Rochelle takes her new boyfriend Dom to the local comic convention, revealing her secret love of cosplay. But Dom starts to get culture-shock as he struggles to understand the new world he's fallen into.

My half of a trade with  Ritts

Part 2: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/29276527/
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Despite the foam plugs jammed into his ears, Dom woke with a start from bathroom door slamming shut just a few feet away from the bed. The zebra sighed and covered his face with the pillow, trying to block out the morning sunlight, as he felt, rather than heard, the rumble of the shower turning on. Instinctively, he stretched an arm out to the other half of the bed, but his fingers touched nothing but empty sheets, already cold. He sighed again and decided that, if Rochelle was already up, then he might as well be, too.
Dom lurched forward in bed and blinked sleep out of his eyes before unscrewing the foam plugs out from his ears. With a dull pop, the muffled rumble of sound he’d been able to easily sleep through turned into clear conversation. The calico cat on the other bed, who’s name might have been Kaitlyn, sat cross-legged in pajamas and was looking down at someone else on the other side, blocked from view.

“-the 1:30 panel, not the 5:30 one. The second one is just a fan-panel and those always suck. I wanna go to the panel with the actors and the Q&A. Those are my favorites.”

“But half the questions people ask at those are so stupid,” said a slightly nasally male voice from the floor. Dom could just make out the tip of a long, green tail bobbing anxiously on the floor and recognized it as Hugh’s. “It’s always like ‘oh what’s your favorite part of working with Gene Sebastian’ or ‘what’s your favorite episode’ or ‘are you a fan of the comics?’”
“Those aren’t stupid! Stop being an asshole!”
“They’re stupid because they’re all the same questions you can just read about in interviews. You get one opportunity to ask the cast something and you’re just gonna ask the same thing they already talked about in Entertainment Weekly?”
“That’s not the point! Even if you already know the answer, it’s cool actually hearing it from the actors, y’know?”

“Then I guess I’m just an asshole ‘cause that sounds stupid to me,” Hugh snorted, his tail thumping impatiently on the carpet. Kaitlyn huffed and smacked him on the back of his head, but her soft hand against his scales just made an ineffectual paff sound that the gator hardly reacted to. The cat crawled to the other side of the bed for her cell phone and locked eyes with Dom.
“Hey! Morning!” she chirped, sitting cross-legged and batting her tail energetically behind her. “You sleep okay? Did we wake you up?”
“Nah,” Dom grumbled as he rubbed sleep out of one eye. “I just don’t sleep so good in hotels, y’know?”
“Yeah, I get that,” Kaitlyn nodded. “I guess I’ve been to enough cons that I got used to it. When I went to BentoCon last year, we had eight people in our room.”
“Holy shit,” Dom frowned. “Why?”
“That’s just part of the experience!” Kaitlyn shrugged with an enthusiastic twinkle in her eye. “It’s kinda fun! Plus, it made the room super cheap. We only had to pay, like, thirty bucks each.”

“I had to pay thirty five,” Hugh grumbled from the other side of the bed.
“That’s ‘cause you wouldn’t go unless you had a spot in the bed every night,” Kaitlyn snapped at him.
“I have a weak back. It’s a medical condition.”
“I think five people in one room is about all I can handle,” Dom said, scratching behind his ear.
“Good thing you brought earplugs, then!” Kaitlyn said, brightly. Dom smiled back at her. He’d only just met her that weekend, through Rochelle, but she was already his favorite of her extended friends. She was energetic and peppy almost to a fault, despite her near constant bickering with Hugh. She wasn’t exactly Dom’s type, but she was cute.

“Who’s in the shower?” Dom asked as he sat on the edge of the bed and stretched, his thick muscles bulging beneath his undershirt. He normally slept in nothing but his boxers, but didn’t think that would’ve been appropriate while sharing a room with so many people.
“Ro,” Kaitlyn answered. “She wanted to knock it out of the way before getting her cosplay on.”
“Cos-what?” Dom blinked. It sounded like a sex thing.
“It is! Cosplay is the Japanese word for it. Sort of.”
“…Oh. Okay.” Dom nodded. That explanation didn’t make it sound much better.
“It’s a portmanteau of ‘costume’ and ‘play,’” Hugh added from the floor. “Kosupure. The Japanese like to make contractions out of English words.”
“Huh. Uh…okay,” Dom said blankly. One question that came to mind was if they were at a comic book convention, then why was he always hearing so much Japanese stuff being dropped into conversation?

“It’s fun! You’ll see some really cool costumes and stuff,” Kaitlyn said.
“Or at least just about a million ‘steampunk’ versions of whatever superhero movie just came out last,” Hugh snorted.
“Those are so cool though!”
“Steam…what?” Dom scratched his head again, wondering if he were still groggy from the lack of sleep or if Rochelle’s friends were just making up words on the spot to fuck with him.

“It’s like...uhhh…this cool kind of…” Kaitlyn mad grasping hands at the air while she chewed on her bottom lip. “Y’know, like…ray guns and goggles and pipes and gears and bronze and stuff.”
“It’s a kind of retro-futurism style that’s all the rage right now,” Hugh said as he finally stood. The gator was far skinner than his thick tail implied, but he was also short, roughly around Dom’s height. He was the only one in the room already dressed, wearing a pair of black cargo shorts with Velcro pockets, a pair of glasses he hadn’t worn the day before, and a black t-shirt with the word ‘Fragged’ printed on it in stylized letters. “You know, Jules Verne, HG Wells…Future technology, but like it was made in the past.”
“Oh okay,” Dom nodded without understanding at all.

“You’ll see what I mean,” Kaitlyn said while waving her hand, trying to assuage Dom’s clear confusion.
“Wasn’t there another dude in here?” Dom asked. As he did, one of his long ears stood up on his head as the hiss of the shower finally turned off. He was begging for Rochelle to come back to give him some kind of context for what, at that point, was starting to feel like waking up on another planet.
“Yeah, he didn’t pre-register,” Kaitlyn said, rolling her eyes. “I think he wanted to get a look at some of the early stuff going on, too.”
“And show off,” Hugh added, cryptically.
“And…show off,” Kaitlyn sighed.

The bathroom door creaked open, letting out a puff of steam that made the entire hotel room humid for a quick second before the air conditioning whipped it away. Rochelle strode out with nothing but a towel wrapped around her broad, muscular chest, stretching down to her thighs. It covered enough of her front for modesty’s sake, but left her back and ass exposed, her long tail trailing behind her almost weightlessly. Her dark fur was still sleek from the shower and clung to her body, making her muscles ripple underneath it like stones beneath silk.
“What are you tellin’ my man?” she said while holding the towel over her chest and bending down to dig through her duffel bag with one hand. Kaitlyn was straight and Hugh was gay, meaning neither of them reacted to Rochelle walking around mostly naked (something she took any opportunity to do). Dom, however, instantly felt himself wake up as his heart fluttered excitedly and the blood in his head and quickly rushed south. “You’re gonna spook him if you get into too much nerd stuff too fast.”
“We’re not!” Kaitlyn said, defensively.

“It’s a lot to take in all at once,” Rochelle said, dropping a pair of socks, a thin bra, and a black thong on the bed before leaning over to give Dom a peck on the cheek. “Morning, beefcake.”
“Morning,” Dom said, coughing as Ro patted him hard on the back and knocked a little wind out of his lungs. She whipped her tail playfully and he heard a soft, rumbling purr in her throat as she stood and turned to Kaitlyn.
“You got my stuff ready?”
“Hell yeah, I do!” the cat said before scrambling to her suitcase at the foot of the bed and carefully removing a few plastic bags. Kaitlyn started to remove some kind of purple, shimmering fabric from the biggest bag. “I had to do a little sewing yesterday to fix that tear from Bentocon, but-”
“No no no, don’t pull it out,” Rochelle said, waving her hand to stop her. She took the bags and glanced at Dom with a sharp-toothed smirk. “Dom hasn’t seen it yet.”
“Seen what?” the zebra asked, blankly.
“Exactly,” Ro answered with another grin before she hooked a free finger around the thong and strode back into the bathroom, her tail curling around the corner before disappearing with her.

“She never flirts like that,” Kaitlyn whispered to Dom as she rocked on the bed ecstatically.
“Really?” Dom asked, smirking.
“Not with anybody else.”
“Kinda makes me wish she’d flirt more than she’d kick my ass, though,” Dom said with a slight chuckle.
“How do you know those aren’t the same thing?” Kaitlyn responded with a sly smile and a flick of her tail.
With Hugh and Kaitlyn getting ready and Rochelle doing God-knows-what in the bathroom, Dom finally worked up enough energy to roll out of bed. He stretched with a loud groan and shuffled to his tiny suitcase in the corner, next to Rochelle’s. Below his undershirt, he wore a pair of black boxer-briefs that hugged his thighs. Dom himself barely paid attention to what he was wearing, but it was enough to make Hugh stop packing his backpack to stare before Kaitlyn snapped him out of it by stepping on his tail.

Dom had no clue what people wore to a comic book convention if they weren’t in costume, but he owned a spare commemorative t-shirt from a power lifting competition that was blue and red and had a logo on the chest stylized like a superhero emblem. Just as he was getting his pants pulled on, Rochelle poked her head out of the bathroom, her hair mysteriously slicked back with gel and tied in a ponytail.
“Kaitlyn!” she called out. “Kaitlyn! I need your help.”
“Coming! Coming!” The calico was already half-dressed in her own costume (some kind of school uniform Dom assumed was from something Japanese) as she hopped over and scattered clothes and suitcases and hurried into the bathroom. A moment later, Dom heard a beep and a click as a card unlocked the hotel room door and jumped as someone in a blue and black full-body costume leapt inside and brandished a toy gun while making loud, cartoonish sound effects.

“Ka-pow! Boosh! Oh yeah! Woo! Who’s ready for donuts?!” he shouted, spinning the toy gun on his finger before dropping it to the floor with a plastic ‘crack.’ For a moment, Dom wondered if somebody was trying to rob them behind the mask, but gradually recognized the build and voice of the fifth occupant of their hotel room.
“Hey man, what’s up?” Dom nodded, flatly. He tapped his foot on the ground before pointing to the costumed man and asking, “Hey, what was your name again? Was it Mar-”
“Deathpool!” he shouted in response, whipping out a fake sword and spinning it around with all the skill of a toddler and a stick.
“Can you at least keep a lid on it ‘til we leave the room?” Hugh grumbled. He caught Dom’s eyes and sighed. “There’s always a ton of Deathpool cosplayers at every con and every single one of them thinks they’re hilarious.”

“Shut up Hugh, you just hate fun,” said ‘Deathpool,’ losing the loud affectation to his voice and jabbing the tip of his sword at him.
“I don’t hate fun,” Hugh snorted. He slapped his tail on the ground with an impatient ‘thwap’ and began sorting through a pile of bagged comic issues from his suitcase, moving them one at a time to his bookbag. “I just think some things get run into the ground too fast.”
“Whatever, Deathpool is still funny.” He pulled his mask back just far enough up his face to scratch the side of his nose before tugging it back down and posing with the sword again. “Oh yeah! Who’s down for churros!?” He swung the plastic blade slowly at Dom’s head, then hopped onto the bed and continued entertaining himself. ‘Deathpool’s’ plastic badge fell off his chest and Dom picked it up in hopes of guessing the man’s identity. It also read ‘Deathpool.’

“Psst,” came a whispering voice from the bathroom door. Kaitlyn’s head was sticking halfway out with a broad grin on her face. “Hey Dom? You ready?”
“Ready for what?” Dom stared at her and realized she wasn’t going to move until he gave an answer. “I…guess I’m ready?”

Kaitlyn smiled before quickly ducking back into the bathroom and shutting the door. Dom cocked his head and listened to the muffled bickering behind the door before it flung open and Rochelle stepped out into the small hallway. The light was off and she was still in silhouette, but the moment she stepped dramatically into the light, Dom’s eyes widened.
Rochelle was dressed head-to-paw in a full-body, purple superhero costume, complete with emblem emblazoned on her broad chest and an elaborate mask that seemed practically glued to her face. Dom instantly understood the need for the thong as the costume clung to her body like a second layer of skin, with each and every muscle outlined and defined beneath the fabric. There was an oval cut just around her bellybutton, which seemed to be there for no other reason than to show off her abs, but he wasn’t exactly complaining.

“Holy shit,” Dom breathed, impressed despite himself. Rochelle grinned her sharp-tooth smile at his reaction and struck a pose, flexing every muscle in her upper body. The zebra hadn’t seen many examples of cosplay other than what he’d passed in the lobby and on the internet, but most of them had left him unimpressed, seemingly like an elaborate Halloween party for adults. But Rochelle’s was different; she didn’t look like she was wearing a costume. She looked like a superhero come to life.
“You like it?” Rochelle asked, standing tall and pinning her fists to her hips.
“Oh yeah,” Dom breathed, scanning her outfit from top to bottom. “You really look like a goddamn superhero, Ro.”

“I made the costume!” Kaitlyn added happily as she hopped out of the bathroom. She wore a costume just as elaborate as Rochelle’s, if not more so, but to Dom it looked more-or-less like a Japanese school girl uniform with some extra sequins and tassels. It was well-made, but Ro’s was far more impressive, not least of which because of who was wearing it.
“Its really good,” Dom nodded. “Looks like it come out of a movie or something.”
“Kaitlyn looked up the kind of material the movie-costumes are made out of,” Rochelle said, posing again by stretching one arm out into mid-punch. “She could probably charge for this, if she wanted to.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to,” the calico added while hiding a proud smirk.
“It’s pretty awesome,” Dom said as he stepped forward and pinched the sleek fabric between his fingers. “What’s it from?”
“I got the fabric online from a wholesale-”
“No, I mean…What’s the costume from?”

There was a beat of silence around the room as the others stared at him.
“It’s…Violet Leopard,” Kaitlyn answered, cocking her head to the side. “You know, from the…You know Violet Leopard.”
“Is…that a superhero?” Dom asked, shaking his head.
“You don’t know Violet Leopard?” Hugh practically shouted from the other end of the room. “The comic that’s been around since 1958? That’s had three movie adaptations?”
“Violet Leopard vs the Jungle Eater?” said ‘Deathpool’ as he dropped to the bed and cocked his masked head at Dom. “Fighters of the Purple Rage? The Blessed Rains arc?”
“Uh…Like…are those…movies?” Dom frowned as he folded his arms over his chest and shook his head.

“Can y’all knock it off?” Rochelle said, her voice booming high above the others with little effort. She folded her arms impatiently, which seemed oddly posed given her elaborate costume. “You guys talk all the time about gettin’ more people into comics, and yet you jump down somebody’s throat every time they don’t know something.”
Hugh, Kaitlyn, and ‘Deathpool’ didn’t answer, but glanced at one another guiltily. Rochelle sighed with a deep rumble and squeezed Dom’s upper arm, her golden eyes shining like polished coins from behind the mask.
“They’re just being snobby, babe, don’t worry about it,” she said, consolingly. “I hardly knew anything about this stuff until Hugh let me borrow his comic books.”
“Graphic novels,” the gator huffed quietly from the other side of the room.
“Nah, it’s cool. If I don’t know something I don’t know it,” Dom shrugged. “I’m just…a little over my head, y’know?”
“Well, here’s what you need to know: Violet Leopard is a superhero that punches bad guys in the jungle and I look fucking great in his costume,” Rochelle said, grinning again as she flexed.
“I can work with that,” Dom smiled, but a moment later his expression flipped into even more confusion. “Wait. ‘His’ costume?”

It took another fifteen minutes for Hugh to finish stuffing his backpack full of comics and for Kaitlyn to finish putting on her costume. ‘Deathpool’, who was impatient with waiting, left on his own with his swords unsheathed and a cry of ‘churros’ as he ran down the hall to bother anyone and everyone in sight. Rochelle’s costume didn’t have any pockets and carrying a bag would break the illusion, so Dom was recruited as her bag-boy and extra set of hands around the convention. Thankfully, Kaitlyn had the foresight to include a utility belt with actual pockets to the costume, at least giving Rochelle somewhere to put her phone and a few fiber bars for when her energy was low. Finally, once the four of them were ready, the left the hotel room together after dividing up their limited keys.
Even on their short trip to the elevators, Dom already felt out of his depth. Rochelle and Kaitlyn were hardly the only ones in costume, and seeing elaborate anime characters and superheros strolling down the hall of an otherwise bland hotel made them stand out all the more. The zebra increasingly felt out of place for being the one without a costume or at least a t-shirt to represent his faith in the Church of Nerd.
The small alcove of the elevators was packed with guests from the rest of the floor. Rochelle towered above them all and inevitably drew stares. Dom knew that Ro wasn’t always comfortable with the kind of attention she got from her appearance, but was surprised to the see the excited spark in her eye as people glanced her way.

“I hate crowds like this,” Hugh moaned next to Dom. “This con gets bigger every year.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Dom asked.
“Not for my tail it isn’t,” Hugh said with a dejected sigh as he stooped to pick it up and hold it out of the way. “If anybody stands on it in the elevator, I’m going to lose it.”
A soft ding drew everyone’s attention to the middle elevator as the green ‘down’ arrow above the door lit up. The metal doors slid open with a thunk, bringing to crowd in the hallway face-to-face with an equally large crowd packed shoulder-to-shoulder inside. The two groups stared at one another awkwardly as no one inside attempted to go out while no one outside attempted to get in. After a few silent seconds, the doors slid shut again and the elevator continued its journey down.
“There was a little room in there,” Kaitlyn said with forced hope.
“Maybe for you, shortie,” Rochelle teased, rolling her shoulders under her costume. Three more times the elevator doors opened to packed cars, enough that some waiting guests got impatient enough to wiggle into them one at a time. After the third, Rochelle grumbled and flicked her tail impatiently before tapping Dom on the shoulder. “This is stupid. Let’s use the stairs.”

“We’re on the tenth floor,” Hugh said, his eyes widening in alarm as if Rochelle has asked him to jump out the window.
“Then keep waiting,” Ro shrugged as she backed away to the end of the hall. “I could use the cardio.”
“I’m down,” Dom said, following along with his girlfriend.
“We’ll catch up with you guys later!” Kaitlyn called after them, waving with the pink plastic wand that went along with her costume.

Dom jogged after Rochelle and followed her to the stairs, her long walking stride hard for him to keep up with when she was in a hurry (but gave him a perfect excuse to enjoy how her ass looked in a tight costume). She stopped at the door to the stairwell and held the door open for Dom to catch up, but let go of it once he did and bounded down the stairs with a playful whip of her long tail. The zebra hurried behind her, doing his best to keep up, but Ro’s long legs were enough to evade him easily, so that all he saw of her was an occasional flash of purple around a corner before hearing her laugh. The two of them kept up the chase down countless flights of stairs until, before Dom even realized it, they were on the bottom floor.

“Can’t catch me,” Rochelle teased as she waited for Dom next to the exit, her tail still batting excitedly with a mind of its own. “I got super-speed.”
“Girl, you just got long-ass legs,” Dom panted, but the quick pounding of his heart got his blood pumping and was putting him in a good mood.
“Want me slow it down for you, bite-size?” Rochelle grinned, her familiar smile strange when coming from behind a mask. When she turned around to open the door, Dom stepped beside her and took advantage of their moment of privacy in the stairwell to playfully slap her ass, making the lioness jump.
“Nah. I like looking at this costume from behind,” he said, his voice smooth. Rochelle purred and wrapped her tail around his waist, pulling him under her arm and scratching behind his ear.
“Cocky…”
Rochelle gave him one last squeeze before stepping back and smoothing out her costume, then stood with her arms out and spun in place.
“How’s it look? Bunched up anywhere? Any holes?”
“This fucking thing looks painted on, Ro,” Dom answered, reaching out to run a finger down the stretchy fabric, then snapped it like a rubber band. “So like…do you get anything for this? Will people be handing out candy and shit?”
“What, you think this is Halloween?”
“Well do you get paid? Do you get a free ticket? I don’t get it.”
“I don’t get anything, Dom. It’s just…fun!” Rochelle cocked her head to the side and shrugged.
“I didn’t even know you liked all this comic book stuff.”
“It’s mostly the cosplay I’m into,” Rochelle said as she stepped past Dom and pushed open the door to the hotel. Before stepping through, she took a few deep breaths, as if getting ready to lift, then stood up to her full height and puffed her chest out before strutting powerfully out of the stairwell.

The door led to an out-of-the-way, mostly empty hallway on one of the lower levels, but an escalator farther down took them up to the main floor. Rochelle took the first step and rode it ahead of Dom, who noticed she seemed to be posing as they ascended, her hands balled into fists on her hips and with a sharp-eyed, predatory look in her eye. As the escalator reached the floor above, Dom’s attention was drawn away from his superhero girlfriend as his eyes widened at the sight.
When they’d arrived the day before, he was skeptical that something as niche as a comic book convention would be enough to fill its host hotel, but the main atrium on the first floor was packed wall-to-wall with people of all shapes, sizes, and species, milling around excitedly with nearly half of them in some kind of costume. Dom came to a stop at the top of the escalator and craned his neck back to stare straight up at the banners hung from the high ceiling, his mouth hanging open. Pictures of superheroes he vaguely recognized were posing dramatically, printed on cuts of tarp bigger than his car, with the convention’s logo stamped below them.
“Ex-cuse us,” said a nasally voice from behind him. Dom jerked back to his senses and realized he was blocking the escalator. He hopped out of the way just in time to get the stink-eye from a group of cats wearing maid costumes and realized, not five minutes into the convention, he’d already lost Rochelle.

Dom maneuvered through the crowd, letting his broad shoulders do most of the work for him, and found Ro in a gap in the crowd, standing head-and-shoulders above everyone around her. She was chatting to a group of con attendees with their phones out that Dom didn’t recognize. As he neared them, the three strangers stood back in a line and held their phones out to snap pictures as Rochelle flexed in her costume and held a pose for them.
“There you are, bite-size,” Ro said as the others left. “Thought I was gonna have to check the lost-and-found for ya.”
“Who were they?” Dom asked, gesturing to the crowd. Rochelle shrugged.
“No idea, they just wanted a picture.” She flicked her tail and smirked behind her mask. “What, you jealous?”
“Nah, I just figured…” Dom scratched the top of his head and cocked his head at Rochelle. “They know you ain’t the real Violet Leopard, right?”
“Hey…babe…the Violet Leopard is a comic book character,” Ro said slowly, as if her boyfriend was just coming out of a coma.
“I know, I know, but there’s a movie, right? They know you aren’t, like, an actor or something, don’t they?”
“The actor was a guy so…yeah, I think they knew.” Rochelle frowned and raised an eyebrow, the mask on her face creasing as she did. “What’s your point?”

“So why were they taking your picture? You’re just wearing a costume.”
“I guess ‘cause they like the Violet Leopard, I don’t know.” She held out her arms and wiggled her hands in the clawed gloves. “It’s a good costume, though.”
Dom opened his mouth wordlessly while a dozen more questions crowded his mind, but as he looked up into Rochelle’s curious eyes behind the purple mask, he sighed and let them go. If he was going get any enjoyment out of the convention (or, more importantly, not ruin Rochelle’s fun), he just had to go with the flow.
“Alright,” he said as he rolled his shoulders. “So, what’s first?”
The convention took up two entire floors of the hotel, with the half-dozen conference rooms all filled with booths, stands, and tables piled high with more comic book paraphernalia than Dom had ever seen in his life. For every half-remembered superhero or super villain he recalled from his childhood, he saw a dozen more obscure characters that slipped past his limited pop culture knowledge. Dom felt like he’d just stumbled upon the church of a strange new religion and that he was the only non-believer in the room. He did his best to keep an open mind, but Dom was out of his element and he knew it.

The crowd was thick and difficult to push through, but it was easy enough to keep up with Rochelle, who was a beefy splotch of purple muscle standing above the crowd. It helped that, every few minutes, a group of con guests with their cameras or cell phones out would stop to ask her for a picture. More than once, Dom was the one taking the picture as Rochelle posed happily with the strangers. The ones that asked her to pretend-punch them were his favorite.

While Dom was puzzling over the convention like he’d landed on another planet, Rochelle was clearly having the time of her life. She bounded enthusiastically like a kitten into every photo shoot and struck dramatic poses that seemed to emphasize every rippling muscle in her body. Even when she wasn’t getting her picture taken, Ro strutted through the crowd with her chin held high and her chest puffed out, every bit of her playing the role of a superhero. It was like she was acting, but for nobody’s enjoyment but her own. Dom was confused at seeing this new side to his girlfriend, but her enthusiasm was contagious and he found himself having fun, even if he didn’t quite understand what was going on.
“How did I not know you were into this kinda stuff?” Dom asked her after she’d finished with yet another picture. “I didn’t even know you read comics.”
“Well…I mostly like it for the cosplay,” Rochelle said, scratching her head. “Hugh pretty much forces me to sit down and read up on the characters I wanna be, though. They’re fun, but not always my kinda thing.”
“I guess you gotta be kinda hardcore about it like him, huh?”
“Not really. Hugh is…Hugh,” Rochelle shrugged. “The comics are fun, but I like coming to these and feeling it, y’know what I mean? How often do you get to go out and be a superhero?”
“But couldn’t you do that any time?” Dom asked.

“What, you think I’m gonna walk down the street in spandex?” Ro snorted. “Everybody would think I was crazy if I did that anywhere else, but at a con…It’s not just about a costume, you get to really be somebody else, y’know? People look and they see Violet Leopard, not me in a suit.”
“But why d’you want to be somebody else?” Dom asked. Rochelle paused, blinking at him for a moment.
“That- I mean, that’s not really…” Ro huffed, a low rumble coming from her chest as her warm breath blew into Dom’s face. “It’s not like that it’s just…fun, okay?”
“I guess so,” Dom said, hooking his thumbs into the straps of the backpack he was wearing. “Maybe I just don’t wanna be anybody but me.”
Before Rochelle could respond, a high voice rose above the convention crowd, making her and Dom’s ears stand up straight. They glanced in the direction of the sound and spotted Kaitlyn pushing her way through the crowd, waving at the two of them with her prop wand. Her other hand was tightly gripping Hugh, practically dragging him close behind.
“Rochelle!” she cried out again, the other con guests parting for her until she and Hugh finally burst through into the open space, panting and regaining their balance.

“Hey y’all,” Ro smiled. “Glad you made it down okay. How’d you find us?”
“Are you kidding? We can see you from a mile away!” Kaitlyn said, pointing to the other end of the huge ballroom they were in. “Plus, we just need to look for purple .”
“True, true.” Rochelle lifted her arms above her head in a flex, then posed heroically with her fist extended. “People are loving this suit. You did real good on it.”
“Shut up, they love you in it!” Kaitlyn said, but she was clearly flattered. She approached Rochelle and, in slow-motion, swung her wand like a baseball bat toward the lioness’ abs. She stood with her fists on her hips while Kaitlyn made sound effects with her mouth.
“Won’t work, I’m bulletproof,” Rochelle said before slowly mock-punching the calico girl. While the two felines amused themselves, Dom glanced over at the nearby Hugh, who was pouring over a list on a small notepad he’d removed from his pocket.
“How’s it going?” he asked. As if waiting for an excuse, Hugh let out an explosive ‘ UGH ’ in frustration and turned to Dom with a sour look on his snaggle-toothed face.

“ Total bust so far,” he moaned. “I can’t find any of the issues on my list except for Miracleman number sixteen, but the booth wants eighty bucks for it.” Hugh suddenly flinched as someone walked close behind him, pulling his tail back. “And people keep stepping on my tail . Like I knew would happen because nobody pays any attention to what’s around them. ”
“That sucks,” Dom responded in the only way he knew how. He wasn’t sure what was in Miracleman number sixteen that would make it cost eighty dollars, but he wasn’t sure of anything happening at the convention.
“It’s fine , I guess I can just look them up on the internet,” Hugh sighed. “Kaitlyn has a few panels she wants to go to, but after that we’re gonna check out the guest room.”
“Guest room?” Dom asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Artists, writers, some actors,” Hugh explained. “I don’t know who’s here. Didn’t want to get my hopes up in case one of them drops out.”
“You mean the people who make comic books? Why are they here?”
“They get paid,” Hugh said, giving Dom the most straightforward answer he’d heard all day. “This isn’t a big con, though. There probably aren’t any big-shots here.”

“I’ve just been following Ro around,” Dom said as he jabbed a thumb toward his girlfriend. “She can hardly go ten feet before somebody else wants a picture, but she’s loving it.”
“Oh yeah, Rochelle gets really into it,” Hugh nodded, his glasses sliding down his snout. “You should’ve seen her at Bentocon .”
“I don’t really get it, but it’s pretty fun,” Dom nodded to himself before glancing at Ro. “If she’s happy, I’m happy.”
“We haven’t gotten a picture together yet!” Kaitlyn gasped, slapping her forehead. She glanced around helplessly for a moment before quickly hurrying over to Hugh. “Give me my phone!”
“If you’re just going to keep asking for it,” Hugh grumbled as he took off his backpack, “then just hold it. ”
“Magical girls don’t have pockets,” she said, tapping his scaly head with her plastic wand.
“I’ll take it,” Dom said, holding his hand out for her phone. “I’ve been doin’ it all day, feels like.”
“Okay!” Kaitlyn said, her eyes lighting up as she handed her cell phone to Dom and hurried over next to Rochelle. She posed by holding the wand out and flashing a two-fingered ‘peace’ sign with her other hand. Ro looked off into the distance with a serious expression and tucked her arms next to her hips, her hands balled into fists and facing upwards.

“Okay…y’all ready?” Dom asked, standing back and trying to get all of Rochelle in frame. He caught movement in the corner of his eye, but assumed it was someone else in the crowd. “One…two…thr-”
The instant before he snapped the picture, a familiar cosplayer in a Deathpool suit leapt in front of them, brandishing fake swords, and posed as wide as he possibly could in the center of the frame. Dom’s reflexes failed him as his thumb slipped and took the picture, capturing the image of ‘Deathpool’ in front of a very irritated Kaitlyn and Rochelle.
“ CHURROS! ”

“ Hey! What the hell!?” Kaitlyn shouted, swiping her wand in the air like a weapon. “Why are you acting like...hang on.” She stood on the tips of her paws and pulled the cosplayer’s mask back to look at his face underneath. “Okay yeah, you’re with us.” After pulling the mask back down, she switched the wand to her left hand and balled up her right to punch ‘Deathpool’ in the chest. “ Stop acting like an asshole! ”
“He’s been doing this all day,” Hugh sighed as he glanced at Dom. “Personally, I blame sub-par writing reducing an interesting and subversive character into nothing but a shallow meme-factory.”
Dom blinked at him.
“Sure.”

“Let’s try again,” Rochelle said as she effortlessly picked up ‘Deathpool’ under his arms and carried him to the edge of circle before dropping him. “And cut that out ,” she commanded, jabbing a clawed finger into his chest. Ro took a second to re-adjust her mask and struck a similar pose next to Kaitlyn. Dom didn’t count down and took the picture quickly in case ‘Deathpool’ decided he wanted to leap in and ruin it again.
“Lemme see!” Kaitlyn said as she grasped for her cell phone. Before handing it over, it started buzzing violently and beeping in Dom’s hand with an alarm. Kaitlyn snatched it and turned off the alarm before checking the time. “1:30! The Justice Team panel!” She lurched past Dom and snatched Hugh by his skinny wrist, half-dragging him along behind her.
“I don’t even like that show!” he protested, his thick tail slapping loudly on the floor.
“Yes you do, shut up. Hurry so we can get seats next to the microphone!”
The pair of them hurried away through the crowd. ‘Deathpool’ had already vanished, presumably to photo-bomb more innocent con guests, leaving Dom and Rochelle alone together.
“They’re havin’ fun,” Ro said, purring contentedly.
“Everybody but Hugh, I guess.”

“Nah, he’s havin’ a good time. If he’s comfortable enough to complain about shit, then he’s happy. He gets real quiet when he’s upset.” Rochelle glanced down at Dom and raised an eyebrow below her mask. “Are you?”
“What, having fun?” Dom hooked his thumbs into his pockets and nodded with an amused smirk. “Yeah, I think so. It’s all pretty weird, but in a goofy kinda way, y’know?”
“Good,” Rochelle beamed with her sharp teeth as she slapped Dom on his upper back before reaching up below his dreads and scratching his head affectionately. “We can have the kinda fun you’re more used to later on…”
Dom shuddered and felt his shoulders and his pants grow tighter, his heart suddenly pounding as he felt Rochelle’s powerful hand on the back of his neck. He cleared his throat and tried to keep his cool, but Ro could practically smell it on him.
“You’re so fuckin’ cute,” she purred, clapping him on the back again before striding off ahead, swishing her tail playfully over her ass, practically vacuum-sealed inside the costume. Dom remembered that she’d put on a thong that morning and was quietly looking forward to taking it off.

After giving the dealer’s room a once-over the first time, he and Rochelle went through it again, taking more time to stop at the interesting booths while Rochelle continued to get stopped for pictures. Dom didn’t pay much attention to the stands selling comics and toys, but there were a few dealers selling interesting hand-made nick-knacks he couldn’t help but be interested in. One booth sold custom pint-glasses with logos and symbols of superheroes on them. Another sold hand-made suits of realistic metal armor. More than a few sold swords and prop weaponry the twelve-year-old in Dom could hardly resist.

Rochelle was still clearly enjoying being the center of attention in her role as the Violet Leopard, but she was showing subtle signs of fatigue that Dom was likely the only one to notice. In the same way he kept an eye on the lioness as her spotter in the gym, he watched her carefully and was waiting for the moment to suggest she take a break.
At one point in the afternoon, Rochelle costume had drawn a small crowd of con guests around her, one of whom asking one of her most common questions: ‘What is your workout routine?’
“You gotta remember, it’s almost more about the diet than the exercise,” Ro explained, standing a full foot and a half taller than the other con guests. “You also need to tailor the diet to what you’re doing, y’know what I mean? Your calorie needs are different depending on if you’re a runner or a bodybuilder. And half of how you put on muscle is genetics, anyhow.” She extended her arm and balled up her first, flexing the muscles underneath her tight costume. Dom, who was watching from the side, flushed at the sight of her monstrous biceps and wiggled his cropped tail anxiously. “I got lucky since my whole family is full ‘a mesomorphs and we put on muscle real good, but you can be healthy and strong at any shape and any size.” She scratched the top of her head, pausing for a second, then snapped her fingers and added, “Oh, and protein powders are bullshit. Don’t waste your money.”

The group nodded while some of them looked to be ready to take notes. Behind them, Dom caught sight of a skinny fox wearing horn-rimmed glasses, cargo shorts, and a sour frown as he stared at Rochelle, his arms folded indignantly over his chest. Dom seemed to be the only one that had noticed him so far and was trying to decipher the fox’s expression before he cupped his hands on either side of his mouth.

“You know Violet Leopard is a guy , right?”

Rochelle stopped talking immediately, her jaw hanging open slightly as she locked eyes with the fox. The rest of the small crowd turned to stare at him as well with various expressions of shock and annoyance.
“Uh…yeah?” Ro answered, folding her arms over her chest and batting her tail. “I know that.”
“Okay? So like…why couldn’t you cosplay someone like Miss Magnificent? Or Lady Lethal? I just don’t get why there’s so many other females you could be, why do you have to take the male heroes too?”
“Because I…I like the costume, okay?” Rochelle huffed through her clenched teeth.
“Have even read any Violet Leopard comics? What, are you paid to be here or something?”
Dom was out of his depth and didn’t quite understand the argument, but the only thing he needed to understand was the embarrassed look on Rochelle’s face. Despite her size and intimidating appearance, the lioness didn’t often know how to respond to direct confrontation as she was always afraid of coming off as too aggressive or too angry, accidentally feeding into a stereotype. Dom, however, had no such inhibitions.

The zebra gently pushed past the con guests in the way and approached the fox. Dom was a good deal shorter than him, but at least double his width. Recalling his times working as a bouncer, he simply touched three fingers to the fox’s chest and put pressure on them while slowly walking him backwards away from Rochelle.

“Walk away, bro,” Dom muttered, his nostrils flaring and his ears pinned back on his head. “Walk away before somebody decides you need to get hurt.”
The fox resisted at first, trying to push back against Dom’s fingers, but the slow march back into the crowd kept him off balance and unable to do anything but backpedal to stay upright.
“My girlfriend can dress up as the Violet Lemur any time she wants to.” Dom said, stopping in place and giving the fox one hard shove for good measure. “And you don’t get to say shit about it. Understand me?”
The fox blinked, flapping his jaw open and closed as if trying to talk, then glanced over Dom’s shoulder to Rochelle and the other con guests.
“Fuck off!” one of the girls shouted at him, prompting a chorus of more swears and jeers at the fox until his slunk away into the crowd. Dom snorted, stomping one foot on the ground angrily and balling his hands into fists, but a pair of large, gloved hands held his shoulders and massaged their thumbs into his shoulders.

“Easy, easy…” Rochelle purred, squeezing the zebra’s back in just the right way to send a pleasing shudder down his spine.
“Sorry,” Dom sighed, relaxing his hands. “Dumb motherfucker was pickin’ on you. Made me mad.”
“I know, I know,” Rochelle said, pulling Dom back into a reverse-hug. He could feel the rumble of her purring in the back of his head. “You’re a tough guy, huh?”
“Only for you, I guess,” he said, shuffling in place. He turned and looked up at Rochelle, standing high enough above him to block out one of the ceiling lights. “You good?”
“Yeah, I’m good. I don’t worry about what assholes like him think,” she said, but Dom could tell there was a brightness to her eyes he hadn’t seen there a few minutes ago. “Hey, you wanna go check out of they have Street Fighter in the video game room? I got some ideas for next year’s costume after I kick your ass.”

The pair of them explored the remaining corner of the dealer’s hall before heading toward the small video game room next door, with more people stopping Rochelle for pictures on the way. Dom stood to the side like he did before, but kept his eyes open as her self-appointed ‘bodyguard’ for any more assholes looking to start trouble. The fox seemed to be in the minority, however, as most of the guests they talked to enjoyed the female spin on Violet Leopard and thought Ro played the part well.
“Yo, Rochelle,” Dom said after her cell phone had started buzzing in the pocket of his backpack. Before she took it, she bit the finger of one of her gloves and pulled it off her hand with her teeth so she could use her phone. It dangled from her mouth as she read the message and Dom noticed she was lightly chewing on the foam claw at the end of it.
“Hugh and Kaitlyn wanna meet up in the artist alley,” Rochelle said after handing the phone back to Dom and pulling the glove back on. “So we can make plans for getting food later.”
“What’s the artist alley?”

“It’s the room set up where all the artists can go and sell stuff,” Rochelle explained as she turned and let the way. “You’ll see.”
“Like comic book artists?” Dom asked behind her.
“I think some, but it’s mostly just amateurs.”
“So…what do they sell?”
“Lotta stuff. Fan art, original stuff, commissions.”
“Of like…superheroes?” Dom scratched under his chin and flicked his ear. “…Okay, sure.”
“What?” Rochelle asked, stopping to glance at him. Dom folded his arms and turned in place to look around at the con guests around him, a skeptical frown on his face.
“I still don’t…I mean, there’s a lotta shit here to do, y’know? If you’re like a comics nerd or some shit, but like…I don’t get why all these people are comin’ here, spending money, dressing up, and all this shit…It just doesn’t make all that much sense to me.”
“Maybe there’s nothing to get,” Rochelle said, putting her hands on her hips. “They just have a different way of havin’ fun.”
“I ain’t makin’ fun or nothing, I just don’t really get it ,” Dom shrugged.
“Well, maybe you’ll figure it out tomorrow,” Ro shrugged before turning and motioning for Dom to follow. “C’mon, if we leave Hugh waiting, he’ll keep complaining until Kaitlyn tries to kill him.”

The artist alley was a room roughly the size and layout of the dealer’s room, but there were long folding tables in place of booths set up with home-made stands displaying a kaleidoscope of art prints, each one manned by a different artist looking out expectantly at the crowd winding through it like a long snake. Rochelle took charge of finding Hugh and Kaitlyn, as she stood high enough to see over the crowd, while Dom looked curiously around at the stands of art.
“Kaitlyn!” Rochelle shouted, her voice booming as she waved to a nearby table. The cat was flipping through a notebook on an artist’s table, her wand tucked under her arm, while Hugh stood beside her and seemed mesmerized at a single comic book clutched in his hands. She jumped at the sound of her name and turned to wave the pair of them down.
“Hey! You guys hungry?” Kaitlyn asked, stepping away from the table. “I’m starving .”
“There’s food trucks outside, right?” Rochelle asked.
“Yeah, but they suck. I figured we could just go somewhere nearby. We have the car, don’t we?”
“What were you thinking…” Rochelle trailed off and glanced around her at Hugh, noticing that his shoulders were trembling. “Uh…Hugh, you okay?”

The gator slowly glanced up from the comic, his eyes bloodshot and his scales wet with tears. He held up the book, an issue of ‘ Magnificent Marauders, ’ and tapped his finger next to the black scribble of sharpie on the cover, his face cracking into a manic grin.
“Duh-Darwin Lee is here… Darwin Lee is here! ” Hugh breathed, shaking the comic in the air. “Nobody told me Darwin Lee was gonna be here! He signed my number one and he shook my hand and-and-and-” He nearly collapsed into more joyful tears as he held the comic to his chest and his legs shook. “This is the greatest day of my life! ”

Rochelle and Kaitlyn stared at him before Hugh’s eyes glazed over and he looked down at his signed comic again, stroking it with a finger.
“Is he alright?” Ro asked.
“Probably,” Kaitlyn answered with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Just give him a minute.”

While Hugh was off in his own little world, Rochelle and Kaitlyn discussed where they wanted to eat, consulting the map on Kaitlyn’s cell phone for nearby restaurants. Dom didn’t have any preference, so his attention drifted from them to the artist booth they were standing next to. Sitting behind it was a thin, lanky weasel wearing yellow-tinted glasses, staring blankly up at Rochelle with his mouth hanging open. A small sign on a piece of paper said his name was ‘Nate.’
Dom curiously flipped through Nate’s folder of art on the table, each page marked with a collection of art prints for sale, the prices marked by size. The artist had fan art of superheroes and characters from TV shows, but had equally as many drawings of original characters (or simply characters from things Dom didn’t recognize).

He frowned as he came to what seemed to be the last page of the folder, marked by a blank page of cardboard, but noticed there was clearly more art behind it. Flipping past it curiously, Dom’s blinked in surprise at a drawing of a female superhero he vaguely recognized flying through the air. Topless. The zebra cocked his head to the size and stared at the drawing before slowly forcing himself to turn the page. Another pair of superheroines, both fully naked, and making out with one another. The next page was a male hero and his female sidekick having sex, their genitals blocked out by a small sticky-note. Dom flipped through the book, seeing page-after-page of well-drawn superhero porn, far more than non-adult art in the first half of the book.
He silently closed the book and stared straight ahead, the gears turning in his mind. Dom stared out at the other artists, wondering how many of them had collections of porn just as extensive and detailed as Nate. Suddenly, like a final puzzle piece falling into place, Dom’s brain lit up in revelation, his eyes widening as his ears stood straight up on his head.

“Yo!” he shouted, making the artist, Rochelle, and Kaitlyn jump and glance at him. Hugh still didn’t look up from his comic. Dom whipped his head up at Rochelle and gripped her by the shoulders, his mouth open in a wide grin. “I get it! I get it!”
“Get what?” Ro frowned.
“This is where nerds come to fuck!” Dom practically screamed, shaking the lioness.
Rochelle blushed and coiled her tail around her leg, glancing around to make sure he hadn’t been overheard.
“Uhh…I guess that’s part of-”

“For real! Why would all these people come hang out here at the same time if they weren’t getting some?” Dom said, ranting like a man who’d just seen the face of God. “It’s in a hotel! There’s a bar downstairs! This is like going to the club, but for nerds! This is where comic book geeks go to hook up!”
“He’s not wrong,” Kaitlyn added, bashfully.

“I…I uhh…Well…” Rochelle scratched the back of her head. “There’s more to it than that…”
“C’mon Ro, nobody goes out of their way to set something like this up unless there’s pussy involved!” Dom said, finally letting go of her but keeping his satisfied grin. “All the tight costumes and shit? They’re dressing up just as much as people do before goin’ to the club, but in a nerd way!”

“I think the hunger’s starting to get to your head, bite-size,” Rochelle said, rolling her eyes as she scratched behind the zebra’s ear. “Let’s see if you’re still on this theory after gettin’ some food in you.”

“Sure thing…” Dom said with a knowing, half-lidded smirk up at his girlfriend, suddenly very confident about the real