The Great and Officially-No-Longer-On-Academic-Notice Trixie slept.

She’d long been a heavy sleeper. Her life, after all, was simply too weighty and profound for her not to be one. Living at your best – and regardless of whatever her principals, mother, teachers, and classmates said, this was very much Trixie’s best – meant a good, deep sleep was well-earned, and, of course, Trixie would never want to settle for lesser-tier rest.

Unfortunately for her, those excellent sleeping habits had been facing a major interruption of late.

She couldn’t quite explain it. But something had her on edge.

And while she may have been sleeping at the moment, it was not the kind of sleep she preferred.

Still, though, it was deep enough that Trixie didn’t notice the cover lifting up beside her, shaping itself around a phantom human form as it fell back down.

Then, little impressions started to appear and disappear all over Trixie’s face. Invisible poking and prodding, making the magician groan. She tossed over to the other side, and the apparition subsequently disappeared from beside her. There were subtle impressions atop the covers as the invisible presence crossed to the other side, then disappeared. For the briefest of moments, Trixie’s nightlight revealed the image of a pajama-clad blue leg.

And then came the sudden, mighty whisper, straight into Trixie’s ear. “WAKE UP, TRIXIE! THE COPS FOUND OUT ABOUT THE SECRET FIREWORKS STASH!”

Trixie jolted up in a panicked sweat, breath heaving. “NO!” she cried. “Trixie blew the last of her MareCoin on that!”

She blinked, then looked around. There was no one there. Again.

Face contorting, she looked at the window, then the clock. She seethed.

Of all the ways she could have started channeling ghosts…

“I’ll get you!” she yowled as the sound of faint giggling disappeared through the closed window. “The Great and Powerful Trixie shall banish your wretched spirit to where it came from!”

Had she looked out of said window, rather than angrily burying her head back into her pillow, she might have noticed, just briefly, a translucent Rainbow Dash laughing her butt off under a streetlight.
----------

“And you’re sure you don’t want to go to the Sombra’s Reign concert movie tonight?” Sunset asked. “There’s still a seat open next to Twilight and I.”

Rainbow shrugged. “I mean you said it was pretty late…”

“We’d be back well before midnight,” Sunset replied. “And, I mean, spring break just started.”

“Ehhhh…”

Sunset shook her head. “I’m not getting you, Rainbow. Lately you’ve been even more obsessed with sleep than Rarity. Is something going on?”

“What?” Rainbow suddenly felt herself flush, but calmed herself down when she saw her friend’s eyebrow lift up curiously. “I mean, no, just, like, I don’t know. Just need to be strict about, like, sleeping habits and stuff. Coach Iron Will says it’s the key to peak performance, after all.”

“Isn’t he the football coach? It’s not football season.”

“It’s still good advice for any season!”

Sunset grimaced. “Look, I get that you’re on like a self-improvement streak or something, and that’s awesome, but you literally have Sombra’s Reign posters in your bedroom. An extra two hours or so awake is too much?”

Rainbow shrugged. “I already have two of their concert recordings. I’ll see them on their next tour for real.”

“This is their final tour.”

Rainbow scoffed. “Sunset, you know every band that says that doesn’t mean it.” She looked at her watch. “I think Applejack is texting me. I gotta go meet up. See you later!”

And then she blasted away in a flash of multicolored light, without hearing the end of whatever Sunset said after “Rainbow, I know that’s not a smartwatch-”
----------

Her friends just didn’t get it. And, in fairness to them, Rainbow knew there was no way they could get it. After all, she hadn’t told any of them.

They were absolutely her closest friends, and she loved them. But at a certain point, Rainbow couldn’t help but feel a little tired about having to more or less split everything that was special about herself with all of them. Sure, her specific speed ability was unique, but all of her friends had gotten something out of the geodes. Sure, she’d gotten wings from the Elements of Harmony, but so had Fluttershy and Twilight. At the end of the day, those abilities were simply part of a team. The bestest, awesomest team she could ever hope to be part of, sure, but still a team.

This thing, though? This was all her. And she wanted – needed – to indulge.

Really, it wasn’t even that weird that she’d managed to get a mighty new superpower out of sleeping. After all, she was pretty famous for sleeping. Mostly because she’d long had a tendency to do it in class, to the point of endangering her ability to participate in sports. With painful reluctance, she’d put serious effort into correcting her sleep schedule, so that she could be constructively lazy in a way that all the busybodies around her would approve of.

And then, a few weeks ago, she’d found herself suddenly up in the wee hours of the morning. Except she wasn’t up. She was standing in her room looking down at her own body. This had briefly led to an existential crisis and sudden applications for acceptance by any benevolent deity willing to have her, until she saw herself roll over and snore loudly. After briefly phasing in and out of herself and feeling assured she was alive, she wasted no time exploring the limits of her new power.

Flying? Check.
Super-speed or geode power? Not check.
Phasing through walls. Ohhhh yeah, check.
Interacting with objects in the real world? Mostly check.
Invisibility? Kinda check. In darkness, she had no reflection in the mirror, but in light, she could see herself as a faint image.

So that basically ruled out ever doing this in the daytime. Lucky her this didn’t happen earlier, otherwise everyone would already know. Instead, she got her little secret.

She hadn’t exactly meant for it to become a vehicle for pranks. But when she’d found herself flying past Trixie’s place, well, she only had so much ability to resist the temptation. Especially when Trixie had spent the whole week previously hogging the music room when the Rainbooms needed to practice, forcing them to move everything to Applejack’s garage.

A little comeuppance was earned, right?

After all, it wasn’t like she did it to her every night. That would be too predictable, anyway. Just enough that the false sense of security could set in, and then she’d be back for another round of vexation – one of those words Twilight had used on her that Rainbow had proudly adopted. Vexation. It sounded awesome, right?

And while on another night she might have given in to Sunset for the sake of appearances, this particular night was just too important. It had been nearly a week since her last after-hours visit, and Trixie was about to leave for a spring break trip to Las Pegasus. She didn’t want Trixie to go too long without a visit.

So in the window she went, right as she knew Trixie’s sleep would usually be at its deepest.

Only this time, something was immediately off. There was a lump under Trixie’s covers, but it wasn’t moving even slightly, or making any of Trixie’s usual noises. There were also nightlights in every outlet.

She tried to tiptoe over one, but suddenly found a flashlight pointing right through her head. “Aaah!”

She shielded her eyes, diving down to avoid the beam. When she looked up, she found herself surrounded.

It wasn’t just Trixie glaring down at her. It was Rarity, Applejack, Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer, Pinkie Pie, and even Fluttershy. All carrying an expression that basically filled in for torches and pitchforks.

“Oh, um, h-hey, Trix,” Rainbow giggled, nerves audible. “You, uh, brought this whole mob here just for me? I’m touched.”

For once, Trixie didn’t say a word.
----------

As it turned out, Rainbow’s phantom ability to manipulate material reality went both ways. Namely, Twilight could grab her with her geode’s telekinetic power and hold her directly in front of the light.

She had a grim suspicion Applejack could probably slug her spirit form, as well, though she was desperate not to find out.

“Okay, so maybe there was some stuff I wasn’t telling you about-”

“Are you kidding?” Sunset yelled. “We all swore we’d report any weird magic stuff to each other as soon as we saw it! And then you have the craziest magic thing we’ve seen since Camp Everfree happen to you and you use it to dick around Trixie for weeks? To the point of it taking precedence over us?”

“Trixie thinks we’re understating the amount of damage done to her-”

“Alright, yeah!” Rainbow said. “Yeah, I screwed up. I- I dunno. I got hooked on this. It made me feel unique, awesome! Powerful!”

Behind her glasses, Twilight’s eyes narrowed, making Rainbow’s see-through form feel even more hollow. “Harassing Trixie made you feel mighty and powerful?”

“What? N-no! I mean, ugh, you’re right. I-I know I went too far there. I shouldn’t have kept coming back.” She looked to Trixie. “You forgive me?”

“No,” Trixie replied, joined by everyone else in the room.

“Fine, yeah, too early for that. Got it. But I mean… look at how cool this is! It’s just awesome! I can be cool in my sleep!”

“And if Trrrrixie goes to your house and beats you up while you’re in bed, that makes her cool and extra-powerful?”

Rainbow winced. “Yeah, I’m not gettin’ out of this one.”

She looked to Applejack and Rarity, who both gestured their agreement with Rainbow’s assessment.

The spirit girl groaned. “Look, if you let me go, I’ll go right back to my body and wake up, and we can talk about this. I- I won’t run. You know me.”

The girls all looked at each other. Trixie shook her head violently, but everyone else nodded.

“Promise you won’t come back to Trixie’s like this again,” Twilight said.

“Done,” Rainbow said, fully meaning it.

Twilight dropped the telekinetic hold, and Rainbow turned to head back home. But then she heard a soft question, though she couldn’t make it out.

She looked at Fluttershy. “What’d you say?”

“Oh, I was just wondering… why did you go after just Trixie? I’d have thought you’d go after Zephyr Breeze.”

Rainbow, floating in mid-air, blinked. The question processed, and then the response registered in a sudden shout.

“Shi–”