The formless entity known to the few initiated as a Dreamweaver locks on a group of minds intruding into the dreamscape.
"Outsiders..."
A much more powerful will wraps around the Dreamweaver, immediately issuing orders. The will of a 'young', even when going by the terms of the timeless reality of the place, entity that usurped the dreamscape.
"Break them! Set us free!"
"How?" the Dreamwaver, on some level, understands that the previously unknown creatures called 'changeling drones' already ruined a shard of the dreamscape someone else created for them.
"Split them up," replies the Tantabus.
***
31214 finds itself in a small room, sitting in a chair in front of a desk full of blinking and clicking things it has absolutely zero reference for. The only thing it can decipher with the limited help of the hive mind is that the piece of paper on the desk right in front of it has 'Play this first' written on it in a common pony script.
31214 takes the piece of paper, puts it to its mouth, and blows into it. Nothing.
"Do you mean... play drone ball? Like, you're the ball?" it crumples the sheet of paper into a ball and throws it. The ball bounces off of a glass thingy on the opposite wall that can't be a window because it's not see-through. This doesn't make anything noteworthy happen either.
On a second look, the paper was lying on a small, black rectangle seemingly filled with a narrow black foil wrapped on each side around a spinny thing connected to a hole. In the center of the rectangle there's a piece of paper with 'Instructions' written on it. 31214 blows into it. It fails to make any noise.
This requires further investigation.
"HA!" 31214 smiles triumphantly when it spots a box-like, open square thingy with two cogwheel-like protrusions sticking out of an indentation roughly the same size as the black rectangle thingy, "It puts the rectangle thingy into the rectangle hole-y... and the cogwheel holes fit!" 31214 presses against the raised part of the... uhh... thingy... and it... eats the smaller rectangle.
This is all new territory.
"Aww... all that thinky effort and still nothing," 31214 frowns, "What am I missing?"
Upon even closer examination, it finds some tiny raised squares on the rectangular thingy, each one covered with strange symbols. Carefully poking them reveals that only one seems to be able to move down, one with two triangles aiming to the right.
*Click!*
"Hello new hire!" a chipper voice comes from the black rectangle.
"Hi... black box thingy?" 31214 is standing on the chair like a spooked cat, its narrowed eyes locked on the box's spinning and humming insides.
"This is a training orientation cassette-"
"Hello train casket-" 31214 tries to communicate, but the thing seems to be ignoring him and just keeps going.
"-containing all the information a fresh-faced security guard might need in this job."
"Imma drone, I'm not a guard or warr-" 31214 tries again.
"Step one - watch the screens closely. If you see any movement, it means somepony got into the arcade and that you might be in trouble."
"Oh no!"
"Step two - the buttons on the control panel turn various features of the arcade on and off. Starting from left to right - door control-"
"What's a control panel? Where's left? Slow down, I'm a drone, we're not good with new things quickly-"
YOU ARE READING
They're EVERYWHERE!
FanfictionNo one really knows how many changelings were present during the invasion of Canterlot. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, it also means that the love explosion scattered them all over the surface of Equus. These are stories of their Queen and...
