The air was thick with anticipation as Rohan and Amir Khaled stood across from each other in the arena. The audience was silent, their eyes glued to the stage, and even the announcer, usually quick with words, seemed stunned. The anticipation was palpable, and then...
Boom.
The announcer, snapping back into character, exploded with excitement. "Ladies and gentlemen! The battle you've been waiting for! Rohan Rao versus Amir Khaled! The Duel begins now!"
Amir's face twisted into a smirk. He raised his arm, pointing at Rohan. "You ready?" His voice was low, filled with the confidence of someone who had been preparing for this moment for years.
Rohan didn't answer, simply standing his ground, his hands slowly rising in a defensive posture. He was calm, too calm. Something about Amir had felt off during the past few days, and now it all made sense. Amir had been playing a game, pretending to be friendly, getting close enough to analyze his patterns, his strengths, his weaknesses. But Rohan wasn't fooled.
Amir, now fully embracing his theatrics, screamed, "10 SECOND SONGS!" and time instantly froze. Everything—spectators, the announcer, even the ambient noise in the arena—was now locked in stasis. Everything except Amir.
He began to laugh maniacally as he approached Rohan, strolling up to his frozen form. "Oh, this is too easy," Amir said, his voice echoing through the frozen time. "I've been acting like your friend for days just to catch you off guard. You have no idea what's coming."
Amir stopped just a foot away from Rohan, preparing to land the first blow. "It's over for you," he whispered with a devilish grin. He swung his fist, but before it could connect, he noticed Rohan's lips moving.
Amir froze—in shock, not in time. "W-what?!"
Rohan's lips parted, completing the single word, "Ditto."
In an instant, the frozen time unraveled, and now both of them stood in the realm of stopped time.
Rohan's eyes locked with Amir's, and he smiled, a cold, knowing smile. "You thought you were the only one in control here? That's where you're wrong."
Amir's face went pale. "How are you in stopped time?"
Rohan took a step closer, his voice calm but dripping with disdain. "Did you really think I'd fall for your 'chummy' act? Only an idiot wouldn't see through it." He paused. "I studied your power the moment Varun announced our match."
The 10 seconds of frozen time passed, and everything resumed in real time. Rohan and Amir both stood their ground. Amir, visibly shaken, let out a frustrated grunt. "Fine, let's see how you handle this."
Amir shouted again, "ERASE TIME!"
Suddenly, the 10 seconds vanished—erased from existence. But Rohan had anticipated this. He quickly countered, "SKIP TIME!"
They both stood still, the world skipping ahead 10 seconds, bypassing the erased moment. Amir, now visibly frustrated, barked, "You know about that too?"
Rohan turned toward the announcer, who was, once again, screaming into his microphone about the chaos happening in the arena. "Let me explain," Rohan began. "The ability '10 Second Songs' gives Amir control over time, but only for 10 seconds. He can stop, reverse, erase, or skip time within that window."
He continued, "Erasing time means changing the cause but leaving the effect. For example, if someone is fated to die within those 10 seconds, Amir can erase the cause of their death, but the effect—death itself—will still happen. The key here is that the universe remembers the effect even if the cause no longer exists."
Amir's frustration turned into pure anger. "Time is mine and mine alone!" he screamed. His body began to glow as he reversed time and then immediately erased it, creating a paradox—a situation where time itself was now out of sync. Rohan's body began to deteriorate as though he had never existed in this timeline in the first place.
Amir's smirk returned as he watched Rohan struggle. "This is it. The paradox will erase you from existence. You're already losing grip on reality."
But then, through the haze of the paradox, Rohan's voice cut through. "You… know about… Temporal Dimensions?"
Amir's smirk disappeared instantly, his face twisting into pure confusion. "What?! How are you still here?"
Rohan, now recovering from the paradox, explained with a cold smile, "Time doesn't flow in just one direction. It's not a single thread. Time flows across multiple dimensions—Temporal Dimensions. What you did was create a paradox in one dimension of time, but there are infinite other dimensions where time exists on different axes. I simply shifted into a different Temporal Dimension—one where the paradox doesn't affect me."
He went on, explaining as Amir's eyes widened in horror, "Temporal Dimensions are like branches of a tree, each representing a different timeline. Some branches are close to ours, where events are similar but not identical. Others are entirely different universes, with events that deviate wildly. By shifting to a different branch, I avoided the paradox entirely."
Rohan's explanation was steeped in advanced temporal theory, his voice calm, almost lecturing. "You see, time is a construct of our universe, bound by the laws of cause and effect. But by bypassing the laws of our universe and accessing the higher-dimensional axes of time, I'm able to move freely across these dimensions. I didn't just counter your power—I transcended it."
Amir, now desperate, screamed, "You can't beat me!"
He tried to reverse time again, then erase it, then skip it—but it was too late. Rohan had already identified the perfect moment. Using the Temporal Dimensions, he found the one timeline where Amir had the greatest vulnerability.
As Amir's power flared wildly, Rohan raised his hand. Time stopped again, but this time, Rohan was in control. He walked up to Amir and landed a series of punches with such precision that by the time the 10 seconds ended, Amir collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
The announcer, once again in disbelief, bellowed into the microphone, "ROHAN WINS AGAIN!"
From the sidelines, Elena, Alejandro, and Ayumi watched the entire ordeal unfold. Elena had her hands over her mouth, anxiety etched across her face. "I thought… I thought he was done for."
Alejandro, always the cool-headed one, nodded but admitted, "Even I wasn't sure how he'd get out of that."
Ayumi, still processing everything, muttered, "Rohan… he's insane. But brilliant."
As Rohan stood over Amir's unconscious body, victorious once again,