Chapter 1

Matthew Murphy was driving home from Texas A&M University to his mother’s house in La Porte, Texas. While he had a dorm room on campus, with his family only a couple hours away and his class schedule (a late morning start on Monday and early afternoon finish on Friday), he normally drove home on Friday afternoon and back on Monday morning.

He had just pulled into his mother’s drive way when his younger sister Megan burst out the front door.

“You’re finally here!” She shouted.

His sister ran to his car before he could get out. She yanked open the passenger door and jumped into his car.

“I need you to take me to the bank, my birthday present from grandpa and grandma finally got here today.”

Yesterday was Megan’s 16^th birthday.

His father’s adoptive parents had no children of their own and while they and their whole family were farmers, not exactly a lucrative business, they had made many wise investments over the years and were very well off. Each year, he and his two sisters each received a check for $1000 and a gold American Eagle coin for their birthdays. Which was why his sister needed to go to the bank.

Their mother had once protested these lavish gifts, but their grandparents brushed her criticisms aside saying that they had no intention of retiring any time soon and no desire to travel, so they really didn’t have anything to spend their money on other than their grandchildren.

Of course, he thought, we aren’t exactly hurting for money ourselves. Between the survivors benefits from his father’s military and police pensions, plus his father’s life insurance policies and his father’s own shrewd investments, his mother would never need to work a day in her life. She volunteered for a number of local charities to have a reason to get out of the house and do something; which was why she wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours yet and his sister was waiting for him to take her to the bank.

He took his sister to the bank and waited in the lobby while she deposited the check and then went back to the safe deposit vault to put the gold coin away. While his sister was in the back, three large men in black trench coats and ski masks burst through the door. They all pulled out guns and two of them shot the two guards in the lobby before the guards had a chance to pull their own guns. They herded the customers and bank employees into a corner of the lobby while one of them took one of the teller’s behind the counter to empty out all the cash drawers. For whatever reason, they were ignoring the hallway back to the vaults for the moment.

While the cash drawers were being emptied his sister and another guard started to come back out from the vault area. His sister was wearing her headphones, listening to her iPod and not paying much attention to anything. The gunman behind the counter saw the guard and Matt’s sister before they saw him. He turned and leveled his gun at them.

Matt swore silently to himself. From the angle his sister and guard were at to the gunman behind the counter, the gunman was going to end up shooting the guard through his sister. Of the two gunman guarding the people in the lobby, the one closest to Matt had also turned to face the approaching guard. Matt took his chance and took off running towards his sister, intent on tackling her out of the way.

I’m not going to make it, he thought.

He was still several strides from his sister when he heard gunshots; but they sounded wrong, distended as if played at half speed or he was traveling away from them at high speed. The entire bank seemed to lurch and he tripped and fell, his hand missing his sister’s arm by inches.

Matt wasn’t sure how long he had been down, if it was just seconds or minutes but there was no sound at all, no gunfire, no shouting, screaming or crying. When he stood up, the first thing he noticed was that his sister was still standing, seemingly uninjured. He started yelling at her to stop being so oblivious to her surroundings, that she needed to be more careful because he wouldn’t always be there to save her. Then he noticed that she was completely motionless, not even the small involuntary movements like blinking of the eyes.

His awareness spread and he noticed the bullet caught in mid-air as if in a high speed photograph, mere inches from his sister’s head. Even the shock-wave created by the bullet was itself visible and frozen in place. He looked around the bank and noticed that everyone in the bank except for himself was motionless, several people caught in unbalanced mid-step positions that no one could maintain for any significant time. Both of the other gunmen had also fired, one at him and the other at the guard. Although his sister wasn’t in the way of that shot, both additional bullets were frozen in the air; along with their shock-waves.

He went to the front of the bank and looked out the window. Everything and everyone outside the bank was likewise frozen, as far as he could see. There were several police vehicles with officers frozen in the middle of getting out. He could see several birds frozen in mid flight. Something in the back of his mind told him that time had stopped for everything except himself.

He went back by his sister and very carefully touched her. She wasn’t hard and unyielding as he expected. She felt completely normal. He picked his sister up and moved her back several steps so she was out of the bullet’s path.

Then he reached out with one finger and touched the bullet. There was some resistance but the bullet shifted slightly. To his surprise the bullet’s shock-wave moved with it. A voice in the back of his mind told him that, if he moved the bullet it would maintain it’s momentum relative to itself. He had an idea which was both ingenious and vindictive. He took the bullet and moved it so that it was behind the gunman who had fired it. He shifted the teller slightly, just in case the bulled passed completely through the gunman. He then repeated the process with the other two bullets and gunmen.

With the bad guys taken care of, and the good guys and bystanders safe, Matt’s mind started to focus on his predicament. How long was this going to last? Was he stuck permanently in a frozen world? With no way to answer his questions, he started to look around. He saw a ball sitting on one of the loan officer’s desks. He picked it up and tried to toss it in the air. As long as he was touching it the ball felt and moved normally, but as soon as it lost contact with him it froze in place. He grabbed the ball from the air and tried it a few more times. He picked up a cup of coffee off of another desk and dropped it. Again, it froze in mid air as soon as it wasn’t touching him any more. He moved back towards his sister and the guard.

Matt checked the time on his cell phone, and ran through events in his head. He figured that around half an hour had passed since the world froze. Suddenly he felt a strain in the back of his mind, it felt as if a muscle he didn’t even know he had was suddenly reaching it’s limit. He felt something snap and things began to move again as time resumed its forward march. Gunshots rang out, people screamed, the gunmen fell and the police swarmed into the bank.

The police found the gunman each mysteriously shot in the back. They searched the bank for any more gunmen. Satisfied that there was no further danger, detectives began to question everyone in the bank.

While Matt and his sister were waiting to be questioned, he called his mother from his cell phone and let her know that he and his little sister were alright, but there had been a failed bank robbery attempt while they were at the bank and they would be delayed while the police questioned everyone.

When it was Matt’s turn to give a statement he told them everything except about time freezing and what he did while time was frozen. He didn’t think they would believe him and even if they did, he didn’t want the attention since he was certain that he was the cause of the time freeze and he didn’t want that kind of attention from the government.

When Matt and his younger sister got home, their mother was home and she greeted them with hugs. They assured their mother that they were alright. Their mother had dinner ready and after eating, Matt was feeling exhausted so he went to his room and went to bed.

Matt woke the next morning feeling refreshed. After breakfast he went out to an area along the side of their garage where he wasn’t visible from the house or from the neighbors. He had enough space there to bounce a tennis ball off the side of the garage and he liked to do this when he needed to think about something when he was home.

Matt was certain that he caused the time freeze and he needed to figure out how to activate it at will. He reviewed his memories of events at the bank. He found that there was a tug in the same part of his mind, when time froze, as he felt the strain in when it started back up. He tried thinking several commands at that part of his mind without any luck. Finally he concentrated on an image of pulling something with that part of his mind. Bingo, the world froze, catching his tennis ball mid throw. He tried to push with the part of his mind that activated the freeze and the world started moving again.

Matt looked at the time on his cell phone. He had used up a good chunk of the morning. He went back in the house and encountered Megan getting ready to go out, probably to the mall with her friends. He noticed that she had her iPod but the headphones were just around her neck and the volume was much lower than she usually had it. He asked his sister about this change.

Megan responded, “I need to be more safety conscious, more aware of my surroundings. You won’t always be there to protect me.”

This answer bothered Matt quite a bit, but it wasn’t until Megan had been gone awhile that he realized just what about the statement bothered him. It was a very close restatement of what he had said to her in the bank the other day before he realized that time had frozen. The statement was also very out of character. She hated it when he tried to protect her, which is why he tried not to most of the time. She simply would not have included the part about him not being there to protect her if it had been her own thought due to the robbery. What he had said to her had affected her thinking and she wasn’t even aware of it. This was a new aspect to his power that he was going to have to test and experiment with carefully.

Matt told his mother that he was going to go to Sylvan Beach Park for the afternoon, it was late in the season being early October; but on the gulf coast of Texas things were still warm enough for an afternoon at the beach. There might not be a lot of people on the beach but there would be plenty of people in the park. He put on a pair of swimming trunks that could double as shorts, a tee-shirt and a pair of sandals, tossed a beach towel and a beach chair into the back of his car and headed over to the park. It was close enough that he could have walked if he hadn’t wanted to take the beach chair along, but he was more out to observe people and test his new powers than to sun himself or go swimming.

As Matt parked his car at the parking lot nearest the beach, he noticed his sister Megan and her boyfriend in the next row up. She was unloading picnic supplies from the trunk of her boyfriend’s car and loading him down with them. Her boyfriend was one of the player’s from the high school football team; but he was a nice guy and intelligent, unlike a lot of the jocks around. He almost felt sorry for the guy, Megan was as much, if not more, dominant than Matt was himself and both had inherited their father’s command presence.

Matt wistfully remembered his father. He had been a career Marine officer before a non-crippling injury forced him to retire from the Marines to avoid a desk job. He moved them out here to La Porte Texas and joined the Harris County Sheriff’s Department. A few years back his father had died in the line of duty rescuing a young girl from a professional kidnapping ring.

Going back to his younger sister, she had their dad’s command presence and at the age of 8 she had been known to be able to make career Marine non-coms cry. If Megan decided to keep her current boyfriend, he was likely to end up being a boy toy.

After his sister and her boyfriend had moved off to the picnic area Matt got out of his car, grabbed his towel and beach chair and walked over to the beach. He set his chair up at the back edge of the beach and laid his towel out on it and then sat down to observe the other beach goers.

A few times he stopped time and tried some things he figured would be innocuous, an itch on the arm or leg here, a command to raise an arm there, even commanded one kid to hop on one leg for a few seconds. It all worked, but none of it was anything beyond the realm of coincidence. Matt got a little braver and picked out a tall guy around his own age with red hair.

Matt stopped time and walked up to his chosen victim and whispered in his ear “You will run out into the water until the water is up to your waist. The whole time you are running out you will scream at the top of your lungs that your hair is on fire. Once in waist deep water you will stop running, but will continue screaming that your hair is on fire until you have said it six times. Finally you will dunk your head in the water.” Matt walked back to his chair and re-started time. Everyone on the beach turned and watched as his victim did exactly as instructed. A lifeguard came over and made sure that the guy’s hair wasn’t on fire, then went back to his post.

Half an hour later, an older woman, a MILF in her late thirties / early forties came by, laid out a beach towel not 4 feet from Matt’s chair and laid down for some sun bathing. Matt decided to try something a little sexual this time. He stopped time and went over and told her “Your nipples itch, you will pull your bikini top down below your breasts and scratch your nipples for 30 seconds. When you finish scratching them, pull your bikini top back up in place. You will then realize that your pussy itches. You will reach down and put one hand in your bikini bottoms and finger yourself until you orgasm.” He restarted time and watched as the woman followed her instructions to the letter. No one else on the beach noticed until she came. The woman turned out to be a screamer, oops. That got the attention of others near by. The woman got dirty looks from a couple of mother’s that had young children at the beach, but while she blushed nicely, she ignored all of the stares and dirty looks.

It was getting on in the afternoon and the MILF had finally left. Three girls around 17 years old came walking down the beach, animatedly gossiping amongst themselves and not particularly watching where they were going. They practically tripped over Matt and started yelling and screaming at him for not getting out of their way. They were crude and vulgar and were making quite a scene, but despite being fairly pissed off at their behavior he tried to ignore them.

The girls finally moved on. After a while they started picking on a young boy no older than 12. They were teasing him with crude sexual innuendo and vulgar insults. The girls behavior was only making Matt madder. A 15 year old girl came over and tried to help the boy. It quickly became clear that the boy was her brother. The older girls turned their attention to the younger girl. Matt saw a man coming over and from the look of concern on his face guessed that he was the father of the two younger kids. Before the father could reach them, one of the older girls made a grab for the younger girls bathing suit. Matt stopped time and rearranged things so the older girl would miss.

When the father arrived on the scene he confronted the older girls; but one of them said out loud, but not loud enough to carry far, “Help this man is trying to rape us.” The father got the point and beat a hasty retreat with his kids in tow. The three girls were laughing their heads off. Oh they thought that was fun, did they? Now Matt was really pissed off.

Matt decided that he finally had the right victims to try something more complicated and lasting.

He stopped time and told all three of the girls to lay out their towels and go and play in the water for a while. When he restarted time they did as told. Once they were up to their waists in the water he stopped time again.

Matt went out to them and removed each girl’s bikini. He then told all three girls “You will each know that all three of you have lost your bikinis and are now naked, but outwardly you will act like you are all still wearing your bikinis. You will start yelling and screaming and splashing as if you are having a great time while doing everything you can to draw attention to yourselves. In five minutes you will come back up on the beach, still making as much noise as possible and drawing as much attention as possible. You will go over and lay down on your towels to tan for a while. You will continue acting as if you are still in your bikinis and make no effort to cover yourselves until at least three different people have complained about you being naked. The first time you will respond as if you don’t believe the person. The second time you will respond with both disbelief and indignation. After the third time you are confronted about being naked you can start acting normally.”

Matt walked off the beach over to the far side of the picnic area and tossed the three bikinis in the trash there. He then went back and re-started time for the last time of the day. The three girls started attracting a lot of attention. People started to stare and point as they realized that the girls were nude. Still nobody said anything to them. People looked at the girls and around at the others on the beach. No one was sure what to make of the girls behavior and it was clear that no one wanted to be the one to make the first move.

Finally the girls were back up on the beach and laying down. Still no one acted. Five minutes passed and finally an old lady walking by and shouted at them to put some clothes on. That was one. Another five minutes passed and one of the mothers with small children came over and started yelling at them, complaining that one of her kids has seen them. The girls responded with insults. The young mother stalked off and went over to the lifeguard station and got the attention of one of the life guards.

The lifeguard came over and started yelling at the girls that if they didn’t either put something on or get off the beach he was going to call the cops. That was three and the girls were now free of his commands. They screamed and jumped up wrapping their towels around themselves and fled.

On Sunday, Matt’s older sister Ruth came out to spend the day with her family. Ruth was four years older than Matt’s 19 and she was a Nurse, working in one of the hospitals in Houston where she had an apartment of her own. Ruth was an incorrigible cock tease. She had been teasing him in sexual ways since he hit puberty. Matt wished she would find a boyfriend she could keep for more than a week or two, maybe then she would stop teasing him every chance she got.

Sunday was a nice day and the family spent most of it out in the back yard. Matt took his laptop out in the backyard and was intending to use it to do some general research on super powers. But he took a moment to look at his family.

At 6 foot 5 inches Matt stood a little over a foot taller than either mom or Megan, who was just a bit shorter then their mother. Ruth on the other hand was taller, only 6 inches shorter than Matt. His mom was from Greece and had classic Greek features, olive skin and black hair, which she kept long and straight. Megan took after mom in looks for the most part, except for her hair, which was copper colored from their Irish father and looked exotic against her otherwise Greek features. Megan had her hair at a mid back length and generally kept it in a pony tail. Ruth’s hair was shoulder length and sandalwood blond, which like Megan, she generally kept in a pony tail. All three women had knock-out hourglass figures.

Ruth as usual spent most of her time striking sexually suggestive poses aimed at Matt; who tried to ignore her, as complaining would only encourage her. At one point she deliberately dropped something directly in front of Matt and then bent at the waist to pick it up. She was wearing a short sun-dress and it rode up enough as she bent over to give Matt a good look at her tight fitting red thong panty, which showed a pronounced camel toe.

By the end of the day Matt’s research had been quite productive. He found information of course on the Texas Rangers super squad based out of Houston. They were the best known supers locally. They were Mr E, Sensor, Sniper, Valkyrie and Zoom. He found no references to anyone with time manipulation powers.

He found two recent news articles that were of interest. The first was about the bank robbery he and his sister had been caught in. The case had police, the Texas Rangers and the FBI all baffled. The three robbers had somehow each managed to shoot themselves in the back. At this point they were assuming the intervention of an unknown super hero vigilante. They had no clue as to the powers or identity of said vigilante and the case was being put on the back burner.

The other news story was about an attempted robbery at an Infinity Labs energy research facility east of Houston by the super villain Grendel. Grendel was super strong and nearly invulnerable, but he was psychotic and not particularly bright. His crimes generally involved assault, murder and property damage. Grendel had been captured during the robbery attempt by Mr E, Valkyrie and Zoom. Authorities were baffled as to why Grendel would suddenly attempt a high tech robbery and were assuming at this point that there was some mastermind that Grendel was working for. Grendel however wasn’t talking, so evidence as to who was behind it was slim.

Matt found several sites talking about the origin of super powers. There were a number facts that almost all of the sites had in common:

1. There was at least some hereditary component to it.

2. There were more people with powers than the costumed heroes and villains. Many, if not most, of those with powers either had powers that were not particularly useful or found normal jobs where their powers gave them an advantage.

3. People with “super powers” have been around for a long time.

4. The current rage of costumed heroes and villains was started in the 1930s, inspired by comics and radio shows such as The Shadow.

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