"I don't see why you're so upset!" Chalkos, the Ant God of Order, waved his two front legs, a touch of pride stroking over him at the way his shiny black carapace flashed with rainbows here at the center of the new and expanding universe. "I was just tidying up!"

The hum from the wings of Desper, the Hornet Goddess of Chaos, seemed to shift tempo and frequency to become a deeper, more ominous buzzing sound. "And what have I told you about tidying up?"

"Hello? God of Order here!" Digging into his abdomen pouch, Chalkos held up a chunky mass of carbon-based goo. "And this star stuff is just getting scattered willy-nilly from one end of creation to the other!"

Desper gave a slow blink with all her compound eyes. "'Willy-nilly'?"

"It's an expression!" Chalkos folded his upper and middle legs. "If you'd pay attention to this whole language thing I've invented, you'd know that!"

That at least got a chuckle out of her. "I pay attention to [i]all[/i] your inventions, Chalky. I couldn't subvert them otherwise."

Chalkos tried to keep his antennae from drooping, but as was usual when dealing with Desper, he couldn't manage it. "You have no consideration, Peri: that's your problem."

"My problem?" All the growling came back into her tone. "My problem is that you deviated from The Plan!"

An odd mix of pride and confusion surged through him at the way she managed to say [i]The Plan[/i] so that he could hear the capital letters. It meant that she respected The Plan, yes, and that was good, but, well, he'd intended capital letters to be a feature of language when it was written, not spoken....

With a shake of his head, he let anger push his other emotions aside. "How dare you?" He swooped through the vacuum of space to poke her furry, black-and-yellow-striped thorax. "I'm Order! by definition, I don't deviate!"

"Ha!" She smacked his foreleg aside. "You've already admitted it!" The lack of air, Chalkos couldn't help but notice, didn't stop her from making 'air quotes' with her own forelegs. "'Tidying up,' you said!" She smacked the blob of star stuff from his grip. "You've been moving that filthy goo around in ways The Plan doesn't talk about at all!"

Fighting down the urge to leap after the slimeball before it could get away and dirty up his nice, clean cosmos, Chalkos instead curled his mandibles into what he thought of as his most winning smile. "I just pile the stuff on one little planet, Peri. How could that hurt?"

"[i]How?[/i]" Her antennae, wings, and legs spread in all directions, waves of radiation flooding from her. "Evolution could happen! Something big and nasty and bipedal could develop, lording itself over our beloved insects and tipping the entire history of the universe ass over teakettle!"

Chalkos blinked at her. "'Ass over teakettle'?"

"I'm subverting language, all right?" Despar's emanations became more neutron-heavy—definitely a bad sign. "But [i]you're[/i] subverting The Plan and...and [i]everything![/i] I mean, can you imagine a world where insects were consigned to second-class status?" She shivered. "It makes me want to start stinging and stinging and stinging and—"

"Peri, Peri, Peri!" Chalkos slipped closer and wrapped all his limbs around her. "There's no way anything like that could really happen! And if it did, well, we'd find a way to overwhelm these creatures, whatever they might be." He stroked the back of her head. "Insects will always be the true rulers of creation, and nothing evolution could come up with is going to change that." Summoning his most soothing vibrations, he let them caress her. "Now, do you want to tear my head off and cram eggs down into my thorax? Will that make you feel better?"

She sniffled. "Yes..."

"Okay, then." He pulled away and managed to aim another smile at her before her mandibles severed his neck.

His head drifting off into the darkness, he had to laugh as she set to work on his body. She always got so worried about such inconsequential things.