On Golden Wings
A group of heroes fight for the legacy of one of their own
Note: This story ended being roughly 1400 words. Oops! Give yourself a couple extra minutes if you’re tight on time, and see the Fact in Fiction section where I discuss what happened.
Hotshot looked up at the spotlit thirtieth floor of the Lico-Prove building, and his fingers itched.
Punkie had been murdered by her own sidekick, Mayfly. And Mayfly, the little shit, had clipped those beautiful insect wings of hers, gilded them, and sold them to Lico-Prove, the sketchiest conglomerate the city offered. And, of course, Lico-Prove took the opportunity to mount the wings where all could see them, pretending it was some sort of tribute and not a show of what money and power could get you.
He couldn’t wait to shoot out those gaudy spotlights and take back Punkie’s only known remains.
A hand grasped his shoulder. “You ready?” asked Dr. Infernal.
Hotshot pulled away from the gloved hand. The demonologist and their suit of shapeshifting demons made him uneasy.
“Remind me why you can’t use that demon cape to float up and grab the wings on your own?”
“Aerial security,” chimed in Jenny Botwick, aka Bott. “There’s a couple dozen armed drones cloaked up there.” She looked tired on the LCD display of the floating sentry droid she was piloting from afar. “You both need to get this droid as close as possible so I can hack them. I already disabled the alarms. Working on the door now.”
“Room for one more?” asked a raspy voice. A blonde woman in a catsuit and chunky goggles rounded the corner, a burly security guard slung over her shoulder. She dropped him at their feet. “Security’s tight and you must know Mayfly was hired to be part of it. You need me.”
Hotshot drew his firearms. The others took their own fighting stances. The woman, a contract killer known as Nite-Nite, only smirked at Hotshot. “Oh babygirl, we both know you’re not warmed up yet.” She didn’t even glance at Jenny, but her predatory gaze lingered on Infernal. “But you might be fun. I like someone with demons.”
“Is the guard alive?” Hotshot demanded.
“Of course,” said Nite. “I know you won’t let me play unless I half-ass it like the rest of you.” She held up a hand, and electricity crackled over it. “Taser-knuckles. Non-lethal.”
“Sensors say she’s not lying,” Bott said.
“Why help us?” Hotshot asked.
“Punkie saved my life once,” she said. “I owe her.”
“Still not lying,” said Bott before Hotshot could call bullshit.
Infernal stood down. “Let’s be quick about this.”
The others followed suit. Bott typed at her keyboard and, seconds later, the front door swung open.
The next forty minutes was an endurance test for the human fighters. Hotshot’s initial shots always went wide, as expected. “Pathetic!” cried the cheerful robotic AI in his gauntlet. But then his power kicked in. The more he fired, the better his aim and the AI’s commentary got. “Mediocre! Average! Splendid! Fantastic! Marvelous!” Soon, he was firing trick shots and hitting every guard between the eyes with his rubber bullets.
Meanwhile, Infernal was in their element, stretching the demons in their costume into tentacles and knocking guards around. If that didn’t overpower them, a quick shift of their mask made their foes weep for mercy before passing out.
Not to be outdone, Nite-Nite danced between her enemies, tasing, kicking, and tripping them before knocking them out with a brutal blow.
Bott floated in the background, administering adrenaline shots to her allies and shooting tranquilizer darts at enemies.
Finally, they reached the main office on the thirtieth floor. Nite kicked the door open, and they scrambled in to find Mayfly and a woman standing behind a desk, dark miasma draped around them.
“Who’s she?” Hotshot asked.
“Database lists her as Malady,” Bott said. “Avatar for a plague deity.”
Nite grinned. “There’s a bounty on her head. This could be—”
“No killing,” the others hissed.
Mayfly cleared his throat. “We know why you’re here, and you’re not getting it.”
Hotshot holstered his guns and stepped forward. His gauntlet had last said he was “red hot!” Even a rubber bullet at this power level could be lethal. He needed both answers and time to cool off. “What the hell, Mayfly? Punkie was only ever kind to you.”
Mayfly laughed. The miasma around Malady grew and overtook the room.
“I remember her differently, Shitshot,” he said from within the depths of the shadows.
Anxiety grasped Hotshot’s heart as they were teleported to the top of the building.
“We’re in the past,” said Infernal, pointing to Mayfly. He looked several years younger. “A memory, maybe? He can’t be more than fourteen here.”
Young Mayfly looked panicked, his wings beating erratically as he looked up at a hovering figure above him.
Hotshot squinted to get a better look at the flyer, and his blood went cold.
“Punkie, please,” young Mayfly begged from the edge of the building.
Punkie shook her head. “You want to be a hero? You’ll get over this silly fear you developed. Now fly!”
Mayfly gulped before closing his eyes and leaning forward. He shrieked as he fell, wings beating uselessly. At the last moment, Punkie dove, catching him and flying them back to the top of the building. “Again!”
Hotshot shook, sweat beading down his forehead. “No, not again,” he found himself muttering along with Mayfly. Then he remembered a fight a few years ago where a laser clipped Mayfly while he was in midair. Had he developed a fear of heights ever since?
“Your golden girl was a menace! I’m glad she’s gone!”
“Enough!” Infernal summoned a demonic aura that grew in size. “You reek of Malady’s influence! Your crime was being easily manipulated.” The aura clawed at its surroundings, destroying the illusion. They were back in the office. Hotshot’s pulse slowed to its normal rhythm.
But then the tattered illusion morphed back to miasma and stabbed the demons, killing them. Infernal collapsed, naked save for their mask. Hotshot and Nite quickly jumped to the front. Bott floated over Infernal, creating an energy barrier. “Shields activated. Initiating hacking protocols. You’re both on your own for a bit.”
Mayfly grabbed his bladed staff and charged. Malady started channeling a dark energy spell.
Nite turned to Hotshot. “I’ll fight your boy. You take the ugly one.”
He checked his gauntlet. “I still haven’t cooled off!” He ducked a blow before Nite shoved him aside and took his place.
“We need to get those wings down! A brat and some old hag don’t get to tarnish Punkie’s memory!”
Hotshot groaned before drawing one of his guns, pointing it at the ceiling, and firing. “WHOA, BUDDY!” The rubber bullet ricocheted three times before striking Malady in the eye. She went down, clutching her face and spell abandoned. There was no way she’d see out of that eye again.
He just maimed someone…
A cry grabbed his attention, and he saw Nite standing over Mayfly, his staff in her hands. The bladed end of it was trained on the young hero’s neck.
“Nite,” Hotshot warned.
But before he could say anything else, Nite took out a gun—wait, that’s his other gun!—and fired a shot—she switched it to real bullets?—at Malady’s prone form. The bullet hit its mark, and she stilled. Then Nite slammed the blunt end of the staff into the nearest window and dove out the jagged opening. Then she grabbed onto something affixed near the hole.
“The wings!” Infernal yelled from behind Bott’s barrier. “She’s getting them!”
Hotshot stepped forward to help, but a bullet from his own gun grazed his ear.
“These wings are mine,” growled Nite. Hotshot noticed her knees were pressed to the outer wall of the building—suction cup kneepads, how’d he miss those?—so she had one hand free to keep a gun trained on them and the other to retrieve a laser pen from her belt. Two quick strokes and the wings were off and falling. She withdrew from the wall and swan dove after them.
Hotshot and Infernal ran to the window and watched as Nite, a golden wing strapped around each arm, glided by the building. She rounded the next corner, disappearing from sight.
Hotshot groaned. “Do you think she’s been hired to take them?”
Infernal sighed. “I think she was closer to Punkie than we thought.”
“I’m really sorry,” Bott said as she maneuvered the droid to cuff Mayfly. “I don’t know how she got that handgun ammo past me. My sensors should have picked it up unless she stashed it somewhere ahead of time.”
“Nobody’s blaming you,” Hotshot said.
Jenny looked ready to argue, but then loud sniffling broke the conversation.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” Mayfly cried. “But Malady, she kept making me remember and—” He broke down into unintelligible sobs.
Hotshot shook his head. Mayfly had already admitted it. He’d wanted Punkie gone. And with a strong dose of psychosis from Malady, he couldn’t blame the kid. He checked his gauntlet. “Marvelous!” it read.
He scoffed. “Not even a little.”
Fact in Fiction
Hey there! In case you missed the last Microfiction Roundup, we’re back with more stories! This one took some extra time to bake, mainly because I got too ambitious with the scope. Can you believe this is the scaled back version?
For those who don’t know or remember, I get or generate prompts for many of my flash and microfiction. For me, one of the most exhausting parts of the short fiction writing process is idea generation. You have to do so much of it, so prompts and random generators help immensely. And the main one I use for flash fiction is The Story Engine.
The original prompt generated involved this tunnel rat on a desperate mission to steal a pair of wings. Interesting… who is the opposition? Let’s pull another card… A sidekick! Is this a superhero story? A story of a sidekick’s betrayal?1 Is the tunnel rat pulling off a heist?
“Let’s make it a whole superhero team to join the rat,” said Past Anthony. “Let’s give the sidekick someone to work with.”
Several “let’s” later, and this is what I generated:
It’s too ambitious. I knew that. “I’ll play with it and pare it down. I’m a writer, dammit! I can figure it out!” Punkie’s wings may have been golden, but mine were made of wax.
I had a pretty basic checklist going on in my head:
Each character included should be “fun” in some way
The sidekick is allowed to be the exception, since he felt like a dweeb to me
It’s a superhero story—it needs a bit of action, and all the heroes need a chance to shine, even if it’s paraphrased
It’s a superhero story—it needs an emotional conflict
So, I worked out what the wings represented and why the sidekick was an antagonist in the first place. The Sawbones character, while fun, felt unnecessary, so I removed him. I also simplified and tweaked some other stuff, like making Malady an avatar of a god, rather than a messenger.
Then I got to work and ended up with a 1600-word monstrosity. Time to trim a little more. Ironically enough, the teenage tunnel rat character I started with wasn’t significant, so she went away, and I adjusted the plot to compensate.
And then it just felt like I’d either have to take out a key character or whittle down some other aspect (e.g. plot, detail, dialogue). I loved who I had left and got concerned cutting any more would work against the goals I listed above.
So I had to settle for breaking my 1000 words or less rule. I cleaned up what I had, and overall, I’m happy with it! If the response is good, I might write more stories in this universe. Ones that aren’t so metaphorically close to the sun…
Anyway, my plan isn’t to increase the word count for the Quick as a Flash issues. It’s been a couple of years since I last posted one. We’ll call it a learning experience as I get used to properly judging scope again.
What's Next?
Thanks for reading this far!
I enjoy making these issues interactive, so let’s bring back polling. Vote for your favorite prompt options below, and they’ll determine what I write about in a future issue. Note that it might not be the next issue, but I will get to them in order. You have one week to get your votes in!
Interestingly, I didn’t consider the possibility of the tunnel rat being a villain and the story being from their POV until just now.
I don't know that I would have noticed that there was an extra 400 word in this story. It was very entertaining with a variety of sub-plots that helped create unity within the characters.
Great job Anthony! On Golden Wings was a fun read!