4 A Bender's Tragedy

I looked around as we passed through halls, board rooms and lounges, but not for long, for my gaze was caught by the SupremeScout not to have left it since. I finally thought that I could get all the answers as to why and how my life turned into a total shitstorm with all that I had been experiencing for the past three days. I looked at the man, death staring straight into his eye and was about to demand answers, but then, he gave a terrifying look back, as if he was trying to scare me. "Oh, you don't want to look me in the eye, boyo; I'll kill you", he said. I got struck by chills reaching up to my spine by that look of his. It felt almost pure evil, and it seemed as if I appeared to be a freshly prepared chicken meal in front of a starving man; his eyes kinda gave me a stern look of intimidation and superiority.

But then, suddenly, his face started to change its shape, and he puffed up. He burst into laughter as if he was on some laughing gas; tears ran down his cheeks. "It's just the way he is." the scout told me. "Why would anyone laugh at their own pranks when it wasn't funny, and nobody else laughed?" I asked the scout. "Well, he's an old man with an absurd sense of humour. What can ya do about it?" He finally stopped laughing, and it turned into lighter giggles. "So, what were you going to question me about with that aggressive stare of yours?". I honestly felt a bit more lighter and went on to ask him about everything.

"I lost my friends, saw people die all around me. It wasn't anything like an average homicide; strange things are happening since the morning, and I want the explanation promised", I said sternly, trying to be as rigid I could have been in that moment. He looked at me and sighed, "What you experienced was the awakening of your time-bending ability. An encounter with a dark figure might have happened too, and I assume that's what has caused the death of people around you?". I nodded back to confirm.

"Due to your ability of time-bending having been awakened and you not understanding it, you could not have had control over it, thus creating turbulence in the flow of time. The figure you saw was the manifestation of that very complication. It tends to hunt the person who caused it and consume them to regain the extra energy lost".

I didn't understand why the other people had to have been victims, but then he continued. "It can't see anything; all it can do is feel movement around, so it tries to consume the life force out of anything, desperately trying to find the person who caused it. If anyone is around and is causing movement, it's certain death for them." I looked down in vain and made a firm fist. "Energy can neither be created nor be destroyed. If more energy is used than what is written in one's fate and that isn't returned, it has to be compensated", said he.

"How was she, the scout, able to deal with that figure if the extra energy was needed to be compensated by me? How did she manage?" I asked in a haze of confusion. "I made that happen by stopping time and letting the figure feed on it. The accelerated time was stabilised due to it being compensated by my Time-Stop.", the scout replied.

Then the old man cleared his throat and said, "Time-Benders are beings capable of bending the flow of time which you already know by now, I suppose. The flow is a dimension with three temporal domains. Benders can see, understand, and manipulate them based on their type. In easier terms, the three domains are just like control buttons on a media player: Rewind, Pause and Skip; thus, a time bender is categorised by his or her capability to use either domain. Rewind enables the user to rewind time, Pause allows the user to stop time like SuperiorScout-006, and Skip enables a user to either accelerate or skip time, like you".

With these things said, I slowly started to understand the situation, and the clutter in my head cleared out. "I think that should be enough for you to know now; please take some rest. There is a lot more to catch up, and the scouts shall brief you further on". A few people then escorted me to the quarters, where I was told to take some rest. To be honest, I liked the hospitality and treatment I was given.

[The new Time-Bender has now been taken to a room in the headquarters and is currently away from all contact.]

The SupremeScout looked quite tense after the new bender was escorted to the room. "Mr. Farrokh, I-I mean SupremeScout, are you sure about him being free like that for now? You look quite tensed". "Even though I know you wouldn't be wrong, Superior-6, but are you sure about him being able to bend time for three days straight without knowing? He went missing somewhere in his university and came out of that very place three days later?". The scout nodded with agreement.

"But seeing a newbie accelerator who just seemed to awaken his ability to skip such a long duration without even feeling it is shocking! Also, I was supposed to stop time for a nice three hours since the entity that killed those people was an S grade, sir. I'm sure he is an accelerator for now, but he cancelled out my time stop unknowingly by auto resuming the flow with full energy control. Does this mean he actually belongs to an impossible domain?" she asked.

Farrokh sighed after he came to know about the whole incident. "There is a chance that he just has some crazy potential as an accelerator, but there is still a limit to that. The record amount of time accelerated by a newbie bender is 5 hours, with her being aware of the time being sped up. The entity that had appeared at her awakening was just a mere C grade". The scout looked startled, and she recalled that S-Grade entities only show up when a higher grade bender disrupts the flow with unstable energy usage.

Farrokh, knowing these facts, went on and said, "An impossible domain user has only been recorded once in history. It's one of the earliest pieces of information we have preserved since the first benders. Though we do not have information on what type of an ability it was, we know it was probably the only impossible one". After having heard this, the scout pondered for some time.

"Could it be something else that enables his devilish potential? What if he is under something's influence?". Farrokh quickly debunked that by saying that his control would have already been taken over by now if it were to be that case. He cleared out that if that much energy was being fed, he should have lost control over his body at the moment of awakening itself. "Since he hasn't lost his mind, we should observe him for an extended period, without the higher-ups knowing. We can probably be more certain about things after putting him on a team and getting him to train. Let him rest now, but tomorrow I want you to go talk to him and talk about the primary limitation of a Time-Bender; I forgot to tell him about it probably because I was worried too much. We cannot let this incident be known to any other people other than us. If the higher-ups find out, he would be executed immediately".

The scout agreed and then was on her way back to her room as she required rest after such a hectic day. She still kept thinking about what Farrokh said, then went to the balcony to get some air, thinking she would feel lighter as the sun was setting. A light breeze blew, and she let it cool her face. Shortly after, her eyes became watery; she broke down. The shiny pearl-like teardrops twinkled due to the sun rays, and drop by drop, hit the ground.

The new bender was in the opposite room, and, with his window directly facing her balcony, he unintentionally spotted her crying when he looked out. He felt terrible seeing her sobbing and went on to open the window to check if things were alright since he didn't reasonably expect to see her like that. The moment he got the window open, she noticed him and quickly rushed back into her room in a panic. "Hey, wait up!" he exclaimed, but she already had gone back and had started closing the balcony door. Understanding that it wasn't a good time to talk, he shut the window too and went back to bed.