Cheese Sandwich Gets a 'Real Job'

by PensacolaRanger


Chapter 7 - Re-inventing Cheese

(*Grrroooaannn*) Six days and one night later, Cheese Sandwich felt absolutely…awful. His body was sore, from nose to tail. He lay in bed, long after lights out, unable or unwilling to move, and completely unable to remember when he last felt so beat. His head had small lumps, and his hide was covered in small bruises, burns & abrasions, cuts & scrapes, pin and needle pricks, and even small animal bites. Every muscle ached. His head hurt, his back hurt, his forelegs hurt, his hind legs hurt, his flank hurt…everything hurt. He couldn’t think of what to take for it. Twilight tried casting the healing spell on him a few more times, but now it only got him through the work days, and completely wore off at night. He tried as much as possible to sleep off the fatigue, instead. But, tonight…even that didn’t seem to be enough. All slept out now, he just lay wide awake in bed, staring up at the high-vaulted crystal ceiling, as if trying to read it like one of Twilight’s library books, to find the answer he sought to his pain problem…

All he could do now was think. And think. And think some more. He thought about the whole week that had just gone by,
and his own dismal efforts to conform and live up to each new job with each of the Mane 6, that came with each new day.

Day 1: the baker’s assistant job with Pinkie Pie. What a mistake that was. Too much baking powder in one recipe; too little in another. Burnt cupcakes left in the oven too long. Lumpy cookies. Scuzzy scones. Muffins that were salty instead of sweet. He blamed that on his grabbing the wrong “white stuff” at the wrong time. How he was ever going to make that up to the gray funny-eyed Pegasus pony customer, he didn’t know. Then there was that obnoxious foal customer with the propeller beanie hat, the one named Button Mash, who asked: “How’d a pony like you ever get a job as a baker’s assistant anyway, Mister?” To which Cheese could only shrug and reply: “Well hey, I only took this job ‘cause I kneaded the dough! Heh-heh-heh…” That joke was older than Cheese was, and it wasn’t far from the truth, but for the first time in his career, no one laughed at it. And the sour look the kid gave him could’ve melted a game console. Needless to say, Cheese had to stay long after closing time to help clean up all the extra flour, sugar and egg mess he made of the kitchen. About the only being in the whole place which had nothing bad to say about Cheese’s work was Gummy the toothless baby alligator, who just blinked and kept licking at Cheese’s curly hair locks.

Baking sweets was obviously more complicated than it seemed. How could Pinkie Pie and the Cakes do it? He cursed himself for cheating all these years; sending out for birthday cakes instead of mastering the craft of baking them himself. How he could botch that, yet still turn out perfect party pizza, even he couldn’t understand. Maybe it was only cheese dishes he had a knack for. If someone had ordered cheese muffins or a cheese Danish, or even a Manehattan-style cheesecake, those he could manage. Just his luck, it wasn’t on that day. How was he ever going to make it up to poor Pinkie Pie, who did her best to root for him and coach him all through the orders? (*Sigh*) Still…he had earned 100 bits for the day, though he didn’t feel his efforts were worth that much.

Then came Day 2: apple-bucking with Applejack for the big Cider Season harvest. AJ practically bucked him out of bed before daybreak, to come with her out to Sweet Apple Acres for breakfast with the whole family. Apple Brown Bettys & strudel never tasted so good. Then it was off to the south and east orchards as Celestia’s Sun rose. His head & hooves still ached from the memory of finding each tree’s “sweet spot,” then whamming the hard barked trunk with his hind-hooves, and galloping out of the way to keep his head from getting pummeled by those hard fruits as they fell into the bushel basket. A hoofball helmet would’ve been more helpful to Cheese than the straw hat he’d been given by Big MacIntosh to wear for the job. He got knocked in the head by a few single apples that managed to fall out of the tree just as he was trotting back over to fetch the (oof!) heavy basket to load on Mac’s cart. Hard as he tried to keep up with AJ, she always managed to keep three bushels ahead of him. And yet by sundown, after sorting the apples with Granny Smith, and a nice dinner of apple pie, sauce & fritters with the family (Apple Bloom was now home from school to join them) despite the lumps under his mane and the blisters on his hooves, Cheese managed to earn another 100 bits---though AJ thought his efforts were worth only half that much. “Oh, that’s just AJ for ‘ya...” Granny reassured, “…always a bit stingy with the day-labor help. Lookin’ forward to them bouncy polkas ‘a yours on Cider Day! Heh-heh-heh…” (With that day coming up before his back rent was due, Cheese was certainly looking forward to it. Not just to earn more bits, but to be back in his natural work element again, if only for one day.)

Then came Day 3: off to the Carousel Boutique to help Rarity with dress-making. Cheese winced from recalling all the pin and needle pricks he took that day, and his teeth & tongue still tingled from holding thread spools, the tape measure, scissors, bobbins, the seam gauge, straight pins, needles and thimbles. To say Cheese looked ridiculous modeling mare’s clothes for fittings would be a major understatement, but from time to time it was necessary as the dummy carousel ponies around the shop didn’t always suit Rarity as proper stand-ins for some orders. Thankfully she didn’t make him wear any of them in public, when it was time for him to pull the delivery cart (her own this time; no more having to borrow the party gear cart from Pinkie Pie) to the Ponyville Post Office to ship the orders. By day’s end, Cheese felt like a spent voodoo doll, or a filly’s dress-up doll after playtime was over. But, thanks to Rarity’s famously generous spirit, his purse (if he’d been forced to carry one as a fashion accessory) was 200 bits heavier.

(*Oooooh…*) And now, the ex-party pony’s memory came to…Day 4: animal day-care at Fluttershy’s cottage. Feeding seeds to the birds wasn’t too bad; their twitter-songs were rather pleasant and soothing, though sweeping up their droppings was not so pleasant. Angel Bunny, of course, was anything but. He squirmed all through his bath, fussed all through meal times, refused to let Cheese pet him or hold him, and kept biting Cheese on the hind-hoof every time he turned around. More than once, Cheese was sorely tempted to kick the little buck-toothed cotton ball---only to be stopped each time with a cold stare from Fluttershy, akin to her Nightmare Night Flutter-Bat persona. Hairy the Bear seemed fearsome to Cheese at first, but a few curious snufflings and cheerful sloppy licks later, and he & Hairy were good friends. A necessary relationship, Cheese discovered, for the purpose of giving Hairy’s claws their proper trimming. Then it was out to the coop to feed corn to the chickens, to the seal & walrus pens for their fish-feeding (how Fluttershy managed to keep marine mammals on her property this far inland from the coasts, he had no idea) then off to the very edge of the Everfree Forest, to feed nuts to squirrels & chipmunks, and to visit Manny Roar the Manticore. Cheese froze stiff at the sight of the enormous scorpion-tailed, bat-winged, horn-headed lion, not knowing what to make of it. But as with the bear, a few curious sniffs and pawings, and more sloppy licks later (plus a big saucer of milk, per Fluttershy’s orders) and all was well between the newfound friends.

Cheese noted the new cowlicks (er, cat-licks) in his mane after feeding Manny, and chalked it up to another one of the ‘weirdest moments in Cheese Sandwich’s colorful life.’ The next weirdest one after that, was another fleeting glimpse of the same stripe-legged, yellow-eyed, hooded equine Cheese saw in Ponyville over a week ago, just off in the distance and retreating quickly into the forest. Even without his other sense, Cheese had a peculiar feeling he was going to meet up with that cloaked phantom once and for all, before this whole quest-for-a-new-job business was over. At day’s end, another purseful of 100 bits was also chalked up on his tally.

This now brought Cheese up to…Day 5: Friendship Castle Library assistant to Twilight Sparkle, Spike, and Owlowiscious. Soooo many books, so little time to organize them. (Actually, this was the third day of a 3-day weekend vacation, which Twilight called her "book-sort-cation." for reorganizing the library. ) Soooo many books, and so little time to organize them. Basically they dealt with the load one shelf at a time; Twilight levitated a row of books down to the floor, Spike & Cheese sorted them as she supervised, and she levitated the row back up to its respective shelf. Some single books were dealt with by the owl clutching them in his toeclaws, and flying them back & forth between floor and shelf.

But, ohhh…the ways Twilight wanted the books sorted; most in alphabetical order, but some in a specific order: fiction according to genre, non-fiction according to researchers, history according to kingdoms or cities of publication, health & science according to discoverers, cookbooks according to chefs, art according to artists, training manuals according to authors, magic according to wizard ponies---(*whew*) the lists went on and on and on. Sometimes Twilight would shriek in fright, and all 3 assistants would literally drop whatever they were doing (usually a clutch of books each was assigned to sort) and rush to her aid! But more often than not, it only turned out to be Twilight dismayed at the total disorder of a given bookcase, and in no real danger at all. Several deep breaths and sighs later, they would return to their assigned tasks. (No taking the librarian out of the princess, apparently.) By and by, little by little. and crisis-by-crisis, Cheese had pocketed another 100 bits for the day, and the entire Friendship Castle Library was re-counted, re-sorted, and re-catalogued. The last count was 19,993 books. It now reached 19,997; just 3 shy of 20,000 total.

“Well…there’s always the Ponyville Book Fair…” said Spike, “…which Twilight never misses!”

“Unless, of course, royal duties like missions for Princess Celestia or the Cutie Map, call me elsewhere…” Twilight added.

“Oh, uh, yeah…so then she sends me; Good ol’ Kenmore Gillspotten Heathspike!” the little dragon said proudly.

"Umm...huh?" queried Cheese.

"(*Giggle*) That's Spike's full name. I found it in one of the books on this shelf." Twilight was indicating an incomplete unkempt
shelf on the far end of the library.

"I call it: The Long Lost & Obscured History of Equestria. An archive still in progress. So far, I've found up to 4 generations worth of forgotten pony history. I found Spike's full name in the 'Generation 3' series. Did you know dragons in Equestria can live for up to a million years or more? And that I'm not the first-ever princess of Ponyville? That honor goes to Princess Wysteria; also G3 series. We're actually G4; the fourth generation of Equestrian ponies, but very little is known or recorded about the previous three, and considering they're 1000 years old, Celestia & Luna go back even more generations! Why haven't they ever told me about all this? Why wasn't it covered in magic school? And I still haven't worked out where Starswirl's time period fits in! (*Sigh*) Obviously, I have a long way to go before this archive is completed. But it's 'gotta be important, I just know it is..." Twilight pace-trotted and babbled on in Pinkie Pie fashion----as was her custom, Cheese noted, when she went off on a tangent on a subject she'd put a lot of effort into studying.

All Spike, Owly & Cheese could do was exchange woeful glances and slowly shake their heads. Spike long suspected all this forgotten history was actually taking place in some other dimension; perhaps in one of the other realms accessible by the same portal mirror to Sunset Shimmer's humanoid world, or by other portals hidden in the other castles, and that the full name really belonged to his counterpart in the G3 realm. But seeing how seriously Twilight was taking the subject, he wasn't about to go bursting her bubble of expectations anytime soon, so he simply kept mum about it.


Briefly breaking the his own bubble of memory, Cheese stiffly turned over in bed, and sighed. “But we went through the whole castle library from top to bottom, and didn’t turn up so much as one volume on alternative careers for ex-party ponies!” During his work with Twilight he had hoped to find something like that, but such was his busted luck in this venture. He couldn’t imagine himself becoming a daily full-timer on any of these jobs so far.

Which now brought Cheese Sandwich to the memory of (*groan*) Day 6: today's job with Rainbow Dash, on the Cloudsdale Weather Team…

Rainbow outfitted Cheese with a strap-on rotary wing & goggles (similar to the getup she gave her pet tortoise Tank) and Twilight cast her cloud-walking spell on him, to enable the ex-party pony to accompany Dash to the Cloudsdale Weather Factory. Being assigned to Dash personally as ‘assistant weather pony’ was hard enough for Cheese to swallow, let alone Dash’s boss: Commander Hurricane IV. Still wary of Dash after her little winter sabotage caper, but still willing to help out a friend in a jam, he approved the job and put Cheese temporarily on the payroll as day-labor.

Then it was off to the Storm Bay, to collect rain clouds from the (custom Dash-repaired) Cloud Generator machine, for the day’s rain distribution. For Cheese, touching & pushing a storm cloud was “as weird as moving gray cotton candy,” he thought. And being zapped by little stray lightning bolts wasn’t helping him to like the job, either. Even weirder was finding himself, on command, jumping up & down on the cloud to make the rain fall. That part, however, he soon came to enjoy. Before long, he was doing a sort of “buffalo Indian rain dance” each time he had to dump a rain shower---which unfortunately, earned him some sour looks from Chief Thunderhooves’ tribe as he delivered Appleloosa’s rain. “(Heh) Not authentic enough; I get it…” Cheese commented to himself, with an embarrassed grin. Dash could only face-hoof in frustration. Cloudkicking to clear the skies after the rain was even more fun, after Dash showed him how. But of course, Cheese had to learn the hard way, the difference between a free-floating cloud, and one nestled on a rocky mountain peak. (YeeOwwwch...) At day’s end, Cheese glided away with 100 bits from payroll, but not without a storm front of irritated looks from the other Pegasi, and exchanging embarrassed blushes with Rainbow.

Cheese achingly turned over again, on his back, and stared up at the vaulted crystal ceiling again, totaling things up. “Lets see now…” he thought, “…that’s, umm…700 bits so far, for 6 day-jobs, with 800 more to go, and only…19 days left. And now I’ve run the whole gamut of day-jobs with the Mane 6. So far, none of them suit me as a new career. So now what? Unless they have friends looking to hire help, the only option left is…(gulp) …that dreaded community job board at Town Hall.”

Cheese shivered and broke out in a sweat. He did not like that prospect one bit. Surprises he loved, but usually when he was the one springing them on guests in the course of a party, when he was in his own element and in control of what was going on, and the surprises were always pleasant. But now…with no pre-planned script to follow, out of his element, his Cheesy Sense still out of order, and at the complete mercy (or contempt) of others…the surprises were not pleasant at all anymore. Suddenly he was the shy little colt again
he was in childhood, trapped in a grown-up’s body. He'd become the problem foal nopony wanted. “Charity’s all well and good,” he thought, “but why kid myself? I can’t keep this up forever. Not for the rest of my life, and certainly not for the rest of the month! But what can I do? I’ve tried my best, and I keep on trying my best…but it’s just not good enough. I’m a party pony…now stuck in a world where party ponies…no longer get paid as much as anypony else. But where else do I belong? What else can I do for a living?
And why isn’t anything else I’ve tried working?"

In frustration, no longer caring about his aches & pains, he tossed the bed covers off and sat up on the edge of the bed. He took several deep breaths to clear his head, and worked his hooves through the tangled locks of his mane. No longer feeling comfortable in the bed, he got up, pace-trotted a few times to think…but coming up with no answers, he squatted on his haunches on the floor, and hung his weary head low.

Evidently, ‘re-inventing Cheese’ was proving more difficult than even he thought. Now it seemed, he had no other choice.
He would have to do as Princess Twilight said: trot down to Ponyville Town Hall and face the job board.

It was a leap of faith, he knew. But, better than a leap off a cliff into oblivion. He prepared to make his choice…

With that, Cheese Sandwich got up, squinted his eyes, set his jaw, and slowly trotted over to his room window. He could feel
the billowing of his old poncho, and the wobble of Boneless 2 on his back again, the snug fit of his old flat-brimmed hat, and
the feel of his old party-favor cigarillo clutched between his teeth...if only in his mind.


“Many a tough challenge this old hombre’ has faced…” said Cheese, back in his Colt Eastwood voice, “…but failure, giving up,
and suicide...are not on the list of options. Not for this pony! Okay, you ornery job board. Time for a showdown.
You and me, first thing tomorrow. Hmmm..... right after one more crack at making breakfast.


Cheese stared off into the distance, waiting for Luna’s Moon to set…and for the coming dawn…of Celestia’s Sun.


He could almost hear that familiar lone 4-note whistle and 3-note harmonica playing, in the background of his own mind.



[CONTINUED NEXT CHAPTER…]