Kansas City’s Premier Anime Convention
The Story of the Phoenix
One bright morning in March 2005, a baby phoenix opened its eyes and looked around in confusion. Strange creatures with two legs were running around with false skins on, some carrying giant, soft egg-like pouches they could open and close and put things in, and some carrying wonderful-smelling brown and tan sticks in bright red boxes.
The baby phoenix squawked in joy as one of these brown and tan sticks fell to the ground in front of it. Though it happily munched away on its first meal, it decided that the two-leggers were much too big and scary to come out and visit, so it hid itself away and decided to take a nap.
One year later the phoenix woke up, and this time there were even more two-leggers around! Still feeling very shy, it kept to the shadows and searched for more tasty sticks to eat. At the end of two days, the phoenix was plump and happy, and it curled up inside a warm box to wait for the next time the two-leggers showed up.
To its great surprise, the next time the phoenix woke it found itself in a big, new place – much bigger than the place where it first woke up! Even though it was scared of the new place, it was too hungry to take another nap before eating, and at the end of three whole days the two-leggers left and the phoenix settled down in its box for another full-tummied nap.
Twice more the phoenix woke to a brand new place, each bigger and scarier than the last. The newest big place had a warm feeling behind its big scariness, though, and after crunching its way through several more tasty sticks it settled down to one more nap.
Now five years old, the phoenix was no longer a tiny baby, and it had a harder and harder time finding hiding places from the big two-leggers. Because it woke up in the same place with the warm feeling, it decided that this was the year it would come out and say hello to all the two-leggers!
To the great surprise of the Naka-Kon staff, a beautiful phoenix with brilliant red feathers popped out of a box while they set up the convention. Everyone loved it immediately, and decided to adopt the phoenix as the convention’s new mascot.
The phoenix waited patiently while kon-goers thought of names and voted on them. After several days, the voters chose to name him Tomo, and he decided to stay with Naka-Kon for good.
