Carlos and Neil Do Oku-con

I'd like to acknowledge the influence of IceBear's "The Fiend's Tongue" and William Pratt's "Master PC: The Rumor Mill" on this frivolous story.

Cosplay is not consent. Don't be a creep at conventions, or in general.

*****

"Dude, check out that Ochako down there! She's really fucking cute."

"Yeah, there's definitely Zero Gravity on that ass, am I right?"

Up on the second floor "skyview terrace," a narrow corridor looking down on the main convention center pre-function spaces, two young men were seated on stools at a high bar-style counter. Peering over the railing, their attention was not on the greasy, overpriced pizza that they had successfully extracted from one of the swarmed cafes (which was probably just as well), but on the energized, varied, and unusually colorful selection of humanity bustling around below them. Some of those specimens had tits and, presumably, vaginas, and thus were more worthy of the pair's scrutiny than others.

The event was called Oku-Con: "Oku" for "indoors," because it took place indoors in the middle of the rainy season. And because every halfway decent anime con name had already been taken. It was regionally famous for cosplay, attracting all manner of skilled costumers and discerning aficionados, as well as a smattering of creepy degenerates. To wit:

"Aww shit man, there's a Tifa!" enthused the first speaker, a Latino youth of 19 named Carlos. His body was lean, free of both fat and muscle, and his face was cheerful and unsullied by intelligence. "Original outfit too, not any of that watered-down Advent Children shit."

"Ahh, she doesn't have the body to pull it off," his companion scoffed. He was weightier and pastier than his friend, with a complexion that suggested that greasy pizza was not an unfamiliar meal for him. His narrow eyes shone with the certainty that he was smarter than anyone else around him. Which was often true, because he spent a lot of time with Carlos.

The pair were somewhere in that age range that American society had judged to be too immature to drink beer, but sufficiently mature to participate in the sacred democratic process.

"She should'a dressed as Yuffie," the white guy, Neil, continued. "No ass, and probably just like a C cup. Gotta be at least a D to pull off Tifa."

"I dunno man, I still wouldn't mind her doing her little victory bounce in front of me," joked the Carlos. They both laughed crudely.

"Con rules say you can't harass the cosplayers, you know," cut in a disgusted young woman seated about a yard away from them.

"Uh, we're not harassing them? We're way up here?" Neil retorted condescendingly, after a half-second glance had revealed this woman to be fully-clothed, overweight, and not exceptionally pretty, the trifecta of doom for his attention span.

The undeniable truth of his words caused the woman to glare at them for a moment, before grabbing her bag and moving further away down the counter with a parting shot of "Assholes!" The undeniable truth of that failed to have any effect at all on Carlos and Neil, who turned their attention back to the concourse below.

"Oh man, look at that Sailor Pluto!" Neil pointed. "Man, she's so fucking hot." The woman in question was posing for some admiring amateur photographers, locking key-themed weapons with a pixieish Sora. Her streamlined sailor fuku was done in the classic short-skirted anime-style rather than the longer musical style popular among cosplayers, and her current battle stance showed off the curves of her bourbon-colored body, even from this distance.

"Dude, Sailor Moon is a dumb show," complained Carlos. "And those costumes suck, man, you can't even see their boobs with those big bows in front."

"Fuck you, man, Sailor Moon is a classic and if you'd actually watch it you'd love it!" Neil insisted, in ferocious defiance of everything he knew about Carlos's thoroughly shounen tastes in anime. "And there's more to life than fuckin' tits, dude. Look at that chick's legs! Sailor Moon was groundbreaking in having cute heroines flashing their frigging panties. You think Ezra would wear a skirt if not for Sailor Moon? I guarantee you she'd be wearing, like... pants or something."

"Ohh," intoned Carlos, in due deference to Ezra Scarlet's hotness and lack of pants. Carlos was easily swayed by people stating things confidently.

"Besides," Neil continued, getting into a roll of spouting unjustified bullshit, "girls who cosplay Sailor Senshi are all sluts, dude. Everyone knows that."

Carlos chewed that one over as he chewed his last bite of shitty pizza. "So... why don't they wear sluttier outfits, then?"

"Because they're embarrassed, man, don't you get it? Sailor Moon is respectable enough that it's got some plausible deniability, like" (here in an incompetent falsetto) "'no, no, it's not that I'm thirsting for dick!' But everyone at cons knows the score." Unlike Carlos, Neil had been to anime conventions before, and was leveraging his sempai status for all it was worth.

"Woah," Carlos responded, eyeing the departing skirt-clad ass of the Sailor Pluto with a new appreciation.

---------

Pizza and education finished for now, the two descended to the ground level to meander towards the exhibitors' hall. The wide busy hallway they passed through was lined with booths from various organizations.

Carlos stopped off at a booth for something called BLCon, lured by the bowl of candy on offer, from which he extracted a Twix and, after a moment's hesitation, another Twix. These Twixes were like half-size, after all. Properly speaking, you'd need four to have a real Twix experience, but these were the only two in the bowl. "So this is like, a different convention?" he asked, his dormant trick-or-treating instincts informing him that candy needed to be purchased with perfunctory conversation.

"Yes," replied the clean, bespeckled young man behind the desk. "BLCon is the region's largest boys' love and yaoi-focused..."

"Oh, uh, cool," Carlos said, booking it with the Twixes. Hopefully they weren't gay Twixes or anything.

He caught up with Neil at the booth of the local JET Program Alumni Association, where a stout fortysomething-year-old woman was informing him about the exciting, life-changing, and (most importantly) financially-compensated possibilities of teaching English in Japan.

"...and if your contracting organization agrees, you're able to renew yearly for a total of up to five years, with accompanying pay raises," explained the woman, who had not been getting too many bites today and was willing to speak to pretty much anyone. Odds were that this guy was a creepy otaku, but if he got that far, the interviewers were good at weeding such folks out.

"Well, I'll think about it. I am pretty good at English," Neil graciously conceded. He'd seen plenty of examples of dumb Engrish online; obviously he could teach the Japanese to do better than that. More importantly, he had the vague impression that for white dudes, the poontang flowed like wine in Japan. Or like sake? Whatever.

"Take a pamphlet," the woman encouraged. "The timeline for the application process is all in there. Oh, you do need an undergraduate degree, though - it's non-negotiable for the Japanese visa office. Do you have one? Or might you be expecting to graduate college at some point...?"

Neil's smug smile froze, as did his fantasies of a cute Japanese school nurse in an implausibly-skimpy uniform riding his dick after-hours in the teachers' room, moaning 'ikuuuuuu'. Stuffing the pamphlet into a pocket, he haughtily mumbled "Well, I'll think about it," again and stalked off.

Carlos hurried after him. "Hey, I'm starting college soon. Maybe I could go work in Japan afterwards." Carlos was signed up for his first remedial classes at the local low-standards state university, undeterred either by his lack of particular ambition, or by the academic difficulties that had left him graduating high school a year late. He was good-natured about education; his troubles stemmed mostly from some kind of high-level executive dysfunction that prevented him from prioritizing schoolwork, and also from the fact that he was a moron.

"Ahh, college is all a bunch of bullshit," grumbled Neil, resentful of the forces that had conspired to unfairly sabotage his chances of a life of ease and debauchery in glorious Nippon. "Nobody with real intelligence would do all the BS assignments those ignorant professors foist on you." Carlos shrugged.

They were now almost beyond the booths; but the one at the very end caught Carlos's eye. Just past a foreign goods import service, which was getting good traffic, sat a miserable-looking older guy (at least thirty, positively ancient). He was gaunt, stubbly, and bespectacled, and there was nobody at his table. The signboard in front read "Psychic Resonance Adjustment."

"Are you, like, advertising a game or something?" Carlos asked the guy, who raised abruptly from his slouch, surprised at having a visitor. He had intended to buy a booth at Occulcon, but due to a completely understandable mistake that could have happened to anyone, instead found himself surrounded by weeaboos here at Oku-Con instead, one week early for his target audience.

"Uh, no, in fact! I'm a specialist in optimizing psychic resonances in individuals. Are you... familiar with the topic...?"

"Of course," Neil answered, disdainfully. "Psychic powers are ESP and moving things with your mind and shit."

"And then you might turn into some kind of crazy meat monster," Carlos put in. "With tentacles. Kanedaaaaaa!"

"I'd take the tentacles," Neil leered, turning to watch the shapely rears of a Chun-Li and Cammy who had just walked past.

The psychic man mentally lowered his impressions of his visitors, although probably not enough. Nevertheless, he carried on gamely with his spiel.

"Well, you see, all magickal and psychic practices are humans' attempts to create a non-physical effect using non-physical means. Most people struggle to do so successfully because their souls aren't resonating at the proper frequency with the universe. By adjusting your soul's resonance, I can increase the likelihood that change occurs according to your will, even without invoking intermediary beings to..." The two young men's eyes showed no flashes of understanding. He tried again. "I can... awaken your psychic potential?"

Neil rolled his eyes. "C'mon, Carlos, let's go. This is so fucking sus."

But something in the man's pitch had caught Carlos's fickle attention. "So you're like the Supreme Kai. Or the Namekian Guru."

"...Sure?" Guru? wondered the psychic guy. Was this kid some kind of Hindu or yogic practitioner?

"Alright, cool. Lay it on me!"

"Well, excellent. Now, I do charge a nominal fee of fifty dollars, which is of course an absolute bargain compared to..."

Carlos turned immediately. "Naw, man, never mind. Lead the way, Neil."

"Wait!" the man interrupted. It was very important to maintain reasonably high prices to signal that his services were valuable, but on the other hand, this was the closest thing to a sale he'd had all day, and maybe the universe was trying to tell him something. And it was important for him to keep in practice. Not to mention that he'd somehow left his credit card at home, and needed cash to buy one of those personal pizzas that he saw everyone walking around with.

"How about five bucks?" he conceded. Carlos happily forked over the Lincoln and plopped into the cheap plastic chair in front of the booth, and soon the psychic guy was holding both of Carlos's hands in his (slightly gay, but whatever). He closed his eyes, but otherwise made no particularly mystical motions or gestures. Carlos sat there, placid.

Neil tapped his feet, impatiently. "C'mon, Carlos, all the best doujinshi are gonna be picked over by the time we get there."

"Naw, hang on a minute," urged Carlos. "It took a long time for Gohan."

"I think you're more of a Krillin, dude," Neil snarked, but he pulled out his phone and tapped into Genshin Impact while he waited for his friend.

Eventually, the psychic guy pulled his hands back, wiping a thin sheen of sweat from his brow. "Alright, I think we're finished. That was easier than usual, actually."

"Cool. So how do I move things with my mind?"

"Erm..." the guy hesitated. "You can use any type of occult practice you prefer, but obviously nobody can create that kind of physical force. Still, you should find it much easier to enact efficacious rituals. I mean, the universe should respond to your sub- and super-conscious mind more readily, in proportion with your focus, will, and serenity. I suggest a regimen of daily meditation to maintain the spiritual resonance that we've set up today, of a duration no less than..."

Disappointed, Carlos had already turned away, muttering "what a ripoff." Neil was more than happy to finally get moving again as well.

"Don't forget to tell your friends!" the psychic guy called after them.

---------

Since the dawn of mankind, humans had sought to exert supernatural influence on the world around them. Systems of ritual, prayer, meditation, and mind-altering drugs had been employed to bring about the mental state necessary to shape the world around them.

What the psychic booth guy did not suspect was that Carlos was a one-in-a-generation natural magickal talent. Carlos didn't need ritual or meditation to achieve a zen state: his mind was clear of doubt and distraction already, instead full of wide-eyed wonder, serenity, and a dash of deeply-entrenched delusion that was strong and flexible, like bamboo. (No amount of effort by Neil could convince him that Erica Steele, their sophomore year prom queen, had not been "kinda into him.") He combined a guileless openness to the world around him with a limitless capacity for optimism: to believe wholeheartedly, and despite evidence, in a better world than this. For a certain definition of "better."

And he was still a little bit high from the THC gummies he'd eaten while they'd been waiting in line for their badges, which didn't hurt.

Carlos's amazing soul was now attuned to the cosmos, and the cosmos was listening intently. If, at that moment, his thoughts had been turned to those of peace and justice, he could have accomplished miracles.

Instead, he was hanging out with Neil at an anime con.

---------

The dealer's room was large and packed, a veritable Costco of overpriced imported plastic and fanart both pandering (read: commercially viable) and sincere (i.e., 100% unsellable). There was plenty to stimulate the eyes in any direction; but along with the goods came a new teeming mass of humanity, and Carlos and Neil certainly scanned the crowd for anyone worth looking at.

Here, then, was the first of Carlos's influences: since his mind automatically tuned out people who were not exceptionally attractive or dolled-up for the male gaze, he had a certain confirmation bias going on. There were boner-inducing cosplay chicks all over, right?

And thus there were. Not that they magically appeared out of nowhere; such a thing would be blatantly impossible. But in concordance with Carlos's expectations, certain patterns in Yetzirah, the World of Formation, were subtly strengthened. These patterns were then echoed in the lower existence of Asiyah, the world of Action. And as a result, female fans found their skin clearing up, their waists tightening, their asses and boobs shifting more towards the size favored by Carlos - which, to be clear, was not flat. Carlos was many things, but a lolicon was not one of them.

Even the costumes themselves changed. Skirts that had been lengthened for modesty's sake became more source-material accurate. Necklines inched down. Tops expanded to accommodate their suddenly more-talented wearers... or, in some cases, did not expand, clinging to supple titflesh like a desperate lover.

A female Byleth, whose love for the character and her game of origin had made her put countless hours into assembling the rather involved outfit, discovered that she had instead assembled a Summer Byleth outfit, a cheesecake bikini number from Fire Emblem Heroes that showed much more skin than fabric. She now remembered deliberately choosing that outfit, but she couldn't remember why she had wanted to - she didn't even play Heroes. She had been leaning over a display case full of acrylic keychains, but noticed that the eyes of the men around her were pointed straight at her pendulous, only somewhat contained, breasts. Blushing deeply, she turned and fled, running chest-first into the face of a stout thirty-something guy who was delighted to receive such an authentic ecchi experience.

No, nobody quite understood that anything had changed, or why - not even Carlos and Neil. They were, of course, duly pleased by the flesh on display, but they were quite used to leering at women and making no further moves. So after a little more ogling, they got down to the business of shopping. Or, on their budget, complaining about not being able to shop.

"Fuckin' price gougers," Neil grumbled, returning the box of a large Casca figurine after seeing the price tag on the back. "I wish I was a hot chick so I could suck off one of these fuckin' extorters for a discount."

"No way that happens, dude," Carlos scoffed.

"Fuck yes it does, man, it only makes sense. Why do you think these retailers price this stuff so high? Like anyone can afford this plastic shit! I'll bet tons of these cosplay babes slip under the table to get themselves a special deal." Neil at least had the good grace to mutter these accusations under his breath to Carlos, rather than speak them out loudly. That was about as far as his social graces extended.

Any other person who had spent more than five minutes in Neil's company would have assumed that this was total bullshit. Carlos assumed that it was true. He cast his eyes around the nearby booths, searching for confirmation.

Down the aisle, a bespectacled high school senior with straight brown hair was browsing a selection of anime mugs on display under glass. She'd originally come to the con in casual clothes and furry white cat ears... a low-key nod to cosplay... but now discovered that she had supplemented her headband with an entire matching catgirl outfit, complete with fuzzy tube top, layered skirt that puffed up just a little too high on her creamy thighs, and a collar with a round maneki neko-style bell. Kind of embarrassing, she would normally have thought, but she supposed there was nothing wrong with getting into the spirit of things.

Her breath practically caught as she noticed a Revolutionary Girl Utena mug, displaying the protagonist protectively embracing her dark-skinned friend/fiancee. Utena was one of her obsessions, an deep, innovative, feminist show... that had come out back in the mid-late 90s. Despite its ardent fan following, finding merch was rare, especially outside of Japan.

"Excuse me, how much is this Utena mug?" she asked the dealer. It would be perfect to encourage her while holding her tea in late-night study sessions.

"Mugs are fifty-five," the guy answered promptly, his arms crossed. He was a large man in a large JoJo t-shirt, with a large face and short-cropped blond hair.

Fifty-five? The catgirl was stunned. She couldn't afford that, her whole con budget was thirty! She was saving for college, after all! Sure, mugs were heavy and breakable and rare and probably hard to import, so it made sense, but... she eyed the mug longingly. She had never seen one before, and would probably never see its like again. Not even on Ebay.

"Don't let your jaw drop," the guy cautioned placidly. "Or do," he added a moment later, after his eyes flicked up and down her pandering Halloween-esque outfit.