Gloom and 99200 should reach the greenhouse in only a couple minutes when the drone suddenly sits up and its breathing quickens.

“Anything wrong?” whispers Gloom, slowing her casual trot down into a quiet walk and focusing on controlling her breathing.

“Just a moment,” says 99200 in a normal volume, which Gloom reads as whatever made it tense up isn’t related to their surroundings, and picks up the pace again. A couple of heavy seconds later, 99200 speaks again, this time in a distant, stunned tone, “Something we’ve never seen before invaded the High Score Cavern and destroyed High Score’s statue.”

“Luna’s stars!” gasps Gloom, familiar with 9999’s sacrifice in the dreamscape while saving Luna from the Tantabus in the chaos post-changeling invasion from the retelling of events by both the Princess herself as well as 65536. That statue was the symbol of dronekind’s change from disposable tools into a civilization as well as the major changes in the hive itself that followed.

What sort of creature would the drones not know about when everypony said the top levels were safe? What would destroy a statue, though, and why?

The memory of the encounter with the invisible ‘thing’ returns, making Gloom shudder.

“Did anypony catch what the monster looked like?” she asks.

“It was huge! I’d show you but you ponies don’t have hive links. I guess you need at least some disadvantage since you’re nice and warm and fluffy,” says 99200 and shakes its head, “Anyway. It was huge and looked generally like a pony but with big wings different from yours and massive, white, tentacle-y glowing ball instead of a head,” the drone pauses, “Kinda like when you light up your hooves- uh, I mean boots- horseshoes, was it?”

Gloom stops, raises her forelegs, and lights her horseshoe up to maximum brightness she can muster. The warm, yellow light almost flows like a liquid and the edges of the ball seem to end in little tendrils like a frayed fabric. She turns the light off to stop draining the already limited amount of energy recharged from yesterday, and suspicion about something incredibly stupid creeps into her mind.

“Did- did anypony catch what color that monster was?”

Her suspicion proves correct when 99200 answers:

“Purple, very purple. The bright kind of purple.”

She lets out an extremely annoyed groan and a facehoof.

Luna damn it, Twilight! What did you do aside from burning out drone retinas with that goddamn lighthouse on your head?

“Is anypony hurt?” asks Gloom next.

“99998 got a bit thrown around but it’s okay,” 99200 shakes its head, “99856 used some new bombs to chase the monster away. It was bleeding really badly-” Gloom’s blood freezes in her veins, “-but when the guys later followed the trail it grew thinner and thinner until it disappeared.”

“Where did the blood trail lead?” she keeps making sure that 99200 really is talking about Twilight for some reason visiting the HSC and doing something dumb.

Oh thank the holy whatever-the-hay for alicorn resilience and Twilight’s knowledge of magic!

“The trail circled around a bit but eventually it faded while heading upwards through the tunnel-” 99200 makes a sequence of noises, buzzing, and clicking which makes zero sense to Gloom.

“What was that last thing?”

99200 pauses.

“Oh… yeah, that’s a hive map reference,” it scratches its head, “There’s no way to translate it into normal words, sorry. It’s just one of the core tunnels leading to higher levels of the hive.”

A spark of divine inspiration strikes Gloom as she resumes walking.

“I might know what the monster is,” she says.

“REALLY?!”

“Yes,” Gloom grins into the darkness ahead that’s only barely lit by 99200’s fresh glowgoop stick tucked behind her ear.

How to formulate the idea in the right way?

“I think,” she says slowly, “In a drone way, I would call her the Hey-ing Waver because she would normally call out to you like ‘Hey!’ and then wave to lure you towards her.”

“Whoa, you’re good!” 99200 is clearly impressed at the sensible nomenclature, “What does the Hey-ing Waver do?”

“If you don’t avoid her,” only the tiniest hint of sadistic satisfaction creeps into Gloom’s voice as she spins her nonsense, “she can snatch you up and put you in a tube and perform all sorts of weird experiments on you before she lets you go.”

“It, uhh, she lets you go afterwards? That doesn’t sound so bad,” 99200 furrows its brows, “Do the exterminants hurt?”

Gloom realizes that walking the thin line between innocently getting back at Twilight for her stupid intrusion and riling the drones up into an arms-race frenzy that might actually kill the alicorn is a bit more difficult than she expected.

“Some can hurt, a little, but… but they can take so long that you can miss breaky time.”

“That’s not the worst-” muses 99200.

“And worky time too,” Gloom raises the stakes.

“OH NO!” 99200 freezes, “What do we do?!”

“The best thing to do is to not listen, leave her alone, and avoid her if possible. Maybe throw something that’s not an internationally recognized war crime- something non-lethal, maybe just something very sticky at her if she tries to examine something from somepony’s stash without permission.”

“Do you think she’ll come back?” peeps 99200.

“Yes, I’m afraid she will,” Gloom sighs, “The thing is, the Hey-ing Waver isn’t malevolent-”

“What’s mlemmlevolume mean?”

“-Evil, it means evil. She’s not evil, she just can be extremely inconsiderate and can tunnel vision-”

“Tunnel vision sounds so cool!”

“-She can have a one-track mind and doesn’t always think of who she hurts to reach her goals!” Gloom huffs, “Because of that, I think that destroying 9999’s statue was an accident.”

At this point, Gloom gets and idea, a wonderful, terrible idea, and adds:

“But there’s one thing to be careful of - the Hey-ing Waver can leave behind weird, small, crystals that serve as her eyes. Who knows if she managed to lay them somewhere before you caught her, and you wouldn’t want her watching everything you do, would you? Don’t forget that she has wings so they can be anywhere.”

99200 vigorously nods.

“IMMA TELL EVERYONE RIGHT NOW!”

As the drone goes quiet to concentrate on everything it “learned” just now, Gloom allows herself a smug, satisfied smirk.

This way, Twilight’s spy crystals should get ruined even without villainy and the need to go to the Guide’s Cavern.

Author's Note

I'm sorry, but I have to start doing short updates. I can't keep up the 2-4k word pace weekly anymore. I feel tired, barely creative, unoriginal, and I keep stressing because I can barely finish chapters on time. It feels like doing work after coming from work. If I manage to build a buffer or return to being the insane writing machine like I used to, I'll make the chapters bigger again. Sorry, and thanks for still sticking around and talking despite the varied quality of my ramblings.