"It's over there." Karyn pointed to a small playground, where several kids were playing. One girl had a water pistol and was ducking beneath a slide.
Jon and Karyn went over. The shard was right beneath the slide where the girl was, but hard to see in the shadow.
"Excuse me," said Jon.
"I can't leave here, mister! I'm a bank robber! If I leave here the cops will catch me!"
"You're playing cops and robbers?" wondered Jon.
"Of course we're playing! And if you get in my way I'll shoot you all!"
"Just watch it," said Jon. "Don't step over there, please..." Jon reached into his pocket for the tweezers.
Another child said "I hear you! You're under arrest!" and pointed his finger at the slide, yelling "Bang!" The girl fled, stepping right on the shard. While some fairly close contact was required to set the shard off, that didn't necessarily mean bare skin, and when her foot hit the shard that was enough. Suddenly she grew in height, turning into a teenaged guy with a ski mask on his face. He was carrying a gun and a bag of something.
Jon guessed that the bag contained money, and the gun was now real.
The teen turned, confused, and fired at Jon. It missed and hit Karyn. She fell to the ground, screaming and bleeding.
Jon was nearly in a panic until he remembered he still had the stone. "I wish that me and Karyn were immune to bullets for the next hour, and that that guy would follow my commands. And I wish Karyn were completely healed."
Flicker
The robber fired again, but nothing happened except the sound of a ricochet as the bullet bounced off of Jon.
Jon said, "I command you. Don't shoot and don't rob anyone! And stay right here."
The 'robber' froze in place.
Karyn got up and looked around. "He's real," she said. "That hurt!"
"I'm going to fix it," said Jon. "I wish everyone except me and Karyn would think that that person was normally like he is. I wish he'd forget about robbery and have a normal life and family. And I wish that that money would vanish."
The money didn't vanish. Since it was created by the wand shard, reversing it was impossible.
"I wish that money would be buried 5 miles underground!" Now it vanished.
"Owww," said Karyn. "I still feel that."
"It's your imagination. I healed it!"
"I know, I know. Anyway, we have another one." Karyn picked up the shard with tweezers and put it in the bottle.
"That was still pretty easy," said Jon.
"But it was harder than the other ones," replied Karyn. "The longer we leave the shards around, the greater the chance someone will find one... There could be all sorts of things. Someone hurts himself. Or like that kid, they turn into something dangerous. A dragon, maybe, or a magician, or a Sherman tank."
"Or they get a vagina like I did," said Jon. He looked at the stone, thinking.
