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Hour and a half later.

It took a while for Cindi to actually calm down enough to recite the spell to change back. Embarrassingly, the spell needs one to be calm, and Cindi wasn't exactly that when they got back to the hotel room. Even worse, when the spell worked for Akari but not for her, that for a brief moment sent her spiralling into full blown hyperventilating.

Rowan managed to eventually get through to his friend, but it was definitely a new experience for both.

Now they are sitting at a table in a diner that screams of 'Sunday evening comfort food', and have ordered a huge snack platter of everything deep fried and unhealthy while they try to get their thoughts together.

'I have been effectively female all weekend, why did it freak me out now that badly?', Jacinto muses to himself. 'It's not like it means anything, it's just who Cindi is.'

He sighs for what must be twenty-seventh time in as many minutes, giving Rowan an apologetic look.

"Sorry about that."

Rowan nods, giving a sympathetic smile, "Again, no need to apologize Jac'. If you hadn't, I would have. You just noticed first."

Jacinto nods and takes an onion ring to dip. "Yeah, guess so. I don't know why, but that scared me more than finding out about all this on Friday..."

Rowan sighs, picking up a fried cheese stick for himself, "I can't say either. Maybe we just got too into it? Thinking of it as furselves... made it too real in our heads, and then... well..." He waves the cheese stick in emphasis, then shrugs.

Jacinto gives a bit of a shrug as he munches. "It's still so much, so fast, I guess. And we did get into but, but..." He frowns: "I can not deny that... d-despite my freakout there, that doesn't erase me having a good time just before it." He lowers his head into his palm and groans.

Rowan frowns, "It's... a lot, yeah. The more we understand, the more we find out there is to all of this... Just, focus on the fun parts for now. The less fun we can figure out later if we decide to go to another con like that."

Jacinto takes a breath and nods as he lifts his head from his palm. "Yeah. Maybe just focus on the fur part and not the..." He blinks. "...er, no, that's not going to work. If... if I want to be Cindi again, I have to... accept that other part too."

Rowan nods sympathetically, "Yeeeah. I mean, we did make female OC's... and female fursuits... but... it's different when it's actually... your... well... yeah. You know."

He bites into the cheese stick. "I guess... Akari is female... but... I mean, I'm not."

Jacinto sighs: "Same for Cindi and I. But on some level, Cindi is me, I said as much earlier today. And... it's that part that scares me." He frowns: "That doesn't make a lick of sense. I'm not a girl."

Rowan shakes his head, considering, "Neither am I... Guess that's why there's the bit of panic? Cause you connected the two of you in your mind but... that difference is pretty extreme..."

Jacinto looks at a piece of fried bread in his hand and frowns at it like it has some grand answers to this dilemma. "Something like that, yeah. Mind wants to have these neat little boxes and what we're doing refuses to have anything to do with boxes."

Rowan sighs, reaching up to his chest, "I also didn't expect the costumes to be that 'accurate' where they are..." He pauses, lowering his hand, having not even considered what Akari might have 'lower' just yet. He sighs, "Is this payback for those commissions I got?"

Jacinto blinks in confusion: "Commissions? But we did everything ourselves."

Rowan coughs, "Err... I meant... the art commissions."

Jacinto pauses, then finally connects the dots. "Oh. Those commissions. I, er... I don't know if I want to know."

Rowan drops his head to the table, "Uggh... sorry. Akari would be ashamed of me."

Jacinto gives Rowan a look, then gives a good-natured chuckle as he touches his friend on the arm. "...and secretly like the pictures anyway."

Rowan lifts his head back up with a laugh, "Well... yeah... that's also true."

Jacinto takes a cheese stick and points with it: "There is yet a way for all this to make sense. We just didn't find it yet, I think."

Rowan snorts, "Well, we just have to learn more, right? I Mean... if you're still interested in it? It might be something to ease into a little more carefully from here on out."

Jacinto hesitates, but then nods. "Yes... I could try to claim that I am shocked out of the whole experience, but no... I'm not. I still want to know, just... smaller steps, maybe. Or something." He shudders slightly at the memory of where his mind was not that long time ago.

Rowan smirks, "I kinda suspected... but hey, I'll be taking every step with you. The friendship speech is more Akari's thing, but sentiment is the same from me."

Jacinto chuckles softly as he eats the cheese stick. "You know, it's also kind of your thing at times. You keep me sane a lot."

Rowan chuckles, picking out a potato skin from the basket, "You know neither of us really has much of an argument for sanity."

Jacinto nods: "Yes, but let's be fair we lost that bid a long time before this weekend."

Rowan sits back, snacking on the potato skin, "That's my point exactly. Honestly... for me, I just don't think everything has fully clicked yet?"

Jacinto shrugs: "Well, we have all the time to figure out the comfort zone with this all. Other than the desire to try again, anyway." He eats a couple of pieces of fried goodness as he thinks. "For myself, I will probably take a few days of just boring ol' work before I do or decide much else."

Rowan chuckles, "Need something completely mundane and boring really check us back into reality... I mean, like every con, really."

Jacinto nods, looking down at the table. "Perhaps more so now, for obvious reasons. But yeah. Need just time, and I think some reading of everything we have now access to."

Rowan takes a breath, "Heh... yeah... I don't even know. Like I said, it hasn't... sunk in. The being Akari... being female... the whole RFC. It's a lot, and it's all crazy. But it also was a lot of fun, once we learned what was going on. Or at least, like, ten percent of what was going on."

Jacinto chuckles softly: "Crazy and fun and a lot. About sums it up." He leans on one hand, considering: "You know, you'd think we'd be more weirded about the whole 'change to another being', but with fursuiting I guess we've mentally done that trip dozens of times already anyway..."

Rowan shrugs again, "It's... slipping on another identity. And we've always gotten into it pretty intensely. Just taking it to another level, now."

Jacinto nods. "Yeah. It's all that, and-" He motions with his hands, as though making a ball from something: "-and then it just becomes this fuzzy mess where I trip up."

Rowan sighs, "Yeah, same feels here... I think I understand what's going on, but something feels off, and suddenly being Akari feels just... no, not wrong, that's not the best word..." He trails off with a sigh. "I don't know. But that difference... it's so extreme and weird between us."

Jacinto nods, taking a gulp from his drink. "Yeah. Figure out where I stand between suddenly two of... well, me. Kind of. Although not even really just that, since as Audie noted, it's just all us. There's just a lot more of me than I used to have."

Rowan frowns, "Well, Audie said it's up to us what we kept in character and let bleed across. So... it's just a matter of taking that stuff and pushing it down."

Jacinto smiles. "Yeah, pretty much that. Gotta find some semblance of sanity and balance. In what is complete madness if I am honest, but I'm apparently going to embrace it anyway."

Rowan takes another cheese stick and eats it quietly, "Embrace it... yeah, I guess we have to, huh? To some degree at least. That makes it sound so... I don't know."

Jacinto looks at Rowan: "Defeatist? Yeah, in some ways. But I see our options either getting to know what we've been handed, or be forever bothered by it because we didn't. One way or another, this 'fur-self' issue is not really going to leave, is it."

Rowan nods, Jacinto's words finding the feeling he was facing, "Defeatest, yeah... this isn't going away. I'm just... I'm still so torn over how deep to go."

Jacinto nods: "Yeah, me too." He hums, a thought occurring. "Hmm. But maybe we can do more testing in a low stress sort of way."

Rowan raises an eyebrow, "What... you mean just doing it back home in private?"

Jacinto nods: "Kind of. Next weekend we'd normally be getting together to fix our costumes, post-con." He points with a cheese stick again: "Pretty obviously, not going to be a thing. But should we just... you know, do it, hang around as Cindi and Akari without any performance or public eye involved, see how we feel?"

Rowan rubs his chin, "No crowds, no pressure, just the two of us? It's not a bad idea at all."

Jacinto nods, nomming on the cheese stick: "Figure out which parts are us, which are our fursonas, and what the differences even are." He shrugs: "Talk it out, we're pretty decent at that."

Rowan nods, taking out a piece of bread, "Hmm. That has been said before, yes. Alright... I think that's a pretty good plan. We know who Cindi and Akari are on one level, but never really had to deal with them his closely."

Jacinto hums: "In a way, we have no idea how they... we deal with fur-self stuff when nothing directly happens. Now that the 'suit' part doesn't preclude a vast majority of potential activities and pastimes... I am kind of curious, and maybe that is a bit insane to say after today, to just find out how we, as them, deal with mundanity." He gives a wry chuckle. "I swear nothing I say this weekend sounds sane."

Rowan sighs, tearing into the bread with a tired chuckle, "Part of me thinks we should ask more questions of the RFC, but I really think we'll get a lot of the same advice about 'finding yourself' that Audie gave us... so your idea does fall in line with that."

Jacinto nods slowly as he thinks: "Yeah... Also if we first see things for ourselves more, we have a better idea of what questions to potentially ask later, you know?"

Rowan considers, "We both know we want to wear them again. But if we wait for another convention, that might be... months. If we wait that long, who knows what might come up next time."

Jacinto sighs. "I would also just... Want to be more prepared, you know? I scared myself so bad there for no reason, and I want to not have it happen again..." He looks down, expression a bit somber.

Rowan gives Jacinto an understanding look, "Yeah. We need to have no more surprises, at the least."

Jacinto gives a weak chuckle: "We can always hope. But if something turns up again, easier to deal with if we are home."

Rowan nods, "Yeah, so long as no one finds out. But that shouldn't really be a problem. Honestly, probably more ways we'd get found out here than back home."

Jacinto nods, smiling in wry amusement: "If someone comes peeking through my third story windows at the edge of the town, that'll be a first, fur or no fur."

Rowan smirks, "Well, no one has ever found out about us working on the suits there, so seems the perfect spot to test things out in more mundane conditions."

Jacinto nods. "Yeah, just... Get more of a feel. I think for me, the more I know what I can do, can't do, and how my body feels in general... The better chance I have in understanding the femme part of it." He shivers a bit. "Definitely a thought that both excites and scares me."

Rowan frowns, feeling somewhat uncertain about it all as the more they keep talking about it. "Just... try not to think about it too much, Jac', alright? It's kinda... I mean, it's weird, right? But.. I don't really know where I'm going with this, to be honest."

He sighs, distracting himself with dipping the bread from the appetizer plate.

Jacinto focuses on the food for a moment as well. "Heh. Me, trying to not think about something when it bothers me. Sure. Easy." He sighs softly.

Rowan slumps a little, "Yeah, guess that's asking for the impossible, huh? I don't even know where I want to start thinking about in this whole thing. If I want to... except, yeah, I mean, I can't really stop thinking about how good it felt to be Akari..."

Jacinto shrugs: "Yeah, pretty much." He looks at the remains of their idle snacking, with most of it gone as they have been talking. "Long ass drive tomorrow. We should get back to the room. Get some rest if we can."

Rowan nods, pulling out his wallet to leave cash on the table. "You... feeling better at least? Been a long weekend with extreme highs and lows."

Jacinto nods, giving a genuine if tired smile. "Yeah. Thank you." For a second he wants to take Rowan's hand in his, but thinks better of it, and turns the motion into reaching for his wallet as well, adding enough to cover the bill and a generous tip. "Let's go."

Rowan counts his cash and leaves it on the table, smiling back at Jacinto. "Yeah, no worries. Let's head back."

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