Come for the Pizza, Return for the Atmosphere
Twilight pulled the door open and took a deep breath. The heat was intense, but nothing she wasn't used to. A few fly-away strands of her mane crinkled and singed away, but their acrid smell was easily covered by the intoxicating aroma that soon enveloped her.
The rich freshness of rising dough laid a powerful foundation, supporting and elevating the other scents. Homemade sauce bubbled like magma, each bursting bubble releasing a tiny cloud of steam and spice. The cheese was rich and cloying, a panoply of subtle variations as the three-variety blend melted, fried, and crisped in staggered stages. The onions added a subtle sweetness that enhanced that natural richness of the cheese without diminishing its impact, like gilding on the frame of a painting. Topping it all was the afterthought of black olives, sliced thinly to let their juices simmer and disperse across the whole as a fine mist of flavor.
It all came together to Twilight's senses like a symphony. Every part unique and distinguishable, yet an indispensable part of a greater whole.
It smelled like heaven.
She pulled her head out of the oven before her mane could properly catch fire (a lesson thoroughly learned after the last time) and let the door swing shut as she turned back to the service counter.
"It shouldn't be more than another five minutes," she said. "Drink while you wait?"
The mare on the other side of the counter considered it for a moment. She was young, probably just out of highschool, with cheery yellow wings and a striped mane the colors of bell peppers. "You have Colta-Cola?"
Twilight nodded to the small fridge by the door where a few dozen glass bottles of the most popular brands sat waiting like fizzy soldiers in formation. The young pegasus moved towards it and opened the door, letting a cold breeze waft out that cut through the hot air from the ovens like an arctic knife. She reached in with a wing and rummaged around for a bottle from the back where they'd be coldest.
Twilight magically snagged a second one for herself before the door closed. Score one for magic; cola bottles zilch.
"'ow much?" the mare asked while her teeth worked on the bottle cap.
Twilight popped hers off with much less difficulty. "A bit fifty."
She took the coins and dropped them in the register, letting the spellwork within sort them into their proper slots. The jingling noise of internal magical machinations almost formed a recognizable tune before the process finished and the sounds died away.
Silence passed between them for a moment, broken only by the sounds of fizzing carbonation and the low roar of the oven. The city was quiet outside the shop, blanketed by the soft curtain of night, the solemn vigilance pierced only occasionally by the odd dog, siren, or distant yell.
Twilight really appreciated slow days like these. Busy weekends and mealtime rush hours were good for business, but there was more to the job than just making money. Only when the customers trickled in by ones and twos at odd hours did she get the chance to stop and chat.
And with slow days being decently predictable, she only needed to pay her sous chef to come in on Fridays and the weekend. Money wasn't everything to Twilight, but the bankers behind her loans tended to take up with a different philosophy. Thankfully Pinkie seemed more than happy to work a half dozen part-time jobs rather than stay in a single place all week.
Normally the pizzeria wouldn't be open this late; on any other Tuesday at this hour she'd be well into double-checking the day's take and scrubbing down the pans and bowls. But she'd recognized the desperation in her young customer's eyes when she'd so fervently knocked on the glass. It was a feeling she sympathized with all too easily.
"So, what's the test on, Miss Glider?" Twilight asked. At Glider's confused and slightly suspicious glance, she returned a disarming smile. "I know a cram session pizza when I see one. Either you've got a big test tomorrow or a major essay you've been putting off." She flicked the corner of the slip of paper stabbed through the metal spike by the register. "Also, you signed your receipt."
Glider tensed for a second, but with the explanation she relaxed and sighed. "Is it that obvious?"
"Little bit."
Her wings settled as they untensed, feathers brushing against her sweater with a faint shushing sound. "It's a midterm," the pegasus explained as she took another pull from her cola. "Fundamental Theories of Magical Resonance."
The name rang familiar, even if she couldn't summon up too many relevant equations. "Studying transharmonics? That's pretty ambitious." Also not a study she'd expect a pegasus to be interested in. "It's a good field though. A word of advice," she gestured with her bottle, "When you get to the 301 level, take Professor Ribbon Wire's class over Doctor Thorn's. The syllabus will list them as different courses, but it's all the same material and besides—" she leaned in and lowered her voice "—Dr. Thorn tends to have some old-fashioned ideas about what kind of ponies should be taught at CSGU and it sometimes bleeds through into his lessons."
Glider's eyes widened, just as Twilight had predicted. It was the same with all her customers from the College. No pony ever expected the pizza mare to understand their niche field of study, let alone make course recommendations. It also meant that this conversation was likely going to wander down a very familiar route, but it was one that tended to result in cultivating a regular customer, so she was fine with it.
"How do you know the CSGU professors?" Not the cleverest of question, but par for a student of the elite school. Lots of booksmarts and not too much tact or common sense. Twilight could relate. She also chose to ignore the—probably unintentional—barb in her tone about the credulity of a meager food service worker knowing the details of an elite institute of learning.
Twilight allowed herself a smirk. This next bit was always fun.
"Oh Ribbon and I go back years. In fact, I TA'ed for him for three semesters."
And there it was. That gobsmacked expression. The hanging jaw. The crashing sound of her preconceived notions of social hierarchies shattering. It never got old.
To her credit, Glider recovered quicker than most. "You went to CSGU?"
"And their Early Starters Scholarship program." She grinned. "What's wrong? Didn't expect to find a University graduate in a pizza parlor?"
"I— well, no. I mean... the guidance counselor said I'd be practically guaranteed any job I wanted after graduation but..."
Twilight laughed. It was such an honest reaction she just couldn't help it. She was really starting to hope Glider would become a regular; she was fun.
"To be honest, I'm not technically a graduate. I had to drop out and never actually finished all my credits."
"Drop out?" Glider's brows furrowed. "Why in the world would you drop out of the most prestigious school in Equestria?"
It was a fair question. When thousands of ponies squandered their teenage years maintaining perfect GPAs and bolstering their extracurriculars for even the chance to apply—and a rare hooful were selected for the school's junior program—what kind of madmare would give it up?
"Personal reasons," Twilight said opaquely. "Some things happened and my life took a different path. But I don't regret it." She took a long sip of her cola as Glider waited, a familiar mix of confusion and interest in her eyes. "Sure, if I finished I probably could have been a researcher at an institute in Manehattan, or gone to work for Sunlit Conglomerated—" not that they'd been founded at the time "—or maybe even tried for a spot in the Royal Corp of Sorcerers if my GPA was good enough." Which it had been and then some. Twilight set her drink aside and connected her eyes to Glider's. "But I don't think I'd be nearly as happy in any of those jobs as I would be here."
"Here," she continued, using magic and bottle to gesture around the shop, "I get to meet interesting ponies, serve delicious food, and enjoy every day of it. It may not make the most money, but I've made good friends here that I don't think I'd have ever met otherwise. And friendship is just as important an ingredient as anything else."
Her words hung heavy in the air for a moment. Then Twilight broke the tension with a small snorting laugh. "Well that certainly got heavy. Sorry for bringing the mood down on you there."
"It's fine," Glider said, even as her expression seemed to be somewhere else. "It was... interesting. You've got a really unique perspective."
It wasn't quite the boilerplate response Twilight usually got from a student customer hearing her story for the first time, but it fell within the usual parameters. The CSGU was really big on pushing the "you made it this far, now go do great things!" mindset regardless if 'great things' were what that pony wanted or enjoyed. It warmed a part of her to know that, thanks to her, another student had been awakened to the idea that she really could do anything she wanted, not just what the guidance counselors recommended. She could still remember all that pressure—that crippling pressure to succeed—heaped on by the speeches and the assemblies and the teachers and the counselors and the Princess—
Twilight cut off that particular train of thought before she fell back down the spiral. Even from spending only a few seconds down that introspective avenue she felt how her heart had sped up and her breathing turned shallow. With a few practiced deep breathing exercises she brought it back to normal. That was the past. She had a job now and more than that, a customer to attend to.
"I think you should be just about done," Twilight said mere seconds before a sharp 'ding!' resounded from the timer by the oven. Fetching her pizza paddle, she opened the door and let a jetstream of sizzling air and rich smells blast into the room. With a little shuffling and a nudge with her magic, she extracted her prize from the fiery depths.
The crust was browned yet not burned. The cheese gooey and evenly spread. The olives crispy yet not dry. Another perfect pie.
"Ohmigosh..." Twilight grinned as she caught the telltale sound of the aroma reaching Glider. She gave the pizza a little spin as she maneuvered it to the boxing area. It wasn't really necessary—totally impractical, really—but she couldn't help but put on a little show. It slid into the box with a precision born of years of practice.
Tucking the little flaps into their slots to seal the box shut, Twilight took a quill and scribbled a line of complex characters down the side panel and over the edge. They glowed for a moment with the color of her magic then faded back to black.
"Here you go!" Twilight said as she handed the pizza over. "Careful, it's hot. Keep the lid closed so these rune sequence won't break and it should stay piping fresh all the way back to your dorm. Or the library, if you're willing to risk Mrs. Decimal's ire.
"Oh! Thanks." The pegasus accepted the box with a small noise of surprise, most likely from seeing spellwork from a 5th level class being used for such a mundane purpose.
But what good was the technique if she wasn't going to ever use it?
Glider arranged the box on her back, arching her wings up to lightly grip it on each side. Before turning to leave, she dropped her change in the Tips jar.
"Thank you for your patronage." Twilight called out cheerfully as she left, "Come again soon!"
Glider paused at the door before turning back with a smile. "Yeah. I think I will."
As the bell jingled with the closing of the door, Twilight reached out with her magic and flipped the open sign to 'closed' once more, latching the bolt with the same motion. One extra-late customer per night was plenty thank-you-very-much.
Now that she was alone, she celebrated the acquisition of a new (and hopefully returning) customer with a victorious hoofpump. While it was all fine and good to talk up the value of making a personal connection with customers, bits were bits, and she was none too keen on dancing that fine line between the red and the black.
Satisfied with her day's work, Twilight set the register to total the day's profit and turned to face her kitchen. Flour dusted the dough prep station and the ashes in the oven would still take time to cool before she could rake them out.
Sleep beckoned. Cleaning demanded to be addressed. What a dilemma.
With a sigh, she set about finding a rag to wet. She could always sleep in. No one bought pizzas for breakfast, anyway.
Author's Note
This one's been lingering in my Half-Finished Ideas folder for quite some time now. Have a few ideas to expand the universe further into a proper AU if there's some interest.
