//------------------------------// // Dear Princess Lunchtime - Chapter Five (Comedy, Random, Adventure) // Story: xjuggerscrapsx // by xjuggernaughtx //------------------------------// Dear Princess Lunchtime, What a couple of days it’s been, Your Half-a-Sandwich-With-a-Bowl-of-Soupness! I thought and thought, but I just couldn’t figure out what to do about Spreadsheet. The guards stop me whenever I come to the office building now, and he gets an escort when he leaves. Personally, I think that’s a bit much. I just want to talk to the guy! But you know me, Princess. I’m not going to let some stuffy old laws get in the way of spreading enlightenment, so I headed down to the library to look for some answers. Bingo! I had to do some delivery work when I worked for The Feed Bag, and sometimes that called for a little creativity. Ponies would do the darnest things! They get in the shower, or fall asleep, or try on their wife’s socks or something, and their you’d be, standing outside ringing the doorbell for twenty minutes. Nu-huh. Not this pony. It’s amazing how unappreciative ponies can get when you pick their locks and drop their food off. I mean, I always woke them up or yelled into the bathroom or whatever. It’s not my fault they weren’t paying attention. I even had to talk to the city guards for a whole afternoon once. I still have nightmares thinking off all the tips I lost that day. Back to the situation at hoof. I figured that the office building would have the standard duct layout, and I was right. Big buildings like that usually buy from one of three main distributors: Canterlot Zephyr, Richwind, or Equin-Ox. None of the companies have a duct size smaller than three feet across. More than enough room for a pony and her hotbag! Public record shows that Spreadsheet’s building upgraded to the Richwind Windigo cooling system three years ago! That’s all your faithful student needed to see! I’ll be going to see Spreadsheet tomorrow, and I’m sure he’ll come around once he has all the facts. With that off of my hooves, I trotted on over to the Culinary Repository and asked to speak with one of their scholars. Princess, you would not believe the eye rolls I had to endure trying to convince the secretary that the ancient tome I carried with me contained truths about lunchtime that nopony had read for thousands of years. You’d think they’d be over the moon, but they kept telling me that solicitors were prohibited, and that whatever I was peddling would have to be done somewhere else. The nerve of some ponies! Well, I had a spicy surprise for them. I’ve been around the block a few times (mostly running from the guards), and I’ve picked up a trick or two. After three hours of arguing, I finally threw my hooves up and hit them with a liquid smoke bomb. I sometimes had to use them to make a getaway from my deliveries. Some liquid smoke, a little black pepper, some cayenne for flash, all tied together with some tapioca paste as a binder. Bam! Whoever gets a muzzleful of that will be coughing and sneezing for a good twenty minutes. Wasting no time, I snatched the registry off their desk and galloped for the elevator. It looked like research and archives were both on the fifth level, so that’s where I went. Your Majesty, you would not believe the difference! All of these professor types were wandering around in the hallways because the security alarm was going off  In my experience, you’ve got about twenty minutes at that point. The guards will hang around for about five, hoping that it’s some pony who went out the fire exit. Five more minutes of arguing about who’s turn it is to respond, then ten minutes or so of looking. So I grabbed two of these stallions and asked them what they knew about the magic of lunch. They asked me what I was collecting for and why I hadn’t cleared it with the front desk. What is it with these ponies?!   So I pulled them into an office and told them that I’d been sent by you to explore the magic of the midday meal, and that I had texts of ancient wisdom to share. I’ll admit that I was a little hurt by their lack of enthusiasm.  Here I was, trying to help their cause, and they were giving me some line about ‘improper scope of research’ or somesuch. After several minutes of hot debate, I was dismayed to find out that they generally limited themselves to research on recipes and cooking techniques. What a waste! It was trump card time, so I hit them with the book.  Well, I didn’t literally hit them with it, but I did slam it down in front of them quite hard. I needed their attention. They thought it looked a little light on measurements for a cookbook, and I had to steer them back to the prophecy. I was halfway through explaining what we’d been able to piece together when one of them jumped up and started jabbering on. I had to hide behind a desk when he tore through his bookshelf, tossing books left and right as he searched. Finally, he cried out and held a book up over his head. It turns out that your book is written in an all but forgotten language. In Prance, there was once a pony tribe called the Gourmands, who founded someplace called Gourmandy. Most of their history has been lost to time, but the Repository has several copies of a cypher used by the Prench nobility of the era.   The pair tore through the book, picking out key names and places by comparing them with the cypher, and when we heard the guards coming, they told me to hide under the desk.  When questioned, they said that they hadn’t seen anyone unusual and that they had no idea with that office smelled so strongly of liquid smoke and tapioca. Stiff Peaks told me that, given enough time, he should be able to translate the whole book! Your Snackiness, this is exactly what we’d hoped for! Truly, the magic of lunchtime must be guiding me. I decided to leave the tome in their care, and they let me borrow a torque and an apron that they had lying around so that I could make my escape with the rest of the evacuees. Don’t worry, I made sure to look perplexed and complain about the souffle that I had in the oven. Those guards didn’t suspect a thing! Your faithful student, Poppyseed