“You brutish split-brain patient! You lodged a brownie into the judge’s abdomen panel!?”

Gorb became defensive. “I was bored! And the prank was pretty funny but then I was having exoskeleton pains so decided to go home.”

Cazgor turned away and huffed awkwardly when he realized that was the end of Gorb’s sentence. The silence reached its pregnancy when Cazgor cracked his beak. “Well thanks to you I got disqualified.”

Gorb snickered. “Wait, you got disqualified?”

“YES!” Cazgor shrieked.

“Zesus, Cazgor, it was just a science show, no need to get your antennae in a bunch,” Gorb said, grooming himself with his frontal legs. “I was just helping the judge with their ego.”

Cazgor tightened his fists and his pronged fingers scraped against his palm.

“And I thought you woundn’t mind anyways since you always love to help. Speaking of which I have this clone of a douchebag at work that loves to steal my lunch, do you think you could start putting poison in my lunchbox? Then when she-“

“Shut up..”

Gorb turned around slowly and stirnly to make eye contact with Cazgor. “Excuse you?”

“Ever since we were broodmates — ever since you split from our collective consciousness in Hive, I thought you left me with the kind and caring personality traits. Empathy and compassion. I thought I was good at helping other Crumyulites.” Cazgor’s ocelli began to line with a tear-like mucus. “But now I realize that you’re just leeching off me the empathy you left behind! You’re no better than a goddamn parasitic worm!”

“Well at least I wasn’t left by my girlfriend.”

Cazgor’s dorsal vessel contracted as if it were smacked by a fly swatter. Gorb thought he was dead for a moment.

“I bet you like being miserable. Its an excuse for you to be a shitty person.”

Gorb opened his beak to speak, but all that came out was a thin, stinging wisp of methane gas.

“I wish I had never shared thoughts with you in Hive,” Cazgor uttered.

The slammed door rocked the cold sweat right off of Gorb’s thorax. He wanted to scream but had no nerve receptors to listen to him.