Y’know, despite what some might wanna believe, some lives really are just better than others.
Is that a mean thing to say? I don’t think so; after seeing how the laws of nature go about their judgments, it made pretty clear sense to me.
You see, for a bug, your day is the most important thing there is: Spend it wisely, and act by whatever means necessary within it, in the hopes that you could see the next. Bugs could say what they will about your life, but at the end of your day, it was you who had to live by the things you did. If we knew anything, it was better that way than to die by those things, at the whim of some random hunter. So you better find something good enough to die by.
For us, that was business. I mean, we were the enforcers of the laws of nature; we fuckin’ thrived. In fact, we were the ones makin’ the deals with those random hunters, while all the other saps in the forest were out cozying up to them. And now, we’re the bugs with the forest’s full trust; we’ve practically had everything within the grasp of our tarsi from the start, and we’ve made the best possible use of it, every chance we got. That’s how Kelvin wanted it.
Nothing stood in the way of business. Like I said, it was all we had to ourselves, and each of our lives.
After all, it’s not like any of us were human.
“I remember how the humans called it the ‘Dust Bowl…’”
“I still remember the day I was there: Dust all over the sky and around the fields, a horrible drought… I was very young, and I could hardly see a thing, but there… There were your ancestors, thousands of them, chipping away at the dew from rotten plants, the only plants that were available. Even under those terrible conditions, your ancestors had the strength to stick together and feed with one other. They were strong… then came these ladybugs. They saw your struggling ancestors with only dinnertime on their minds. It was a slaughter, a complete slaughter of your ancestors, countless corpses under that miserable drought…”
“My life has gone on for over eight thousand days, but that moment will never leave me.”
That was the voice of Kelvin, the soft-spoken queen of our ant colony, reeling over those events while speaking to a small swarm of aphids. I, Clover, was there too, among her most trusted associates. We never spoke much; in fact, it was rare for Kelvin to speak at all. Slider would be the ant to tell us anything our queen wanted us to know; he never really left her side. But this was one of the few times I heard an account straight from her.
Our colony’s dark, damp, warm burrow was the safest environment Kelvin knew for those young aphids. In such an isolated space, she figured there’d be no intrusion threats from other bugs.
“I was still a larva when that took place,” Kelvin continued, “You aphids don’t live very long, so you wouldn’t understand an event like that, or how long it could stay with you. Hopefully… you’ll never have to,” she finished, with a long, tired sigh. Queen Kelvin wasn’t lying about those eight thousand days, and how much of a toll they must’ve taken on her, incredible as that number was to us ants. That was almost three hundred whole lives’ worth of time, compared to each of us in there, and that’s impressive enough for a group of bugs like us who knew how numbers worked.
One of the aphids from the group shyly raised her voice after hearing her caretaker’s story.
“Where are the ladybugs now…?”
“They’re long gone now,” she answered, “Ladybugs only live for around three hundred days, possibly more if they’re fortunate… but their luck seems to be improving. They’re out there now, spoiling their underbellies on your kind. I hate to scare you, I despise thinking of it myself, but… you are their favorite food,” she contested, shrugging, “It’s just the way it is, I know them well enough to understand that.”
The young aphids lightly shook with fear.
“W-Why do they do that?” asked another, scared out of its mind.
“They’re hungry,” Kelvin answered with a sigh. “We all get hungry; there’s not a bug in this entire forest who can resist your honeydew after a smell of the aroma. Even we ants can’t resist,” she admitted with a soft smile, “But we aren’t evil; we’re not the ones going out to scarf you down… But the rest are. It’s why we can’t risk any of you stepping outside the colony.”
Kelvin looked again at the young aphids, seeing that they hadn’t settled down, and paused to redirect herself.
“But, not to worry,” she assured. “Down here, I’ll keep all of you under my protection. That’s what I’ve done, through my work and the work of my associates, and that’s what we’ll keep doing, for the rest of my long life…”
Their smiles returned, which Kelvin liked to see.
“…And as far as I see it, those ladybugs… they will learn the error of their cruel, heartless ways soon enough… One way or the other.”
I remember sitting there, I had no idea what she really meant. One way or the other… Was she really after hemolymph-shed, or was she just stating a fact of life? Her conviction was nearly strong enough to suggest a full-scale war. I had to admit, I felt like a war with a group as reckless as the ladybugs would’ve gotten ugly fast. But who am I to make a judgment on that? Kelvin has her amazing mind for combat, which we all loved her for; I’m just the scout ant finding information. And I never had a problem with that. Besides, the killing side of things was never any of my business.
Killing was a touchy subject for virtually the entire forest, but not for us. Deep down, no insect looked forward to killing for its food, but really, you had no choice but to do it if you wanted to survive. The ladybugs we all knew, from the neighboring cottonwood tree, were the same in that regard, but they had a different attitude about it. For them, hemolymph-shed seemed to come with an odd sense of dignity; it’s tough to explain.
Anyone else typically treats all their kills with diplomacy and purpose; when it was a bug’s time to go, it was a bug’s time to go, you couldn’t argue that if you tried. We all had to eat sometime. But on the contrary, these ladybugs were actin’ like they had food to spare…
If Slider was right about one thing, it was how he’d always call ‘em a mafia. And it made sense; beneath those red, stubby, polka-dotted bodies, and their humble facade masking who they really were, it wasn’t hard to see how well that label fit them. But still, Kelvin had her reservations on getting rid of ‘em so quickly, without at least giving them a chance. So the rest of the forest had to deal with their stupidity, whether we liked it or not.
Still, they went on and killed like it was nobuggy’s business.
“I… I don’t want to do this,” a scared, young ladybug told his mother. “Y-You know I don’t want to do this, I– I don’t want to hurt it, the poor thing…”
“C’mon!” She encouraged him. “All bugs gotta do it; it’s in our nature. This is how it works.”
This mother ladybug’s name was Ruby, and her son’s name was Dot (the insect of interest in this report, and the biggest sap in this entire forest; you’ll see why sooner or later.)
An adult who had just broken out of his pupa, Dot was complaining about his hunger to his mother, Ruby, who saw that as a long-overdue teaching opportunity, so she made her brief goodbye to her keyholders, handlers, and associates in her cottonwood tree, where they had made their home, deeper out into the wilderness. While there, they happened upon an aphid, guarding its eggs while drinking dew from the leaf it sat on.
And, knowing Dot’s hesitance well, Ruby did what any understanding mother would do when her son feared something: Slowly push him closer to it.
“…I can’t do this,” he finally copped out, shaking like the leaves that surrounded them. His hesitation to kill a small creature was inches away from getting the better of him. “C’mon, son, you’re not gonna murk yourself over this fuckin’ thing, are you? I didn’t raise you to be weak, now…” The young son hesitated further, looking back at his mother after she said that, and stopped all his movements. With a sense of agency, Ruby brought him to her side.
“Look, Dot,” she told him, “You said you wanted to be part of what we do, right? You didn’t want to fall behind? This is how you do it. I’m not gonna be the headbug forever, y’know; you’re going to take over with me someday! Wouldn’t that be great? You’re next in line, but you gotta step up!”
In what looked like a fearful sweat, Dot stared back at the aphid, then his mother, who then let out a slow sigh.
“…What is it, Dot? Morals? Every single bug in the forest is doing what you’re afraid to do right now: The ants, the caterpillars, the termites, every bug, even the mites! We murk for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So if it’s morals you’re worried about, you’re bringin’ ‘em up the wrong tree,” she laughed.
In all fairness, Ruby’s right when she talks about how we killed along with the others. Difference is, it’s only when necessary; the hemolymph-shed you’re about to see here was done merely to prove some worthless point. Ruby was definitely a flawed leader, but without her charisma as the cottonwood’s sole headbug, she and her ‘capos’ wouldn’t have amounted to shit beneath our abdomens.
But deep down, despite how difficult it all felt, Dot still admired and loved his mother a lot, so of course, he wanted to comply. After all, being the odd bug out in the business came with very few perks.
He looked back at the aphid in front of him, softly admitting, “I… I do like honeydew…”
“Exactly! It’s just like drinking honeydew, but you’ll take it from the source now,” she patted him. “Go ahead, I’m right here.”
He looked at the aphid, then at his mother, then back at the aphid again to lock into deep concentration, slowly moving away from his mommy and toward the sitting bug.
“That’s it…” she whispered from afar, “Just a little more…”
Dot snuck up closer to it, trembling, probably more than the leaf the aphid stood on, but remained undetected.
“…”
The aphid suddenly realized, and it quickly locked eyes with Dot.
Ruby quickly whispered behind him, “Now!”
He finally lunged at it, successfully gripping it with his mandibles and tarsal claws, it squirming quickly in a failed attempt to escape.
“That’s it! That’s how you do it!” Ruby cheered from a distance, elated.
With the aphid now suffering from a deep gash while inside his mouth, Dot began chewing rather quickly, just begging to be done with it all, nearly spitting it out once he tasted the hemolymph.
With all its limbs struggling to stay connected to its body, the aphid let out alarm pheromones and garbled screams for its life. Dot didn’t think to stop, react, or even open his eyes anymore; he just kept on crunching, even while the aphid’s body was leaking all over the place. Even over its own eggs. Desperately screeching and fighting as its head broke apart, it suddenly felt Dot’s mandibles running through its brain, and its limbs finally stopped moving. The look on Dot’s face said it all.
He slowly opened his eyes to an insect so disfigured that he couldn’t even tell if it was the same bug anymore. Of course, he couldn’t get over the smell and taste, but the result of his catch, into what was now the drink he loved so much, gave him a totally different impression. Not an uncommon feeling for a first kill; A better bug wouldn’t have even bothered, but a more mature bug wouldn’t even give a shit. Dot was neither of those.
“That’s my boy! You’re a grown-up ladybug now! The cottonwood’s gonna be so proud!” Ruby shouted, joyful tears in her eyes.
Tears were in Dot’s eyes, too, alright.
And in his muffled mouth were the aphid’s remains: Its soft, broken-up exoskeleton and leaked-out guts. When these kinds of things happen, it’s hard to tell who feels worse; the aphid’s life was over, but her son’s life was now scarred with no hope to recover.
“This calls for a celebration!”
And celebrate they did, in what was probably the happiest Ruby had ever been in, probably, her whole life. See, you weren’t really a bug in her business until you’d made your first kill. As an expected rite of passage in that cottonwood tree, it was only getting more and more common among the rest of the bugs there; the rest of her associates all did their first kills when they were larva, and without all the fuckin’ crying.
None of the ladybugs in the higher branches ever really cared about those associates, and that’s one of the weirdest parts (among many weirdest parts) about how Ruby structured her business. She just let them go on and do what they felt like, long as they followed each of her orders. But even then, she never offered them that many new orders anymore. There was that one honeydew heist operation, written in Jammy’s archive, but that was back in the last generation of the business. Old news. Business had been moving pretty slow since then.
Making matters worse, some things about the way she raised Dot during his larvahood remained at the forefront of her concerns. He foraged when she told him to, yeah, but he never wanted to murk anybuggy, like the associates did, and that was really the worst of it; he spent all his time in that fuckin’ honeydew bar, the restaurant where they all sat together for that day’s celebration. Libelle, an associate at the time, was hoping her headbug would offer her a promotion for setting it up herself many days ago, in the middle-branches of the tree. They were impressed, but knowing Dot, it worked a little too well, so the role of handler was all Ruby could offer her. It left Ruby wondering, with some quiet fears deep inside, how the future would turn out for her son, or her business, after she was gone. She hated to admit it, but seeing her son not wanting to get involved left quite a lot of room for improvement in her eyes.
“Hey, pass the honeydew for my son here, it’s his favorite!”
Thankfully, she didn’t have to worry so much about that anymore.
“That aphid he murked didn’t have ties to any other bugs, did it, Miss Ruby?” asked Lucky, a keyholder, seated at the private oak table with the other seven bugs, including Dot.
“Nope. Not from what I saw,” Ruby answered.
“Ah, good,” Lucky said in relief.
“It’s gotta have that look to it,” she continued, munching some of the dead whiteflies on her plate. “Aphids have to have some kind of marking, or a different, distinctive behavior to them if they’re part of another burrow, tree, or colony, or whatever. Dot’s kill was clean. Fair game.”
“You… really sure it didn’t have any markings?” Berry, seated with them too, nervously asked. Despite him being another keyholder, he was known for his shy demeanor and quiet fears. At least, I knew about them. “No sign it could’ve been from the ants?” The others turned to him once he asked that.
“Berry, of course. I was there, too, and so was Basel,” Nino calmly reaffirmed at the table, while looking over to his friend next to him.
“But goodness, you should’ve seen the fuckin’ hemolymph!” Basel said, the other ladybugs laughing with him, “It leaked like fuckin’ crazy, it was incredible. Dot turned the poor bastard into a drink!”
Everybuggy else laughed their abdomens off. “Just wish I had some myself,” Nino quietly added with a polite smile.
We ants understood Ruby’s two closest handlers as a bit of a good-handler, bad-handler situation; Nino was always the more dignified one in their conversations, but Basel had a lot more personality, and was much more prone to add to a mess. Still, both of them stuck real close to each other, and especially close to Ruby. No matter what. I’m not too sure why, maybe it was over keyholder promotions? Whatever. There were quite a few handlers in Ruby’s tree; they were the ones who had the authority to boss around the associates and assign them Ruby’s tasks, but aside from Ruby herself, the four keyholders had the most authority in the tree.
Even through those ladybugs’ great moods at the table, something else added to Berry’s worries, “Well… wouldn’t a kill like that set the ants off in some other way?” he concededly asked, then dimming his tone. “I mean… y’know how Kelvin gets…”
“Nah, the bug we found was casually drinkin’ from a leaf while guarding its eggs,” Ruby clarified. “Typical aphid behavior; it’s fair game.”
“Ah, good thing it laid eggs, right?” Sprout, the third keyholder, laughed while nudging over to Dot, who was more off to the side.
“No kidding!” Lucky laughed with him. “Imagine, we just go against the whole peace deal on Dot’s first kill?”
“As if!” Ruby laughed back, munching the whitefly on her plate while looking back at her son. “I brought him with me when I made that peace deal, you think I’d let him murk an immature aphid? Before it ever lays eggs?”
In their laughter, they looked over at her son, sitting next to his mother in quiet contemplation, clearly juggling a few thoughts. The others sensed Dot’s general unease and rightly distanced themselves.
So in that silence, they sank into the nice atmosphere of the place surrounding them. The area was covered in oak, with walls of bushes and leaves that kept it familiar enough for any bug to feel comfortable unwinding. The scent at that bar was intoxicating, peppered all around with that classic honey and pine smell; the whole tree smelled like that, but it was really pronounced here. Dot, of course, was a huge fan. Grasshoppers regularly served the drinks, from a limited selection of nectar or dew from whichever trees or flowers Sprout or the other keyholders could forage or pollinate, but the bar’s specialty was always honeydew.
In fact, the popularity of that drink was enough for even other bug species in the forest to wanna dine there as guests. It was an odd paradox to us ants; most, if not all of the forest hated ladybugs, as did we. But I guess, something about their honeydew selection just hit the spot for them, I don’t know. Ruby wasn’t that scary of a headbug, either, once you got to know her.
But we ants knew better than to associate; we had our own honeydew sources.
Libelle sat there with them too, looking over everything, from the food being served, to the seated bug guests from other species, and found everything running smoothly… except for one sight: A ladybug with two different aphids by his side, both of them close to, but not yet at, the point where they could lay eggs. It was considered bad manners enough to bring live prey around with you, but this felt different. Libelle’s face turned to disgust once she recognized who that ladybug was: A fellow handler, seated far away from them, but she knew him quite well. Then again, given how jealous he felt of her for starting the bar, and for how much better-liked she was among the tree for it, Libelle found it right to distance herself from him. But it was near fuckin’ impossible to ignore something like this…
…Then again, why add drama to a celebration? This was the happiest she had ever seen Ruby, and that headbug knew the conflict between her two handlers well enough anyhow; she never liked when Libelle tried to start up anything if it could always just wait. So Libelle figured, she wasn’t gonna get to keyholder any sooner by bringing this up at such a nicely-running event, and chose to give it a rest. Still, she kept her eyes on him.
The keyholders and other made ladybugs seated with her tried looking in her line of sight, but couldn’t really catch it. Ruby and Dot did the same, but now, with the conversation turning more onto Libelle, Ruby found an opening to whisper to her son about her.
“Y’know, I wonder why you haven’t looked at any of the girlie ladybugs in the business,” Ruby nudged him cutely, “I mean, you gotta bring on a new generation at some point, Dot.”
Dot, seated next to her, caught those words, but pretended he didn’t; he just kept on looking bothered.
“Don’t tell anybuggy else I said this, but… I want you to get with Libelle.”
He clenched and cringed a little, looking over at Libelle’s candid gaze with discomfort.
“I mean, you aren’t related, you’re both in adulthood, she’s beautiful, she’s on her way to keyholder? Why don’t ‘ya get to know her more?”
“Mom, shut up, I– I don’t wanna,” Dot whispered back harshly.
Ruby then looked pretty mean after that, whispering, “What? So do you want the males? I didn’t raise a fuckin’ mounter, alright?”
“No, I’m not, it’s just… I’m not a mating freak.”
Ruby just sat there giving him that look, knowing he didn’t care to listen.
“Besides,” her son continued, now using a normal tone, “I like beauty on the insides. More than on the outsides…”
With each of his stupid ideas met by silence, he finally shut his proboscis, opting not to say a thing else to anybuggy at the table anymore.
His mom let out a long sigh after looking at his face. “Dot…” she said while munching the whitefly on her plate, looking tired while addressing him, “…Nobuggy’s insides are beautiful. ‘Ya just killed an aphid, you should know that by now.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s why we’re here,” Berry said with some funny sarcasm, kindly cheering to Dot with a little smile, “So, how’d it feel to finally kill your first bug, huh? I remember you were just a larva, you were scared to even look at an aphid face-to-face, but now you've already got one under your belt! Wasn’t it great?”
Dot just looked at him; didn’t answer. His awkwardness unwelcomely spread across the rest of the table.
“Son, answer him, how was it?” Ruby sternly told him.
“It was… fine,” Dot flatly broke to them, not making eye contact. “…I guess.”
“Y’know you gotta do this for the rest of your life, right?” Ruby told him in a laugh with the others. He trembled a little, as the prior conversation replayed in his head, as did his experience with the aphid.
“…Hey, you’ll get used to it, bud, don’t worry,” Sprout reassured him. “Look at it like this: You’re a real part of what we do now!”
“Not like he wasn’t before,” Ruby clarified, “He’s pretty fuckin’ great at spotting bugs for foraging, no doubt.”
The keyholders nodded in agreement with their headbug, in the hopes that Dot would notice, to cheer him up. Thing is, that wasn’t really the kind of muscle they needed in that business; their bug-spotting was good enough thanks to their hundred associates, even if they go off to do their own thing most of the time.
“We just gotta work on your…” Ruby hesitated, “…small flight problem.”
Dot cupped his face with his tarsi in embarrassment.
“C’mon, Mom, y’know I can’t fly in a straight line, now I gotta hear it from the table?”
Truthfully, it was pretty well known among the entire cottonwood how bad their underbug was at flying, but whatever.
“Look, ‘ya still got time,” Ruby consoled him, holding his shoulder at the table while the others kept on talking, taking their own swigs from glasses of honeydew and munching on some lacebug nymphs themselves. “All these things, your worries, they’re all gonna be sorted out in time, at least while I’m around,” she smiled confidently. A grasshopper waiter then passed by them as she was talking. “Hey, get my son here another glass of honeydew, will ‘ya?”
“But, Mom…” Dot wanted to continue, “I… I–”
She looked out at the others as he kept on talking; they just looked towards each other, not at her.
“I get that I gotta provide, I don’t disagree, but…” Dot said, noticing how Ruby was addressing him, “For the rest of my life…? Why’s it gotta be that way, Mom?”
Ruby stopped, very much noticing the naivety of his question, so she told him the best way she could.
“…You see, it’s true. We do this ‘til we die. But you can either look at it like somethin’ sad, or look at it like a good thing. Work ‘til you die, sure, but make your death worth somethin’. I mean, by the time you’re runnin’ things with me, you’ll be so busy that once you die, you won’t even notice. So it’s like a buffer, and there’s nothin’ wrong with that!”
In a smile, she tousled his head while finishing her explanation, “So cheer up, son, will ‘ya? Let’s enjoy your celebration!”
Dot then settled down again, hearing her break off in conversation with the rest. But even then, despite her attempts to calm his worries down, they just couldn’t fade away. He was a participant at the table, but all he wanted to do was trail off in that dumb little head of his.
He slowly looked around at the keyholders engrossed in conversations, apart from Libelle, then turned his head back down at his empty plate.
It makes sense why he got all depressed like that; all the bugs knew his story. It was hard to say that anyone was as proud of their underbug as they were of his mother. A rough night like this at the table proved that Dot was the least proud of all.
“Here ya go, Dot. Congrats, by the way,” lightly cheered the grasshopper, coming back with the glass of honeydew.
Soon as she placed it on the table, Dot stared at it for a few seconds, in deep focus on the grainy texture he remembered loving in his larva days.
The long frown he wore that night never left his face. You ever gotten to that point when you’ve drunk so much dew that you start to feel bad for the tree it came from? Yeah, that’s pretty much what Dot was thinkin’ here.
After the talk about Libelle, his traumatic first kill, and embarrassment at the table over his flying, he must’ve known deep down that those feelings would only change once his long night was finally over.
Thing is, the night wouldn’t end the way they expected it to.“Jammy, go over to the ladybugs and deliver to ‘em what Kelvin said,” I remembered hearing Slider say that night down in one of our working burrows, which was just above Kelvin’s. “Talk to the first one you can find, preferably a keyholder; they don’t give a fuck about their associates, anyhow. Kelvin’s already coordinated with Blackjack; he’ll do his duty as soon as we send you off. Got it?”
“Alright, I’m on it,” Jammy told him.
Earlier that day, we already settled on our plans. It was as busy as ever down here in the colony; workers were moving in and out at breakneck speed, with the many scout ants, like myself, running investigations to conduct our pheromone reports, like this one you’re reading now. There were thousands of us, and we all looked practically the same, except Kelvin was the biggest. Somehow, she kept track of each of us flawlessly. We made it a goal to never run our operations like the ladybug mafia; we conducted ourselves through efficiency and survival first, made all the better by the fact that our population was in the thousands, not the hundreds, like the ladybugs were. We had every right to make it a source of pride for us.
“...Mom?” Dot asked, sadly tugging his mother as they were on their way scampering out of the bar to get back to their room upbranch. Noticing the droopy look on his face, she looked over at her keyholders and handlers as they were all scampering out of the bar together.
“Go on, I’ll follow shortly,” Ruby told them. With them on their way to the gathering den near the top of that tree, she turned back to her son, who seemed to be bracing himself.
“…I don’t think I’m gonna be able to do this, I…” he dolefully told her, “I’m really going to kill for the rest of my life? I– I don’t have it in me to do this, Mom… Nobuggy’s gonna like me enough to let me kill unnoticed, anyway…”
As much as Ruby wanted to protest her son’s doubtful self-talk, her head filled with what the other bugs had told her about him in the days before his first kill, and how little she could do to protest them. Again, all the bugs knew his story. She remained in silent ponderment over his issues, and worse, his uncertainty about changing them. There wasn’t much she could say.
Until she finally knew. And by then, she began to speak,“…I–”
Suddenly, they felt the ground faintly shaking, with a strong breeze blowing overhead.
“Crow!” Checker, the fourth keyholder, shouted from the faraway top of the tree.
Instinctively, Checker flew into that tree’s leaves and loudly tapped his tarsal claws together to signal the cottonwood’s lockdown, as was his responsibility. Never leaving his post for even a second, this ladybug was pretty much the only one really dedicated to his job. He had to be, especially after the last one they had, but I’ll get to that later.
Every associate in the cottonwood who knew Checker’s signal promptly dug into the soil and made their way underground, as they always did when this kinda thing came up. All the other ladybug associates, especially the larvae, were left in panic; it had been around forty days since the last time the mafia went into lockdown, which for all insects was like an eternity.
“Down, down!” Ruby shouted while guiding her other ladybugs underground.
Other insects were there too, but in true ladybug fashion, Ruby never gave enough of a fuck to bring ‘em down to safety. At the same time, this was the first lockdown Dot ever experienced. Not even as a larva did he ever have to worry about a canary, crow, mouse, or any other predator before. So, throughout the emotional mess in Dot’s head, his contributions to the business (and lack thereof) were still at the forefront of his mind. In the rush, he started guiding some bugs down as well.
“Come on, come on! Just… make your way down there…”
“Dot, what’re you doing?!” Ruby then shouted, looking over at her son.
Well outside Ruby’s expectations, Dot was guiding whiteflies and mites, bugs that were typically Ruby’s prey, down to safety. He turned over to his mother, “D-Don’t we gotta save ‘em, too?! C’mon!” in a display of pointless heroism.
Too busy to even address her son, her frustration kept on rising, but couldn’t do anything about it. Once the last ladybug associate was in, Ruby pulled her son inside and stayed under the compost ‘til things cleared up overhead with the crow.
But to be fair, Blackjack wasn’t very close at all. In fact, he didn’t even go near them to begin with; he just stayed on top of a faraway branch within Checker’s line of sight ‘til he decided to leave. The whole thing was a complete hoax, but all those ladybugs remained underground regardless, which was just how we wanted it.
While underground, each of those ladybugs burrowed deep into holes that they dug on their own, as if they were graves. I never understood why they chose to do that instead of just forming one big burrow to convene, like we did; the only ones that joined her in the same hole were Dot, Lucky, and Berry.
As Kelvin’s best scouter, I had to ask; were they afraid of Ruby? No, that couldn’t be it; the ladybugs loved their leader, just like we loved ours, and I’ll even admit it myself; Ruby didn’t seem all that bad, despite her occasional incompetence.
To the made ladybugs in the higher branches, the smaller bugs never paid too much mind, but they always paid their respects; if not to the keyholders for guarding their tree and observing the insects that come in and out of it, it was to Ruby for keeping the whole thing together. Like I said, though: Not immune to occasional incompetence.
“Alright, how many of us are in here?” Ruby asked from deep inside the burrows.
“...No idea, Miss Ruby,” reluctantly admitted Lucky.
“What do you mean, no idea?!” Ruby suddenly shouted, then sighed, “...Fuck, I guess we’ll never get ‘em back,” she accepted.
Perfect example of that occasional incompetence. It’s beyond me why Ruby never actually bothered to keep count of how many ladybugs there were in what was essentially her mafia. You’d think that a bug like Kelvin would have trouble keeping count of the thousand ants in her colony, but apparently, even a hundred was too much for Ruby. ‘Thousand’ was the biggest number any of us knew, so we’d say there were a hundred or so ladybugs in theirs, but really, we don’t care; we already knew our colony was bigger, and that’s what mattered. Besides, not our job to keep track of their mess.
Oh, and they never actually lost any ladybugs; Blackjack never took a bite outta them, or cared to.
“Mom?” Dot asked again, this time about the smaller bugs he brought inside the burrows.
“Just a second,” she told him in an unusually stern tone, clearly holding back her temper.
“Lucky, Berry, I’ll need you both to dig more space in here; it’s a little cramped,” she instructed the two keyholders with a lighter tone, which Dot noticed. His already wide frown grew wider, shaking even more inside than he had before.
“Yes, Miss Ruby,” they said as they started digging, but then dug away into separate paths.
“…Dot,” Ruby sighed. She noticed Dot looking avoidantly at Lucky and Berry, digging far off into the burrows.
“Come here,” she adamantly signaled.
As her son promptly got close to her, she began to slowly question him.
“Why… the fuck… did you bring the whiteflies down here?”
“I…”
“Don’t you know that one of those could’ve been from the ants?!” she started scolding. “You’re practically giving them pathways underground that lead right to where we are, and you don’t see a fuckin’ problem with that?! Where’s your head at, what’s the matter with you?!”
To her credit, we do make a lot of deals with whiteflies, but only to get honeydew, not for underground pathways. Besides, we already knew how to find them underground if we wanted. But still, Ruby’s concern wasn’t unfounded.
And even then, Dot saw fit to dismiss her with an idiotic bout of quick thinking: “Well, no one’s trying to murk us now, huh?”
“How do you know?! You just stuffed them down here!” Ruby scorned, pacing back and forth, “It’s bad enough that we’ve got a crow above us, and below us, but… If you’re gonna make it a habit to be this… bug-saving vigilante, then…” She hesitated in her speech before she continued; it was hard to speak with her son’s ashamed, broken look staring right into her face. In my view, she could’ve said far worse, but he had already taken personally everything she said.
He noticed her hesitation, and for a split second, didn’t know what to do. Well-reasoned thoughts of being the weak link flooded his head, and he was ready to break. Soon enough, that’s what he did.
“Then what?” he carelessly rebelled. “What more is there on the list of shit that I’ve failed at? I murked an aphid in cold hemolymph for you, and I’m still not a good enough son?! What, ‘cause I can’t fly, I’m scared to kill, I bring down the wrong bugs, I’m a failure?! I can’t do anything right in my life?! Then I guess that’s me. That’s who you raised, and that’s what I am,” he shook fiercely. His mother only grew more furious the faster he kept on talking, “I’m not worth my title, I’m worthless to the whole fuckin’ tree, and they all know it. I’m… I’m better off dead!”
“You want to embrace that view of yourself? This spoiled fuckin’ ladybug who can’t take control with a new generation after I’m gone?! Fine, bring my whole colony down if you hate it so much, after I can’t be there to support you on your smallest wins. What’re you gonna do then?! This wasn’t how I fuckin’ raised you.”
The look on his face was the most pathetic thing I could describe.
“Tell me! What’re you gonna do?!” she started shouting, shutting her eyes in her outrage. She then looked to the dirt walls around her, continuing as if yelling at it, too.
“You see this compost?! I’m gonna be down here someday,” she turned back to him, then back at it. “This is probably gonna be my home after… ten or twenty days, I don’t know how long I’ve got left. What’re you gonna do when the keyholders are under your control, when there’s no more honeydew left?! You’ve already got half the entire supply down your stomach! And all the shit that comes out after, the ants’ll feed off of. You want that to be how they know you?!”
She turned around to her son, now reduced to a shaking, crying, blubbering fuckin’ mess all curled up in a ball, his face turned to the dirt; fuckin’ ladybug looked paralyzed. He didn’t even have the decency to look at his mother as she was rightfully scolding his entire fuckin’ life.
At that moment, it hit her that he was right: This was the underbug she yearned to raise, and this was the son he turned out to be. She was playing family before, during the celebration, but the entire thing felt now like a bygone memory. She did her best to hold it together, but there’s really nothing worse than knowing your son’s been a piece of shit this whole time.
“You can cry all you want, but…” she told him, tears welling up. “You need to start taking yourself seriously.”
As much as everything Ruby told him hurt, she was the one who felt worse. They were both desperate for a way out of what Dot now dug himself into, but no response from him could’ve made it any better.
“...How?!”