Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Though I didn't learn this mantra until the start of my service in the army, I had been living with similar intent since a young age. Do things slowly, do them properly, then ramp up the speed. It would be all fine and dandy if this was an efficient way of doing things, however, for me, it was the only way possible. See, I have always been a bit quick. Okay, maybe really quick. I have always been able to see things, or at least remember things, in extremely high detail with relation to the time elapsing during an event. For example, most people seem to see a second as a second. They go throughout their lives, regardless of occurrences, at the same pace, like a leaf flowing down a clean ditch, unperturbed in its journey downstream. There are no changes in their flow, so they won't feel anything awry, at least temporally, regardless of what happens. Truly a blessing.

On the other hand, there are times for me where a second will take 2, 4, or 8 seconds of relative time. Some might be envious, thinking that "bullet time" would be super cool, but I'm here to tell you that they've been looking at the concept through rose tinted glasses. All that happens is that time moves a little slower for you, not that you're able to actually move your body any faster. Just because you can see what happens, doesn't mean you can do anything about it. Worse still is the dissonance you feel within your body. Daily tasks such as walking, eating, and talking are all a balance of making sure that all your muscles and nerves are on the same page and insuring that all of the instructions sent are carried out at roughly the same time. Otherwise, you trip over your own feet, you shovel spaghetti into the side of your mouth instead of into it, and you flub your words as your vocal cords move on to the next words as your tongue is still forming the last. It feels like input lag on a controller, making life nearly unplayable, so to speak.

If you combine this with being unable to put in fine controls on how you observe the passage of time at any given time, you now have a full blown mess. Your developing years will be spent trying to reconcile your perception with reality, and there won't be any expert able to train you or guide you. You may go through speech therapy or take martial arts to try to find the answers to your impediments, and while that may treat the symptoms, you will never get around to treating the root cause. You will still feel uncomfortable in your own skin at times, unable to properly index your own erratic personal clock to the steady march of others. On the plus side, though, there are many advantages once you are able to control your perception, your flux, as I like to call it. You become able to notice things that others can't. You become the best commentator at the sidelines. You never have to worry about a comeback because you'll have one ready before they can blink (as long as your tongue and mouth cooperate and you don't stutter, effectively ending you). The only problem is first understanding how your perception of time begins to be in a state of flux so that you may seek a way to control it.

Emotions, in my case, were the key. Excitement, arousal, fear, joy. The stronger the emotion, the higher the flux. Determination and willpower can also spur you into a state of temporal flux, as can meditation or intense focus. Which leads me to this moment. A combination of determination, focus, and recently panic. My eyes are currently stinging from the flash of unburnt powder being ignited after leaving the muzzle of the saturday night special. My arms are currently under the effects of recoil from my own sidearm, the bullet from which has long since (by my perception) been sucked into the head of the hostage taker across the room from me. My ears are slowly sending in data from the Liberator II headset, the sound of the gunshots echoing in the room having exceeded the threshold of the high pass filter and therefor being cut off, with only the last transmission being sent over comms playing from the internal speakers, though in slow motion most of the information delivered by the hairs in my eardrum just sounds like static. 

Finally, with my eyes again, slowly perceiving the bullet travel gracefully through the air, ever closer but still not yet at its destination, intent on embedding itself into my cranium.