A/N - It happened again! Poor Cricket!

Cricket stood in the grasps of the HiveWings and LeafWings as they held her and Bullfrog captive between them glaring down their friends. She felt a perpetual terror run through her as she began to ask herself all the things that they could do to her and her companions.

From the moment Blue had told her about the injections that the HiveWings gave to dragons on Misbehavior Way, she had felt a sort of anxiety about what it must be like to be stung in such a way wondering what must it be like to be in so much pain, and be too paralyzed to even react to it? As she was held between the infected dragons, she couldn't help but feel a sense of horror that perhaps she was about to find out.

"Sundew, this HiveWing is Carabid. I choose him specially to be the one to inject you. He has marvelous stingers in his claws and tail and the ability to inject much more toxin than boring Wasp." The dragons holding her said. Cricket glanced at her friends with tears. Poor Sundew. Were they really going to use the HiveWings' toxin to inject them all with the HiveMind? She couldn't watch. Cricket recalled how she'd been stung and injected with a similar toxin during her protesting against Wasp, and she knew how much it hurt, but she was sure she hadn't been given the full dose so Lady Jewel could interrogate her. It had been painful, but she could not imagine what it must have felt like for a full dose of it, which - it still hurt her to remember - Moon, Qibli, Tsunami, and Pineapple recently received when they'd been captured earlier on this quest. And from the sound of it, this wasn't just an ordinary sting but the worst sting any of them could possibly imagine.

The others were protesting, trying to find an alternate way out of this predicament that currently plagued them. "If you turn invisible again," Carabid hissed through the Hivemind "or shoot any more unpleasant ice at me, I will have Carabid stab Cricket first." He jerked Cricket closer to himself, and Cricket winced at the thought of his stringers, she felt nausea rush through her whole body, she'd been horrified when she'd discover that Queen Wasp injected the HiveWing eggs with her toxin long before they even hatched, Queen Wasp's toxin was said to be way worse than those of the average HiveWing. Cricket's unborn self had been spared such a fate by her mother having rescued her from the HiveWing poisoning by hiding her egg, even unborn, she'd managed thus far to avoid pain like that. The other dragons of the team had escaped that fate as well when they escaped Wasp just in time, which Cricket had figured was too much to imagine any of them going through.

But now here they were, with Carabid, a dragon whose toxin was supposedly even worse than Queen Wasp's, and he was about to inject them all with the same toxin they've managed to avoid for so long. Cricket remembered how Wasp had reacted through the Librarian after being bitten by that bullet ant; was Carabid's toxin anywhere near as painful as that? After all that had happened, after all of the worst of fates that they had managed to avoid, was it possible that it could ultimately still happen to them? It couldn't, right? How could you even begin to comprehend being in so much pain? What would it feel like when the injection finally came? Cricket realized with nausea, this was one question she never wanted to find the answer to first hand. They had to do what they had to to save the world, but did it have to end up this way, was this ending to their tale inevitable.

And then the fighting broke out, all was chaos. Cricket saw her opportunity, she was free, out of Carabid's reach. She'd done it, that horrible fate she had been wondering about was no longer within reach. She'd fight, with everything she had, but if that was going to happen to her, then it surely would have happened already, right?

But then she was surround, a large group of dragons grabbing at her. She fought back, but there was no escape. "Help!" She cried, but she knew everybody else was trapped in their own battle. The dragons that surrounded her lifted her up in their talons like she was nothing.

Oh-no, oh-no!

And before she could fully grasp what was happening, they threw her at Carabid.

…

She felt the stinger sinking in, penetrating her scales, deep and sharp into her muscle tissue.

And in that instant, Cricket started screaming, horribly, terribly, with pain she couldn't imagine. Except, her mouth wouldn't move, it was all happening inside. Her body wanted to jerk, to spasm in the pain, but it was frozen stiff, boiling acid rolled through every centimeter of her mortal body as the Hivemind made it's way into her conscious. The experience was more horrifying than Cricket had ever imagined, and Cricket could only watch from the inside of her frozen stiff body as she felt like her insides were being melted as if by lava, sharp acid gnawing deep into her bone marrow.

Help! Cricket's mind screamed out in mortal agony. She wanted to claw free of her scales; jagged breathing, gasping, but even that was too much for her frozen body that now lay discarded and limp on the ground, the look of surprise still written on her face. Cricket's whole mind screamed for help, for any semblance of relief, but not even she could hear it beyond the pain.

Cricket had wondered what it must have been like to be bitten by that bullet ant, pain that could make the mighty Queen Wasp abandon the Librarian, and here Cricket was, trapped in her own body with pain that must surely have felt just as bad, if not worse. This was the kind of pain that would be censored from most stories, too intense for any sane dragon to want to read, the pain that would drive Cricket crazy scoring the book fruitlessly for any kind of answers to all her questions about how the character must be feeling, something too painful to address, but something that still happened to the character whether they could take it or not. But it was different seeing it as a reader and actually experiencing it, on the outside it would appear to be no more graphic than a sting that left her unmoving, but on the inside, it felt just as graphic as the violence you'd never want to expose a sensitive young dragonet to, a kind of pain Cricket would never dare want to have inflicted on any of her favorite characters, but now couldn't escape her own exposure to. How could this be the conclusion to Cricket's story? How could after so long, after so long of overcoming such odds, how could she ultimately end up in such a situation where she was in the grasps of a pain worse than death? But her part in the story was passed, and now there was no longer need to spare her from this pain, no need to address it now that it had happened, because though it was too much to inflict on a protagonist, too much to relate to for the reader if inflicted on the POV, Cricket's POV no longer mattered anymore, it was past, she had passed the torch on to another dragon and she was now open game. From the very first moment they started their quest, this was what it was all leading to, all the moments of foreshadowing, all the moments she'd avoided the worst of it, it was all leading to here. Was there ever a future where Cricket could have made it to the end beyond her own story without experiencing so much agony? All she had done was simply just to exist in the middle of this conflict, and now this pain was the path on which fate had brought her.

It was beyond what she could ever begin to bear, Cricket wanted to scream, to cry out her predicament, but she couldn't, but as the toxin consumed her, she felt herself being absorbed into the Mind-Space of the Othermind. The pain started fading here, Cottonmouth could only feel the pain if he was inside Cricket's body, and fortunately Cricket's mind would soon no longer be in her body as well.

From the part of her mind that was inside the mind-space, she could see Pineapple coming to her aid. She wanted to end this sheering agony, but until the toxin had fully consumed her, she could not fully let herself go. Cottonmouth wouldn't have to worry about Cricket doing anything while he waited, even if her body could move, she'd be in way too much pain to fight back. Cottonmouth wouldn't dare risk this much pain if he had any say; her body would just lay abandoned were it was until the toxin had fully set in and then it would be his for the taking. But Cricket had already endured that pain to get here, and the part of her that was still tied to her physical self was still screaming in excruciating agony. Pain Cottonmouth wouldn't dare step into, pain Cricket now could not unlive.

Cricket thought of poor Blue and how he always tried to understand what other dragons were going through, but this is something he'd never understand, Cricket had been injected by Carabid, and poor Blue was fortunate that this was something he'd never have to know. But he loved Cricket, and him knowing that his true love had been through something this awful and unreconcilable would wreck him for as long as they both lived.

Still half in-half out of the Mindspace, Cricket could make out Luna, eyes closed, concentrating, like she was on the verge of doing something important. Luna… Cricket could finally think through the slowly dissipating pain, you have to end this.

And in that final moment, the toxin had fully set in. All that fighting, all that rebellion to remain free of the mind control, Cricket's body was no longer her own, she'd have to hope Luna had some semblance of control left over her own body, because for Cricket, she was totally out of the fight. So, with that last trace of hope, Cricket let herself slide into the Mindspace, and let her body go, free from the pain that had just racked her body.

A/N – No, Cricket did not die, as you must no if you've read the book, she just got consumed by the Othermind in the worst way possible, that poor Soul.