This story is one I have had in the wings for a while now. It's one I've been planning out and worked on frequently. I first started writing it after reading 'Twins and Cosplayers' by 'Martel Irasia'. I completely recommend reading it.

I borrowed her main villain and a few of her characters for the end of this chapter, with permission so no complaints.

I wanted a better excuse for being self-inserted and in the state I find myself than 'My game cube did it.' partially because I don't own a game cube, playing Symphonia on my Wii.

I stood in the middle if the front room, behind me is a huge shape under a white sheet. The dining room table had been pushed to the side to make room. I fiddle with a camera on a tripod for a moment. One I make sure it is set up properly I press the button to start filming.

"Hello, YouTube.

My name is Draceena. I am a twenty one year old woman but I am often mistaken for a fifteen year old boy. I act like one too sometimes. I live here at home with my mum and dad, my brother Xai and my sister Grace. Her account is GraceDoesWierdThings. Look her up, she's funny.

Anyway, I figured this would be a good time to start my own channel. Tomorrow, Xai, Grace and I are going to the London MCM semi-annual Anime and Manga Exhibition. London Expo for short."

I look behind me at the large shape hidden under a huge white sheet before turning back to the camera. "Wanna see my costume?" I reach over and press the stop button. After watching what I just filmed and finding nothing wrong with it I set the camera back up on the stand. I move it closer to the shape and, after making sure everything is in the right place, started filming again. I would have to cut the first part of the video out when I edit it. (Read: when I get Grace to edit it for me.)

I pulled the sheet off the big shape in the middle of the room. "Tada!" I pause for a moment so I can have more space to cut out this section. Before I look back at my cosplay. It is a life-size model of a horse minus the head. I carefully take off the wrap skirt I was wearing and step up onto the chair.

I carefully feel around the neck hole and find the seam. I pull a part of the back off and climb in settling myself inside the animatronic body so that my legs are hidden inside up to my waist and close the back up.

I turn back to the camera. "Tada! I'm a centaur! Cool huh? My cousin is a geek working for that major computer company. Mana-Electro. You know the one. They perfected prosthetic limbs by using a design based on Full Metal Alchemist. They invented lots of other stuff too. This is a proto type design. I will be showing it off at the Expo to try and gain more attention for the company." (An: Mana-Electro is a completely made up company.)

I look down at the body. "I haven't fully strapped myself in yet, that would require Grace to help me and about ten minutes to get everything set up. But I can actually move it like a real horse would so I actually look like a centaur when I'm wearing it."

I look back at the camera and grin. I pause for a moment before carefully extracting myself from my costume and climbing down.

I walk back over to the camera and stop the recording. I went upstairs to find Grace. Once sure she is not naked I stand outside our room and held the camera up, facing me. "Let's go find out what my weird sister is doing." I stop the recording sigh and try again. "Let's go see if Grace has her costume finished yet."

I slowly open the door to mine and my sister's bedroom. "And here we find the Grace, in her natural habitat." I point the camera at my sister, sitting on her bed in front of a canvas. On the canvas was a half finished painting of a tiger.

Grace turned around. "'Sup!"

"So Grace, what are you cosplaying as tomorrow?"

Grace stood up and walked over to a dressmakers dummy in the corner of the room directly opposite the door. "I am cosplaying as Flutterbat! Vampire Fluttershy."

I walk closer to the costume and pause then stop the recording. "Yay, video."

"Emi, you do realise you're half naked right?"

I look down and realise I forgot to put my skirt back on. "DAMNIT! At least I didn't get it in shot. I think. At least I'm wearing underwear." I sigh and hang my head. "I'm stupid."

Grace laughed at me. "Anyway, nudity aside. Are you ready to go tomorrow?"

I smile at her. "Yeah. I'm ready. Everything is packed. Barry will be here at six thirty in the morning with his minibus so I need you to help me get into my costume before then. You all packed?"

Grace nodded and I went back downstairs. "See you in the morning then."

...

Morning arrived and I yawned wide. The alarm on my phone was going off. I reach out towards it and fall off the couch. Oh yeah, I slept downstairs last night. I stand up and blink around the room.

"Emi, turn it off."

I look to my right. Right. Megan stayed here last night. I look around the room and then remember where I put my phone. I walk across into the dining room and pick up my phone off the table so I can turn off the alarm. By then I was wide awake so I went to have a shower.

When I got out of the bathroom Grace was standing outside the door and went in to shower and get ready. I walked downstairs to get into my costume.

Since it was so huge and it had neuro-receptors of some kind that allowed me to move it with my mind that meant it would take at least ten minutes to put it on with help. I strap my legs in properly. On the inside I am sitting down so my waist is at the opening on the neck join. I was sitting on a seat but my legs where in a kneeling position. I had to strap a catheter in since it would take too long to put on and take off every time I needed to pee.

Once I had properly secured my lower half in the costume I pulled out the cords that would be running up my back to attach to the headset thingy I would have on. When I had them free I pressed a switch on the inside to turn it on and put the back of the body in place and used the special seal and costume/stage makeup to fix the join so it looked like my skin just faded into horse hair for the body. Grace came in at that point and grabbed my headset off the table. We carefully positioned all the sticky things in the right places and attached everything together. Grace then put some more stage makeup stuff on my back, like a skin graft. It ended up looking like a horses mane but shorter and it hid the cables.

I then put on a wig to hide the sticky things and headset. Good thing I have such short hair or it would be a bit more complicated. I then pressed a button on the headset to turn it on. I carefully concentrated and moved each of the feet in turn and swished the tail. I took a few shaky steps around the room and grinned.

Grace grinned back and went to get her cosplay on. I picked up the padded bra/crop-top thingy I made that I would be wearing as a shirt.

I picked up my bow and quiver full of arrows and slung them over my back. I then fastened a strap I made to my waist and attached my bag, a coil of rope, my dagger and my sword. My bag was actually made out of a similar material to an old potato sack. It made the costume seem more authentic.

I picked up my camera off the table. I twisted the screen around so I could see what I was filming and pressed record. "Hey, today's the day. Yes my hair is longer. It's wig. I have got my costume on now." I walked over to the tripod by the door to the conservatory and fixed the camera to it and walked into the middle off the room. "What do you think? Pretty cool huh?" I gently stamped one of my hooves on the floor and wished my tail.

When Grace was finished getting ready she filmed me for her video since she was doing one too. Then I filmed her with both of our cameras. Then we both filmed Megan and Ben, when they came downstairs. We had a large breakfast (For us anyway, I only had two slices of toast and half a grapefruit) and went to gather the rest of our stuff. I made sure that I had everything I needed in my bag and that I had the entry tickets secured away. I then got a call from Barry to say he was nearly there and would be about another fifteen minutes. I quickly called the others to get their stuff together.

Barry was one on my Dad's friends. I forget what he does but he earns a lot of money. He owns a minibus especially for disabled people so we are borrowing that to get to expo.

Xai got his team Aqua cosplay on and Megan had her Umbreon onesy.

I double checked my bag. I had a spare change of clothes, my phone, my purse (With my ID, and Debit card), my camera, my first aid kit, my gloves, a forearm bracer for archery (Not that I could hit a target to save my life), some food (For lunch), a large number of bottles of water, lemon ice-tea and fizzy drinks (Drinks at Expo are expensive), some sweats (I like sugar), a few travel packs of tissues, the tickets, a notepad and collection of pens and a book to read.

This was going to be fun.

Expo took place in a building in London called EdExell. It was a building specifically designed for conventions. There were huge warehouse like rooms along both walls labelled N1, N2, N3 and so on along one side and S1, S2, S3 and so on along the other. The N stood for North and the S stood for South. The doors on either end of the building were the East entrance and the West entrance. On one side of the building was a huge car park but on the other was a huge set of stairs with some statues here and there as well as a small grassy courtyard/field that people sat around in. The Expo itself was in one of the warehouse rooms and you had to have a special wrist band to say you have paid to get in. The queue was in another warehouse room.

Between some of the rooms were shops like 'Costa coffee' and 'Upper crust' or 'Subway'. This was places where people attending the conventions could go to eat.

Sometimes there was interesting things in the other rooms like work shops or lectures. There was also an adult section but I had never been in there. Wasn't really interested.

When we got there everyone else left the bus before me since I needed the room to get around the pole that was there. After a while we met up with Megan's friends who where meeting us there and we all went to hand in our tickets. Even buying in advance we were still in the queue for a good fifteen minutes. Much better than the one time we got here and where in queue for about two hours. One time we didn't buy in advance and had to join to other line and were there for four hours.

At that point I split off from the others, I usually went around on my own to buy things before the group met up and we did fun stuff together. I ended up buying a cool blue and black parasol, a real dear-skin canteen, a cool set of blue hairbrushes in a metal case that looked just like what I pictured a wing pack looking like and a dozen boxes of pocky.

When I left to go meet up with the others I filled my new canteen up. It was quite the novelty having a canteen but it fit with my costume.

Eventually I got hungry and decided to find somewhere to eat so I set of down the centre aisle. There was seating in squares all along the isle but most of them where full.

As I was walking past a room I heard some people screaming. It wasn't the usual kind of screaming you hear at expo either. Twice while I was in the queue to get in everyone started cheering for some reason. Most of us didn't know why but we cheered anyway.

Everyone cheered when I walked in. It was awesome!

I poked my head around the door and stood frozen in place. In the middle of the room was a large metal device that looked kind of like a dome or even an igloo. In the centre of it there was a swirling vortex of purple-black energy swirling in the centre. There were four people near the door trying desperately to escape.

Two of them vanished within the first second.

A Martel cosplayer was the next to be dragged in, screaming her head off as she vanished.

There was a man standing off to one side. He had silver hair flowing down his back and a long black coat on. "Good luck, my friends. Especially you my dear Lara. I do hope you don't die before we meet again." He turned around and spotted me just as the girl cosplaying as Lloyd (was her name Lara?) vanished.

This all happened in only a few seconds, I barely had time to register what was happening before it was over.

I stepped into the room and pulled my bow off. "What have you done?" I asked in a low and threatening tone. I had mastered that tone years ago since I work with children. They need to know they are in trouble without being yelled at.

I notched an arrow and aimed it at the strange black crystal embedded in his chest.

He smirked. "A foolish mortal like you has no power here." He pushed a few buttons on the side of the machine and the vortex started swirling again, this time with streaks of red and luminous yellow added in.

Before I could register what was happening I somehow had my bow slung back over my shoulder, my arrow back in my quiver and was somehow just outside the door of the dome. I felt it pulling me backwards and tried to move away. Unfortunately since the legs I was running on weren't my own I tripped and fell, being pulled backwards through the air through the remaining space between me and the dome.

"You won't interfere!"