A/N: This is an odd, spur-of-the-moment one-shot which I had a plot-bunny of only a few days ago. It's made to illustrate a point rather than have any particular lyrical beauty, but I think I've done what I meant to adequately. This is meant to be written by a character entirely inexperienced in writing, and so any grammar or spelling problems in there are deliberate.
Perfection
Hello. This is my story. No. no, scratch that.
Dear Diary,
Did I really 'write' that? How do you erase these things?
The Biography of a Simple
Ah, no, that's pretty bad, too.
This is an average beedrill of the hive, appointed to the task of defending the colony. I decided to write just a brief biography of my life, like a diary, because of a sort of gut feeling I just had over something that'll happen a few days later.
And you know this isn't even justified! Day after tomorrow nothing could possibly happen! Me and my dispatch are just going to go for a quick scouting around the territory, we're not even supposed to engage with hostile units. (I hope I used those military terms right.) It might be my first time out, but they've assured me my chances of mishap are next to nothing. But the feeling still goes on, even though I know all these things. For five days I've tried to tell myself its all right, no need to worry, but I can't listen to common sense. When I first heard I was going for my first flight out of the hive, that feeling was just a little insecurity. But it's been growing! It's grown so far you can see what I've had to do. I cut this beeswax from the walls of my cell and even got an illegally aquired oran sapling to bind it, in case it has to remain hidden for a long time. I could get jailed for this! And I'm writing these letters out of my own venom, and you know how precious that thing is. Ah, have to write briefly! If I waste too much venom…
So anyway, ten plates of our solid beeswax bound with a sapling of oran I took, and wrote on it with the venom on my drills. And so you have this diary. I feel all melodramatic saying it, but if something happenned to me I think my small little life should leave something behind, even if it's just a tiny diary. Of course, I plan to smash this stupid thing against the ground from the top floor of our hive if nothing happened. This would be the most useless risk in my life if nothing happened!
I guess I should start from the beginning. I'm told I was born among forty other eggs (all my siblings) on a big wepear leaf. Following instinct, I spent most of my weedle fase biting away at unlimited supplies of those fat, wholesome leaves with their tangy bitterness. I don't know how I ever stood that then, but apparantly I liked it a lot. I remember that dark, warm room where so many of us just ate and ate, and we didn't spend any time at all for much else, even friendship or society. Though I'm pretty sure families stuck together. I don't think I thought so then, but looking back that hall was HUGE, and packed with thousands of us wriggling over each other. I guess I was born into that sort of space, so it didn't seem strange to me.
Only one thing happened then that mattered really. Every once in a while these tutors would come and we would watch as we ate as those teachers talked and talked about the outside world. It was wide and free and lighted, theu said. Everyone had a part in the Greater Community, they also said. We never really knew what they were harping on until we evolved. Then we really knew what they were harping on about, but that's a bit farther on.
Every once in a while one of us would become so fat and lazy that they rolled over and started spitting out some slimy brown material, that quickly hardened and dried to make a tough shell. Then, before we could freak out and damage the new pokèmon, one of the higher-ups would swoop down and whisk this thing away, causing excited rumours. But then one of the more attentive weedle would explain their ideas on the life cycle to the rest of the brood, and we would all hastily stop thinking about the possibility of sudden death and try out this more likely idea.
I honestly don't remember when I evolved. I remember falling half asleep one day, and then my body just started going crazy by itself, spinning this weird blanket made out of brown silk and waiting for that to harden. And then I was asleep.
Next thing I know, I'm waking up cramped in some tiny case, with so many body parts I did [Inot[/I remember having it wasn't even funny. This is too much I know, but I've always had this terrible fear of closed spaces. Don't they call it clostrophobia? I don't know. So the first thing I do, I take a big stretch, or at least try to anyway but fail because I'm in a freaking kakuna-sized case! I keep trying, and finally the whole cocoon bursts apart, and suddenly I have four limbs and two feelers and no nose and a pair of freshly minted, straight–from-the-oven WINGS, and it's all right with me. I've never felt so fine in my life.
There was another beedrill (older than me—well of course, older than me, but I meant way older) just waiting at the door to the little room I was in, and he told me to follow and so, trying not to drag the new stinger on my bottom, wondering how my stick-thin legs can support me, I followed. What else was there to do?
The first thing I thought when I entered the greater hive was how specious it was. Well—no. I think I was really thinking about its emptiness. There were those honey comb cells, and they were much smaller than anything I had ever seen before, but some of the main halls weren't much smaller than my cave before the evolution, and for a long time I would jump to thinking (when I saw them) about how few people we had in them, and how many you could really pack in their, economically speaking. I always wondered where those hundreds of weedle went to after they evolved.
I was shoved into a queue, right after exiting that chamber, and they gave me what they called a 'mentor', Yureph. He said he came from the sixth quadrant of something or the other and he seemed to be very proud of it. He did know a lot about the hive, though, and I couldn't have spent the first few weeks without someone like him.
He told me all those details about my life that didn't really matter, here, I mean, since everyone knows what they are and everything. (Where my cell was, where I was supposed to lunch and dine, and exetera.) He did say that I was "fine light material", and I didn't know what he meant by that. (I don't think he meant for me to.) They had all sorts of classes of Drills' here, and each of them with maybe the drills in a different shape, or bigger wings, or something like that, and miraculosly they all had something to do to "benefit our kind" with their tools.
The miracles didn't stop there. Oh no, we had a whole sleuth of miracles once we got down to it. (Someday I'll figure out whether it's 'sleu' or 'sleuth' or 'slew' or what.) The fighters were all elite out of their class, the nectar-carriers were elite, only the apprentices of the janitors weren't elite, and I once even heard someone saying the crates of honey were elite, however that works. The machinery of the hive was as smooth as if they'd used the 'elite' honey to oil it. And at first I was pretty doubtful about that, even the machinery working perfectly. That goes against common sense, I think. Everything has to break down sometime, doesn't it? Still, the hive was so accomodating while I was in the procrastinating stage, still seeing the sights, waiting for my training and my orders, I had to admit something was going on perfectly down there in the works. And, being nosy as I am, I just had to find out.
Yureph was pretty okay with me looking into the machinery, at least. I saw how collecting beedrill came from openings in the hive walls and deposited their nectar into little cells cut into a plate in some storage place, where another class of beedrill would release something into those tubs and seal the whole thing with a slather of new and clear wax. They worked very fast in rows through the whole room, and I could see tubs of honey in ascending order of age going right to left. It was very nice to see that clear, water-y thing slowly drying into the honey I could always get in bowls at my mess hall.
And there was no possible way anything could go wrong. Every single nectar collecter had a guard tagging him all the time, and he was specially [Itrained[/I to know his collector's smell. They worked in big groups outside of the hive, and they stopped at clusters of flowers and the guards never let anyone out of a protective ring they made. Back home, the clear sort of wax was the hardest possible, and no one could break one of those tubs unless they could break the entire plate, and no one could break a plate of honey unless they broke half of the hive itself. And anyone who could do that, the military would spot from a mile away, and they would fill him with stingers. And this sort of procedure was everywhere.
But pretty quickly I saw a problem. Sure all the [Istrategies[/I and [Iarchitecture[/I and all the systems were perfect, but how do you know if the PEOPLE will be perfect? Of course a scout might not notice some small enemy, of course a collecter might slip through the protection, of course the people would make mistakes. What if the tasters for the honey made a mistake, what if they secreted the wrong kind of enzymes into the nectar?
But this wasn't hapenning at all. Everyone was working perfectly. How was everyone so skilled? They all worked quickly and efficently, with big, genune grins on their faces. Strange.
Anyway, they told me from the start I was going to be in the military. My wings were strong and sleek, and my drills just hard enough, and my body made for that. And I didn't have anything against this. I mean, I'm not brave or courageous or anything, but I think it would be pretty cool. I just hope I could face all those 'hardships' they keep going on about in the military. Scout training has been easy enough.
Well, then. This is everything up to present day. Tommorrow we have our first time out, a quick and easy scouting mission. But just in case, here's something of mine that might last longer than I do!
The diary ends here. However, a loose slab of wax has been retrieved from near the premises of the hive which matches this beedrill's handwriting, style and story. It is assumed that this is a last-minute writing by the same scout.
I don't have much time. Have to write down everything I know. This is impossible! Far too much!
We reached the exit station for scouts. Big slab of actual rock, sticking out of the hive. And big window in the wall of the hive. They told us there really were enemies out there! We were supposed to go down there and COUNT them, it was madness. A great big swarm of enemy beedrill, and what if someone got hurt by them? Madness. Nobody'd told us this before, we though we were just going to make a quick scan of the territory. A few of the other begginners jumped right out, all brave, and the rest of us were left there to wonder what to do next. Of course I wanted to protect the hive, but wasn't this too much? Am I selfish now? I just don't know.
But no, they had no right to do what they did next. They waited just so long as maybe ten more of us decided to go, and then they shut up the exit! They sealed off all the exits, and now I have this great bog chunk of rock slowly falling on me and I feel like those action characters in those dangerous situations. Except I'm not going to escape! I'm not going to escape. No escape for me. Isn't that great? I'm just stuck here, in this infested little place, and I'm going to die, just like that! Only this last little note that I cut out from the wall. All I have to do is sling it out of the hive, there's just enough space under their sealing door to do that, and that's all that's left of me! eleven pieces of beeswax. No, I have to write down what I figured out!
no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no escape no e
After this, the note trails off. It is likely that the writer became incapable of forming ideas in his delirium, and spent his last moments writing down this recurrent message.
Later in that day, two new beedrill entered the exit room: one young and the other old, one master and one apprentice, but both custodians.
The elevation system worked in a complex network of latches and pulleys, lowering rock slabs in ascending order of rank as their need was required. Higher ranks of teams would step on higher levels of slabs, which would be lowered to stack onto the slab underneath. Thus could the experience of military teams be distinguished, and thus also could be carried out another more obscure task.
As the second rank of platform was raised from the ground floor, the flattened carcasses of five unfortunate first-timers dislodged themselves from the floor.
"Poor bastards," muttered the older. He hobbled forward towards the platform, only to stop at his third limp.
"Well?" he said. "Are you just going to stand there?"
For the apprentice had moved no farther than the doorway, and was disposed to treating the scene with a horrified gape. He merely shook his head in response to his master's urging.
The older beedrill sighed, and adopted the most placating tone he could muster. "Look here," he said. "This sort of stuff just has to be done. They were too scared to go out and defend the colony, so they had to be destroyed. This is a [Ipart[/I of nature. It happens everywhere in the hive, at least. They're not fit to serve in the hive. They don't [Ideserve[/I to live in the hive."
"But, but," the boy stammered, "don't they deserve to live at all?"
"What could we do? We can't throw them out, they'll die there. And if we give them a place to live here, they'll just take space. This is how we refine our hive. You and me, we're the [Ielite[/I out of our class. We can't have imperfect people messing up the works, can we?"
He was not amused by his student's continued protest. "Ah, you'll understand eventually, like I did. Just give me a hand, will you? I swear, these drills of ours are [Imade[/I for scraping! Flat and wide, and pretty sweeping. It's like we were bred from a long line of beedrill to do this job…"