“…Are you okay?”
“I… I don’t know anymore…”
“Hey, hey, it’s alright… Just take it easy. You’re with me now, not with them. It’s alright…”
“You… You sure?”
“Yes, yes, it’s okay now. I promise.”
“I… I still can’t–”
“I know… I know, me too. But you’re not there anymore, you’re with me. It’s okay.”
“Thank you… Th-Thank you, Phido…”
“It’s– It’s okay. It’s almost over.”
“Th… Thank you so much…”
After that disgusting display that the ladybugs put on for the two of them, Ivy and Phido dug down to a working burrow in their ant colony, where they hid deep inside one of our underground chambers, away from even the workers. She felt safe underground, near a friend she knew well. Phido was digging around that burrow, making a space where she could breathe easier. That poor moth girl… She was holding him pretty tight, just desperate to be in a safe place; Dot doing what he did to one of his own immediately let her know exactly how much danger she had put herself in.
“Can you breathe okay?”
“Y– Yes… It’s alright, I… I can’t– I still can’t believe… what I had just s-saw…”
“You’re never going to see that ladybug ever again, okay?”
“P… Promise?”
“Yes. I promise, we… We’ll keep you safe. We always will.”
“Th– Thank you, Phido…”
“No, don’t thank me, it’s alright. You can stick with us.”
“Th– Thank you, h… he fuckin’ tricked me all this time… I… I just wanna stay by you…”
Feeling tears fall down her face, he immediately spoke, “N– No, no, don’t cry… Please…”
“I just… Y– You’ve been so kind…”
By this point, she was letting out pheromones for him. Phido stopped, hesitating, then embraced her again. The smell didn’t seem to really hit him yet.
And while they were hugging it out down there, I won’t shy away from admitting: Ivy got a little touchy-feely with Phido here, now that she finally felt that sense of normalcy again with him.
And I perfectly share her sentiment; whenever the ladybugs’ situation was too much for me to report on, I always had to go back to the ants. Everything felt normal like that, and Phido in particular just had that air around him that kept it all alive. When he talked, he just… He always had that ‘pretty boy’ attitude to him, I guess you could say.
Again, ants knew better than to relate outside their species, but I’m sure Phido knew those pheromones were pretty incredible, once they hit him; it was probably the best sensation Phido had ever felt, and I’m sure he’s felt a lot in all his days, as sweet as he is. But he didn’t advance, he didn’t ask for more, he didn’t try to mate, or do any of the bugshit Dot tried to pull. He enjoyed it, but Ivy could tell that he didn’t give a fuck about the smell, and that made Ivy want to offer him even more. That was the behavior of a bug who actually deserved it.
Dot fooled that moth girlie for a good amount of time, and the whole thing was all over her scent. What a fuckin’ sap; Phido’s head didn’t fill with any thoughts that changed his fuckin’ life or anything… I had to ask it; why couldn’t Dot just be more like Phido? I guess, you really do have to be selective with who gets your scents; some get the benefits of pheromone addiction, and some get the drawbacks.
“Keyholder down! Keyholder DOWN!”
“W– What?! Berry?!” Sprout screamed as he flew up to see Checker, who was signaling something he caught within his field of vision, sounding more freaked out than I’d ever heard him; Dot just stayed in the gathering den. They saw some blurry bits of red and yellow off in the horizon, “T– That can’t be B–”
Then, they both saw it clearer. It was Berry; his face pretty much cracked open, his underbelly beaten to a hemolymph pulp. All Sprout wanted to do was cry the moment he saw his friend, lying there a fuckin’ mess, and just wanted to cry. But as pretty much the only bug in the tree with any drive to do something anymore, he found crying a job for the saps, and Dot was becoming too fuckin’ inefficient.
“…Put the tree on lockup, immediately,” Sprout hastily told him.
And just like that, Checker ordered all the remaining sections of associates to stay inside the center of the tree’s trunk again; I guess there was a reasonable doubt among them that Dot wasn’t the one who killed…
…But none of the associates there had ever made themselves a traitor to their own tree before. The thought of sabotaging the tree never crossed anybuggy’s minds, let alone the mind of a handler, keyholder, underbug, or especially a headbug ever doing that…
…But times change.
“…Hey. My name’s Twig. What’s yours?”
“…”
“You there?”
“Yeah, I… I just didn’t know we were giving out our names… Ruby wanted to keep associate names secret.”
“Well, things’re getting pretty fuckin’ bad… and Ruby’s dead now, so do the names even matter anymore? I mean, here we are inside the fuckin’ tree again… Two lockups and a lockdown in the span of ten days. Something’s up.”
“Yeah, it’s… it’s fuckin’ horrible out here. The name's Reed, by the way.”
This was a conversation I was able to record from inside the cottonwood tree, between two of the associates during lockup. Like I said, as a ladybug associate, you were practically a nobuggy compared to the rest of the tree.
And I found that pretty fucked up. Everybuggy in our burrows: Slider, Torch, Phido, and I? We were all associates. Every single ant in our colony was an associate, even the drones. But Kelvin treated us all equally: One of the many reasons why we just fuckin’ adore her. For the most part, the cottonwood kept their associates in the dark about pretty much all their operations, only knowing what they know about through observation alone.
But even though the tree was separated and even ranked by its higher and lower branches, it wasn’t hard to figure out what those higher-ups were really up to, if you bothered to put in the effort to scout for it. And that’s coming from an ant like myself, so imagine what you could’ve found.
“Everything fuckin’ sucks right now, Reed, I– I can’t even remember the last time I was asked to do a hit. Not since the first generation, when I took out those thrips and milkweeds. It’s gotten so fuckin’ boring since then…”
“Yeah, there’s nothin’ to fuckin’ do anymore… except just… sit here and take in the tragedy of all these dying higher-ups.”
“Y’know, why do they fuckin’ matter so much, anyway? We’re sitting here over a dead bug upbranch, but when it’s us, they don’t lock the tree down, or up, or whatever the fuck. Ruby pretended to give a fuck, but all of them really don’t.
“Yeah! It’s stupid!”
“So fuckin’ idiotic…”
They just kept sitting in some more silence after that. Twig then spoke again, muttering under his breath.
“Hope it was Dot who got murked, that fuckin’ piece of shit…”
“I hope so, too. He’s just a fuckin’ associate to me, maybe worse.”
“Yeah, Ruby ruined that bug. Coddled him like nobuggy’s business.”
“If anything, you’ve got more character than he does, Twig.”
“Tch, yeah. No kidding. Even Cedar was better than he was, and he was terrible. Worst fuckin’ handler we’ve ever had.”
“Yeah, I hate those fuckin’ handlers… Dunno where he is now, though.”
“How long d’we have to stay down here, anyway?”
Sprout, Basel, and Dot were the only ones left in that gathering den, sitting pretty far apart from each other in that dark space, alone together; they all saw what happened to their friend. None of them had their eyes on anyone, but spent much of the time there taking in the tense air of that room. Minutes and seconds passed; if there was a unit of time I knew that went beyond minutes and seconds, I would use it here.
Dot was just thinking the whole time, and in his expressions, began mirroring what those associates were feeling inside the hollow trunk, wondering what point there was staying inside such a dark, cramped space for so long.
But the thing was, they didn’t even need to speak; there was no deliberation at all for a while. Despite the lack of eyes on one another inside that den, all of them had their focus on Dot. Sprout, Basel, and even Checker? They all knew where each of them were. Besides, Checker knew that no one else entered the cottonwood, and the last time anybuggy ever saw Dot was while he foraged with Berry. There was really only one explanation.
“…It was me,” Dot shakily let out a long sigh, finally saying the quiet part out loud. Tears started dripping from him the moment soon as he confessed.
The air eased up once they got his confession, but nobuggy felt any better about it. It was there that Sprout got up, and decided to be the first to talk some sense into him.
“Hey. Dot,” Sprout said, in an almost scolding tone, “Just explain it to me. Why’d you do it?”
“He…” Dot hesitated, his breath getting shaky now. “He w– withheld… information. There was some… deal. And it got Lucky killed. Maybe even Mom. He didn’t tell us about any of it.”
Basel and Sprout looked at each other, with really stressed looks on their faces, and looked back at Dot, now a murker of his own kind. Even despite what he was telling them, they both knew they really couldn’t see him the same way again.
“But I’ve…” Dot continued, visibly showing lots of guilty remorse, “I know I went against my mother by… killing him. I went against her, against the tree–” Dot then shook as Sprout suddenly interrupted him.
“No, Dot, you went against the entire fuckin’ forest. This entire operation,” Sprout looked away from him, “You’ve dug us all underground now.”
Memories of Dot’s argument with Ruby underground suddenly returned.
“…W-Wh– What?!”
“Don’t you fuckin’ play dumb with me,” Sprout scolded, looking back at him, tears streaming down a little, “The entire forest is gonna know about this now.”
“What, so you just wanna tell ‘em?! Have you lost it?!” Dot tried shouting back, sounding out of breath.
“No, YOU’VE lost it. Berry was our FRIEND. Now he’s GONE,” Sprout dramatically raised his voice, slowly climbing to a buzz, “And it’s ALL because of you.”
Dot looked around at the den, finding Basel and Checker staring at him; his vision got shakier.
“…I didn’t know what else to do. Berry lied to all of us. It got Lucky killed, so I–”
“Are you his fucking executioner?! You wanna decide who fuckin’ lives and dies?! We could’ve been able to talk to Berry to sort this thing out, but you go ahead and break the agreement that every hierarchy in the FOREST has followed for thousands of da–”
Dot suddenly couldn’t take Sprout’s voice anymore.
“So why the FUCK does KELVIN get to?!” Dot screamed at the top of his spiracles, “Give me a fuckin’ BREAK! Kelvin KILLED my MOTHER!”
“What proof do you have that she DID that?! For all we know, that murking could’ve been YOU! I mean, you killed our friend! You could’ve killed her, too!” Sprout badgered him. Those words flew Dot to pace around the room, crying silently and almost hyperventilating, as if he were caught inside a fuckin’ venus flytrap.
“Even if Kelvin did kill her,” Sprout continued with an exhausted voice as Dot kept shaking, “What the fuck made you wanna be like her?!”
And after he calmed down and took a few breaths, Dot responded with probably the most insane thing I’ve ever heard anybuggy say before.
“Wh– What the fuck is it with you, Sprout?! You were just a good f-fuckin’ forager back then, and n-now you’re defending Kelvin and saying it was me, who the FUCK d’you think you are?!” Dot tearfully shouted, prompting Sprout to drip some tears a little himself. Dot just kept on talking.
“The moment I make a mistake, it’s always fuckin’ scrutinized, but Kelvin gets a free pass, now killing off our tree while mating a thousand drones a FUCKIN’ SECOND. There’s ALWAYS a higher standard for me to fuck up–”
“Wait, wait, wait, back up, you’re trying to make ME the one in the wrong here?!” Sprout interrupted, then continued, “You seriously think you’re justified?! I’m not the fuckin’ murker of my own kind here, I’m not the one with hemolymph on my tarsi. That was ALL YOU.”
Finally, somebuggy said it. It was always better to not have hemolymph on your tarsi before getting into a fight with someone.
And why’d he have to insult our queen with a lie like that? Sure, she’s still laying eggs to this day from all those drones who mated with her long ago, in that nuptial flight, but they’re all dead now.
From there, the den grew much quieter, and the two fighting ladybugs spoke with low tones from then on.
(Thank fuck. It felt a lot less like a screaming match; I could transcribe everything they were saying much faster now.)
“…At least I didn’t kill Nino.”
Sprout then stopped once Dot tearfully said those words; the leader of the tree, saying something like that?! Genuinely unconscionable.
After that long silence, more thoughts began to flood in Sprout’s head, each more sobering than the last, knowing the conversation was getting way too sour and insane. So he kept himself restrained and remained the much bigger bug, keeping a low tone.
“You sent him to the parasitic wasps, Dot.”
Dot remained silent.
“You ordered him to where he got killed. That ant told me everything when Basel and I held him back.”
Dot still remained silent.
“Something you didn’t wanna do, because you were too busy killing my friend.”
Dot didn’t know what to do anymore.
Sprout looked around the room, seeing everybuggy else with deeply sunken looks on their faces as they listened in to this conversation, shaking with fear over who was truly leading them now. Everyone was tired; Dot was practically motionless. Sprout then continued, with dried tears down his face.
“…Why’d you even care about that fuckin’ ant more than Nino, anyway?”
Sprout observed his face. The moment Dot was asked his opinion, he was ready to spill it all, “I–”
“Actually, no, save your breath. I don’t wanna hear it anymore. I’m out.”
And just like that, Sprout was gone. He flew out of the den, but didn’t stop anywhere. Basel peeked out of the den’s entrance to see where he was going, but he wasn’t flying down to forage anymore. He was off in the horizon, heading anywhere else but near there. That was the last time any of the ladybugs ever saw him.
Gotta say, my respect for Sprout went up a fuckton after I reported this part.
Checker then came back down from his post, trying to soften the air, “Hey, I… I heard some shouting. What happened? Did we find out what happened to Berry? Internal threat, or external?”
Basel gave Checker a deeply conflicted look. Then, Dot rose from where he sat and told Checker with a sunken voice, “…It was external. Call off the lockup.”
Basel looked over at Dot with incredulousness. “I’ll be in my room,” Dot muttered to himself, shaking as he began to leave the den.
“Dot…” Basel stopped him, so Dot looked at that handler dead-on and told him the following words:
“We may fall, but we’ll rise. They won’t see us rise, but we’ll rise regardless.”
Basel’s worried look barely changed, even though those were the words Ruby would say when she designated a new ladybug as a keyholder.
“We need a new keyholder; you’re the new keyholder now. Congratulations, Basel.”
Basel’s look still didn’t change.
With nothing else to say or do from there, Dot continued his scamper out of the den into his room.
And after he left, nobuggy wanted to speak to Dot anymore. It was hard for them, though; how were they supposed to lead the colony out of threats with a leader who was acting like this, driving away his own friends? They were stumped, but there really was nothing they could say about it. They didn’t know what to make of any of what the fuck he was talkin’ about anymore, so they all just stopped their operations for a bit.
But hey, that’s them if those idiots needed to debate on supporting a murker of his own kind. Not our problem; Kelvin knew better than to let ants start problems with each other, anyway. Jammy was the first to try that, and you already saw what happened there.
“Ah, hey Slider. Clover. What’s new?” Torch greeted us from inside one of our working burrows, all smiles, where Slider had just come down after a talk with our queen; I was following him close behind after that private talk, and knew well enough about it myself.
Really, that was when our colony heard the news about Jammy. Knowing his story, it was hard to put into words, but I had to say; he pulled through like a fuckin’ champion before he died. Even despite him going off the rails. Still, it was clear to everyone; his resilience proved the kind of strength only an ant could have. Even while leaking out all the hemolymph he could, he managed to enter just by that tree’s entrance and offer us the perfect venue where we could win the easiest war of our lives.
Once Torch told us the news, we all, of course, had our moment of silence, but Slider calmed us by reminding us of the upside.
“Ugh, finally, I’m sick of those fuckin' ladybugs…” Torch told us.
“The queen was sick of ‘em the moment she saw ‘em get that fuckin’ dragonfly,” Slider chuckled.
“Where are those ladybugs, anyhow?” Torch asked, “Aren’t they underground?”
Slider didn’t know the answer, so I had to interject. “Nah, the associates are under lockup now.”
“Lockup? The fuck is that?”
“They keep the associates inside the tree trunk,” I explained to Torch, “Their trunk’s got a hollow space, where all the associates hide, but the headbugs hide together inside that gathering den, in the higher branches.”
“Hah, associates on the bottom and heads on top? That’s how they set up their colony?” Slider laughed.
“Tch, of course it is,” Torch retorted, laughing, “They can’t live without a fuckin’ hierarchy.”
With all of us sharing a laugh together about it, Slider turned to me and asked, “Hey, Clover, why do they do that, anyway?”
“It’s what happens after a higher-up gets murked,” I smiled.
“Ooh, who was it?” asked Slider, the rest of the worker ants around us gasping with surprise and continuing their laughs.
“Berry,” I said, laughing with them, “And I’ll do ‘ya one better, Dot was the one who got him!”
I’ll admit it… The air got pretty awkward after I said that. Slider and Torch immediately stopped laughing upon hearing that news.
“…Wait, Clover, you’re saying that… Dot killed his own fuckin’ ladybug?”
“Yeah–” I answered Slider, my laughter dying down too. With a relatively distraught look from him, he and Torch just stared at each other. I knew their looks pretty well.
“Well, that’s fuckin rich,” Torch said, with caution in his voice, “A ladybug who kills one of his own… Get the fuck outta here…”
“It’s unthinkable,” Slider added, “First, he tries to fuck a moth, then he makes a fool of himself in front of our queen… more than once… and now he kills one of his own. Dot’s a fuckin’ threat.”
“…No kidding,” Torch said while heading back to his own burrow to discuss with the fire ants.
“I’ll let Kelvin know of this immediately,” Slider said, addressing me, crawling back down to the queen’s burrow.
“Reed?”
“Yeah, Twig?”
“Why the fuck do they keep us in the dark like this?”
“They don’t trust us, there’s no trusting anyone in this fuckin’ forest.”
“Well, where do we turn if we don’t know who to trust?”
Those two associates, still inside the trunk during lockup, shared a pause after saying probably the most true words to ever come out of a ladybug’s proboscis.
“What’s a better option, trusting the ants?” Reed asked sarcastically.
“Fuck that. They’ll kill you ‘cause they’re bored.”
“I hate those fuckin’ sons of botflies, they– they got the whole forest’s respect, and all they do is aedeagus around with their queen all fuckin’ day.”
Well, I didn’t know that, and neither did you. And neither should anybuggy else, ‘cause it’s another fuckin’ lie from these insects. Kelvin really couldn’t catch a break with being insulted like this; it’s not fair.
“Well, if it’s the ants who’re doing all the killing, just get Dot outta here and put us out of our fuckin’ misery,” Reed laughed, his laughter then petering out upon seeing Twig’s expression.
“…Y’know, it’s… It’s all death with these fuckin’ bugs, Reed. Even with us. I still lay awake in torpor sometimes, thinkin’ of who I’ve killed… and whether they really deserved it or what.”
“That’s the worst feeling,” Reed answered, looking up into the top of the trunk, while pensively laying on his back with Twig next to him in that cramped space. Twig kept on talking.
“Back before the diapause, the forest killed left and right,” Twig said, “Now, everyone’s all soft about it; too worried about the fuckin’ cockroach race going on. So they just hate instead.”
“Yeah, if– if you hate your enemies that much, then just fuckin’ kill ‘em already.”
“No, Reed, I’m just wondering why Ruby ever put us in that position in the first place…”
“…And that’s trust again,” Twig said.
They looked around at the dark room in contemplation over what it is they were talking about. Some of the ladybugs that were awake underneath them started listening in, but didn’t interrupt.
“Is trust even a good thing?”
“What do you mean, Twig?”
“I mean, trust is a two-way branch, right? That’s what Ruby says? We never got any promotions, we never got any communication. They really don’t give a fuck about our lives. I never trusted Ruby, rest in peace… but she never trusted me. Or any of us.”
“So why’re we here?” Reed asked rhetorically, but Twig and the others genuinely started to question it. I would’ve, too. “Y’know what, yeah! Why the fuck are we here?”
“…I guess it’s all to feel like we’re part of something,” Twig answered seriously, looking over to him. “I was promised that I’d survive more efficiently by staying here, but it’s at the cost of my window of trust.”
“Yeah, you’re… You’re right,” Reed answered, finding himself sitting up, invested in the conversation, and Twig did the same. “So then it becomes a question of… what’s the better tradeoff: More trust, or more efficiency?”
“We’d have to know the facts on that, on how much we’ve consumed. But we can’t. How would we know, anyway?”
“We can’t run trustworthy numbers. It’s all relative, anyhow.”
“Yeah, Reed, it’s like… It feels like it’s all just built on lies. They say it’s not a cockroach race, but that’s how they treat it. All these ants, all these ladybugs, they promise it’s not a competition, or to be better than anybuggy else, but with every move they make they… they look to the next unfortunate bug to understand where they are.”
After that last bit of deliberation, they laid back down, and let out a long sigh. Twig looked at the shadowy bark inside where they hid out after speaking his peace, and muttered.
“It’s all a gamble. It’s all just fuckin’ fortune.”
Reed scoffed, “Some game this is…”
“…There’s no winning in games like these.”
Just underneath the bark where they were talking, they could then hear the sounds of digging. They didn’t know what it was.
“Is that Checker?”
“I hope so, I can’t wait to get the fuck outta here. Soon as he opens up this trunk, I’m out. It’s quits.”
Their worries seemed to dissipate, now realizing the freedom they had to leave the entire time.
“Me too. Fuck this, I wanna go with you.”
I mean, I totally understand it myself; they stayed in there for what felt like a fuckin’ eternity. And again, Checker was too busy crying over Berry, or whatever, to let ‘em out, anyway.
And it was odd; those associates said everything under the sky’s light ball: Practically dismantled the entire way the forest fuckin’ operated, with just that one discussion (or at least, tried). But the ever-so-important deliberation up there in the gathering den? Nothing. Just a quick game of who’s at fault, followed by an outburst, and then some more fuckin’ crying. They never bothered to get to the heart of the horrible shit everybuggy was on. They all wanted an answer, but nobuggy wanted the truth.
So yes, I totally understood where all those associates were coming from, and what all their fears were.
The fire ants got to understand them, too, by the time they killed ‘em all.
It was Kelvin’s orders; her fire ants made quick work of ‘em. It was all much easier than we thought, too; around a thousand of us, and hardly a hundred of them, all done inside that trunk without the keyholders or all the fuckin’ headbug politics on our back. Good riddance.
Those associates had it coming, too; we never forgot about Beatrice.
Remember those sunflowers and thrips? Jewel, Fairy, and Dice, back when they were all alive, didn’t actually have the whole story on them.
Yes, the honeybee queen did make those deals with the thrips and parasitoids to keep the flowers safe, but there was one more part they forgot to mention: The butterflies.
We’ve written at length about butterflies in other reports, but Kelvin saved the most important parts for this one. The bees and the butterflies loved one another back in those days, they really did. But Ruby did something here that crawled over all our expectations, and not in a good way.
It all started when this one dumb fuckin’ ladybug associate, I don’t even remember her name, died after eating a caterpillar, somehow mistaking it for a fuckin’ aphid.
See, there’s this process unique to caterpillars where the toxins… I don’t fuckin’ remember, it had something to do with toxins; when they eat toxic plants, they don’t die from it, but it carries over to whoever eats it. Smart fuckin’ bugs.
But once Ruby found out, just guess how she reacted. Take a wild fuckin’ guess.
“My queen, my queen!” Bitsy, one of her long-gone associates from way back when, called out from the surface of the burrow. “Queen Kelvin, it’s Rosie, from the cottonwood; she brings a warning from Ruby.”
“From Ruby? Bring her down, I’ll speak with her at once.”
Yeah, this was just before the ladybugs broke all the trust we had for them.
“Rosie, what brings you here?” Kelvin asked.
“Queen Kelvin, I’d say it’s urgent,” Rosie responded diplomatically, back when the ladybugs treated our queen with respect. She took out a sunflower petal and kept talking to our queen, “You see, the sunflower population’s in great danger; its numbers are shrinking, fast. I pulled this petal out from a wilted one.”
Kelvin, with her fantastic observational skills, closely observed that sunflower petal and looked back at Rosie’s compound eyes; cottonwood keyholders had come down to the burrows before with warnings, and Kelvin found no reason in the past to not trust those. And with this one involving somebuggy as close to her as Beatrice was, what else was Kelvin gonna do?
But sadly, heeding Rosie’s warning ended up being a pretty big mistake on our queen’s part; you’ll see why in a minute.
“If this is true, I’ll need to inform Beatrice at once,” Kelvin said.
“I must insist on it, queen Kelvin,” Rosie finished.
So now, Ruby’s fiasco was set in motion. Really, by that point, nothing happened to those fuckin’ sunflowers; it was really the milkweeds that everybuggy should’ve looked out for. What, did you guess that Ruby was gonna let that caterpillar-egg thing slide? Fuck no; Ruby was gonna take revenge by killing off the milkweeds, the butterflies’ favorite flowers, to score their own nectar for the night.
I mean, how else do you think the honeydew bar had such a huge selection?
Thankfully for Ruby, though, everybuggy was lookin’ the other way. They had the perfect window to kill those flowers off, and that’s just what they did.
The butterflies could never have survived somethin’ like that; they all died the next day.
And so did Beatrice; once we all found out about what Ruby’s associates had pulled on us, Beatrice got so upset over it that she took her own life.
As a bug could imagine, Kelvin could never have taken that gracefully. By that point, her trust in the ladybugs had stretched far too thin; after Domino and now after Beatrice, she had to keep her eyes on Ruby, waiting for just the right chance to strike, while somehow dealing with all her many associates she had by then.
She waited for Ruby’s consequences to eventually come in at the time we’d all been hoping for, but for many days, they never did. Even while her whole tree was tearing through the fuckin’ sunflower population, none of the other bugs did anything to stop them; Ruby was probably the most feared bug in the forest by this point.
But like I explained in the INTERIM to this report, it didn’t last; Elly’s mistake handed us the biggest miracle we could’ve ever asked for, especially in dealing with those fuckin’ associates.
Now they’re all gone; just floating on inside the tree trunk, suspended in pools of their own guts.
Y’know, Kelvin told me about Beatrice, and how she was always a real sweet, peaceful type, before she decided to give up on the forest, in the way she did. She never liked seeing dead bugs, so when her butterfly friends all turned up dead, the poor girl held so much guilt inside…
But hey. To avenge a loved one gone on, sometimes, hemolymph pools are the only option.
You’re welcome, Beatrice; we still miss you.
“Urr… Ugh… M– My antennae… I-I’m l-leaking… W-Wh… Where is everyone…?”
“Heh. Hey, Pebble, c’mere. We got a survivor.”
“N– No-N– O-Ow… Ow…”
“Got anything to say about Beatrice?”
“G… G-G–”
“Huh?”
“…Go f-fuck yourself.”
“Right, right…”
SNAP!