AnimeCon Harem 14: Situation Silver

   “Uh, hey,” Emily said into her phone. “We’re all gonna be at the hospital right here in town, Brian got hurt. Call me back or meet us, we’ll be at the emergency care thing. Bye.”

   “She didn’t pick up?” Kelly asked.

   “She didn’t pick up,” Emily sighed. “Probably helping someone haul the big stuff from their LARP thing down to the parking lot. I don’t know.”

   “I got a text back from Megan,” Stephanie announced in a despondent voice. “She can meet us there. I—I don’t know what to do. She’s going to be leaving to drive back to our university soon, we’re almost an hour away. I…I just… how can I leave, when things are like this?”

   “We’ll get everything figured out,” Kelly said. “Really. I promise.”

   “Wait, for hospital parking—” Emily smacked her forehead. “Long term parking, or short term? Where are we putting Brian’s car?”

   “Uhh,” Kelly made a face. “I dunno, it—it depends. Right?”

   “Yeah, on how bad things are,” Emily said. “But, like—I dunno, how soon can you get a hold of magical healer people?”

   “Magical healer people?” Stephanie’s head snapped up to stare at them.

   “People we know in the future, kinda,” Kelly said. “They don’t know us yet. I can contact them tonight, I think. Someone could get here… soonish. Late night tonight, early tomorrow maybe. Before creeps show up, I think. I hope. But—it’ll probably cost us something.”

   “Cost us what?” Emily frowned. “Not money, I’m guessing?”

   “Um,” Kelly said, scowling for a moment as she tried to steer through the late afternoon traffic. “Well. Whatever they want, basically. We’re not really in any position to bargain with them. Probably they’ll want a favor in the future, or a promise of support or something. It shouldn’t be too bad, and if it is—I’ll take care of it. It’s on me. I started this particular fucking mess, and… I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”

   “No like, sexual favors, right?” Emily grimaced. “Nothing like that?”

   “No, no,” Kelly shook her head. “They’re girls. Well, women. Think a group like ours, but one that lost their Brian. Basically. Oh and uh, don’t even hint at Brian pulling any of them into our group thing, or anything like that. Ever. Major taboo and sore spot.”

   “That um, has implications,” Emily paused. “Right? I think?”

   “Nah, they’re not exactly like us,” Kelly said. “Every magic group thing is a little different. Sometimes really different. For us, I’m hoping alternate futures sending us tips on stuff can be our leverage with them. Maybe. They’ll probably want proof, so… here’s to hoping some future me is real fucking cooperative with what’s going on right here, I guess. If they want proof we’ll need a send, and if whatever fuckface future Kelly from some hopefully close-enough-to-ours timeline doesn’t oblige—we’re real fucked. Because that’s our best leverage.”

   “Okay,” Emily slowly nodded as she mentally worked her way through that. “So, no guaranteed sends on demand, then. It’s a maybe thing.”

   “Yeah,” Kelly said. “It’s a maybe thing. There’s some bullshit chart you make up on a dry erase board in a lot of the futures, showing how we think that all works, but. I’m gonna be honest; I don’t really get it, not just from little passing flashes of future shit I’ve seen. We’re gonna have to figure it out.”

   “But, they can heal Brian?” Stephanie asked. “From whatever’s happened? He’s going to be okay?”

   “No matter what, he’s going to be okay,” Kelly promised again. “Things are just rough right now. They may be rough for a while. I don’t know how the Chloe side of things has panned out, here.”

   “I don’t want to go anywhere until I’m sure he’ll be okay,” Stephanie said, fighting back tears. “If, if that means we need to get a hotel room somewhere around here tonight, I can pay for that. I can have Megan go back to the university without me.”

   “I can pay, Brian gave me all that cash,” Kelly said.

   “No,” Stephanie shook her head. “No. You save that.”

   They lapsed into silence for a moment. Kelly needed to change lanes to make a turn-off, but none of the other drivers seemed keen on letting her pass. Eventually she just floored it, jerking them forward in the largest gap between oncoming cars they’d seen and then speeding up to ensure a truck coming up didn’t smash into the trunk of Brian’s car. The blue surging throughout her suffused with adrenaline for a moment, but Emily’s mind was everywhere else but the city streets.

   “How fast is magic healing?” Emily asked. “Instant? Like a right-away thing? Can Brian be okay to just like, drive back home with us, soon as possible?”

   “I… I don’t know,” Kelly admitted. “Probably not. Depends on how messed up he is, depends on how cooperative magical healing people are, depends on how psycho Chloe winds up being. It’ll raise eyebrows on medical records if he’s just this complete miracle case and x-ray shows broken bones this afternoon, pristine perfect bones tomorrow morning. Depends on too many things.”

   “Fuck,” Emily grimaced. “Alright. Was afraid of that, yeah. What’s our worst case scenario?”

   “Worst case, magical healing people tell us to fuck off,” Kelly said. “Creeps show up for Brian, any of us girls get taken by creeps. That’s worst case I can think of, and—we’re not letting that happen. That means, if we can’t get Brian okay enough to transfer or I dunno, get released to conditional home bedrest or something, we’re going to have to distance ourselves from him for a bit.”

   “That’s not happening,” Stephanie shook her head.

   “Steph—”

   “No. No. I’m not leaving him, no matter what. Not to other people. Who are—wh-what do you even mean, creeps?”

   “People like Brian, but if Brian was bad. Basically,” Kelly let out a huff of aggravation. “They mind control and rape and shit. They’ll heal Brian, Brian will thank them and then politely tell them to fuck off, maybe wind up owing them a favor. I’m not letting you, me, Emily, Rebecca—any of us—get razzle-dazzled by mind control shit and molested or gangbanged. End of story. Not fucking happening. Okay?”

   “They do that?” Emily felt like throwing up. “The Masters guys? The creeps?”

   “Yeah,” Kelly said. “They do… whatever the fuck they want.”

   “But—” Stephanie started.

   “No,” Kelly was firm. “They can’t affect Brian, they can’t razzle-dazzle him with their mind bullshit. Us girls, they can. So, no. No. End of story. End of story, unless I get a send that specifically explains otherwise. And how or why.”

   “Then,” Emily swallowed. “Isn’t this going to be a problem? Are magic healer peoples at risk from them, too? Is that going to be like, a no-sell in negotiations? If creeps show up, or if they find out creeps are showing up, or that they might be showing up?”

   “...It’s a risk,” Kelly said after a long moment of silence. “Yeah, that could be a problem. Fuck.”

   “Magic healer peoples—who are they?” Stephanie asked. “That can’t be what they call themselves.”

   “It isn’t,” Kelly shook her head. “It’s sensitive. Not my secret to tell. That kinda thing.”

   “Okay,” Emily squeezed the handle built into the door’s armrest until her hand began to hurt. “What can you tell us?”

   “We’re not in a good spot right now,” Kelly said. “When something terrible happens, generally we get some kind of heads-up from a future-me about it, so we don’t go in completely blind. But, this was the first big thing we try to change, and we just keep totally blowing it, over and over and over.

   “We’re not ready. That’s all there is to it. Our individual magic stuff isn’t developed enough to make meaningful differences we can take advantage of, we don’t have any clout with any of the magic bullshit people we know from the future—we’re just kinda fucked. Trying this over and over again, because we think we can metagame some perfect outcome where nobody gets raped or hurt or fucked over in horrible ways.”

   “This one boils down to an us or Chloe thing, right?” Emily pressed. “That’s basically what started this one?”

   “Yeah,” Kelly blew out a breath. “Yeah.”

   “Then, ultimately—”

   “She doesn’t deserve to get raped, and that’s not gonna be on my conscience,” Kelly snapped. “So, I made a judgment call. Okay?”

   “Brian doesn’t deserve to get the shit beaten out of him, either,” Emily countered. “If it’s—”

   “No, he doesn’t,” Kelly cut her off. “That’s—that’s on me. I’m going to make it up to him.”

   “There was no other way this could’ve gone better?” Emily asked. “No other thing we could’ve tried?”

   “Keeping her from getting raped is just the start of it,” Kelly admitted. “If we can manage that in the right way, maybe she can cool her tits on the psychotic obsession with fucking over Brian. That’s what most—well, at least half of these attempts in the different iterations are all about.”

   “Okay, makes sense,” Emily rocked back in her seat. “So, rather than preventing the rape or just stopping the rape, we’ve been trying to pull off a rescue. Hero swoops in and saves the damsel in distress, gives Chloe a change of heart?”

   “Somewhat,” Kelly said. “Like I said, half of the iterations are going for that. The other half is perfectly fine with Chloe… facing the worst. The different outcomes that branch off from those just keep ping-ponging back and forth on what they want the next iteration after them to try. When Chloe has a change of heart, she stops calling herself Chloe. Chloe was just her middle name anyways, she was using it ‘cause she’s a pretentious cunt or a hipster or whatever. Her real first name is Christine, and that’s what she’ll start going by, that’s who she is to us when she stops being hellbent on trying to fuck us over. Some—but not all—of the raped Chloes turn into Christines. Most of them even, maybe. None of the rescued Chloes have turned into Christines, yet. That’s what we’ve been going for.”

   “Okay, so, Christine,” Emily asked. “What can you tell us about her?”

   “Her color thing is silver, her theme thing is a mirror, her power reflects back our powers,” Kelly explained. “Steph can’t feel her, you can’t—uh, your thing can’t affect her, Rebecca’s thing doesn’t do anything for her. She’s not on the radar of the dreamscape map thing we have. Hell, maybe it’s been screwing with my future notice send bullshit, and that’s why all of this is so fucked.”

   “What’s she like?” Stephanie asked in a quiet voice.

   “Christine? Broken, traumatized,” Kelly said. “It’s pretty bad. Jumpy, can’t let anyone but Brian touch her, and that’s even with the full magic makeover that helps fix some things for her mentally. I’m pretty sure sex was completely off the table, but that was private stuff between him and her and not my business. The charm thing couldn’t fix everything. She’s not real big on talking, so don’t expect any kind of conversation. Future hopes, dreams, goals—all nada. She’s just sort of there in the background, for us. Part of our little group. If you ask her to help with dishes, maybe she’ll do dishes, maybe she’ll start them and then just kind of stare for a while, and then wander off. Likes to be alone a lot.

   “Rebecca sits with her a lot of the time, kinda-sorta just talks to her and always checks in on her. Emily, you avoid her like the plague, because seeing her upsets you, and then you feel guilty about that. Brian guilt trips about it nonstop, and that then bleeds over into Steph, obviously. Me and Angela? Well, I don’t feel all that guilty around her, but then I’m not all that patient with her, either. I’m not a great person.”

   “Yet, you don’t want to be at fault for—”

   “I may not be a great person, but that doesn’t mean I’m a super shitty person either, Emily.”

   “Okay. Yeah, I get it. Was just sayin.’”

   “Angela?” Stephanie asked.

   “Girl number six,” Kelly shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes things just don’t turn out that way, so I dunno if I should even get your hopes up. If we do wind up with her, she’s blue number two, which trashed a whole bunch of the other Emily’s stupid sentai color theories for our charm thing.”

   “What,” Emily’s mouth fell open. “What do you mean, blue number two? I’m blue, that’s already taken. You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

   “Same shade of blue,” Kelly said. “Different theme to go with it. You’re the one that ropes her in, so that’s all on you, anyhow.”

   “I can’t believe this,” Emily muttered to herself. “I—I don’t think I even know any Angelas. I maybe knew one from way back in high school? But, I didn’t really know her.”

   “How were you able to learn so much, this time?” Stephanie asked in a quiet voice.

   “This one send was a stupid fucking long daisy chain of different ones,” Kelly growled. “Instead of one kinda solid one. So, accuracy, as far as we’re concerned, is all over the place. Since so many of the previous ones don’t have a lot of relation to what we may actually face in this one. Also a fucking lot of it got lost completely, and I think more and more of it’s slipping away every second I’m not actively dwelling on it. So. Poor retention, shit accuracy, this whole send was a mixed fucking bag of maybes. Let’s just not even do this ever again?”

   “I mean, you still got a ton of advanced knowledge, though,” Emily pointed out. “In an all-around way. You know what our powers wind up being, you know details about how things may go, who we might meet. Magical groups of people and all that.”

   “Sure, kind of,” Kelly shook her head. “Unless any tiny thing changes, and things don’t go the same way or we don’t wind up meeting the same people. The whole chain of sends has been us overcorrecting or under correcting back and forth and it’s all—it’s all shit. It’s all shit, and I hate it. I fucking hate it.”

   “I… feel the same way,” Stephanie sighed. “Literally, even. I can’t help but feel the exact way, I-I can feel her hating it, and now I hate it. I don’t know how to block out all the bad feelings yet, or if that’s even possible—and it frightens me. I could just. Lose control, again. Be overwhelmed by everything everyone’s feelings. I don’t know what to do.”

   “Fuck,” Emily said. “How bad is mine? My power. When I get it, when I figure out what it is.”

   “Yours?” Kelly let out a dry laugh. “Yours is just great. You love it, it’s fine.”

   Yeah, Emily frowned as she glared out at the other vehicles traveling beside theirs. I bet.

   Emily persisted interrogating Kelly about every detail she could latch onto, but beyond the basics points they had already covered, her lines of questioning got nowhere. Asking for information on the different future versions of their group ran into a wall, because Kelly had trouble pinning down useful specifics. There were a lot of iterations, all of them were different in small ways but blurred together, and beyond defining them into either camp rescue Christine or camp Chloe can go fuck herself, everything remained vague and nebulous.

   When she pressed for details about ‘the Masters’—the creeps—Kelly grew increasingly irritable, because she couldn’t name any of them individually or describe their appearances. Trust me, you’ll know if they show up was ominous, and from the clipped, biting responses, nervous glances towards Stephanie, and seething vitriol, Emily could infer that most of their impression on Kelly was that in one of the really bad iterations, they’d taken Stephanie and changed her into someone else.

   That was terrifying, and as Emily’s own anxiety grew she couldn’t help but pester Kelly with even more questions. There wasn’t anything of note revealed, however, just I don’t knows that evolved into I don’t fucking know, okay Emily until she forced herself to stop frustrating Kelly. Stephanie had fallen into ominous silence by the time they arrived at the hospital and pulled into the short-term parking lot, and when they finally stepped out of the car together, the pink-haired girl had her shoulders tensed up and was visibly gritting her teeth.

   “You okay to do this?” Emily asked Stephanie, exchanging a nervous glance with Kelly. “Realize you’re probably getting all our worry and shit, through your thing.”

   “Yes,” Stephanie bit out. “It’s still. It’s overwhelming, it’s choking. Multiplicative worry. Can we—please can we just go and see? See that he’s alright. Make sure he’s okay. Please.”

   It was a long walk for the three girls from their parking area to the emergency care entrance, and when they stepped in through the two sets of automatic doors the reception area was underwhelming. A pair of counters at the far end, both of which were busy, a guy waiting in line at the one, and then a large waiting area filled with rows of seats. Emily was just about to push on ahead towards one of the front desks when Kelly clutched at her arm and yanked her backwards.

   “We’re fucked,” Kelly hissed out. “We’re beyond fucked, this is—this is way, way, way past any worst case scenario. We’re completely fucked.”

   “Kelly?” Emily froze, feeling panic rise up within her in a flurry of bubbles. “Explain?”

   When she followed Kelly’s stare, Emily realized a girl was watching them from the distant corner of the waiting room. Despite wearing an ordinary gray sweatshirt and sweatpants, this figure was an otherworldly ethereal beauty—tall and with the long, slender limbs of a catwalk model. Her silvery hair was pulled into a loose tousle on one side, her fine facial features were picture-perfect—and horrifyingly familiar. The stark difference to that most hated face that Emily would recognize anywhere was a pair of rather demonic bright red eyes that glared at the girls from across the room. Raw dread welled up within her in a deluge of emotion all over again at the sight. This evoked the same fight or flight reaction she’d experienced back at that parking garage, when Kelly in the glory of her gothic trappings had seemed to appear out of thin air like a fallen guardian angel.

   “It’s Chloe,” Kelly choked out. “She’s. She’s on the blood magic thing, somehow. Don’t know how, don’t know why, but—that's it. We’re completely, totally fucked. We uh, we tried putting Rebecca on the blood thing, the blood magic vampire thing. We—they did, they tried this, and, it’s this other separate track from the charm kind of magic we’re all on. It doesn’t—it didn’t end well. It’s vampire shit. Super strong and super fast, and uh, and Rebecca, even Rebecca eventually couldn’t control her uh, her need for blood. It was bad. It was real fuckin’ bad, okay?”

   “Okay,” Emily swallowed, glancing from Kelly to Stephanie. “What do we do?”

   “I don’t fucking know!” Kelly stammered. “We’re—we’re fucked. Vampire fucking Chloe? We—we—there’s nothing we can do to stop her. From doing whatever the fuck she wants. We’re fucked. We uh, we need to try to go find Brian, get him mobile however it takes, whatever we have to do, and get the fuck out of here.”

   “Can we—”

   “Emily. She’ll fucking kill us,” Kelly said in a grave voice. “Easily. Carelessly. She’s that fucking dangerous. Okay?!”

   “Stephanie?” Emily asked, her voice growing tight. “Stephanie?”

   “She feels completely different,” Stephanie reported, not looking away from Chloe. “Before she was noise, static—messy. Now, she’s… silent. She’s there but silent, too silent. Hidden, or ah, or she’s blocked herself off from what I can feel. I don’t know.”

   “Her hair’s full silver,” Emily stated the obvious. “So—so, does she have a power? Is she connected to our charm thing?”

   “She, she might have powers,” Kelly threw out her hands. “It’s—I don’t know. Rebecca still had her power when she went on the other track. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

   “So uh, if she’s queen psychobitch but supernaturally strong and shit, we’re, we’re just fucked no matter what, yeah?” Emily whispered. “Like, nothing we can even really do. She’d uh, she’d catch up to us, or find us, hunt us down, or, or—”

   “Yeah,” Kelly bit out. “Yeah. We’re fucked.”

   “We need to know how bad Brian’s hurt,” Stephanie insisted.

   “If she’s like this, she took blood from him,” Kelly said. “So, uh—he might be. He might be pretty bad. Worse than any of the other times, I mean. This is—this is worst case scenario, times ten. Or, at least none of the timelines that survived to even send warnings were this bad. By a longshot.”

   “Chloe randomly getting his blood is… weird,” Emily shook her head. “Like, what did she do, just bite him? Randomly? If she had to have contact with his blood to get put on this blood magic bullshit track. Right? She got blood instead of saliva or spooge, so she’s on this other separate thing?”

   “Yeah, I—yeah,” Kelly shrugged. “I don’t know.”

   “You said you sent him on time,” Emily reasoned. “You called the cops early. Maybe—maybe Brian got to her in time. To uh, to stop the worst from happening. If—”

   “This is the worst that can fucking happen,” Kelly hissed.

   “—if, no I mean, if Brian saved her, like if the timing is right, maybe that’s not psychobitch Chloe,” Emily finished. “Maybe she’s, uh, maybe she’s willing to… let us live. I don’t know. You said that best case scenario, whatever bullshit thing all those versions of us were trying to metagame—you said that was getting her to stop being Chloe and start being Christine. Right?”

   “I don’t know,” Kelly shook her head. “I think we should run. Grab Brian, and bail. Fast as we can. Or at least maybe try to.”

   “I don’t think we can run,” Stephanie took a step forward. “I think—I think we should try to talk to her.”

   “No,” Kelly flat out refused. “No. Not a fucking chance. No way. No, no—”

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