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At the Chicago Comicon, First Day
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I pulled the Dimensional Diamond from beneath my costume and rubbed it. It glowed. I asked the jewel to stop time for the thousands of people around me in the gigantic convention center exposition hall.
To be completely honest, I didn’t expect anything to happen. Any superpowers I’d had in the past had been in another dimension. But this was the Dimensional Diamond, and the fourth dimension is time.
Time stopped. Comicon attendees who had been frenziedly shoving at each other froze. Screams and shouts were cut off. The darkened exhibition hall was suddenly silent.
Still no lights. Whoever had sabotaged the hall had messed with the emergency backup system, too.
I had no way of knowing how long I could keep the crowd in stasis. One minute in, the diamond grew warm. Three minutes in, it was hot. Ten minutes in, the diamond was so scorching that even through my gloves I couldn’t hold it anymore. I dropped it.
Time unfroze.
People were disoriented. They didn’t shout or scream, not yet.
Into the silence came blessed relief from the loudspeakers. “This is security for the convention center speaking. Please remain exactly where you are, while security staff leads everyone to safety in an orderly fashion.”
People around me sighed. Their taut poses relaxed. They still were tightly packed, but they no longer struggled in panic mode. It might have helped that the speaker was male this time. Not that same taunting female voice we’d heard previously. The mystery woman who’d plunged us into darkness, Mistress Miraculous. What did she have against comicons, anyway?