"Hey what are we doing now?" While on it's underbelly, the cockroach flailed all its legs around.
"Honestly Alejandros, I don't know yet. We still have to wait for something we can react to. But I think Senny here is the most well fit to escape. I mean, just look at him, he can dig a tunnel just about anywhere and through anything. Therefore we're going to be depending on him to dig us a hole to safety!" Collapsing into the solid pancake, the previously phallic object fell apart.
"Hey! You think I like eating dirt? That stuff is disgusting, I mean just look at it! It's soft and crumbly, like some liquid going through you! And just imagine all the mold that's growing within! Do you want to be eating that?" The worm threw its head up in frustration but fell right back down.
"Well I'm not a worm so I wouldn't know, but I'm sure I could stretch my roots and just eat just about anything. Probably wouldn't be a net energy gain though." The pancake puffed up into a ball of cotton candy once more.
"Hey you're not the one taking the actual thing inside you! You get to dissolve it and absorb it! Not like us! Stop complaining!" The tubular creature opened wide it's lip like appendages and revealed its mouth.
"That's just how I eat! I suffer a net energy loss every time I eat dirt! But you wouldn't suffer the same problem as me because you just dissolve it within you and don't waste as much acid as me!" The ball of cotton candy began to stir up the light grey powder that made up the ground.
"Well how's eating trash a net energy gain?" The worm, the tubular creature, rolled a quarter turn.
"That's the cost of survival! I mean, if I didn't eat that trash what do you think that ball of fat will do to us!" Holding a clump of the powder, which had dried and turned into concrete after rain, the ball of cotton candy threw it at the shell of the worm, hearing it clang off.
"Hah that bloated bag of blood! What can he do! Worse at tunneling than Senny here! I mean worms eat dirt don't they? Moles are supposed to be the ones chasing after him!" The cockroach did a 360 on his belly.
"Well what's going to happen to sack of blubber?" The ball of cotton candy relaxed itself, letting its sides droop down.
"Who knows… Do we even care?" The worm rolled the other way until he was turned a quarter way the other way.
"What happens to him might happen to us." The ball of cotton candy perked up into a sphere again.
"Well what's happening to him?" The worm finally turned until it was properly oriented.
"You up to go check on it Alejandros?" The cloud of cotton candy formed a spike pointing directly up like a pointed hat on a wizard.
"Look, I think you're misinterpreting something, I never die because I don't try to die, not because I go searching for it!" The cockroach immediately stood up.
"Come on, we've heard that a million times by now, and I bet you've heard that this is simply a precaution. You're not searching for death, you're simply poking around it to find out where it is! Then we can run far far away." The cloud of cotton candy formed a spike formed to poke at the cockroach.
"Fine. But not because you told me to, but because I want to make sure I don't die." With that, the cockroach crawled into a hole.
And for the millionth time, the brown iridescent, many legged creature darted into a hole.
The two remaining looked at the hole Alejandros had disappeared into and back at each other.
"Wasn't that basically what we said though?" The worm rolled a quarter turn.
"Don't worry about it Senny, a mission done is a mission done. Now, let's think of where we'll go, do you want to start digging a hole?" The cloud then pointed downwards with its spike, like an ice cream cone, or a stick holding a ball of cotton candy...
"Yeah I was gonna do that, can't stand just sitting around waiting." And with that the rod shaped creature dug into a hole downwards, leaving the erect phallic creature standing alone.
"Well what do I do now that I'm alone…"
"Well I mean…"
The oily antenna dipped back through the hole, followed by a flat face with a smaller pair of jaws with large beady eyes which bulged out. The head was followed by a leg, with short, thin hairs which had formed a small bead of oil at the tip of each one. The leg itself was tipped with even finer joints which ended with a pair of sickle shaped hooks.
"Hey! Why are you back so early! Alejandros come on! Don't slack off!" The threads of the ball of cotton candy flew around the cockroach menacingly.
"Hey it's not my fault! There's this thing! It's blocking us! It covers us entirely! The only reason why I took so long was because I covered every bit there was to see! No hole!" The cockroach ended up jumping up and down in panic.
"What? That shouldn't be possible! My threads didn't feel anything!" Several threads burst out once more into the surrounding powdery material.
A dust plume bellowed out from the side of the wall. A serpentine creature with interlocking plates of armor that wrapped around its whole body wriggled out. The very front of it was tipped with a round, soft face.
"Hey guess what's underground!" The worm lifted its head up above ground.
"A wall?" The cockroach turned and stared at it.
"How'd you know?" The worm rolled a quarter turn once again.
"I found one all around us in the trash too!" The cockroach began to jump around wildly in worry.
"Wait guys it looks like the humans are clearing the trash now! There are so many vibrations! They're getting closer!" The ball of cotton candy suddenly spread apart its threads to form a tent like structure with a single pole standing up in it. "We'll disguise ourselves as a part of the wall! Come on guys, I'll use my threads to blend in!"
"Will that work?" The worm rolled until it was a quarter turn the other way.
"We have no choice!" The cloth like layer opened up further.
"God this is cramped." The worm began to wriggle in.
"Hey at least you get to coil around! I'm one stiff piece of shell!" The cockroach followed after.
"Hey don't push around my core! It's sensitive! I'd lose all my energy accumulation if you unbalanced it!" The tent like creature moved the pole around to avoid contact.
"That's a clear lie! You've layered so many of your threads around it that it's now practically impenetrable!" The worm settled in.
"It's only because I know how delicate it is that I protect it so much!" A few more threads came in from the cloth like layer to surround the pole even more.
"Yeah as if! Your core is so dense that it's basically turned stable!" The cockroach crawled on top of the worm and settled down.
"Hey! It's not all stable, I still need to extract energy for daily use!" The entrance of the tent like creature closed and even created a floor.
"But even if your core explodes, the inert energy laying around still gives you enough energy to last a couple hundred years!" The cockroach stabbed its legs into the shell of the worm.
"Not under intensive actions though. It'll only last a year!" The surface of the cloth like layer began to smooth out.
"That's like if I ran for a year straight! Do you think I would?" The cockroach tilted itself closer to the core to take up less space.
"Of course no! But what if it was a limited resource! Just imagine slowly feeling your energy run dry!" The grey powder slowly crept up from below to camouflage the cloth like layer into the surroundings.
"It's not limited! There's plenty to eat! I mean just look around us! They have so much of it they can only dump it here!" The cockroach began to crouch down and press its body closer to the worm.
"If they hoard metals out there, who's to say they don't hoard better sources of energy?" The worm rolled around while coiled around the pole..
"Shut up Senny, energy is consumed, metal isn't." The cockroach mated its underbelly to the back of the shell.
"Then that means they must have a source of energy right?" The worm coiled itself up the tent pole.
"Maybe but we don't know where it is! We do know where this sludge is though so we'd better get all we can!" The cockroach tapped its legs against the shell.
"And by get all you can you mean sit and be lazy right?" The worm raised its head and waved its mouth appendages around.
Quiet!" A strip of white shot between the faces of the two.
"What? Why!?" Two voices rang out simultaneously.
"They're getting closer!" The tent like creature was perfectly still.
--Outside--
"Sir I think the nanobots are dead."
"That was to be expected with the amount of radiation here."
"Sir, we lost an extreme amount of nanobots attempting to form that shield, with how scattered they are they're basically impossible to retrieve."
"Don't worry, when we capture that creature, it'll be worth far more than some nanobots."
"Hey! Aaaaaagh"
"Man down! Man down! There's a colony of naked mole rats!"
"Capture them!"
"Sir they're too hard to capture!"
"Use the rest of our nanobots! This is a priority!"
"We couldn't capture all of them sir."
"We'll come back later to pick up the creatures in the sphere"
--Inside--
"What's going on outside?"
"Quite a few vibrations from the moles over there don't you think?"
"We don't feel vibrations remember? No threads."
"Hey they've stopped!"
"You think humans captured them all?"
"Impossible, they've dug their tunnels way too deep. I once dug all the way over there and they were transporting dirt up!"
"Hah! Senny, guess you aren't the best at digging after all!"