They're EVERYWHERE!

by Nameless Narrator


1988, 9999: 10

Luckily for the duo of bark-eating drones, the trip to the poppy field was uneventful and the copy of Sawtooth’s map depicted landmarks well enough for 36658 and 57999 to not lose their way.

That is, until 57999 scouting ahead finds its progress forcibly stopped.

“Goop! There’s a barrier. Soft metal thingy,” it bumps into the metal ‘thingy’ and bounces off, “Tough but springy too. Must be magic!”

“Hmmm,” 36658’s hoof digs through the chain link fence without any resistance, cutting out an uneven hole, “We gotta grab this. Do you have any idea what we could trade all this for?”

“No?”

“MANY things.”

“Oh my holes! Soo… square metal thingy first, then popsicles?”

“Yup.”

With the chain link fence proving no match for the drones’ digging instinct, the duo quickly roll up the cut off fence and fasten it to 36658’s back with globs of goo.

The main objective comes next, and both drones mix eating the poppies with filling the two bags they got from Sawtooth. The field seems massive and the two bags get filled up soon. However, the duo catch barking from the distance followed by loud rustling quickly approaching them.

The drones clearly overstayed their welcome.

“Bitey woofers! Mozzarella it!” calls out 36658 when it notices a shape rushing through the plants.

“Woooow! You speak fancy?” asks 57999, dashing by its friend’s side and helping it by supporting the bulk of the bag.

“Mister Hacksmith told me so many things!”

Unfortunately, drones aren’t the best long-distance runners, and the loud noises closing the distance from behind are relentless.

“The woofers are too fast! I think it was their stash,” comments 36658.

“You can’t have a stash that’s not hidden! If it’s not hidden, it’s everyone’s!”

“Maybe they’re just bad at hiding stuff and we found their stash!”

That, indeed, would be breaking the unspoken drone code.

“Huh. Yeah, that would be against the rules. On the other hole, a pony will lose his leg if we give the pops back.”

“Got an idea! Let’s trade,” 36658 nods sideways, “You’ve got a fresh batch in you, right?”

57999 tosses a fresh hoofful of presumed agonyslayers the dogs’ way. Almost without thinking, the dogs lick all the scattered bits stuck to their muzzles without slowing.

At first, that is. A short moment later, the pursuit stops and the dogs drop on the ground.

“Hey, I think it worked!” cheers 36658.

“We should come back with the new tormentannihilators!” 57999 pauses, “Wait, we did! We ate all those poppers. I think they worked really well on the woofers.” 

“WHAT THE HAY HAPPENED TO THE DOGS?!” screams a new, furious voice in the distance.

“THEY’RE JUST SLEEPY!” yells 57999 in response.

“ARE YOU THE BASTARD WHO STOLE OUR FENCE?!” the voice continues.

“WHAT’S A FENCE?”

“I WILL FIND YOU AND GUT YOU, WHOEVER YOU ARE!”

“On second thought, we shouldn’t come back. Ever,” concludes 36658, “If they have more woofers, they’ll catch up.”

“How about the split tunnel trick? You take the bags and I draw them thataway!” 57999 points in a random direction.

“Great thinking!” 36658 stops in its tracks and 57999 immediately starts looking for a way to load the second bag on 36658’s back. The weight isn’t a problem, rather the size of the cargo. Hopefully, though, 36658 won’t need to run if 57999 does its job well.

“Thanks. Good luck, buddy!” whispers 36658.

57999 nods and darts north. Several moments later, it calls out to draw the pursuers’ attention away from 36658.

“Your plants are pretty! Can I get some more later?”

“YES!” replies the angry voice.

“Wait, really?”

“WITH ARROWS!”

“Hey, I want those- oh wait...” 

And the hunt begins anew.

***

In the changeling camp, 20100 has returned from its job helping ponies early, its return quickly explained by its shaky steps and sickly moaning. 

“Ughhh...”

“And what happened to you?” asks 1988, opening his eyes as his meditation, planning, and maintaining the hivemind gets interrupted.

“Too much wood- hurk!” 20100 throws up on the ground, and quickly begins digging a hole next to the mess.

“Oh right, you were trying to make paper. How did that go?”

“Blurrrgh!” this time, 20100 hits the fresh hole.

“If it makes you feel any better, you can’t make moving pictures with the water reed papyrus like you tried either.”

“...it doesn’t...” 20100 collapses on its butt.

“So… what went wrong? And don’t mistake my asking for caring, I’m just bored and too starving to maintain the hive mind and try to seduce a pony at the same time.”

“I ate too much… I think.”

“So you just ate a bag of sawdust and hoped for the best?”

“Yes? One sec- bluuuurhghg!”

“I see that’s your new puking hole. Right here in the camp,” comments 1988.

“I’ll fill it in afterwards. Don’t worry.”

“Maybe showing a basic level of foresight and finding a place away from the center of the camp when you first felt sick would have been better.”

“Hindsight is number-number,” groans 20100.

1988 sighs.

“Let’s get back to the core of the problem - you really just ate sawdust and hoped to throw up paper?”

“It works for 36658 and -hurk!- 57999!”

“Yeah, two drones of the same genetic strain found one another. These days, that’s basically a miracle. Do you even know if your digestion has any special properties?”

“What?”

“Look, you drones don’t have enough self-control and knowledge to make your digestion work the way you want. Holes, even I can do only basic manipulations with my resin and venom.”

“Then why do their tummies do exactly what they want?” pouts 20100.

“They got lucky that their interest aligns with their ability. That’s all. Or they simply discovered what their biology was good for and stuck to it.”

20100’s ears droop and its face turns into a picture of pure misery. At least until its eyes bulge and it throws up again.

“But I like moving pictures...” the drone mumbles afterwards, “So does everyone else.”

“Really? It isn’t just a passing fancy until you find something shiny?” asks 1988 skeptically.

“Nu-uh! Oops, exactly the wrong noise to make right n- blurghh!” 20100 resumes filling its hole.

“Then, just a passing thought because I doubt you drones are capable of learning anything this complex, how about you try making paper the right way? I mean, like the ponies do.”

“I dunno how the ponies do it. I asked Magic Lantern and he had no idea.”

“Well,” 1988 scratches his head, “You know I was stationed in Appleloosa, Dodge Junction, and the other backwater holes in the south including Klugetown, right?”

“Uhh, no?”

1988 facehoofs.

“Nevermind. Since those places are too far from the heavily industrialized north to import everything, they use simpler crafting methods for local products including paper. It’s not the smooth, white paper like the notepad the foal showed you. It’s yellow-ish, doesn’t last as long, cracks at the edges, and is more used as toilet paper than for books, but it could work.”

“I’m listening! Hurk! Wait no, I’m- bluuurghgh!” 20100 experimentally prods its belly, “I think that might be everything. Now I’m listening.”

“And as things would have it, I know how to make it.”

“Yay! Woohoo!”

“Given the right tools, obviously, and in a factory.”

“Much less woohoo but still a little bit yay,” 20100 remains positive. Something as simple as ‘a thing being impossible’ has no chance of dampening a drone’s day.

“It’s going to take some time and doubtlessly a lot of failures because it’s a multi-step process. Do you have any sawdust left?” asks 1988.

20100 looks at the hole filled with… mess.

“That?”

“YOU ARE NOT EATING THAT AGAIN!”

“Okay. Then I’ve got a bag over there,” the drone nods towards an uprooted tree in the back.

“Bring that here and don’t eat anything yet.”

The drone does so and sits down next to the bag, eagerly awaiting next instruction.

“Oookay,” 1988 digs in his memory, “The first part is simple - get rid of the useless part of the wood. You’ll need to adjust your stomach acid to be a little stronger and not add any resin to the remains. Grab a hoofful and try it.”

20100 carefully chows down the sawdust and swallows. After a moment of thought, it burps out a cloud of smoke and pokes its belly.

“I think it was too strong.”

“And what do we do when we fail?” 1988 gives encouragement a shot despite being fairly certain the drone has no chance of succeeding.

“We wibble?”

“No, we try again and adjust the variables. In this case - the stomach acid.”

20100 gives it a second shot.

And a third.

And a fourth.

On the fifth try, it throws up some kind of brown-ish yellow mess and proceeds to prod it.

“What’s that?” it asks 1988.

“It might be somewhere in the neighborhood of what you need. What you want now is to find a flat rock, roughly this big,” 1988 spreads his forelegs to indicate the dimensions, “It can be smaller if we don’t want to make standardized A5-A4 sheets-” he stops himself when the drone tilts its head, “Just find a roughly flat rock that’s at least three by three hooves in size.”

To his mild surprise, 20100 sits there for a while, rubbing its chin, before bolting away and returning shortly after, carrying a boulder of about half its own size on its back. 

“Here,” it drops it directly in front of 1988.

“And the flat part? You didn’t forget the flat part, right? Because there isn’t any flat part here,” 1988 taps on the rock.

“Nope!” 20100 beams, its hoof glows, and it digs. Its forelegs shear the rock as if molding soft clay, leaving behind an almost perfectly smooth surface in the matter of minutes, ”Ta daa!”

“How in all holes…?” 1988 taps into 20100 to measure how much love that stupid drone burned to make this and, to both his horror and amazement, discovers that it was basically none. If he tried that in his current state, he would be an empty husk. Holes, he might not even know how to do that.

“We’re made for digging,” 20100 shrugs.

“I guess so,” 1988 admits, “I’ve never even seen a warrior use a transformation like that and that would completely revolutionize changeling combat. Can you do that again while I’m tapped into you?”

“But the rock is smooth already.”

“Polish the side or something.”

“Okay.”

1988 enters 20100’s mind. A drone should be easy to read, and it is. That is, until 20100 begins the digging process. The infiltrator lasts for barely a minute before a headache forces him to withdraw and he has to admit defeat. What the drone is doing isn’t conscious. It simply wants to dig and its biology does… weird things. Maybe if he had enough love and time, he might be able to decipher the process but right now he’s smart enough to know he’s standing in front of a steep mountain without climbing gear, magic, or wings.

By the time 1988 recovers, 20100 has polished the rock into a cube, infuriating the infiltrator by spending much less love than him simply observing the process.

“Alright, that’s enough,” 1988 shakes his head, “You’re clearly made for this and I don’t have the resources to copy the process.”

“Yup, digging, carrying, and being delicious. That’s us!”

“Being delicious?”

“Why else would everything back home want to eat us?”

With a sigh, 1988 can’t stop himself from patting the drone’s head.

“Back to the topic of making paper. Make more of that weird stuff you threw up last time, enough to cover this rock with a thin foil.”

Attempt after attempt, the day goes by. Failure after failure, the drone keeps obeying the infiltrator without questioning. Eat wood, throw up weird brown stuff, spread on rock, let it dry, it cracks and breaks, 1988 thinks about an improvement. Over and over and over.

And yet, for no identifiable reason, neither of the two considers this a wasted day. 

***

17070 returns to the changeling camp by the evening, spots 1988 busy with 20100, decides not to bother them, and walks to the back with the one remaining Silent guarding hibernating 9999. The Silent watches as 17070 sits down by 9999 and boops it.

17070 smiles at the Silent.

“High Score is doing fine and no bits are missing. You’re doing a great job, buddy.”

The Silent simply tilts its head.

“Don’t worry about not being the smartest or understanding things. It’s not like most of us drones have any idea what’s going on. But hey, ponies don’t throw stuff at us, no one is trying to eat us, and Miss Ladle gives the best hugs. Wanna see?”

The Silent stares, clearly not grasping the concept.

“Like this!” 17070 walks over to the Silent and gives it a hug. The other changeling simply stands there, “You’re supposed to return it.”

It raises its forelegs and wraps them around 17070.

“Yay,” chirps the drone happily, “Now do you know who deserves hugs the most?” it wiggles out of the hug and points at 9999, “That guy! I would explain why but you probably wouldn’t get most of the words. High Score is just so awesome that normal drone words can’t even describe it. You’d need warrior words or maybe even infiltrator ones!”

Another head tilt.

“But you know what never fails? Hugs.”

With that, 17070 lies down next to 9999 and wraps its legs around it. Several moments later, grass cracks under the Silent’s hoofsteps as it lies down as well and simply throws one foreleg around the two.

“Nice first try, buddy,” mumbles 17070, “You’ll get there eventually.”

***

1988’s attempts with 20100 failed to produce anything resembling paper but they were slowly getting better. If changelings ever bothered to use wooden pulp tablets for writing, there was one drone who could easily supply them. However, the constant failures eventually evoked the “I know I’m too stupid to understand all you’re saying but please don’t be mad” phase in 20100 so 1988 decided to call it a day. The thing was that 1988 wasn’t particularly invested in the process, so the one who got gradually more and more mad at 20100 was the drone itself. 

After that, 1988 decided to wander through the pony camp to absorb some ambient affection as the ponies returned back after a hard day’s work. However, with them being visibly busy, he couldn’t do much more than eventually return back to the changeling campsite. 

He enters the camp at the same time as 57999, but before he can take stock of what the drones, who are now chilling out in a circle, did throughout the day, he notices something big that wasn’t there before.

“You didn’t get eaten, that’s so awesome!” 36658 charges straight at 57999 entering the camp, and tackles it to the ground.

“Woop woop!” 57999 nuzzles the drone atop it.

“WHERE IN ALL HOLES DID YOU STEAL THIRTY PONY LENGTHS OF A CHAIN LINK FENCE?!” screams 1988 after examining the rolled up object 36658 tried to unsuccessfully hide in its stash between the roots of the uprooted tree.

“So thaaat’s what the voice was angry about,” 36658 and 57999 exchange knowing glances.

“That’s not an answer!” 1988 stomps over to the duo and, in all his slender height, looms over them. 

“We had to get poppers to save a pony’s leg,” explains 36658.

“I wasn’t asking about the poppies, Triage stopped me when I was walking around. Congratulations, by the way, there’s a big chance the pony will walk again on all fours-” 

“IT’S A SMALL STEP FOR A PONY, BUT A HUGE SUCCESS FOR THE DRONE KIND!” 36658 and 57999 exchange a high one.

“Don’t celebrate yet, I can still do unspeakable things to you if you stole the fencing from the camp.”

“We didn’t steal it!” 36658 corrects itself, “Uhh, I mean from the ponies,” it corrects itself again, “Uhh, the camp ponies, I mean. This was between us and the poppies so we had to clear the way.”

“THIRTY. PONY. LENGTHS!” 1988’s eye twitches.

“It looked useful and was super easy to roll up,” 57999 beams at 1988.

“GRRRAWRHGLBLGLGLL!” the infiltrator’s eyes bulge as an incoherent scream of frustration leaves his throat.

Nervously but in perfect sync, both drones lean backwards.

“Do you want a tormentannihilator?” asks 36658, “They’re super calming. Medical lady spent a long time poking her patient in an open wound and he didn’t say a thing. And poking around under our carapace really hurts, we know that. We even gave a small tablet to 20100 earlier since it felt super sick. And we tried them too just for effect. Makes things totally painless. I smacked 57999 with a stick. All properly tested!”

“Torment- poppies-” 1988 suffers a minor aneurysm as he finally connects everything and realizes why all the drones around are barely reacting to his possibly unjustified anger, “ARE YOU ALL BUCKED UP ON SOME PRIMITIVE VARIANT OF HEROIN?!”

“Yeah! Medical lady totally called us heroic!” 57999 nods with enthusiasm.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH-?!”1988 stops screaming as he reflexively gulps when something lands in his open mouth, “You didn’t just throw a heroin, morphine, or any other derived opiate in tablet form into my mouth. Because if you did, I’d have to peel off your carapace and-”

“Nope!” 36658 shakes its head, beaming, “It was just a tormentannihilator, no heroics or morfeus.”

1988 facehoofs, but the sudden rush of peace stops his desire to crack the drone in half like a wishbone in its tracks almost instantly.

“And it works on changelings...” he mutters, facehoofing, “Because of course it does. You tested it...”

“Well duh.” 36658 shrugs, “Wouldn’t be much use otherwise.”

“Holes damn it!” 1988 shakes his head and unsteadily walks away.

36658 and 57999 exchange worried looks.

“Did we do… bad?” asks 57999, its ears drooping.

 36658 pats its head with a forced smile.

“Hey, we saved a pony from leg pegging, and if we’re about to get nommed, it was all my idea anyway because Miss Triage asked me to help.”

“I dun want you to get nommed!”

*Sad wibble!*

“It’ll be fine,” 36658 closes its eyes in its moment of zen, “You know all the healy goop tricks like I do. You can do what I can do. If anything happens, just help medicine up everyone who needs it… even high ranks.”

“CHEER UP PILE-ON!” yells 20100 out of nowhere, immediately pouncing on 36658. 

57999 joins in. 17070 doesn’t hear the call to hugs, but is familiar with the signs, so it lands on the small pile of drones with only a slight delay. Seeing that 36658 isn’t cheering up enough, 57999 frowns.

“This doesn’t have the effect it used to with only four of us here,” it comments and translates the message into a mental version for 17070.

“I know what will make this work!” 17070 sits up, being the king of the pile, “Gimme a sec!”

It trots off.

It trots back with 9999 on its back, followed by the Silent, and throws 9999 into the pile.

“Now you!” it taps on the Silent’s head and points at the pile.

The Silent looks around quizzically, but it seems to get the idea as it slowly walks over to the pile, sits down, and leans its side against the nearest drone.

“DRONE BALL!” 17070 yells in victory, jumping into the pile again while taking care not to land on the now rather fragile 9999.

“What the holes are you doing?” asks 1988, returning with a bug zapper hooked into a leg hole.

“Cheer-up pile for 36658!” replies 20100, “And we threw High Score in so that it didn’t feel left out.”

“Idiots, it doesn’t feel anything right now,” 1988 shakes his head, walks past, and hangs the bug zapper on a low-hanging branch, “Since you two saved a pony’s leg, 17070 actually got us some love, and 20100… probably learned something, you can have your shiny right here and watch from your friendship pile.”

“Nu-uh!” the drones shake their heads as one.

“I’m sorry. What?” 1988 pauses, “Aren’t you, like, hooked on it?”

“Not when it’s off,” says 36658.

“I was just going to turn it on-”

“NO!” the drones say as one again.

“I mean, there’s just a button in the back-” 1988 reaches behind the zapper.

“Only Shiny Bringer brings shiny! We named it like that so that everyone would understand. Cheat shiny is goop shiny,” 20100 pouts while all the others nod. Aside from 9999, obviously.

1988 glares, and slowly lowers his hoof.

“Weirdos,” he shakes his head and lies down.

The drones exchange glances.

“Cheer up pile?” whispers 17070.

“CHEER UP PILE!” the others yell, and 1988 finds himself buried under a chitinous avalanche. With the tormentannihilators sapping away his desire to do anything, he just sighs again and closes his eyes.

The final thing he feels before drifting off is a faint ‘thud’ from somewhere on the left as the Silent brings 9999 on the pile and plops itself and the majestic Shiny Bringer down as well.