THE SECRET LIFE OF ROACH
CHAPTER ONE
by DandelionsFlyingThroughBlueAir
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A/N: I always felt like Roach deserved a little more love in Starkid fanfiction...
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Title: The Secret Life Of Roach
Genre: Friendship
Characters: Roach & Bug
Plot: Everyone has a dream. These two insects have wild ones. Bug's: to be a Starship Ranger. And his best friend Roach's: to be an artist. Here's a crazy story about a little bug trying to make it in a cruel world. A bit AU.
Rating: K
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"Welcome to the world, little roach."
A tall egg planter bug stood in front of the newly hatched bugs. He smiled at them as three of them slipped and slid around the mammal they had just been hatched out of. However, the little roach stubbornly refused to come out. The egg planter wondered why. Another older bug who looked rather bored looked on. The egg planter kept trying to coax the little roach out of the unconscious mammal.
From the inside of the mammal, Roach refused to come out. He didn't want to go out the normal way. He wanted to do something different. It would be cool to make something that could get him out...Ooh! Roach thought. He gathered all his might, and then he let out a massive gust of air that exploded the mammal.
Roach slowly found his way out. The three other little bugs gazed at him. The bored bug rolled his eyes. And the egg planter looked just about ready to burst, like Roach's mammal just did. He seethed. The bored bug (let's name him Bee for future reference, as he is one) awkwardly patted him on the head.
"He's only a couple seconds old, please don't bug out on me about this."
He snorted, thinking about the new batch of bugs that would come in to become new mammal wranglers today at the request of the Overqueen. How many of them would actually like their jobs? The vast majority wouldn't. But they'd be forced into it anyway. And the cycle would keep going, on and on and on until one day either the Overqueen changed the system (unlikely) or all the bugs died.
What an optimistic bug Bee is, isn't he?
The egg planter started to calm down, taking jagged breaths. He pointed towards the blown up mammal and sputtered.
"Tha-tha-tha-mam-mam-them-eat..."
"Yes, master," Bee said sarcastically. He rolled his eyes again. Boring job, boring life, boring mammal wranglers...
Bee suddenly changed his usual blank facial expressions to bright and perky.
"Hiya bugs! Why don't ya go ahead and eat your pretty mammal over there!" he exclaimed.
The four bugs obliged, and went for the mammal. They gobbled it up like it was nothing. (In reality, it greatly resembled a green version of Pikachu, a great and awesome thing indeed.) Once the bugs had finished chewing up Pikachu, they glanced at Bee with no particular reason or intent.
"What?" Bee muttered, looking away and feeling awkward.
"Why are you such a pessimist? Why are you sarcastic? How did you get this job? Why do you do your job? Do you like your job?" Roach exclaimed all in one breath.
Bee glared at him. "Not applicable, because, the Overqueen, because, WHAT DO YOU THINK?"
Roach thought for a minute. "You hate it?" he thought out loud.
"I think he does," Roach's 5-second older sister Beetle said.
"Why?" Roach persisted.
Bee sighed. This little creature-critter just wouldn't give up, wouldn't he?
"Because I didn't choose this life," he sighed. "I wanted to be a pollen collector."
Roach, Beetle, and the two other bugs all simultaneously cocked their heads. "What's a pollen collector?" Roach asked curiously.
"A special type of bee that collects food, primarily pollen, for making honey. They wear these cool yellow and black jackets," Bee sighed. "I've done that a lot in my long two weeks for my family. They're brave! And they get to go out of the Hive. But when I found out I can't do that anymore because of the Overqueen..." Bored shrugged. "My life is now over. I found out just a few days ago, and I still hate egg planting."
"Wow," Beetle gasped. "I sure hope the Overqueen lets me do what I want to do!"
"Isn't the Overqueen usually kind and merciful?" Roach said cautiously. He didn't know how he knew this; something inside of him told him that this was true.
"Yes," the egg planter declared, now fully recovered from the shock of Roach exploding the mammal. "Yes, yes she is, and may I ask you, Bee, to not brainwash these little hatchlings into your rebellious theories about our wise and powerful Queen!"
The egg planter quickly brushed himself up. "Come on, hatchlings. I'm going to take you to your mommy. You have a few more siblings that should hatch in any second."
At these words, they all heard cracking sounds. The mammal wrangler immediately ordered Bee to go take care of the new hatchlings, and he grudgingly obliged, now back to normal.
"Wow," the egg planter said. "Usually hatchlings don't get a lot of words out of Bee. He doesn't talk much. I do wish that he lightened up about his job. Egg planting can be fun if he just tried!"
The four little roaches trotted after the egg planter, who led them to their family cave. As they made their way to their lives, Roach whispered to Beetle, "I know what I wanna be when I'm a big bug!"
"What?" Beetle whispered back.
"A...creator...thingy!" Roach exclaimed. "I can invent new ways to get little hatchlings out of mammals faster! That's what I was thinking of when I wouldn't come out. I can create so many things - that's a job, right?"
"That's cool!" Beetle responded. "I'm not sure what I wanna be when I grow up."
"It's all right, Beetle. You've got a lot of time to figure out what you wanna be! And if you don't figure it out, you can always rely on the Overqueen to help you!" Roach exclaimed. Another random thought that just came to him.
They stopped at an average sized cave, hearing the noisy sounds of playful bugs inside. Roach smiled. He knew just the thing to quell the noise!
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The next few hours were bliss for Roach. He met his mom, his dad, and his ten million older brothers. Though he had a shy beginning, he quickly opened up to his new family. With every wacky situation the brothers got into, Roach came up with some interesting ways to solve it. Take the argument between Buggy, Cater, Pillar, Dragon, Fly, Ziggy, Zaggy, In, and Sect, for instance. They were all quarreling about who slept where in their little section of the sleeping cave. Buggy, Dragon, and Sect all wanted the corner, but obviously they all couldn't sleep there at once...until Roach solved the problem by making an insane bug system with "bunk rocks" out of the little rocks they were to sleep on, complete with specially made leaf blankets and soft, fluffy dandelion pillows for all of them. Fly had a silvery, swirly pattern, Sect had scissors and paper designed on it, Buggy had various other types of bugs on his, and so forth. Of course, they all started up an argument about who was going to sleep on which level. At this point, Beetle jumped in and told their parents about the argument, which instantly shut them all up.
But after those few hours, his ten million older brothers started telling lots of really cool stories about the Overqueen. Dragon told a story about his friend Peachy, a fresh off the chrysalis butterfly, who was able to fly around in her new job, a berry gatherer. "She gives you the ability to do your best!" Dragon exclaimed. Ziggy told stories about all the awesome army ants he's befriended. "The Overqueen makes them who they are today: totally awesome!" Ziggy declared. And the stories kept on coming. "The Overqueen is almighty and powerful!" "Gives you whatever you want, gratis!" "What's gratis?" "Shut up, Jiminy." "She's, in a word? Awesome." "Even if you don't like her, you have to like her. It's because she's royalty, you know?" "Shut up, Jiminy." "She's so amazing, she's the whole reason this world and your fellow bugs are successful!" It seemed like they all worshipped the Overqueen, even Jiminy, who seemed to be the sarcastic one who was just having fun psyching the hatchlings out. Even Roach, after a while, started to idolize her. Bee who? The Overqueen couldn't be that bad after all! Who was Bee to know anyway?
As a matter of fact, Roach never saw Bee again after that day.
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A/N: And so the story begins...I'll get the next chapter up as soon as possible! If you're wondering, when Roach says "creator" he really means "artist" because art is not something that is really used in Bug World.