Minneapolis is a young and ambitious trans woman. With her cybernetic wings, she’s reinvented the postal service in her home city of…well, Minneapolis…and she’s looking for something to do next. So, she joins up with the fuel-stealing trashmoon pirates to try and bring down the great Captain with her terrible expanse of wings. But the Captain’s got other concerns - how will she rescue the trashmoon citizenry from exploitation by the countries of the earth?

The Captain’s experience and cynicsm against Minneapolis’ leadership and naivete. The two greatest flyers in the history of pteroplasty. And, maybe, a common cause of freedom to unite these women in the most audacious heist ever conceived.

Ongoing serialized illustrated short story, written by Caroline Kittredge Faustine and illustrated by Molly Liu, January 2016 to the present.

• Flygirl 1

  Minneapolis burst through the dark hardwood doors of the captain’s cabin and crouched on the floor, her wings a shield in front of her. She grabbed the electric baton at her waist and braced for gunfire.

• Flygirl 2

  When the captain wheeled herself into the cabin she recognized the paintings on the wall but bumped into a coatrack she wasn’t expecting, knocking it down. Her old partner’s spouse picked it up and smiled, then opened a far door for her. She had already forgotten their name since she was not here to see them. She maneuvered around more familiar things unfamiliary arranged and entered through the open doorway.

• Flygirl 3

  Minneapolis was in danger of losing her meagre pirate lunch. She was spinning slowly above the trashmoon, descending through the thermosphere. The captain and her pirates had long since left, towing the corpse of the tanker behind them. Soon they would drain it of its fuel and then rip its chassis down to scraps to rebuild their unnatural chimera ships. She had cried with helpless frustration, watching them attach the vicious cables to the hull of the tanker, jettison the prisoners in claustrophobic escape pods, and head towards the other moon. Now she was alone, hundreds of miles above the moon, watching it spin slowly in and out of view. She could see the glinting styrofoam mountains polished by the plastic dust storms, their mad curves sharp against the throbbing masses of mutant plants and the vast plains of trash with who knew what lurking beneath the surface.

• Flygirl 4

  Minneapolis tried to drink the whole glass of moonshine in one go but choked. As she lowered the half-full tumbler to the counter, Bartender Willy chuckled, her eye concerned.

• Flygirl 5

  The captain stared at her open desk drawer. She couldn’t remember why she’d opened it. She pushed away the new schematics from Seahorse, turned to the window behind her, and stared out into space. Her stomach ached with hunger but she had no appetite for the dinner on her desk.

• Flygirl 6

  Minneapolis woke up on the rough hotel bed when her alarm went off, sitting up and getting out of the covers before she shushed it. Elytra moaned on the couch and shook hir wingfeathers. Sie slept here three or four times a week, slept heavy as a teenager should, and waking hir up in the morning bothered Minneapolis in an affectionate way.

• Flygirl 7

  The captain waited in a cold rain by a mound of fresh-looking trash. The pile had very little plant growth on it, otherwise it was ­indistinguishable from the rest of the landscape. But between the coordinates her contact had sent her, and an eye trained by long experience, she knew this would be the spot. Here was the entrance to the revolutionary Moonies’ underground base.

• Flygirl 8

  The captain’s old partner tapped her cane and twitched her wing behind her lanterned telescope. The second trashmoon was almost in alignment. When the moon got this close, she could see every guard tower, every barred window, every winking light in the penal colony’s night. One of those lights would be for her.