1072.4

The moth had lost one of its iridescent green wings, but it was still alive. Its five armored legs worked their way carefully around the carnage strewn across the battlefield. It hopped over the corpse of a quetzalcoatl. The gaping hole through its chest was still smoldering. With only one wing left, flight was out of the question. But it still had plenty of fight.

Its one hundred eyes darted around, scanning the ground while it used its antennas to radar the sky. The signal was fuzzy. The evil red dragonfly had blasted off half an antenna. This was a problem because it meant the homing missiles were ineffective. Being heavy artillery, the moth relied on its antennas to get a lock on the target. Then the missile guidance system took over. That damn red dragonfly had found the green moth's weakness. The only places the moth didn't have armor were its joints and its sensitive antennas.

There was a blip on its six-o-clock. The moth spun, in a split second firing off one thousand rounds of hot lead. At nothing. Curses. The chaingun was its only remaining effective weapon. It had plenty of ammo, but the red dragonfly was fast, for it eschewed heavy weapons. It was only armed with a single plasma cannon on the tip of each of its four wings. The evil dragonfly won its battles with fancy flying and quad bolts of scorching red plasma.

Dodging behind the rainbow wreckage of a cyborg parrot, the moth took a moment to get its bearings. It could feel the unseen enemy in the sky above. The green moth needed a plan. It was used to finishing a fight quickly. Its homing missiles each carried a quarter-megaton neutron-bomb payload. Usually it reserved its chaingun for desecrating the twitching remains of its fallen foes. That was, if there were any remains left to desecrate.

The moth hoped that the red dragonfly lacked a full-featured radar system. The lighter opponents usually did. That meant that the dragonfly relied purely on visual detection. Scanning the remains littering the battlefield, the green moth spied a fallen robin whose breast was stained red with blood. The robin had wielded a semi-automatic grenade launcher loaded with a variety of different explosive rounds. If there were any smoke grenades left, the moth could blanket the area with a thick fog. Then the damned red dragonfly would have to fly in low and slow to find its target. And even with malfunctioning radar, the moth would be able to detect its foe.

The moth broke cover and ran as fast as its slow, tank-like legs would carry it. The green moth was only twenty yards away from salvation, when hot plasma began to rain down right in his path. Quite nimbly for such a large, armored creature, the moth dodged backward while simultaneously raising its chaingun in the direction the shots had come from. The green moth sprinted the rest of the way to the grenade launcher, never ceasing the barrage of bullets pouring out of the gun's twenty fifty-caliber rotating barrels.

The launcher was intact. The digital ammunition readout showed one incendiary grenade, two flashbangs and four smoke grenades. In the split second it took the moth to read the display, it had already rotated the magazine to "smoke" and began to pull the trigger. The first bomb exploded at its feet, immediately covering everything in a ten meter area in a rapidly expanding cloud of smoke. The green moth spun in a circle, firing the three remaining smoke grenades in one hundred and twenty degree increments.

The moth changed positions, slipping on the slimy tail of a slain flying fish. It fell to the ground and froze. The only sound was the last of the compressed gas leaving the grenade canisters. Silently, the moth regained its footing. A bead of sweat rolled into its eyes, making a good forty of them blurry. The moth ignored the sweat, focused only on trying to scan for the dragonfly with its damaged antennas. The moth raised its chaingun in one hand and the grenade launcher in the other. It hadn't yet been able to change to another grenade type. The satisfying metal clicking sounds of switching would betray its position in the swirling fog. The moth waited.

Something was wrong. The enemy should be trying to flush it out. The moth's one and a half remaining antennas spun, searching for the enemy. By the time it saw the movement, it was already too late. The fiend was on his tail. Literally. The evil red dragonfly stood atop the moth's huge, armored abdomen. Being that close, through the fog the moth could see that his enemy had another weapon, after all. For through the mist, the moth could make out in the dragonfly's evil grin two rows of laser-sharp diamond-studded mandibles. And the evil red dragonfly was licking its lips.

I'm going to interrupt here for just a second and describe to you a childhood memory: It is a cold, late-November morning. I lay on the old, comfortable leather couch in my aunt's living room. The house is just beginning to wake. I can hear my aunty's hair dryer in the bathroom. I have to pee, but I am holding it. I'm good at holding it. My mom stirs on the floor. She's not quite ready to wake up yet, but I could bet money that by the time I get out of the bathroom after Helen's done in there, she'll be getting a cup of coffee from the kitchen. Right now, I pull the crocheted blanket that my grandmother made up to my chin and gaze toward the ceiling.

Adorning the wall above my improvised mattress are fabulous paper kites. There are tropical birds and butterflies. A veritable rainbow of flying paper creatures. My favorite is a big, blue butterfly with black and yellow and green accents on its wings. The little boy that I am begins to daydream about these kites. But it's not a daydream with flying and sparkles and unicorns. No, the little boy that I am pits them against each other in mortal combat. The violent kid's movies of the 1980s influence my play. As I wait to use the bathroom, the final competitors in this morning's battle royale face off.

Before the green moth could even squeeze the trigger of the chaingun, the evil red dragonfly plasma-zapped its barrel, fusing the metal into a glowing, dripping glob of useless. The dragonfly, quick as lightning, ducked down and with its powerful, deadly jaws, and began to bite through the armor on the moth's abdomen. The only thing that could penetrate that kind of armor was diamond laserteeth. The armor that the dragonfly was biting through was the armor upon which the moth's missile launcher had been attached. In an instant, the dragonfly had severed the weapon and thrown it into the hazy distance. The moth screamed in pain and rage. The dragonfly, with its uncanny speed, darted off again into the sky.

The wounded green moth was now only armed with a scavenged grenade launcher that had two flashbangs and one incendiary round. That could work, though. The moth could blind the dragonfly with the flashbangs and then burn it to cinders with the final grenade. Even if it had to incinerate the dragonfly at close range, it would do so. The moth's remaining armor would keep it protected.

The moth's antennas detected a blip. Something was falling from the sky. The moth raised the grenade launcher and squinted its eyes in anticipation of the flash grenade exploding. But once again, something was wrong. The blip falling from the sky was too small. It was not the dragonfly. But it was heading straight for him. The moth dodged backward and took cover. Unfortunately its damaged radar had misread the trajectory of the object. The small cone of metal landed squarely on the moth's thorax. The moth had only a split second to register that it had just caught the neutron-bomb nosecone from one of its own missiles before a streaking plasma bolt detonated the small object.

The explosion created a crater surrounded by piles of black and green and white bug guts. The evil red dragonfly flew in a downward spiral over the blast site, enjoying the carnage it had created. It gloated over the destruction. Something blue and fast, faster than the dragonfly, shot by just over its head with a peculiar hum. The dragonfly's face hurt. In the fog the dragonfly could make out a silhouette of glowing blue butterfly wings. Glowing blue lightsaber butterfly wings. The evil red dragonfly spat out a mouthful of shiny severed mandibles. Lightsabers were the only thing that could cut through diamond laserteeth. The humming blue shape streaked by again. Son of a bitch, thought the evil red dragonfly as its decapitated head rolled through a pile of stinking moth entrails, that butterfly is fast.