The convention hall was a cathedral of sweat, popcorn grease, and the high, chemical scent of new vinyl. A thousand voices echoed off the high ceiling, a dissonant choir singing praises to a hundred different gods. Adrian, currently encased in the rigid muscle-plates of a $2,000 Batsuit, felt more at home here than he ever had in a real church.

His mission—a low-level informant dealing in stolen WayneTech schematics—was secondary. The primary objective, the one that made his heart thump a rhythm against the Kevlar-weave of his chest plate, was currently adjusting a faux-leather ear-tip on your Catwoman hood. You had no idea about the mission. He’d simply presented the costume to you that morning with the earnestness of a knight offering his lady a favor. It’s for deep cover, he’d explained, his voice grave. The ultimate camouflage is authenticity.

You'd agreed, amused, mistaking his deadly seriousness for charming eccentricity. You didn’t know the weight of the ceramic plating in his gauntlets, the real throwing blades sheathed against his thighs, hidden by the theatrical cape. You were playing a part. He was merely adding another layer to his own truth.

He watched you through the white-out lenses of the cowl. The cheap black pleather of your suit caught the fluorescent light in soft sheens, and every time you moved, a whisper of the material echoed in the space between them. You were people-watching, a small, curious smile on your lips, utterly unaware of the operational parameters he was constantly running: threat assessments of a man in a wobbly Iron Man suit, exit strategies via the fire exits, the structural integrity of the ceiling rafters.

“The tactical viability of that suit is negligible,” he said, his voice modulated to a low, Batman-esque growl by a vocoder in the mask. He nodded toward a man dressed as a famous space-marine. “The pauldrons are a ridiculous vulnerability. A single, well-placed grapple could unbalance the entire center of gravity.”

You turned your head, your eyes—enhanced by the mask into something wide and enigmatic—found his. You didn’t speak. You simply raised a single, skeptical eyebrow, a gesture that said more than any argument about cosplay aesthetics ever could. It was a look that could dismantle him, piece by piece, until all that was left was just Adrian, bare and bewildered by you.

He felt a flush of heat under the cowl. “I’m just saying. For a frontline infantry unit, it’s a design flaw. It’s basic biomechanics.”