The Darkening Light

Beer?

15th May, 2112

Frank Romero Jr.

Ah, another 'sick' day from school. This is much more relaxing than going to the piece of crap institution they call a school. Everything is biased. Rich kids get all the priority but then again in this world, the rich is always given priority over everyone else.

The federation rules over us now. More specifically glomech rules over us. It's not democracy no matter how much they want you to believe it. How could we call a government a democracy where only the rich vote and all they ever cared about is making their pockets bigger and ours as small as possible to feed their inferiority complex. There is nothing left for them to buy yet they keep taking as much as they possibly can.

My grandparents were in the great war. Basically anyone who picked the wrong side and survived ended up the fallen and the other 'The Prestige'. The federation and glomech opressed us causing as much as havoc as they possibly. Officers with glomech ultra suits patronizing ordinary citizens. Ultrasuits were somewhat the equivalent of Iron Man's suit without the rocket boots and if he forgot to paint it. Well I guess you can't give them points for originality. Living here was hell and it sure wasn't about to change soon. Sometimes I wish I could go back to my ancestral homeland of Italy but this being a prison it would be impossible for us to go back.

I'm Frank Romero Jr. I am a high school senior living in the Village along with the rest of the fallen. I live alone with my mom who works two jobs to pay for all the money the prestige steal from us. I'm what some would call a nerd but I prefer the word genius. I can hack into anything and I am pretty good with machines. The only friend I have is ironically the most popular boy in school, Matthew Redwood. He saved me from a bunch of bullies in eighth grade, which basically meant he got beat up instead of me, and we've been friends ever since. Plus he was the only one of the prestige that actually understood our position and well he had a thing against bullies.

As I prepared breakfast, more like lunch because it was 12 by then, I heard a knock on the door. It was Matt and he had this look on his face that I'd never seen before.

Me :- Happy birthday doucheface! I was gonna drop by after school!

Matt:- ....

Me:-  What happened?

Matt:- Layla broke it off.

Me:- On your birthday?! Wow that's harsh. You need a drink. Beer?

Matt:- Yeah.

He sat down on my couch as I fetched him some beer. As soon as I gave it to him, it started bubbling up as though it was boiling. Puzzled by this, I was gonna get another one when he stopped me and he said, ''I just burnt a mugger alive with my bare hands. Boiling beer should be the least of my worries.''

17th June,2112

It had been a month since Matt revealed his powers to me. It seemed he had the power to produce and control fire with his hands.  We didn't quite know the full extent of them yet. The past month we have been training so that he could get better at controlling them and maybe now he was ready to implement my plan.

When he saw this as his world faling apart, I took it as an opportunity for the fallen to finally get rid of the oppression of the ultrasuits. So I trained him as far away from civilization as I could possibly get as and  I learned as much I could about ultrasuits.

The only time an officer removes his ultrasuit when he is in duty is to recharge it. So I snuck into the recharge center and waited till finally I got my hands on a suit. I got in, hacked it as fast as I could and took off. Half a dozen suits followed. Half of them taken down by Matt. He wore a black fire resistant mask, pants and a t-shirt. He fought them off with all his might creating firewalls to burn the bullets shot at him. Meanwhile I had modified the program on ultrasuit to be superior to the others and all I had to was be inside it. We fought side by side, standing our ground. His mixed martial arts classes really had started to show it's benefits. We had defeated around 15 suits when it came.

The Bruiser was what they called it. About eight feet tall and massive. It punched me away like a little bug. My back hit a wall stopping me from flying off any further. My ultrasuit opened up leaving me vulnerable. An officer just walked upto me and aimed his beamer right at me. 'This was the end', I thought to myself. I closed my eyes waiting the imminent oblivion with Matt's screams filling the corners of my ears. This was it. This was the end.

Matt:- Open your eyes, Frank.

Me:- Are we in heaven?

Matt:- No, you piece of shit. We're still in hell.

I opened my eyes and I could see that Matt's hand had burned right through the officer's chest through his ultrasuit. He took it out and I could see that he melted every ultrasuit in his sight. He was more dangerous than I thought. He picked me up and said 'Yeah that bruiser ain't gonna stay down forever. Let's go home.'

We returned to my house. As we opened the door, a girl's voice welcomed us. ''You guys sure are stupid.''

As Matt set me down, I saw her. She wore leather pants, a leather jacket, black boots and had black hair with blue streaks.

Matt and I exchanged looks of utter confusion and we were in no condition to fight anymore.

She took a beer that was on the table, almost froze it completely with her hand and offered it to me,

''Beer?''

Well that fixes one of Matt's problems.