Not the Hero chp. 26 pt 2 (Patreon)

Nano is over, and while I didn't meet my goal, I did get half of it done. Now it's time to get back to other stuff. So here's the next little bit of Not the Hero.

***

 In the show, Trixie had set herself up as an absolute monarch over Ponyville, demanding that the two colts who’d woken up an Ursa Minor to test her the first time she’d come to Ponyville service her every whim, which included being carried around in a wagon without wheels because she’d claimed she hadn’t trusted wheels. She’d also thrown Pinkie’s mouth in a trash can, which I found hilarious and wished I’d been able to see happen in real life. The Element of Deception doesn’t allow Trixie significantly more power than she naturally has, and even with it, maintaining an illusion that Pinkie has no mouth would be difficult, so she hadn’t tried that one. 

Instead, I found, she’d turned Pinkie’s voice into the tweeting of a bird. She’d invented a number of “evil” things to force the population to do, since the goal was to look like a villain to Anon. She’d told Applejack that she wanted to bathe in applesauce, and demanded that she and her family crush enough apples to make that happen. (In the show, she’d only wanted an applesauce facial. Apparently what Trixie really wants when she’s a villain is less extreme than what she thinks a villain would want.) She was still making Snips and Snails pull her everywhere, but in a cart that she’d decorated to look like an exotic Eastern palanquin, with wheels. She kept tormenting Rarity by making her dresses change to horrible colors (well, colors Rarity considered horrible; I rather liked some of the combinations.) And she was making the townsponies put up statues of her everywhere, because apparently that is a thing villains do. I have to object to that – I put up images of myself everywhere (I try to avoid statues per se, to be honest) and I’m not… no, wait, I actually am a villain. I may not be evil but I am definitely a villain. Never mind! Carry on, Trixie!

I spoke into her earring to get her to go someplace alone and use her illusion power to block anyone from being able to see us. She picked the Golden Oaks Library, because of course she did. 

“Trixie has driven Twilight Sparkle from Ponyville and ruled the town as a cruel tyrant,” she boasted to me, obviously very proud of herself. “When will Anon be coming?”

I laughed. “He’s still on trial for his life. I’m not sure when he’s going to be able to show up.”

Her face fell. “As pleasant as it is for Trixie to finally get the recognition she deserves… this is getting somewhat boring. Could you at least bring Twilight back so I could demonstrate my superiority to her again?”

I shrugged. “I dunno, I think you’ve proven your point. If you want to magnanimously give Ponyville back to its citizens and move on, I wouldn’t object.”

“But doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose of having Trixie do this in the first place? I thought our goal was for Trixie to fight Anon!”

“It’s actually to make him think I am plotting villainous things so that his powers don’t force me to do stupid villainous things,” I said. “If you want, we could do a big reveal where you’re shown to be my ally and then I unleash some chaos on Ponyville and then I bet Anon would show up.”

“Trixie does not wish to be upstaged,” she said stiffly. “You are more powerful and your tricks are very showy.”

I was surprised the Great and Powerful Trixie could actually humble herself to admit that I was better than her at her chosen skill – not that it wasn’t self-evidently true, but Trixie’s narcissism didn’t seem like an attitude overly conducive to recognizing one’s betters. “You have a point. Ponies aren’t likely to look at you while I’m around.” 

“That isn’t what I—”

“Let’s see how this plays out. They might take a recess after today to let Anon come fight you. If it goes on another day or two and Twilight doesn’t come back and Anon doesn’t show up, feel free to tell them how much the town bores you, and then threaten to take over Manehattan or something and get out of here.”

“I could take over Manehattan, couldn’t I?” This was less a question than a villainous musing, the kind where if I’d been saying it I would have been steepling my fingers, but of course Trixie couldn’t do that, lacking fingers. Did I mention lately how much I love having hands? 

“Eh, probably not. The place is too big and the population too jaded to be cowed by illusions. But if you went out west and attacked Appleoosa, then Anon would be drawn in because that’s Applejack’s family out there.”

“Yes, but then Trixie would have to go out west. There’s almost nothing out there!”

“Well, there are plenty of places in Equestria that aren’t Manehattan and aren’t Appleoosa. You might be able to take over Fillydelphia or Baltimare, at least to the extent of taking over City Hall, or you could go with a smaller town like Ponypsie up near Manehattan.” Somepony knocked on the door. “I suppose that’s my cue to head out now.”

“Yes!” Trixie called to the door. “The Great and Powerful Trixie will be with you momentarily!”

“It’s Snips,” a colt’s whiny little voice said through the door.

Trixie sighed heavily. “Why are you bothering me?”

“There’s a filly in the town square saying you can’t really do anything, it’s just illusions! You need to come and prove how strong you are to her!”

I raised an eyebrow. This sounded promising. “Go on, then,” I said. “I’ll be invisible, but I’m definitely going to watch this.”

***

It was Diamond Tiara. Of course it was Diamond Tiara. Elements of Disharmony conflict with each other when forced into proximity, and the Element of Cruelty conveyed a certain degree of resistance to mind control just like all the others did, though not as much so as Arrogance. She was standing in the middle of the town square, alone, although her sycophant was a safe distance away. 

“Who dares challenge the Great and Powerful Trixie?” Trixie demanded as she appeared in the town square in a puff of smoke. (She hadn’t teleported. She’d trotted under an invisibility spell, and then dropped the spell as she entered town square.)

“’Great and Powerful Trixie,’” Diamond mocked in a nasal sing-song voice. “Is that name supposed to be impressive?”

“You are a child,” Trixie intoned, “and therefore beneath my notice. Otherwise I would crush you like a bug for daring to question me!”

“Really? ‘Cause I think you can’t. I think you were here in Ponyville once before and your entire show was about how great you supposedly are and then we all found out you were a fake and a loser. Unicorns don’t suddenly become supreme masters of magic when they started out as pathetic as you were, so I wondered, what’s really going on? Where are you getting this power from? And then I remembered, oh yeah, you’re an illusionist! So you learned some new techniques to do some really good illusions, but you can’t actually hurt anypony.”

This was hilarious. I had to surround myself with a thin layer of vacuum so that there was no possibility of anyone hearing my hearty guffaws. Diamond didn’t actually know that I had given Trixie the Element of Deception, but she’d deduced logically from the abilities Trixie had demonstrated the last time that what Trixie was doing now had to be illusions. 

“Do you truly wish to test the Great and Powerful Trixie? I would never want to harm a child, but if you insist on proof, you may leave me no choice!”

“Yeah, Diamond, you’d better back down! You don’t want Trixie to turn you into a toad!” one of the two colts who follows her around, the short blue one, said.

The other one, the tall, skinny yellow one, said, “She turned me into a toad.”

Diamond gave him a look of deep skepticism. “You don’t look like a toad now.”

“Well, I got better.”

By now a few other ponies had gathered to watch, mostly other foals such as the Cutie Mark Crusaders, though there were one or two adults in the mix.

“I think you’re lying. I don’t think the ‘Great and Powerful Trrrrrrrickusie’ can turn anypony into a toad. It’s all tricks, not magic!”

“Yeah, well, we’re unicorns and you’re not, so we know more about magic than you do!” the blue one said.

“Please,” Diamond said, tossing her head. “You guys can barely lift a quill, and you expect me to believe you’re experts on magic?” She trotted over to the little blue one, sneering down at him. “You two are even bigger pathetic losers than Trashcan here; at least she can do some magic. All you can do is look up to a unicorn who’s lying to you about how great she is and think, ‘wow, I wish I was that unicorn, because I’m so pathetic that I can’t even fantasize about being a decent unicorn, I gotta imagine that I’m a washed-up street performer’—”

“Trixie is not a street performer!”

Diamond pointed with one of her forehooves at the stage Trixie had used to perform when she’d first come to Ponyville. “That’s on the street. You performed there. That makes you a street performer. If the horseshoe fits, wear it.”

Probably emboldened by the lack of Trixie smiting Diamond Tiara, her friend Silver Spoof trotted over to her. “Yeah! You don’t really have any special powers!”

“Yes, she does!” the blue colt insisted. “I know a lot more about magic than either of you!”

“Yeah? What kind of magic do you know?” Diamond sneered.

“I know how to do this!” the colt yelled, summoning a pair of scissors out of… somewhere (I think he had it on his person, not hammerspace, but I truly do not want to know where) and going after Diamond Tiara’s mane with it. Diamond spun around and bucked the scissors, knocking it out of the colt’s control, and it flew across the field and nearly stabbed a passerby.

“You see? That could have hurt somepony!” Diamond yelled, ignoring the fact that if a pony had gotten hurt, it would have been because of her actions. “You two are traitors to Ponyville! You live here, you go to school here, but you side with this lame-brain who’s already been proven to be a fraud!”

“Yeah, traitors!” Silver Spam said.

“Now just wait one moment here,” Apple Bloom, who had so far been silently watching, spoke up. “I don’t agree with Snips and Snails working for Trixie but that doesn’t make them traitors. In case you didn’t notice, Trixie’s been threatening ponies to force them to work for her!”

“Yeah, you can’t hold that against them – Trixie made them join her as soon as she defeated Twilight!” Sweetie Belle added.

“Oh, so you blank flanks are on Trixie’s side too? I should have known you’d be willing to sell out Ponyville! After all, you’re the ones who are super best friends with a weird monkey from the Everfree Forest!”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard you say this week,” Scootaloo said.

“Anon isn’t from the Everfree Forest, he’s from another dimension!” Sweetie Belle retorted. 

“Ooh, ‘another dimension.’ Look who’s a dictionary!” Diamond said to her sidekick. 

“ENOUGH!” Trixie yelled, using her magic to amplify her voice loudly enough that even Diamond paid attention. “You have gone far enough, little filly! Apologize to the Great and Powerful Trixie for doubting her powers right now, or I will make you disappear!”

Diamond snickered. “Oh, yeah, I’d like to see you try it!”

Trixie, ever the showmare, made swirls of smoke darken the air, spinning over her head. “Powers of the ancient unicorns, let this rude foal begone!”

From the perspective of Diamond Tiara, nothing happened, and she giggled about it quite loudly. From the perspective of everyone else, aside from me of course, Diamond was now invisible. Silver Spud wailed in shock. “Give her back!” she screamed.

“Silver, I’m right here. What’s wrong with you?” Diamond said, but her friend couldn’t hear her. Trixie had just enacted a little trick I like to call a “ban”, where the victim can see and hear everyone, but no one can see or hear her. It was ruthless, cruel and well within the powers of the Element of Deception. I applauded. No one could hear me directly inside my vacuum bubble, but I had air on the inside of it because vacuum just does terrible things to my mane, so Trixie could hear me through the earring. I’d been wondering how Trixie was going to deal with Diamond.

“Perhaps, if you serve Trixie adequately, I will return your rude friend from the dimension I banished her to,” Trixie said pompously. “Why don’t you shine my hooves?”

Apple Bloom, quietly enough that maybe Trixie might not hear her, said to Scootaloo, “Get Rainbow Dash to go get Anon. Trixie has to be stopped before she disappears anypony else.”

“I’m on it!” Scootaloo hopped on her scooter and drove away, while Diamond Tiara got increasingly distressed that no one was listening to her or looking at her.

“Guys! Guys! I’m here! I’m still here! It’s an illusion, just like I said!”

I appeared to her, and only to her. “Diamond, Diamond, Diamond. I would have thought you’d realize. An illusion that you can’t be seen or heard is a spell that makes it seem like you’re not there.”

“She turned me invisible?!” Diamond screamed. “How do I turn back? Turn me back!”

I chuckled. “I’m not taking sides, here,” I said. “Trixie is also working for me, just like you.”

“But it’s not fair! Daddy can’t get goods out to market because nothing can come in or go out of Ponyville! She has to be stopped! Why are you letting her do this to us?”

“To make Anon come, of course. And now that she’s made you vanish, I think that will probably happen very soon.”

“But you can make me visible again!”

“I caaaan, yes.” I twirled around her in the air. “But I’m not gonna. What’s happening serves my interests… and yours, if you want to take down Anon.”

“I don’t want to be invisible!”

“Well, you’ve been such an excellent minion, I’ll give you a little hint. Fight illusion with illusion.” 

And then I teleported away. It’ll be interesting to see if Diamond Tiara figures out my hint before Anon shows up.