Installment #1: Griffin's Enrollment

     This is the first installment in what's for now dubbed the Spitfire Chronicles. I think I'll next write a political short next to establish the major conflict of humanity!  

     The neighborhood children enjoyed playing runeball in the sunny afternoons. forgetting the world, the Xeno War, and the dragons that patrolled and harassed the human borders. The children squealed and hooted delightedly as they attempted making hoops with only their feet. Being lower income citizens they didn't have particularly nice cloths, patched jackets with cheap respirators from the Moabel Commission which made it mandatory for minors to have breathing protection after the Neurotoxin Raids of 453. Grimy and smugged, life expectancy for children like these was low, and few high class humans were adopting. 

     One of the children, named Griffen, noticed Rhoj III purging over the horizon and new that that was his curfew. He began to head home at a brisk pace, a healthy specimen for the degraded state of his district, with a spry build, Scusian complexion, and hair short he always had his hood up to cover his face. Taking his favorite route to the roofs of the run down suburban, he turned down the alley next to the Dragon's Growler Pub. 

     Being street smart he avoided eye contact by keeping his head down. He had often heard about the men who attended such places, scumbag robbers, raiders, and scavengers. When he was far enough down the alley he looked up just in time to see a man running at him from behind a waste atomizer. Griffin quickly avoided the man's lunge and took flight to a ladder. After recovering the attacker reached the ladder by the time the boy was several rungs above his head. When the man tried to grab Griffin's leg he planted a glancing kick to the man's masked face. 

     Griffin ran from roof top to roof top, ducking and weaving through makeshift squater camps and air vents at a break-neck pace. He rounded the corner of an air disperser to find the same man leaning relaxedly against the rusted side panel. The man wore a black mask with a built in respirator and visual augments that made the eye lenses glow an alien shade of blue. His jacket was weathered but well fitting with a military design. 

     "So surprised?" he said as he stepped forward with his hands up inquisitively "You didn't think I could outrun a little cheeper like you did ya!" in an instant he was inches away from Griffin's face with sharp tendrils protruding from one of his gauntlets. 

     Griffin was pinned to the side of the air pump and squirmed mightily. "What do you want freak!"

     "No! What do you want!" the man corrected. After pausing he said "You want to live of course, you want... a normal life, friends, family and a place to call home. Thats what any normal kid wants of course, but those are luxuries that I am denying you."

     Griffin stopped and realized the weight of the man's words "To dragon dump you are! You isn't my boss!" he cried defiantly.

     Ignoring the phrase the man got closer "By the time I'm done with you... you will be no normal person... you will be special."

     Griffin could almost see the man's ambition through the concealing mask, the excitement of a madman. "What do you want."

     "You can get around pretty smartly can't ya? Take this," the man handed him a small metal case the size of a pocket notebook. "There's two men in the Dragon's Growler who need this... get the picture?"

     "What of my mom? I'll be late cuz of you!" Griffin asked.

     "Don't worry." he said with a silly tone "That won't matter."

     Griffin nodded and made to go were he had came from. Back over, and under piping and valves, through the squater village, and down the fire escape. He slowed to a walking pace as he neared the pub and opted not to put his head down for fear he might look like a pick pocket. He entered with wary slowness. The bar's activity slowed down with his arrival. He slowly made way to the bar since it was the only action that came to his mind. He began looking from man to man, some were higher class pressed suits and ties, others were industrial workers and then others who fell in between. Then two men made way to him tugging their jacket seams as they got up.

     One had a jacket with styling similar to the masked man's but it hung lower. His face held three scars like a claw had slashed across it, and stubble. The other man did not wear the same style jacket but rather wore a flamboyant vest that was bursting at the seems with exotic furs. Both had firearms strapped to their legs. 

     The flamboyant one took the lead "Come outside kid..." Griffin obliged.