Chapter 1: Part 1: Survival of the Fittest. The will to live. Part 1

That survival instinct, that will to live, that need to get back to life again, is more powerful than any consideration of taste, decency, politeness, manner, civility.

Anything.

It's such a powerful force.

-Danny Teenle.

Chapter 1: Part 1: Survival of the Fittest. The will to live.

Part 1

Date: Thursday, May 28, 2009

Time: 6:42:56 A.M.

Location: Bronx, NEO New York City.

BANG!

A single gunshot broke out.

BANG!

Another gunshot broke out.

The gunshots continued.

One by one.

One after another.

Each shot echoing.

The gunshots continued.

In the early quiet morning, several gunshots broke out in a small corner store in NEO New York City.

Ten to be exact, and with that, the magazine fell out of the gun and landed on the floor with a "clink".

On the other side of the room, the obvious target for those 10 bullets.

A gray radio.

A small radio that sat on a dresser stand.

The radio, which now had three bullet holes in it.

The wall behind the broken radio had seven bullet holes, as it missed the radio completely.

Damn!" A voice broke out. "It is a lot harder to hit a small target when a small handgun recoils like that, huh?"

In the small room, the voice came from a man dressed in black sitting atop the store-counter. In his hand was a Beretta M9A1 Semi-Automatic Pistol.

A handgun.

To some, a handgun was nothing more than a weapon, but to the man on the counter who fired the ten shots into a small radio, it meant the world to him.

A sign of dominance.

A sign of power.

Back to the radio.

The small piece of scrap did not deserve to be called to a radio after the damage it suffered. It looked like nothing more than Swiss cheese.

One man spoke from the other side of the room: Dude, what the hell is your problem?" The man walking down the store aisle dressed in all black said this to the man sitting at the store counter, waving the gun around, looking for another object to call target practice.

The man on the store counter looked back and reached into his pockets of his dark black jacket and pulled out another magazine for his handgun and loaded it into his gun as he found a new target to set his gun on.

One man spoke angrily, Hey, did you know how hard it was to smuggle that gun and the bullets into this city without tipping off the police and other authorities?"

"We don't have enough bullets for you to be shooting recklessly, especially at a useless target."

"I know that," spat the man on the counter as he closed one of his eyes to focus. "Unless you're permitted by the damn city, you can't hold one of these bad teens, let alone own one. I was just getting used to it. We weren't able to sneak that many in to use, so we had no practice with them."

"So, what of it?" The man in the aisle said, We've got a few, and that's all that matters, Would you agree?"

The man on the counter lowered the weapon and adjusted himself to face everyone.

"But why is that? I mean, this city is fixing its population to become superpowered freaks. The city exists for that one purpose. The city tells you what to do, what time to be inside, what rules to follow, and how to follow them, and that's if you are useful to them; if not, you are swept under the rug as an existence not even worth mentioning. When did the majority become less friendly to these superpowered freaks"?

The man at the counter tightened the grip of the small black handgun in his hand and said, "I don't want to live in a city with regulations like that". To the man on the counter, the weapon was a sign of power that could not be denied; to him, it was a part of him to be used in any way he wanted, his own power.

"But what can you do about it, man? Those rules were set up by the higher-ups. Did you forget that most of the population are kids and teenagers?" A voice spoke out.

No, I did not forget that." The man at the counter adjusted himself slightly and placed his hand on the side of his face.

"And those are not kids; those are monsters". He continued as he adjusted the tone of his voice.

An eerie sight for those watching.

Half his body was covered in shadows as he spoke.

As if the man was swallowed by the ever-growing shadows.

The man's demeanor changes drastically.

"For whatever reason, personal or otherwise, the majority of the population of its city abandoned humanity a long time ago to obtain powers.

"Magicians, Spell-casters, Fragments, and espers—this whole city exists for them... The city's pride and joy don't make me laugh."

The man at the counter began to focus on the weapon in his hand.

To the man on the counter, this weapon is his answer to the gap of power between him and the superpowered population.

The man on the counter readjusted himself and prepared to fire again at a tower of cans.

Suddenly, there were three knocks on the window glass from outside of the corner store, breaking the tension in the room.

The four men inside, dressed in black, knew what that meant.

Somebody was coming.

"Already huh?" The man on the store counter said, "Keep quiet, everyone, and this will pass."

The door to the corner store opened, and the bell was attached to the wall so that when the door opened, the store owner would be aware of customers. With that knowledge in mind, everyone's eyes in the store focused on the door, and with that, a large man walked in dressed in all black from his head to his toe.

The large man walks in and closes the door to the corner store behind him.

The large man turns around to face the leader of the now five men dressed in black. The man on the counter spoke.

"So, who is coming?"

The large man at the door spoke: "It''s one of those robots that pollute the city, it must have heard the gunshot from inside the store."

And with that statement, everybody looked at the man sitting atop the store counter.

"Hey, hey don't look at me," the man said jokingly. "I was just testing the weapon; it would have been worse to find out when we need it and it does not work. Would you not agree?"

"Well, none of that matters now, does it?"

(So, what now?) With the threat approaching, the man on the counter thought to himself. (What do we do now?)

New York City, the technologically futuristic city with a population of a little less than 8.2 million people, has managed to build a line of "Helper robots," or so they were called. They help the city and its not-so-normal population with everyday tasks throughout The City of New York. The robots would pick up litter, tend to the residents of New York City, and alert emergency crews for any problems within the city.

The robot in question that was approaching was the new security robot. It was a new prototype line of robots introduced to help the police fight its superpowered population.

With the population of New York City, you had to introduce something that could oversee reality warpers who could create and destroy on a whim or when certain conditions were met. The main way the robots dealt with the reality warpers was with a High Pitch Frequency the robots would give off to subdue the perpetrator(s) in question.

The High Pitch Frequency was enough to disarm most of the population within the city.

The sound affected the brain and created a situation where one power could not be used without hurting the user or anyone nearby, as most reality warpers needed to concentrate for their powers to work. A magician or spell-caster can manipulate certain events and their surroundings with certain objects and spells and call it magic. Fragments and Espers initially follow the same pattern in executing their powers, for espers, they would have to manipulate their "Invisible Angelic Aura" surrounding their bodies to use their powers, and fragments would have to be near or in contact with the element they are aligned with to manipulate.

The magician or spellcaster would ultimately have to create a situation where the power would exist to bring their power into this world. If one had all the magical objects correctly set up, they would be able to use magic, but if the brain was affected and the magician or spell-caster would activate the spell in question, the spell would backfire on the user the same way it would an esper of fragment since they have to mentally create the situation in which their powers would work via their concentration. Ultimately, if the brain is affected, it can render one's power unusable.

A voice spoke, "What do we do now?" The voice came from a man who was in between the aisles of food and kitchen supplies.

"Think."

The answer came from the man sitting on the counter.

"Think?" said the man at the door. "It was your recklessness that got us into this, and now you want us to think, How the hell are we supposed to combat a system designed to handle reality warpers"?

"We point out the flaw within the system."

"Flaw? What flaw?"

Please, this is NEO New York City those robots were built by the city. There is no way in hell the have a flaw that we can exploit". the man sounded desperate trying to figure out the situation.

"It simple really, We asses the situation"

"And then what? The man at the door cut him off.

"If you would let me finish, I was getting to my point; we look at what's there and what isn't there, then we move on from there."

"What?"

The man on the counter sighed in disbelief at that statement. What he was imposing was a plan that would get rid of the problem approaching the corner store. To the other four men in the room, his plan sounded crazy. A flaw in a system that was created to oversee NEO New York City super powered population. It sounded far-fetched because none of the five men had any powers themselves.

What hope did they have?

Aright, listen up," was all that he managed to say before he started speaking again.

"According to the official citywide report that was released a few months ago when the robots were first introduced to the NEO New York City public, they were labeled as ARCH_ANGEL_Beta Versions for something bigger. So, one can assume that they are still beta versions, with only 263 that were produced."

Alright," the man at the door spoke, "If they are beta versions, what difference does that make?"

"You don't understand how software releases work, don't you? There are four stages to how software is released, and no matter how great or advanced the technology of the city is, it is not going to take a big risk of it not working, especially in NEO New York City."

Everything was quiet.

"First stage: The Pre-Alpha Phase: The information gathering stage, the charts, the hypothetical, the statistics, and so on. The NEO New York City Power Development and Regulation Program is a city-wide program in which the city helps develop powers through both scientific and magical means, such as spell-casters and espers, and helps regulate those that are born with their powers, such as fragments and wizards. Because the city is so close to the development of one's powers, the person's powers would be added to the Ability Registry List. From there, the city always knows who has what powers and how their powers can be used; the more powers the city can produce, the more information it can gather for the robots"?

The man on the counter slightly moved around a bit.

"The next stage would be the Alpha Phase: With all the information gathered from the Ability Registry List, NEO New York City can produce the robots. The main function of this part is to evaluate the core functionality to see if it works as intended. This phase would include a bunch of bugs, but if it passes the bare minimum, then the city cannot label it a complete failure, as it was expected to fail. Then would be the stage we are at now: The Beta Testing stage. At this stage, the program is released to the public to see how it would function in an open testing environment and what it can improve on. This is where we exploit the flaw in the system."

The man at the door peered outside the window and saw the ARCH_ANGEL_Beta robot coming.

"So how do we exploit that flaw?"

"Compare the beta version to the other robots that monitor and maintain the city, and it is obvious that anyone can see the difference between the

ARCH_ANGEL_Beta and the 20000 ANGEL_LINE Helper robots that were mass produced and are still being mass produced For one, consider their numbers for dealing with the situation across the city. Because the Angel Line robots fall under the Guardian Angel Security System, their main order never deviates from the main security system objective: To maintain order and protect the city. That is why it is not odd to see multiple ANGEL_LINE robots attending to the same problem across the city, ranging from a few to a dozen on the same problem, because they are all linked up to each other. If a problem exists, Guardian_Angel will see to it that it gets erased."

The man leaped off the store counter.

"So, the flaw we exploit is the ARCH_ANGEL_Beta lack of numbers. The ANGEL_LINE robots are scattered across the city; they are within signal range of each other and are always linked up to the GUARDIAN_ANGEL system for better efficiency. The ARCH_ANGEL_Beta may not be linked to that same system."

"How would you know that?"

"Think about it; no matter how you look at it, it is impossible for a machine to have that many functions without overloading and breaking down. For example, on any device you have, if you were to run many applications and programs in the background, your device would slow down. That is why there are so many of the ANGEL_LINE robots running about; they are the robots that maintain order. In order to attend to every need of the users, sacrifices must be made. The computer will sacrifice speed for the functionality of all the programs; the same applies here. The robots cannot have both orders to maintain order in New York City and be ready to combat the superpowered population if they need to; it has to be split up."

"So, I will ask again, how do we exploit the flaw?" The man at the door said.

"I said if we looked at what was there and what was not, we would be able to exploit the flaw. All the robots in the city have a wireless transmitter attached to them, so they are always in range of each other. My guess is that the city monitors everything that occurs and handles everything within the city. With each signal bouncing off each ANGEL_LINE robot like a cell tower, they can respond to every situation across the city. If we assume that the Arch Angel Betas are not linked up to the Guardian Angel security system and are in limited numbers, then there is a strong possibility we can get what we came for and leave."

"So how do we do it?"

"With this," as the man held the gun in his hand.