Bella barged into the cluttered Cosplay staff HQ, swiveling her head looking for Kiko. A few volunteers and other staff folks were chatting or busy with tasks, but Kiko was nowhere to be seen.
“Hey Bella! Are you running from something? What’s that look on your face for?” asked Kiko.
Kiko was sitting at a folding table surrounded by costumed mannequins. She blended in as if she were a mannequin herself. Her short, blue hair was pulled into a point above her head. The matching blue paint on her face made Kiko’s head look like a giant raindrop. Her blue-flecked white unitard looked like wind-whipped clouds. When Kiko smiled she was the spring rain, and when she scowled she was the coming storm.
“Boss,” Bella said as she approached the table, “We’ve got a problem!”
“Only one?” asked Kiko. “That’s an improvement over last year.”
Bella knew that was true. Kiko had taken over when the previous Cosplay Coordinator walked off the job. Last year’s RinthCon had been inexplicably jammed with more people than anyone had expected. And the costumes! They were much more realistic than normal. Tensions were high, staff were overworked and exhausted. Tempers flared. Kiko looked like a tiny bird turned into a human by elves, but she had to be tough as nails to keep everything together.
“Yeah, only one problem,” said Bella. “But it’s huge!”
“I’m listening.”
Bella hesitated. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Give it your best shot.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” said Bella. “It’s easy to explain, but hard to believe. It has to do with the new Cosplay facility you found for us.”
One of the con staff standing nearby turned his head in Bella’s direction. He had long, cascading brown hair and a matching beard. His green shirt contrasted with his red tartan kilt. He walked over to the two women and took his elvish pipe out of his mouth. “No one told me about a new cosplay space.”
Kiko waved at the newcomer. “This is Jair. He’s head of security. Jair, this is Bella. She took over my old job. Sorry I didn’t mention the move. We found his unlocked door and it led to an athletic facility with great changing rooms. It’s a bit of a walk, but it’s worth it. If the hotel staff notice, we’ll just move back to the original rooms. But I don’t think they’ll ever realize we’re there.”
“I know you know this,” said Jair. “But let me remind you the Saturn Hotel is an asteroid. It’s a renovated research facility. Once you get outside the hotel area there is a complex of unused tunnels and rooms as big as a city. You can get lost out there. Do you have any idea how much our volunteer attrition dropped the year we started locking all the doors?”
Kiko frowned. “All right, I’ll tell everyone to move back to the other rooms.”
“I don’t care if you use stay where you are, but I need to inspect the place and have security make sure nobody is going to wander into parts unknown.”
Kiko stood up. “Let’s go then and see what this is all about.”
Bella led the others out of the Cosplay HQ and around to the back of the convention area. They saw fewer and fewer people until the empty hall opened into an unused auxiliary lobby. Dust lay on all the surfaces.
“Spooky,” said Jair.
Bella pushed through the double entrance doors into a broad corridor. They walked until Bella turned on a flashlight. “Power is spotty in this section. Not far now though. Left here and down to the end of the tunnel.”
They continued until the tunnel ended in a pair of large doors. Beyond those, the stone floor gave way to fake grass.
“Here we are,” said Bella. “We found a remote control for the lights. Just a second.”
There was a click and arrays of blinding lights came on far overhead.
“This is a stadium!” exclaimed Jair. Bella, Kiko and Jair were standing on the pitch with rows of seats surrounding them.
“I said it was an athletic facility,” said Niko.
“I thought you meant a gym! You could seat 100,000 people in here.”
“That,” said Bella pointing to the other side of the field, “is the thing I came to tell you about.”
Kiko gasped.
“It’s not exactly a problem…” continued Bella.
The thing Bella was pointing to stood thirty feet tall, its boxy chest, legs and arms painted dark red except for the yellow and black nuclear device warnings on left breast. A pod of missiles squatted on the right shoulder next to the cockpit that was situated as the machine’s head.
“It was just here when we came in to set up for contestant check in. That thing is too big to fit through any of the tunnels. I have no idea how it was brought in.”
Jair stroked his beard thoughtfully. “However it got here,” he said, “I guess we know who’s winning the cosplay competition.”
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