Aya had only been outside the colony for one single day.
One.
And she had almost died FIVE TIMES.That was nearly one death every few hours. Impressive in a horrible way.
She glared at the sky.
"Reincarnation is a scam. A full-blown, soul-trapping, divine MLM scheme. And I'm the idiot who clicked 'Agree' without reading the fine print!"
The Hunter (Aya vs. The Entire Food Chain)
Aya's antennae twitched.
Something was watching her.Something above.Something... ancient.Something with a hunger for crunchy protein.
Her tiny heart dropped into her thorax.
A shadow swept across the clearing like a curtain of doom. Aya looked up—and there it was:
A bird.
Not just any bird.An insect-eating, nature's-precision-murder-missile kind of bird.
Wings the size of thunderclouds. Eyes like snipers. A beak sharpened by thousands of evolutionary updates.
Aya didn't scream. She didn't even think.
She just RAN.
The bird's beak impacted the ground behind her with the force of a divine hammer. Dirt flew. Pebbles exploded. The earth trembled.
"I'M TOO SMALL TO DIE LIKE THIS!" she screamed internally.
She ran like her butt was on fire, zigzagging through twigs and leaves like a caffeinated pinball.
The bird launched into the air again. Its wings beat like thunder, stirring a gale that nearly launched Aya into orbit.
It dived again.
Aya tucked into a roll—yes, like an action movie protagonist—and narrowly avoided being speared like a cocktail olive.
She darted beneath a half-curled leaf, heart pounding.
Everything went still.
The bird hovered briefly, scanning, calculating.
Aya didn't breathe.
Her whole existence became one singular hope:
"Please be dumber than you look."
Then—A twig snapped somewhere nearby. A frog? A lizard? Another dumb insect?
Didn't matter.
The bird's head snapped toward the sound like a loaded spring and WHOOSH!—it was gone.
Aya exhaled so hard it could've launched her backward.
She staggered out from her hiding spot and flopped onto her belly.
"This is fine," she muttered, antennae twitching in post-traumatic terror. "Everything's fine. I'm alive. That counts as a win now."
She needed shelter.She needed food.She needed therapy.
But mostly?She needed a break.
Short Story 1: The Snail Assassin
After an hour of cautious wandering and very suspicious grass-blade side-eyes, Aya stumbled across something glorious.
Food.
And not just any food—a snail.
A plump, slow, defenseless-looking snail, glistening in the afternoon light like a soft little pudding snack.
Aya's eyes sparkled.
"Finally. Something that won't try to kill me! Thank you, universe!"
She crept closer. The snail didn't move. Didn't even notice her.
This was too easy.
Aya rubbed her legs together in glee.
"You're slow. You're squishy. You're MINE."
She leapt.
And then—
The snail moved.
No.The snail LUNGED.
Aya gasped.
"Snails aren't supposed to lunge!!"
But this one did.It turned its entire slimy body and CHARGED.
Aya screamed.A genuine, high-frequency panic squeak only ants and bats could hear.
"WHY IS IT FAST? WHY IS IT FAST?!"
The snail pursued her like a horror movie villain. It didn't matter that it was slow by human standards—Aya was an ant. Everything was relative. And this thing? It was booking it at snail-light-speed.
She fled. Over leaves. Around twigs. Under roots.
The snail slithered forward, relentless. Tireless. Like a slow-moving curse forged from shame and nightmares.
Aya leapt over a pebble. The snail climbed it. Slowly. Intentionally. Unnaturally.
She dove under a curled leaf, gasping for air, legs shaking.
The snail stopped at the edge of the leaf. Watching. Judging. Flexing its nonexistent muscles.
Eventually, it turned around and slimed off into the undergrowth… victorious.
Aya collapsed.
"…I just lost… to a snail. A SNAIL."
She curled into a tiny, embarrassed ball.
"I used to have a desk job. Now I'm being chased by salad toppings."
Aya's current life stats:
Hunger: ✔️
Humiliation: 🔥🔥🔥
Bird trauma: ✅
Snail-induced existential crisis: MAX LEVEL
The Lone Survivor (Can I Get a Break? No? Okay.)
Aya found a tiny hole tucked beneath the curve of a crooked rock. It was dark, quiet, and hidden—like a secret nook the world had forgotten.
"Safe zone acquired," she muttered. "Finally."
She crawled in, antennae twitching cautiously.
…And immediately regretted everything.
From the depths of the shadows, a pair of glowing mandibles flashed like twin daggers.
A lone, battle-scarred ant lunged at her with the fury of someone who'd lived through five wars and wasn't afraid to start a sixth.
Aya squeaked and ducked, barely avoiding the strike.
"WHY IS EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD HOSTILE?!" she yelled, scrambling backward.
The ant followed, baring its jaws and flooding the air with aggressive pheromones.
Aya picked up the scent instantly:
"INTRUDER. DIE."
"Yeah, I got that vibe already, thanks!"
She frantically sprayed her own pheromones into the air:
"NOT A THREAT. JUST TIRED. PLEASE DON'T KILL ME."
The lone ant sniffed the message.
And lunged again.
Aya dodged. Again.
She barely managed to jump over a tiny root, using it as cover. She was exhausted, soaked from the fake leaf incident, and definitely not in the mood for another showdown.
"I swear, if one more thing tries to eat me, I'm going to bite myself just to get it over with!"
But the rogue ant wasn't listening.
It charged, mandibles clicking, ready for a final blow—
When the ground trembled beneath them.
A soft tremor.
Then another.
Then the sound—squish, squish, squish—like a thousand wet feet slapping the earth at once.
Aya and the rogue ant froze.
They turned slowly.
And saw it.
A shadow longer than a truck.
A centipede.
A HUGE one. At least fifty times her size, body segmented like a chain of nightmares. Its antennae curled, tasting the air. Its beady eyes locked onto them.
It didn't hesitate.
It slithered forward, moving like an unholy train made of legs and hate.
Aya's instincts screamed.
RUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUN—
And she obeyed.
She didn't even wait to see what the rogue ant did.
Screw honor. Screw strategy. SCREW EVERYTHING.
She was out.
"WHY IS IT ALWAYS LEGS?! WHY SO MANY LEGS?!"
She sprinted wildly through the underbrush, dodging twigs like spears and leaping over pebbles that felt like boulders. Behind her, the centipede crashed through the foliage like a living bulldozer.
Short Story 2: The Leaf That Betrayed Me
In her panicked escape, Aya spotted something miraculous.
A puddle of water.And floating in it—a leaf.
A single, flat, perfect leaf.
An idea hit her like lightning.
"That's it! I can use it like a boat! I'll be like… like a pirate ant!"
Without hesitation, she charged toward the puddle with the confidence of a protagonist. She leapt—
The air slowed around her.
She soared like a hero. Wings of destiny. Graceful. Epic. Inspirational.
And then—
SPLORSH.
She sank like a brick.
The "leaf" was not a leaf.
It was a slimy, evil layer of algae pretending to be a leaf. A traitor. A liar. A fake friend.
Aya thrashed underwater, bubbles flying from her mandibles as she flailed like a drowning raisin.
"GLUGBLURGHAGHHH—WHY AM I ALWAYS WRONG?!"
She kicked, rolled, paddled in blind panic until she finally, finally crawled up the muddy bank and flopped onto the ground, absolutely done.
She lay there, covered in muck, her chest heaving.
Behind her, she could still hear the faint slither of the centipede slinking off in disappointment.
"...I almost drowned… because of salad."
Aya glared at the puddle. Her eye twitched.
"...That was personal."
The Worst Encounter Possible (Why Do I Even Try?)
Aya stumbled out of the underbrush, dirt caked to her legs, her antennae drooping from exhaustion, and every limb aching from betrayal, near-death, and more betrayal.
She blinked.
Sunlight poured into a wide, open clearing.
And in that clearing—
Giants.
Not birds. Not bugs. Not centipedes. Not snails with personal vendettas.
Humans.
Actual, full-sized, not-ant people. A group of them—four maybe? Sitting by what looked like a campsite, chatting and eating snacks.
Aya's first reaction wasn't fear.
It was pure, overwhelming joy.
"YES. FINALLY. HUMANS! MY PEOPLE!"
Tears sprang to her multi-faceted eyes. Her tiny legs began moving on their own.
She ran out into the clearing, waving her antennae like she was flagging down a rescue helicopter in a disaster movie.
"HEY! DOWN HERE! I'M HUMAN TOO, I JUST GOT REINCARNATED—IT'S A WHOLE THING! PLEASE HELP ME!"
One of the humans turned.
Then another.
A moment passed.
Their eyes locked onto her tiny black form.
And then—
"AHHHHH!! WHAT IS THAT?!"
Aya's heart dropped.
Wait, no. No no no no NO—
Before she could even scream, one of the guys—a tall teenager in shorts—grabbed a rock.
He's not going to throw that, right? He wouldn't—
He did.
WHOOSH.
The rock sailed through the air, fast enough to crack a skull.
Aya leapt sideways with a shriek.
BOOM! The rock exploded into the dirt just inches from her.
"I JUST BARELY SURVIVED A KILLER SNAIL, PLEASE GIVE ME A BREAK—"
Another one stood up, shrieking.
"STEP ON IT! KILL IT!"
Aya looked up.
A shadow loomed.
A boot. A full-sized human boot. Coming down. ON HER.
Her brain screeched.Her body launched.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH—!"
She ran like she'd never run before.
She dodged left.She veered right.She jumped over a crumb.She got hit by a Dorito.She kept running.
"IT'S STILL MOVING!!"
"GET ANOTHER ROCK!"
Aya zipped between two sneakers, barely avoiding being obliterated by a Converse-wearing giant.
One of them squirted something from a spray bottle.
Is that insecticide? ARE YOU SERIOUS?!
The air smelled like chemical death.
Her legs were moving so fast she couldn't feel them anymore. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like her thorax would explode.
SOMEONE THREW A BACKPACK AT HER.
A. BACKPACK.
It crushed a patch of moss like a meteor.
She finally spotted it—a narrow crack between two stones at the edge of the clearing.
She bolted for it.
Rocks and shouts and stomps chased her.
She reached the gap.
And dove in.
Darkness.
Silence.
Aya lay there, shaking.
Dirt covered her shell. Her legs trembled. Her lungs (or whatever ants had) burned with every microscopic breath.
She could still hear the humans above.
"Did it go under there?"
"Whatever, it's gone. Gross."
And then, finally… silence.
Aya curled into a ball, her antennae limp.
The joy she'd felt moments earlier twisted into a deep, raw, burning ache.
They didn't recognize me. I'm not a person to them. I'm just…
Just a bug.
Her chest tightened.
She remembered what it felt like to sit in a cold office, ignored and overworked.
She thought this world would be different.
She thought she could find someone—anyone—to help her.
But now?
Now she was just another pest to be crushed.
And the worst part?
They were right.
She wasn't human anymore.
She was just an ant.
A small, weak, disgusting ant scurrying in the dirt.
"I'm not one of them anymore," she whispered into the darkness.
"I'm one of the monsters now."
Her tiny eyes glinted in the dim light as the weight of reality finally crashed down.
If she wanted to survive…
She had to stop thinking like a human.
And start thinking like a monster.