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The Next Morning.
After a surprisingly restful sleep, the duo awoke excitedly to the alarm, no need to hit snooze for once either. They went down to the hotel restaurant and had a quick (but not too quick) breakfast. Now, the pair has returned to their room for the final preparations and suiting up.
Rowan grabs his hefty suitcase, lovingly packed, and slips it onto the bed. Despite how rushed everything has felt to reach this point, he slows down just a bit, unzipping the case with almost a bit of reverence. He takes a deep breath as he grins to Jac', "You ready? As if I have to ask."
Jacinto has his hands on his suitcase just the same. "Ready as it is possible to be. Let's get this show on the road."
With that, he opens the chest of wonders, or the large suitcase his creation is in and looks at the contents of it. Everything as perfectly packed as the previous fifteen times he checked on the contents: mostly soft costume pieces packaged in enough padding that there's barely even room for air in the suitcase.
With utmost care, he picks up the headpiece. Admiring for a moment at the costume's dog head, just slightly alien look to it, with slightly opaque eyes and carefully folded cloth antennas and big fluffy ears. He puts it down on the bed and swallows. This is really it.
"Time to bring Cindi and Akari to life."
Rowan swallows nervously before throwing open his own case to look at the custom-made suit. So much sweat and blood and tears went into making Akari a reality, not to mention the time and money involved.
He lovingly shifts the packing to lift her head up, carefully unwrapping the antlers. "I'm sure they're just as eager as we are. Oh wow... I've got butterflies in my stomach."
Jacinto nods: "All of the butterflies." He starts picking up the other costume pieces, laying them down on the bed in roughly the order he will be needing them. Bodysuit, padding suit, cooling undersuit, paw-gloves... lot of pieces even with a lot of the costume being just the bodysuit itself. All kinds of tiny pieces, up to and including couple of pieces of electronics.
Taking a deep breath, he starts undressing, briefly going all the way naked so that he can put on briefs that have zero looseness in them. Nothing worse than having your undersuit feel folded on itself because your boxers got into a fold. He very briefly notes that fursuit has the advantage of not needing to hide your true gender in anyway, unlike other modes of cross-gender clothing he has definitely not researched out of curiosity. Fursuiting is not drag or crossplay, obviously.
Picking up his light gray cooling suit, that will cover him from knees to shoulders, keeping his body sweat from getting into the suit itself and keeping him sane under all that fur. "Okay, time to be cool." He chuckles at his own weak joke.
Rowan laughs, "Please. We're two dorks preparing to wear intricately crafted suits of our OC's at a furry convention. We were always cool."
The jokes are lame, but they are successful in breaking up the nerves of the moment at the very least, and Rowan begins to go through the same process as Jacinto, stripping down to put on the underlayer of the costume.
Something about it all has always been very freeing to Rowan, not having to worry about what he's doing or saying or feeling while in the suit. It gives a layer of escapism, a chance to just 'be' someone else, someone cute and happy with themselves. Not that Rowan is unhappy with himself, but in a fursuit... It's just different.
Jacinto quickly gets into the cooling suit, letting out a soft sigh. "...maybe possibly the best investment in all the years of this hobby. How did we ever do summer cons without these?" With a lot of sweat, that's what they did. Being uncomfortable for the sake of art is part of the description, after all.
Picking up the big padded pants, he starts getting into the shapewear meant to get his legs look decidedly differently shaped. Initially they had used just cheap furnishing pillows for making these, but have since upgraded to tighter, lighter, more breathing materials, that when put on correctly with the fursuit, should leave absolutely no folds anywhere. Even if without it it just makes him look like he's gained weight on his hips for some inordinate amounts and there's something wrong with his legs.
Once again he tries to not think about that too much as he continues putting the pieces on. "This part always feels so silly."
True to his words, the part where he picks up the small vest with two very un-masculine bumps on the front of it, and puts it on... he initially felt very silly about it, even embarrassed. Now less so, although it's still not something he would care to advertise around. But Cindi is a female character, so smooth big fluffy breasts are a needed thing...
Rowan would be pretty embarrassed too, if anyone saw him wearing this other than Jacinto, but the two of them have seen each other in worse over the course of working on their suits together. "Yeah, it's pretty silly... but eh, you know. All part of the process. Besides, look at me. Not much different, eh?"
He laughs at his self-depricating joke. He's already normally heavy, the extra padding just makes him feel less overweight and self-conscious and turn it into something more positive.
He's not fat like this. He's soft and huggable. Akari is plump and loves it~.
Cindi is also considerably bigger than her creator and wearer. But there is something very... dare Jacinto say 'attractive' about how Cindi looks. Instead of voicing that, he gives Rowan a smirk: "Well, some difference. If nothing else, Akari is big differently than you are."
Jacinto then turns his attention to the major part, the fursuit itself. A carefully crafted full piece from his wrists and neck, down to the big paw-feet and tail sewn into the rear of the suit but reinforced to be bouncy. The tail has supports that go around Jacinto's waist, firmly locking it in place so it doesn't drag, but wags and bounces freely when he moves. The suit is made from cream-colored long pile fake fur, with big brown splotches and smaller pink ones in a pattern deliberately crafted to look random. Overall, as he pulls the suit on it feels like home, a feeling of euphoria about a body shape that just feels good to wear... and be.
Testing the firmness and bounciness of the tail that's somewhere between insect abdomen and a King Charles Spaniel's floofy tail, giving a very poofy look behind him. Although also a look he has to be fairly aware of how and where to move, but that's just practice.
"It's like coming home, putting this on again." His heart is definitely beating faster as he swallows. Excitement and euphoria and general elation about the whole thing they are doing now.
Rowan chuckles as he moves to slip on his own suit, "Big differently, but still big."
He runs a hand over the soft fur, before lifting the suit from the bed. His is made from the same cream-colored fur as Cindi is, though without the random splotches and instead more deliberate patches of embroidered pink scales. The patches are big enough to be visible, but small enough that the fur isn't disrupted by their presence.
Atop her head is a cascade of berry-colored red/purple mane that flows down her back towards her own tail. It's less poofy, more slender and serpentine, though just as fluffy. The legs end in cloven hooves, and slipping his feet down in is comfortable, even when from the outside the digitigrade joints seem impossible.
He bounces once on the hooves to test the tail's bounce as well, making sure the belt around his waist is properly tightened to hold the supports in place, then lets out an almost involuntary giggle at the feeling of his tail bouncing behind him, "You're not wrong, we haven't even worn the full outfits before... not with all the accessories and details added on. But it feels so cozy~."
He laughs, "For now at least. We'll see how cozy it is in 8 hours."
Jacinto nods with a soft laugh, then flexes his hands before picking up the paw-gloves. Carefully he connects a small wire hidden in the sleeve of the suit, to matching part inside his right glove. With imperceptibly small flicks of his thumb inside his glove, he can thus move the ears and the antennas on top of the costume's headpiece, as well as the cream-colored costume moth wings on the fursuit's back. Incredible amount of trial and error went into getting it just right, but where his own own capabilities fell short, stubborn learning via online resources supported. He even got into a course about working small electronics once, for exactly (and really, only) this purpose.
He flexes his now-pawed right hand, then uses mostly his left to put on a small flowery band of (fake) Hyacinth flowers around his right wrist, to further obfuscate his wrist moving and because said flowers just are part of Cindi's theme. He then makes another check in the mirror to make sure the suit sits perfectly on him.
Satisfied, he reaches to pick up the head, only that and the left paw to do. Before he puts the light and complicated head on, he attaches the wiring that hide inside the fursuit's neck, then turns to smile at his friend. "See you on the other side."
Rowan does the same, slipping on his own hand, a three-fingered hoof that are a little trickier to manipulate than the (slightly) more dexterous paws that Jacinto made. For Akari, he ties some (equally fake) jasmine flowers along the antlers, almost making them appear to be branches that are blooming, a cute detail that Akari loves.
He picks up the head to hook up the electronics, still a bit in awe of how fast Jac' picked up this skill and how expertly he implemented it into the suit. Just doing a few similar tests before ensuring everything is hidden, and then Rowan lifts up the head, smirking at Jac' with a laugh, "Be back in a few hours."
He lowers the head down over his own.
Jacinto puts on the head, settling it on comfortably before putting on the left glove to finish up.
He looks into the mirror and lets out a very satisfied sigh at the image, that's absolutely nothing like the human wearing it. There is no way in the ever that anyone would connect the bored and quiet paper pusher to the cream puff of a dog-moth.
He turns to his friend and nods, then whispers just loudly enough that it's audible through the costume heads. "Showtime."
Per their oft-tested and true methods, they talk as little as possible while in character, and if they do it's by whispering while Cindi and Akari hug each other.
He can't resist giving the costume and thus the floofy abdo-tail a wiggle, though. It just feels so good.
Rowan slips on the other hoof, taking a moment to ensure it's properly pulled into place. He wiggles the fingers as best he can, grinning all the while. Once he's sure everything is secure, he does another bounce, refraining from just bursting into giggles. Being Akari feels amazing~
He steps over towards Jacinto; towards Cindi, and can't resist giving her a hug, whispering back to her "Let's knock 'em dead, girl."
Jacinto... or really, Cindi leans into the hug: "Do lets." She then makes one last check everything needed - like hotel keys and phone - is hidden somewhere inside the costume but is also not visible, before giving a spin in front of the mirror and heading towards the door. This is going to be so awesome...
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