm, the magician pony would mostly remember Maud for her monotonous, yet mute, yet translatable style of talking, and she could perfectly hear her interlocutor talk to Trixie right now, despite her not saying a single word from an outside point of view.

And Trixie could even understand why Maud had bothered to come from so far away. Lowering her head with growing anguish, she fixed her eyes on the very rock she had been coddling, fiddling and twiddling with up to this point, and slowly, realization kicked in. Trixie seethed again more angrily, her rock-tickling hoof moving back upward in reverse, drawn into a circular arc, and hitting her hard right in the face. Of bucking course…

She stared into Maud’s eyes again. The stoic mare glared back, her eyes journeying back and forth between the rock and its tormentor, as though she’d been on the verge of taking Trixie to court for a rock’s sexual harassment. Faced with this thorny issue, Trixie initially attempted to hold a conversation:

“Sooo… what’s up, Maud? Long time no see, eh?’

No answers.

“Not much of a talker today, now are you?” she tried again, sweating to the point of making summer jealous. “What? Do you happen to be… not in the Maud to talk?”

Trixie smiled desperately, with the vain hope of finding a mirror for her forced comedic failure in Maud’s blank expression, but to no avail. And without Discord’s stand-up drums and cymbals to celebrate this pitiable joke, it was even less funny. Maud fixed her deadpan gaze on her again. Her left eye conveyed an explicit message that could be interpreted as ‘That was cringe’. And on the other side of her nose, some kind of ‘I’ll let you figure out where the exit is’ could be deciphered in her right eye.

That was a lot to handle for the rocknapper’s bruised ego. Thankfully, a recent visit from a certain farm pony had taught Trixie how to handle things the Applejack way:

“So, let me guess: this rock belongs to you?” she said.

Maud stared at her blankly. It meant Sort of.

“And this rock is your… own rock’s companion, or something like that? Boulder, if I remember its name right?”

Maud stared at her blankly. It meant Yes.

“So I better give it back to you, like right now!”

Maud stared at her blankly. It meant If you care about living another day, that is.

Trixie now knew what to do: she got up from her chair and took a step back, away from the crime scene her table had become. Maud stepped forward, took the rock and turned around. Before she walked away, the Earth pony looked Trixie straight in the eyes one last time. You’ll live. Have a good day.

Trixie nervously gulped down a lump in her throat, but she was still breathing and it mattered. She felt like she was the most basic of jokes, but to Tartarus with her feelings. She was alive, and well, and even still kind of a friend to Maud. That was enough, period. Taking a deep breath, she waved timidly to bid her visitor goodbye.

“Okay… have a… rocky day!”

And it didn’t mean sh*t.

The Patient and Tenacious Trixie had already lost two battles, but the war was yet to be won. And this time, she’d redouble her efforts and make sure her next ASMR trigger would not end up either stolen, snatched away or retrieved by somepony else.

For there were now TWO of them on the table: a Wonderbolt Lead Pony badge and an audio CD. Nothing could POSSIBLY go wrong this freaking time…

The once penniless, and nearly homeless magician had saved the first item from a gloomy fate, as the Wonderbolt badge had been thrown away in a dumpster after Captain Spitfire had ripped it off a dismissed Lightning Dust’s chest. Really dark times for my purse back then. Curse you Twilight Sparkle for destroying my reputation twice! She thought back bitterly.

The second item was a heavy metal album on a compact disk. “Rage Against the Rainbow Machine”, by the eponymous band. Probably had it been confiscated by the mother of a rebel colt, and subsequently dumped somewhere close to the Everfree Forest, next to some pieces of uneaten carrots and… a rabbit statue? (Which was bizarre to say the least). Trixie had found it there, and despite being herself more into the likes of Iron Maneden or Maretalica and their Heavy/Thrash contemporaries, she had kept hold of it.

Seconds before she used her recorder again, a second window’s lights were turned on in the crumbling youth hostel building. Unbeknownst to her, Maud Pie had rented a room for Boulder and the retrieved rock, who happened to be her pet rock’s rockfriend. The two of them had the entire day to make up for the lost time and recover from their emotions under the covers, with all due intimacy…

“Let’s get this over with!” the showmare decided with pure willpower in her voice. “Greetings, my sleepyhea-”

“Err… excuse me?”

Trixie froze, her neck becoming stiff in even purer rage. Hence the jerky way her head spasmodically spun upward in incensed fits and starts; just enough homicidal resolve to come face to face with the bucking son of a Gabby Gum who’d dare interrupt her for the umpteenth time, for Luna’s bucking sake!

“What. Do. You. W-… F-Fluttershy?!”

The timid Pegasus backed off slightly, terrified by the overwhelming amount of irritation she noted all over Trixie’s face, nearly retracting into a fluffy ball and curling up, hiding in an imaginary shell with enough conviction that she could ask Tank for advice regarding Tortoise Citizenship. She didn’t do so however, rendering this whole long-as-Tartarus sentence utterly useless like its writer when ADHT reaches its climax.

*Insert self-mockery*

“I’m… uhm, so sorry for bothering you! Um…” Fluttershy mumbled with genuine supplication, if not downright begging for mercy and almost turning away. “I was, uhm… I was wondering if you could… well, if you didn’t mind… giving that back?”

With excruciating timidness, Fluttershy pointed a wobbly hoof at a square-shaped object on the table, all the while taking frantic breaths and bracing herself for impact, as she expected to be made a fool of within the next couple of seconds. Apprehension and embarrassment fought for the number one spot in her heart. Trixie’s upset but confused expression only grew worse, upon finding out what the Element of Kindness had come to her for. Her jaws nearly came off as a consequence.

“F-Flutter…Fluttershy…” she muttered like a broken record. “Are you… a metal fan?”

The gold-furred Pegasus nodded anxiously. “Y-yes, I am.”

She closed her eyes in anticipation of the worst. When she opened them again, Trixie was giving her a slightly judgmental look, coupled with an amused, mischievous smirk.

“How can you possibly do that, Flutterhsy?” Trixie cried out indignantly. “How could you… listen to metal music… using a CD? In our time? Really?”

Confusion quickly changed sides, taking up residence over Fluttershy’s facial expression.

“Honestly honey, CDs are sooooo passé. Like, ponies stopped using them in 50 before Celestia!” Trixie explained, Rarity totally getting her tongue. She tried, and failed to suppress a chuckle. “That’s just hilarious!”

Trixie eventually lost control, burst into tears of laughter, and snickered hard for a while. Until a sad frown of distress cast a pall over Fluttershy’s clouded face. Trixie realized that she was serious, and probably feeling a little hurt by her nasty remarks as well. The remorseful showmare knew when to call it quits before a pony’s mood spiraled out of control, which would have the potential of looking very nasty in the case of an Element-bearing metalhead. As she regained her composure, she grabbed the album and hoofed it over.

“Here, have it back.” she offered. “Sorry for making fun of you.”

Fluttershy’s heart went through a rollercoaster of emotions. Her tail swung in excitement, her tippy-tappy hooves bombing the ground, and it all ended up with a thankful, and bloodily monstrous jump in the air.

“OH YEA-EA-EA-EAH!!” she screamed wildly with a voice as guttural as could be, making the original version of “Down with the Sick Mare” pale in comparison. Instantly though, she fell silent in absolute embarrassment, burying her face deep in the inside of her elbows. “S-Sorry! I meant… Yeah.”

Trixie struggled even harder to repress another uncontrollable fit of giggles, but Fluttershy would not give her the time to make a laughingstock out of her: she promptly got the hay away. You’re welcome.

Trixie closed her eyes for a long-overdue, restorative nap. A quick nap. It lasted two hours.

The Sun was halfway through its daily celestial route when she woke up. In the same old tumbledown hostel building still facing her from opposite the dirty road, the lights from a third window came on in turn, and it was a pretty long story. Unbeknownst to Trixie…

*Earlier that day…*

Fluttershy’s rabbit pet, Angel, runs off with her metal album earlier that day. Panicked and worried sick, the Pegasus turns over every stone in the forested areas around her cottage. She eventually finds him eating carrots in the company… of a cockatrice. The two of them are leaning closer to each other, but Fluttershy suddenly leaps out of a bush, screaming at the magical beast to go away. Her brutal appearance sends the cockatrice into a panic, and the freaked-out animal accidentally turns Angel into a statue.

Maddened like she’s never been before, Fluttershy goes after it, catches it again, pins it to the ground, and forcibly stares it into undoing the petrification spell and setting Angel free of his stone prison. When Fluttershy returns to rescue and check on the rabbit, the album is gone. Fluttershy is furious and uses the Stare again, this time to send Mr. NaughtyPants straight to bed, nearly pulling her eye in the process.

Later on, following a regretful crying spree on both sides and an emotional reunion in each other’s arms, Fluttershy finds out the real truth behind Angel’s runaway: the cockatrice is his new girlfriend, she loves hardcore music and wanted to listen to Fluttershy’s album. It had nothing to do with Angel’s owner becoming a scream-addicted social outcast, spending too much time headbanging in her Nightmare Night underbed Hideout, and neglecting her animal friends concurrently.

Okay, maybe a little…

*Later that day…*

Fluttershy rented a room at the youth hostel for Angel and his girlfriend to get to know each other better, as a way to make amends for unfairly scolding her pet rabbit and ruining his first date. Trixie didn’t know that, and when a fourth window lighted up, she still didn’t know that the cockatrice had petrified Angel by yet another accident, inevitably sparking interest from a lusty Boulder and his rockfriend…

In the meantime, the Unscarable Trixie was determined to finish her first ASMR work, no matter the cost. She still had one item left to use. She WOULD finish it, swearing it on each hair in Star Swirl’s beard.

Unless the entire universe decided otherwise. No matter how thick the beard.

“Hey! Where in the hoof wouldya get that from?” a winged mare asked accusingly.

Rainbow Dash was next in the long line of bothersome ponies to magically show up and mess with the Great and BUCKING JADED Trixie. How had the Element of Loyalty gotten here, in this tartarushole in the middle of nowhere? Trixie didn’t know, nor did she care. How had all these ponies made it to her, what were the secrets of the Universe, what was Celestia’s royal butt made of? She didn’t know or care either.

“Lemme guess: this badge belongs to you somehow, or maybe to a Wonderbolt college of yours, and you’re totally getting it back, over my dead body if necessary. Right?” Trixie deadpanned.

Despite some initial confusion at the showmare’s blasé and dejected demeanor, Rainbow Dash was quick to confirm Trixie’s suppositions with an aggressive head nod. Trixie gave up arguing before actually arguing, and hoofed over the badge with the desperate need to make Equestria’s top flier, best pest and supreme nuisance get the hay out of her sight as soon as-

“RAINBOW DASH!”

Both mares froze over. Behind a poor Rainbow Dash going limp, a furious Applejack’s fiery eyes were taking aim at her chatterbox of a marefriend’s backside. A soon-to-be tanned backside for the crime of talking too much. Rainbow Dash felt an unexplainable source of heat setting his rear end on fire, swallowing hard and heavily as she eventually recognized Applejack’s voice.

“Ya broke yer promise, ‘Bow! Nopony was supposed ta know ‘bout us!” the same voice shouted again.

Had she? Had Rainbow Dash inadvertently made their relationship public? She could not remember if she had, but whatever; talking things over wasn’t an option anymore. Nope, nope, NOPE!

Trixie banged her own head against the table surface. This is getting out of hoof. Now, there are two of them! came this thought like a phantom menace out of a nerdy mind. You two should get a room.

The Pegasus made a run for it. She would lose the race, but she’d try her luck anyway. Regardless of the reason why the farm pony was so mad at her, Rainbow Dash already knew the outcome: the two of them were to have a conversation about it, and Rainbow Dash would certainly find a way to convince Applejack that she was innocent. But she would still get punished first, unfairly or not.

Applejack went after her like a loose tornado on steroids, furiously bumping and whamming her hooves against one another for the sake of warming up.

“Yer gonna get it so hard it’s gonna shake the pony feathers outta Equestria, an’ the next time somepony wants ta measure the strength of an earthquake, he’ll use the newly-invented Rainbow Smack Magnitude Scale!”

The rainbow-maned Pegasus would only fly so far. No need for Applejack to grab her by the tail, as an unexpected ally made quick job of catching the preyed pony mid-flight – screeching at the top of her lungs as a mean to boast about holding a PhD in shredding vocal cords.

“Nopony BREAKS a Pinkie Promise!” the pink mare vociferated.

Trixie gave up. At least on the tapping part.

Instead, she’d try to use a special function from her recorder, one that would let her create some hypnotic, and very sensitive echoed sound effects. Once said functionality was activated, she brought her lips as close to the mic as possible, and spoke soothingly into it:

“Now, my lil-lil-lil-lil’ sleepyheads-s-s-s, let’s trrrrry, t-t-t-try to do-o-o-o some echo-o-o-o-o sounds-s-s-s, echo-o-o-o sounds-s-s-s, ec-c-c-c-c-ho-o-o sou-BRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAP-P-P-P!”

She had to cut the recording, utterly exasperated. A few meters away down the road, Sweetie Belle had just burped in quite an impressive fashion, being taught about life on a farm by the best teacher in the ranks of the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

“Yeehaw! That’s the spirit!” Apple Bloom praised her.

Trixie waited until they were gone far enough for even the loudest burp to stay out of her ears’ reach. She made a second attempt.

“S-o-o-o-o, as I said-d-d-d, let’s make-ke-ke-ke some echo-o-o-o soun-YEAAAAAA-A-A-AH!!”

Her fur stood on edge. Up in the sky above her, units of Wonderbolt Cadets were performing aerial maneuvers. One of the cadets was VERY vocal and happy about it, going by the name of Bulk Biceps. Yet another wasted recording.

Trixe made several more attempts, all of them falling short of expectations.

She then heard an uncanny kind of BOOM in the distance, echoing throughout the atmosphere, which sounded identical to a hard surface meeting soft flesh. A shiver of compassion shook her to the core, as she observed a minute’s silence for Rainbow Dash’s ability to sit down for the next couple of days.

A few tremors also rocked the ground beneath her. The registered moment magnitude was 5.6 on the Rainbow Smack scale.

Turns out, it was just Spike leaving his basket after eating too much ice cream…

Trixie was done. She was bucking done.

Celestia’s Star would soon fall below the horizon, and so were the Exhausted and Helpless Trixie’s hopes of accomplishing anything worth a whole day’s work. The sunset was settling down, the colors of which were not unlike a spanked mare’s butt cheeks. And still no exploitable ASMR recordings.

It felt like unluckiness and injustice were having a baby bearing Trixie’s name. And to top it all, the snubbing lights from a fifth hostel window were there to remind her that two marefriends were bucking it out in bed – the ultimate form of reconciliation after a heated argument. She could even make out some smoke; Rainbow Dash’s blazing flank setting the bed sheets on fire.

Everypony in the wide, wide world of Equestria was bucking. All, except her. ASMR had taken its toll.

But maybe… Yeah, MAYBE she could give it one more try. The last one. From the seemingly-infinite storage space inside her bag, Trixie dug out a blindfold and wore it over her eyes. Ideas of what would happen the next time she’d see Starlight Glimmer in private slowly took seed in her mind, courtesy of Mr. Blindfold and her primal instincts, but she chased them away.

She pulled the bag close to her, electing to blindly pick an item at random. The first one would be the right one.

After a while, as she played with the unidentified object, its soft but coarse, moisty texture tipped her off. Something was wrong with it. She kept fiddling with it nonetheless, until a real tragedy occurred: one of her hard-pressed hoofs squeezed the item, applying too much pressure for it to resist. It exploded pathetically, spreading chocolate chips and spongy crumbs of cake all over the table.

And it was at this moment Trixie knew, she had seriously bucked up.

The blindfold fell off in a snap, giving way to a horrified look. Trixie’s item was something that just couldn’t be messed with, and she had just smashed it. Instantaneously, during the next couple of seconds, the last of her life, the air turned icy cold, a sensation worse than anything else. Far worse, and far colder than would have happened in the worst-case scenario, had Trixie accidentally summoned a Windigo to the party.

The sky darkened all of a sudden, plunging the world of Equestria into a very premature night. It had nothing to do with Nightmare Moon and Princess Luna making peace in a sixth hostel room right at this moment. No, it was a disaster of demonic proportions. Apocalypse on the Rainbow Smack scale.

The setting Sun’s rays of light were now fully blocked from warming Trixie’s shivering skin, the outside temperatures and her level of consciousness falling to an all-time low similarly. Descending upon the powerless showmare like the wrath of a disabled goddess, a foreign object of hostile nature went straight for her.

Trixie looked at it only once, looked at HER, and it was enough for her to realize that she, the Lost and Condemned Trixe, had just sealed her own fate and signed her own death warrant.

Death by Derpy Hooves.

Trixie closed her eyes. Dear Princess Celestia, today I learned an important lesson: I should never try to do ASMR with a muffin.

THE END.