In a house in Berlin, Germany, a young man in his twenties is working on building something that he has created many times before, not because he has to but because he wants to. That young man is trying to create a miniature robot that perfectly imitates humans and copies their actions and perfects those actions all by itself.
Johan has been working on creating this "man-made life" for the last five years but has not been able to succeed, but this time it's different than previous attempts because this time he has the proper body parts for the machine and the experience from his previous mistakes. He is fully confident that he will be able to completely perfect this robot by the month's end.
He suddenly gets a phone call; it's from his friend Hans. "Johan...You are at your home right now?"
"Yeah, why?".
"I, Irina and Anna are coming to pick you up then. Let's go to the college festival.".
Johan was hesitant to say ok; he never really liked going to any event. Not because he was shy or antisocial; in fact, he is fairly famous in his college and is friendly with almost everyone. He is a bit witty and does not care about the age of anyone; he makes himself loud and clear, but no one has a problem with that. Most people are willing to accept one or two bad things that come from a person who has a hundred good qualities.
He was hesitant because he wants to fulfil the dream he has been working on for the past five years as quickly as possible and sit back to enjoy the fruits of his massive success in the field of robotics. But he is known to never let someone down whenever they ask him for something, in this case, his time. So after a bit of hesitation, he says ok. He works on the robot a bit more and then puts it in a cardboard box and starts getting ready. While getting ready, he sees a big flash across the sky like a missile but shrugs it off like it was normal.
For the people of his earth, it WAS, in fact, normal, because in his world there were two kinds of human species. The first one being the normal human-like of the real world and the second one being humans who have supernatural powers that exceed human limits by a mile. For Johan and others, seeing people fly, teleport, heal others or massacre ordinary humans was as common as seeing the sky upon stepping outside, because of which the ordinary powerless humans have already accepted that they can die anytime, whether inside or outside, and are now indifferent to seeing people die or go missing.
Johan and his friends too are the powerless humans who can only survive either by becoming rich enough to be able to afford a safe haven built only for the rich and powerful or by being smart enough to detect dangers ahead of time, which is seemingly impossible even after centuries of evolution to survive among the power users.
Hans, Irina and Anna arrived at his house in a car to pick him up. Johan was already waiting outside of his house for them; he sat in the car, greeted them, and they started to drive off towards the "College for the Powerless – Robotics and Other Sciences, Berlin".
Even the schools and colleges were different for the two species, but in a sense, it was better to keep the power users and non-power users separate from each other.
For the young hot headed power users a well protected facillity was important as no one would be able to survive if they went berserk except other power users.
After half an hour or so they finally reached their college.Their college was a small building with high walls which reached up to 30 feet. The most gruesome part was that the walls were permanently stained with blood, and the blood was of none other than the powerless people.
Every few years or so there are tensions between the power users and the powerless that result in the power users targeting kids, women and young people and killing them mercilessly as if they were cattle. They do this to put their fear in ordinary humans and to assert their dominance, self-declaring themselves as the true "humans".
For them, only those with power are considered humans; other people are just ants or bugs for them.
The blood stains on the wall are caused because they smash the heads of powerless children and women on the wall, causing their heads to burst instantly because of their raw strength, and then they proceed to make a show of their powers by committing more atrocities.
Afterwards the government comes in and pretends to take the power users away for persecution, but they are released the next day without any punishment. The powerless are rarely given any justice by persecuting the power users, but they are only those power users who are either useless for the government or for the power user's society.
When Johan and his friends reached the college, they saw that there was no one in the college, no stall and not a single soul. They went inside and were soon met by the dean of the college.
"Sir, wasn't today the annual college
festival?" Hans asked the dean.
"It was supposed to be today; the preparations and all were complete, but..." The dean, Mr Aisen Waltz, replied in a disappointing tone, "There has been an accident regarding the power users."
All four knew if there was an accident and power users were involved, then there were surely some casualties.
"I-is everyone okay, Mister Waltz??" Anna asked in a concerned voice.
The dean was silent; this was enough to tell them that the casualty was someone from the college. Mister Waltz asked them to follow him and took them to the site of the accident, which was right behind the college. There they first saw that a part of the school building had fallen on the ground with icicles and water everywhere.
There, right beside the fallen wall, were numerous bodies which were half covered by a white cloth and people crying near the bodies. The dean explained
"This morning there was a fight between an ice user and a wind user. During their fight, one of their attacks targeted at each other reached the college building, which caused it to fall on the nearby bystanders and some college students who had arrived early and were taking their props for the stalls from the gym storage room (which was at the backside of the college), but then the wall broke and fell on them."
"T-then most of these bodies are of our friends!?" Johan said this while looking around, and one after another he kept spotting the bodies of his under- and upper-class friends and recognised them only because of their parents crying over their bodies.
All four of them were not only experiencing sadness but also overwhelming anger towards the power users. They could not stay there for long; the unrecognisable faces of their friends and the sorrow of their loved ones were too much for them to handle.
Asking the dean about what happened to the power users who committed this crime in broad daylight was pointless. They knew no action would have been taken against them.
"I- I, uh, I'm sorry for taking you all to the college; it was my idea to go and enjoy the festival...I am very sorry," Hans said in a depressing but apologetic tone.
"No...it wasn't your fault at all; we all agreed to it, and besides...we were going to know about it sooner or later, so..." Irina replied. But the other two remained quiet; they were too depressed and shocked to be able to think about whose fault it is.
But all four of them knew that the ones most at fault were the powerful humans who were beyond their reach forever.
Johan was dropped at his house, and he went straight to his room. His mother was preparing lunch, but he refused and went to his room, locked it, and went straight to his medicine box and shoved 3 sleeping pills with his shaking hands in his mouth and went to sleep...well, tried to.
Upon waking up it was already evening; he went to his desk, took out a black card and called on the number given on it.
"...this is 'The Vanquisher'...I need some information on the fight that happened between an ice user and a wind user this morning."
Chapter 1
Complete