The game was of course rigged from the start. I knew it, I also want to believe that the Hinata Hyuga cosplayer knew it, after all she had volunteered to be the stooge in this little mock gameshow and I hoped and prayed too that the Naruto cosplayer knew it. I want to believe the poor girl knew what she was getting into when she volunteered to take part in this silly little stunt. I hope so. I really do hope so. Otherwise I don't think I could have lived with the guilt for what I was about to do. Thankfully today was Saturday and tomorrow was Sunday. If I still felt guilty tomorrow morning I could always skip having donuts and coffee with my friends and pop into St. Mary’s Episcopal Church an hour early before Sunday Mass started to drag Father away from his morning coffee to hear me say confession. 
Oh Lord, that would have been something. I could just see myself kneeling down in front of Father. An old, leather bound Book of Common Prayer opened in front me, and I dressed in my best frilly Sunday dress intoning from those yellow, brittle pages the Rite of Reconciliation in front of him in Elizabethan English. Oh Lord, what a life I live. 
The stunts were silly little things. For the first one the Naruto cosplayer had to sprint from the stage toward the doors in the back of the room and back onto the stage in ten seconds flat. Because again Naruto was an anime ninja and he was suppose to be really fast. Of course it took the guy cosplaying as him around a minute and a half. The meant that poor little Hinta Hyuga got a chocolate pudding pie in the face! The crowded loved it but the poor girl almost jumped out of her bunny suit as I smashed the pudding pie in her face. The Graham cracker pie crust exploded like a bomb and sent tiny blobs of pudding and squirty cream in all compass directions.

The Naruto cosplayer just stood there looking blushing and looking bashful as he rubbed the back of his neck as he watched the Hinta Hyuga cosplayer get her first pie to the face. As she tried mostly unsuccessful to clean the pie, pudding and cream from her eyes, a volunteer wearing a bright neon orange shirt with the words 'Stage Hand' emblazon on the back stepped up a step ladder and poured a thick looking mixture from a gallon milk gunge into the clear, plastic reservoir located just above the wooden stool.

I winced a little, I think I was having flashbacks to when I was gunged for Homecoming. I sure as sugar hoped that the Hinta Hyuga cosplayer knew what she was getting into. Because things were about to get messy, really messy.

For the second stunt the Naruto cosplayer had to do fifteen sit-ups, eighteen push-ups, thirty seven crunches in under a minute! Because you know Naturo being an anime ninja was supposed to be really, really strong. I think you know what happened. It took the guy around eighteen minutes to do all that. I guess he could have done it faster, but that was a bulky cosplay he was wearing! That and he stopped halfway through to declare his undying love for his sweetheart Hinta Hyuga.

And you can guess what happened then. A moment later, I was smashing another pie in the poor girl's face and another gallon of ice cold slime was poured into the clear, plastic reservoir above her head. Two down, two to go. Oh and the crowd was loving it. You could tell the Naturo cosplayer was a real ham actor. Each time he failed a stunt he would hold his hands up in the air, shake his head from left to right and say.

“I'm sorry Hinta-Chan! I guess I'm really out of shape! Maybe I should train a little more!” He said it in such a laid back manner that I was not sure if he was joking or staying in character. And the Hinta Hyuga cosplayer only blushed as she shrugged her shoulders, her face was now covered in a thick layer of pudding and oily cream and at the bottom of the tank one could see the ruined remains of the two pies I'd tossed at her. Two crinkled tin pie pans lay side by side.

“That's okay!” The cosplayer who was cosplaying as Hinta said said the cosplayer who would cosplaying as Naturo said. “I still love you!”

“Oh how sweet!” I said winking.

The next stunt was really silly as he had to perform ten spells or something. I call them spells, I mean I never watched an episode of Naruto in my life. So I'm going to call the weird hand gestures he was doing with his hands spells or something like that. Of course there was a time limit on it, he was supposed to perform those ten spells in under two minutes flat! That was kind of unfair I felt, because come on, even the most hardened Harry Potter fan would have a hard time doing ten spells from the movies or the many books with correct hand jesters in two minutes. I mean maybe they could, but once you get on stage, things change. Stage fright takes over, you become aware of the crowd watching you. And I’m sure many would buckle under the pressure. The only reason I was thriving was because I was a seasoned cheerleader.  Any jitters about performing in front of a large crowd had long since been worked out of me. 

And of course as expected he failed and the Hinta cosplayer was rewarded or should I say punished with another pie in the face. I think this time the pudding that filled the pie tin was strawberry or something because once I pushed it into her face a landslide of pink pudding slid down her chest and pooled in her lap and the air around the tank started to smell like strawberries.

At this point, I doubted things could get any messier. I mean the poor girl was a walking blob of cream and pudding and the bottom of the tank was filled with broken pieces of pie crust, some big, some small, and mountains of once white cream that was starting to turn yellow under the relentless heat of the lamps from above.

But again I was proven wrong. The next stunt was something that I did not expect, but it was fun. A cosplayer was selected at random I think, and they were supposed to fight 'Naruto' . I was told to select some guy that looked kind of cute, like he made me feel things. The guy was around the same size and height as the Naruto cosplayer and I guessed they might have weighed the same.

The guy I told to select was a guy who was cosplaying as the famous swordsmen, Rurouni Kenshin, for those who don't know anime very well, allow me to clue you in. Rurouni Kenshin is the main character in a manga that is set eleven years into the Meiji era. Now I know enough about Japanese History  to know that the Meiji era was kind of the era that defined the modern day Japan we know and love. Well the modern Japan I know and love. I’m not sure the same could be said about China or Korea. Anyway I digress. God my thoughts are scattered today. 

If I can recall correctly, the Meiji era started on October 23, 1868 and lasted till July 30, 1912. In that time Japan had transformed itself from a mostly rural feudal society to a new industrialized society. It was a period of remarkable growth and transformation. Anyway the Rurouni Kenshin cosplayer and the Naturo cosplay had something of a mock fight on stage, and the crowd ate it up like popcorn. And of course in the end the Rurouni Kenshin cosplayer won with ease and that meant that I got to smash another pie in poor Hinta's face!

If you've been keeping count, that was the fourth and final pie. Those four pies had rendered the lovely Hinta cosplayer a walking, human-shaped blob of oily cream and pudding that was coated in a fine dusting of graham cracker crumbles.

“Oh I'm so sorry!” I said blushing a little as I peered toward the poor girl. I turned my head toward the crowd. “But it looks like Naturo has failed every one of our physical challenges. And that means, our lovely Hinta here is about to get an ice cold bath in four gallons of slime! After all this is Cosplayer in Peril!” I said as I bunny hopped over to the cord and wrapped the cord tightly around my hand.

At this point the Hinta cosplayer was blushing so hard, her body heat was starting to melt the cream. At that moment I hoped, and I really hoped that that girl, whoever she was, would forgive me! But then I shrugged my shoulders and pulled hard on the cord. A few seconds later the plug that was holding back the massive overflow of slime came pouring down over her head.

The girl jumped, as the massive downpour of red, green, yellow and orange slime poured down on her head, soaking her bare shoulders, coating her bare legs, and adding to the mess that had been collected around her feet. The roar of laughter filled the air. The girl had been transformed from a pudding coated bunny girl to something that looked like it belonged in a nineteen fifties black and white 'B' horror movie.

How that bunny suit was remaining up I have no idea. But at this point in time I’d consider it a miracle. Or maybe she had the foresight of buying a bunny suit with clear plastic trips that looped over the shoulders. Those strips were supposed to provide support and keep your girls properly covered. Of course I would call that cheating, since my suit did not have any support beside the tight fabric and the zipper in back. But I’m sure the shoe was on the other foot. My girls would be hanging out and the show would be canceled. Or maybe not. 

“Cold.” The girl said blushing. “So cold.” She said again. Still blushing. “So.. So.. Cold..”

I blinked and rubbed my shoulders and then. Well at this point nobody had given me any direction. The laughter went on for a few more minutes and slowly the crowd started to filter out through the double doors in the back. I think only a few hours remained till the convention closed for the day. Maybe less. Maybe that convention was already closing for the day and people were heading toward the parking lot to get in their cars and head toward the house. Come to think up it, when the game started a lot of vendors were starting to close up shop and the artist alley was looking more or less like a ghost town

And so without stopping to shake a few hands or hug a few necks like we normally do down here in the South. I started to walk off the stage. I still had to get changed, load up the stuff I bought that day. And then hit the road before five o' clock rush hour traffic hit. Now, I was okay driving in and around Benton. I was perfectly fine with driving in such median size cities such as Greenville, Yazoo City, Vicksburg, and Greenwood. But the thought of five o' clock rush hour traffic in the massive urban spray that was the metropolitan area. No thank you.

So I took one more look around the stage. A few stage hands were helping the Hinta cosplayer out of the tank and helping her toward the shower I guess or maybe some clean up station. So that was good, the other members of her school club seemed to be hauling out buckets of warm water, bottles of dish washing liquid and a collection of brooms, dust pans and trash bins so they had the mess under control. So it seemed there was nothing else for me to do.

What happened then? Well I changed out of my sexy bunny girl outfit and into something normal, like a pair of jeans and form fitting white blouse, loaded everything I brought in the trunk of my car and carefully I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the open highway. All of that took less than fifteen minutes and as I started to zoom down the highway, I rolled down the windows to catch some of the early summer breeze.

The whole day felt unreal. Had I really gone to my first anime convention? Had I really pied and slimed a girl? Why did the mental image of her sitting there, covered from head to toe in pudding, cream and thick gunge make me feel warm and moist? I shook my head and sighed. Coming out of the egg it seemed to have been easy enough. In fact, from day one I had been surrounded by amazing people who had been there to guide me, mentor me and yes even minister to me. But none, and I mean none had ever sat me down and explained the birds and bees to me.

And so I took a deep breath and tried to focus on the road. Now I know you take your life into your own hands every time you step into a car or truck. But driving in Jackson presents its own perils. The asphalt is marred with pot holes that look more like craters that have been formed by falling meteorites. These potholes often hold and collect rainwater from the year around rainfall.

And people tend to drive like bat's out of hell. And so I pushed the thoughts of birds and bees out of my head. How odd that going from James to Jamie had been easy enough. Almost as easy as if flipping a light switch. But nobody, and I mean nobody ever told me that I would have to face my own sexuality. And so my anime convention adventure came to an end. Had it been fun wearing a sexy bunny girl outfit? Hell yes! Would I do it again hell yes! Would I volunteer to be a hostess on a messy gameshow? I doubt it though I won't mind being the one sitting in the tank. But that's a story for another day. But as I took the turn off that would take me home toward Benton. I breathed a silent prayer. Hopefully one day I would be on stage, sitting in a gunge tank, wearing a faux leather bunny suit, getting my face smashed with a pie from a cute, adorable blonde haired, blue eyed girl wearing a bunny suit too. That thought sent shivers up my spine and made me bush hard! 

The End.