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.

Harry Porter and His Chamber of Secrets

"There! Now don't do bad things anymore!" She said.

"What?" I asked, looking up at her, kneeling after getting tired out from the fight. The teenage girl with long, pink hair, and wearing a white, flowing dress, looked at me.

"Don't do bad things anymore," she repeated, "I mean, it's just a friendly advice, but if I were in your position, I'd follow it."

"Why?" I asked. Her cheerful smile disappeared, and she turned serious.

"Because," she said, and cracked her knuckles, "I'm still standing, and you can't even lift your arms."

"Wha- what's that supposed to mean?" I asked, a mix of confusion and fear rising within me.

"That means I'm letting you go," she answered, "I'll consider this situation over with, but if you try something bad again, I'll come back. Over, and over, and over again. Until you learn." She turned to leave.

"Hey, wait," I said.

"What is it?" She asked and said, "I gotta get home for dinner."

"Why just not finish it?" I asked.

"Multiple reasons, really," she answered, "For one, I believe in redemption. And secondly, it's been two years since a real big bad showed up, and our fight just now was really fun. I actually had to get a little serious. Bye." With that, she flew away faster than I had ever seen her move.

As I sat there, as her magic repaired the damage our clash had caused, I realized several things. I realized that, throughout it all, she was giving it just enough to not go down, while I was trying my hardest to destroy her. I realized that, in a serious fight, she would have destroyed me much sooner. But I also realized that she didn't take pity on me, but rather, that she showed mercy.

And considering all I had done, showing mercy may just be the greatest feat she had displayed that day.

---

Side note: The magical girl in this story is mainly based on Cure Lovely from Happiness Charge Precure.

Throughout the whole season, she does several things that heavily imply she loves fighting evil because the forces of evil aren't protected by the Geneva Convention, allowing her to do things like this.

Project Kontingency: The Golden Galaxy

THIS is the Bad Place!

"-then she said 'There! Now don't do bad things anymore!' and she left. The s-silly little girl. You see, you must help me, doctor, I have nowhere else to turn.

Ok I guess i can f-fully see why you don't think this is a problem. Although it's a secret I would normally k-keep well, you know I'm the BlackChainer because I, for some insane f-foolish reason, feel I have to answer every question fully, honestly and even provide supplementary information if there's a chance of confusion. Because lying is f-fundamental bad. And so is sarcasm, ap-absolutely. And you think that me not doing bad things anymore is a good thing.

Ok. Fine. Encoding all the banks, governments and medical records behind a concensus algorithm protocol and holding the world to ranson was not just a work of g-g- a very naughty little cleverclogs it was also quantifyably harmful. But you are sorely mistaken if you think that's all I do. I worked tirelessly to get myself into a position of trust - as my alter-ego, Barum Manifest, tech billionaire, in case you were wondering, I normally wear plasti-skin over the facial scars, and a prosthetic hand instead of the claw, if I cover the scars with my hand like this and you imagine me wearing glasses, yeah, yeah, you got it. F-fiddlesticks.

Well, as Barum I run factories all across Asia, admittedly the best of them were sweatshops and the rest used slave labour, d-drat. Ok I own Friendpad and YourBox outright - mostly I used them to manipulate the populace, distort the truth and steal from or spy on my customers, b-bugsplat. Health insurance firms - that formed a cartel with my private hospitals, specialised in shoddy plastic surgery, to hike the prices for the uninsured to force everyone to insure or essentially die in poverty. F-fuchsine h-heliotrope! I was running those as legitimate business fronts for my nefarious schemes. I'm worse than I thought.

But the fact remains that, forget the evil g-cleverclogs stuff, I can't run my f-functional business empire while I'm like this, without a major value overhaul and reorganisation, I'd have to change the business model to something like a co-operative, and cut a lot of ties and fire a lot of people who even I find distasteful anyway, but I could totally do it and still make a profit if I tried because I'm a g-very swotty cleverclogs.

Fine... fine. Did I tell how I realised the nature of my ailment? No? Very well then. So that s-silly girl did her bop on the head and no more badness thing and I thought 'Really? And you're just going to walk away? No enforcement? No consquences beyond a smashed lab and a few henchmen turned into off-broadway chorus dancers, Artsy artists and on demand Etsy model-makers. I'll have rebuilt in a week.' I picked myself out of the wreckage of the ChainGun, disguised myself as best I could and walked to the nearest safe house - flat 47a on Madison, key 1337 into the pad and it just lets you in. S-shoot.

At least I tried to, turns out disguising yourself is bad, I spent 15 minutes trying to apply the plasti-skin and fit the f-funny prosthetic hand before I gave up. At the time I put it down to nerves. I got a cloak with a collar from some recess and stepped out in the evening drizzle. The appartment is just across the road from the ChainCave, it should present no problem. Except I got to the deserted thoroughfare and just couldn't cross it. I had to walk 500 yards to the nearest pedestrian Illumination, wait for the f-flashing green man, and then walk 500 yards back.

While i was returning in the cursed deluge I spied a p-, a p-... Really? I can't say p- p-... A cock-of-the-walk remonstrating physically with one of his hens. It's a scene I've seen a hundred times and there's nothing anyone can do - unless you're a billionaire, or even just have some disposable income, and can use it to set them both up with a safe space away from their constraining lives, a re-education and retraining program and some seed money for their new careers. Um. I was compelled to intercede. 'Unhand that woman!' I cried. Yes. They laughed too. That's when I knew there was something amiss beyond any nerves or brain damage.

Thanks to his inebriation, and a boyhood summer spent as grease-monkey aboard an ilicit Solomon Islands pearl diving schooner, I survived the ensuing fisticuffs: my dignity did not.

If you must resort to such crude categorisations as 'super-villian' I consider myself on the cerebral rather than the physical side of the profession. I did have several lethal and non-lethal forms of self-protection upon my person; apparently it's immoral to use a tonic immobility ray in a fistfight, even if your sparring partner outweighs you by a good 30 pounds.

I immobilised him briefly, despite having to abide by strict Marquess of Queensbury rules in a street brawl, and fled to my refuge place. It was there I discovered that my attempts at self-concealment had failed because of this st-silly curse rather than nerves.

There was a car, ready in the garage. Have you ever tried to drive with exact obeyance of the highway code in this city? I was almost run off the road by SUVs twice before I reached the mansion I share with my partner- Bradley Travers the Non-Fungible-Titan. Um. With whom I have a had p- a carnal relationship more years than that st- b- silly little girl has been on the planet. A relationship without the tawdry commonplaces of how the general herd display their w- affection, a relationship which has plumbed the very depths of pleasure and pain -because I Luv! Luv! Luv! my snuggle bear and he still makes my heart go pitter-patter after 20 years and I get sad if I don't see him for so much as a day. Uh. Can we just both forget I ever said that? Please?

Anyway I came home tired and defeated. I wanted physical-and emotional and spiritual- comfort from my partner. He welcomed me wonderfully, asked me if anything was wrong. I tried to kiss him. I couldn't. I tried to hug him. I couldn't. All I could do was pat him manfully on the shoulder. That s- silly girl had done what a dozen sessions of electro-shock 'therapy' administered to my teenage brain by a grinning, sadistic, colleague of yours could not and made me think my own homosexuality was 'bad'.

Except, of course, it wasn't the silly girl- who I think has a semi-serious relationship with a sapient female unicorn. That's not how the spell works, that's not how the spell can work. It's me that's the closet homophobe. It's no wonder considering I was fathered by an ageing, aristocratic, Brindisi gigolo who tried to cure his 13-year-old sons penchant for b-backdoorsmanship by making me throw porcelain dolls at the convent girls and paying the local pr-. Ladies of i- r-. Extra friendly ladies to flagellate me; and my mother, a defrocked skete nun, beat me every Saturday, Sunday too if there was an 'm' or an 'n' in the month, with a wooden shoe stretcher for reasons of hygiene. I realised that if the problem lies within me I merely need to heal myself.

Which is where you come in, I don't seem to think it's bad to see a s-psycho-analyst so long as it's a Jungian with an academic non-practicing role, can't go near a Freudian without screaming childish abuse, and CBT practitioners make me throw rocks, I'm the richest entity since Mansa Musa and you're on an academic stipend surely we can work something out.

Instead of worrying about what I might do if you help me - although obviously if you managed to cured me complete I might kill you to tie up loose ends. Um. You should think about what I might do as I am. I told you enough about my upbringing for you to realise it was unconventional. My dad told me it's bad not to stick up for women no matter the cost. My mum told me it's bad to swear. And they both taught me that even a semblance of a lie is bad. But try to imagine what else an impotent nymphomaniac and a holy laudanum addict had to teach a growning boy. If you asked your secretary in here I could show you how my father taught me it's bad not to salute a pretty lady with an exposed erection everytime she enters the room. My mother told me that the best and right thing to give to the children of the poor was a severe birching to warm their blood. I blanked out most of my childhood but who knows what over horrors await within. I could be worse for being unable to do anything I consider bad. Imagine if she'd done this to an entity like Thomas the TorqueArmada or The Ayatollah K-Maimy? I don't need to be able to commit mass-murder or steal the world's GDP- I just want to be able to hold my Snuggie-wuggems."

Join Arnold as we explore his habitat, his lifestyles and how amoeba functions in an ecosystem. We will even tackle the tale of Merc the Brain-Eating Amoeba of Kerosene Creek. So, grab your microscopes and let's dive into the world of Arnold the Amoeba!

A must-read for kids interested in Biology!

Price: $13.49

So cute!

I am so dumb. I somehow didn’t notice again.

You're welcome.

Yes, they are. They're definitely laughing at you.

You may or may not hear it, but someone is always talking behind your back, saying mean things about you.

If you feel insecure about this, do not fear... This book is for you. In this book, you'll learn how to take insults and never give in or even falter, you'll learn how to DEAL WITH IT.

Everyone may be laughing at you, but you will have the last laugh after this.

PRICE: $50

(Also, we have met again u/HelloWorld1352)

Death always got his due.

For years, ever since I'd accidentally frozen time for... well, a frankly depressingly long period in between bites of my cereal before I'd learned how to resume, I'd always thought that phrase applied to other people.

I'd avoided death more times than I can count. My line of work, you end up developing a pretty flirtatious relationship with that suave son of a gun. He beckons me into his embrace on a daily basis, and each time I coyly say nah, I've got other plans today. My ability to stop time let me keep him a good arm's length away.

You see, people often don't realize just how much thought, either conscious or subconscious, goes into your actions. Moving your arm is an entire lightshow of neurons firing in your brain, carrying signals down the nervous system to twitch and pull muscle fibers in dozens of simultaneous and differing directions. Even flipping someone off is a delightful exercise in body control.

When you have literal eternity to really study how these signals travel through your nervous system, how conscious and subconscious thought interact with every organ, tissue, cell in your body, you learn a few neat tricks.

For instance, visualization of action. You ever fantasize about getting into a fight? Pulling off all of the cool action movie moves in real life? It all goes perfectly in your mind, but ever get into an actual fight and you learn pretty quick that your body just doesn't work that way. One punch to the face, and your arms start flailing as pain flashes through each receptor in your poor little noggin.

Key phrase there, your body doesn't work that way. But with an eternity to learn, it can.

Whatever I envision my body doing, within its limitations, my body does perfectly. No fight ever went how I didn't imagine it going, no bullet missed its mark, no play in football I couldn't make work, hell sometimes I just used it to make sure none of my pee got on the toilet seat.

Again, I'd avoided death more times than I can count. My ability came in pretty handy with my work as a mercenary.

I just don't know how I'm going to avoid it this time.

There's a bullet just a good few inches away from the bridge of my nose, blurred by its proximity to my eyes. And the worst part is, I'm not even working today. This is just your regular, run of the mill bad luck.

I don't know why I'd frozen time. Maybe it was pure instinct, maybe I'd known something was wrong. Whatever it was, I was now forced to try to think clearly through the eternal burn on the roof of my mouth from my too-hot breakfast egg sandwich. I couldn't have just blown on it a bit before taking this bite? No, my impatient ass had to stuff my face without waiting for it to cool down.

Alright, whatever. Think clearly. I can't move my eyes, so I'm limited to what I can see being directly ahead of me and some slight peripheral. My mouth burns. I can't smell anything, no air to pull into my lungs. My mouth burns.... oh, you learn to get used to that, by the way, the whole no breathing thing and my mouth still. Fucking. Burns.

I see someone frozen in the middle of falling back, the window of a black car rolled down as people wearing masks shoot him. Assholes, not professional at all. There's like five other people on the sidewalk here, and you're shooting down it into the direction of pedestrians? No wonder I was in this predicament, they were fucking amateurs*.* And who guns people down in the morning, anyway? Some of us here are just trying to enjoy our egg sandwiches. Still burns by the way.

No matter how hard I think though, despite my annoyance with amateur mobsters, I don't see a way to dodge the crossfire. I'd grown intimately familiar with what my body could and couldn't do, and ducking or dodging a bullet just a few inches away from my precious brain meat isn't one of them.

Ah well. I guess death always got his due. Alright death, you suave son of a gun, come whisper your sweet nothings into my ear. There better be egg sandwhiches in the after life, because you owe me one.

I resume tim-

I feel there are depths to it that are just waiting to be plumbed

The bullet and I eye each other for a moment. But, unlike the bullet, I do care about that moment. Because it's my last one. It's also the bullet's last moment, if you think about it. But the bullet doesn't think about it. Lucky bullet...

Stopping time is my thing. I do it for fun, to have all the time admiring that girl or a crashing wave or anything else fugitive or triffering my timidity. Today, fir the first tume ever, I stopped time out if necessity. And juuust in time, it seems.

Or just a bit too early, you idiot. Whenever you will let time flow again, you die, you idiot. What are some thoughts worth, compared with your now inevitable death?

I know I'm right. I'm toast. But then... what forces me to let time flow again? I can keep it stuck for as long as I want, after all. For eternity, if I want. I don't need to eat or drink, I don't need to breathe... I have Eternal Life before me!

Eternal life, followed by death. Oh my, this is too funny. My catholic Mother would raise her eyes up to the Lord if she'd hear me now. Eternal life, and then, death...

They say Eternity is rather long, especially towards the end. Let's find out.

What The Hell Did I Just Read

Interesting add about the girl. Thank you for explaining!

Thank you for explaining that to me; that makes sense.

The Hunt

This prompt is almost just the plot for the first season of (spoiler) >!The Good Place!<

The Blue Door

Turns out ‘faceless girl’ was literal D:

It did ! Loved the irony an the sarcasm of the characters. I laughed immediately. I also like the thought of what's required of "heaven" and how we perceive life and religion while Alive

Oooh the dialogue in this piece flows really well! Good work!

A long long time ago. Who knows? Not me. We never lost control.

This one hit home. I can't explain it right now but the lesson in it all was truth of self.