"Police, open the door, we have a warrant to search this house, open up or we will be forced to enter."
The police were here again, only this time it seems they were prepared. Dan had been staying in this formerly abandoned building for the last few weeks, word was he inherited it from a family member, however not much was known about the man himself.
"No answer, time to breach the door." The officer, along with the others around him, prepped for the door to be breached. As they rushed to the walls, a singular officer, behind him two more, all stood by waiting for the former to kick down the door.
"Breaching In 3! 2! 1!" With a singular kick, the door fell to the ground, forcefully bringing dust into the air. Before the dust could settle, police rushed into the building, splitting up to make sure rooms were clear, before moving to the next and doing the same. The comms filled with police officers confirming that the building was clear, once all rooms were confirmed to be empty, they converged in the main room.
"Everything is clear sir, not a single sign of residence, or anyone living here in the first place." a young officer stated, with supreme, somewhat misplaced confidence.
The Sergeant walked around the room, eyeballing just about everything. He had been on the force for more years than the other officer had been alive. Everything, to him, was considered evidence.
"Cadet, do you notice strange about this place? Something out of place, perhaps wrong?"
The young officer looked around, not sure what to have noticed the first place, and finally looked back to the Sergeant.
"No sir, I do not see anything out of the ordinary sir."
The Sergeant took a deep breath, before beginning to walk around the room, slowly.
"Look around you, look how organized everything is. According to our records this building has been abandoned for years, only recently taken attendance by a single person. Notice how there is dust everywhere, and yet nothing else, no needles or other paraphernalia indicating a drug hideout, no debris, no torn up furniture or mattresses without frames, nothing."
The young officer continued to stare at the Sergeant, at a loss for words, unable to add on to what had just been said.
"But your right, cadet, there are no signs of habitation. There's no trash, accommodations, no food, nothing. Notice something else? There are no trails of dust. Other than…"
The Sergeant shined his flashlight onto a part of the floor lacking any dust, a silhouette in the shape of a sleeping person lie on the ground. Shining his flashlight around, he noticed there were bootprints in the dust, but only in the main room.
"I want a forensic team here Ay-Ess-Ay-Pee to see if there's any fingerprints left behind, we need to find out who lived here, and for what reason."
"Police, open the door, we have a warrant to search this house, open up or we will be forced to enter."
This wasn't good, Dan hadn't expected the police to be here so quickly, usually it took them several weeks to get a warrant however now they were here less than a week after he told them to fuck off and come back with one. He had to quickly pack up and leave, he had no time to cover his tracks, only to grab what was important to him and leave. He quickly packed his laptop into his bag, along with a multitude of hard drives, and prepared head out the back door. As he was turning off the lights, and without a second to spare, and as he heard the door get kicked down, he activated his power. Color was sucked out of the world and time slowed down to a halt. As Dan walked out the back door, he noticed the front door in the midst of being kicked down. He hurried out of the building and continued until he got to a nearby bus stop. Once sat down, he deactivated his power. Color returned to the word and time started running normally again. This was Dan's power, or in the more colloquially known term, "Quirk." He had the ability to stop time.
"One-minute-twenty-three seconds... I need to get back in practice..." Dan said, lightly panting for breath. Stopping time took a toll on him, roughly equivalent to holding one's breath for an extended period of time.
"Didn't have time to clean up my evidence, that could turn out catastrophic. I need to leave town, immediately." Dan stated to himself, worriedly. It's not the standard police forensics unit he was worried about, it was the potential for other quirk users to track him down using whatever he left behind. However, his thoughts were interrupted by a bus arriving at the stop. Dan got on, payed the fare, and then took a seat near the back. A news story played on the back of the chair he was behind.
"In other news, The United States Census Bureau has came back with a shocking statistic. According to them there has been a four-percent increase in the amount of people who possess quirks this year, bringing us up to twelve-percent of the population as quirk users, a stark increase from the one-percent increase last year. While some are claiming this is just an outlier or a product of the population increasing. We take you live to an interview with the head of the US Department of Commerce, for his take on the situation."
Dan shut off the TV, he had no interest in the opinions of politicians.
"Mate, wake up, end of the line."
Dan woke up with a jolt, as well as instinctively stopping time. It wasn't the first time he had woken up to an unfamiliar voice, and because of this he had trained himself to always wake up in stopped time in an unfamiliar situation. As he got up he examined the situation as best he could in his half asleep state. The bus driver was standing in the aisle across from him holding a flashlight, as well a handgun in a holster around his waist. Dan contemplated whether or not walking away in stopped time was worth it. From the drivers perspective, Dan would seemingly teleport away, however this carried that fact that the driver might report him for using his quirk outside of reserved areas. He decided the best course of action was to wake up "Normally."
"Huh… What…? Oh, I must have fallen asleep, sorry. I'll be on my way."
As he started to get up and walk out, the driver stopped him, his left hand was on the handgun.
"Sorry guy, but we have to report this kind of thing now. New anti-homeless laws and all that. You're gonna have to wait while I get the police."
Dan sat back down, with his neck killing him for sleeping in such an uncomfortable position.
"This probably won't take long, they'll just ask for some ID and your SSN and you'll be on your wa-"
The driver froze, all the color sapped out of him as Dan stopped time once again. Unfortunately, in his half asleep state, he had cornered himself. It was too late to just walk away in stopped time because the Driver already knew what he looked like, and cops were about to be called. He had about a minute more of stopped time so he had to think quickly. The thought kept crossing his mind that he should kill the driver, it was the easy option out after all, grab his pistol in stopped time and just shoot him. He walked over to the front of the bus, time still stopped, and look at the dash. A picture of, what he could assume was the driver's family sat on it. His wife, son, and daughter along with him were in the picture.
"Killing is out of the question, I'm not putting his family through that. I need to think of something else."
After some time thinking, he ended on two ways of fixing this situation, either he could lie to the driver about not having his wallet on him, or level with him and tell him the truth of his situation. He thought about it for around 25 seconds before coming to a decision, he would tell the truth. Dan figured that if this man also had a family, he would understand where he was coming from. And with that, time resumed.
"-y from there. So just sit tight while I-"
Dan interrupted him mid sentence.
"Before you do that, can I… can I talk to you for second?" Dan said, trying to sound as level-headed as possible.
"Guy, your gonna tell me some sob story about losing your job, or your girlfriend, but you gotta realize I'm only doing this to keep my jo-"
He stopped time once again. This was quickly going nowhere, and he decided he had to take drastic action. He reached up and broke both cameras in the bus, before walking over and taking the driver's phone out of his hand. He then walked back to where he originally was before resuming time.
"-b, so just wa… wait a second…" The driver stopped and starting looking around for his phone, thinking he may have dropped it.
"Looking for your phone? I stopped time and took it." Dan said this as he held up the drivers phone. "Look man, you really need to understand where I'm coming from when I say that I can't be reported to the police. So I need you to sit down, and I'm going to tell you my current situation."
The driver responded by pulling out his handgun, and pointing it at Dan. He sighed and continued talking.
"Or you can do that... anyways, I'll continue on. About 5 years back, I was a hero. If you read enough news to remember a hero named "Broken Hourglass," that was me. Now, you may remember me going dark after fighting a villain, goes by the name of "Nucleator," A women who could supposedly build nuclear bombs out of anything. And... well... You remember what happened to Chicago, right?. Anyway, as soon as the fight broke out, I contacted my family to tell them to evacuate to one of our safehouses, where there would be a bunker they could stay in while the radiation settles. Little did I know, a villain working in conjunction with her hacked my phone, preventing the alert from being sent out."
"What… are you-" Dan once again interrupted him, keen on getting the entirety of his story out before letting the driver make any decisions.
"My family was… they were vaporized in the explosion…" He paused for a bit before continuing on. "I rescued as many people as I could that night, but I only managed to save a fraction of a fraction of the people that lost their lives to her. A week later I went on a massive killing spree, single handedly taking down 4… maybe 5 crime organizations in one day. While this sounds like a good thing in retrospect, it ultimately ended up blowing up in my face. The law hunted me down for not giving the villains due process. Meanwhile the villains who managed to escape formed a more powerful, ruthless, and united organization like that never before seen on American soil… So I went into hiding. And here we are today."
The driver could do nothing but stare in silence, he slowly lowered the gun, and put it back in his holster before sitting in a seat across from him.
"I… I'm sorry for your loss. However I have a question, why... tell me all this?" The driver asked to break the silence.
"The law is still after me, as are members of that organization. How it has remained stable for all these years is beyond me. But I do know this: if you report me to the police, they will know a general idea of where I am, and will resume the manhunt at full scale. But if you let me go, I can continue on with my life, such as it is. The reason I'm telling you all this is because like me, you also have a family, and would be able to understand what I have been through. So I'm giving you a choice."
Dan threw back the phone to the driver, who caught it and turned it on.
"You can either report me, and potentially put yourself in danger from the police and villains, or... you can let me go, and continue with your life normally. All cameras on this bus have been destroyed, so don't feel compelled to make any decision based on your job."
The driver thought for a moment, before putting his phone in his pocket.
"I… I guess I could let you off with a 'warning,' but for the sake of my safety, you should really go, if what you're saying is true."
"In that case, I'm already gone. Thank you for understanding." And in the blink of an eye, Dan was gone. From the driver's point of view Dan had just disappeared completely, however in actuality, Dan had stopped time and walked out the bus, and to a nearby motel. He desperately needed to normal bed to sleep on. He resumed time as he approached the motel, and walked into the lobby. No one was at the desk, so he walked up to ring the bell. A worked walked up and greeted him.
"One person room please, just need it for the night. I'll be paying in cash."