Twilight groaned. Her brain felt almost four full sizes too big for her head. Although, at least she was laying on something sort of soft. Eyes crusted with sleep opened and slammed closed again. "Ugh… Princess Celestia, put your light away, I don't want to go to school today…" The Princess of Friendship tried to think about what had happened the previous night. "Pizza…"
"Here," a chittery voice said.
The word meant nothing, but when Twilight tried to curse at the changeling-sounding creature her mouth was stuffed full of something. Something good. Something cheesy.
"Hrmmfmfmf." Twilight chewed on the chilled pizza, feeling the savory tastes clearing her palate of… whatever "dark cider" was. "This is so good! Thanks, Bored." She tried to use her magic to grasp the second slice she could smell just before her snout, but was suddenly reminded why magic and headaches didn't go together.
" 's alright. You looked like you needed it." Bored eased the slice forward again, grinning as the alicorn his hive-mates feared, literally ate from his hoof. "Didn't know a princess could drink that much… or dance so well on a wobbly table."
Twilight lifted her head and opened her eyes again. It certainly wasn't her castle, it certainly wasn't a hive either, but here she sat, eating pizza with a changeling. "The table was wobbling? What was that stuff anyway?"
"It wobbled a lot when you danced on it." Bored shrugged. "You want more?" He waggled the pizza, seeing Twilight's bleary eyes focus on it like a shark. He moved the food closer and was swamped in love. "By the Queen's eggs…" He grinned and let the mare have the remainder of the slice to control. "I hope I didn't lose my job, we are not meant to drink love at work."
"Just tell 'em the Princess of Friendship needed you for an important mission. You think any others would come and challenge that?" Twilight mumbled around her breakfast. Reaching out to the nearest liquid-receptacle, Twilight grabbed a half-full glass with a hoof, brought it to her snout and flopped backwards against the couch.
Lyra hobbled into the living room, her left-back leg dragging on the floor. She spotted Bored and Twilight and let out a low, blood-chilling groan.
"What's wrong with her?" Twilight sipped some more of the tart, dry drink that tasted like apples.
Snorting, Bored pointed at the glass in Twilight's hoof. "She tried to keep up with you, drinking that." The attention brought back some glimpses of the night, to Twilight. Her eyes went wide; she tilted the glass up and drank the last third in a gulp. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to forget what I just remembered. We really ran around town… like THAT?" Twilight gestured vaguely toward Lyra, who groaned more. "How can she even walk now?" For some reason the pizza restored more life to Twilight than the drink and the night had stolen. Looking around, she found the extra-spicy pizza Lyra had been eating.
Lyra blinked as a slice was held before her. "Twilight, don't take this the wrong way." Lyra leaned forward, closing her mouth around enough of the cold pizza that she got it out of the alicorn's hoof. "I wuff woo." The world, with a slice of cold pizza, seemed much more survivable to Lyra.
Looking in the box, Twilight sighed. "That was the last slice." She smiled up to Lyra. "But you looked like you needed it more." She flopped onto her back, wiggling all four legs in the air. "I have to admit, that pizza is really tasty. Why didn't Chrysalis start with this?"
"Wasn't really her idea. We captured a few ponies a while back, there were two unicorns with them," Bored curled up on the second couch, watched the two mares suffer through their headaches with help of delicious, cheesy food, "they had all kinds of odd ideas, but when one said 'You should take over Equestria, economically,' she started to actually listen."
"Flim and Flam." Twilight and Lyra both said the names together, groaning more than their depreciated conditions warranted.
"What did she do with them?" Twilight felt it right to be curious, they were still ponies after all.
"They tried to sell 'chitin polish' to a bunch of drones—turned out to be mud." Bored yawned and sank down into a more cozy position. "Put 'em in pods, I think."
Twilight giggled despite herself. "They should—" She couldn't continue, she started laughing at the thought that the two had been hoist by their own petard, so to speak. She froze in her laughter the moment she saw Bored's expression; the drone looked at her, eyes half-closed, a smile almost from ear to ear, as if he were in love. "Uh, Bored?"
"Yes, my Queen?" Bored didn't even register what he had said, staring at the tastiest source of food he had ever seen (also the only pony he had ever drunk from).
Reaching up, Lyra poked the upside-down alicorn in the shoulder. "Cut him some slack, from what I remember, he was just as crazy last night as we were." She reached for the pizza box and gave a soft whimper when she found it empty. "Need more…"
Finally, snapping from his love-drunk haze, Bored shook his head and looked at Lyra. "Shop's closed."
" 's alright," Lyra waved a hoof and slipped off the couch, landing on her hooves with ease, "there is something better." Her words drew the attention of both her companions. "I can show you, but you have to promise never to pass on the secrets of… grilled cheese."
Twilight was salivating. She had just eaten two slices of pizza, but the idea of hot, melting cheese had her full attention. "Cross-heart, fly, cupcake, stuff… what is 'grilled cheese'?!"
Lyra jerked back at the intense focus of the Princess. "Uh, Bored? Do you promise?"
"Cross my heart and hope to fly," Bored lifted a holey hoof to his chest, "stick a cupcake in my eye." He finished with the customary poke in the eye. "I won't tell anyling."
"Where did you learn that?" Twilight's brain, as usual, took a tangent to the real problem she needed to solve.
"Pinkie Pie." Bored shrugged. "Told me I had to promise not to tell anypony she loves double sau—" He looked down, a purple hoof was jammed in his mouth. "Mmfmfmmf?"
"You can't break a Pinkie Promise, Bored." Twilight looked at her new friend with a pleading gaze. "If you do that…" she looked left and right, and when she was sure nopony but the three of them was present, continued, "she will know."
"Then why did you say it so short?" Bored looked at Twilight with his head slightly tilted, now that her hoof was out of his mouth. "Wouldn't she know then, too?"
Twilight's face blanched of color and she trembled. "C-Cross my heart, hope to f-f-fly. Stick a cupcake in my eye." She finished with the sacred words and gesture. "I didn't mean to… I am just really hungry and…"
Lyra was looking at the pair like they were crazy.
"What?" Twilight got defensive. "You have made promises to Pinkie Pie, right?"
The world seemed to squeeze down to a pinprick, for Lyra. She felt memories overwhelm her. "The peanut butter… we agreed never to talk about it." Like a light coming on, she was back to the real world, the dark hollow history she shared with Pinkie shoved back deep inside. "Sorry, what?"
Twilight shook her head in dismay. "Grilled cheese. We said we wouldn't tell anypony, even made Pinkie Promises." She regained her hooves and started following Lyra into the kitchen.
"Right, right. Okay, grilled cheese sandwiches. The secret isn't the grilling, but the cheese." Lyra opened her refrigerator to reveal a good third of it was various kinds of cheese. "Right, we need a nice soft Colby for the inside, some grated cheddar for the outside."
Mesmerized by the array of dairy products, Twilight found herself drooling as Lyra selected three different kinds of cheese. "Wait, what was that last one?" She pointed at a small section of a wheel that looked to have been attacked with a knife on many occasions.
"This is the most important cheese of all." Lyra held it up. "An aged cheddar, look how it breaks as I cut it." As she explained, Lyra sliced through the crumbly, pale cheese. "This is the cheese we eat while we wait for them to cook."
Twilight caught the little wedge that Lyra's gold magic passed to her. It didn't last more than a second in her magic, it was in her mouth. "Oh daft goof."
"That is a six-year-old cheddar, one of my favorites." Lyra nodded. Behind her, bread began to float out of the breadbox, and the fridge opened again. "Now, normally we would put all kinds of things in the sandwich." She lifted out some mayonnaise. "But I think somepony needs to try just the pure goodness of a literal sandwich of melted cheese." She turned a tempting smile back to Twilight.
As Twilight watched, Lyra sliced up the Colby, a knife already spreading the mayonnaise onto the bread. Placing the thick slabs of cheese on one slice, she pressed the other down on top. "You with me so far, Twilight?" She giggled when the focused Princess only nodded. "Okay, and next we have a hot pan."
Twilight hadn't even seen Lyra's magic prepare the pan, but now that she noticed it she saw a thin drizzle of oil in it. To her amazement, two little piles of grated cheese landed in the pan, then the sandwiches landed on top of them. "Is that it?" It seemed easy, too easy.
"Well, yeah. All we are doing is making a cheese sandwich, and then grilling it." Lyra shrugged. "You thought this was going to be wing surgery?" She pushed the sandwiches around in the pan, hearing them sizzle.
"I don't know, I guess…" Twilight had thought there would be at least some actual magic involved. "So what happens next?"
Lyra flipped one of the sandwiches, plopping down more cheese under it, then repeated it for the other one. "Gotta turn them, no good if both sides aren't crisp." She tapped the tip with the knife she held in her magic, proving that the grated cheese had melted and hardened, soaking into the bread.
"Where is Twilight and what have you done with her you… monster?" Rainbow Dash had burst in the front door of Lyra's house, zooming through while screaming her battle-cry. When she finally found Twilight, Lyra, and Bored in the kitchen, she trailed off. "Uh, guys, I think we might'a messed up." She landed.
Pinkie Pie was next on the scene, and looked at the three ponies near the stove. "Don't be so quick, Dashie. I bet they are ALL changelings!" At her pronouncement, Rainbow Dash gasped and took a fighting stance.
"We're not all—" Twilight got no further, suddenly accosted by a lariat.
With a, "Yee-haw!" Applejack had rushed in and cast a lasso around Twilight, Lyra, and Bored. "Ah got em!"
"Awesome work, now if you don't want the pummeling of your lives, you will tell us where you took Princess Twilight." Rainbow Dash stalked right up to Twilight, glaring up at the alicorn.
"Twilight?" Lyra was sandwiched against the Princess of Friendship. "If you don't get this sorted out, our sandwiches will burn."
The gasp was just about the loudest, soft sound ever. A thunderous (by comparison) POMF signaled a complex teleportation that put Lyra in front of the stove, Twilight standing free in the middle of the room, and Bored right behind her. "Girls, they didn't foalnap me. We just—"
"T-T-Twilight would never act like that…" Fluttershy's soft voice came from somewhere in the back of the room, hiding behind Rarity. "S-She would never run around the town… singing that… that song…"
A vague memory came back to Twilight, her cheeks blushed, her wings shot up, and the Princess of Friendship groaned. "I… I actually did." Twilight hung her head. "I don't know why I did, but it seemed like a really important thing to sing."
"I didn't even hear half of it," Rarity waved a perfectly hooficured limb in the air, "and from what I did understand, nopony could be that flexible. NO!" She turned to Pinkie Pie, who already had her mouth open. "Not even you, darling."
Pinkie's mane slumped a little. "Wait, what's this?" She picked up one of the almost-empty bottles of cider. Lifting it to her snout with one hoof, she inhaled what was inside and blinked. "Good stuff!"
Applejack grabbed another bottle. "Granny's grade-A moonshine-infused hard cider? Sugarcube, we use this for polishing the cutlery!" She held the bottle at a good distance. "Only Granny can keep it down without… without…" Applejack looked around the room, counting six empty bottles. "Either you had a lot of stuff to polish, or you done a great job of polishin' yer insides." Her drawl increased as everything started to make sense.
"I guess we might have overdone it a little." Twilight's attention was suddenly stolen. Golden magic hovered a plate under her snout, and everything in the world went out of focus. Oil, cheese, toasty bread. She inhaled deeply and grabbed the plate with her magic.
The first bite was a shock, the cheese was hot of course, but the flavor that attacked her taste-buds would make even the Tartarus-hot substance edible. "Mmm-s'good…"
"You gotta give Spike the recipe for that, Lyra." Rainbow Dash's attention was fixed on the masticating alicorn, watching Twilight's wings droop, her eyes close. "Because there are, like, tons of times when she really coulda used an 'off switch.' "
Twilight didn't even notice her friends leave, but she did recall a grinning changeling guide her down to the couch. She couldn't remember his name right now, but part of her brain labeled him as a "bringer of cheese," so he was deemed friend.
~~~~~+++++~~~~~
Twilight was sprawled in her library, nibbling on a cheese stick wrapped in lettuce, while she wrote her diary for the day. She paused when she got to the bit about grilled cheese sandwiches. "Well, I did promise not to tell anypony, and I will be the only pony to read this…" She started to write about the incident, getting so far as her Pinkie Promise to Lyra.
A chill ran down Twilight's spine, a breeze blew the doors of her library open, and under the noise a voice whispered, "Forevveeeerrrrr…"
Closing the door with her magic, Twilight scribbled out the words she was writing and closed her diary. "Nope!"
Author's Note
Well, I promised and here it is. Get it while it is hot!
Now, what wacky goal can I set for this one, to force me to round out the trilogy? How about, if this makes the ~~feature box~~ AND ends up with more comments than the first? Two goals, because this is the second one, okay? Okay!
~~~~~+++++~~~~~
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