99526 is staring at a heavily-built griffon wearing a white shirt and a hat associated with the ship's staff. Said griffon is operating some completely unknown machinery situated by the railing in the back of the cruise ship, enjoying the relative quiet and seemingly not particularly bothered by the changeling’s presence.
There are two reasons why 99526 is here.
The first one is that it’s never seen a griffon before, and the hive mind tooltip only said [Aggressive, to be avoided]. On the other hole, no one on the ship was to harm the changelings, supposedly, and despite the warning, the griffon didn’t throw anything when he first saw 99526, nor did he yell at it to go away. Such a discrepancy needed to be rectified, and maybe reporting a misleading hive mind tooltip would earn it a point or two.
The second reason is the main one. Next to the griffon sits a heavy box with steam coming out of it from which 99526 can smell ringy chompers. Ringy chompers are always bad news - you see a ring on the water and if you don’t react immediately you get chomped. Those monsters being anywhere on the ship could be the worst thing ever and would make curling unplayable.
“Hello, Mister griffon!” 99526 finally gathers the courage to speak out, “Why are you putting ringy chompers into a box?”
“Ring what?” he only looks back at the drone carefully circling the ice box, rotating the drum of a stationary winch, “Hey, leave that alone! That’s for the Manehattan griffon ambassador.”
99526 stops trying to peek over the edge of the ice box.
“Are those… dead?”
“Yeah. Pretty hard to grill them when they’re still alive,” replies the griffon, finally pulling out a small net containing several more ringy chompers.
“Phew,” 99526 lets out a sigh of relief before trotting over to the griffon who empties the net on the floor and starts picking out some of the caught fish. Freshly caught fish, “AAAAH!” 99526 jumps backwards when the nearest ringy chomper flaps one final time before remaining lying limp on the floor, “Be careful or they’ll eat you!”
The griffon raises an eyebrow, meaningfully slitting the throat of a fish with a talon and letting it bleed out before tossing it into the ice box.
“Did you need anything or are you just here to freak out over herrings?”
Gasping for air, heart beating, and shaking from adrenaline, 99526 glares at the small, now motionless, fish. A rather small fish, now that it thinks about it.
“Those… those are kinda… small. Does that mean… they don’t eat… changelings? The ringy chompers I know about can bite a drone in half, or at least take a leg off easily.”
With the icebox now full, the griffon seems to be done with its selection process. He grabs one of the remaining herrings and lobs it into the air. A seagull swoops down from a cloud of them hanging above the ship’s rear, catching it before any other can.
“We eat them,” is all the griffon says, “And so do they.”
99526 carefully approaches a dead herring and slowly pokes it with the tip of its hoof. When it doesn’t move anymore, the drone looks at the griffon who grabs a different one and throws it to the circling birds again.
“Can I do that too?” asks 99526.
“I don’t know, can you?” the griffon shrugs. 99526 has no clue how to read an expression of someone with a beak, but the griffon’s eyes look on the border of amusement.
99526 loads a fish into its leg hole and lobs it as hard as it can. The arc is significantly lower than the casual throw of the griffon, and 99526 rushes over to the railing to take a look at the fish falling back into the sea.
And whoosh!
With only the smallest splash, a seagull catches it just before it hits the water, prompting a happy ‘Eeee!’ from the drone as well as an approving clap.
“If you want, you can throw the rest to the birds too. They’re not fit for grilling,” the griffon hefts the icebox onto its back, “Guests often do that. I’ll be back in ten to clean the deck.”
“Thank you!” replies 99526 politely, grabbing another fish to throw.
The griffon leaves.
As 99526 fails another throw and leans over, its eyes catch a floaty lagging behind the ship like one which Miss Cadance showed it yesterday. It’s barely visible, though, being the same color as the sea water. 99526 could swear there’s someone holding onto it, but no one is calling for help or anything, so it’s probably fine.
Now, if these aren’t ringy munchers then we don’t have a name for them, but I don’t know what those do to name them properly, so let’s stick to the griffon name.
After throwing the rest of the herrings to the birds, 99526 grabs the mop which the griffon left behind and starts wiping the deck.
***
“Points, points, pointy points,” mutters 10013 to itself as it wanders through the corridors of the ship, “Be helpful, don’t make the high ranks refill you, or do something special for the hive. Come to think of it, what do ponies do here all day? High Score, give me a sign!” 10013 pauses, looks around, and when nothing happens it adds, “Please?” with a chuckle and shaking its head, the drone passes a staircase next to which hangs a sign reading [Schedule] under which there’s a long list filled with writing.
Good thing I helped the Potatoes with designing High Score’s memorial so I don’t have to tap into anyone to read this.
“Thanks, buddy,” 10013 looks at the floor, “I hope the great gablonk is full of shinies today.”
Satisfied, 10013 reads the sign.
“Oooh, light show on the main deck!” it slowly deciphers the writing closest to its head, unfortunately, it’s the one on the bottom of the list, “21:00 - uhh, hive mind?” in response, the hive mind translates the military time to the time of the day in a way the drone can understand, “Ah, close to pony sleepy time. Alrighty,” it flies up to the beginning of the list, “Lecture, public - griffon customs and etiquette, lecture, public - a brief history of Crystal Empire, lecture, public-”
> Translation: Story time for everyone.
“-ah. Oooh, Presentation, public - Life and times of Gusty the Great-”
> Translation: Story time with pictures.
10013 drops on the ground again.
All these storytimes sound pretty interesting. Maybe learning about other places could be useful for points too?
***
36658 has been tracking 20100’s hive link in order to secure an ally in the great war for points. Also to ask if 20100 has any ideas on how to gain these elusive things, because, so far, the daily life on the ship didn’t have a place for a drone looking for work aside from their stroke of luck yesterday.
“Whatcha doing?” it asks, finally finding the drone in question curled up on the roof of a tall, multi-story establishment covering the back third of the main deck.
“Drawing!” replies 20100, showing the picture of a sunrise done in pencil that would bring a tear to the eye of any master painter.
“No point gathering?”
“Nope. I asked around and everyone I met said they were busy,” 20100 shrugs, “So I decided to get started practicing on backgrounds for my new moving picture set about High Score.”
“Oooh, what’s it going to be?”
“I’m not exactly sure yet. I was thinking about what 99111 said and I wanted it to be a little more grounded but still awesome.”
“More grounded you say? How about the one about when High Score carried an important but super fragile egg, it didn’t walk and bob up and down, but instead it carefully moved the world with its legs while staying in one place?”
“How was that more grounded?” 20100 gives it a skeptical look.
“It’s set back at home, so it’s undergrounded!”
“Huh, I can see the logic, but, you know, did that really happen?”
“Well…” 36658 rubs its chin, “Who can say that it didn’t, right?”
“The queen or the high ranks. You know, the same changelings whom High Score would stop from munching us forever if it could do everything you say.”
Faced with such resistance from a long-time friend, 36658 grabs 20100 by the shoulders and looks it in the eyes.
“High Score saved my life. High Score saved your life. High Score saved the lives of many drones. I don’t want it to be forgotten, which will happen if I just say that it was a drone who got the highest rank by being the smartest and the most skilled. We -the drone we, not us we- need more than that, buddy.”
“Will you listen to me if I say something that’s borderline 99111-ish or will you just hear what I say and ignore me?” 20100 gently pushes 36658 back.
“You’re my buddy, 20100. Of course I will!”
“Then don’t you think you’re pushing High Score away from us drones by those over the top stories?”
“Uhhh, I don’t understand.”
“Wasn’t the whole point of spreading the word about High Score showing the newly hatched drones what they can become instead of… all this? I don’t even know what to call what we’re doing these days. I didn’t want to hurt you, but I kiiinda understand where 99111 is coming from.”
36658 stares, opens its mouth, closes it, stares.
20100 sighs, adding:
“I’m sorry, buddy. I for sure don’t think 99111’s way is right either, but I think there should be a middle between the two of you. You want a picture? I drew a huge, scary, unicorn lady I saw swimming in a pool earlier. She glowed!” it flips the pages of its notepad to show 36658.
36658, however, turns around and starts walking away.
“I’m… I’m just gonna go… wibble… in the corner somewhere…”
20100 flips the notepad to a fresh page, ignoring the incomplete sunrise picture, and starts drawing a perfect likeness of 9999 from memory.
High Score will reveal to us the right path, we just have to be patient and never give up on looking. I know, deep in my noggin, that you and 99111 will figure out a way that will make us drones stronger and better than ever.
***
As 36658 wanders through the bowels of the ship, now emptying due to everyone enjoying themselves on the main deck again, a hive link communication it would expect the least arrives in its head:
“Finally!” says 99111, which is followed by a mental marker appearing on the hive mind map, “Look, Miss Gem is looking for you. That’s the nice zebra we met yesterday in the showers. She said it was something about making agonyslayers. I warned her about you being a violent meanie, but her business sounded important.”
Even 36658 has to admit that aimlessly walking around like it’s been doing for the last hour is leading nowhere. On the other hole, the one presenting the information is the ultimate heretic.
“...thanks…” it forces out, changing its direction mid-step towards the new marker.
Hesitant silence fills the mental connection, and after a moment, 99111 asks:
“Are you okay?”
36658 ponders it for several seconds. It understands 99111’s and 20100’s and now probably everyone’s concerns, but… but none of them seem to understand or want to understand its position. Could it be because it’s in the wrong?
I wish I knew the big words and how to string those together to help me explain all this properly. This isn’t about us, this is about the future.
“...I don’t know…” it replies and cuts off the connection.