They're... ON HOLIDAY?

by Nameless Narrator

Day 6 - Worky time cancelled!: 5/8

Having stopped before an obstacle made of pure horror and terrifying memories, 99380 narrows its eyes, back arched like a cat unable to decide between fight or flight.

No webby spinners anywhere, and yet…

The arrangement of seemingly sky-high nets separating several courts for tennis, squash, baseball, and other activities from the rest of the resort as well as each other is making the drone look around with warranted paranoia.

10013 said that there shouldn’t be many threats anywhere in this place, so… maybe this is all part of the… uhh, fun?

It doesn’t particularly smell of rot or remains here either.

However, knowing that webby spinners of various kinds usually come when their webs move, 99380 carefully pokes the net and immediately jumps behind a tree lining the road that led it here, one of many forming a neatly kept alley.

Nothing happens.

Hmm, the web wasn’t even sticky. Another try?

99380 pokes the net again, this time with more strength and without immediately jumping away. It’s its job to figure out if this is something that might harm other drones, after all.

Nothing happens yet again. Emboldened by the lack of visible danger, 99380 walks around the nets until it finds a hole leading through. Some more experimentation of darting back and forth in case this was some elaborate and patient ruse later, the drone has to admit that everything seems fairly safe.

So what is all this for then?

While webby spinner webs usually are heavy on patterns, 99380 has never seen anything this perfect, so it begins strolling through various separated rectangular sections. The floor of one is made of hard, red dust staining the drone’s hooves, another section has weird grass lookalike covering it.

99380 jumps backwards when its eyes spot a particular thing in the middle of the football green.

I KNEW THIS WAS A WEBBY SPINNER PLACE! AN EGG!

A brief look around reveals, once again, that there are no cave spiders of any variety approaching 99380 to melt its insides and suck them out. 99380 tilts its head.

This place is confusing…

With utmost care, it approaches the football left in the middle of the field.

*Poke!*

The ball rolls a bit.

*Stronger poke!*

This egg is extremely bouncy!

99380 chases the football quickly rolling away for a moment.

*Bonk!*

“Ehehehehehe!” 99380 follows the kicked football again before jumping on it with legs spread and rolling along, “Gotcha!”

Its ears catch the sound of a rock or a pebble grinding against the ground, and the drone immediately jumps behind the nearest cover, which is the ball itself.

IKNEWTHEREWOULDBELEGGYSPINNERS!

When it stops looking up the various surrounding nets, crouching 99380 finally notices a female griffon wearing a short, white skirt, a shade on her forehead, and carrying a squash racket, who is carefully approaching the drone.

“Hmmm, who or what might you be, little critter?” she mumbles to herself.

“I’m 99380, Miss!” the drone stops attempting to ineffectively hide behind the football, and sits up when it realizes there are no giant spiders coming yet again.

“Whoa!” her eyes widen, “It- you can talk?”

“Mhm,” 99380 nods, “You griffons and ponies use a lot of long words that don’t always make sense, but I know the basics.”

“So, nine- uhh-”

“99380, Miss,” the drone offers advice.

“99380, what are you doing here?”

“The Queen told us that the worky time was cancelled, I’m not sure if only today or for the rest of the trip, and that we should find things that could be fun or interesting to tell others back home about them.”

“The Queen- are you a guest here in the resort?”

“Uh huh!” 99380 nods, “We arrived two sleepy times ago after the big ship we were on sank.”

“Ohhhhhh, I see,” she nods, giving 99380 a quick bow, “My apologies then,” she giggles nervously, “I thought you were some critter that wandered here by accident.”

“Hehehe,” 99380 rubs its head, “The second part is kinda true. We had this map in our suite with a bunch of numbers and we split up to explore what those were. This was supposed to be a ‘sports area’ but all I see are these giant webby spinner webs and this egg,” it points at the netting surrounding every court before poking the football which rolls away, “No webby spinners, though, so it’s probably safe here. Unless…!” it looks from side to side meaningfully again, one more time proven wrong in its assessment that this is all a patient and elaborate trap, “Nevermind.”

As per usual when someone new is faced with a chatty drone explaining something, the griffoness’ eyes glaze over and she shakes her head when the explanation is done.

“This, umm, is the sports area,” she points her racket towards the ball, “You don’t have hoofball where you come from?”

“Hmmm,” 99380 checks the limited hive mind access it has this far from any high ranks, and shakes its head, “Nope. Is that what you call the egg thingy?”

“This isn’t an egg,” the griffoness shakes her head, puts her racket down, walks over to the ball, and dribbles it a few times against the fake grass, “This is a griffon-made ball. Catch!” she kicks it towards the drone without much strength.

The drone jumps at it again, catching it with all four legs and rolling along. When it stops, it rises up, smiling.

“I like this game! Catch!” it attempts to kick the ball back towards the griffoness, but for some reason the ball spins and rolls barely in her vague direction, “Huh? It ran away!” it points its hoof accusingly at the ball.

“It’s not as easy as it looks,” the griffoness chuckles as she runs over to the ball and stops it, “You wanna play then?”

“Sure!”

“Then stand over there,” she points at the goal, “The game is about me getting the ball inside the goal and you trying to stop it. If it crosses the white line, you lose and I win.”

99380 stops in the middle of the goal and looks up.

“Uhh, it’s kinda big…”

“It’s griffon-sized. I’ll go easy on you,” the griffoness smirks, “But if I were you I’d take a step or two forward. As I said - the ball can’t cross the white line.”

99380 stretches its legs and steps up, saying:

“Okay, I’m ready-” the ball whistles past with the drone barely able to raise its forelegs in the right direction, “Oh… wow… uhh… that was quick,” it takes the ball and kicks it towards its opponent again.

“I’m just sizing you up.”

The next kick sends the ball at a much slower pace, but still quickly enough for 99380 to fail catching it and it bounces off of it.

“Aww, goop! I failed to catch it again…”

“Told you, you just need to make sure it doesn’t pass the white line. Whether you catch it or just bounce it away it doesn’t matter.”

“Yaaaaay, then I won that time!” 99380 cheers up immediately and hops up and down in celebration.

“That’s score one for you and one for me,” she laughs, “Ready?”

It quickly becomes clear that, among other things, the drone’s size is making it near impossible to cover enough of the goal to be able to catch anything of decent speed, so the contest quickly turns one-sided. Things become much more interesting when they switch places and 99380 is allowed to shoot from a shorter distance, as the drone quickly learns to shoot pretty much wherever it wants. However, it still doesn’t have the strength to kick the ball quickly enough.

To the griffoness’ surprise, though, the drone doesn’t seem to be discouraged whatsoever and tries its best every shot, which keeps her interested.

“Alright, little guy. I might be way out of your league as far as hoofball goes, so let’s see if we can find some activity that makes us more equal, shall we?”

“Definitely! This is fun,” 99380 beams, “I gotta learn more games to show the guys back home.”

***

One of the two drones currently not suffering from existential dread is 99526, who is finding genuine serenity in walking through the mostly empty resort. Past the occasional bird screech or any other loud noise caused by the local fauna, that is. Still, so far it seems that none of the sounds signal an attacking monster coming its way, and it's slowly learning to tune those out.

As it’s walking along one of the concentric paths marking a level of the sloping resort, a new, high-pitched, repeating noise catches its ears, something it’s never heard before. It finds one of the many narrow paths leading down, and descends through a wall of vegetation onto a main road of a lower level, pausing when a strange sight greets it, unsure whether to flee, help, or… what?

An elderly griffon is sitting on a bench, surrounded by a large group of four-legged creatures smaller than the drone with long, raised tails who are making those weird noises. Contrary to 99526’s experiences from home, this bunch of grouped-up creatures doesn’t feel like a situation where the old and weak griffon ends up devoured by thousands of tiny teeth.

The griffon throws a small pile of brown objects on the concrete, which makes the creatures swirl around it, hiss at each other, and grab some with either their mouths or clawed paws.

“Gee, there’s enough for everyone,” the griffon chuckles and scatters more of the brown thingies which 99526 files under some kind of crunchy food.

That doesn’t exactly calm 99526 down, though, because that could mean the griffon isn’t something the swarm of creatures wants to eat but, from experience, drones are extremely crunchy. Still, the resort hasn’t been dangerous so far and it is supposed to be exploring, so 99526 gathers courage and starts sneaking towards the spectacle.

The creatures notice the drone almost immediately, briefly backing away before seemingly deciding that the food on the ground is more important, which alerts the griffon as well.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like you around here before…” he squints at 99526.

“Makes sense. I don’t think we drones have ever been so far from the hive before,” 99526 nods, sitting down several pony lengths away from the swarming creatures, one of which begins approaching it, “Uhhh, do those things eat changelings?”

“Cats? Don’t be silly,” the griffon lets out a crackly laugh before squinting again, “Hmph! Well I’ll be damned, a changeling on griffon soil…” he leans closer this time, “I thought you’d be bigger. The old stories say you were much bigger… with more teeth.”

“Ah, that must be the high ranks. They can be spooky,” 99526 nods knowingly, “We’re drones, we don’t really even bite anything… unless someone gives us noms.”

“Gives you what?”

“Umm, noms. We don’t normally eat your food but we can taste it for some reason,” 99526 shrugs, “and you have a whole bunch of weird, delicious things - noms.”

The griffon’s beak curves into a smirk before he beckons at 99526 to come closer, which the drone does, careful not to get too close to the group of cats eagerly waiting for the griffon to give them more dry food…

…which he offers to 99526.

The drone grabs the hoofful and experimentally eats one.

“Crunchy!” it beams, and munches the rest, “Thanks, Mister Griff- eep?!” it looks down where one of the cats starts licking the hoof with which it held the dry food, “Are you sure these don’t eat changelings, or at least drones? Back home, crunching noises never mean a good thing.”

A cat rubs its head against increasingly confused 99526.

“They’re cats,” the griffon rolls his eyes, “They either want to eat, play, or cuddle. They usually don’t warm up to new sights this quickly, though. Rub its belly,” his devious smirk returns.

99526 does so, and the cat rolls on its back, immediately grabbing its hoof with all four legs and starting to bite it. Thankfully, drone carapace offers more than enough protection, and after twitching its leg away at first and watching the cat’s eyes locked on it, 99526 lowers it again and lets the cat go to town on it. Strangely enough, to the drone at least, despite the predatory behavior there’s a weak stream of love seeping from the cat to the drone.

“Heh, the surface is weird,” comments 99526, “Looks like you can’t tell what’s dangerous and what isn’t. It’s much simpler in the tunnels - if it moves, run.”

“There’s nothing particularly dangerous in the resort, and the worst thing in the sea is the occasional stinging jellyfish. We can’t have the high-profile tourists getting hurt here, and there are a bunch of griffon and pony protections in place so that doesn’t happen. It’s different deeper in the jungle, due to the animals as well as the natives, but both groups leave you alone if you stick to the marked paths or hire a tour guide.”

“That’s great to hear,” 99526 briefly pauses, “I suppose there isn’t anything I can help you with, right?”

The griffon shrugs.

“Not really. I’m just relaxing with the cats before everyone wakes up and I get to open my store down on the promenade,” the griffon points and laughs at a larger cat which splits away from the group and unceremoniously flops on the concrete where sunlight manages to pierce the treeline, and begins licking itself, “Hah, look at that fatty. I might be overfeeding them, but they’ll need it for winter.”

“Winter- winter- oh, freezy time!” 99526 tilts its head in curiosity, “What happens in freezy time?”

“This isn’t a winter resort, and there isn’t much to do here in winter, so there are no guests, no money coming in, and not much food for vagrant critters,” the griffon nods to the cats.

“Gotcha! So you’re here all the time?”

With 99526 keeping the conversation about tidbits of island life going while sitting under the bench with the cats, time just flies by.

Author's Note:

Day 3659845, still no plot.

Comments

[ChakatRedstripe]

World building and existential dread is a good substitute for plot. Well either that or chrysalis running into both cadence and shining.. ;p

[Booster Spice]

If the beach resort closes in winter, need to have a good volcano mountain in the middle, and open a ski resort? Snow for fleshies, lava for Dragons?

[Morphy]

Isn't there a story or two where Chrysalis gets a whole mess of dogs/cats to get love when ponies are too difficult?

[Doctor_Den]

I was wondering: When the drones finish making figurines of characters for the game and Chrysalis accidentally discovers that there is also a figurine in her image. What will happen? Will Chrysalis get mad that her likeness is being used or will she be mad that the figurine doesn't capture her beauty well enough?

[Scyphi]

11389804
If there is, I haven't seen it, but it wouldn't surprise me if there's at least one out there.

[Nameless Narrator]

11390194
They can if they transform their insides so that they can.

[Nameless Narrator]

11389677
Oh hi, Shiny! Take a guess which drone is yours.
11389728
Also fleshies for peckish dragons.
11389804
No idea. My headcanon is that it wouldn't work, because the love flow would be too low and forcing more would kill the animals eventually.
11389844
That would probably depend on how well she slept that night. However, we'll get to why that's not a possibility soon enough.

[Nameless Narrator]

11390584
Who knows what's really going on?
11390595
MONSTERS!

[Two_Madmans]

Day 3659845, still no plot.

But there at least two...~

[Two_Madmans]

11389804
Don't think so, or at least I didn't read any. But there was an official comics where her hive ate love of some animals...

11389844
I think second, and then she orders to make more figures of her...~

[Nameless Narrator]

11391235
This is happening roughly during the time of Silver Sun where Cromach is forced to slaughter his original team that's turned into zombies, with Contradiction being the only one surviving. As for relation to Big Boss, Gem maaaay have recently figured out something about the concept of Silversmith and this might not be just a Blueblood antidepressant trip paid by ye olde Sunbutt.
11391266
I'm not THAT big on 40k minutia. What's being definitely-not-retconned this time? You know, after squats and Votann.