"I am NOT flirting with him!"
"Kiara honey, there's no need for you to shout," Gypsy said softly. The other ants didn't stop in their work, but they turned their heads and twitched their antennae.
"Well excuse me but I can't help it when people are accusing me." Kiara took a step back, waving her free arm around. "I mean, I'm a human, he's an ant, you're talking about a crime against God and nature! Apparently now it's wrong for me to be interested in Flik's progress in helping me get home?"
"That's not what we—" Manny began.
"Except actually, I don't even really have a home to go back to, do I?" She paced in a small circle, back and forth from the support beam she'd been working on. "By the time I get back it'll be a broken home with a broken family because my parents decided to get a freaking divorce!"
"Wait," Gypsy said.
"What's wrong with my mom anyways? My dad's a great guy, but instead of trying to see things from his perspective, she and him go have a big stupid fight and get separated." She held her mallet with both hands now, swinging it about. The insects backed away from her. "And while they're both distracted with that, I have to deal with a maniac chipmunk gangster who's obsessed with killing me! It's not fair!"
She spun and slammed her mallet into the support beam. It fell aside, crashed against another support beam which fell to the ground, and its attached supports began to crumble with it.
"No, not that one!" an ant shouted.
All around them, the tunnel began to shake and groan. Kernels of dirt fell, bouncing off of Kiara's glasses. The structures that the second support beam had been attached to climbed up, and up, spider-webbed left and right.
The ants and Kiara scrambled out of the way, while Manny and Gypsy flew down the tunnels fast as their wings could take them. Yelling, screaming, panic and confusion as the tunnels collapsed. Each floor fell into itself, floor into ceiling, ceiling into wall, up and up until blinding daylight shone. Kiara huddled with a small group of ants next to a stable wall, watching and waiting until the dirt, sticks, and grass stopped falling.
When she brushed some of the dust off her glasses, Kiara could only stare with her teeth on edge. In the middle of the dirt plain, just shy of both the slope of the ant hill and where the circus wagons had parked, the tunnels had collapsed into a massive pit.
She and other ants staggered to survey the damage, while still others scurried about, calling for anybody who was injured and trapped. Only when it became apparent that nobody was in need of dire medical assistance did Kiara's chest loosen a little.
"Who did this?!" Thorny thundered, his voice echoing over pit and plain, and Kiara's chest tightened again. The ants that she had huddled with for shelter all took a step back, staring pointedly. From among the cross-sections of upper tiers, Thorny and Kiara made eye contact, and he jumped down, marching towards her. "What happened?!"
"It was an accident!" she said.
"She was having another temper tantrum," an ant nearby said.
"No! That's not fair, it was—"
"You know what, I don't care," Thorny interrupted. "Not even Flik caused this much mayhem, and definitely not because he couldn't control his temper. You're off tunnel duty!"