A Storyteller's Game

Chapter 0 - (Alternate) World Series

“Wait up, you guys. My wig is falling off again,” said Liza Mortimer in a practiced British accent.

 

Liza’s three best friends, Hollie, Karen, and Janetta, stood in their respective military uniforms and waited while Liza re-situated the spiky blond wig on her head. She’d dedicated days of work to this handmade Arthur Kirkland cosplay, also known as England, of the Hetalia fandom. Many hours had been spent scouring the web for the perfect reference pictures, picking out the exact shade of green fabric, stitching pieces together and picking them apart and stitching them back together again. It was a lot of work, but this was Liza’s first anime convention, and she was determined to get it right. And now the <i>wig</i> was giving her trouble?

 

“It’s ‘cause you have so much hair,” her friend Hollie, dressed as the personification of America, pointed out helpfully. She kept glancing at the immense room behind her, the Artist’s Alley, with poorly disguised impatience. Rows upon rows of booths stretched out from wall to wall, displaying posters, buttons, plushies, and all kinds of other amazing items which Liza probably couldn’t even begin to imagine.

 

“Says you! No way am I going to cut all my hair off just so it can fit into a wig. Don’t be a stupid America.” Liza finished straightening her wig and ran up to join them, unable to keep herself from smiling. “Have some patience! I want to get going, too, but I have to put up with this ridiculous wig. I can’t… Oh, wow! Look at all these people!”

 

All around them, cosplayers swarmed through the aisles as if they had found their one true home. Liza’s eyes skipped from one brightly colored costume to the next. Most of these characters were ones she’d never even heard of, but some she recognized. Each one made her want to squee a little more. Her fingers tightened on the strap of her camera, wrapped securely around her wrist. She’d <i>have</i> to get photos of everyone.

 

“Look, it’s Miku!” Karen, who was dressed as Japan, pointed at a girl with long teal twintails. “Liza, can I borrow your camera?”

 

Liza clutched the camera to her chest, staring at her friend in mock horror. “Bloody hell, you can’t be serious!”

 

Karen pouted. “But…Miku!”

 

“But…my camera!” Liza’s camera was her most precious and beloved possession. To ask to touch it would be like asking to vandalize the creation that had led the four of them here, the anime that they adored with an undying and sometimes frightening devotion. To others, their dedication to this anime appeared almost bizarrely religious. But those were the people who did not understand.

 

Oh, the things they didn’t understand. Those people, the outsiders, known to some by the grim title of “the normal ones”, would never understand what it felt like to give yourself over completely to another world, to be inescapably, deliciously <i>obsessed</i>. Liza had had obsessions before, but nothing else had ever even come close to the scale of how she felt about this one special fandom: Hetalia. Although she had at first rejected the off-the-wall humor and overall weirdness of this anime that depicted the countries of the world as people, it had quickly grown on her. Ever since that day a few months ago in sophomore history class, when she’d accidentally referred to Germany as “he”, she’d known it was a done deal. There was no going back. Hetalia had taken over her life.