Birth

The goril screamed in agony. He swung and pushed.

Roaches that held on his arm were lifted into the air as he smashed and flailed them. It was a feat of strength because with them over him, it was like he was wearing a heavyweight suit.

Not even 60 seconds later and only bones were left behind. Most of the roaches didn't get to eat and so left unsatisfied.

"That's why everyone's starving."

"Huh? It's because of them?"

"You had infected one and you didn't realise?"

"Sorry I didn't it before but it makes sense now."

Ever since the royal worm witnessed cannibalism among the dickroaches (the host body of the mutant worm), it had already hypothesised that the lack of prey over the last month was because of the dickroaches which had multiplied out of control.

'I would have died if it weren't for you...' The royal worm thought but did not say out loud.

"It's too unsafe out there so we'll be stuck here for a while. Until we find at least two hosts for us."

"It doesn't sound too bad from what I'm hearing."

They gazed each other. Then their bodies floated closer on their own. Then their tails looped around each other at the tips and they both looked into each other's eyes. Their embrace resembled the shape of a heart.

"Only a fool would take anything positive out of that." The regal one teased.

"I'm just being optimistic."

They chuckled while caressing each other's mandibles. Their mandibles brushed against each other at high frequencies as if they were tickling each other. Then it slowed down to a more sensual pace. They were lightly feeling and exploring each other's mandibles. This act was very intimate and also very rare among the species.

Then the highborn snapped its head back.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm going to give birth soon."

"Oh."

The mutant worm thought about the implications of having offspring in an environment with a scarcity of food and cannibalistic worms. The worms don't have a concept of family similar to spiders or lampreys.

In some species, the spiderlings will eat their mother or the lamprey lays over a 100,000 eggs and leaves them to luck. The slithers will give birth and let the wormlets survive on their own. While it's normal for adult cockroaches to prey on juveniles in times of starvation, the slithers didn't normally have a shortage of prey.

Their life cycle of invading another species and eating their members or their preys or even the predator didn't leave one starved. However, if the unlikely did happen, the slithers aren't averse to acts of cannibalism.

'Hm? Its only one? There was more.'

Common slithers usually birth 10 baby worms while royals can birth around 30.

Suddenly the night became day. The slithers in the water and the dickroaches looked up in the sky. A saucer sat in the air. Bright lights from the edge of its rim and under it illuminated the area.

Most of the lights were concentrated from the bottom of it which seemed like an opening. Indeed.

A variety of drones came out of the light and aimed a gun turret at the group of dickroaches.

A mysterious ball of purple light was being charged at the gun barrel of the drones. When they reached the size of a head, they were launched and when they got close to the roaches, they scattered into tiny beads of purple balls that had spread out over a wide area.

Once the roaches were hit, the beads became lightning that electrocuted each of them, but they were not charred, they were being stunned until they became unconscious.

A few of the stronger ones resisted and flew away but smacked into a green coloured dome. It was sustained by a green stream of energy that came from the UFO's gun barrel that had come out from the rim.

Purple lightning was great at subduing enemies by disrupting the neurological impulses in their nervous system and rendering them paralysed.

Certain special organisms are resistant or immune to this. So, another drone flew to the fleeing roaches and changed its gun barrel. It shot out blue lightning.

The drone stopped short of killing it as it had a training module for determining the appropriate settings for stunning a variety of organisms.

The blue lightning was just regular electricity though it packed 1 billion volts.

The dickroach wasn't especially strong, it simply had a high resistance to electricity and sedatives as well as everything else. If in doubt, just shock it with more electricity.

The roaches that resisted were half-dead at this point. A few were killed by accident but that couldn't be helped. There are individual differences between organisms of the same species. That's why acquiring a huge sample was important.

Then the swamp was bathed in white light.

"Jump out of the swamp now!"

The mutant worm didn't ask why and trusted those words.

They had jumped out just before the swamp was lit up by purple lightning that was chasing around the waters.

The drones were gathering the bodies using an anti-gravity gun and separating them into different piles by the race of the specimens.

A couple of drones spotted them and so they slithered away. Then a worm snaked out from under the royal slither.

'What?'

A spotlight shone on the wormlet as a drone came out of a bush and headed towards it. It was lifted into the air by the anti-gravity gun. It looked like it was frozen in time.

A second gun came from the drone and fired purple lightning without charging it. A small streak of purple stunned the wormlet.

The royal watched but didn't stop running away. A drone came upon the two and the highborn turned around and jumped on it. It then broke into a weak spot with its hard drill on its tail. The drone sent a couple of sparks before falling to the ground broken.

The royal worm came out of it and spat out a couple of wires.