[ WP ] A blizzard strikes during a massive comic book convention , completely isolating the building and the attendees , most of whom are in costume . Then there is a murder . And as you made the mistake of dressing up as Sherlock Holmes , everyone expects you to solve it .

Thunder split the sky, and for a second the convention hall flashed alight, the terror in every face more visceral under the illumination of God's wrath. Then the hall was dark again, and only the half-ass lanterns from the cellphones on people's hands gave some little light to the place. There was a dead man on the ground, twitching his last agonizing seconds away as his friend tried uselessly to contain the blood oozing out of his chest, the big, serrated army knife a palm deep into the victim's sternum. The hall was alive, moving, buzzing, like a beehive, the sound of a thousand whispers of fear and despair mingled with the crashing of the hail that beat ceaselessly against the ceiling. 
 
 Thus began the story of Sherlock Holmes, fighting against the odds to find the man who took Spock's life. 
 
 Being dressed as Sherlock Holmes was a giant mistake from the start, but that was hardly connected to the horrible murder that took place in the convention. Alan was too short and too fat to be the Sherlock from BBC's show, the one Sherlock whose clothes he had the courage to wear. Robert Downey Jr. wore that weird, 19th century clothing, and that weird English accent ( Alan took the hint from his movies' failure and ditched both ) but Benedict Crumblepatch's was a stylish, 21st century Holmes, one Alan could find the clothes for without being questioned about his hobbies. So wear the clothes he did, the itching, barely-warming clothes that let his chest freeze and made his arms shake. The hat was good, though. And it was all going fine, for Alan's standards, up until the horrible murder. 
 
 The hall had been too full for anyone to fully grasp what was happening around it. Conventions had their way, and almost Douglas Adamsian mixture of improbable events happening at the same time that could power the *Bistromathic* with half the space and twice the power. The sheer number of variables flying around that one Jon Snow cosplayer deciding whether to get Ice or Longclaw for his wall, whether to pay with his Dad's stolen card or his Mom's allowance, whether to buy the good version on the booth with the fat guy or the shitty version that's being sold by a cute lady, and, on top of all that, the raw amount of thought he puts on each and every observer's every opinion about his cosplay, his allowance or his mother and her destructive habits around cheap gin and drunken sailors is entirely incomprehensible to the human mind, and yet just a small particle of all that is going on in the convention floor. 
 
 As those thoughts raced around Alan's head, the dead guy's friend ( or so Alan thought ) wailed away his sadness, hands crossed against his friend's chest, sobbing so hard the dead body shook along, its mouth moving in an unsettling pattern. The friend was dressed as Picard, a fitting costume to cry over Spock's death, Alan decided. He looked around at the other observers, to see what kind of sick people stood idle as a man cried over his friend's death. He saw pixies, and ponies, bears and ninja's, one man dressed as Yasuo and another, half concealed by the crowd, in a soldier uniform, all watching the scene with different reactions; some were crying along with the dead man's friend, some were silently scared, praying for life, and some were smiling. Alan touched his cheeks to make sure he was n't one of them, and sighed in relief when he felt his mouth tightly shut. 
 
 Alan was just observing all this with a sort of sick, visceral curiosity, when thunder striked against the ceiling of the hall, and a piece of it broke out, falling inside. Desperate screams and wild shoving followed quickly, and in the commotion, Alan's attention moved to the crowd, desperate faces running pointlessly from side to side. Alan turned his attention back to the dead man, his calm, dead features a jarring clash against the desperation in the hall. He bent down, took the knife out of the dead man's chest, and walked away. His friend was long gone, running from the commotion, or to see the fallen ceiling, or just running in general. Some people ca n't take death all that well. 
 
 The emergency lights were turned on inside the hall, and the wall of darkness was replaced by an almost blinding light. The commotion stopped, eventually, though the buzzing held on for some good two minutes before order could be achieved. Alan looked around, trying to use his deductive powers to find the murderer, remembering all he knew from watching, reading, writing, studying, guessing and compiling every single thing there was to be known about Sherlock Holmes, the murder knife heavy in his hand. He took a deep breath, and started noting the details he saw. 
 
 > The murdered had to be strong; the knife was too deep in the dead man's sternum to be a simple stab. The murder had a motive, then; nobody would go for the kill *in the heart* if there was n't a meaning to it. Because of the angle of the stab, I must conclude the murdered had to be taller than the victim, who, judging by the size of his shoes and coat and the measures I can see, is around 5'10 to 6'1, give or take. The murderer had to be smart; if he was a stupid stabber, everyone would've seen him raise his hand, even if the hall was overcrowded. The choice of place also says a lot; the killer *knew* the dead man would be here. He also had to be in a costume that would allow for a knife such as this one to enter the convention floor, because the metal detector guys would n't let him in if his Barney costume started beeping around the pockets. So, I'm looking for a 6'2 tall man, and it has to be a man, accounting for average male/female heights and the fact that this is a fucking cosplaying convention, plus the force and angle of the stab, and this man will be disguised as a soldier, probably full-on, too, kevlar and face-paint, to explain the knife beeping. 
 
 Alan began looking for the suspect he described, searching overhead for the man he thought was the killer, when a blinding pain in his back made him fall down. When he reached to touch it, he felt a piece of metal and a hilt - a knife. He tried to look up, and saw a big man in a soldier costume, grinning at him, a wide grin, wider than he could believe, wider than humanly possible, a grin so unsettling it sent shivers down his spine, and for a second he forgot the pain he was feeling, the knife in his back, he forgot that his assumptions were right and that his costume was weird and ill-fitting. There only was the soldier, and his sick grin. 
 
 The man's twisted smile grew larger, if that could be believed, and Alan saw he mouth something before pulling a small thread from his kevlar. The last thing he saw was a blinding light, and it was done.
