Chapter Text
Birds chirped softly, grasses swayed in a gentle breeze, and the sun shone brightly as it rose up on a beautiful new day in Free Country, USA. Homestar Runner wiggled under his sheets as his circadian rhythm began speaking to him. Blinking his eyes open groggily, he slid further under his blanket for a few extra minutes of sleep, and he realized it felt really heavy. Not in an uncomfortable way, but in a weighted blanket kind of way. Cozy. He sighed happily.
Then he furrowed his brow and opened his eyes, much more awake. It was freshly summer! He didn’t have blankets on his bed, he had like, one sheet! That’s not supposed to be cozy! He scrambled out from under the frighteningly heavy sheet and found the edge of his bed to be entirely too far away. With wide eyes, he stared down at his bedroom floor, which seemed like two stories below him. Homestar thought hard, and stomped his tiny foot as if in realization.
“I should NOT have put that new sweater in the dryer last night. On the bright side, maybe it’ll fit me now!” He stepped off the edge of the bed and tumbled to the ground with a little tap.
“Ow!!” Another bright side of being bug-sized is that long falls aren’t as injury-inducing. Force per square inch, and the effect of gravity, and all that. He shook himself off and headed to his front door, a lightweight spring in his step on the journey. Being tiny wasn’t so bad! He’d never be able to reach his doorknob, but he was small enough to squeeze under the door, Indiana Jones-style.
The first thing Homestar figured he should do is find some ants and get prepared for this kind of life. He hopped down the treacherous heights of his porch steps, and wondered where popular ants his age would be hanging out. Probably in the ground, some place with plenty of dirt and sand. Ants seemed to like that kind of stuff.
The tiny athlete leapt (whole centimeters at a time!) around his front yard, searching for fellow bug-sized creatures.
“Hey!” he called to a pillbug moseying around some decaying leaves. “Do you know of any ants around here?”
The bug took a small munch of some particularly brown and slimy-looking leaf. Homestar frowned. “Because no offense, but I don’t think the roly-poly life is for me.” The bug just stared in his direction for a moment, and then moved on, disappearing into the groundcover.
Luckily that didn’t matter, because Homestar spotted an ant a few feet away. He ran toward it with a grin. “Hello, ant! My name is Homestar Runner. I would like to enlist myself into your ant colony. My skills that could benefit your anthill include a fondness for picnics, a special ability for carrying things around, and a sense of comradeship and community, ensuring I will never let down my fellow ants- oh, where are you going? Am I hired?” The little man rambled on to the silent ant as it trudged an invisible scent-marked trail to its residence. A few more ants showed up as they walked, and Homestar oohingly introduced himself to them in turn. They ignored him, but didn’t discourage him, either.
Under the branches of a large shrub, Homestar And The Ants came upon the anthill. The ants continued tirelessly into what looked like the main entrance, but their new comrade stopped short to admire the structure.
Being this small and being this close, the engineering of an anthill seemed a lot more impressive. The grains of soil so purposefully chosen and laced together with that weird glue-spit made Homestar’s jaw drop, and the few entrances he could spot gave the impression of a complex and deeply connected system of ant-halls and ant-rooms. The tiny man, with (he hoped) the confidence and humility of an ant, stepped into the main entrance after his new ant acquaintances. He was a bit bigger than them, though, and he had to crawl on his ‘hands’ and knees to fit in the small tunnel.
It was getting very dark, he lamented. The soil was nearly black, a little damp, and felt cooler than the surface. Homestar appreciated the atmosphere. The earthy darkness, though not quite picturesque, did make him feel like a real ant! As his eyes adjusted, he felt the antish stares from his hillmates from the connected tunnels, too small for him to risk entering. He didn’t want to bump his head on some load-bearing patch of dirt and get in a lawsuit his first day on the job…
As he thought about that possibility, he dropped into a living space. That was his guess, at least, judging by the number of ants in the tiny, dim cavern, gazes all trained on him. He heard the rustle of a pair of wings, and distantly remembered something about winged ants being important. He bowed at the hip.
“Greetings, my fellow ant-sized creatures. Some of you may know me already, but I am the Homestar Runner. Today I am become an ant-sized creature, as I have just mentioned. I would desire to become a part of your anthill and perhaps even part of your ant family. I would be an excellent ant when it comes to walking one by two and… that sort of thing.”
He waited for a response to this speech. A few ants at the back of the room clicked their jaws, but they had already been doing that, so he wasn’t sure if it was related. An ant in the front turned around and began to walk away, and Homestar glanced around at the blank stares of the rest, before following the ant from the front. “Soo, are you gonna show me around?” It said nothing. Homestar was getting a little nervy from the silence, and wondering if ant life was right for him.
Down another tunnel, into another room, down another tunnel. Homestar was getting tired, and getting a little hot despite the cool dank earth. Maybe it was the awkward silence making him uncomfortable… would the Poopsmith make a better ant than him? He shuddered as he followed his ant guide into yet another cavern, darker than the last. Discouraged and missing his old life, Homestar stopped. He watched the ant walk on without him- it definitely hadn’t been a tour. The athlete sat heavily and immediately recoiled.
Whatever he had sat down on was not hard. The opposite: it squished down as Homestar sat, and he felt a slimy liquid pour out of it. He scrambled up and bumped into another of the gross, squishy spheres, the darkness keeping him practically blind and not giving any clues as to what he had squashed.
He heard an ant rush into the room, though. And then another, and another, and a steadily louder click of jaws as what seemed like the entire colony came pouring in to meet his mistake. Homestar gulped as he realized what kinds of squishy spheres ants kept in the depths of their anthills: eggs. He’d crushed an egg.
He rushed through the crowd in a frenzy, relying only on instinct to dodge the angry army and wishing he was back to normal size about now. In the main tunnel, he crawled like he never had before, feeling very thirsty, very tired of the dark, and very not ready to die!
Twice an ant lunged out of a side tunnel, leaving Homestar barely enough room to kick it back and continue crawling for his life. A speck of light shone to him from high above, and at the speed the Runner was getting himself outta there, it sure could’ve looked like he had six legs! When he reached the surface he doubled over, panting heavily, just to look back and see a stream of menacing ants spilling out to keep chasing him. Would he ever catch a break?
With one final burst of energy, he pushed himself to run as hard and as fast as he could toward his girlfriend Marzipan’s.