They're... ON HOLIDAY?

by Nameless Narrator

Day 5 - Standard procedure: 7/8

The workshop remains busy, with Trixie measuring and sawing planks of wood using a table saw, 99111 following her every step and watching what she’s doing with complete fascination, and 20100 sitting on a chair by the two chemistry tables in the front, staring intensely at a glass bowl with sizzling powder inside it.

*POOF!*

“Eep!” 20100 falls backwards alongside the chair it’s been sitting on as the black plume of smoke bursts out of the bowl.

Exactly like when they originally entered the place.

“NO!” Trixie screams with frustration, but has the presence of mind to turn the spinning saw off before darting towards the chemistry table and taking the bowl off, “Damn it! It’s ruined again. I told you to watch it!”

20100 sits up on the floor and proudly nods.

“I did! I saw the entire thing,” it reports, “First, it started hissing. Next, the center turned black-”

“I told you to tell me when it started sizzling!”

“Umm, you didn’t?” 20100 scratches its head, “You just told me to watch it. I’d remember. We have a very good memory.”

“Trixie didn’t?” taken aback, Trixie returns to her third person reference.

“Nu uh,” 99111 shakes its head in support of 20100.

“Are you sure?”

“Mhm!” both drones nod in sync.

“Crap…” Trixie picks the fallen chair up, sits down on it with a long sigh, and buries her face into her hooves, “This was supposed to be the gig that sets me up for years…”

“Umm…” 20100 peeps, raising its foreleg, “Can you please explain what I did wrong? I’ll try not to do it again. I don’t know all your pony expressions, so maybe I misunderstood something about watching-”

“No…” she moans, adding in a whisper, “Just another small screw up in a life of big one.”

“If it’s about the dust,” 20100 keeps trying, “I can ask 36658 or 65536 to ask Miss Gem if she doesn’t have more you can borrow. She’s a very nice zebra lady.”

“That’s not the point,” Trixie groans, “I could buy the ingredients to make it myself in the city. It’s not particularly difficult, but I don’t have any bits because almost everything I had sank with the cruise ship!” gritting her teeth, she stands back up in a way that looks as if she was carrying a heavy weight all over her. Strange, for someone as skinny as her, at least according to the drones, “Get it together, Trixie. This won’t be the first time you had to service griffons to earn some cash and it probably won’t be the last. Even the pony royals are into some barely legal, kinky shit, and there’s a bunch of them here. You just… you just have to… delay the performance, find some make-up to cover the bruises later, the usual. It’ll be okay. You haven’t starved so far, and this is a long way off from the worst situation you’ve been in.”

“Miss Trixie?” despite her incoherent rambling, 20100 did overhear one critical thing, “Did you say you needed bits?”

Trixie looks at it with mild surprise, as if not expecting the drones to still be there.

“Pony bits, griffon coinage, and time. Unfortunately, To get the former, I need the latter-” her explanation is interrupted by the two drones looking at each other without any audible communication, nodding several times, and smiling, “What are you doing?”

“If you need shinies, 20100 can get you some,” 99111 nudges the other grinning drone.

“The Great And Powerful Trixie is listening with extreme suspicion,” Trixie raises one skeptical eyebrow.

“It’s hard to believe, but I swear we tested it on the ship a bunch,” 20100 speaks out carefully, “I can, umm, always win at things that have a random chance of that happening.”

“What…?”

“It’s true!” 99111 nods, “It won so much at the ship’s casino that they sent big scary ponies to kick us out but then some paladin friends came and told them that would be super against the rules so we had to promise not to trade the chippies back for shinies but to spend them. It only lost when one of the paladins cheated at the spinny table, but he admitted it and said it was just a test so that’s okay. We had thiiiiis many!” 99111’s forelegs trace the shape of a pile much bigger than itself in the air.

“And the map we had in our room said that there was a casino in this resort too. If there are spinny machines there too, I can get you some shinies! I just need one for the first spin, and I gotta be careful not to win too much,” 20100 pauses, “Ummm, and probably a small bag. Stuffing too many shinies into my leg holes makes walking kinda hard. Can’t bend my leggos properly and all.”

Trixie stares at the earnest expressions of both drones.

“You’re not joking, right? That actually happened… I heard someone talking about it,” Trixie twitches and facehoofs before grabbing a small pouch hanging by a strap from a chair in the back and giving it to 20100, “There! Trixie doubts her day can get any worse, and the food here is free, so the difference between zero bits and five bits is nil.”

20100 grabs the pouch and puffs out its chest in determination.

“I won’t let you down!” it glances 99111’s way, “You coming?”

99111 shakes its head.

“Unless you need me, I’d rather stay here and watch all this,” it circles its foreleg around to point at all the work Trixie has been doing, “It’s fascinating, you know? Making useful stuff out of scraps? Not having to find the right drone who can make the kind of goop you need but being able to use sticks and rocks and anything you can find,” as it talks, a smile grows on its face, “Anyone back home would be able to learn this,” it freezes, “Awww, but 10013 said we should stick together…”

“Ah, that’s fine!” 20100 waves it off, “We’re both helping Miss Trixie. 10013 didn’t mean we should, you know, stick together. 99641 isn’t even on this trip and it has the stickiest goop I’ve ever seen. I’ll go check out the casino and you go on learning stuffing!”

“Stuffing?” Trixie asks weakly, still stunned from what just happened.

“Making stuff,” explains 99111.

As Trixie helplessly facehoofs, 20100 trots out of the workshop and, when the heavy metal door closes behind it, 99111 hops on the chair to reach Trixie’s height.

“So, how can I help you until 20100 comes back with the shinies?”

***

“It sucks having to make hinges out of wood,” Trixie puts the file she’s been levitating to the side, next to many others of varying roughness. When she hears the clip-clop of 99111 completely mesmerized by the entire process and sees it bringing yet another square of plywood ready to be sawed into planks, she shakes her head, “This won’t do. Plywood is just sawdust pressed together really hard. A hinge made of that will break immediately. We need real wood,” looking around at the cabinets containing various free-to-use tools or natural resources, she frowns when she doesn’t find anything useful, “Go check the main storage room. Look for anything looking like a wooden log or a beam. Do you know what those are?”

“A piece of a tree trunk and a big smile.”

Trixie’s eye twitches.

“Yes. Find me some tree pieces.”

She sits down and wipes the sweat off of her forehead. Constant woodworking over the past hour and a half has been taxing, but the changeling help with hauling raw materials did wonders to save her stamina.

When they say they’re good at carrying things, they mean it.

As if on cue, 99111 arrives, balancing a de-rooted tree stump of its own size on its back.

“Where do you want it?” it asks.

“On that empty table,” Trixie points to a yet unused workbench. 99111 shuffles over and stops.

“I think I have a problem. This thing is too heavy to fly with,” when, with some trickery where the drone slides the stump on crouching Trixie’s back and then from her onto the workbench, it asks, “What’s next? How do we make whatever that binge thingy is?”

“Give- give me a moment to- to catch my breath,” Trixie gasps for air, “Do I… look like… a powerlifter… to you?”

What are these drones made of? This would exhaust a normal earth pony if they had to carry it for longer, and this one isn’t even breathing faster.

“You lifted that stump very powerfully!” 99111 attempts encouragement, only to earn a tired glance from Trixie whose face is clearly visible due her mane tied into a bun for safety around rotating tools, “I mean it! We would normally do this in a pair if we didn’t have a ramp.”

And it means every word it’s saying. Unbelievable. Or it’s making fun of me and it’s among the best liars I’ve ever met. Also possible because, well, a changeling.

“Of course. The Great And Powerful Trixie is no ordinary unicorn,” she says when she can speak without wheezing again.

“Eeeeee!” 99111 claps its hooves together repeatedly. To Trixie’s own surprise, seeing someone looking at her with eyes filled with wonder just like during one of her shows lifts her spirits which, in her current situation, she thought impossible.

“As a reward, the Great And Powerful Trixie will now show you, small changeling basking in her presence, how to make wooden hinges, which she may or may not have done many a time to fix her humble mobile abode,” she whirls a cape she doesn’t have anymore, and briefly levitates a hoof-held saw before pausing, putting it back down, and lifting a saw for two, the end of which stops in front of 99111’s face who blankly looks at it, “You didn’t think that you’d just be watching Trixie do all the work, did you?”

“WHAT DO I DO?! WHAT DO I DO?!” 99111 jumps up and down, smiling wide enough for a horror movie.

“Pull up a chair. You need to be able to reach above the desk at least. This is a griffon saw, so it’s not great if you know only how to use a mouth-”

Griffon talons immediately grow on 99111’s foreleg and grab the handle.

“-cheatingbastard-”

“Huh?”

“-The Great And Powerful Trixie said ‘good job’,” Trixie walks around the table and takes her place opposite the changeling. This is obviously unnecessary for telekinesis, but it’s better to measure the cut, “Now put the saw blade on the wood and pull towards yourself. Just pull, no need to use force to push it down.”

“Eee! It jumps!” 99111, sitting on a chair, covers its eyes but doesn’t let go of the handle.

“Yes. Your job is to keep it in contact with the wood but not push it down too much,” she pulls the saw towards her.

“It snuck away! That’s spooky.”

“Yes, yes. Now pull it back.”

“Wheee!”

“And now we’re going to do this until we saw the stump all the way through.”

***

20100 returns after noon. The workshop is still empty barring Trixie and 99111 who stop doing whatever arcane process they’ve been doing. At least Trixie does. 99111 rushes towards 20100, chattering like a machine gun:

“Wemadeaboxwemadeastandingboxoutoftotallynothingbutnottotallynothingthereweresticksandplanksandwecan-”

It gets picked up by a shimmering magical bubble when the blue unicorn notices that 20100 raises a bulging pouch and jingles it as demonstration.

“YOU ACTUALLY DID IT?” Trixie trots past 99111 happily chattering away inside the floating bubble, unbothered by not making any noise, “There’s not rocks or chocolate money or anything like that in there, right?”

Without waiting for an answer, she snatches the pouch at the same time she drops 99111.

“-andwe’reabouttomakesomethingcalledahingethatmakesthewoodenplanksspin!”

“Sounds interesting!” replies 20100 with a smile, “Pity I missed all that.”

Trixie stops staring into the open pouch with a dropped jaw, and looks at the changelings sitting side by side again, face reddening.

“Enough! Stop!” her raised voice makes them look at her, puzzled, “I can believe you somehow got me the money you promised. I don’t care what changeling magic you used, but I REFUSE to believe you understood the word salad that one-” she points at 99111, “-spewed out IN ADDITION to that it kept saying INSIDE MY NOISE CANCELLING BUBBLE!”

“That’s the problem?” 20100 waves its hoof dismissively before tapping on its forehead, “Mind links. That’s the most basic thing we do most of the time.”

Trixie deflates, eye twitching uncontrollably as she walks back to her workspace with the filled pouch.

“I see…”

“Yeah, that’s nothing,” 20100 trots towards the doorless plywood cabinet Trixie and 99111 built so far and pokes it, “This, though… you made this outta bits and pieces and now it’s a proper box. That’s so much more interesting!”

“I give up,” Trixie shakes her head and shrugs, “You’re magic, and not the kind of normal, everyday magic. Help me clean up here for now. We’ll continue building my props later, but first I need to get my chemistry ingredients.”

Comments

[anunenka]

Plywood is just sawdust pressed together really hard.

Eh... that's more of a description of MDF. Plywood is cross-laid sheets of wood... though I guess some of the sheets could be wood chips sealed together.

[Kiue Jin]

You know, if the Hive really wanted to profit from the drones, they would rent them out.

[Scyphi]

“You’re magic, and not the kind of normal, everyday magic."

I suppose that's as good a layman's summary of 'ling abilities as any, all right.

11345962
Don't give Chryssi any ideas--I could see her exploiting the heck out of that for her own gain, not so much the drones. Though admittedly, the drones would probably love it anyway.

[Booster Spice]

I watched these three bowls like you told me.

But theyre empty.

Well, the first one bubbled and dissapeared, the second bubbled, turned red then dripped out the bottom, and the third one bubbled, turned purple, grew a load of eyes, started dinging and then blobbed out, accross the floor and into the drain.

[Nameless Narrator]

11345929
Okay, I did some more digging and translating, and what I really meant was something called 'a chipboard' which is a term I never heard before. So, let's not chalk it up to me being a dumbass who didn't do enough research in time, rather to Trixie not being a woodworking specialist.
Haha, writing is easy! It's the character that's wrong, not me!
11345962
Get you drones here! Freshly hatched ones! Barely even traumatized! No visible bite marks!
11346144
- Trixie is a a bit proponent of "If it isn't broken, don't fix it."
- And business would work until a soulless corporation got into it and started downright exploiting them. Working for minimum hugs, only one allowed cuddle session per day, and so on.
11346430
Egg sackly!