Kenneth started to walk in the dimly-lit room, every step of the way releasing more squelching sounds as the wax floor covering gave way to his tread. He finally spotted what gave off the small amount of light. Sitting on where used to be a normal kitchenette, lied a six inch candle slowly plotting to suffocate the world in its amber glow. The lack of airflow did not stop the candle flickering resulting in the stalactites of wax dripping with excess honey, to produce dancing shadows.

The places the shadows held their jig, the off-white of his Electro-Vision glowed, still sporting a slight blue tint thanks to the proximity of his eyes. He absentmindedly looked around the room and asked the trio another question. He really likes his questions.

"What was this room even for? I mean I would say it was for honey storage... but the lack of any actual container begs the question."

Savannah replied with an amount of haughtiness meant for a queen. Nose raised high, all five eyes closed, all four arms crossed, and being held like a glorified purse dog.

"Hmpf, hmpf The Queen had special ideas, special ideas, for this place, yes, yes. Too complex, too complex for a peasant like you. Mmh, Mmh."

Nodding his head sagely, Ken did not believe a single thing coming from the brat, so he turned to the one that so far had proven to be a reliable source of information.

"So Violet, do YOU know what this room is for?"

She took a second to think, making an outdated meme by placing her chin in the nook of the "L" that was formed with her left upper arm.

"Nope, nope. We're too young, too young, to know why The queen, The Queen, made this."

-~ Well that was helpful. At least we now know these three are relatively young. We should still find out where Mardy ran off to while we take a look at the weaponry of the Bee-lings.~-

"Already ahead of you Kendra."

The three bee-lings stared at Ken, then at each other, then looked around, then finally back to Ken, wondering who the hell he was speaking to.

"Before we go running off to look at your gun, would one of you mind still telling me where Mardy is? We'll still go to your gun first, but I want to know where so I don't get lost trying to find her."

The trio were about to complain till they heard that they were still going to be able to brag about their hardware before meeting with the chief of command.

Harper squeaked the answer, finally getting her chance to show off her knowledge of the "crib" MET style... somewhat.

"The Queen, The Queen, could not stay with you long after you, you, fell unconscious. Umhm umhm! It's why she chose us, us, to act as guide and guard. So we don't know, don't know, where she is, but, but, she is probably in her chambers. It's where she makes her FYJ rounds, yes yes."

"FYJ what?" Kenneth looked at the bee-ling like it had grown a second head, which for all he knew was a possible outcome.

She quickly answered his query with a renewed vigor.

"Yes, yes, FYJ: Full Yellow Jacket. It's how we're made, how we're made! Even the drones are made with them. Umhm Umhm!"

"So you're saying you are all made from bullets... Wha-how-Are you sure you got that right? You girls don't look anything like any bullet I’ve ever seen."

All three of the petite stared at Ken as if HE grew a second head before nodding in unison. Violet put on a wry smile before answering Ken like his question was coming from a toddler.

"All of the girls know, know, about 'The Brains & The Bees'. Yes, yes! The drones, drones, would know it too, if they weren't soo stupid, stupid!"

-~ The whole "bee-lings being made from bullets" and "The BRAINS &The Bees" things bring up even more questions that paint a very morbid picture. However, I think the Viewers have had enough info dumps for one day. We should really get going with the whole gun thing~-

Kenneth nodded in agreement, which elicited a confused tilt to Harper and Violet, Savannah was in an intense thinking pose and wasn't paying attention to Ken's action to react. Apparently she did finally get the answer to her big THINK because she asked Ken a very, VERY, well thought out question.

"Mr...?"

"Kenneth, but Ken is fine"

"Mr. Ken, How big was the bullet, bullet, that made you?"

If what he could gleam from their explanation, he would say it was a very small bullet. Very small indeed. Sadly these tiny terrors were probably fed only caffeine and candy, because before he could answer the question Harper squeaked out a Theory.

"It must have been huge, HUGE! Like the size of one of us! Yes, yes, must be."

Violet's eyes grew ten times their size while her mouth fell agape as the realization dawned on her.

"Girls! Girls! Think of how big the gun was!"

Savannah did some fast maths with all 16 of her digits before looking at the other two as she had reached the same conclusion.

The three looked up to Ken with a newfound admiration with a collective "Wow" that forced Kendra to do a mental face palm as she chuckled at the idiocy of the whole situation. It didn't help that both her and Ken both immediately put their heads in the gutter and thought about their dad with a "BIG GUN". They then cringed at the thought and tried to burn it in hell fire. The attempt was similar to adding water to a grease fire...

Quickly trying to change the topic Kenneth and Kendra blurted out in both mental and real space.

" So now that we know where Mardy is, how about you lead me to your gu...n" Cringing again they realized that the image wasn't going to go away anytime soon. Several pigs were going to need to be slaughtered by the end of the day.

Continuing the MET cribs episode, Harper directed the bunch out of the ex-breakroom. Down the hall to the left was Mardy's office with two turrets... no two gun emplacements, flanking the closed door.

"Those are the Praetoria, Praetoria, the oldest out of all of us. They are the only, ONLY, ones allowed to guard the Queen's chamber."

He could barely make out the sight of 5 sets of antennae protruding from above the shielding of the guns, which look to be shotguns, if the barrels are what they lead him to believe.

Harper started to tug on him to turn him around but before he complied the door to the chamber opened up revealing a flushed-face Mardy walking out with a box of shotgun shells that appeared to be dripping wet. She noticed Ken standing in the hallway, and before he could even finish "hey" she went back in and closed the door.

If it weren't for the distant thrum of activity, the hall would have been deathly quiet. What broke the impromptu silence was not in fact the trio of chatty bee-girls being held like Chihuahuas, nor did it break from the man carrying them like Chihuahuas. It was the Once-stoic Praetoria, manning the defense guns of the Queen's chamber that broke down in a fit of gut clenching laughter. They laughed for it was the first time they have seen Queen Mardy act so shyly. They laughed so hard they cried with tears of mirth, and then they cried harder for they knew Queen Mardy was going to scold them when things calmed down.

Harper's repeated tugging brought Ken's mind out of the weird event and he turned in the direction she was leading him to. The destination of which was easily pointed out by Harper, and was less than ten feet away.

The door Harper pointed to was the airlock for the gun range only that it had a "small modification to it. Likely since the vast majority of the occupants in this area were in the range of a foot tall, having a door built for someone around 5x their height would be difficult to navigate through. As such the bottom half of the door was now sporting a foldable "doggy door", for lack of better terms. Aside from the handle, what made the "folding" part of the door obvious was when it suddenly opened revealing two jacked Bee-lings wheeling out what looked like a miniature German PaK 40, though in place of scaled down 7.5 cm artillery piece, a heavily modified Luger American, chambered in what appeared to be .223, sat in its place.

-~Those must bee the Drones they were talking about~-

The two brutes were un-mistakenly male. While the Bee-girls wore fluffy dresses going down to their thighs, the brutes wore what could only be best described as a classy velvet Barman's uniform. Though it appeared that they were heavily influenced by Mardy's preferences as the slacks and dress shirts seemed painted onto the toned muscles of the "towering" drones. Bee-girls averaged about a foot in height, Violet being the tallest he'd seen was about 1'2", the two drones in front of them were standing head and shoulders above the girls at ~1'6", though the one wearing black&yellow striped suspenders was slightly taller than the one with plain yellow ones. Their faces were also different from the girls as it wasn't even remotely human and were far more bee-like similar to the "Face shields" that the bee-girls had.

The two drones didn't even stop to question Ken's existence, and stoically continued to cart the gun carriage down the hall towards the entrance of the once gun store. A shortstack of a bee-girl, roughly 8", with soot and grease dying her yellow fluff, and tool bits stuffed into her pollen baskets making her thighs look Thiccer than honey, was standing out of the way for the brutes to pass, and was about to close up the door when she spotted the group towering over her. Instead of cowering, stuttering, gawking, or any other normal response, she turned her head over her shoulder, cupped her mouth and yelled in a shrill, almost new-Jersey, voice.

"TALLS ONE COMING THROUGH!"

She immediately closed the foldable lower door and latched it to the upper, securing it in place.

"Alls set for yous, juss watch wehres ya steppin', ya hear?" The dirty bee-girl said crossing her upper arms and placing her lower ones on her hips.

Ken stared at the newcomer, then at the trio of misfits, then finally back at the dirty one before asking a series of questions.

"So what's your name? And why do you not repeat words when you speak?"

The standing bee-girl used one of her upper arms to scratch at her cheek, spreading the grease, before answering.

"Wells da names Maybelle, an' if yous tawkin' about hows I don't speak like a damned fehre den dats due to deh new nanies raizen dems all. Even I hates it wehn dey tawk like dat. Thinkins it be cute en alls for Mum. En she agrees wiff dem!" she shook her head in disgust, before throwing her hands out. "Eh, fuggedaboutit, Yous all probably 'eres for gun pick up. Let’s get yous insyde to clears a lot for more equipmen."

Maybelle motioned to the door. Kenneth was about to reach out and open it when he realised that he had three bee-girls occupying both his arms. He summarily dropped them like one would do with a cat, causing them to yelp in surprise before their wings ended thier fall, and reached out and opened the door. It immediately disgorged the sound of heavy machinery into the hall since the interior "airlock" door was being held open.

-~Boring of barrels,

And filling of primers,

Receivers a milling and dremels with grinders,

Bolts an screws securing these things

There are some in this very same scene~-

"Shush Kendra"

The, now four, bee-lings stared at Ken's outburst. Three of them wondered if they should say something, while the last wondered if he shadow boxed at night. Despite Kendra's impromptu musical, she was mostly right. The gun range had turned into a sprawling workshop filled with machinery all scaled so that they may be used by the diminutive Bee-lings spaced out into multiple lanes so that wheeled equipment can be rolled out or, in Ken's case, a "Talls one" can walk through without interfering too much in the hive of activity. Mini-Mills and lathes were scattered amongst presses, and other miscellaneous work benches. Just about every power tool or machine was hooked up to hamster wheels occupied by running drones.

On the near side, where the original lane tables sat, the lots were occupied with a variety of modified long arms mounted on scaled down carriages. The closest two lots were unique from the rest. One held a partially disassembled Flakvierling 38 but using Jlocks instead of the 4 scaled 22mm guns, while the other held their quarry.

It was also styled like a mini-Flak 38, but it was the single barreled design and just like all of the other mini-murder machines the main cannon was replaced with a long arm. This long arm however, wasn't the "standard" bolt action seen on most of the other ones, the Jlock 38 notwithstanding. It was an upside down AK, and it immediately drew the attention of Ken and the trio.

Maybelle swiftly walked to the towed mini-AA-AK and slapped the frontal shield.

"Dis bad boy roight 'ere cans take up to a standard .308 behfors penetration is achieved... sous long as it ain't taykin a direct hit, ya hear. Sous yous three bess not comeback to mah shop wiff dis lookin like it did when ya braht it 'ere. Damned thing was stahtin to look like the moon weth da amount of craytahs on it.

"Asyde from dat, tho. Wes tooled up ya axle, cleaned en re-greased ya cranks, en made shor dat ya gun be cleanah dan Mum's seahch histry. Dis time tho we opted to go for a flat dahk grey implace of de kahmo. Who knew painten greens wood be more no-tis-a-bul en uhban ehnviromens, den again us bee folk don't exactly blend in do we?"

Ken stared at the assortment of black on yellow and yellow on black throughout the workshop and nodded his head in agreement.

"If anything people should be more cautious when dealing with you guys" Ken chuckled at his joke.

"As dey shood, Shor our height may be smoll, but our stingahs leave lahge holes!" Maybelles puffed up chest and upturned nose led Kenneth and Kendra to believe she did not get the joke at all.

-~Man I wish we were smaller. Always wanted to shoot an AA.~-

His nodding head only further increased the size of Maybelle's ego.