Jenn stuffed the rest of the costume into her duffel bag while her cat looked at her, perplexed. She was an hour behind, and she could imagine the throngs of people already gathering in lines outside the convention centre. She took one last look at her dingy apartment, her dirty dishes rattling from the the sound of a low-flying airplane passing above, and rushed out the door.
Forty-five minutes on a packed, sweaty bus, and she was almost there. Comic-Con banners flew by her on either side, and she noticed more and more people in costumes on the bus, a sure sign that they were all headed to the same place.
After another forty-five minutes of standing in line under the hot sun to get inside the convention centre, Jenn found herself no further along than when she arrived. Just then, she noticed a shrewd looking homeless man with a beard, pushing a shopping cart full of cans. He pulled his taped-together sunglasses down off the bridge of his nose, looking straight at Jenn, and pointed at a side entrance that no one seemed to be using. She nodded quickly, looking around, and slipped out of the line, flashing her badge to security at the side entrance and scurried away to the women's bathroom.
Finally, she was inside, in air conditioning, staring at herself in the mirror. She was short, with a tiny frame, and brown hair that she was pulling back under a cap to cover with a blonde wig. She had just finished changing into her costume for the first day of the convention: Power Girl. She wore a white one-piece jumpsuit with a hole cut in the chest, but the material was somewhat ill-fitting, since she had sewn it herself. On top of this, her figure was nowhere even close to the character in the comics, but she wore it with commitment, and with just enough padding to bear a passing, if not crude resemblance. Jenn had been to a number of pointless auditions in the last few months, and for her, it was a relief to cast herself in a part she wanted to play, whether she was truly right for it or not.
Still hoping to make up some time, Jenn hurried into a back hallway and crammed her duffel bag with her street clothes into a locker, throwing a combination lock on it and finally feeling free to wander around the convention centre. Who knows, maybe she'd get noticed, meet some new friends, or even a casting director! At the very least, Comic Con was a chance for her to escape the growing reality that she wasn't getting any work as an actress.
Jenn stepped out in a main lobby area in the convention center, adjusting her wig slightly. It was just past 10 a.m, and the first wave of fans had come and gone, the lobby area humming with a low energy smattering of geeks and half-assed cosplayers. After a moment, Jenn's noticed a curvy young woman dressed as Catwoman in black leather strutting by, a small crowd of men (and some women) taking pictures with their phones and begging for interviews.
"Oh, please, please, one at a time…" Catwoman said, not looking at any of them in particular, her long neck stretched high, her chest sticking out as she walked. Jenn's eyes tracked her all the way across the space until she disappeared through a set of double doors. Now alone, she looked down at her scuffed-up blue Power Girl boots, depressed that no one had even stopped her for so much as a lousy picture. 'It was obviously that girl's figure,' Jenn thought, especially in that outfit, and as revealing as her own Power Girl costume was, there's no way she could compete with goods like that.
"Excuse me…" a voice said, from beside her. She turned to see a very well built man, dressed in a contemporary 'Man of Steel' style Superman costume, smiling broadly at her, his hair perfect, his costume as impressively constructed and nuanced as his muscular body. Jenn trembled inside, trying to project a more confident demeanour for her first fan encounter, and one dressed up as her childhood crush, at that.
"Y-yes, Superman?"
"Do you know that girl's name, that Catwoman girl?" Superman said, gesturing casually to the double doors. Jenn rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, sighing frustratedly.
"Eghh, sorry." she said, wheeling around and heading for one of the convention halls, to look at comic, posters, *anything* to get away from people for a minute…
She darted into Hall D, quickly finding herself in a canyon of rack-mounted comic and movie posters to flip through, mounted on rows and rows of swinging metal frames. Her eyes scanned the artwork, but she didn't even process it.
"Come on, Jenn…" she said, chiding herself. "You can't get upset anytime someone else gets attention. That's part of the fun of going to this place. You'll meet people. Give it some time…" she said, flipping another poster at the end of the rack, and behind it – a bright green face, grinning at her!
"Sssssmokin!" a young man in a yellow suit said, clearly dressed as The Mask. He had enormous fake teeth in his mouth, and his face was painted a convincing electric green, probably about 18 or 19 years old. He held the grin, and then it faded as an awkward moment hung between him and Jenn, until the reference dawned on her.
"Oh, 'The Mask', right? Cool! I'm Jenn – err, Power Girl." she said, shaking his hand.
"Edward!" he said in a playfully official sounding voice. Edward was swimming in his yellow suit, which had the right look, but was clearly two sizes too big big. He adjusted the zoot suit hat, revealing a glimpse of his slicked jet black hair.
"I saw your costume from over there. Pretty cool. Aaaaand I noticed you're not in any of the talks right now." Edward said, suspiciously.
"Oh, it's all superhero movie stuff right now, I think. I'm pretty sure I don't need to wait two hours to watch a trailer in a crowded room. I come here to meet artists, fans, and you know, dress up." Jenn said, meekly.
"Amen. Fans like you and me, we gotta stick together." Edward said, defiantly. "Hollywood thinks they can invade our thing. Pfft! They'll leave it behind in the dust like they do with everything. It'll still be ours when they're done with it." Jenn was getting a little bored with Edward's outspokenness, and wandered away, half-nodding. "Soo…you wanna get a bite to eat?" Jenn looked over at Edward, a rush of blood running up the back of her neck, not expecting to get hit on. She was flattered, but Edward was too young…and too skinny…and too greasy for her, even if his costume was kind of cool.
"Oh…" Jenn said, not finding the right words for this moment at all.
"I have an unlimited meal card. My dad does the catering for some of this stuff." Edward said, proudly. Jenn's eyes lit up, having not much more than a few dollars and a sandwich shop punch card to her name.
Five minutes later, Jenn and Edward were sitting in the cafeteria, a parade of wookies bustling behind them as they ate fried food and looked through the contents of Edward's Comic Con bag.
"You have to be prepared," Edward explained, his green face paint stretching and cracking on his skin after only a few hours of wear. "I have water, my phone (obviously), green face paint, spare batteries, face powder, sharpies, and then comics and whatnot." Edward spilled out some collectibles from another pocket of the bag, among them, Mask comics, and a wooden mask prop.
"Whoa, is that the real thing?" Jenn asked, surprised that Edward had a real prop in his bag.
"Pfft, it's a replica, I think. I'll get it signed, or something. Maybe I'll sell it, I don't know. Feels pretty cheap, probably made in Thailand or something, painted in a sweatshop by little kids." Jenn shot Edward a dirty look, which he didn't understand the intent of. Edward picked up the prop and obnoxiously banged it several times on the cafeteria table, the clang of the wood echoing in the half-filled cafeteria. People around them started to look, and Jenn grabbed it from him –
"Ssssh! There's people eating here." she said in a hushed voice, turning it over in her hands.
"What? They're like, ten times louder than us." Edward said, repacking his bag. Jenn was only in her mid-twenties, but she felt like their age difference was going to get on her nerves more and more if they were going to spend any amount of time together. She looked at the wooden mask, feeling the grooves with her fingers, enjoying the weight in her hands.
"You like that thing? It's yours. Keep it." Edward said between bites. Jenn smiled a little, clutching the mask in her hands, unable to explain to herself why she was responding to it. She brought it up a few inches from her face, looking at Edward through the eye holes. He gave her a quick raise of his eyebrows, clearly more interested in eating than anything else in this moment. She studied the texture of the inside of the mask, fascinated by its polish and shine, almost like some kind of luminescent stone.
"They really make these things detailed…" she said to herself, under her breath. After a moment of being hypnotized by the mask, she put it down beside her, and exhaled.
"I think I have to go change." Jenn said to Edward, with directness. He just looked at her… "Honestly, I think I'm trying too hard with this outfit. It's not…me. I think I want to wear my street clothes, and just enjoy the first day, you know? I have other costumes for all the other days. I don't need to push it." Jenn said, admitting this to herself for the first time, and feeling relief about not needing to look like a perfect Power Girl. "I'll meet you back in the lobby, ok?" Jenn said as Edward nodded.
Jenn was back in the women's bathroom, escaping from her Power Girl costume and putting on her street clothes once more, which was a total relief. She stepped out of the stall and looked at herself – she wore a loose fitting, long-sleeved olive shirt, beat-up jeans, and had her hair tied back, which looked sweaty and had needed a wash for several days now. Not that she had been turning heads as Power Girl, but dressed in her street clothes, Jenn realized that she looked frumpy, and…average. It was depressing. Jenn looked down in her duffel bag beside her, seeing the mask. 'Even a dumb tribal mask prop would be more exciting than my own stupid face', Jenn thought to herself. She brought it up to her face, wanting to see her eyes through the dark wood, and immediately the mask leapt onto her head with a force of its own! It twisted and stretched from its rigid form into something distinctly alive, creaking and expanding from its ridges, streaks of green light cracking from deep within, releasing vast amounts of energy into the empty bathroom. Jenn began to keel over as the mask engulfed her entire head, the wood turning to green rubber, and she started to feel claustrophobic as the stretchy material covered her ears, only letting her hear her own breathing…
She seizured around the bathroom as her body began to change, the mask getting stretchier and vivdly green as it clung tightly to her skin, the iron noseplate disappearing…
"Ughnn!" Jenn cried through the mask, her sounds muffled as the painful transformation was still taking place. Her round face began to get distinctly angular, with a strong jawline becoming prominent. Her loose fitting shirt began to cling to her skin as she grew taller, inch after inch, her clothes changing and melding together. Jenn could feel her personality and inhibitions melting into the background as another presence in her mind emerged. Jet black hair appeared in a frenzy, tumbling and twisting down the sides of her head, with sharp cheekbones and eyebrows emerging to match, along with skintight black leather pants, knee-high boots, a black leather jacket, and a black tank top. Jenn's new features looked somewhere between Sofia Vergara and Angelina Jolie, but with an eternally youthful, somewhat devious slant. She stopped in place, looking at herself in the mirror as she put her hands on her hips, her chest suddenly bulging out generously to fill out her ludicrously low-cut tank top.
Looking at herself in the mirror as the Mask, her jaw dropped in shock at her new appearance. "Hot." she declared, leaning on one side of her hips, her leather pants creaking. The Mask pulled at the edge of her face, pulling the mask a little tighter, and snapped it back. "Perfect fit, too." she said, smirking.