"Well," Zipp said, gesturing at the X-ray machines, ultrasound systems, and ouija boards scattered about her palace penthouse laboratory, "that's all I can learn from the outside."
The six of them stared at the ancient artifact. It was a metal cube about the size of a pony's head, with a metal dome on top and a tall metal pump and dispensing nozzle.
Sprout leaned in towards it and screamed, "Give us your secrets, cube!"
Sunny looked from her dad's notebook to the metal container and back. "I've got the translation. I think?"
"Oh?" Hitch said. "What's it say?"
"'Nacho cheese'."
"What's 'nacho'?" Pipp asked.
Sunny flipped pages. "An ancient Equestrian delicacy, served in the Royal box to the princesses at puppet operas, pegasus races, or zebra-versus-breezie gladiator combat."
"A royal delicacy..." Sprout mused. "Or imperial?"
"Hey, Zipp?" Hitch asked. "Do you have the necessary permits to try to awaken dread ancient artifacts?"
"Yes," Zipp replied, pointing at a sheet of paper taped to the wall. "Let's do this."
They went to downtown Zephyr Heights and purchased ingredients, based on Sunny's notes, then returned to Zipp's lab.
Sunny's horn lit up, levitating small paper boats onto Zipp's lab bench. Pipp filled them with corn chips from a plastic bag. Zipp lit an oxyacetylene torch and toasted the chips.
Izzy poked a can of refried beans onto her horn and wrenched it open, fired a spell up her horn to warm them, and then shook dollops of the glop onto each portion of chips. "Bean-bong..." she muttered.
The six of them stared at the nacho cheese dispenser.
"I wonder who the mare was," Pipp asked sadly.
They all nodded. Deep in the caverns beneath the Canterlot ruins, a pegasus mare—reduced to nothing but dried bones in a khaki shirt and pith helmet—had been impaled on a spear trap a few steps short of the artifact.
"Do you suppose she was trying to take the artifact," Pipp continued, "or she's the one who placed it there?"
"The storm's coming," Sprout said, looking out the window.
Zipp donned a pair of dark goggles and a heavy rubber boot over one hoof. She used the boot to flip a massive, sparking electrical switch. The roof of her lab slowly clamshelled open with the sound of grinding and clanking gears, opening the penthouse lab up to the black cloudy skies of the approaching lightning and thunder.
"They don't call me Princess Zephyrina Storm for nothing!"
Pipp laughed. "Literally no one but your birth certificate calls you that."
A massive brass lightning rod extended upward, into which the electrical cord of the nacho cheese artifact was plugged.
Izzy leaned to Hitch and stage-whispered, "I wouldn't mind some of your lightning rod."
Hitch looked at her, eyes widening.
"If you know what I mean," Izzy said with an eyebrow waggle.
"Yes, I know—"
"Lightning is a whole different power dynamic."
"Yes, Izzy, we underst—"
"Your penis."
"Yes, we get—"
"In me."
"Izzy!" Sprout shouted. "Hitch gets it."
"I'm medium sneaky," Izzy pouted, "not medium subtle."
The first few drops of rain and gusts of wind arrived. Sunny and Izzy put domes of their magic over the chips and refried beans to keep them dry. Lightning peppered Zephyr Heights and, after a moment, a bolt struck the tall brass rod and the metal artifact jumped.
Zipp held up a complex instrument with dials and LCD screens and antennas. "It's warm, and I'm getting all sorts of ab-para-normal readings."
"I'm starving," Pipp said, and worked the pump, dispensing cheese onto the six plates of nachos. Zipp flipped the switch and the ceiling closed again, cutting off the rain.
"Smells good," Izzy said, closing her eyes and stretching her neck towards the nachos.
Zipp said, "This was my idea, so it's only fair I go first..." She picked up a chip, dripping with cheese and beans, and sniffed delicately.
The others stared at her.
Closing her eyes, Zipp popped it in her mouth and crunched down. The others looked at her expectantly. "It's not baaaaaaad," Zipp said. "Although it doesn't deserve to be called 'cheese'."
As she said that, the cheese dispenser shook and rattled, bouncing around the table until it yanked its electric cord out of the socket.
The lid blew off and a thunderclap of magic knocked them all to the ground, billowing Zipp and Pipp's feathers.
Floating in an eldritch glow above the cheese dispenser was a small pony with a poofy pink mane, dry skin sloughing off a dusty skeleton to expose half-mummified tendons, its eyes glowing red.
"I am the cheesiest! And I am awakened by the kiss of a princess!" boomed a high, squeaky voice. The red eyes focused on Izzy, Sunny, and Pipp. "Where is she?"
"Look, little filly," Zipp said, "I'm over here."
The red eyes focused on Zipp. "I am Lich'il Cheese, undead dairymancer of doom, and I am a colt! And I'm looking for a princess, buddy."
Zipp took another bite of nachos.
"Wait, you're a mare?" said Lich'il cheese.
"If you're a dude, why can't I be the princess who awakened you?" Zipp said.
"A lich, eh?" Sunny said, flipping through her dad's notebook. "I thought those were myths."
"Nope, real," Izzy said. "Like, half the crystals in Bridlewood are phylacteries containing the soul of an ancient sorcerer or two. Why do you think 'magic' was such a bad word? Our history books are full of famous liches. Trixie the Mad, Starlight the Brutal, Sunburst the Pussywhipped."
"Trixie wasn't mad," Lich'il Cheese corrected. "She was just a little special. And Starlight wasn't brutal, she was quite nice. And Sunburst... um..."
They looked at him, waiting.
After a moment, Lich'il cheese continued, "Anyway, I scoured the world for the magic of the ancient dairymancers to find the power to curdle death!"
"Wait—you trapped yourself in cheese?" Hitch asked.
"What else would I use as my soul jar? Shelf-stable processed nacho cheese-food will outlast gold, gems, the very basalt of the mountains. I'm IMMORTAL!" He squeaked evil laughter.
Grabbing a paper boat of nachos and crunching down, Hitch said, "Heck, those are good."
"Stop eating my powwwwerrrrrr!" Lich'il Cheese whined.
"Lich'il Cheese..." Sprout tapped his chin. "There's a legend about an ancient earth pony industrialist, Cheese Sandwich, whose factories produced all the weapons ancient earth ponies used to crush the unicorns and pegasi. You know him?"
"Pffft. My stupid dad. He didn't make weapons, he made jokes."
"That seems more pleasant," Izzy said, crunching on a nacho. "Hey, that is good, especially for being a thousand years old."
"My stupid parents; both so famous!" Lich'il Cheese said. "I was an independent musician, traveling Equestria, and ponies were all like, 'We love your mom, Cheese!' Or, 'Your dad performed at my seventh birthday party, Cheese!' Or 'Why are your parents curated articles in Ponypedia, Cheese, and you're just a stub?' No one cared about my music! I was as mad as mozzarella on a masala!"
"You must have sucked," Sprout said around a mouthful of nachos.
"My mom could play six instruments at once! My dad could play six instruments at once! Why shouldn't I play twelve instruments at once? But noooooo, foals cried, old ponies covered their ears, and birds fell dead from trees. So unfair!"
"You sound spoiled," Sprout said. "Just assuming you can outdo your parents."
"And him calling you spoiled? That's really saying something," Sunny pointed out.
"You should have just edited your own Ponypedia article," Zipp said.
Lich'il Cheese huffed and crossed his forelegs in front of his chest. "That's against the rules."
Zipp nodded. "That's how Pipp keeps getting banned."
"Warned," Pipp corrected. "Not banned. I'm the centerpiece of their yearly donation campaign, they can't ban me."
"How many warnings, now?" Sunny asked.
"🎶Thir-tee SEV-en🎵," Pipp singsonged.
"How are you editing your Ponypedia page?" Sprout asked.
Pipp grinned and shook her ass. "I keep 'accidentally' uploading stills from my 'leaked' sex tape."
Hitch and Sprout's eyes widened as they made mental notes for a future web search.
"Anyway," Pipp said, flipping her wings, "Welcome to Zephyr Heights. I'm Princess Pipp and my sister over there is Crown Princess Zipp."
"Now that I'm freed from the cheesy phylactery Princess Twilight confined me to," Lich'il Cheese said with an evil laugh, "I can take over the world! I'll start with your kingdom!"
"Wait, I thought you picked the shelf-stable soul jar?" Sunny said. "I'm getting confused."
"Of course I picked it," Lich'il Cheese said, rolling his red glowing eyes, "but after I burned down the Royal Library, started a war with Griffonstone, and sang bawdy ballads about her big butt, Twilight banished me into it until I was kissed by a princess."
"Apparently any sort of lip contact with the cheese counts?" Zipp ate another nacho. Around the chips, she mumbled, "And not a kiss per se?"
"Yes. Give me your kingdom. Now."
"Queendom," Zipp said, swallowing nachos. "Mom will have you thrown in the reeducation clamps for calling it a kingdom."
"Re-education camps?" Sprout asked.
"No."
"No clamps can hold Lich'il Cheese, evil dairymancer of badness!"
"You need a better slogan, Dude," Zipp said, munching on her nachos. "If you have to call yourself evil and bad, nopony will take you seriously. And you're cute, which doesn't help."
"I am not cute! I'm a powerful dark cheese wiz!"
"He's freaking adorable," Hitch said. "I want to pinch his decaying lil' cheeks."
Wind swirled and thunder crashed as Lich'il Cheese turned his red-eyes glare on Zipp. "How do you know so much about being an evil overlord?"
"I'm the crown princess," she said with a laugh. "I've studied government theory since I was six, and Marechiavelli's The Princess is one of the main texts."
"You aren't planning to be an evil queen, are you, Zipp?" Pipp said, her voice concerned. "Historically, evil queens tend to execute any other candidates for the throne..."
"Ripp Pipp," Izzy said, patting her on the head before burying her face into her nachos. "Wow, these are great! Who wants seconds?"
"Ew," Pipp said. "You got beans in my mane."
"Seriously, stop eating my power!" Lich'il Cheese whined.
"Why?" Hitch said. "You just said you plan to be an evil overlord—"
"I implied that."
"—and we have all the megalomania we need," Hitch said, poking Sprout in the ribs.
"Okay," Lich'il Cheese shouted. "Line up and let me steal your magic. Let's get this conquest started."
"I have a better idea," Izzy said. "Even if Bridlewood didn't have magic, we sure remembered it. And there's only one way to destroy a lich."
"What?" said the others.
Izzy poured more chips from the bag into her paper boat and opened a second can of refried beans with her horn. "Destroy its phylactery."
Izzy, Sunny, Pipp, and Zipp ate melon and berries at breakfast the next morning, sitting on a terrace thirty stories above Zephyr Heights. The sun shined and the air was clear and cool after the overnight thunderstorms.
A team of palace employees thundered down the hallway, past the terrace, pushing carts of tools and supplies.
Hitch dodged around the team and trotted onto the breakfast terrace.
"Coffee?" Sunny asked.
"Nah," Hitch said. "I still feel off from all the nachos. Maybe just some melon."
"Where's Sprout?" Pipp asked.
Hitch tilted his head towards the hallway as another SWAT team of palace plumbers in hazmat gear thundered past. "Turns out he's lich-tose intolerant."
Author's Note
Re-education clamps stolen from "Sluggy Freelance."
Samey90 — 02/18/2022
I guess this is also what fetish list is for
FanOfMostEverything — 02/18/2022
In this case, it's more like the list of six-syllable ingredients on a bag of chips.
"We put a lot of crap into this to make shelf-stable nacho cheese. Are you sure you want to eat it?"
Samey90 — 02/18/2022
Cue someone putting "shelf-stable nacho cheese" on the fetish list
FanOfMostEverything — 02/18/2022
SOCK THAT WAS NOT A CHALLENGE
Needless to say, I took it as a challenge.
