Chapter Thirty
**Fred's POV**
Fred knew he smelled the call of adventure the moment he hid in the new Servant's robes.
All proper Niffler's feel the call, at the prime of their lives. It is only those of truly noble heart who have the bill to sniff out the very best of it. Not only had Fred gotten a name from a famous Stick Waver Servant, but a proper Adventure on an entirely new world. All of the other Niffler's would lose their Shinnies if they knew of this. Fred was positive of this he would bet his very greatest shinny of all on it. He had thought about it at length and remained positive.
Just remembering his first real adventure here filled Fred with appropriate pride. Such a clever servant he had acquired, freezing all the two-legs in place so Fred could do what he did best. For the always noble Fred lived by the Niffler Creed, and the Niffler Creed was simple and true and had never once led him wrong.
*I want it more. *
Let's face it, if these two-legs truly didn't want Fred to have such wonderful Shinnies, they should simply grow their own pocket spaces like any civilized beings even the stick wavers made their own sometimes. Instead, these silly two-legs left all their Shinnies just lying around. What was even worse was that some of them actually wore Shinnies on their bodies, instead of using it to decorate their favorite pets or to swim in, just there for others to simply take. It was practically an invitation; Fred was a civilized Niffler after all and he understood invitations very well thank you.
The servant named Mistress by that pesky Winky, *KEEPER of the tasty shinny* had asked ever so politely whether a nasty smelly man had those crystal Shinnies, for which of course they did, and Fred had naturally been taking those already. His clever servant had even promised she would clean those crystal Shinnies from all the nastiness. She did ask one large favor...to keep those particular crystal Shinnies in his super secure pocket for safekeeping. Fred had seen no harm in granting such a simple request. It was so difficult to find a servant as clever as this one, one had to maintain the relationship.
Fred remembered giving the two-legs a fun chase as they were leaving, on the boat. He had enjoyed that very much.
At the present moment his servant seemed to be in pain, maybe not physical but she seemed upset.
Fred could not have this! Nope! Not at all! A sad servant cannot help Fred on his great adventures. How could Fred look his ancestors bill to bill in the great afterlife of collected Shinnies past, without the greatest Adventure possible to account for? The ancestors would want to know, they always wanted to know.
So, Fred did what a niffler needed to do to keep to servants happy.
He just hoped this two-legged servant did not take it the wrong way.
Fred selected a Shiny from his collection...the heaviest ugly one that these strange two-legs liked to wear on their faces. He had planned to go tonight and collect the rest and have his servant turn them into the proper swimming size, so losing just one wouldn't hurt significantly. He approached the sleeping form of his servant where she lay next to the strange two-legged male who always smelled strongly of wanting to mate with her.
Fred saw nothing wrong with this, this particular two-leg actually appreciated Niffler law of *I want it more* like a proper civilized being. Though the Servant's servant Winky that dreaded Keeper that he was currently at war with seemed to dislike him for reasons Fred had never fully understood and did not particularly care to investigate.
Fred considered his sleeping servant's adorable face. Maybe he should adopt this servant as a pet one day, she was so ugly she was adorable, with all that fur piled on top of her head and the complete absence of a proper Shiny Bill Sniffer and mouth combined. All the two-legs were this way. Mouth holes instead of a proper bill, so inefficient, so undignified. How else was one supposed to swim through a mountain of Shinnies without a proper bill to lead the way? Such a mystery, such a waste of a face.
But whatever, right now Fred needed this servant awake so he could make her happy and continue his noble life's work. The collecting of the greatest number of Shinnies ever to be collected, and then the swimming in his triumph while his enemies lamented his success.
Winky would not win this war, that had not been decided yet. He would steal and possess the lick able Shiny, The ultimate Shiny, The holiest of Shinnies. A Shiny that tasted genuinely yummy after a hard day of swimming, and which he wanted very much to sit back and relax with at the end of a long successful adventure. Just a few licks of his Shiny, after all the life of a Niffler was tough work, but someone had to do it, and Fred had accepted this burden with grace and nobility and very little complaint.
He started poking at his servant, but the ever increasingly lazy servant refused to wake.
*Hmm. * Fred thought about this, then an idea came to him. He clambered quickly up the side of the Scaly Servant...who opened one enormous eye and watched him with what Fred chose to interpret as respectful admiration of his skill and glossy coat...everyone was jealous of the coat, from the vantage point of one great golden shoulder, Fred took careful aim.
He timed his jump perfectly, a high and graceful arc, eye on the Prize, curled up in a tight and aerodynamic ball at exactly the right moment, and landed precisely in the male two-leg's lap.
Fred rolled away briskly through the dizziness as the male two-leg reacted with considerable rudeness at being given a wakeup from a creature of his noble status.
"*Ahh, good, you're awake, *" Fred thought, looking his servant in the eyes as she blinked herself into consciousness. His servant was always slow when she first woke. Could she not see that he was taking the time to comfort her? So ungrateful. But at least she was adorable and useful even being so ugly, which was more than could be said for most of these strange two legs.
Fred presented his gift with some hesitation, the heavy ugly Shiny that these strange two-legs liked to wear on their faces. He placed it before her with appropriate ceremony.
Then his servant grabbed him, no matter how much he squirmed or kicked with his perfectly pedicured flipper he could not escape, she placed a mouth-hole kiss on Fred's head. *OHH NOO* Fred thought internally.
Fred slumped in defeat.
He knew it, he had known it would come to this eventually, she was taken with him.
He needed to put a stop to this quickly before the situation escalated and she went into heat and wanted his prime Niffler hide. He needed to let her down gently, after all he still needed her services after this. He began patting her hand with appropriate regret, composing the speech in his head.
---
**Daario Naharis's POV**
Daario woke up angry and in considerable pain, but mostly just angry now as his hand slowly reached for his dagger.
He had been having the greatest dream of his life. A far-off place with magical city lights, dancing with the Goddess somewhere the dream Goddess had called Paris, floating above some towering monument of steel beams lit up in a display that no words he currently possessed were adequate to describe, and just as they were leaning toward each other —
*BAM*
Right in the pride and joy.
He opened his eyes to find Hermione giggling with her hand over her mouth, and the creature patting her hand with an expression of profound and solemn regret. The creature looked genuinely sad, Hermione was struggling with equal genuineness to keep any kind of straight face.
Hermione saw his expression and took some mercy on him. "Fred is giving me the *it's not you, it's me* speech," she said, in a voice that was doing an admirable job of staying level. "Followed by the *let's still be friends*, and now we appear to be at *we are in two different places in life. *" she said all of this as though this was a completely ordinary thing to report upon waking.
Daario looked at the creature, who was still patting Hermione's hand with the careful solemnity of one of those accused healers delivering difficult news.
Then Daario saw the mask.
He sat up, all amusement falling away as the thought arrived fully formed. He turned it over in his hands...the golden mask, one of several they had found on men throughout the city who had had started escalating things to the point where two dead unsullied and one of the Golden Company were murdered just the night before.
"Hermione," he said, looking at the creature, then the mask, then back to her. "Can this creature lead me to the owners of this mask?"
She looked puzzled, "Of course, but what for?"
"While you were away having your fun in the cold," he said, sitting up fully now, "a group of people have been infiltrating certain places and causing us some difficulty. The one thing connecting all of them is that exact mask, every single one." He held it up. "If this creature can sniff them out, we can clear the city of them in a day."
Hermione looked at Fred, who had turned from the patting to examining the mask with his bill, nostrils working rapidly.
"I think," she said slowly, a smile starting at the corner of her mouth, "that Fred would be very interested in finding everyone who has one of those."
*He thanked whatever Gods were out there for bringing her back when they did, before the situation became much worse. * He knew in his heart the Gods have come back, and that they are guiding their favorite daughter towards success, he just hoped the Gods kept favoring them.
---
Hours later found Daario walking through the eastern quarter of the city with Grey Worm at his side, the Niffler on the ground ahead of them, the mask in hand.
Daario could not help himself, "Still haven't got the balls to ask her?"
As Daario looked towards Grey Rats groin, "They have grown back, right?"
Grey Worm's expression did not change, knowing the way of the man in front of him. "I have been in many life-or-death battles," he said, after a moment, "and not once was I afraid. How can one small question be so terrifying?" He looked off into distance troubled. "What if she says no? What if she does not believe me to be a real man again?"
Daario placed a hand briefly on the man's shoulder. "She cannot say YES either unless you ask. So why worry about a no that may never come? Life is short, my very serious friend. Take advantage of the time you have." He looked at him. "For yourself. Not for anyone else. For yourself."
Grey Worm said nothing but just nodded his head and looked to the man ready for the day's work.
Daario crouched and set the Niffler on the ground with the mask. "Alright my little friend, just like the pretty Goddess said...help us find the mask people, and you get to keep every Shiny they have, all of it, the whole collection what do you say," as Daario flipped the creature a coin.
Fred looked at him, after snatching the coin out of the air with unnatural speed, then at the mask, then back at him.
He gave a crisp and precise salute.
Daario straightened up, "This creature is the solution to all our problems my friend, I'm telling you he is gonna save us all."
Grey Worm regarded Fred with the expression of a man who had witnessed many things and found this among the more concerning of them. "There is something very wrong with that creature, it is beyond unnatural."
"Nonsense," Daario said.
Fred promptly caught a scent, raising his head high getting on the tips of its very toes then...faceplanted directly into the stone street. His tiny round ass remained pointed straight at the sky, while his front half dragged itself slowly forward with his arms flat against his sides and his bill pressing along the ground.
They both stared at him.
"I feel significantly safer already," Grey Worm said, in a voice entirely without inflection, one eyebrow raised.
Then Fred started to pick up speed.
What followed was one of the more unusual mornings of Daario's extensive and varied career. The Niffler moved through the city the way street rats and pickpocket's moves through a market but...somehow far better always arriving somewhere unexpected. They lost him under a cart selling dates. They found him again posed completely motionless on a merchant's display shelf, three stolen necklaces draped around his neck, holding the stillness of a decorative figurine with such commitment that three separate people walked past without noticing him. Until he noticed he was spotted, at which point he promptly bolted.
Once he flew past Daario's face at speed, screaming in fright for just a moment in what appeared to be slow motion, made eye contact with Daario, stopped screaming, waved, and then continued screaming as he collided directly with Grey Worm's face and knocked him cleanly over.
At one point he squeezed himself through a gap in a wall that Daario was genuinely unable to explain by any principle of physical reality he was aware of, I mean, he could barely fit the tip of his dagger in the opening.
They eventually recovered him when Dany came around a corner asking after Hermione's wellbeing, at which point Fred apparently decided he had collected enough data, or stolen loot, and was bored with the game. He allowed himself to be handed over without further protest and looked up at Daario with an expression of cooperative goodwill.
They cleared the city by midafternoon, with only one mild incident of the creature stealing the assailant's weapons from them before we even entered that building.
Every single mask accounted for, or at least all the little guys could find in the city. Every single one of the network's members found meant one less to worry about. Fred's methods remained mysterious and his route remained inexplicable, but the results were not in dispute.
Daario was prepared to concede that the creature was, in some limited and chaotic and deeply unnatural sense, useful.
He was thinking this specific thought when he reached for his favorite dagger.
He checked his left side, his right, his belt at the back, his boot.
He looked at Fred, who was sitting on Grey Worm's shoulder cleaning his bill with the cheerful unconcerned expression of a creature who had absolutely no idea what Daario was looking for and certainly had never seen it and would not know where to look if asked.
Daario looked at Grey Worm.
Grey Worm looked at Fred.
"I told you, there is something deeply wrong with this creature" Grey Worm said, as he walked away, brushing off a very indignant Niffler from his shoulder.