AnimeCon Harem Bonus Part: Cosplay Contest (Patreon)

   Yikes, Jordyn thought to herself, idly worrying her tongue ring back and forth inside her mouth. There’s some really fierce cosplays this year.

   The line of cosplayers waiting for pre-judging was already snaking back and forth through the enormous room and it was still growing, which seemed ominous to Jordyn. For many, the cosplay contest was AnimeCon’s main event, the crown jewel of the convention. It showcased only the best of the best in fan-made costumes, attracting cosplayers every year by both the prestige of the award titles and the generous cash prize. As such, the contest was allotted the largest panel room, a gigantic space that now featured a large stage, hundreds upon hundreds of folding chairs for seating, and a series of tables along the distant far wall where the judges and announcer sat.

   Jordyn was crossplaying—cosplaying a character of the opposite gender—Dmitri Dhampir from HellState, a well-known character from a popular series. Assuming the look of a centuries-old master vampire, she had outfitted herself in posh, even decadent, if somewhat sinister Victorian nobleman’s attire. The blood-red coat made her one of the more eye-catching cosplayers in the room, and the cravat she wore, the dandy hat, and the spell circles sewn on the back of her white gloves showed off both Jordyn’s tailoring finesse and her exemplary attention to detail.

   Jordyn didn’t like to go overboard like others did with the genderswap aspect of the crossplay—this wasn’t the Halloween-store ‘sexy’ girl version of something—because, in her mind, Dmitri Dhampir was perfectly sexy just as he was. Changing the stately dress pants to a miniskirt, or the dignified maroon vest beneath her coat to a bikini top would have lost the class Dmitri exuded. She had tailored each of the traditionally male garments to her very female proportions, of course, but she’d didn’t feel a particular need to show off her impressive body. That’s not tasteful. Not for my Dmitri.

   After carefully straightening her long black hair, the only obvious difference between her cosplay and the character was... the color of her skin. While Dmitri Dhampir had the ghoulish pale skin of a vampire nightwalker, Jordyn—well, she was black. Or, at the very least, a light shade of brown she would call mocha, or even chocolate caramel, if she was feeling a particular craving. Thankfully, race had never been much of a barrier for Jordyn in the local cosplay community. Sometimes, she suspected it even lent her an exoticism that made her stand out from many of the other well-known cosplayers in the area.

   “Hi! What are you from?” A chipper voice sounded out from beside her. Curious, Jordyn turned to meet her neighbor in line.

   It was a petite girl with long, dark hair and excited, expressive features, cosplaying Blaire Bellefonte from EMRLD. The ensemble consisted of a simple sleeveless white crop top and tiny white short shorts, framed by a black coat-tailed vest which was buttoned closed beneath her bust, making it resemble a corset. 

   “Ooooh, you look so cool!” the dark-haired girl breathed appreciatively, clapping her hands. “Are you Dash the Avalanche, from TriGrave? The Humanoid Sandstorm?! Did you see—”

   “Uhh, no, I’m—”

   “Ah, wait. Big red coat. I get it,” the girl interrupted. She was younger than Jordyn, and very short—but with a pair of large breasts on a skinny frame that made Jordyn certain this overexcited chatterbox of a teenager found herself very popular with the opposite sex. “You’re... Dorian, from Devil May Care! Right? Am I right?”

   “Dmitri Dhampir, actually,” Jordyn said in a bemused drawl, tipping her wide-brimmed hat. “From HellState.”

   “Oh my God, that was gonna be my next guess! You’re so fucking cool!” the girl exclaimed, hopping in place. Her bust bounced in a way that suggested she wasn’t wearing any support beneath her cosplay top. “I’m Melanie. But, my friends call me Mel! But really, my friends call me Neko sometimes, because I’m so into anime, and I’m kinda like a cat. There was this—”

   “Nice to meet you,” Jordyn said quickly, smiling. “Melanie’s a really pretty name.”

   “What?! You think so? No way,” Melanie retorted. “You’re really pretty. No, wait! I didn’t mean it like, in that way. Although, kinda, I did, but only if it’s cool. Your cosplay’s like, ten times better than everyone else’s here, and you’re gonna win this whole thing, for sure. And, you’re black! Or, you know, African-American. Have you ever thought about cosplaying—”

   “Is this your first time at a convention?” Jordyn probably should have felt annoyed, or at the very least exasperated by Melanie’s endless enthusiasm, but to her surprise, it was just the opposite. She’s so BRIGHT and... animated. She’s having so much fun, in the way I wish I still felt at conventions. Before I was worried about how cringy I was acting. Haha...

   “I was here last year, with my Dad,” Melanie answered, exaggerating a thoughtful look, scrunching her brows. “Which is weird. Because, he like, never visits me. But, I didn’t even cosplay back then, so it doesn’t count. Now, I’m eighteen, so I’m gonna go to, like, every single anime convention there is, now. All of them. Every year. I’m gonna live at cosplay conventions.”

   “That’s pretty much what I do,” Jordyn nodded agreeably. “I go by Synn, that’s my cosplay name. This is my second year entering the AnimeCon contes—”

   “Synn? That’s so badass!” Melanie gushed. “Synn. I want a cool cosplay name like that. Oh, man… what would I be? Reaper? Malefice?”

   “Uh… you could be Neko?” Jordyn supplied helpfully.

   “That’s perfect, Neko! People call me that.” Melanie’s eyes went wide, before the girl seemed to deflate with a heavy sigh. “You’re gonna win, though. Like, you have to. If you don’t win, I’ll start a revolution, or a riot or—or something, until you win.”

   “Hell, yeah,” Jordyn allowed herself a small moment and released her inner geek, drawing the pair of prop handguns hidden in her coat and pretending to shoot them in the air. “Pew, pew!”

   “Ohmigod you have guns?!” Melanie gaped at her. “That’s so fucking cool! Agggh! I’m so freakin’ jealous! I don’t think I’m anywhere near good enough for a cosplay name, or a web page or anything. I mean, freakin’ look at this.” The teenage girl plucked at her costume top, and a seam separated with the movement, exposing a brief triangle of pale breast. 

   “Whoa, uhh—careful,” Jordyn cautioned, quickly holstering her guns and leaning forward to smooth out the sections of fabric and cover the girl back up. On closer inspection, the Blaire cosplay looked… well, not shabby, but distinctly unfinished. “Did you... make this yourself?”

   “Yeah! Well, I mean, sorta,” Melanie laughed. “I made it, and then my Mom fixed it. Mostly. I sat down in my car to drive here and I was like—OH, SHIT! Because some of the back’s still held together with just pins, and they were all jabbing me. Wait, I didn’t, like, bleed on the back or anything, did I?”

   The girl turned around, pulling her long black hair up out of the way, and Jordyn was horrified to discover that the back of the Blaire Bellefonte cosplay was hanging in tatters. Two last panels of fabric were barely holding the outfit onto the girl’s body, by a single pin. Jordyn’s smile froze in place, and she began screaming internally.

   “...Are there blood spots?”

   “Uh, you’re… um. We’ve got a problem,” Jordyn finally managed. As delicately as she could, she pinched edges of fabric together and repositioned the pin as best as she was able. To her growing dismay, the now taut piece split another seam at the shoulder instead, and the entire garment began slipping free.

   With a yelp, Jordyn dropped decorum and clamped her arms around Melanie just before the smaller teenage girl was rendered half-naked in the middle of the crowded venue. You’ve GOT to be kidding me…

   “Ohhh, fuckmuffins!” Melanie giggled. “Thanks. I definitely felt that. Did I lose a pin? It felt like I lost an important pin.” 

   “Okay, hah, uh, help? Help!” Jordyn laughed, calling out loudly. “Does anyone have any safety pins or... anything? Small wardrobe malfunction, here!”

   “I can spare one, maybe two,” a girl cosplaying a Soul Priestess from Shinobi Souls called from the behind them in line, stepping up. The girl’s face changed when she saw the problem, and she shrugged her long white sleeves back out of the way and rushed forward to help keep Melanie from exposing herself. “One or two pins won’t… this isn’t… where the hell are all of your stitches?!”

   “Fletcher!” The girl called out after realizing their predicament. “Hey! Fletcher! You still keep a travel sewing kit for event emergencies?”

   Yeah, of course we HAVE it, the longtime staffer everyone referred to as Fletcher thought to himself, digging through their half-emptied box that they’d grabbed the audio-video cables and spare microphones from. Question is... are there any pins left? The answer, unsurprisingly, was no. All but one of the needles was missing, as well, and he cursed himself for not remembering to restock the whole thing. It wasn’t his job, or anyone’s job, really— it was something they’d started keeping around just to be thoughtful—but, still. He wasn’t paid to pour in all the effort he did to make events like the cosplay contest work out, either, but he loved to do so.

   Adjusting his spectacles with the press of a finger at the bridge of his nose, Fletcher grabbed the tiny sewing kit and made his way over towards the commotion. There he saw a flailing teenage girl, neatly pinned between a black girl in a Dmitri cosplay on one side, and a short-haired Soul Priestess on the other. To his surprise, he recognized both of them.

   Synn’s Dmitri Dhampir didn’t seem like much at first glance, but the longer he looked, the more regal and natural the outfit seemed on her. There was something dark and graceful in her posture and movements, a sort of presence or bearing that lent synergy to the cosplay she’d chosen. Sometimes, a character seemed to be meant for someone, and after putting the outfit on, it became more than just a costume.

   The Soul Priestess cosplay that Liz wore this year also wasn’t as eye-catching as her usual outfits, but the craftsmanship and fine details in her robe’s emblem, and the accessories she’d worked up out of craft clay and paint were remarkable and spoke of the girl’s dedication to the character. She was also one of the few well-known cosplayers who seemed to remember him every year, and she always made a point to stop and chat him. Damn, this year I really need to ask her out for coffee or something after the con.

   “Afternoon, Synn. Hey, Liz,” He greeted the girls as he stepped over, waggling the little travel sewing kit. “What’d you guys do?”

   “Oh, you know. The usual,” Liz chuckled. “Competition looked tough, so I thought I’d just sabotage all the other cosplays first.”

   “One of these years, we’re going to make a rule against that,” Fletcher said, quirking his lip at her.

   “You know me?” Jordyn asked, surprised.

   “I follow your page online,” Fletcher nodded, offering Liz the sewing kit. “Loved your Metrazoid outfit. Nice Dmitri, too, by the way.”

   “Thank you,” Jordyn smiled, surprised.

   “It’s really not that bad, is it?” Melanie grinned, wriggling awkwardly in the grip of the other two girls so she could meet Fletcher. “I mean, worst comes to worst, I can just hold it in the back with one hand, like this, see—” She straightened, one arm twisted behind her... and her straining top immediately separated in the front.

   Pale, beautiful breasts spilled free, pink nipples on free display. Near-perfect rounded shapes, perky, but with a certain weight to them that Fletcher admired in stunned astonishment for a full second before a startled Jordyn could jump forward to smother the girl into her red coat.

   “—Whoopsie,” Melanie yelped. “Um…”

   “Whoa. Sorry, I… uh, sorry,” Fletcher felt his face going red as he pointedly stared off in the direction of the ceiling. Those were... deceptively large. “Do you need any—”

   “Fletcher!” Liz squealed, sending him an accusing glare for having simply witnessed the sight. “We’ve got it under control. Get outta here!”

   “S—orry ‘bout that,” Melanie squeaked, at least having the good sense to finally seem embarrassed.

   “There aren’t even any safety pins in here, Fletcher…” Liz growled. “What’re we supposed to do, sew her into this while she’s freakin’ standing here? We’ve got a contest to audition for!”

   “Uh…” Torn between advising the cute young newcomer hidden between the girls to realistically let go of her… overly optimistic dream of competing in the contest this year, or jokingly just offering them a stapler, Fletcher was just about to speak when yet another person intervened.

   “Uh, do you… need any help?” A timid voice offered, and a girl with fluffy pink hair wearing a pink-and-red sundress tiptoed over from the front, giving up her spot in the line. “I-I can sew, um, I’m pretty fast.”

   “Please,” Jordyn asked, grateful for the help. “Even if it’s just, like, a quick and ugly fix.”

   “Okay, I’m going, then,” Fletcher jerked his thumb back towards the pre-judging table. “If there’s any problems, just holler, alright?”

   “Alright!” Liz agreed. “Now get outta here, you perv! And, thanks!” 

   “Thank you for the sewing kit!” Jordyn called.

   “Thanks, person!” Melanie added, peeking over the edge of Jordyn’s coat to see Stephanie threading a needle.

   “Thank you, go away now please,” Liz waved him off.

   Seeing that the small incident was… probably in good hands, Fletcher exhaled slowly and shook his head, striding back up the line of waiting cosplayers towards the pre-judging booth. Liz looked amazing like always, and he secretly hoped she’d win something, but he’d already spotted a lot of other strong contenders this year. There were countless other veterans cosplayers who regularly attended AnimeCon, some of them even famous across the entire coast.

   Sara Star herself had camped out in front of the panel room at noon today to be one of the first in line this year. She was decked out in an absurdly intricate Vampire Princess Marcilla costume—a flowing red and black dress, horrific and beautiful like she’d stepped out of someone’s fantastical nightmares. There were even newcomers here that Fletcher didn’t even recognize, like the phenomenal Magical Doll Himari towards the end of the line, or this hulking giant of an Ogre King here beside the Bosatsu cosplayer.

   Amazing. This thing’s huge. Wonder how he figured out how to build all of this? And, how he got in here? I bet he can’t see a thing. Fletcher was just stopping to admire the detail on the sneering visage of the enormous Ogre when something about the Bosatsu standing next to the Ogre caught his eye.

   “Excuse me, is that a khakkhara?” Fletcher asked, gesturing towards the metal staff the large man dressed as a Buddhist monk was wielding.

   “This is the shakujō of I, Bosatsu of the Six Paths!” the cosplayer arrogantly declared, jangling the metal rings of the staff in indignation. The monk’s face fell at reading the words ‘AnimeCon Staff’ on Fletcher’s shirt, and he quickly lowered his voice to a normal speaking tone. “Er, that is—I’ve already taken it to the weapons and props check.They put the safety band down here, at the bottom.”

   “May I?” Fletcher smiled politely, opening his hands, and the cosplayer quickly passed the staff to him.

   This is no prop, Fletcher discovered, hefting the thing in admiration. Six rings, representing the Six Truths of a bodhisattva. Doesn’t look like a flea-market imitation, either. Wonder if he realizes this one’s from India, and definitely not the kind from China or Japan?

   “It’s very nice,” Fletcher commented, handing it back to the robed Monk. The Bosatsu cosplayer was fat, wore glasses, had shaggy brown hair, and a scruffy beard that was spreading from his cheeks to his neck.

   “Yes, yes, thank you,” the Monk hurriedly bowed in relief. “Peace be with you, friend.”

   “Try not to be too loud with it,” Fletcher cautioned, and he continued on towards the judging table to watch the proceedings. Sounding staffs were originally carried to warn small animals and insects out of the monk’s path, so that no life—no matter how small—was trodden upon. The thought of a boastful, haughty cosplayer flailing one around didn’t sit well with Fletcher, but he supposed that must have just been how the character acted in whatever anime the guy was from.

   After all… convent Sisters don’t normally have gatling guns, either. Or show quite that much skin, Fletcher thought as he passed by a heavily-armed girl wearing a Nun’s habit. Instead of a traditional black cassock, the rest of the outfit was rather revealing lingerie that seemed to be patterned into the shapes of overlapping crucifixes. You really never know what kind of characters will show up at AnimeCon.

   At the front of the hundreds of rows of chairs set up for the audience, a single one of them was occupied, by a scowling young Chinese girl who was watching the auditions. She looked bored, annoyed, and was impatiently tapping a foot. When Fletcher had asked her earlier what she was doing there, she’d insisted that she was with Foxy.

   Foxy. Fletcher frowned, crossing his arms. He wasn’t sure why Nick had insisted that Foxy take his place as a contest judge—fairly evaluating dozens upon dozens of different costumes based on their accuracy and effort wasn’t something just anyone was able to do. With different cosplays ranging from embroidered ballroom gowns to the carefully molded plastic armor of a futuristic Inferno Marine, this wasn’t something as simple and straightforward as a beauty pageant or popularity contest.

   After all, as one of the larger anime conventions in the country, the stakes for this contest were pretty high. AnimeCon had three prizes and seven awards to distribute among the best cosplays here—and with hundreds of entries, competition was fierce. Many of the up and coming ‘cosplay famous’ competitors had spent months planning, designing and constructing costumes with the specific intent of taking a title or a ranking here. With the added legitimacy of an AnimeCon Best of Show or Judge’s Choice on their cosplay resumes, they were more likely to be invited as a guest at smaller conventions, where they could continue to pile up their achievements and fame, until they were considered a cosplay authority.

   Which, of course, led to the darker side of cosplay, where eking out a win no matter the cost was becoming prevalent. Trying to bribe contest judges, manufacturing controversy and inciting drama, canvassing for sympathy votes, backstabbing old friends, leveraging social connections against one another, digging through old online accounts in the hope of exposing any dirt on their rivals… the cosplay community was an ugly business, sometimes. 

   “Alright, next,” Foxy dismissed the girl in front of them, a girl dressed in a Japanese school blazer and wearing a multi-colored wig. Each of the judges were supposed to take notes on which outstanding costumes made an impression on them... yet Foxy’s legal pad still remained blank.

   Next to approach the judging table was a heavyset girl wearing a modified black-and-white Chinese cheongsam, while a pair of rounded black animal ears poked out from her dirty-blonde hair. As one of the few entrants who wasn’t conventionally attractive, Fletcher was very interested in whether or not Foxy would judge her fairly and remain without bias.

   “Okay, could we have your name, the character, and the series first,” Joe, the first judge,  asked. With dark hair, a neatly-trimmed goatee, and what he joking called his ‘hipster glasses,’ he was an old hand at judging these contests, and longtime friend of Fletcher’s. The third judge was Ghost Wine, a petite young Filipino woman who, like Fletcher, was known by her internet handle rather than her given name. She was wearing her Killer Corps cosplay from Shinobi Souls, but had twisted the mask around so that it rested on the side of her head.

   “Umm, my name’s Megan Green, and, I made a Pandape gijinka,” the overweight girl said, clearly nervous. “Pandape, from Monster Battlers.”

   Ah, Pandape, Fletcher finally recognized the outfit. The more he looked at it, the more clever he thought it was—and although it might not be a flattering thing to say, she’d chosen the monster that perfectly suited her body type. In addition, while the Pandape monster itself was a rather simplistically drawn thing and difficult to translate into an interesting dress, she’d approximated its patterns and markings well with the qípáo-style cheongsam dress. The Chinese style of it naturally seemed to evoke the appropriate image. When the large girl slowly turned so the judges could see her whole outfit and Fletcher saw her panda eye make-up, he was convinced that no one could pull off a better Pandape. It definitely works. Sure, there’s some clumsy seams, but— 

   “Sorry, next,” Foxy interrupted with a bored expression.

   He didn’t even give Joe or Ghost a chance to say anything, Fletcher frowned.  Ghost Wine had still been in the middle of jotting down her thoughts when the contestant was abruptly shooed away, and she turned to shoot another annoyed look at Foxy.

   “O-okay. Thank you,” Megan mumbled, walking away in dejection.

*     *     *

   In no time at all, Jordyn, Liz, and Melanie discovered that the pink-haired newcomer was fast at sewing. Jordyn was helping cover Melanie with her elegant red coat, while Liz held the panels of the Blaire cosplay in place against Melanie, and then Stephanie was running the needle back and forth through the fabric at alarming speed.

   Stephanie pushed the needle point through the fabric with one hand, then immediately pulled the needle, drew the thread, and flipped the needle point around in one quick motion with her other hand. Without pause, she’d push back through and repeat the process with her opposite hand. If Jordyn hadn’t been paying close attention, it would have looked like this girl was simply flossing the thread back and forth through the fabric—but, no, a line of stitches was in fact steadily creeping up the cloth on Melanie’s back.

   “...What kind of stitch are you using?” Jordyn asked, shocked by the skill she was seeing. There was apparently no need to work on the garment inside-out, so that seam excess was hidden afterwards—the two panels of fabric were simply joining together magically at the edges. As Stephanie moved upwards, the stitches pulled tight and seemed to disappear.

   “Looks like some kind of blind stitch,” Liz observed, appearing just as surprised. “You’re fast.”

   “It is,” Stephanie gave them a nervous laugh. “I think? It’s a kind of blind stitch. My mother called it, um, a right-handed invisible ladder stitch. B-but, I’m, uh, I’m not sure what you call it when I’m alternating back and forth between a right and left-handed one, like this. It should hold okay, though!”

   “That’s so neat! Do you sew cosplays for a living?” Melanie was interested, trying to squirm and twist her neck to see what was going on behind her.

   “N-no, no,” Stephanie flustered, adjusting her glasses. “Nothing like that.”

   “Stay still, Blaire,” Liz admonished. “This girl’s like a human sewing machine. You want her to accidentally sew this right into your skin?”

   “That’d actually be really cool,” Melanie giggled. “I’d be like Molly, from Nightmare on Solstice. Sexy, and with just, like... stitches going everywhere through my skin.”

   “I’m… going to slow down,” Stephanie laughed, paling slightly.

   “You’re almost done, though,” Jordyn pointed out, glancing up the pre-judging line ahead of them. The four girls had been slowly shuffling along together every few minutes as the line advanced. “We might actually get this put back together in time. Which is… crazy, right? You can’t start with pieces of a costume way back in the line, and then just arrive at the front with it finished.”

   “Hey, it’s not that bad, it wasn’t in pieces,” Melanie huffed. “I resemble that remark!”

   “You mean resent?” Jordyn asked.

   “No, no,” Liz rolled her eyes. “She does resemble that remark.”

   “O-okay,” Stephanie said, tying off her thread and snipping it. “That should hold this part. I think.”

   “We’ve gotta at least pin the front closed, or something,” Liz pointed out. “Turn around, girl. Let’s see the damage.”

   “I’m Melanie. But, everyone calls me Neko,” Melanie insisted, whirling around to face them. Her top was hanging open where it had split along a seam in the front, and the insides of her breasts were visible, making themselves obvious with a bounce. “Hi!”

   “Uhh, where is your bra?” Liz demanded, looking at Melanie as though she was insane.

   “Blaire doesn’t wear a bra,” Melanie replied, blinking. “I don’t think…?”

   “Yeah, well—this is a convention, not some sleazy no-pantsu cafe!” Liz retorted, shaking her head. “Will you close up a bit? Mishin-chan here can probably fix the front in a flash.”

   “Machine-chan?” Melanie looked towards the pink-haired girl holding the sewing kit.

   “Uh, hi,” Stephanie gave her a weak smile. “Mishin, it’s, ah, that’s Japanese for ‘sewing machine.’ I’m Stephanie, actually. Um, could you—?”

   “Oh! Yeah, sorry!” Melanie tugged the front of her Blaire Bellefonte costume closed… or, tried to. With the back of her cosplay now sewn properly, the previously loose top had become substantially more restricting. Her boobs were now squashed together, creating a deep line of cleavage still stubbornly visible in the gap. “Hnnng. Okay. S’gonna be tight, but I can... suck it in.”

   “Ugh, I hate you,” Liz hissed, glaring daggers at the ditzy girl’s large breasts before turning to Stephanie. “Don’t be too careful sewing up the front. A couple pin jabs never hurt anyone. Anyways, the line’s moving a lot faster, now, and I don’t see anything else here I can do. I’m going back to my spot.”

   “Thanks for your help,” Jordyn called, and she watched the girl dressed as a Soul Priestess wave a backward hand in acknowledgement as she walked away.

   “We still have that pin, if you need to just pin part of it and go,” Jordyn said, plucking the pin from the brim of her hat where she’d stuck it for safekeeping and glancing in the direction of the pre-judging table. “Your spot in line up there’s almost at the front, now.”

   “Oh, it’s okay,” Stephanie replied, pulling the bottom of Melanie’s top together and fastening it together in a flash with a bevy of quick stitches. “I was just in line with—well, I don’t think I’m going to compete. I’m mostly just here with my… uh, for my friend.”

   “You’re not going to compete?” Melanie asked. “But, that’s so crazy! You’re Machine-chan, you’re probably the best sewer in all of AnimeCon!”

   “She means to say seamstress,” Jordyn corrected, wincing. “I’m sure Mel—uh, I’m sure Neko here doesn’t mean to call you a sewer. Because, a sewer is an underground pipeline for sewage.”

   “Uh, yeah! That’s what I meant,” Melanie nodded emphatically. “Seamsteress. What’s your cosplay, Machine-chan? Your dress is cute.”

   “Thank you,” Stephanie laughed, carefully working the needle back and forth up between the imposing shape of Melanie’s melons, which were straining against their sudden confinement. “I’m—well, I was a Flamituff, but I ended up giving part of my costume away to someone else who needed it.”

   “Flamituff?!” Melanie exclaimed, bouncing slightly. “Ohmigod, I love Flamituff! She’s so fuckin’ cool!”

   “Flamituff is really cool,” Jordyn agreed. “Wish I could’ve seen it when it was complete. I was going to try to do one of those Monster Battlers dresses for next year. Gijinka, right? I’m going to make an Obsydeon outfit.”

   “Because you’re black?” Melanie asked, her eyes going wide and clamping a hand over her mouth.

   “Yes, Melanie. Because I’m black,” Jordyn replied, rolling her eyes. “It’d save me all that with white body paint trying to be a Solar Bear, you know?”

   “I’m so sorry,” Melanie breathed. “I just—sometimes I just open my mouth, and things come out, before I can stop them! I have, like, no filter.” The dark-haired girl was fidgeting now as her cosplay became more constraining. Her nipples were even partially visible, straining against the tightening fabric as though trying to bore their way through.

   “Obsydeon is another one of my favorites,” Stephanie said with appreciation as she continued up Melanie’s seam like a slow-motion zipper, pulling the Blaire Bellefonte outfit together with the quick motions of either hand.

   “Steph?” a guy’s voice called over. “Your spot in line’s up almost up.”

   Jordyn looked up to see a cosplayer in a Darkmask outfit approaching them, the familiar grinning skull helmet held in his gloved hands. Lovely green eyes, nice jawline. Old-fashioned side-parted brown hair. Tall, good-looking, and... familiar.

   Though she’d never learned his name, she was passingly acquainted with his group from several past AnimeCons—this guy, the rowdy little latina, that frigid-seeming ice queen, and a couple of other dudes. They happened to take pictures of each other every year, and she was sure they’d chatted once or twice.

   “Oh! Uh, I’m not, I don’t… I don’t think I’m going to compete, after all,” Stephanie gave him a sheepish look. “Not this year. No one can even tell who I was supposed to be, anymore. B-but, if I have another minute, I can fix her costume so she can go up, at least.”

   “...Lance, right?” Jordyn smiled, ticking a gloved finger in the air towards Brian.

   “Yeah, hah,” Brian gave her a small wave. “You used to do Camus, from Metrazoid? Your Dmitri looks really great.”

   “Thank you!” Jordyn tipped her hat towards him, feeling extraordinarily pleased that he’d remembered her as well.

   “I’m gonna head back up, then,” Brian told Stephanie. He spun the Darkmask helmet between his gloved fingertips and flipped it back onto his head in a single motion. “Will you be alright?”

   “Yes,” Stephanie affirmed, nodding. “I’ll find Kelly! We’ll watch, and, um, take pictures when you go up. Good luck!”

   “Who was he?” Melanie whispered with a goofy grin, just moments after Brian turned to make his way back up to the front of the line. She tried to turn away from Stephanie to follow him with her eyes. “He’s cute!”

   “He’s my—um. Well, he and I… I have a big crush on him,” Stephanie admitted, her delicate features blushing red. “His name’s Brian.”

   “Well, you have excellent taste. He was definitely one of my con crushes last year,” Jordyn praised, watching Brian as he walked away. And... I love the way his new outfit sticks to him everywhere this year. “Ah. Uh-oh, looks like he dropped something, though.”

   “He what,” Stephanie seemed to freeze.

   “Hope it wasn’t his convention badge,” Jordyn leaned out further to look past the line of people. “Oh. It’s some little wooden thing?”

   “...I’ve got to go,” Stephanie tucked the needle into the upper hem of Melanie’s cosplay. “S-sorry. You’re just—um, it’s mostly done, if you just pin that through as it is, it should be fine, for now. Don’t try to bend over, and you’ll be fine!” Then the breathless pink-haired girl was gone, hurrying up the line in Brian’s direction.

   “Sure, thanks,” Melanie called, experimentally tugging at the restored costume blouse and then adjusting her bust beneath it. “Seriously. Thank you so much, Machine-chan!”

*     *     *

   “Hey Rob—what’s that?”

   Brady leaned over as much as he could within the confines of his giant costume and squinted harder, unable to make out anything but a blur. Damn. I can’t see for shit without my glasses.

   Although he now looked like the unstoppable Ogre King from Journey to the Western River, he wasn’t nearly as flexible. Stooping over to pick up whatever the thing was would be impossible. The rippling ogre muscles were actually rigid carved foam strapped to his body on a framework, he was sweating buckets, and even peering through the gap beneath the chin of the Ogre King’s sneering face like this was a challenge.

   “Rob, help me out, here. I think one of my skirt pieces broke off.” Brady had made a fairly authentic war skirt of dangling ringmail, chains, and small dangling animal skulls. If one of the important ones had already fallen off here, before he even got up in front of the judges…

   “Rob?!” His friend bellowed out in a bombastic voice, stroking his own scraggly beard. “Hmm, who is this ‘Rob?’ I, Bosatsu of the Six Paths, am here to give you aid. What do you need?”

   “There’s something there on the floor, I think I lost something.”

   “Something—what, this?” Rob snorted, nudging the thing with the edge of his geta wooden sandal. “Does that look like part of your costume? Where are your glasses?”

   “Can’t wear ‘em in here. They fog up, and then I can’t fix ‘em. What is it?”

   Brady squinted again at the wooden charm lying on the ground, but he wasn’t able to make out any details. It was a small token of wood, red thread braided at the edges into an intricate pattern. On its face, the squiggly shapes of Japanese hiragana had been printed.

   “What is it? What is it?” Rob harumphed in disdain, jangling the rings on his shakujō with a shake of his hand. “It’s clearly an evil talisman. But, have no fear. I, Bosatsu—of the Six Paths!—will exterminate this evil here and now.” Rob flicked his long sleeves, took the sounding staff firmly in both hands, and raised it up to smash the butt of the staff down upon the charm.

   “Wai—W-Wait!” the pink-haired girl in the dress that’d passed them in line earlier was running towards them now, eyes frantic… but she was moments too late to stop his shakujō from coming down.

   An abrupt peal of shrieking metal sounded out inside the enclosure of the panel room. The wooden haft of the staff exploded into splinters, peppering the sculpted foam of the Ogre King and the unprotected monk clothes alike in an instant. Part of the metal top of the shakujō shattered, in a bursting rainbow of multicolored sparks, and the staff’s sounding rings flew in every direction.

*     *     *

   “Holy shit,” Jordyn mouthed, peering forward through the row of cosplayers at the thunderous clamor. “What the hell was that?!”

   A heavyset guy in a soot-spotted monk robe was flailing away from a cloud of smoke and falling wood fragments as those nearby him scattered back. Stephanie, who’d been hurrying in that direction when the little explosion went off, had fallen back onto her butt in surprise but otherwise looked unharmed. An enormous commotion ensued as people stepped out of their places in line to get a better look, Melanie and Jordyn being no exception. Tiny pieces of broken metal from the head of the monk’s staff were still tumbling down across the sea of empty seats with clinking noises, and something rolled all the way to stop just at their feet.

   “Hey, cool!” Melanie said, bending down to pick up the small piece of metal on the floor. As her fingers came into contact with it, however, a tiny green spark arced into her pale fingertips, and Melanie gave out a small yelp.

   “Yikes, it’s sharp. Or hot? Or… something?” the dark-haired girl said, standing back up to inspect it. There were no jagged edges after all, and it seemed cool to the touch. It was a plain, metal ring of— 

   Her thoughts blurred in a greenish tint for a moment, and Melanie wavered on her feet.

   Before too long, that staffer Fletcher appeared again, apologizing for the disturbance, assuring everyone that everything was fine, and asking everyone to move. The staggered queue of waiting cosplayers were redirected out of the center aisle path, to reform the line instead across the far wall of the room so he and a few volunteers could start cleaning up the mess. After a short investigation, the Bosatsu of the Six Paths cosplayer was escorted past them out of the convention by security. He was bleeding from dozens of small cuts along his side, still loudly insisting he hadn’t put any firework gimmick in his prop staff.

   Melanie wasn’t paying much attention to any of that, however.

   She felt suddenly alert, extremely conscious of every tiny movement in her sight. Her spatial awareness crept out around her in different directions, and it seemed as though she could feel things that were in motion.

   There was a samurai cosplayer several people behind them, impatiently shifting his weight from one foot to another. The flap of that Bosatsu cosplayer’s sleeves up there as he began wildly gesticulating with stern convention staff who were barking questions at him just outside the event room. A replica magic scepter was propped up against the wall well down the line, slowly sliding forward to fall for a brief second, before the blast magician standing nearby noticed and caught it.

   None of those were what she was looking for—but defining exactly what prey her straining senses were searching for all of the sudden was… what was it? Elusive, rapidly slipping away like a half-forgotten dream. ...Huh. That was... fun?

   “You okay?” Jordyn asked, putting a hand on the shorter girl’s shoulder to steady her.

   “Whoaaa,” Melanie grinned, looking giddy as her sharpened senses began to dull back to normalcy once more. “Yeah! Had, like, a really long head rush there for a minute. Look what I found!” 

   “A bracelet?”

   “...Sure?” Melanie toyed with her new trinket, idly rocking her hips and bouncing her butt against the wall behind her, rocking forward slightly only to let herself fall back again. The pale girl’s attention seemed totally absorbed by the iron bangle in her hands, and there was something a little sexual about the way she slapped her bottom against the wall.

   “Uh… okay?” Jordyn decided not to comment on the strangeness of her weird new friend.

*     *     *

   “Sure you’re alright in there?” Brian asked Brady, carefully picking long wooden splinters out of the carved foam of Brady’s Ogre King cosplay. “Your buddy was bleedin’ all over, had all these little cuts.”

   “Yeah, I’m alright. Rather it got me than my Ogre King, though,” a bitter voice came out from deep within the Ogre. “This thing’s my baby. Took me nine months to finish.” 

   “Damage doesn’t look too bad,” Brian said, pinching another sliver of wood and tugging it out. “Just gonna leave behind a bunch of tiny holes on this side. Can’t even tell, from a bit of a distance. What’d you use to cover the foam, originally? Plastidrip? Roofing sealant?”

   “Plastidrip.”

   “It’s definitely not that bad,” Brian assured him, passing a handful of splinters to Stephanie. She was holding a small waste can up for him and the another volunteer who’d arrived with a broom and dustpan.

   “Couple touch-ups here and there and you won’t even be able to tell.”

   “Thanks for helping out, here,” Fletcher told Brian as he surveyed the scene again. “You didn’t have to give up your spot in line, though.”

   “S’alright,” Brian shrugged. “Steph was over here, I thought something might’ve happened. Scared the hell outta me, I thought it was a gunshot or something.”

   “I was really startled,” Stephanie admitted in a quiet voice. “It happened right in front of me, and I—uh, I fell back onto my bottom.”

   “Glad you’re okay,” Brian said, shaking his head. “And that, you know. That you didn’t fall on anyone else this time.”

   “This… time?” Fletcher paused.

   “B-Brian!” Stephanie scolded, swatting him lightly with the small trash bin. “I told you I’m fine!”

   “Still, I’m gonna have to make sure you didn’t bruise or anything, later,” he said with a slight grin. “You said there was just... a flash, and then colored sparks flew out?”

   “K-kind of?” Stephanie blushed and fidgeted with the harem charm she’d picked up when security came over to pull Rob aside. It seemed completely unharmed.

   “Definitely a firework of some kind, then,” Fletcher frowned, jingling the few bits of metal he’d collected in his hand. “Weird as hell, though. I don’t know what he thought it was gonna do. What was supposed to happen? Shaft of the staff must’ve been hollowed out, and he pushed firecrackers down the length, or… something? The whole top metal parts of the staff got completely blasted away. I think we’re lucky the thing was pointed at the ceiling and not at somebody. Convention security’s pissed.”

   “Rob went over the top with everything, this year,” Brady griped from within the giant Ogre King costume. “Just my luck. He’s the only one that knows how to help me out of this thing.”

   “If you walk me through it after the contest, I can help you take it all off,” Brian offered, taking one last look across the exaggerated musculature of the cosplay for wooden slivers. “But, we should hop back in line now, it’s moving along again.”

   “Alright, yeah. Thanks again, man.”

   “It’s all just… weird,” Fletcher muttered to himself as they walked away. He’d held the staff himself some minutes beforehand and not noticed anything amiss. The weapons check booth had even given it a numbered safety band that should match up with their record. Looking around the nearby chairs they’d scattered so they could sweep up the broken wood and metal pieces, he realized that there was something else off about this. “Wait. Where’d all the khakkhara’s rings go?”

*     *     *

   As Brian and Stephanie led the Ogre King towards the back of the line, a girl leaned out with her arm raised high, bouncing on her feet.

   “Ooh, ooh! Here, pick me, pick me!” The dark-haired girl giggled. “Machine-chan, here, here, pick us! We saved you guys a spot in line!”

   “Machine-chan…?” Brian asked, raising an eyebrow at Stephanie.

   “I-I think she means mishin-chan,” Stephanie gave him a weak smile.

   “Mishin-chan…?”

   “Better than calling her a sewer,” Jordyn observed dryly, smiling at the girl next to her.

   “Anyways, hi!” Melanie breathed, waving with both hands despite them being right in front of her. “I’m Melanie, but everyone calls me Neko.”

   “I’m Brian.”

   “I think you’re really hot!”

   “Nah—I’m not even sweating,” Brian joked, stepping aside to reveal the lumbering shape of the Ogre King taking slow steps up behind them.  “This guy, on the other hand…”

   “Ohmigod, it’s that cool big guy?!” Melanie squealed, hopping forward to put both of her hands on the Ogre’s immense muscular foam chest. She spun around to make sure everyone else saw him, too. “Look how big he is!”

   “Ah, careful…” A tiny voice called out from inside the Ogre King costume.

   “There’s a person in there! Hello, person!” Melanie stood on her tiptoes, trying to peer inside as she chattered away. “I’m Melanie, but really everyone calls me—”

   “We meet again,” Jordyn smiled at Brian and Stephanie. “What was all the noise and fuss up there about? They just threw a guy out.”

   “Fireworks, we think,” Brian shrugged. “Either that, or the monk guy swung his staff down so hard it practically exploded. Steph was right there, she saw it.”

   “I think it was a firecracker?” Stephanie sounded unsure. She looked like she wanted to take Brian’s arm, but was uncomfortable brazenly doing it right here in front of everyone else. “There were a bunch of different-colored sparks.”

   “I saw a buncha green when I picked up this earring!” Melanie interjected, giving them a big smile and holding up a thick iron ring. “Soon as I touched it, it was like, whoaaa, sudden... acid trippy thing! Not that I’ve ever done acid! Might be cool, though, someday. But, it was all, like, green and everything went wavy like special effects.”

   “...Green?” Stephanie asked.

   “I thought that was a bracelet?” Jordyn quirked a brow. “Looks a l’il thick to be an earring.”

   “No way, it’s an earring,” Melanie insisted. “It’s just, you know, Ogre-sized. See? It matches!”

   They all followed the girl’s eagerly pointing finger to Brady’s Ogre King cosplay, where a matching iron ring was embedded in the ogre’s long pointed ear. A bit of the painted plastidrip coating had torn there where the ring was lodged, and some of the blue foam beneath was visible.

   “I… don’t think that’s an earring,” Brian said, stepping closer to the Ogre. “Sorry... Brady, was it? Did your cosplay have a pierced ear?”

   “Uh… it definitely did not,” Brady’s concerned voice sounded out from within. “...Shit. What happened?”

   “Well—surprise! It’s pierced now,” Jordyn chuckled. “Were you in costume downtown drinking last night? These things happen. You should probably check for new tattoos?”

   “I think it’s another piece of your buddy Bosatsu’s staff,” Brian said. “Didn’t even notice it before—I thought it was part of your cosplay.”

   “So, this is one of the jingly-jangly things from that guy’s staff that asploded?” As Melanie turned the ring over in her fingers, it did indeed look like one of the ones that had been blown off of the exploding shakujō.

   “...Exploded?”

   “Yeah, that’s what I said,” The air-headed girl blinked from the large metal ring in her hands to Jordyn. “Asploded.”

   “Shiiiiit,” Brady said, awkwardly raising his bulky covered arms and trying to grab the large head prosthetic to lift it off.

   “Wait, wait!” Melanie insisted, tugging the carved foam forearms back down. “You should totally leave it, it looks cool just like that! That ring totally looks like an Ogre earring.”

   “Yeah, she might be right,” Brian said. “The ear’s torn a little bit—if you take the ring out, it’ll be a lot more noticeable. I mean, the inside foam’s bright blue.”

   “It was originally foam from a camping pad thing,” Brady said, swearing again. “Fuck. Wish I could see how it looks.”

   “I can take a quick pic for you,” Jordyn offered, pulling her phone out from a pocket along the inside of her coat.

   “That’s alright,” Brady sounded a bit defeated. “I’m not wearing my glasses in here, anyways. Might as well just go up like this, if it looks like a piercing.”

   “Wait, let me adjust it a bit, first,” Jordyn said, dropping her phone back into the pocket and peeling off one of her white Dmitri Dhampir gloves. “For an earring, it’s kinda... skewed a bit wonky.”

  As she gingerly reached up to fix the iron ring stuck in the Ogre King’s ear, a jolt of brilliant purple energy zapped out into her brown hand. The large enclosure of the cosplay contest room seemed to tilt and spin for her for a moment, and dozens of bright violet flower petals seemed to flutter and whirl upon an unseen wind across her vision. 

   “Whoa,” Jordyn blinked and batted her eyes, but the phenomenon vanished so quickly that she’d wondered if it had ever been there. “What… the…?”

   She turned her hand this way and that, not sure what was spurring this sudden feeling of anticipation budding within her. The imagined color had been dazzling, like an amethyst formation hewn out from within ordinary, unassuming stone. Lovely lilac shades of lattice along the outer edges, and then positively purple with potential deep within.

   “You okay?” Melanie asked, cocking her head at an angle. “Hey wait—did you just see, like, a whole buncha green right when you touched the ring? Like, everything is suddenly all WHOO bright green sugar sprinkles— ”

   “Yeah, a little bit, kinda?” Jordyn laughed, turning to look at Melanie with interest. “Not green, though. Purple?”

   “Pink, for me,” Stephanie abruptly joined in with a nervous laugh. The three girls exchanged looks and Melanie let out a giggle.

   “Wait… what exactly are we talking about?” Just as quickly as it had appeared, Jordyn’s oddly specific and extremely confusing purple-hued epiphany was fading away, leaving the black girl in the Dmitri Dhampir cosplay looking confused and embarrassed. She gave them an exasperated look. “It was purple, yeah. But I was also, like, just on the cusp of figuring out something... really big, for a second. I think?”

   “Ugh, I get that all the time,” Melanie gave them a helpless shrug. “Always seems to just, like... slip away?”

   “…I guess?”

   The group all shuffled over a bit as the line advanced several more feet again.

   “Is it... normal for there to be this many costume mishaps?” Stephanie asked after the long awkward moment passed.

   “Yeah, all the time,” Jordyn answered.

   “Oh, yeah,” Brian agreed.

   “Every fuckin’ year,” Brady sighed.

   “My friend Emily has the worst luck with that,” Brian grinned. “She did this Grimoire Saint costume, so she’s covered in body paint, ‘cause she’s supposed to look like a naked statue. Well, she sat down to eat with us in that little cafe the con has, but when she gets up afterwards—the stone-textured paint on her butt had come off.”

   “No way,” Jordyn had been more closely inspecting the iron ring lodged in the Ogre King’s ear when she clamped her hand over her mouth to contain her reaction. “Are you serious?”

   “Oh, yeah,” Brian chuckled. “She was wearing a thong, but it was like, blended against her skin with that putty stuff for hiding Halloween facial prosthetics. So, she’s walking around the con as a Grimoire Saint, white and gray all over... except for these two bright pink spots of skin, one on each butt cheek.”

   “That’s hilarious!” Melanie exclaimed, and they all shuffled forward as the line advanced once again. “What did she do?”

   “I remember seeing the girl with the cool statue costume a couple years back, but I never noticed that,” Jordyn laughed. “She’s that real short girl that’s always with your group, right?”

   “Yeah, that’s Emily,” Brian nodded. “She ended up trying to smear paint over from the surrounding area, but it was really too dry to work. She got so mad at me for not helping her, hah…”

   “Why didn’t you?” Stephanie blinked.

   “Couldn’t exactly have my hands all over another girl’s butt while my girlfrie—uh, while my now ex-girlfriend was standing there glaring at us. Chloe was pissed at that entire situation.”

   “I woulda helped!” Melanie chimed in with a laugh. “I’m not shy at all. I like, wouldn’t have even cared, hah ha!”

   “Hey, keep it down back there,” One of cosplayers ahead of them in line called over.

   “Sorry!” Melanie yelled back in a loud voice. “I got excited!”

   “Was your ex the one with you guys who was always Hera Victoria?” Jordyn asked, frowning. “I had my eye out for her, since she always does HellState cosplay every year. Honestly, I always kinda assumed that other girl was your girlfriend. The statue one, that real short girl.”

   “Emily? No way,” Brian laughed. “We practically grew up together, she’d never be able to see me that way.”

   “I’d see you that way!” Melanie interrupted, flashing him a wide smile. “I totally would.” The dark-haired girl dressed as Blaire Bellefonte had a hyper, predatory gleam in her eyes, almost shaking with anticipation, ready to pounce forward the instant he made a move.

   “Oh,” Jordyn smiled, looking from Melanie to Stephanie and seeing strangely similar expressions. Huh. “Where is she, then? You’re usually with a big group.”

   “Emily’s getting here late tonight... I think. And, Chloe… she broke up with me just last week,” Brian winced. “I’d pre-ordered badges for both of us, and she sent hers back to me right away. So, yeah, I don’t think she wants to be anywhere near here, or me.”

   “Ouch.”

   There was some inkling or thread of thinking Jordyn was overlooking, some missing perspective needed for that strange realization she’d had earlier. Something about Brian seemed to resonate with that weird feeling she’d felt so certain of for in that moment, and she subconsciously took a step closer to him. It was a heady feeling, a purple feeling, lush with blooming... arousal, interest that was deepening a shade further into expectation.

   “Oh, h-hey,” Stephanie cut in. “Guys? We’re, um, we’re next in line.”

*     *     *

   “Okay, I think that’s all we need to see. Next,” Foxy commanded, drumming his fingertips across the legal pad on the table out of boredom. The Perseus cosplayer from Dice Duelists who’d been standing in front of them at the judge’s table nodded and shuffled off in dejection.

    A faint smile played across Foxy’s handsomely arrogant face. This year he’d gone from being the local Mana: the Mastery pariah to one of the esteemed cosplay contest judges, and in a matter of a few hours. All it took was finally cashing in an old favor. He’d always jokingly badgered his buddy Nick to let him stand-in as a judge—this year, it actually happened. 

   Becoming a someone here at AnimeCon was all about connections, and few people could boast having the influence of Foxy of fucking Loxly. Throughout the years he’d won prominent titles in several different gaming tournaments here, including a Mana: the Mastery regional championship, so he was a familiar face in those circles. He was well-known among the established artists alley who regularly bought booths as well, because he was an infamously generous patron; regularly paying extravagant sums for commissioned art.

   Honestly, it wasn’t any coincidence that his old pal Nick happened to also be a veteran AnimeCon staffer and cosplay contest judge. Each of Foxy’s carefully hand-chosen cadre of friends was also, in fact, someone of importance in their field of subculture expertise. One was head moderator of one of the largest internet anime fan-forums. Another, the artisan geek famous for running an entire small lab of 3-D printers that produced miniatures and small props. Several of the voice actors and convention guests were on a first-name basis with Foxy, and the AnimeCon afterparty he hosted every year at his hotel room was legendary for featuring several thousand dollars worth of freely flowing liquor.

   Ironically, for someone so deeply involved in this fan community, Foxy’d never had much of an interest in cosplay, personally. But, after all—wasn’t becoming a contest judge like this a step above that in the hobby hierarchy, anyways? The awards and titles everyone was vying for were his to dispense, he was the one to determine how much value their hard work constructing a cosplay actually had. Imagining himself lording this borrowed position over these costumed sycophants was so funny to him that Foxy could almost forget there were two other judges.

   “If you could first give us your name, the character you’re cosplaying, and then the series they’re from,” Joe rattled off his rote instructions to the slim young girl in the enticing white and black ensemble who’d stepped up next.

  “Hi!” That girl gave them a giddy smile and energetically waved both hands at them. “My name is Melanie Campbell, and my cosplay name is Neko!”

   “I think… uh, well, that’s already taken, actually,” Joe interrupted, leaning forward. “As a cosplay name. ‘Neko’ is a pretty well-known west-coast cosplayer, for the past... probably seven or eight years? She gets hired by game studios to do cosplays for publicity. I follow her on Nibbler.”

   “Neko is… already taken?” Melanie all at once looked completely crushed. 

   Watching the bubbly young teen go from animated enthusiasm to speechlessly despondent in a matter of seconds piqued Foxy’s interest, and he sat up in his seat as Joe gave the girl a nervous chuckle.

   “We actually don’t require cosplay names, or anything like that,” Joe assured her. “Just Melanie, is fine.”

   “Kind of a waste, though,” Foxy gave the pretty young contestant in front of them a charming grin. “How ‘bout… ‘Melaneko?’”

   “Melaneko?!” The new moniker seemed to stun the dark-haired girl, her blue eyes going wide and mouth falling open before she erupted into an enormous enthusiastic smile and jumped in place like she’d been given a spike of adrenaline. 

   Damn, she’s a cutie.

   “Ohmigod, Melaneko! That’s so perfect! You’re like, a genius!” Melanie gushed. “Melaneko! Melaneko! Oh my god, thank you so much!”

   “You heard her, Joe—write down ‘Melaneko,’ instead of Melanie,” Foxy decided, not failing to notice the unrestrained bounce of Melanie’s breasts through her costume as she did her excited little dance. Joe actually had seniority over Foxy and Ghost Wine by a pretty large margin, but he was a laid-back guy who simply smiled and penciled over his previous entry.

   “Moving on,” the last judge, Ghost Wine, looked annoyed. “You’re Blaire from EMRLD, correct? Did you make the outfit yourself?”

   “Yep! And, well, sorta!” Melanie answered with a chipper, unabashed smile. “Mom helped fix a few little, uh, mess-ups I made, and then it like, practically came apart when I was in line here when I lost an important pin, or something! But, my friends helped me get it all back together, so—here it is!”

   “Seems like your cosplay’s been a real adventure,” Foxy said, carefully observing her up and down. Nice. Hope she’s not underage. She was short-statured and pretty thin, but positively stacked, sporting a ripe pair of tits barely held in by the fabric of her cosplay.

   “Oh yeah,” Melanie nodded energetically. “You have no idea!”

    “Well, I think you look great,” Foxy praised. “How old are you?”

   “I just turned eighteen!”

   “Uh, now wait a minute, here,” Ghost Wine bitched, frowning at Foxy and then turning toward Melanie. “I’m familiar with many variations of Blaire, but all of them have either a large black bow worn on the top of the head, or cat ears—and you have neither.”

   “Fuck!” Melanie swore, reflexively grabbing at her crown to discover there was nothing there. “I mean, uh. Whoops! I think... I maybe left them in my car. I do have cat ears.”

   “Uh-huh, okay,” Ghost Wine shook her head. The Filipino judge looked even more aggravated. “I think that’ll be all, then. Next in line, please?”

   “Now, now,” Foxy argued, motioning for Melanie not to leave yet. “It’s an honest mistake, and she’s been through a lot to get this far. I think she looks great, can’t you cut her some slack?”

   “Are you fucking serious right now?” Ghost Wine hissed at him in a low voice. “You veto Sarah Star for Best of Show, you wave away almost every single decent cosplayer in line, and then you want to let her walk the stage? Even cat ears aside, Blaire wears thigh-highs, not sneakers.”

   “Sorry,” Melanie apologized, squirming uncomfortably.

   Wow. This girl has a sharp sense of hearing.

   “I did find a pair that was perfect, but they were a little too expensive…” 

   “It’s not fair penalize her for that,” Foxy scowled at the other judge. “Not everyone’s made of money, Ghost Wine. There’s a lot more to cosplay than that—everyone has to start somewhere.”

   “Okay, what. What. Ghost Wine slapped her hands on the judging table. “You know that’s not what I—”

   “We don’t have to give her an award, but we can at least let her walk on stage,” Foxy cut her off. “Everyone was a beginner, once. You don’t have to be mean to her.”

   “Are you fucking serious?!”

   “Hey, both of you—it’s fine,” Joe stood, placating both of them. “We have plenty of slots left, still. She can walk. Not a big deal.”

   “Thank you, Joe,” Foxy nodded in appreciation.

   “Whatever,” Ghost Wine huffed.

   “Thank you!” Melanie chimed in awkwardly. “Joe.”

   “It’s fine,” the judge sighed, running a finger down the partially filled-in list. “Let’s put you… about halfway through. You’ll be number forty, make sure you remember your number.”

   “Thank you so much!” Melanie squeaked out, wriggling with excitement again. “Forty! Got it. I promise I won’t mess up and ruin everything!”

   “Next in line, please,” Ghost Wine impatiently called, still pissed off.

   She’s got a huge ass for such a little body, too, Foxy thought, watching Melanie leave with appreciation. And unlike Mary, she seems fun. Easy to please. By comparison, the lovely Chinese teen waiting for him in the front row of seats seemed practically frigid. It had been good having her around to showcase his own worth, and she was an exotic pretty face, but this Melanie girl seemed so much more imminently… fuckable.

   “I go by Synn,” the next girl introduced herself confidently, “this year, I’m cosplaying Dmirtir Dhampir, from HellState.” She opened her coat slightly to reveal a neatly tailored vest beneath, as well as the dual gunbelts for her pistols.

   “I spent about a month altering patterns from different regency-era men’s clothing so that it’s both accurate for Dmitri, and fits my exact dimensions,” Jordyn continued, slightly turning to show off each hip. “The gunbelts, I made out of six different thrift-store belts and assembled using an awl punch and a rivet gun, while the holsters themselves are water-hardened—I shaped them from scrap leather. All of it I then stained, so that it looks like one matching piece. I hand-stitched the—”

   “Hate to interrupt, but you have to let us ask the questions,” Joe chuckled. “You’re definitely good to walk the stage, let’s put you at… here, you’ll be number sixty-four.”

   “Sixty-four,” Jordyn acknowledged with a smile. “Thank you.”

   “Now, as for winning an award,” Ghost Wine spoke up, “did you make every part of the costume yourself?”

   “I… did not,” Jordyn faltered slightly, and guiltily slid the pistols out of their holsters to hold them up. “Jekyll and Hyde I struggled with, and eventually decided that the most faithful renditions of them would be ordering from a 3-D printer. They’re the only part of the entire outfit—including the boots—that I didn’t make by hand.”

   “I don’t think we should count them,” Foxy mused, enraptured by Jordyn’s confidence and candor. “It’s a special case. She was gunning for accuracy, if you’ll pardon the pun, and you literally can’t get any more accurate than a 3-D printed prop using the actual models. You painted them yourself, I assume?”

   “I did!” Jordyn flashed a bright smile. “Primer, and then a coat of chrome color, followed by a drybrushing of gunmetal gray, and then I used an ink-wash on Hyde, here.”

   The black girl was stunning, with fine features and a breathy voice that sent a pleasant shiver down Foxy’s spine. At first, he’d been sorry to see she wasn’t wearing that skintight blue null suit from Metrazoid from last year, but she was sexy in a whole new way in this getup. 

   Something about the way she carried herself and the way she’d cut the cloth to her dimensions made it seem particularly... classy. The typical HellState vampire cosplayers he’d seen were brash young edgelord kids with lousy store-bought costumes, while Synn instead looked legitimate. She captured all the subtle key points in making the outfit peerlessly elegant, and carried herself with a certain poise and bearing that really sold it.

   “Hmm…” Joe tapped his chin. “Let’s say for now that we won’t rule you out for the guns, and we’ll make a final consideration after we’ve seen everyone in line. Sound good?”

   “Agreed,” Foxy nodded, flashing Jordyn a grin.

   “That’s fine,” Ghost Wine said, giving Jordyn a small wave and a rare smile. “You look great.”

   “Thank you,” Jordyn gave a small bow before turning to leave. “Sixty-four, correct?”

   “Yep, sixty-four,” Joe confirmed. “Could we have the next person in line, please?”

   “Oh, no way,” Foxy snorted to himself as Brian in his Darkmask costume approached the judge’s table. It really is a small convention, after all, huh? That pink-haired ditz that was always clinging to Brian's arm was already slinking out the exit the rejected cosplayers left through, as if she was already certain Foxy wasn’t going to give her a chance.

   “Yeah, I don’t think so, but nice try. No way. Next!”

   “Wait a minute, wait, stop,” Ghost Wine frowned, holding up a hand to indicate Brian’s Hero hero Haruki minion should remain in place. She turned her glare back towards Foxy again. “What exactly’s the problem with this one?”

   “I met this guy earlier,” Foxy shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a very obviously store-bought costume, there’s a bunch of ‘em wandering around the con just like that. All exactly identical.”

   “No, wait,” Fletcher interrupted, trotting up to the judge’s table. “Doesn’t he have a helmet?”

   “Yeah?” Foxy cast a bored look towards Fletcher and drummed his fingertips across the blank legal pad. “So?”

   “None of the other Skullfies I saw going around the convention had a helmet,” Fletcher pointed out, pointing to Brian’s outfit. “Or a belt, or anything. Those store-bought ones just have all their details printed out onto fabric zentai-suits.”

   Fletcher had very clearly seen Brian shuck off the molded plastic helmet to rush over and make sure that pink-haired girl was okay—he even gave up his spot in line to help pick splinters of wood out of the Brady’s cosplay. The scene of Brian carefully plucking sharp bits of wood out of the towering shape of the Ogre King had been a big impression on Fletcher, it was like watching the story of Androcles and the Lion unfold before him. Or maybe that Aesop’s fable that followed after? No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

   “I still don’t see the point in letting him walk,” Foxy shrugged. “Like I said, there’s a bunch of ‘em running already running around the convention.”

   “There’s dozens of Blaire Bellefontes around too,” Ghost Wine pointed out. “AnimeCon’s a big convention.”

   “Yeah, alright then,” Foxy rolled his eyes and gestured indifferently. “Go ahead.”

   “Could we please have your name, the character, and the series?” Joe read out his line.

   “I’m Brian, and I’m cosplaying a Darkmask, from Hero Hero Haruki.”

   “Did you make every single part of your costume yourself?” Foxy challenged.

   “No. I bought the helmet as a kit from a guy who uses a vacuum-former to—”

   “Aha, that’s what I thought,” Foxy interrupted. “You bought it. I think that’s all we need to hear, then.”

   “How’s that any different from getting a prop 3-D printed, so that you can have the most accurate piece available?” Ghost Wine argued, slapping her legal pad on the table. “He looks great. We can at least let him walk.”

   “No,” Foxy decided, shaking his head as if that was completely out of the question. “I don’t think so.”

   “Alright then, I’ll try again some other year,” Brian remarked casually, stepping back.

   “Hey, you don’t have to—” Fletcher started to say.

   “Thank you. Next, please,” Foxy called out.

   Ghost Wine threw her legal pad at Foxy.

   Rather than leaving dispiritedly, however, Brian set his helmet on one of the seats beside Mary in the front row and then remained behind to help the next contestant—the hulking Ogre King—forward.

   “Thanks, man” Brady’s voice drifted out from under the Ogre King’s jaw. “Geez, tough judge’s panel this year, huh?”

   “You’ll do fine,” Fletcher heard Brian assure the cosplayer.

   “Uh, you flunked, Brian, you can leave now,” Mary taunted.

   “Um,” Brian turned to the judges with an apologetic smile as he assisted Brady up to the table and tugged him to a stop when he was close enough. “His friend was helping him move around as a handler, but he had to go, uh… there was that issue.”

   “What are you doing in here, anyways?” Fletcher addressed Mary in a quiet voice, irked by her terrible attitude.

   “Uh, I’m with Foxy,” Mary retorted. “So, I can be wherever I want.”

   “Not today, you can’t,” Fletcher pointed towards the exit. “Foxy’s a stand-in, not a staffer. Get out.”

   “You can’t do that,” Mary scowled and looked over to Foxy for support. Unfortunately for her, all three of the judges were completely enamored with the Ogre King.

   “This one’s absolutely outstanding,” Joe said in admiration. “Could we have your name, the character, and the series?”

   “Exactly, now this is a cosplay,” Foxy agreed.

   “My name is Brady, and I’m cosplaying Ogre King Jötunn, from Journey to the Western River,” the man inside the suit called out, muffled by layers of fabric and foam.

   “I love the details,” Ghost Wine praised. “Little bits like the skulls dangling from the fur skirts, the toothy sneer, all the scars, and the pierced ear. You look like you just walked off of a movie set.”

   “Go on, get out of here,” Fletcher told Mary again as the judges started asking their questions about the process of construction on the Ogre King build. “You’re not staff and you’re not entering the contest, so you need to wait outside.”

*     *     *

   Who the fuck do you think you are? Mary scowled indignantly at Fletcher. She was standing now, hoping Foxy would notice her predicament and speak up for her—but he was still ignoring her for some stupid Ogre. I wasn’t bothering anyone who was actually good enough for the contest! So, what’s your big problem?

   The thrill and excitement of having Foxy tell off that asshole Brian was already getting ruined. Somehow it had been even more satisfying than watching the two confront each other in a fight, because Foxy was a judge. With barely a wave of his hand and a few words, a position of authority was bestowed upon him, a position of power. Of course Brian was going to lose out; she’d been anticipating this since she’d first noticed Brian and the dim-witted Stephanie girl were in line for the contest. Too bad Kelly wasn’t around to see Brian make this total fool of himself.

   But, now this dopey staffer was trying to boss her around like he was in charge. Was he a judge? No. Probably just some stupid dweeb volunteering, whereas Foxy was asked to help fill in for someone. Clearly, Foxy was a talent in demand, while this staff guy just signed up to creep on chicks and go on little power trips like this.

   “I’m leaving, fine,” Mary huffed, sending a last look to Foxy, who was still ignoring her. She grabbed the cute hand-stitched bag Foxy’d bought her from the artist’s alley section, making sure to bump the other chair hard enough for Brian’s helmet to fall over.

   The dumb staffer caught it before it hit the ground, and glared at her.

   “Out. Now.”

   Rolling her eyes at him, she shook her head and stormed off towards the exit, not bothering to look back towards the judge’s table. She was still hoping for Foxy to call out to her when her shoe scuffed an errant piece of metal on the carpeted floor.

   The fuck? It was an iron bangle of some sort. Too thick to be an earring, and Mary swiped it off the ground as she left. Maybe it’s worth something.

   Mary stumbled, blinded for a moment by the flash of a golden gleam as she walked out. She felt… different, as she turned the ring of metal over in her hands. It wasn’t gold—it was a dull and tarnished iron color. Why am I thinking of gold? It’s just… metal.

   Unlike the classical elements of other ancient cultures, China had always considered metal as one of the few principle elements, just like fire or water. While she’d grown up very westernized, how could she not know Taoism and Wu Xing? Her parents were both very business-oriented and favored pretentious antique Chinese art pieces to show off their (otherwise ignored) heritage—and the metal element was always featured prominently, using gold.

  Wealth, ambition. Power and strength, Mary thought to herself, almost swooning. Yeah, doesn’t my Foxy embody all of those metal traits perfectly?

   This was all expensive, Mary found herself cheering up at feeling the weight of the cute bag Foxy’d bought her, and the Korean box-set of DVDs she carried within it. That’s how much he values me. I’m that important to him, he’d buy me anything… because I’m worth it. Foxy was always the right choice, Kelly. Your Brian is dirt, and what I have is REAL gold.

*    *    *

   “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that— could you speak up?” Foxy asked. Brady’s voice was muffled quite a bit from deep within the Ogre costume, even after Brian had helped him shuffle even closer to their table.

   “He said, he used a heat-gun to curve the foam into shape first, then he used a dremel to shape it after that,” Brian answered for them.

   “That’s amazing,” Joe said. “I’ve heard of people using that technique for making foam armor, but I’ve never seen it applied to sculpting out muscle like this.”

   “I think we have our AnimeCon Best in Show for this year,” Ghost Wine proposed.

   “Agreed,” Foxy nodded.

   “Yeah, I’m marking that down, too,” Joe said. “Unless someone else in line really blows us away, I think you’re taking it, Brady. For now, let’s put you at the very end of the line walking onstage, so that you finish out the show.”

   “He says ‘thank you,’” Brian grinned, bowing on Brady’s behalf and turning to help him leave.

   “Hey,” Fletcher called, holding up Brian’s skull helmet. “Don’t want to forget this.”

   “Ah, thank you,” Brian said, stepping over to accept it.

   “We can still get you walking on stage for the Contest,” Fletcher said in a low voice. “Foxy’s been an asshat.”

   “That’s okay,” Brian chuckled. “I’m not too put out about it. I mostly just entered for fun.”

   “You sure, man?” Fletcher asked.

   “Yeah. I was gonna stick around back there to help Brady up on stage, though, if that’s alright.”

   “That’s cool, thank you,” Fletcher said appreciatively. “You’re already mostly in black, you’re practically a stagehand already.”

   “I was a stagehand back in high school,” Brian laughed. “If you guys ever need help with anything. My best friend’s mom ran the whole theatre department, and she ran a tight ship.”

   “No kidding?” Fletcher looked thoughtful. “Ever think about applying to be a staffer, here?”

*     *     *

   “You made it!” Melanie jumped and gave Brian and Brady an energetic wave. “I knew you both would. You guys’re awesome.”

   “Congratulations,” Jordyn grinned at the guys.

   In the conference room adjacent to the enormous Cosplay Contest room, those selected to walk the stage had all gathered in. If the assortment of costumes in the previous line had been impressive, these were all only the best of the best; the cream of the crop. Almost everyone had turned to watch as Brian gingerly helped the Ogre King stoop down to get through the doorway.

   “I, uh, actually didn’t make it,” Brian said, giving them an awkward laugh. “But, I’m sticking around as a handler and assist the Ogre King going up on stage.”

  “What?! No way, you’re lying,” Melanie’s face fell. “How could you not make it? Even I made it. That one judge in the trenchcoat was super nice. If you talk to him, he’ll let you go up!”

   Deep within the carved foam of the Ogre, Brady gave out a snort.

   “Yeah, um. He actually didn’t like me very much,” Brian laughed. “But, it’s okay. I went up on stage year before last, and it was great. Everyone in here looks incredible, I’m really not a match for you guys this year.”

   “I think you’re more than good enough,” Jordyn frowned. “Did they give you any reason?”

   “Reason?” Brady spoke out again. “That middle judge had some sort of vendetta against him.”

   “Eh, I wouldn’t go that far,” Brian said. “Brady, you need help sitting down in that thing?”

   “What?” Melanie seemed aghast. “But, that’s totally not fair at all!”

   “I actually can’t sit in this,” Brady sighed. “If you can help me shift one of these pieces, I would love to lean up against a chair back, though. My legs are killing me.”

   “You got it, boss,” Brian said, already appropriating a nearby chair.

   “Ogre King,” A soft voice called out, and a young woman in a long, flowing dress appeared as cosplayers on either side parted to make way for her. “Did they give you one of the awards?”

   Kelly? Brian did a double-take on seeing her. No… that’s not Kelly. The resemblance is incredible, though. Or maybe it’s just the dress?

   Like the Calamity Queen set Kelly had worn today, this girl’s flowing dress and careful makeup had a sinister air to them, inspiring very similar feelings of horror and veneration. A moment after realizing that this definitely wasn’t Kelly, it occurred to him what this girl was cosplaying—this was Vampire Princess Marcilla from Magi Hunter, and she looked perfectly spot-on. Maybe it’s just the way she did her makeup that looks so much like Kelly’s?

   “Sarah Star!” Jordyn exclaimed in surprise.

   Wow, really? Didn’t even recognize her this year, Brian thought to himself, impressed. Sarah simply gave Jordyn a nod of acknowledgement and then turned her attention back to the Ogre King.

   “Did they tell you which award you won?” Sarah asked.

   “Not for sure,” Brian answered for Brady. “He has a maybe or a probably on Best of show, though.”

   Unsurprised sighs of aggravation sounded out from some of the surrounding cosplayers at hearing the news, as well as a few who voiced their support and appreciation. Like it or not, Brady’s Ogre King cosplay really was one of the most outstanding of all the costumes present. Sarah Star narrowed her eyes, pressed her mouth into a tight line, and then turned and walked away without another word.

*     *     *

   Pre-judging for AnimeCon’s cosplay contest had finally ended, and the waiting audience of impatient photographers and attendees were finally allowed to file into the event room and find their seats. Between the arduous struggle and bickering back and forth as Foxy and Ghost Wine butted heads repeatedly and the incident with the contestant who’d rigged some kind of flash pot in his prop staff, the event was actually running twenty minutes late, according to the schedule printed within the booklets.

   “Did I win anything?” Sarah was blunt as she stared down Foxy with her arms crossed.

   “You know I can’t reveal that to you,” Foxy chuckled. “But, no. You didn’t win anything.”

   The glare she’d been shooting him froze in place and she stiffened, trying to gauge whether or not he was being serious with her. Dressed in the flowing elegance of her Vampire Princess Marcilla dress and with her carefully painted face, she made a beautiful, if slightly somber sight. He’d been aware of the cosplayer Sarah Star for a long time; locally, she was by far the most famous cosplayer around. He couldn’t help but think he saw something more to her now, however, something familiar about her face. She reminds me of Kelly. Wonder if it’s just some cosplay primadonna thing, that makes them put off the same vibe?

   “Why?” Sarah’s voice was cold.

   “Short answer—you’ve reached your limit. This is as far as you go, in regards to the cosplay contest,” Foxy answered honestly. “As for the long answer…”

   “Go on,” She asked, gritting her teeth.

   “Of the three prizes, you were only even eligible for Superior Craftsmanship, and Joe said that’s really more for outstanding large props than it is costumes.”

   “Only eligible for Craftsmanship? What about Best of Show, or Judge’s Choice? Why wouldn’t I—”

   “Apparently, because you’ve won each of those awards in past years,” Foxy shrugged.

   “Bullshit,” Sarah spat out, livid. “What fucking rule says I can’t win those over and over again?”

   “There isn’t one,” Foxy nodded and gave her an understanding smile. “But, it makes it a lot less likely that they’ll pick you. The way Ghost Wine explained it, because you’ve won those in the past, they set the bar that much higher when they grade you. Your outfit this year looks amazing, in my opinion, certainly—but, they said it was about on the same level as your past cosplays, and that to win again you’d need to really outdo yourself.”

   None of that was true, of course. Ghost Wine had been gushing over how beautiful the details on the dress were, and Joe had quietly proposed naming Sarah Star as Judge’s Choice again... but Foxy disagreed with them. He had other plans for this girl.

   “That’s such bullshit!”

   “I think so, too,” he agreed, nodding again. “Of course, I might be able to help you out a little… if you can do a little something for me.”

   “...What do you want.”

   “Don’t know if you knew,” Foxy started, “But, I throw this pretty big after-hours AnimeCon get-together every year. Lots of important people show up… and I think of you as pretty important, too. Come make an appearance at my party. Wear something sexy, socialize, hobnob with the other higher-ups of all the little fandom communities. Honestly, you belong there with us anyways. This contest thing? It’s beating a dead horse, you don’t have to keep competing. Everyone already knows you’re the best cosplayer around.”

   “I heard about the party you had last year,” Sarah said slowly, carefully choosing her words. “I can go. But, I’m not drinking. Or flirting with people, or—anything like that.”

   “No one’ll pressure you into anything you don’t want,” Foxy promised. “I’ll make sure of it.”

   “I don’t know,” Sarah gave him a reluctant look. “The stories I heard made it sound like things get out of hand, and… certain kinds of girls always get invited. I’m not like that at all.”

   “Well, I’ll still be extending invitation to some easy—uh, that is, some girls who’re easy on the eyes. You know, eye candy to spruce up the party. That’s just something I do to keep certain people happy, they’ve come to expect that kind of thing. You’re nothing like those girls, though—you’re Sarah Star. Everyone knows you, you’re a big name.”

   “Uh-huh. And... what’ll you do for me, then, if I go?”

   “I’ll talk to the program staff. We’ll have you come out as the very first person on stage,  introduce you with all those past titles you’ve earned. Then, the whole thing seems like a… you know, a passing on the torch sorta thing, rather than you being defeated in the contest this year.”

   “I was not defeated in the contest this year.”

   “Exactly,” Foxy smiled. “This way, it’ll put you on a different level than the other contestants; you’re not competing with them, you’re the one in position to hand them the awards. Hell, I can probably convince Joe to let you go up onstage and actually hand this year’s winners their awards. Present it to them personally.”

   “I don’t know if I like that idea,” Sarah frowned.

   “Listen, you’re not really getting anywhere even if you’d won the same awards all over again,” Foxy said. “This is past that, above that. The next step for you.”

   “...Okay, whatever. Fine.”

   “Okay?”

   “I’ll go to your party,” Sarah agreed. “Make sure I get to be the one to hand them the awards.”

   “I will,” Foxy promised. “My buddy Fletcher is practically running the event, here. Make sure to wear something sexy tonight.”

   “I’m not one of those kind of girls,” Sarah warned again.

   “Oh, I know you’re not,” Foxy laughed. “Although… now that I think of it, I know just who to rope in, now.”

*     *     *

   “Fuck yeah I wanna go to a party!” Melanie exclaimed, bouncing in place. “I love parties!”

   Behind the stage set up in the enormous cosplay contest event room, the adjacent conference room was filled with cosplayers getting ready to walk out was bustling with excitement. Lined up now in order of when they were to appear on stage, the bubbly dark-haired girl cosplaying Blaire had finally been separated from her new friend Jordyn. Brady and his impromptu helper Brian were relegated the whole way back to the very end of the line.

   “Awesome,” Foxy said, passing her a slip of paper. “We’re in the Wingfield Grand just a block away, we have a huge suite on the second floor. It’s gonna be a blast. I was just thinking to myself how cool it’d be to introduce you to everyone as Melaneko.”

   “Ohmigod! I totally forgot!” Melanie spun, grabbing the shoulders of the girl beside her in line. “I have a cosplay name! You won’t believe what it is!”

   “...Is it Melaneko?” Chloe grimaced, squirming out from the girl’s excited grasp. As the thirty-ninth cosplayer assigned to cross the stage, she was right next to Melanie in the new line. “That’s, uh… cute.”

   “Isn’t it? Melaneko! There’s like, other people who go by ‘neko,’ I guess, but no one but me has Melaneko! I’m Melaneko, and you’re... Miss Angie?”

   “I said it was Miss Anne Dree, actually,” Chloe rebutted, her remaining patience obviously draining out of her with each spoken sentence. “Not Miss Angie.”

   “Misandry Cosplay, huh? I love it, I’ll have to look up your page later,” Foxy praised, looking over the Magical Doll Himari cosplayer with open appreciation. She’d been one of the last ones to pass muster to walk the stage, but she was leggy and had a gorgeous face—how would he ever forget her? “Any interest in a party after the con? There’ll be a ton of free liquor.”

   “I love liquor!” Melanie jumped in again.

   “I’ll take an invitation,” Chloe said, turning away from Melanie with disgust and looked back to Foxy. “But, I probably won’t ever show up. I’m meeting my boyfriend later.”

   “That’s a tough sell,” Foxy laughed, but he ripped off another scrap of paper and scribbled his room number on it for her. “But, what the hell. In case you change your mind.”

   “I won’t,” Chloe said. She took the slip from him, folded it, and tucked it beneath the band of her leotard. “But, thank you.”

   “Hey, no pressure,” Foxy shrugged, seeing Chloe’s hesitation. He leaned in a little closer, and spoke as if he was confiding a secret to her. “Just, thought it’d be cool if you made an appearance… since it’s very, very likely you’re be winning Judge’s Choice, this year. Congratulations, Miss Anne Dree Cosplay.”

   “Really?” Chloe couldn’t help but smile at him. “Is it okay for you to tell me that?”

   “Sure, you earned it,” Foxy nodded, sending a glance back towards the red coat of Jordyn visible much further down the line. “It’s down to either you or that awful Dmitri chick—and she bought a whole bunch of parts of her costume, rather than actually making them.”

   “Dmitri…?” Melanie blinked, leaning out of line to look down towards Jordyn. “Dmitri Dhampir? What?”

   “Hard to believe she was even in the running,” Chloe smiled sweetly, rolling her eyes. “I normally do cosplays from HellState—so I could see, at a single glance, that her outfit is nothing special. You can tell she was banking on getting charity points just because of her skin color.”

   “She… what?” Melanie asked in bewildered confusion. “You’re not talking about Synn, right? The Dmitri that’s over there?”

   “Of course, Synn’s still pretty cool,” Foxy reassured Melanie. “If Misandry here isn’t interested, I might as well go invite Synn her to the party instead.”

   “I’ll think about it,” Chloe shrugged, speaking in a distant, non-committal voice. As Foxy watched, she glanced down the line again, distracted. As they’d been standing there, this girl in the Magical Doll Himari getup had been looking down that way quite a bit, actually.

   Who’s she on the lookout for?

   “Synn’s really cool,” Melanie spoke up quickly. “She helped me fix my, uh, well my everything.”

   “I’m sure she’s great,” Chloe said, shooting Melanie a patronizing look. “But, this is a competition—not a charity.”

   “Sad but true,” Foxy nodded. “That girl who won Best of Show last year, Sarah Star, she didn’t even merit an honorable mention this year. She’s on the verge of tears right now, they’re sending her out first. Contests can be tough.”

   “Aw, that poor girl,” Melanie said, turning to look towards the front of the line. “Which one is she?”

   “I don’t remember,” Foxy lied. “She was in something real drab. She’ll be lucky if anyone remembers her, after this year.”

   “But that’s so sad!” Melanie pouted.

   “Just how things are,” Foxy sighed. “Well, I’ve gotta go handle some things. Good luck out there on stage, you two.”

*    *    *

   “A party?” Jordyn arched an eyebrow at Foxy.

   “Yeah, every year after the con a bunch of friends get together at the Grand Wingfield.”

   “Okay… but, why me?” She asked. She looked flattered but remained cautious, regarding him with an amused smile as she tried to decide what his game was.

   “Honestly, because I feel kinda bad,” Foxy chuckled, giving her an awkward look. “I really think you should’ve won Judge’s Choice... but that other judge just wouldn’t have it.”

   “Ah, right,” Jordyn nodded ruefully. “Because of my guns, huh?”

   “Yeah.”

   “Well, that’s okay. I have to thank you guys for still letting me come out on stage.”

   “Hah, I love your laid-back attitude,” Foxy gave her a grin. “The girl who’s winning Judge’s Choice is kinda… well, she seems really petty. I can’t stand her, personally.”

   “Oh,” Jordyn said, raising both brows for a moment and smiling back at him. She didn’t seem interested at all in which girl that was.

   Damn, she really IS pretty cool. I like her more and more.

   “Anyways—yeah, here’s the room number if you’re interested in swinging by sometime tonight. It’s a block away, at the Grand Wingfield Hotel.”

   “Thanks. I’ll definitely keep it in mind.”

   “Cool. I’ve gotta go talk to the organizer real quick before the first girl goes on stage. Catch you later, hopefully.

*     *     *

   “You want to change the program now?” Fletcher laughed, thinking the notion was even more funny than it was irritating. “When we’re running twenty minutes behind? First of all, Foxy; you’re a temporary stand-in to the judge’s panel for the contest. That’s it. I don’t see where you think you can suddenly—”

   “I know, trust me— I know,” Foxy said, holding up his hands. “I’m not asking for a huge change, though. Just hear me out.”

   “Nope,” Fletcher brushed him off. The event was about to start, and he didn’t have time to deal with any nonsense right now. “Go take a seat somewhere to watch the show, your role in this is over.”

   Something about Foxy’s ‘suggestion’ rankled with Fletcher, and as he made his rounds checking on all of the staffers, the entire situation seemed more and more suspicious to him.

   “Hey, what do you want me to do with all this?” One of the volunteer staffers asked, jangling metal pieces and wooden splinters in a dustpan.

   “What is it?” Fletcher glanced over.

   “The rest of that stuff we swept up before letting everyone in,” the volunteer reported, hand hovering over the pieces as if he was about to sort through them. “Looks like one of the rings from that monk dude’s staff?”

   “Well, don’t touch it—it’s evidence, for now,” Fletcher instructed. “Put it in back behind the stage with the other dustpan and the bin full of little bits. We’ll see later if convention center security needs to look it over, or anything like that.”

   “Everything cool?” Dave asked, indicating the growing impatience of the audience filling the panel room. As their designated host for the event, he was also doubling as their sound technician—that is, he’d arranged dozens upon dozens of anime music clips into a Vidtube playlist, based on the numbered cosplayers in their order of appearance. In addition to introducing each of the contestants to the stage, he would carefully stop and start that playlist as the show required. “We ready to get started?”

   “Yeah,” Fletcher affirmed. “I’ll get the room lights.”

*     *     *

   “Shit. Shit!” Sarah swore, frantically stepping back to check under her feet and then struggling to whirl in place with the long train of her dress. “My pendant brooch is gone.”

   “Pendant brooch?” Liz asked, trying to help her scan the ground. Unfortunately, scant moments later, all the banks of overhead lights turned off for the contest, and it was simply too dark to see very far. “Well... fuck. What’s it look like? Is it important?”

   “It’s a big, antique-looking metal clasp,” Sarah explained. “Like... a circle made out of metal, with a thing going through it. Has little molded leaves along the outer edge. We cast it out of aluminum, in our little miniature forge.”

   “Uhh, well if you didn’t drop it right here, we’re not gonna be able to find it,” Liz pointed out, crouching down to help Sarah lift up several feet of dress. “S’not here. Can you make do?”

   “I’ll have to, I guess,” Sarah sighed. “Fuck! It’s supposed to hold part of my dress in a certain way. Hopefully we can at least find it before I go back up on stage again.”

   “That sure you’re gonna win this year?” Liz chuckled, shaking her head. “Damn, wish I had your confidence.”

   “We’re starting in about sixty seconds,” A volunteer staffer trotted over to advise them. “Be ready to go up when you’re called.”

   “I’m missing part of my costume,” Sarah informed him. 

   “...You’re kidding,” the volunteer winced.

   “It’s a pendant brooch, like, a little metal circle with a—”

   “Wait, hold on!” The frazzled staff guy seemed to remember something, and he ducked over to the rear of the stage where he grabbed a dustpan and returned, carefully keeping it level so as not to spill its contents. “...Is this it?”

   Picking the thick iron ring of metal out of the pan, Sarah felt her hopes fall. This isn’t it. This is just some random junk—

   “Ow!” She exclaimed, flicking the piece back into the dustpan and inspecting her finger. “It’s sharp.”

   “That’s not it?” The panicking volunteer looked crestfallen.

   “No, that isn’t it,” Sarah shook her head distractedly. Yellow motes of sunlight seemed to be wafting down through the air, and Sarah glanced upwards and then looked around in confusion. She blinked, clearing her head. Must’ve been some trick of the light?

   “Sarah! Sarah!” Qin Wanwan called out. “One of the girls back there just stepped on this—isn’t this yours?”

   “Oh my god,” Sarah exhaled a breath of relief, accepting the pendant brooch from her friend. “Thank you so much! Literally, just in time!”

*     *     *

   “Joe—did Foxy say anything to you about changes to the program?” Fletcher asked, leaning down so that his buddy could hear him over the noise within the room. Sitting at the same staff table, Dave leaned over with interest, one hand covering the head of his microphone.

   “Changes? No,” Joe shook his head. “Why, what’s up? What happened?”

   “I think... Foxy’s been abusing authority toward his own interests.”

   “What? How—why? In what way?” Joe actually seemed surprised. “That’s so stupid.”

   “It’s not stupid if he doesn’t get caught,” Fletcher sighed, scowling inwardly at Joe’s naiveté. Sometimes always looking for the best in people had his friend failing to see some pretty big warning signs. At that point, WE would be the stupid ones.

   “I guess,” Joe frowned and looked around, trying to see where Foxy had run off to since. “What do you want to do?”

   “I know you keep track of what each judge votes,” Fletcher said, giving Joe a serious look. “And, they’re weighted, somehow? How much would taking Foxy’s vote out of the equation change the end results of the contest?”

   “Uh… all of his votes?” Joe looked startled for a moment, and flipped pages in the legal pad to his competition notes. “Looks like… quite a bit, actually? Just about the only award he actually agreed with us on was Brady’s Ogre King. The Judge’s Choice and Superior Craftsmanship would change hands and be completely different.”

   “I thought so,” Fletcher said heavily. “I want to revoke all of Foxy’s judgements for the contest.”

   “Fuuuck. Like, right now?”

   “Yeah.”

   “This gonna be another holdup?” Dave asked, about to switch the mic back off.

   “Not for you,” Fletcher gestured for him to go ahead. “We’ll figure it all out while everyone walks.”

*     *     *

   “Welcome everyone to the main event—the AnimeCon cosplay contest! We have a great turnout of cosplayers this year, and I hope everyone’s excited to see them! First in our lineup for this evening is Sarah Star, and she’s cosplaying the Vampire Princess Marcilla, from Magi Hunter!” With a subtle fade-in, the haunting organ melody of Marcilla’s theme music began to play.

   Although more than a little miffed that she hadn’t been introduced as the previous winner of Judges’ Choice and Best of Show from past AnimeCons as promised, Sarah displayed the poise and professionalism one would expect of an experienced cosplay veteran. Carefully drawing up the front of her dress so she could ascend to the stage, she strode out into the spotlight with slow, graceful steps. If anything, Foxy’s failure to follow through helped her properly get into character; her demeanor was cold and expressionless to the point of being inhuman, and the enormous audience crammed into the cosplay contest room roared with approval, cheers, applause, and whistles.

   “That was Sarah Star, everyone!”

   Knowing her cue to exit the stage, Sarah Star gave a solemn bow and leisurely walked across the other side of the platform to the exit, trailing the beautiful train of her Marcilla dress behind her as she left.

   “Next up, we have Liz Licks! She’s cosplaying a Soul Priestess, from Shinobi Souls!” This time, one of the peppy action music themes from the anime was played.

   “That’s one of the girls that helped me with my costume!” Melanie exclaimed, peeking out from her place in line.

   “Ssh,” Chloe shushed. 

   “What kinda cosplay name is ‘Liz Licks?’” Melanie wondered out loud. “Is that like, a lesbian thing…?”

   “Nah, her name has to do with her lizard,” one of the guys in line near them, an Inferno Marine cosplayer in rigid plastic armor, whispered over helpfully.

   “...Lizard?”

   “Yeah. She has a bearded dragon—always has it in her profile picture, flicking its tongue out right at her nose.”

   “That’s so cool! Liz Licks! A bearded dragon?!” Melanie burst out. “Cutie little spikey boi?! That’s so fuckin’ awesome!!”

   “Ssh,” Chloe shushed, keeping her eye on the competition on-stage.

   Unlike Sarah Star, Liz took a more active approach—she performed the healing pose Soul Priestesses were famous for, first facing the left wing of the crowd at at angle, and then another healing pose facing the right wing of the audience. The various photographers clustered up right in front by the stage seemed to appreciate it, showering her with dozens of flickering flashes, and the response from the attendees was almost as enthusiastic as it’d been for Sarah.

   “That was Liz Licks, as a Soul Priestess!” The announcer called, and Liz broke character, waving energetically to everyone and trotting off the stage.

   “Fuck, what do I do when I get up there?” Melanie asked, realizing she hadn’t planned quite that far ahead. “Hey, what do you think I should I do?”

   Chloe gave her an annoyed shrug, focusing on the line of cosplayers heading up one by one onto the stage. Earlier, she’d seemed suspiciously vigilant of someone in the very back of the line. But, as the tail end of the chain of queued cosplayers was all the way back in the conference waiting room, that apparently wasn’t her concern now.

   “Well, what are you going to do?” Melanie asked, poking at Chloe’s side to get her attention.

   “It’s a contest,” Chloe snapped, turning to shoot the younger girl an icy glare. “I’m going up there to win. Figure out how to lose gracefully on your own.”

   “Sheesh, okay, yeah, whatever,” Melanie huffed. “You look real sweet and everything, but you don’t really act much like Himari, y’know?”

   “Fuck off.”

*     *     *

   After appearing in front of everyone, the cosplayers stepping down to the opposite side of the stage would begin forming a new line along the wall. There, Sarah Star regarded the waiting Foxy with an unfriendly look.

   “So?” She asked.

   “I’ve told the staff what we’re going to do,” Foxy explained. “They’re probably going to introduce you as the past Best of Show and everything after everyone walks. Y’know, when they actually have you hand them the awards.”

   “Probably?” Sarah scoffed, glancing around for one of the staffers. “Where’s someone who can tell me more than probably? Is all of this a might, maybe, probably thing, or is this actually happening?”

   “I’ll see what I can do,” Foxy sighed, ducking back over towards the announcer’s table through the dark of the enormous room, skirting around the hundreds of filled seats.

   Fletcher intercepted him before he made it to the staff table.

   “Whoa, hey,” Fletcher said, standing in Foxy’s path and holding up his hands. “Why don’t you take a seat and watch the contest, okay?”

   “Sorry, I need to talk to the staff,” Foxy apologized, trying to brush past the obstruction.

   “I’m staff,” Fletcher reminded him, stopping him in his tracks with a hand on his chest. “...Why don’t you sit down?”

   “Next up, we have Miss Anne Dree, with an old anime classic—Magical Doll Himari!”

   The eruption of cheers was expected, and only intensified as Chloe appeared, her enormous twin-tails bobbing along behind her. While the character had long been a fan-favorite and Himari cosplays were almost ubiquitous at any anime convention, few had the appropriate physique to do her justice. Stepping up onto the stage with the long, slender legs of a runway model and sporting the difficult-to-craft enormous pair of spiralling hair extensions, Chloe did indeed look the part. Her fine-featured face was pulled into a cheery smile, and she basked in the spotlight with confidence, immediately striking one of Magical Doll Himari’s signature poses.

   “Let’s hear it for Miss Anne Dree, everyone!”

   As her moment concluded, Chloe performed an impressive twirl—an actual ballet piroutte she’d been practicing for this moment—and snapped out a victory pose, making a ‘V’ with her fingers. Then she relaxed, giving the crowd a smile and a friendly wave before prancing offstage.

   “Now we have Melaneko, as Blaire from EMRLD!”

   Let’s see you follow up that act, dumb fucking bimbo, Chloe smirked to herself. She was looking forward to watching that annoying brat behind her stand there awkwardly, her hands at her sides—comically unsure of how to even properly position for photos in the face of so much overwhelming attention.

   Excitement and anticipation rushed to Melanie’s head—and, as her heartbeat accelerated, everything in sight took on a slightly green sheen, and the previously dark room seemed so much easier to see. That strange hyper-awareness had returned, and Melanie felt her senses stretch out in every direction to encompass the stage platform, the line of cosplayers, even most of the audience. Every hair on her body seemed to stand on end, energized, and out of impulse—she leapt. Unexpectedly, her jump easily cleared the edge of the stage, she tucked into a deft roll, and then slid to a stop midstage in a crouch, one knee on the ground and her opposite hand splayed out—already poised to react, ready to burst into motion again.

   Holy… FUCKS! How’d I just do that?!

   Shocked into stunned silence, it was a moment before the crowd could react, exploding out into a deafening roar of cheers and shouts, dozens of fans even rising up out of their seats to stand. Having acted on the spur of the moment, and without having actually investing any thought into it, Melanie was almost as surprised as everyone else. She blinked forward into the flash of dozens of cameras until it became disorienting.

   “That was—wow, right?—that was Melaneko cosplay!”

   Sheepishly rising up out of her low stance, Melanie was waving awkwardly to everyone with an enormous smile on her face when the stitches along the side of her Blaire Bellefonte costume gave way. The white and black outfit had already been straining at the seams, and with a tiny rip from her exaggerated performance earlier, her entire upper garment fell. For the second time this evening, Melanie’s breasts were in uninhibited view of the open public. This time, however, was while on stage in front of dozens of cameras and a multitude of exuberant attendees.

   “Eep!”

   Melanie’s reaction was drowned out by the calamity of noise roaring through the room in the form of whoops, hollers, cheers, whistles, and screams, and people as far away as AnimeCon’s main lobby could hear the sudden and surprising increase in volume. Crossing her hands over her chest and clapping a hand over each starkly visible nipple, Melanie gave the audience a shy grin and scampered off stage, the remnant of her cosplay top fluttering behind her from where it still clung around one of her shoulders. There was an awkward pause in the event lineup as the EMRLD theme finally faded out.

   Melanie’s mishap hadn’t escaped the notice of Foxy and Fletcher; both of them simultaneously abandoned their deadlocked stalemate at the rear of the room and were hurrying back over in the girl’s direction.

   “What’s your problem with me, anyways?” Foxy was getting aggravated; he didn’t have time for this.

   “You were abusing the authority given to you as a judge for your own interests,” Fletcher growled back, trying to outpace Foxy.

   “Of course I have my own preferences as to what cosplays I like and don’t like,” Foxy snorted, shucking his signature black trenchcoat off of his shoulders as he strode forward. “That’s the way things work—that’s why there’s three judges, and only majority opinion decides.”

   In a matter of moments, the two had crossed the breadth of the room between the seated audience on one side and the cosplayers who’d already walked on the other, reaching Melanie at the end of that line.

   “Are you alright?” Fletcher called out to the dark-haired girl.

   “I swear it was an accident,” Melanie laughed, giving him her best puppy-dog eyes. “I really didn’t mean to, this time! Don’t get mad at me!” 

   “No one’s mad at you,” Foxy assured her, protectively slipping his trenchcoat around the girl’s shoulders. 

   Chloe, who’d been the nearest contestant waiting offstage there, rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically, visibly disgusted by the entire turn of events.

   Seeing that Melanie was in no way traumatized after finding herself exposed again, and in front of AnimeCon’s largest crowd, no less, Fletcher didn’t press the issue. Instead, he rushed over towards the photographers who’d taken up the premium space right in front of the stage.

   “If any of you got that by accident—delete it,” Fletcher instructed all of them. “I think she’s a minor, and if it’s found on your camera, there’ll be consequences.” He didn’t really think she was under eighteen, but his words had the intended effect, and several amused smiles disappeared in an instant.

   Grimacing at what a fiasco the event was turning out to be, Fletcher gave Dave a wave, signalling he should resume and introduce the next cosplayer.

*     *     *

   Bundled up within Foxy’s trenchcoat, Melanie was positively giddy with excitement. Flashing everyone hadn’t been something she would’ve done intentionally, but she definitely didn’t regret that it happened, either. To her, it was even cooler than the awesome way she jumped up on stage. That! Was! Fucking! Amazing! I can’t wait to tell everyone back home about this!

   “You sure know how to get everyone’s attention,” Foxy slid his hand down to the small of her back. It didn’t seem weird to her at that particular moment, either—she was in his coat, after all.

   “Oooh yeah,” Melanie agreed with a giggle, so pumped up and excited she was nearly vibrating in place. “Titties do that, sometimes!”

   “They do, do they?” Foxy asked with a chuckle.

   “Like you wouldn’t believe!” Melanie asserted, looking up at him with an enormous smile. She was holding the trenchcoat closed with both hands from the inside, but she wasn’t doing a great job. “That wasn’t even the first time it’s happened today! And, they were both total accidents!”

   “Yeah, I bet,” Chloe spat. “Either put those things away, or go get a room.”

   “Ah, I did give you a slip with my room number on it, right?” Foxy lit up at the reminder.

   “You did! I’m definitely gonna be there!” Melanie promised.

   “Cool!” Foxy grinned. “How ‘bout after everything here’s all wrapped up, I take you out to the vendor’s room and buy you a T-shirt or something to wear?”

   “You’d buy me a T-shirt?!” Melanie exclaimed in surprise, her eyes going wide. “Like, for me to keep?! For free?!”

   “Well, yeah.”

   “Omigod, you’re—you’re the bestest!” Melanie cried out, and she latched onto him in a fierce hug, letting the coat fall open.

   “Hey, s’no problem,” Foxy grinned at feeling her bare breasts squash up against him in an enthusiastic way. “I mean, you’ll havta wear something to the party tonight, right?”

   “Thank you thank you thank you so much for everything!!” Melanie said, pulling just far enough away from him to land an appreciative smooch on his unsuspecting cheek. 

   “No big deal, really,” Foxy insisted, pleasantly surprised. “Come find me when the contest’s over?”

   “...Yeah!” Melanie agreed breathlessly, and she staring at him intensely for a long moment, as if mesmerized by him. The instant her lips made contact with his skin, it was as if something changed, and her vision took on a greenish hue from before. Her surroundings seemed sluggish, as if everything around her except for Foxy was slightly in slow-motion, and Melanie was simply unable to look away from him. She was vaguely aware of the continuing cosplay contest, the several other contestants who had crossed the stage and lined up behind her at this point, but her attention was locked firmly on Foxy in front of her.

   “Cool! Hang on to my coat ‘till then,” Foxy said, giving her a roguish smile as he pulled away from her.

   “Hehehe!” Melanie had an eerie grin as she followed him with her eyes, and she fidgeted in place from one foot to the other, trembling with anticipation and barely able to resist the urge to pounce.

*     *     *

   “Hey,” A cold voice called out to Foxy as he made his way past the line of cosplayers to the back of the room. When Foxy turned, he found Sarah Star looking at him expectantly.

   “Caught a bit of what you and that staff guy said, when you two ran past,” Sarah said. “He’s the one making things difficult for all of this?”

   “Yeah,” Foxy replied, giving her a helpless shrug. “Well, I should really say he’s the one making things difficult for you. You’re Sarah Star, there’s all sorts of jealous punks out there who can’t stand to be in your shadow. Who knows which one of them’s been trying to pull you down a peg? The staff here are getting super corrupt—none of this is even any sort of fair contest, anymore.”

       “...This is such bullshit,” Sarah hissed in vexation, trying to see where that staffer—Fletcher—had gone. Her fist clenched and unclenched as she leaned out of the line, trembling with anger.

   “Hey, I’m on your side,” Foxy said, taking her hand and giving it a comforting squeeze. “This is bullshit. I’m gonna go talk to them again, and see what I can do.”

   “A-alright,” Sarah said distractedly. “Yeah.”

   She was still slightly stunned as she watched him hurry on, almost as if someone was shining a light right in her face. Foxy wasn’t one of her friends, and they’d never really even spoken before in the past years at AnimeCon—they’d simply been aware of each other’s reputations. So, why is it like this…?

   She held up the hand he’d squeezed, looking at it in a daze. This awful contest situation that seemed to conspire against her felt like an oppressive stormy cloudfront, blocking out her long-anticipated chance at happiness this year. But, then Foxy was breaking through it all, like a yellow ray of sunshine. A column of warmth and light, falling on her and no one else. A single sunbeam that chose her, a spotlight that promised it was her time to shine.

*     *     *

   “Next up, we have Synn, as Dmitri Dhampir, from HellState!” the announcer heralded over the speakers, and the familiar sound of the HellState intro began to play. Jordyn arrived in a vermillion flourish of her coat to cheers and shouts, and then stalked forward to the very front of the stage. She stood there, unmoving, and wore an impassive face for a long moment under the flickering light of camera flashes, before her face twisted into the widest, most evil grin she could manage. She drew both Jekyll and Hyde, levelling the pair of pistols out across the crowd to an explosive fanfare of applause and approval.

   “That was Synn as Dmitri, everyone!”

   Jordyn holstered her guns and waggled an aristocratic gloved finger at the audience as she casually stepped away. She barely made it down the stairs on the opposite side when she was immediately waylaid by Melanie running up to her.

   “You were so cool!” Melanie exclaimed, once again bouncing with excitement. “You were amazing!”

   “What happened to your costume?!” Jordyn looked at the girl hidden beneath the trenchcoat in shock. Very nude breasts could be glimpsed within the gap of the coat. “Are you alright?!”

   “You didn’t see? Oh my god!” Melanie danced in place. “I totally ripped it! It’s all busted! I can’t wait to see all the pictures!”

   “I was like, twenty people back,” Jordyn admitted, conscientiously closing the trenchcoat around Melanie and buttoning it for her. “I didn’t see, but I definitely heard something. They made a huge commotion, right after you went up.”

   “I know, right!” Melanie danced in place ecstatically. “It was crazy!”

   “Whose coat is this?”

   “It’s…” Melanie looked perplexed. “That one judge guy’s? I don’t think I know his name? But, he was super nice, and he even invited me to a big party later!”

   “I think I know just who you mean,” Jordyn smiled thoughtfully. “Let me see what’s left of your Blaire top! How bad is it?”

*     *     *

   “No way in hell,” Fletcher shook his head adamantly. “We just fixed all of this.”

   “Yeah, you ‘fixed’ it, alright,” Foxy said sarcastically. “I think too many honest results have been getting ‘fixed’ around here in these cosplay contests, and that’s a problem.”

   “We just got it all figured out all over again, and just in time,” Joe said helplessly, holding up his hands. “If Fletcher says there’s anything… circumspect, at all, then this is all we can do, right now!”

   “What the hell is going on?” Ghost Wine demanded, trotting over from where she’d been sitting in the audience. 

   “We had to change the contest results,” Fletcher explained, holding up the re-evaluated legal pad Joe had just finished drawing up. “We took out Foxy’s votes.”

   “Finally, someone who’ll listen to reason,” Foxy said in exasperation, turning to appeal to Ghost Wine. “Don’t you think it’s awfully suspicious how—”

   “Shut the fuck up,” Ghost Wine glared, not looking towards him. “Does it change who won?”

   “Yeah,” Joe confirmed, leaning forward to point at names on the notepad Fletcher had. “It’s totally different. The award for—”

   “Good,” Ghost Wine interrupted, taking the contest results and slapping them on the staff table. “Then, I’m happy. Can we get this asshat Foxy out of here, now?”

   “Keep it down, you guys’re gonna throw me off,” Dave complained, covering the head of the mic and leaning away from it. Taking a deep breath, he prepared the last audio clip of the day on his laptop and brought the microphone back up. “Last—but definitely not least—we have Brady, cosplaying Ogre King Jötunn, from Journey to the Western River!”

   The King of the Ogres bobbed slowly into view as Brian carefully helped Brady navigate the steps, and then the hulking mass of muscle and violence was stomping into the spotlight, bulging arms held out in a fearsome pose that promised carnage to anyone unlucky enough to be within his grasp. Between the enormous teeth of the Ogre’s snarling grin and the sheer size of the costume, several of the photographers in front subconsciously backed up a step.

   The crowd thundered with applause and shouts of approval, and the Ogre King raised his arms higher in response, eliciting even more ardent screams and shouts. The flickering flashes of the photographers snapping shot after shot even looked like a magic spell bursting towards the oversized creature, and Brady shifted the bulk of his costume as if to angrily ward off the offending lights.

   Unlike all the cosplayers who’d preceded him, Brady didn’t receive an exit cue. When the Western River Evil Marches theme ended, Brian hopped up onto the stage and guided Brady several steps back and out of the way, before the Darkmask minion ducked down and out of view again. A cheer or two went out from the audience at Brian, surprisingly, but no one seemed surprised they were having the Ogre King remain on stage, because he was sure to win one of the major awards.

   “For our first of the AnimeCon Cosplay Contest awards, we have Judge’s Choice, with a five hundred dollar prize! And, this year’s winner is… Synn Cosplay, with Dmitri Dhampir!”

   “What,” Jordyn blurted out in surprise. Applause and cheering sounded out across the event room for her, and she still felt stunned as the cosplayers in line next to her turn towards her. I won? I really won?

   She strode as quickly as she could back up towards the stage, embarrassed and elated in equal measure. I mean, I know I did a really great job this year with Dmitri… but I really won an award?!

   “Let’s have a huge round of applause for Synn, everybody!”

   What. Chloe glared out at the enthusiastic audience in growing anger and disgust. It felt like they were mocking her, like she’d taken a punch to the gut and everyone found it terribly funny. Why the fuck are they clapping like monkeys when I’m the one being hurt, here? Why would SHE win, in that generic red piece of shit? Is this really where we’re all at, right now? A DIVERSITY win, instead of something that somebody actually fucking earns? I can’t believe this. I literally can’t believe this.

   That airheaded bimbo beside her in line wearing only the trenchcoat was cheering and actually jumping in place like a brainless buffoon at hearing Synn had won Judge’s Choice. Can we not? Can we just fucking not?

   “Next up, we have the prize for Superior Craftsmanship, a seven hundred and fifty-dollar prize! I think we can all agree that the one who deserves that the most this year is… Brady, with his Ogre King!”

   Brady raised the Ogre King’s arms again in a gesture of triumph, but most surprised by the announcement was Sarah. Her head immediately snapped over towards where Foxy was at the back of the room. He met eyes with her, seemed to mentally calculate for a moment, and then his expression finally eased into a smile, and he gave her a thumbs up. Like a yellow sunbeam piercing through the storm of uncertainty, Sarah felt hope welling up inside her, bright and clear. That could mean…

   “Finally, for our grand prize of two thousand dollars!” The announcer paused for dramatic effect. “Winner of AnimeCon’s Best of Show is—Sarah Star, with Vampire Princess Marcilla!”

   He did it somehow, Sarah thought to herself, beaming with pride as she lifted her skirts and elegantly made her way back up onto the stage. It’s so hard with everyone out to get me. To stay relevant. To not just become another cosplay has-been, old news. I worked so hard, everyone. I still have what it takes.

*     *     *

   Attendees were streaming out the doors of the cosplay contest after its conclusion, but dozens and dozens milled about to chat and discuss with each other, many of the contestants themselves lingering around to take photos with fans. Across the hall from the event room, a thin Chinese girl glowered, watching with angry eyes as Foxy led a dark-haired, bubbly-looking girl out of the room. She’s… she’s wearing his coat!

   “Mary, hey,” Foxy called over to the pouting Chinese girl as he slipped his wallet out of his back pocket. “My new friend here, her cosplay ripped. Could you head on into the vendors room before it closes and grab a T-shirt for us, real quick?”

   I’m not your fucking slave, you— Mary’s retort died before she could spit it out as she watched Foxy produce a pair fifty-dollar bills and pass them over to her. A golden flicker seemed to shimmer in the air between the notes of currency, and Mary swallowed down her previous sentiments. I guess I could make a quick trip?

   “Okay. Yeah,” Mary agreed quickly. The sense of enmity and frustration at being ignored as she’d waited outside the cosplay contest room was fading away fast. We’re all adults, here, after all. He was just busy. Foxy’s a really important person here, of course he’s busy. Holding a grudge over his circumstances would be… pretty petty of me, wouldn’t it?

   Besides, Mary smirked, sizing up this new young girl. She was young and pretty, but the positively vacuous smile she wore put Mary’s heart at ease. She’s just a bauble—just a pretty face to bring around, to help everyone understand Foxy’s worth. I’m the real deal, he said he thought I was better than everyone else. He’s giving ME agency to spend the money on his behalf, isn’t he? If that doesn’t show which of us girls he really places trust with, then what does?

   “I suppose I should be thanking you?” Sarah said warily as she approached Foxy, the long train of her dress pulled up and suspended from the floor in her arms. 

   “No, It’s not big deal,” Foxy sighed in apparent exasperation. “I wanted you to be able to hand out the awards, you deserve that. But, I guess there’s too many people who’ve wormed their way into event administration that’re out to get you. I at the very least had to make sure you didn’t walk away with nothing. I mean, look at you—Sarah, you look amazing.”

   “Thank you,” Sarah responded in a neutral voice, but in her heart was unexpectedly felt warm and fluttery. It seemed like out of everyone here, Foxy was the only one who actually wanted her to shine. He understands. He just wants everyone to see how amazing I can be. That’s why tried so hard to help me. That’s why he invited me to his get together.

   “So, where’s your party again?” Sarah asked. “I guess I could make an appearance, after I change.”

   “The Grand Wingfield Hotel, just a little ways down the street from the convention center. Here, I can write down the room number for you,” he suggested, patting for his pockets for a moment before seeming to realize he wasn’t wearing his trenchcoat anymore. “Whoops. Hey, Melaneko!”

   “That’s me!” Melanie chirped out, spinning away from a group of guys wanting to chat with her back to face Foxy. “Melaneko Cosplay, at your service!”

   “Do you mind if I…?” Foxy reached down into one of the front pockets of the coat draped over her shoulders in an ambiguous way, grasping for the pen and paper he’d kept there.

   “Eep!” Melanie yelped in surprise, face flushing and that wide grin of hers reappearing.

   “Sorry, thanks,” Foxy chuckled in an offhand manner, turning back to Sarah. “I’m gonna give you the room number—we’re on the second floor— and then my number, too. In case you need to get in touch with me for anything.”

   “Okay,” Sarah said, glancing from Foxy to Melanie and back again. “Just… again, so you know. I’m not that kind of girl, alright?”

   “What kind of girl?” Melanie blinked.

   “The you kind of girl,” Foxy laughed. “She means you look like a pervert, or a flasher or something, wearing just a trenchcoat like that.”

   “You do,” Sarah admitted with a straight face.

   “I… yeah? I guess I kinda do!” Melanie laughed. “Aw, geez. Now I’m gonna wanna try flashing someone.”

   “Haven’t you already?” Foxy joked.

   “I’ll see you later, then, Foxy,” Sarah said, giving a polite wave and taking her leave.

   “Later,” he waved, slipping an arm around Melanie’s shoulder in a suave motion and guiding her away from the other dudes trying to get her attention. “Mary’ll be back in a bit. There’s lots of cool late-night activities around the con and elsewhere. Interested in checking anything out?”

   Green sparks seemed to sputter throughout Melanie’s vision, and she looked at her extravagant and charming new friend with eyes that were dilating just a bit too far in the light of the convention center’s halls.

   “Fuck yeah, I do!”

/// Still feels like a mess to me, but I feel like I've done what I can. I was constantly torn between feeling overwhelmed by introducing so many new characters, and wanting each to have a little bit of limelight, and feeling like there weren't enough characters, and that it made the event feel small.

As a contrast, this time our Waifu-tier patron characters: Foxy, Jordyn, Melanie, and Fletcher were the primary characters, while several of AnimeCon Harem's main characters found supporting roles. I tried to give the eight or so other side characters a bit of life too, but at the same time I can't stray too far away from what was going on in the chapter. Any thoughts you guys have on the chapter would be greatly appreciated! Thank you for reading!