Henkō Yurei

Micah Alexander sighed as he rolled his shoulders, his amber eyes drifting half-lidded as he shook his head, his raven hair messy.

He smirked, looking in the mirror as he snapped his collar before turning away, mildly amused as his cousin was almost a dead ringer for a certain staff wielding Edenian. “Kinda impressive how you were able to create that costume from nothing more than a screenshot, Lavender,” he drawled, his Irish accent obvious.

Lavender Brown smirked. “Hey, you can't blame me for being hot, especially like this. Though your hair ain't supposed to be messy…. though it does make you look cuter,” she teased, making him roll his eyes.

“Just because I'm cosplaying a soul-stealing sorcerer doesn't mean I'd prefer to be a dead ringer for the guy, Jade,” Micah deadpanned. “Besides, pardon the pun, but in the series, the guy's been dead for years, considering MKX is stretched over a quarter century. Though I can say that I don't like how he was written out… it came off as lazy, not to mention that I'd love to kick Shao Khan in the balls for that betrayal,” he said coolly, letting his accent fade slowly until it sounded almost identical to the deep carrying drawl of Cary Hiroyuki.

Lavender shivered, making him smirk. “That's just creepy how you can change your voice like that. I've heard you impersonate Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman in his Logan character, Keith Urban both singing and speaking, Patrick Stewart, and that… uh… what was his name? That guy that did Dracula in Van Helsing?” she said, flicking the polymer staff as she spoke.

“Richard Roxburgh, though it's always funny to see people jump when I slip into that exaggerated accent he used for Dracula,” Micah smirked.

Lavender rolled her eyes, smirking beneath her facemask. “You're crazy,” she quipped.

“Crazy is a perspective, biǎomèi,” he quipped as he turned away towards the door. “Besides, sanity is overrated,” he drawled. He heard the soft clinking of the gypsy coins hanging from Lavender's belt cinched snugly around her shapely hips.

His gaze scanned around, spotting a Zero cosplayer. He shrugged a bit, dismissing the guy. His gaze scanned around, spotting people taking photos. A smirk crosses his face as he pauses. “How about we give them a bit of an act… and tease them with a bit of a finisher?” he teased.

Lavender smirked. “You have those bracelets we made? The spheres of dry ice with the smaller spheres of water and the green LEDs?” she questioned, getting a playful smirk in reply. “Let’s do it. This is going to be fun,” she quipped, laughing a bit. She saw him unlace the blunted sword from his hip, smirking.

They went through the act, trading staff for blunted sword near the end, though when he took her down, she twisted, sprawling on the floor as if dazed before he jerked her up to her feet as she triggered the bracelets and LEDs, green tinted fog billowing out as he caught her around the shoulder and throat before lifting her a few inches off the ground, courtesy of her tensed legs as she gave a brief hop as he pulled his hand away, the dry ice fog thickening as if something were being dragged from her body as the LEDs on the bracelet closest to her was deactivated by the same pressure trigger that had triggered it as he let his hand drag away slowly, the fog trailing behind as the emerald gleam within the fog refracted as he let her pratfall to the floor as he deactivated the bracelet beneath his jacket’s sleeve.

As she sprang to her feet, he noticed she’d slipped in the thicker contact lenses that gave the illusion of being blind… or in this case, the illusion that she was ‘dead’. Gasps drew attention from quite a few cosplayers as he grinned, bowing a bit as Lavender did so as well.

As she straightened, they gasped more as the lenses had slipped out, into the container for them hidden in a wrist pouch.

Micah chuckled, shrugging as the onlookers snapped photos though he had the strangest thought that those rumors of cosplayers going missing and those ‘Displaced’ stories he found rather imaginative could be rather possible.

He walked through the various set-ups for items and cosplaying, though he did notice a guy apparently cosplaying the Resident Evil 4 shopkeep, though the cloak was all wrong, a dark navy with some lighter blue runic script he thought might have been Nordic in origin, though he couldn’t tell initially. That Zero cosplayer was near the guy, examining something. He noticed a cloaked male watching them intently before he grimaced slightly, absently letting his gaze drift around cautiously as he heard them haggling over price.

His eyes narrowed on the shopkeeper, noticing the kashira of a katana seemingly flickering in and out of existence in a vibrant dark and pale blue glow roughly every half second or so. His gaze slid away from the ‘shopkeeper’ whom he now suspected was anything but a shopkeeper or a cosplayer. He felt a hard shoulder bump before he spotted the man cosplaying as the Betrayer of Hope from the Wheel of Time series. Another name for the character of ‘Ishmael’ was ‘Moridin’... in the Old Tongue it translated as Death.

He saw the Zero cosplayer turn away with a satchel that certainly fit the theme of his costume before he blinked, seeing tendrils of golden red flame flickering around the guy before he dropped to one knee, his body apparently dissolving into golden red dust that ignited even as it fell, whirling into a maelstrom before vanishing soundlessly. His gaze snapped up to the navy cloaked shopkeeper who was turning away.

He saw his cousin coming from the other end, looking worried, though it was then that he heard the raspy growl.

“Careful, boy, or you may stumble onto things left to those who know more than you. Especially if they wish to keep what they do secret to the fools of the world,” he heard as he turned before he saw his cousin hurled into a stand before intense pain surged through his body as he was thrown into the same stand, which collapsed beneath him. His hand slapped onto an amulet, whilst he felt items falling on top of him as he felt Lavender gasp behind him as he felt the chain of a serrated kunai very similar to that of a certain Hellspawn Ninja wrap around his chest as a fan pinned the same shoulder down, also pinning the chain down as he saw the mask of a particular Cryomancer land onto his face. He managed to turn his head to see emerald flames erupting, consuming their way up his body swiftly and with agonizing pain even as every breath ached from the heavily bruised ribs he had from whatever had knocked him aside.

Unconsciousness soon engulfed him, though he could feel his cousin's hand gripping his own.