I woke up a few hours later to an all too familiar headache. I checked the clock hanging above the TV that was still on, it was 10:08 pm if the lack of light was anything to judge by. Perfect, I had some tests to run and light wasn’t exactly conducive to keeping them quiet. I put on my new athletic clothing, a red jersey, red shorts and some red Adidas. Yeah all red I know, but like I said my favorite hero was the flash and well frankly I’m a speedster, at least I hope I qualify for that title. Regardless of my fashion choices it was time to test that speed. I put on the cheap little watch I’d bought at woolworths, took down the clock from the wall and put it and the stopwatch I’d purchased into a red backpack I’d gotten while shopping.
With all my supplies gathered I left the room, locked up and started jogging, first down the stairs then out on the streets. My goal was to find a high school. Why a high school, because they always have tracks that are a quarter of a mile long and I needed a set distance to try and figure out what sorts of speeds I could move at. So I jogged, warming up the my muscles because honestly I can’t imagine what it’s like to pull a muscle when travelling over 100 miles per hour. That’s right I’m pretty sure I could move at least that fast. I know I can sprint at 10 mph maybe a little fast if I really pushed myself thanks to the treadmills at my college. I was now physically 4x faster than I used to be, that would put me sprinting at 40 mph. Then if you add in my ability to slow time down 4x I should be able to sprint at 160 mph, maybe a little faster depending on what my actual max speed was.
Now I didn’t plan on going all out on a curved track, I’d probably need an airport runway to really test myself out, but if I could manage 100 mph on a high school track I’d be happy. So I jogged through the outskirts of Charlotte, looking for a high school. Kind of weird sure but I’m not really sure where else you are supposed to find a track in the middle of a city.
It took a while, and by a while I mean an hour and a half of running before I found something that would work. It wasn’t a high school, it was in fact James Woods middle school, but by that point I didn’t really care I’d jogged close to twelve miles in order to find the place and I was a little tired of running around aimlessly. The weird thing though was that I wasn’t tired. I mean sure I wasn’t going at my max speed, but still twelve miles would have put me on my ass before coming to this world and now I was able to jog it like it was a warm up.
I’m going to make some assumptions here because I don’t really have any hard facts yet, but my guess is that when my body was upgraded to run faster my stamina increased as a corollary. It does make some sense I mean what kind of speedster gets tired after running only three miles. So yeah warm up over time to test some stuff out. First up my ability to slow down time. I needed to test out if I really did make things go four time slower when I activated the power. So I pulled out all my time keeping gear, synched up my watch with the clock, started the stopwatch, dropped it and maxed out my ability to slow down time relative to myself. It was weird watching the stopwatch fall while moving 4x faster relative to everything else. The stopwatch still fell, it’s not everything around me stopped or anything like that, but instead of almost instantly hitting the ground it began to fall like a helium balloon that was no longer able to hold itself up. I checked the watch attached to my wrist noting that at least it was still moving at a normal pace when I heard a weird deep noise. I took my eyes off the watch and realized the sound was the stopwatch hitting the track. The deep noise was likely the clattering noise of the falling object distorted by the speed at which time was moving for me.
Okay so that was pretty cool, I waited a solid minute, double checking the watch to make sure it was exact, before I stopped the stopwatch and checked the time… 15 seconds, okay so goods as advertised. I resynced the watch with the clock then got up and got ready to run. It was time to test if I could really move four times faster than I used to be able to. I hadn’t really tested this out yet, but I figured it would be pretty easy to activate so I started the timer and broke out into a sprint. When I reached my maximum speed I felt an energy start coursing through my veins it felt like it was encouraging me to go faster and I gave into the energy and it’s like I shifted gears. Everything began to blur a little bit as air moving at close to 40 mph began to hit my eyes. They began to water, but I pushed through and did my best to stay on the track. The turns ended up being a little too sharp for me so I ended up slowing down a little bit in order to not fly off the track, but I got four laps done in record time. I mean that quite literally it took me 1 minute and 44 seconds to do four laps. I did some rough math… damn near 35 miles per hour.
Time to test the synergy of my two skills, though first I needed to wipe the tears off my face, looks like goggles or some kind of wind break would be necessary. But first, I pressed the the button to start the stopwatch, slowed down time, dropped the stopwatch and took off. 26 objective seconds later and I stopped the stop watch. I yelled, “140 fucking miles per hour! I am officially a beast!”
I spent the next couple of hours fine tuning my various methods of speeding up. Surprisingly enough getting time to move at the pace I wanted it to was a lot easier than running at 20 mph vs 25 mph vs 30 mph. Once that energy started coursing through my veins it was a lot harder to control. I was starting to get control of it though, but several hours of running and experiment with my powers left me pretty tired so I began to make my way back to the motel. I began to jog at a steady 8 miles per hour when i had a thought…
It wasn’t exactly my brightest idea, but I was going to be doing it eventually so even though I lacked the mask and goggles I’d eventually end up wearing I started sprinting back. It was close to 1 AM according to the clock I’d taken from my room, 6 am according to the watch on my wrist. At a certain point I’d stopped syncing it up with real time. But yeah it took me about 4 minutes to get back. I ended up saving on distance since I actually knew where I was going this time. Super speed is cool.
When I got back I double checked that the room was still untouched, then went into the bathroom took a shower and went back to sleep. Thankfully this time no blue screen ruined my rest and when I woke up at 7:40 am I felt refreshed and hungry.
I changed into some jeans and a tee shirt that actually fit then made my way down to the front desk. Sid was sitting at the desk and he looked at me with fear in his eyes. I smiled and activated my mental powers. I hadn’t tested them since the upgrade but now that I focused on them I could instantly tell that they were much stronger. The sensitivity to other people’s thoughts as Sid’s instantly jumped out at me. “Holy shit it’s the guy who kicked the shit out of Tyrone. So glad I’m not mixed up with those two or I’d likely have to deal with this crazy fucker too. Shit I can’t stare better say somthin” Sid spoke, “Hey there sir! How ya doin today, things been quiet for ya?”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
I grinned, and responded, “Oh sure, quiet enough, in fact I’ve enjoyed my stay here so much I’d like another couple days.” I dropped five $20s on the desk and Sid’s jaw dropped a bit. He slowly gathered his wits and asked, “You sure bout that sir? There’s plenty of other establishments around that are nicer than our…”
I smiled again, flashing my large white teeth at him, “Oh I’m sure after all the staff here is top notch, I’ve built up such great rapport with everyone here I’d hate to lose that after all I am new in town and I can’t afford to pass up new friends.”
Sid gulped and took the money, then asked, “Well if you’re sure… I’m guessing you want to stay in the same room… Uhm by the way I never did catch your name…”
I flashed my teeth again and said, “Oh? Well that’s okay, I guess we just aren’t close enough yet.”
I turned around and walked out the door leaving behind a stunned Sid. I chuckled a bit at his confusion. As soon as I saw there was going to be magic in this world I knew I’d never reveal my name to anyone. I’d read enough fantasy to know that true names had power and sometimes never have said yours in the world you were on would protect you from some of it. So yeah people would only know me by assumed names. I should probably think about what I’d have people call me, maybe Richard Johnson, that way I’d get a laugh out of everytime someone called me by name… Dick Dick… too funny.
I headed over to Mabel’s as it was literally the only food place I knew in town. I took a second today to actually take a look at the diner today as yesterday I was too hungry to notice anything except the food. The diner was a part of a small stripmall, there was also a pet shop, a bakery, a nail salon and a place serving authentic mexican food, which I found a bit dubious. But then again I was in the territory of a latino gang so maybe the place did actually serve real mexican food. I went into Mabel’s and sat down in the booth I took yesterday. The place wasn’t overly full but then I’d probably arrived after the real breakfast crowd. A young waitress approached me in that classic 60’s diner server’s outfit and asked, “Hey there how ya doin today?”
She handed me a menu and I responded, “Doing great though I’m a little hungry today…”
She smiled one of those polite service smiles and responded, “Well that’s good, I imagine a big fella like you can really put it away. Can I get you some coffee?”
I shook my head and replied, “No thanks, I’d love some water and some OJ if you have it?”
She smiled once again and brightly responded, “Sure thing hun, be right back with that.”
She walked away and I perused the menu. For the first time I noticed prices and was stunned, a number 1 which consisted of 4 pancakes, hash browns, bacon, toast and two eggs all for just $2.00. Okay maybe I was being a little harsh with those thieves they were apparently walking away with the equivalent of at least a million dollars, and they might have gotten away with it too if I hadn’t been such a meddling kid.
The waitress started making her way back and I had a chance to make a note of her name, she dropped the two glasses off in front of me and asked, “So you had a chance to decide on whatchu want?”
I nodded and replied, “I sure have Trixie, I’d like the number one with a side of grits, please and thank you.”
Trixie wrote down my order, flashed me a smile grabbed my menu and said, “Well okay then, those’ll be right up.”
She left the table and I sat in silence for a few seconds before I reached for my phone… Damn I forgot I didn’t have my phone, I also couldn’t get a new one as they didn’t freaking exist back in the 60’s… Maybe I should have gotten a paper.
With nothing else to do I looked around the little diner, there were 14 booths like the one I was sitting in, half of which were empty, there was a long bar in front of the kitchen that lonely patrons could sit at, though there were only three people taking up the… 12 seat bar. There were also a few tables, 6 to be exact though all of those were empty at the moment. Frankly I was a little surprised at how empty the place was, either I really missed the crowd at.. 12:06 damn forgot to reset the watch, I checked around the diner for a clock that hadn’t recently experienced temporal fluctuations… 7:45 am right, anyway unless the crowds already came and went or were yet to come, Mabel’s was probably in some financial troubles.
I mean seriously you can’t have a positive cash flow for a diner that seats… 92 people yet only has… 16 people in it during what should be peak hours. This might be something to look into, a diner would be a good way to launder money and as a future gang lord I would need places to do that. Of course setting up a false identity would be key to doing anything of that nature. After all a ghost might be damn near untraceable but a ghost has a hard time booking a flight, or dealing with the police.
I was interrupted from my musings by the arrival of food. My stomach gurgled as Trixie dropped everything off she managed to not notice the noise, or was polite enough to ignore it before saying, “Enjoy hun!”
I decided after that bit of embarrassment faded that I needed to hit up a grocery store. Time was a little more fluid for me and going 16 hours without food after having run for over fifty miles wasn’t exactly a good idea. I cleared my plate relatively quickly, only barely managing to not speed up my body so I could shove it in my mouth faster. After I finished breakfast which was great Trixie dropped off the bill. My total was a whopping $2.67 after tax. I left a five on the table wished Trixie a nice rest of her day and left the shop in search of a grocery store. I vaguely remembered seeing one about a mile away from my current location and so I went for a quick jog. Not supernaturally fast mind you but I still moved at a decent clip. Ten minutes later I was standing in the produce aisle of a Piggly Wiggly. I loaded up my cart with bananas, apples and oranges. Then I made my way over to the cereal aisle, picked up some Special K and made my way to the checkout stand. I grabbed a newspaper while the cashier a pleasantly plump middle aged white woman checked me out for get this… $3.56. I had over ten pounds of fruit along with cereal and I spent less than 5 bucks. The 60’s were a cool time when you had more than $200,000 in stolen cash.
After my little grocery visit I made my way back to the motel and deposited the food on my dresser. I then put away all the clothes I purchased the day before and began to read the paper. I’d gotten through most of the paper when I heard a knock at my door. I looked through the peephole and outside were Tyrone and Janet. I activated my mental powers… man I need to think of a better name than that, anyway I began snooping through the two’s emotions and got a sense of nervous anticipation.
Now that could be caused by meeting with me as I was a definite source of fear in both their lives, but I’d rather not take chances so I cast my thoughts forward and began to search for the source of their nervousness. Janet was an open book as always, “Fuck I hope he’s not there, please tell me he skipped town, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do this…” You get the picture, Tyrone took a bit more work, but where yesterday I was rebuffed at the door so to speak today i gained access. “Those fuckers better show up I’m nobody's’ bitch specially not some jumped up nigger who got the drop on me. Once those diablos show up this fucker’s dead and I’m in the clear.”
I smiled at Tyrone’s plan, opened the door and said, “Welcome in my oh so faithful employees.”