Whenever it gets close to a food, the food runs away! It can do that here!

. . . More foods with fun games attached?  Yes, it will absolutely play follow the leader with them!!  Munch munch; swoop zooooom.

No! It is supposed to let these foods run away. Unless the stolen food shows up.

:( :( :( :( :(

Will any of the other its zoom with it?  No?  Well, it can zoom by itself.

As long as it's zooming the designated perimeter.

Time passes. The sun goes up and comes down. The giant squid occasionally surfaces a tentacle for this reason or that. The four-legged foods are giving its designated perimeter a wide berth but if it flies high enough and gets a good angle it can sometimes see one between the trees. The small foods stay close to the water and the building, too far to nibble most of the time.

It takes Cleo a while to break away from her new friends, who are all telling her so emphatically that those things are BAD MONSTERS even if they're responsibly looking for escaped criminals right now. It's true that it was rough when there were a bunch of them on the train, but if she can just find the right one - or maybe meet a new one, but, like, by itself, so it's manageable - she's sure she can make friends again.

Cleo slips out on a Saturday afternoon, shortly after lunch, all by herself, to go see the "dementors".

Here's one!  It drifts down to her, leisurely-like.

Ah. She sees what they meant about the - yeah. Hm. Hers didn't do that.

Wave wave?

It doesn't really react, aside from continuing to come closer.

Another one appears, off over there.  It swoops down faster than the first one.

"It's me Cleo," she says.

There's quite a lot of them, actually.  Patrolling out here is hungry work and this is the first easy food there's been out here.

Oh huh what are all the other its doing.  Something interesting?  - No, it's just a food.  Well, it's pretty hungry too; it'll join the rest of them.  No sense in turning down a free lunch, especially in this economy.

She had some idea of trying to reconstruct the clapping game but she can't quite call to mind exactly how it went at the moment. She can manage... one clap?

. . . Huh.  Is that - no it can't be, it remembers the Cleo being smaller and it has never seen a food suddenly change size.  It's still interesting though, and even a food that's only like the Cleo is still the most interesting thing that's happened since the most recent time it went home.  It stops nibbling her, obviously, and it REALLY WISHES it could make the other its do that too.  Why do they have to ruin everythinnnnnnnng.  It attempts a k-k-kh-kh-kh-khh-khhhhh in frustrated communication.  . . . And, belatedly, copies the clap.

One of the other its looks even more inclined to ruin everything than the rest of them.  It sweeps the closest, and is - definitely not going in for a full meal, but is maybe doing something stronger than nibbling.

- Normally that would be kind of interesting but now that is the WORST thing possible to do.  It'll yell at that one.

That one yells back!

Normally it would not want to do anything this likely to be the bad kind of interesting, but it's so fed up with being stuck in this one spot when there are interesting things right over there, and - it doesn't take the time to coalesce this into thoughts, and it's not sure it could even if it did take the time, but there's something about - it wants the bad interestingness even if it is bad because of the thing the maybe-badness will get it.  It really really does not want the Cleo-ish food to get boringified more than it already is.

So: it will become the onk.  It flies back a little ways and then zooms right into the worst it, whipping around to slam its legs into its torso.  And then it zooms for the Cleo-ish food and picks it - well.  A food is much heavier than a sponge, it turns out.  Hmm.

The Cleo-ish food is not very heavy but is, yeah, heavier than a sponge. It squirms.

The idea of things being heavy as opposed to stuck is a new and somewhat difficult concept, but conveniently it is very smart and can figure things out very fast.  It drags the Cleo-ish food along the ground a little before readjusting its grip (its arms going under the food's and wrapping around the food's middle from behind), and beginning a proper zoom.

The worst it is reeling from being onked but the rest of the group is not so easily left behind.

Zoom zoom zoom zoom - they're still following it???  It will have to be cleverer.

Maybe it will go in a direction it shouldn't go.  It didn't see where the food came from but it's much more curious about the window place so it'll head that way.  Swoop zoom.

This indeed causes the other its to stop following!