[WP]You can cook 1-minute rice in 57 seconds. Despite your relatively minor time-bending superpower, they're coming for you.

...

Sarah had been born with an extremely tiny portion of magic.

For some in that position, others might have considered this some mystical form of divine blessings from the sky above. A few others still might have dedicated their lives to identifying how and why it turned to be that way, but for Sarah magic was just the way of things. Her mother had a tiny bit of magic, as did her father (as did the adorable story of how those two met) so it wasn't like she was completely without understanding of the strange gift that wasn't really a gift.

Once upon a time, way back in her childhood Sarah remembered when her mother told stories about the old magics- back before everything was all watered down and forgotten. The old magics that had real power, real strength. Not just the tiny flicker of adjustment Sarah might use to cook her 1-minute rice in slightly less than the suggested 1-minute, or her mothers gift of applying that same concept with more or less similar effectiveness.

No, real magic. The kind that might slow the world she focused on to a crawl: The kind that might lift things with a wave of her hand, or shower down lightning from the sky.

Sarah's father told her that her great, great, great, great grandfather could do some of those things. Not very well, but the tales went that he'd puzzled out a bit more of the gift than most of the family, and he'd tried to teach others until the church got involved. After that, according to her father, it seemed that things went downhill rather quickly until Sarah's great, great, great, great grandmother was a widow. If there was a lesson to take away from all of that, the moral of the story seemed to be a simple one:

"Don't fuck around with magic Sarah. Bad shit happens when you fuck around with magic."

She could hear her father's voice clearly in her mind, and more often than not she had to agree with it. There was certainly magic in the world, however faint, and just knowing that she could prove that wonderful fact to herself was enough; more than enough for anyone. Sarah wanted little in the manner of attention for her odd little talents, and she rarely wished to shoot lightning from the sky, or lift things with her mind- but sometimes she did push the border of what she should and shouldn't do.

Generally that happened when she was very hungry, and the one required minute of rice cooking would be preferred in fifty-seven seconds. She'd found that if she really, really concentrated, sometimes she could make that fifty-seven turn into a fifty-six; and recently she realized awoken to the knowledge that the fifty-six could easily be fifty-five.

There was progress here.

Perhaps this was the exact method of madness that lead her great, great, great, great grandfather to ruin, but even in idle imaginations Sarah knew the Church wasn't really much of a problem in the present day. If anything she was much more concerned about the government, but if she was only applying her strange gifts to cook rice a bit faster- she had to guess that they weren't going to find out her secrets anytime soon.

Of course, it was 6:45 PM on a Thursday night when they came for her, exactly fifty-four seconds into her most earnest rice-cooking attempt that dinged ready at fifty-five, much to both her pride and horror at the sight.

It all happened in rather short succession.

First Sarah was surprised to hear her kitchen's radio blare some form of half-squawked emergency warning that wouldn't seemed to budge no matter how much she absently toggled along the stations. It continued more than enough to split her attention from the microwave, and frustrated her to no end- for it had interrupted one of her favorite songs.

Second was the rough sound of pounding footsteps, then followed by the front door of her apartment being more than certainly thrown to ruin. The hinges and the frame attached crashed and skid across the floor, as wood was splintered, metal was bent and large barrels of rounded steel were all leveled rather confidently in her direction by rather scary looking men in black suits and black sunglasses with black ties.

As Sarah all but immediately accepted her fate, she had to wonder why percentage of her tax dollars had funded such an over-powered venture to capture those rare and gifted rice-cooking individuals among the population. Or, more importantly: Who it was that had even thought to order such a hardline doctrine. For seriousness of the matter aside, the War on Drugs was one thing, but the War on quicker rice cooking seemed another entirely.

"Stop right there!" The voices shouted atop one another, men swarming into the small studio apartment with tremendous speed.

"Hands where we can see them! Don't you dare move!" A more important member of the sudden gather, a man Sarah had already mental named Agent K (regardless of what he might actually go by: perhaps a Bill, or Joe, or Bert for that matter) shouted at her. Whatever meaning of his gaze was held beneath those dark glasses certainly viewed her wooden rice-cooking spoon as a object of concern, for not even half a second into complying with the first demand, he'd already begun shouting something much more worrying. "She's got a wand!"

"Taze her!" Several other voices joined in.

Sarah hadn't much caught on to the exact circumstances just quite yet, for things had moved rather quickly, but she knew she didn't want to be tazed, and certainly wasn't welcoming to folks who broke her front (and only) door. So it was in this instant that Sarah did something she'd never quite considered attempting prior.

Certainly as one might cook rice slightly quicker, one might also cook rice slower; and how different were people and guns from rice, after all?

How different was more of an objective type of question, and not truly a line of thinking Sarah was dedicated to finding an answer, but still she watched, eyes widening to the shock as it seemed to work rather well as a first attempt. For whatever reason it appeared that slowing things down was much easier than making things go faster- which she supposed made at least a little sense in the grander scheme, but was still of great surprise.

Still as the image before her seemed to slip along, like an air bubble slowly rising through a bottle of shampoo, she also had to wonder if it was just a little too effective. A nagging thought.

Speeding up a 1-minute rice packet by 3-5 seconds was one thing, but watching a taser fire in a motion of speed she might expect from an elderly pigeon that was too fat to fly, and instead made its way in life by walking (and taking numerous pauses to rest in between) Sarah had to wonder if there was some other element at play. This was all a bit too easy.

It was only then that she turned to notice there was a man standing behind her.

A pale-faced man with a thick staff of red-stained wood, wearing a rather impressive and regal cloak of deep pitch black, with one hand raised to his chin with a look of rather intense interest on the circumstances. The hair on Sarah's arms, her legs, even the nape of her neck seemed to prickle, and deep down she felt a strong awareness to the wrong feeling that seemed to radiate from the man, for even in the slightest of instants in which she saw him (however stretched they were) she could see that something wasn't quite right in ways beyond the fact that a home intruder had been watching a supposedly secret Government operation.

The strange man seemed to catch her glace, teeth showing in a terrible smile that did little to help Sarah's confidence of making it out of the already unpleasant circumstances on bit, as he raised his staff with ease.

"Fascinating." She heard him say, eyes now alight with a look of genius and madness swirling together in a glowing brilliance she could only barely comprehend was magic rising in the air around him.

Real, tangible, visible Magic.

It was the last thing Sarah witnessed before her soul (along with everyone else's) was promptly ripped out and devoured.