Chapter 3 -- The change starts
A few more days of half heartedly tramping the streets, a few more days of simply not finding a good use for my power was all very disillusioning. I decided Saturday was the day off for Temporal Man of Power and he would go to the beach. The weather was glorious and the drive down very pleasant indeed particularly as I was driven by a friend - an old school friend as it happens: not that this detail is at all relevant to the story.
My eye, and indeed my friend's, was drawn to a surprisingly tall blond girl settling down to sunbathe on the sand. She did that rather enticing thing of lying on her front and then unclipping her bikini top to avoid having a white strap mark across her back. It is always the hope that the girl will forget and, when she turns over, leave the bikini top behind on the towel allowing the admiring man (or men) a pleasing view of the undraped breasts: but rarely is the girl so careless. Of course with my time stopping ability I could simply have removed the top altogether and enjoyed the consternation when she decided to turn over and found it simply missing or perhaps just out of reach. Tantalisingly just out of reach!
It was one of those cottony bikinis, not all tight but slightly loose. The girl was lying face down on the sand. As sweet looking bottom as you could hope to see uppermost or, rather, as far as you could see given the bikini sort of covered it up. It would have been as easy as anything to slip the whole thing off but I was a bit more subtle and, with just a little stopping of time from me, there it was half way down her bottom, the top of her lovely cheeks very much peeking out to see the sun. Both quite delightfully smooth - but leaving a lot still to the imagination. The girl did not notice at all - which was the idea - but the passing men did. It was quite amusing seeing how many erections it induced! Partial clothing is so often more titillating than full nudity. My friend nudged me to see if I had noticed, little realising just who was the cause of all the interest.
It was a worry, though, using time stop - or TS as I was beginning to call it - on a crowded beach. Of course no one could see me out of time. There was no problem with stopping time: the problem was with starting it. Not the original problem of simply how to re-start time but ensuring no one stared at me or asked embarrassing questions. In my alter ego of Temporal Man of Power I slipped into the shadows so I did not suddenly re-appear as if by magic but there were no shadows at all at one o'clock on a crowded beach. I had simply stopped time, got up, walked over to the girl and slipped her bikini down. It was only after the lengthy pause as I admired her bottom that I realised I had absolutely no idea where exactly I had been sitting and what pose I had been in.
Looking around me there were men, women and children looking in every direction including some looking roughly towards where I had been sitting next to my friend. At least he was not looking at me. If I sat down and restarted time to anyone watching I would seem to jerk into a different position. It would look very strange and call attention to me. Probably seeing such a phenomenon once would be put down to a misunderstanding, a poorly observed movement and not particularly noted but if it happened twice or, worse, if I simply restarted time when in a different place altogether then the disappearance or sudden appearance of me would very definitely be noticed. The eye is very good at spotting things which are not normal. I say the eye but it is of course the brain constantly scanning the world for danger. A hang over from when we needed to be very aware of unexpected movement -- perhaps by a sabre tooth tiger hiding in the undergrowth or something.
I did the best I could in trying to remember exactly where I had been sitting and quite what I was doing. I was back in position when I noticed, and noticed just in time (or just out of time), that the magazine I had been reading was lying half way to the girl on the sand. I had dropped it in my haste to get to her. Had I not retrieved it then it would have seemed to anyone watching that it had jumped out of my hands and landed six feet from me at supersonic speed - not exactly a normal happening on the beach. Not at Brighton anyway.
It struck me TS was better practiced with as few people around as possible or, else, I would have to get very good at positively noting my position and posture. Probably I, and indeed TMP, needed a standard adoptive posture when preparing to stop time. Of course I began working on my SAP straight away only for my friend to ask 'what on Earth was I doing?'
Circumspection seemed in order. After all Temporal Man of Power was there to save the World not play amusing tricks on girls or get cheap thrills. He was a man with a mission, with gravitas, with high ethical and moral standards: after all, you did not see Superman using his X ray vision to see what Lana Lang or Lois Lane was hiding away, did you? Well not in the DC Comics I read anyway.
Temporal Man of Power did not drop the ice cream down the pretty busty girl's cleavage; Temporal Man of Power did not sneak the girl's bikini bottoms off in the sea; Temporal Man of Power did not follow the young couple into the dunes to see what they were up to: no, Temporal Man of Power had fish and chips with his friend; Temporal Man of Power went swimming with his friend and Temporal Man of Power finished the day with a couple of pints in the pub - again with his friend. Yes, it was a good day but lying in bed that night Temporal Man of Power's thoughts did go back to the girl with the cottony bikini and the girl almost with ice cream in her bikini, the girl in the sea and the couple in the dunes. It was a good wank; if you want the detail, but Temporal Man of Power had just a sort of nagging feeling he had missed out on something rather better.
The change was creeping closer.
What did it was the girl I had first seen that fateful morning outside my house. Yes, the girl with the dark hair, round face, sweet little button nose and perky upturned brown nipples -- and, of course, with the right one pierced with a gold ring. It was seeing her again unexpectedly and it coming into my mind just how warm the feel of her brassiere had been as I lifted it from her soft breasts. It just prompted me to feel a little more.
She was in just the same blue skirt as before, possibly the same crisp white shirt and again the black nylons. I spotted her coming out of her block of flats early one morning as TMP walked the streets (before going to work). All of a sudden she paused, slapped her head in that way that means, "I've forgotten something."