The sergeant's order snapped him into a slow, steady flutter. Not quite exactly still, but his orange, black and white wings moved through the air in sync with his neighbours, gliding slowly forward in a way that was completely against his former chaotic nature. The air force had trained a new nature into him, though.

"Form cube!" The shift was precise, the unit’s wings fluttering to create a three dimensional array of death, muskets pointed outwards in all directions. Their unit was a riot of color, the unit a mix of colours: swallowtails, blues, whites and speckled woods in addition to monarchs like him, but all with the same blue uniform.

“Form square!” His name was Dane Plecks. Soon a private, he hoped, but for now a cadet drilling with the others. “Fix bayonets!” The flat square rippled with movement as they added the points to the ends of the weapons, making even a butterfly swarm deadly. “Charge!”

The high pitched scream of his unit erupted. The 1st Air leapt forward in a reasonably good plane and the sharp knives cut into the leaf weave that was their target. “Retreat!” They scattered backwards, not running into each other but in an organized chaos, a maelstrom that made targeting them difficult.

“Reform square!” Quickly, they returned to place, reforming twice the distance of their charge away, though not quite quickly enough for the sheepdog sergeant. “Reform, damn you all.” The last swivelled into place, returning things to a flat square of moving colour in the air. “Unfix bayonets.” The deadly points were quickly detached and returned to the belt, the commands snapping him into movement without thought after the endless practice of the last weeks.

“Load in nine times, load!” The litany of commands came swiftly as he braced his weapon, took out a cartridge and tore it with his teeth and used it and the rammer to load his weapon. As the commands continued, he loaded, brought the gun to his shoulder, aimed, and fired with his unit.

Smoke blossomed, the acrid smoke stung his eyes and obscured the leaf targets as they were shredded. “Company, down, form ranks!” Relieved, he fluttered down, the square rotating from the vertical to the horizontal on the training ground. “At ease. Not completely embarrassing yourselves any more, but if you don’t move faster back into square, you’ll be pincushions! Understand me?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” came the reply from his throat, in unison with everyone around him.

“Go clean your weapons,” the sergeant barked. “You are no more than your weapon; you are bullets with butterfly wings. Now get your pretty boy colours out of my face. Section dismissed!”

The group began to break up, heading in small groups towards the barracks. Dane looked down at the weapon in his hand. They were an experiment. Too fragile, some said; one volley of bullets would destroy them. He marched with his unit to the barracks, planning to clean his weapon and to prove them wrong.