The (Accidental) Perfect Distraction
It started, as most of Aya's disasters did, with her trying to help.
"I was just trying to say 'good morning,'" Aya muttered, trembling beneath a mushroom shelf as pure mayhem erupted in every direction. Her voice quivered like a leaf in a hurricane. "I didn't know my 'hello' pheromones could double as a DEFCON 1 alert!"
Apparently, her budding ant body was still figuring out how to… well, ant. Antennae coordination? Trash. Pheromone regulation? A war crime. Coordination with the hive mind? Nonexistent.
The moment she'd tried to mimic the local "hi-I-am-definitely-not-a-spy" pheromone blend, she had accidentally unleashed an ungodly chemical cocktail so potent, so fundamentally wrong, that it was instantly interpreted by the colony as:
"We're under attack!!"
"Enemy queen detected, initiate nukes!"
"DANCE PARTY!???"
And, according to one deeply confused soldier: "Requesting spaghetti."
She wasn't sure which of those was worse.
The colony responded exactly as one would expect when hit with fifty contradictory instincts at once: with absolute, unhinged chaos.
Dozens of soldier ants erupted from their chambers like missiles, wings buzzing, mandibles clacking, leaving trails of hysteria behind them. Ants screamed (telepathically). Ants danced. One ant flipped over a leaf and declared martial law. Another tried to climb the dirt wall to escape the madness and face the sweet release of above-ground existence.
One launched itself into a rock with the determination of a dying hero in a soap opera, splatting harmlessly but dramatically.
"Tell my... brood…" it gurgled before twitching dramatically and going limp. Then it stood back up and marched away like nothing happened.
Aya, meanwhile, was desperately crouched under a mushroom shelf the size of a garden umbrella, trying to look as not-suspicious as a vibrating, panic-stricken ant could possibly look. Her thorax trembled, her antennae were tangled, and she was one pheromone burst away from spontaneous combustion.
Her little ant heart thudded in her thorax. Every sound felt like a footstep of doom—until she peeked out from her hiding place, and her gaze landed on hope.
There, behind a pile of moldy crumbs and ancient discarded food bits, was a narrow, jagged crack in the tunnel wall.
It was small. So small that any ant not desperately looking to escape probably wouldn't even notice it. But to Aya? It gleamed like the gates of heaven, bathed in imaginary light and angelic choir sounds (which was probably just another hallucination caused by stress pheromones).
Jackpot.
"Okay. Focus," she whispered to herself, willing her frantic mind to stay intact. "This is good. Chaotic. Dumb. Confusing. AKA: The perfect time to escape."
She peeked again. Two soldier ants were currently engaged in a fierce duel with what appeared to be a piece of twig that might have once looked like a beetle if you squinted and had bad vision.
One ant was trying to eat his own antennae. Another was tap-dancing to an internal beat that absolutely did not exist.
Perfect cover.
Aya slid from her hiding spot like a ninja made of anxiety, creeping across the wall's curve while doing her best impression of "just another ant minding her own business and definitely not a walking biochemical hazard." She paused by a discarded chunk of berry, waited until two ants ran past screaming about "ghost centipedes," and then darted forward again.
She reached the crack. Up close, it looked narrower than she remembered.
"Oh no. Don't do this to me," she whispered. "I believed in you. You were my salvation."
She nudged the edge. It gave slightly.
Okay. Okay. Breathing would help right now, but ants didn't really breathe like humans. She flailed for a second trying to remember how to calm down in this body. Oxygen in. Oxygen... spiracles? Whatever. No time.
Aya shoved her thorax in, squirmed, and immediately got stuck halfway through like a horrible ant-shaped cork.
"No. Nope. Not like this. Not today."
Behind her, the chaos escalated.
A new alarm pheromone surged through the tunnels. One ant screamed (again, telepathically):"THE QUEEN'S CHAMBER IS COVERED IN SLIME! THE END TIMES ARE NIGH!"
Aya had no idea what that meant, but she was grateful for the distraction.
She wiggled. Twisted. Wiggled again. Something popped.
Freedom.
Aya tumbled through the crack like a meatball through a straw, landed on the other side in a heap of dirt, and looked up in awe.
A forgotten tunnel. Dusty. Undisturbed. Barely used. It felt like a back alley in a city—dark, narrow, a little smelly, but free.
Aya let out a noise that was the ant equivalent of an exhausted sigh and tried to reorient her antennae. "Okay. That was Part One. Now what?"
And then… came the clicks.
Multiple clicks.
Not from behind her, where the chaos reigned, but from deeper in the tunnel. Slow, deliberate.
Aya froze.
"Oh no," she whispered. "Who… what is that?"
From the shadows ahead, a glimmer of movement. A silhouette. Sharp. Unfamiliar.
The distraction had worked. She'd escaped the main prison.
But in her rush for freedom…
She might've crawled straight into something worse
Operation: Tiny Idiot's Great Escape
Aya tried to walk casually. She really did.
But her version of "casual" looked more like a very nervous ant trying not to poop pheromones.
Her legs twitched with every step. Her antennae did that weird spiral-wiggle thing that screamed, "I am totally guilty of something, please don't arrest me."
She zigzagged awkwardly between confused workers and overexcited soldiers, trying her best to blend in—which was difficult, since most of the ants around her were either dancing in confusion, sobbing over imaginary intruders, or carrying the equivalent of lunch for thirty.
Worker Ant #1: balancing a moldy mushroom cap the size of a beanbag chair.Worker Ant #2: locked in a very intense antennae-wiggle debate with its friend about the ethics of leaf storage.Soldier Ant #3: massive, armored, and currently blocking the hallway with mandibles like freshly-sharpened bear traps dipped in menace.
Aya screeched to a halt.
"Where are you going?" the soldier asked, voice as sharp and cold as a buzzsaw. Its pheromones slammed into her brain like a brick wall made of YOU SHALL NOT PASS.
Aya's antennae quivered. Her legs locked.
Oh no. This is it. This is how I die. I didn't even get to taste cheese again.
Think, Aya, THINK! You're smart! You were an office worker! You—okay, you ate cold cup ramen for three days straight during that one budget week but that's not the point—COME ON, SAY SOMETHING!
She panicked and did the worst possible thing: she vomited out the first pheromone combo that came to mind.
"Gathering food," she said, trying to sound confident.
Except instead of "gathering food," she might have accidentally said "hoarding forbidden fungus to summon ancient enemies." Or possibly "banana." She wasn't sure anymore.
The soldier's eyes narrowed. Its mandibles clicked with suspicion. It leaned closer. Closer.
Then came the antennae tap.
Aya stiffened like a popsicle in winter. This was her first experience with direct antennae communication—a.k.a. ant brain-to-brain psychic texting, if texting also sent your emotional breakdown in 4K resolution.
The soldier's thoughts collided with hers like a freight train of judgment:
"Liar. You have no food. You reek of deception. Suspicious idiot energy detected."
Aya screamed. Not out loud, but in her head, which unfortunately was still being broadcast through the antennae connection.
"I AM ON A SECRET MISSION," she blurted mentally, sweat-pheromones practically soaking her exoskeleton."SUPER SECRET. TOP-LEVEL SECURITY. CAN'T SAY ANYTHING OR I'LL EXPLODE."
There was a pause.
A long one.
The soldier stared. Aya stared back.
Internally, she was writing her will and funeral playlist.
And then, the soldier… shrugged.
"Oh. Okay. Carry on."
Aya's thoughts flatlined.
WHAT?! HOW DID THAT WORK?!She had lied,panicked, and bluffed her way through military-grade suspicion using the ant equivalent of "I'm totally supposed to be here, don't worry about it."
Somewhere in the heavens above, the god of ants was either facepalming or slow-clapping.
Aya did not wait to find out which.
Her legs turned to jelly, but she pushed forward with the sheer force of adrenaline and delusional momentum. She rounded the corner and ducked into a side tunnel, breathing hard.
Okay. Okay. She was almost there.
Just needed to find the crack again. Just needed to crawl back through—
A tremor ran through the ground.
Not loud. Not violent. But unmistakable.
Aya froze.
More ants? Another patrol?
No.
Something worse.
From deeper in the shadows, that strange clicking noise returned. But this time, it wasn't slow or cautious. It was eager. Hunting.
Aya turned around just in time to see a pair of glassy, hungry eyes flash in the dark.
Something moved.
Long. Segmented. Fast.
"That's not an ant!" Aya yelped, scrambling backward.
She didn't know what it was—centipede? mutant worm? prison monster? demonic ex-boyfriend from another life?—but she knew three things:
It wasn't supposed to be here.
It was blocking her escape route.
It had just licked its mandibles.
Aya screamed internally for the seventh time that day.
"Nope. Not today. Operation: Tiny Idiot's Great Escape is still on!"
She turned, bolted, and—
—slammed face-first into another soldier ant.
"Explain your presence," it growled.
"AHHH—uh—I'm being chased by a giant clicky thing!"
"What?"
"No time!"
Aya launched a pheromone burst so sharp and ridiculous it caused the soldier to drop into a stunned trance of confusion. She leapt past him like an Olympic hurdler, zigzagging through tunnels, hopping over stunned ants, and praying she wouldn't run into another wall or soldier.
Behind her, the clicking grew louder.
The monster was following her. Or maybe stalking her. Or maybe just casually strolling behind her while planning a six-course dinner.
Either way—she had to move.
Up ahead, she spotted the tiniest sliver of light.
Another crack.
It wasn't the same one as before—but it was something. A possibility. A miracle.
Aya pushed herself harder, her tiny legs a blur. She didn't know if she was crying or sweating or leaking sheer terror—but she reached the opening, squeezed through, and tumbled into—
—a garbage chute.
She landed in a pile of decomposing fruit and moldy seeds with a dramatic splat.
Silence.
Then the familiar click-click-click echoed faintly behind her, but it was fading.
Aya lay there, twitching slightly, covered in ancient grape juice and beetle shells.
She had made it.
Barely. Stupidly. Accidentally. Heroically.
Aya cracked a shaky smile. "And that's why you never question the Tiny Idiot."
The Crawl of Freedom
The crack loomed before her.
Narrow. Jagged. Untouched.
To any ordinary ant, it looked like a dangerous, forgotten gap in the wall. To Aya?
It looked like destiny.
"That's it," she whispered. Her voice trembled with exhaustion and hope. "That's my way out. That's the tunnel that leads to freedom. To fresh air. To not dying in a colony riot."
She didn't wait. No planning. No checking. No second-guessing.
Aya shoved her head into it like a desperate noodle noodle trying to dive into a straw.
Immediately, her antennae slammed into cold stone. Her mandibles scraped awkwardly against rough earth. Her thorax bumped up against the sides like a bumper car that didn't know how to reverse.
"I swear, if this is another dead end—"
She wiggled her shoulders. She wriggled her middle. She kicked her back legs furiously like a beetle trying to swim through peanut butter.
And then she stopped.
Because she wasn't moving forward anymore.
Because—
she was stuck.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" she hissed, her voice echoing back at her in a smug, echoing tone like the tunnel itself was mocking her.
This was not how freedom was supposed to go.
She squirmed. She thrashed. She flapped her limbs like a drowning roach at a pool party. The crack was too tight around her middle. Her abdomen, slightly bloated from stress-eating a berry earlier, was wedged firmly.
The worst part? She could hear the chaos behind her.
The pheromone riot was still raging.
Footsteps. Screaming. Psychic confusion. Someone somewhere bellowed:
"WHO STOLE MY SPAGHETTI SIGNAL?!"
Aya felt her life flash before her compound eyes.
Memories of office life.
Her old desk. Her favorite vending machine. That one time she spilled soup on the department printer and blamed the intern.
"I am not dying like this," she growled, eyes glowing with sheer delusion and spite.
With one final burst of panic-powered strength, she twisted her abdomen sideways, screamed inside her own head—
POP.
She shot out of the crack like a champagne cork on New Year's Eve.
Thwip—spin—SLAM.
Aya somersaulted once in the air, landed directly on her face, bounced twice, and ended in a heap of dirt, twigs, and crushed pride.
Silence.
She lay there. Breathing. Twitching. A single leaf floated down and landed gently on her back like nature was patting her for surviving.
"I… I did it," she whispered hoarsely.
Her legs twitched.
"I'M FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—"
She screamed it into the sky, lungs filled with dirt and glory, wings buzzing with adrenaline.
And then—
A large, brown beetle blinked at her from a rock nearby.
Just blinked. Slowly. Disapprovingly.
Aya froze.
She shrank down like a guilty toddler caught stealing cookies.
"…freedom quietly achieved. Thank you, nature," she said in a whisper, bowing politely to the beetle like it was some kind of divine witness to her stupidity.
The beetle turned and walked away, unimpressed.
Aya sat up slowly, brushing herself off and surveying her surroundings.
She was out. Truly out.
She had escaped the prison colony.
The air was different here—cooler, slightly fresher, and filled with actual smells that weren't all psychic yelling and bug sweat.
Above her, the tunnel opened into a wide cavern lit by bio-luminescent mushrooms. The walls glowed a soft green. The floor was littered with debris from above—fallen leaves, bits of rotting wood, and occasional shiny treasures ants had dragged in and forgotten.
A faint breeze stirred. Aya stood up fully for the first time in hours.
No soldiers. No tunnels. No clicking monsters.
Just freedom.
But before she could celebrate with another dramatic yell, something crunched beneath her foot.
Aya looked down.
A shiny fragment of metal. A human soda can tab, twisted and buried in the dirt.
Human trash.
She froze. Realization settled in.
She wasn't just outside the prison.
She was in the Borderlands.
The forgotten tunnel between the colony and the surface world. A place ants rarely went. A place filled with scavengers, monsters, and—
"Outcasts," she whispered, eyes wide. "Runaways. Rogues. Freaks."
Her eyes darted to a shadow in the distance. Something small. Watching.
Then it waved at her.
Or…maybe it was doing jumping jacks? Maybe summoning a demon? She couldn't tell. Either way—
Aya straightened up.
The Great Ant Prison Break (That Almost Failed Immediately) was over.
Now began the next challenge:
Surviving freedom.
Wait, This is Worse
Aya stood on trembling legs.
Her exoskeleton creaked. Her antennae twitched wildly in all directions, trying to process the tidal wave of sensory overload slamming into her ant brain. The ground pulsed beneath her feet with vibrations she couldn't identify. Wind rushed past her with the force of a freight train. The world outside was alive. Too alive.
Before her stretched a massive, horrifying, jaw-dropping landscape.
Grass.
But not just grass. This was eldritch horror grass. Towering blades of green reached into the sky like skyscrapers built by unfeeling gods. Their tips swayed in the breeze like they were just waiting for a reason to fall on her.
Trees loomed in the distance like ancient titans. Their bark curled and twisted, gnarled and cracking, giving them the haunted appearance of creatures frozen mid-scream.
A breeze drifted by.
Aya's entire body locked up.
The scent. The scent! It was a cocktail of wildflowers, spoiled fruit, dirt, fungus, and... and...
Was that...was that wasp?!
"Oh no."
Aya's voice came out as a dry squeak.
She took a single step forward. The ground responded by shifting beneath her, like a giant had just taken a nap nearby and rolled over in its sleep.
Something rustled in the foliage ahead. A long shadow passed overhead. A bug—a big one—flapped by with wings like leather sails. Its eyes glinted with the same cold expression you'd see in a hitman looking for their next target.
Aya gasped.
"Oh no."
She turned slowly, eyes wide, back toward the crack in the wall—the one she'd just popped out of moments ago like a bottle rocket of freedom and dirt.
The prison.
The familiar tunnel.
The pheromone chaos.
The screaming soldier who still wanted spaghetti.
She stared at it.
Paused.
Contemplated.
"You know, maybe it wasn't that bad…"
Another breeze blew.
It carried a sound this time.
Chittering.
Something was coming through the underbrush. Something BIG. The kind of chittering that sounded like multiple limbs, mandibles, and just enough sentience to enjoy chasing down smaller bugs.
Aya bolted.
"NOPE. I HATE THIS. I HATE THIS. I WANT A REFUND ON REINCARNATION."
She sprinted into the wilderness, dodging giant pebbles that felt like boulders, leaping over twigs the size of bridges, flinching at every single movement in the grass. She didn't even know where she was running. She just ran.
Left. Right. Through a puddle. Under a leaf. Back over the same puddle because she panicked and doubled back.
Her inner monologue was pure static:
I hate this I hate this I hate this nature is a lie reincarnation is a scam I miss office chairs and vending machines and fluorescent lighting that gave me migraines at least that didn't have PREDATORS—
She darted into the shadow of a rock and threw herself flat against the wall, chest heaving, limbs trembling.
Silence.
For a moment.
And then—
FSSHHHKKKKKK—
A centipede slithered past.
A gigantic, armored, multi-legged nightmare beast that looked like a boss fight escaped from an RPG. It didn't see her. It didn't care. It just cruised by like a motorcycle made of spite and crunching noises.
Aya did not breathe.
She did not blink.
She waited for five entire minutes before peeking out again.
Nothing.
Still, Aya's thoughts spiraled:
I escaped the prison and landed in a survival horror game.Great. Excellent. Just peachy. WHERE'S MY TUTORIAL FOR THIS?!
She sat down on a curled-up leaf and slapped her forehead with her front legs.
"This is worse," she said aloud.
She looked around. The giant grass towers waved mockingly in the breeze. A ladybug landed nearby and started cleaning its wings like this was all normal.
Aya slumped.
"This is so much worse."
And then—
Footsteps.
Light. Fast. Several.
Aya froze. Again.
Her antennae flared.
She wasn't alone.
Something was watching her.
Again.
From the shadows.
Again.
And then, from behind a broken twig, a voice spoke:
"Hey. You lost or just stupid?"
Aya jumped a foot in the air. She spun around.
Standing atop a pebble like a dramatic protagonist was another bug. An ant.
But not just any ant.
This one had scars. Jagged ones. A cracked mandible. A missing leg replaced with what looked like a toothpick shard?! Its eyes gleamed with both mischief and mild disgust.
Aya blinked.
"U-uhh..."
The stranger smirked.
"Welcome to the Borderlands, rookie. Try not to die."