I was fifteen when the powers first manifested. Of all things, I was trying to get up the nerve to talk to Susie Grolsch after chemistry class when something clicked in my brain and the world stopped. It caught me off guard and terrified me. The world went black, light stopped moving, stopped bouncing off the receptors in my eyes, stopped sending signals to my brain. I couldn't move a muscle, couldn't breathe, my heart wasn't beating. The only thing in the universe that seemed to be functioning was my brain. I spent what felt like ages alone in my head before I calmed down enough to find this new muscle in my brain and unclench it. When I did the world picked up like nothing had happened. I don't remember what I said to Susie when I came back to myself, but it didn't win her over.
I stood, remembering, as a bullet was frozen in time a few inches from my nose. A pair of bank robbers had fled in this direction and I had seen the guns, the masks, the bags of money, almost a cliche. I happened to be in their way when this wiry prick panics and shoots me. I stop time as the muzzle flashes, and I actually think I'm shot and dead for a minute until I realize I'm still thinking.
I can't move, can't stop the bullet. I didn't manifest telekinetic powers. I can't actually do anything but think when I stop the world. When I was younger I would use my powers to meditate or think through problems at length. The fact that I was blind and without sensation while the world was stopped made the powers less exciting than they might have been.
Slipstream had appeared when I was twenty-three. He had been looking for me for years, since the first time I froze the world and left him the only man who could still move. He was blind when he stood still, but would collect the photons frozen in the air as he moved and had a sort of sight. I couldn't imagine what it actually looked like for him. He said things were distorted and not always accurate. He had showed me how powerful we could be together.
These amateurs didn't know that we were heading to the same bank ourselves just now. Slipstream was approaching the bank from the east while I approached from the north. He would have seen this situation developing. I would give him a few more minutes, just thinking about the beginning.
We had been amateurs ourselves at the start. Small time. We would go to a mall, even just a little strip mall, and I would freeze the world. I would sit and ponder the meaning of life for twenty minutes then unfreeze the world and head back to my car. Slipstream would be waiting with a duffel bag full of all the cash from all the stores in the mall. We traveled and partied and had a ton of fun.
It was only later that we became famous. We started taking more precautions, planning out our heists. We robbed banks, casinos, card rooms, one time we even stole a bunch of paintings from a museum and put them up in McDonald's around the country. We had been investing our money for years now, trying to generate enough passive income that we would be set for life.
If we could get to that point then we could start using our powers for truly important work: Pranks. Imagine drawing a mustache on the President in the middle of a nationally televised speech with a Sharpie. Imagine replacing the football with a greased pig right after a fumble in the Superbowl. This was the important work I was destined to do. So we set off to rob this bank today, make our final score.
It had been about twenty minutes, so I let the world start moving again. I wasn't immediately killed, so Slipstream had been able to stop the bullet. The man with the gun was laying on the ground trussed up like a pig. The other bank robber, the one who hadn't shot me, was also tied up, but looked to have been better treated. People were running and screaming. The robbers looked confused.
In the commotion I just walked away and headed for my car. Slipstream was waiting there by the trunk, all smiles.
"Those guys didn't do half bad. There's at least two hundred thousand in the duffel bags they had." Slipstream patted the trunk, looking satisfied with himself.
"They saved you a bunch of work in the bank. Let's get lunch on them." I slipped into the driver's side of the car and waited while Slipstream got in.
"It will take a couple of months to launder all this money and invest it, but then we really ought to be set. After that, it's Operation Mustache and we move into the big leagues, make a real name for ourselves." Slipstream was all in on our plan to become the world's greatest pranksters.
badprosegenerator t1_j1ubdip wrote
Reply to [WP] You have the peculiar ability to pause time. Nothing can move, including yourself, meaning all you get is time to think. Today you find yourself paused with a bullet right in front of your eyes. by Votbear
I was fifteen when the powers first manifested. Of all things, I was trying to get up the nerve to talk to Susie Grolsch after chemistry class when something clicked in my brain and the world stopped. It caught me off guard and terrified me. The world went black, light stopped moving, stopped bouncing off the receptors in my eyes, stopped sending signals to my brain. I couldn't move a muscle, couldn't breathe, my heart wasn't beating. The only thing in the universe that seemed to be functioning was my brain. I spent what felt like ages alone in my head before I calmed down enough to find this new muscle in my brain and unclench it. When I did the world picked up like nothing had happened. I don't remember what I said to Susie when I came back to myself, but it didn't win her over.
I stood, remembering, as a bullet was frozen in time a few inches from my nose. A pair of bank robbers had fled in this direction and I had seen the guns, the masks, the bags of money, almost a cliche. I happened to be in their way when this wiry prick panics and shoots me. I stop time as the muzzle flashes, and I actually think I'm shot and dead for a minute until I realize I'm still thinking.
I can't move, can't stop the bullet. I didn't manifest telekinetic powers. I can't actually do anything but think when I stop the world. When I was younger I would use my powers to meditate or think through problems at length. The fact that I was blind and without sensation while the world was stopped made the powers less exciting than they might have been.
Slipstream had appeared when I was twenty-three. He had been looking for me for years, since the first time I froze the world and left him the only man who could still move. He was blind when he stood still, but would collect the photons frozen in the air as he moved and had a sort of sight. I couldn't imagine what it actually looked like for him. He said things were distorted and not always accurate. He had showed me how powerful we could be together.
These amateurs didn't know that we were heading to the same bank ourselves just now. Slipstream was approaching the bank from the east while I approached from the north. He would have seen this situation developing. I would give him a few more minutes, just thinking about the beginning.
We had been amateurs ourselves at the start. Small time. We would go to a mall, even just a little strip mall, and I would freeze the world. I would sit and ponder the meaning of life for twenty minutes then unfreeze the world and head back to my car. Slipstream would be waiting with a duffel bag full of all the cash from all the stores in the mall. We traveled and partied and had a ton of fun.
It was only later that we became famous. We started taking more precautions, planning out our heists. We robbed banks, casinos, card rooms, one time we even stole a bunch of paintings from a museum and put them up in McDonald's around the country. We had been investing our money for years now, trying to generate enough passive income that we would be set for life.
If we could get to that point then we could start using our powers for truly important work: Pranks. Imagine drawing a mustache on the President in the middle of a nationally televised speech with a Sharpie. Imagine replacing the football with a greased pig right after a fumble in the Superbowl. This was the important work I was destined to do. So we set off to rob this bank today, make our final score.
It had been about twenty minutes, so I let the world start moving again. I wasn't immediately killed, so Slipstream had been able to stop the bullet. The man with the gun was laying on the ground trussed up like a pig. The other bank robber, the one who hadn't shot me, was also tied up, but looked to have been better treated. People were running and screaming. The robbers looked confused.
In the commotion I just walked away and headed for my car. Slipstream was waiting there by the trunk, all smiles.
"Those guys didn't do half bad. There's at least two hundred thousand in the duffel bags they had." Slipstream patted the trunk, looking satisfied with himself.
"They saved you a bunch of work in the bank. Let's get lunch on them." I slipped into the driver's side of the car and waited while Slipstream got in.
"It will take a couple of months to launder all this money and invest it, but then we really ought to be set. After that, it's Operation Mustache and we move into the big leagues, make a real name for ourselves." Slipstream was all in on our plan to become the world's greatest pranksters.
"I can't fucking wait." I couldn't.