Day 1 - Shippy time: 7/9
Shortly after leaving the drone cabin with 99380, 99526’s stomach rumbles.
“Huh, that didn’t sound good,” the 99380 stops and looks at its friend, “You wanna share? I can still spare a bit of love.”
99526 shakes its head.
“I think it’ll be better if you keep exploring this place. We can’t disappoint everyone by both of us passing out somewhere. Go on ahead and I’ll try to see if there’s any love to scrounge up. Maybe I’ll ask if 93 has a little to spare. At worst, she’ll call me a dummy or something.”
“You don’t believe the veterans’ tales about us getting eaten for the smallest failure?”
“I do, I do, but all I’ve seen so far adhered to 387’s new rules, so I guess I’ll just go and face whatever is in the way like a proper drone.”
“Good luck then,” 99380 nods and heads further down the hall, “I’ll head up on the main deck. See ya.”
“Bye.”
As 99380’s hoofsteps eventually go quiet, 99526 feel more alone than ever before.
Come on, what’s the worst that can happen? Getting munched? Getting munched.
So… do I get munched for trying and failing or do I get munched for giving up and lying down?
Say what you want about all those silly things the veterans say about High Score, but if there’s an important piece of information it’s that it never gave up no matter the challenge.
99526 scrunches its face into a determined and highly boop-able expression before heading on and up to the deck with the cabins belonging to the noble or royal guests. It’s nicely quiet at this time of day, and the drone stops in front of 387 and 93’s cabin to take a deep breath.
Before it can knock, though, it notices a faint seepage of love through a door further in the hallway. It lowers its leg and starts heading towards the door which, to its eyes, is letting out a faint pink glimmer under it. When it’s less than halfway to it, the door opens, and a pony couple entirely covered in a pink cloud walks into the corridor before locking the cabin behind them and leaving in the opposite direction.
99526 beams and quietly follows them, absorbing any love left by their passage.
The stallion is a white unicorn with dark blue mane and the build of a warrior, but the drone’s attention is way more occupied by the mare. This is the first time 99526 has seen a pony with both unicorn horn and pegasus wings. Her coat is pink, her mane and tail are split into stripes of three colors - purple, yellow, and dark violet, and she seems to be the main source of the lingering love cloud now easily feeding 99526. The two are laughing and chatting, completely oblivious to the small drone following them, which is a state of affairs 99526 enjoys because it doesn’t want to bother anyone, and the indirect feeding is bound to take time anyway.
It follows them to the main deck where they get some drinks from the bar before heading off to the giant central pool. Across from it, the drone spots 99111 curled up under a deck chair occupied by the shower zebra reading a magazine. Inspired by how 99111 is safe and no one seems to be bothered by it being around, 99526 resumes following the couple with a little less sneakiness, which it regrets almost immediately.
A thick and muscular foreleg grabs it by the center of its barrel, raising it up.
SPINDLY CATCHER DANGER!
“Eeep!” 99526 bends and bites the leg but its dull teeth can’t do any real damage.
“Hey!” a rough voice warns it and a second foreleg spins the drone around. 99526 finds itself held with two legs by its barrel and staring face to face with a big earth pony sitting on his haunches who is wearing a breezy, dark blue vest with yellow SECURITY written on it, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Being spooked, Mister SECURITY!” 99526 goes limp now that its shocked imagination leaves the territory of tentacly ambushers or scratchy grabbers and returns to reality, “I wouldn’t have bitten you otherwise. Sorry. Did you need anything?” it gives the earth pony a quizzical look.
The security guard scoops 99526 with one bent foreleg again and approaches the duo that the drone has been following.
“Prince Shining Armor, Princess Cadance, may I have a moment?” he speaks up to get their attention.
“Is there a problem?” asks Shining Armor, immediately narrowing his eyes as he notices 99526.
“This changeling has been stalking you ever since you got up here,” he shakes 99526.
“Why were you spying on us?” Shining Armor’s tone lowers into a growl.
“Shiny, calm down,” Cadance puts a hoof on his shoulder.
“Your name is SHINY?!” 99526’s eyes bulge despite being completely ignored.
“Honey, I know things are supposed to be different these days but I still don’t feel comfortable about being stalked by a changeling and, after what Chrysalis did to me, I doubt I ever will.”
“I wasn’t spying on you or stalking you. I’m not an infiltrator,” 99526 opens its mouth, “See? No sharp teeth… or long legs… or a bunch of other scary and mean things. Imma drone. We dig and carry stuff, but I wasn’t doing that either- ooooh, so that’s why you’re asking! Sorry, it takes me some time to get things right,” it facehoofs, “I was kinda hungry and you two were leaving behind a trail of love so I was just following it. Your love is delicious.”
“You were feeding from us?” Shining Armor’s eye twitches.
“Mhm!” 99526 nods, “I didn’t mean to bother you at all but then Mister SECURITY here grabbed me. Speaking of which, I saw a bunch of other SECURITY guys yesterday. Are you from the same hive or something?”
As Shining aggressively opens his mouth, Cadance leans to him and whispers something into his ear which makes him pause.
“Are you sure?” he asks instead, “This can go horribly wrong.”
“Of course it can,” she pats him, smiling, before leaning towards 99526, “Little one, I’m not sure how I could feed you directly but I’m willing to learn.”
99526 shakes its head.
“It’s fine if I can just be around for a short while. I’m already feeling a lot better and I’ve been following you only for a few minutes since you left your cabin. You won’t even notice I’m there. Or I can go bring you something if you need. Carrying stuff, that’s what we do.”
More whispering between the two follows, and the security guard’s leg grips the drone tighter. In the end, Cadance nods at the security guard:
“Let the little guy go. I think this is all just a misunderstanding.”
The guard does so, and 99526 finds itself once again on all fours.
“As you wish, Princess. If there’s any trouble, Quest Security is there for you,” the guard bows and walks off.
“We’re off to have a swim,” says Cadance to 99526, “You’re welcome to stick around, and don’t worry, we won’t send you off for anyth-”
Shining Armor interrupts her by pointing a short, pencil-like wand made of pink crystal at 99526.
“Go grab us two mojitos,” he says firmly. When 99526 just sniffs the stick, Shining adds, “Show this to the bartender. It means the drinks are for us.”
“Ooooh!” 99526 takes the crystal, puts it vertically into its leg hole which closes over it before trotting off, wisely not mentioning the drinks that Shining Armor and Cadance already have.
A short moment later, the drone stops and looks back towards the duo already obscured by other ponies.
Goop. I should have asked where to get this mo-hee-toe drink. Oh well…
With a shrug, 99526 walks over to the first pony going its way and raises its foreleg.
“Excuse me-”
The pony ignores it.
Alright. I need to find someone who isn’t as busy.
As it looks around again, it spots a familiar face ascending the staircase leading down to the inner decks. Well, not a face per se, but a familiar writing.
This SECURITY unicorn’s coat is brick red, and he raises an eyebrow when he hears a quiet clearing of a throat, looks down, and faces 99526.
“Can I help you?”
“Where can I get a mo-hee-toe, please? I think it’s bigger than a less-hee-toe but I’ve never heard of that either,” as the guard’s jaw drops, 99526 expands the hole in its leg to show the guard the crystal it got, “Mister Shiny gave me this.”
Glorious Quest ignores the crystal and examines 99526’s foreleg instead.
“That’s a useful trick,” he says, “With the leg hole, I mean.”
“It sure is!” 99526 nods, “Umm-”
“The mojito, right,” Quest looks around before pointing towards one of the several bars around, “Looks like that bar’s offering it. It’s the green drink.”
“Oooohhh!” 99526 squints in the right direction, “I think I can see it. Thank you very much, Mister!”
“No problem,” Quest pats its head and walks off.
Less than five minutes later, 99526 is carrying one cup in a leg hole and hobbling on three legs, all that while balancing a cup number two on its head with just the biggest smile of success on its face.
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Cute
Now Im waiting to see which drone can work out it can hover whle carrying drinks in all 4 outstretched legs.
99526 has orders, got to carry stuff, and is helpful. Oh my gosh, Triple Win, this is like the best day ever!
At this rate, the drones will have to figure out how to make cup-holders without using their legs. Wait... use resin to make a saddle-cupholder thingy. Brilliant! And here you thought Starwars droids carrying the drinks and nibbles on plates around the space casinos was cute.
The drones barely got here and they're already being treated like unpaid interns x)
Ah! Hey Shining, hey Cadence. Enjoying your cruise so far?
It's sort of a pity I'm not a drinker myself, because I'd probably quote this every time I hear a mojito get mentioned from this point onwards.
Think there will ever be a fic where Shining Armor isn't a total racist jerk to changelings by default?
...nah, probably not.
11194533
Hard on the outside, soft on the inside.
11194548
I'd say that carrying four big drinks like that would be somewhat taxing for drones who barely fly as is, but it would be a fun attraction.
11194693
- The legendary drone hat trick.
- They just need one who can make its resin sturdy enough, or one whose can bond with materials and make them stronger like 17070 could. Minus the explosions. BB8 would have nothing on a changeling drone cartwheeling around with a closed drinking cup in a leg hole each.
11194845
They're getting a bit of love, so technically paid interns. Plus, at this point the situation of the hive changelings can only be described as tentative acceptance, co not being shunned is a win already.
11194893
- Pretty sure they were until getting stalked by a monstrous love-sucking, pony-replacing, rapist predator of pure evil!
- I used to drink rather heavily some ten years ago. These days I do it extremely rarely, but it's always some kind of interesting cocktail. Mojitos are not among them. They suck. Mint sucks.
- I wouldn't throw "racist" around Shining as quickly, because in his case the experience does excuse using the word bugger (not the british swear, no) during the first encounter or two. He's at the level where one just has to say "Yeeeah, I understand his sentiment and that it will take a good amount of healing before he stops saying that.". On the other hand, he respects Horatio Cross around this time and eventually accepts Boss' guys too. Now that I think about it, he already had this discussion with Cadance about Blazing, so let's say he's just wary of hive changelings due to Chrysalis.
11194917
Really, I was more just teasing the trend of how Shining's always the last one to come around to okaying the changelings in fics--if at all-- and how while it's totally justified, it has gotten a little predictable and old-hat over the years. But honestly, I don't know how else a fic writer could handle it anyway, so... 
Weeeeeeeeell, we could quibble over how any action that automatically assumes stereotypes such as that towards a creature as a truth, regardless of whether or not its justified, is still inherently racist at some level...but I hear you.
11194923
- I'd say that concern is shaped by thinking on the level of humans where, while mob mentality and localized social preconceptions are a huge thing, you can consider everyone more an individual rather than "a race member". In my eyes, changelings are specifically the species where this doesn't work by definition of them being a hive controlled from top to bottom the members of which are created to fulfill a certain purpose. We know that's not as much a case at the moment anymore, but Shining for sure doesn't. If it was against, let's say griffons, I'd agree with the racism/speciesism claim but not here, not from his POV.
- As for the predictability, yeah, but it's either that or him being OOC as hell or having a different story set chronologically earlier which would give him the experience to get over his trauma. And in such story, he would still begin as bitter/angry/cautios against changelings, so I don't think there's a way out of this other than "And Chrysalis planted a mental trigger in him which would make him like changelings no matter what.".
I'm having an idea...
A horrible idea... that I can't use in my verse anymore, I think.
Shining has a deep submissive streak that made him enjoy banging Chrysalis a ton, but now he has to pretend in front of Cadance that he hated it to retain his manliness.
DAMN IT, HEAD!
My mind went dirty when the security pony talked about the leg hole trick.
11194893
Shining isn't bad in Changeling Courtship Rituals. Cadence is the jerk in that one. Although I think it was just Chrysalis she didn't like and not changlings in general.