“Brian Douglas?” A pair of college-aged guys wearing AnimeCon Staff shirts stepped out from the side and cut them off from advancing through to the lobby with the rest of the crowd pushing forward. “Are you Brian Douglas?”

“AnimeCon has a zero tolerance policy for harassment,” the first volunteer staffer said. “We’re going to have to ask you to leave—to ask you and your whole group here to leave.”

“Uhhh—what?” Brian gave the guy an uncertain smile, unsure as to whether he was joking or not. “Our whole group. Are you serious?”

It took Brian a moment to realize that this wasn’t some sort of practical joke and that the overweight staffer with the scraggly orangish-brown tufts of facial hair swaddling his neck was being completely serious. Another guy in a volunteer staff shirt was standing right behind the first one with an equally solemn expression. Everything else—the rest of convention hall interior was normal, with all the other attendees were merrily going about their business chatting and laughing and heading towards where they wanted to go. Brian for some reason had been specifically singled out.

“Yeah,” the staffer said, gesturing across all of them. “Brian Douglas and this whole group. We’re going to have to ask all of you to leave.”

“Me? What? Why?” Brian glanced from the girls traveling with him back to the guy in the volunteer staff shirt in disbelief.

“Oh, Brian has to leave, does he?” Kelly grinned. “Oooh wow, our whole group, too? You must have some solid as fuck evidence of whatever the fuck you’re charging us with.”

“We’re not charging you with anything,” the guy’s expression darkened. “We’re asking you to leave. AnimeCon’s a privately hosted event, and it states right there in the registration terms and conditions that we can ask attendees to leave at any time—”

“What the hell?” Megan blurted out. “But why?”

“You’re not security,” Emily gave the staffer a skeptical look. “You’re just some volunteer asshole, harassing us. Power trip bullshit, no doubt based on some totally bogus sob story a certain someone cooked up.”

“We definitely haven’t harassed anyone,” Brian held his hand up to Emily as he carefully addressed the staffer. “Maybe you have the wrong people?”

“Brian c’mon—you know this is Chloe trying underhanded shit,” Emily snapped. “That forum thread she started this morning—late last night—whatever. Uhh, Mr. McStaffer guy, if you go to the third page of that thread where I start making replies, I basically debunk everything she says and lay out what’s really going on.”

“W-we didn’t do anything wrong!” Stephanie asserted.

“Called it. I told you it was her calling in a noise complaint on us that had that cop show up last night,” Kelly chuckled, shaking her head. “I totally called it!”

“Sorry, I’m going to have to ask for your badges,” the staffer insisted, refusing to give them any leeway. “Are you guys going to leave peaceably... or do I have to involve security?”

“Involve security—please,” Emily brightened. “Mr. Gary was a huge help to us yesterday. He’ll know this is fishy as fuck and get to the bottom of everything!”

“Fine,” the staffer grunted out with a rigid expression. “Security it is, then. Your funeral.”

---

“Where’s he going?” Chloe demanded, watching the volunteer staffer who’d confronted them take a step back while speaking into his radio handset. “What’s he saying—why don’t you have a radio on you?”

“Uhh, not all of the staffers get radios,” Andrea blinked. “I've got a walkie-talkie, it's two-way. They had to make sure that the ones who needed—”

“Okay, but why don’t you have a radio?” Chloe demanded, trying to sound panicked rather than furious at the sheer fucking ineptitude of her helper here. “They’re still there, what’s he doing? They’re not freaked out or upset or anything at all. They’re just—they’re just standing there!”

“He’s not leaving this alone,” Andrea began to say. “He’s probably contacting security to—”

“I didn’t fucking ask them to contact security, I asked them to get rid of them!” Chloe seethed. “You said that attendees could be removed at the discretion of the staff. You said that! That’s what you said to me!”

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Andrea held up her hands in an attempt to placate Chloe. “Once the—”

“No it’s not okay!” Chloe snapped, letting herself grow hysterical for a moment so that she could push Andrea in the correct direction. “It’s not okay it’s not okay it’s not okay! Do I look like I’m fucking okay?! DO I LOOK LIKE I’M FUCKING OKAY?!!!”

“It’s going to be alright!” Andrea tried to promise, trying to guide Chloe back from the railing of the upper level veranda and away from the scene below that was triggering her. “Why don’t we take a moment and—”

“I’m going down there!” Chloe decided, giving Andrea a look. “We’re going down there. Right now.”

“What? No!” Andrea quickly tried to placate her. “No no, not a good idea at all, let’s—hey, c’mon! Wait a second—”

---

“You say we’re being removed for harassment,” Brian said. “When and where did we ever harass someone? It should be real easy for us to just prove our innocence so that we can get this cleared up.”

“We don’t need anything cleared up, we asked you to leave!” the staffer insisted, growing increasingly incensed. “Me—one of the staff with authority in charge of running this whole convention—I’m asking you, and your group, to please leave—”

A momentary silence fell as Chloe slowly marched into view with yet another staffer in tow—this one a frumpy looking girl with blocky eyebrows and a rather severe haircut. Chloe’s arms were crossed, and her exquisite face was frozen in a stormy expression that he knew all too well.

Even despite it all, Chloe was beautiful. The light from the pavilion’s skylights fell upon her face just right, her lovely long legs gave her that graceful stride, and she exuded that rare, natural inborn elegance. Almost any guy would immediately get drawn into her poignant features and that starlet look that made her so memorable—so, why didn’t he feel an ounce of attraction towards her anymore?

Why did her very presence instead feel like a knife that was steadily inching into him?

Seeing her again was also like whiplash, in that—surprise—he felt completely unprepared right now to deal with her in person. A little over a week ago, she’d disappeared from the apartment they shared with all of her things, with his two attempts at calling going unanswered and the text he’d sent ignored. Then, Emily delivered the news that he was suddenly single and it had still felt unreal. They’d been having serious troubles, but all at once it felt like the relationship he’d seriously committed himself to was yanked out from under him, and he never really did regain his footing.

His work shifts in the week had come and gone in a hollow sort of daze, and he’d arrived at AnimeCon on Friday without any real expectations. Only to be completely blindsided, by attraction and interest in the form of Stephanie, and then mixed up in what should have been the major complication of Kelly, which then turned into something altogether more convoluted than he knew how to explain. Before he knew it, Emily was even kissing him, Chloe was there, screaming and slamming doors, Kelly was coaxing his dick between her tits and they were all losing themselves in a sexual situation that seemed like something out of a fever dream. Before he could catch his breath and regain his bearings the next morning, Stephanie was overwhelming him with innocent seduction.

Throughout the whirlwind adventure of improbable but somehow continuously escalating situations, Brian had barely had any time to even think about Chloe. Let alone begin to shift his mentality towards her from being his troubled girlfriend to being his EX-girlfriend, to really put her behind him and make their time together just a difficult part of his past.

Right now, all at once, he could only see Chloe as an ex-girlfriend, and regarding her once-familiar presence made his stomach tighten up with a bevy of emotions. He discovered he was relieved at the finality of them being over, ashamed and disgusted that he’d given so much of himself to her, and perturbed, at how stifling Chloe’s approach now felt, how her being near seemed to smother out all the excitement and anticipation he’d held this morning for spending a great last day at the convention here with the girls. Worst of all, he hated realizing how much he’d been lying to himself, all for the sake of attempting to preserve a relationship that was never, ever going to work out.

In fact, for some crazy reason his instincts were screaming at him now that Chloe was dangerous, vindictive, and absolutely hellbent on ruining both his life and the lives of these girls.

Which is, yeah, that’s crazy, Brian tried to tell himself. Paranoid, overdramatic. Or overreacting, or—or something. Right?

It didn’t feel rational for Chloe to have such a drastic psychological effect on him, to have this nauseating feeling of dread settling deep into his guts at her arrival.

Is this how everyone feels when they encounter an ex?

“Brian,” Chloe snapped out in a terse voice.

Her tone was more accusation than acknowledgement, and she stared him down with intensity in her eyes, sizing him up as if challenging him to even dare to speak.

---

Stephanie gripped onto Brian’s arm so tightly that she was sure she was hurting him, but at the same time—she simply couldn’t let go. All she could do was hang on, glaring at Chloe with watering eyes and feeling her hackles rise as her entire body filled with tension. She’d resolved to glue herself to Brian’s side as each of those sickening feelings coursed through him and into her one after another.

These were all emotions that she knew intimately.

An oppressive blanket of anxiety. The weary flavor of resignation, the pain and confusion and sorrow and self-doubt, the sour weight of fear laced with traces of bitterness so raw and fresh that they physically stung.

Brian, Stephanie grit her teeth. Brian I’m here with you. I’m here. We’re here, we’re all here for you. You’re not alone.

She had no idea how to make her charm power useful here, how to make it helpful, because whatever magic ability was connecting her to Brian on that deep level did little to allow her to actually help shoulder his burden. Even so, Stephanie was all the more determined to weather through this encounter with Brian, to feel everything he felt right now, to completely and totally empathize with him.

She loved him.

In the peripheral of her new senses, Stephanie could feel both Kelly’s amusement and annoyance as well as Emily’s immediate, visceral hated for Chloe—which was a new kind of feeling for Stephanie, but one that was quickly growing on her. Emily’s hatred was a deep-seated, completely ingrained total loathing for absolutely everything about Chloe. A well-practiced, trained, and even veteran hate that was rising up, eager to push to the front lines and draw blood. From Chloe herself, Stephanie felt… wrongness, and the aberrant sensation only intensified as Brian’s ex-girlfriend finally stopped in front of them.

Chloe terrified her.

There weren’t any feelings or emotions transferring from Chloe. There was just the grating glassy teeth of signal noise that made Stephanie want to recoil back and hide behind Brian. Whatever bond was tying Stephanie to the other girls, it was as if something had gone terribly wrong to the connection with Chloe. It was off, it was a discordant silvery dial-up modem screech, it was the dance of black and white snow and sudden loud bursting static of an old television turned to the wrong channel, and it hurt.

It’s not… it’s not even feelings COMING from her, exactly, Stephanie determined as she pressed herself against Brian. I’m not connecting TO her. It’s… around her, like a perimeter of dead space in the dreamscape. Rebecca might see it better. There’s a big boundary around her, like a broken area of… whatever that is. Keeping me out.

“Chloe,” Brian responded in a stiff tone.

Only a small moment had passed between Chloe’s greeting and his reply, but Stephanie was experiencing entire volumes of sensory input from everyone all at once and felt stretched completely beyond her ability to keep up.

Brian’s mood sinking in slow motion like a landslide, the hill of his normally steadfast city beginning to slough away and some of those beautiful structures on the cusp of being destroyed. The river of blue that was rising with Emily’s temper, flooding over Emily’s senses and eroding the very embankments that defined her. In stark contrast, Kelly was metal and meteorite and absolutely hissing red with glee, simply begging to be flung into direct confrontation with Chloe. Confusion and growing alarm could be felt from the burnished brown of the distant forest.

And then there’s me, Stephanie’s head swam with color. Then there’s my own feelings—I, I just, I hate her. Oh my God do I hate her. I hate her I hate her I fucking hate EVERYTHING about her, what she’s done, the way she affects Brian—the way she affects all of us, how WRONG she feels, how willing to hurt everyone she is, this dismissive fucking glance she’s giving me now, the way she JUST HAS TO TRY TO FUCKING RUIN EVERYTHING, I HATE HER I HATE HER I HATE HER!

---

“Oh... fiddlesticks!” Rebecca gnawed on her lip and twisted in place to again cast a nervous glance in the direction of the lobby area.

There were only three more people ahead of her in line for registration, dozens of people lining up behind her, and still Rebecca was half-tempted to bail so that she could rush over and see what all the fuss was about. She’d experienced being an unwilling passenger to Stephanie’s emotions earlier that morning, but this time it was as if the entire dreamscape was somehow getting itself into a big wreck over something.

The foundation of the entire dreamscape—Brian, she assumed—was in turmoil, so much so that her own reach there felt uprooted by the abrupt rumbling rise of land and the sudden appearance of chasms as other parts began to fall away. Rebecca swayed in place as she tried to retreat far enough into herself to grapple with what was going on, but the forests were unable to gain any purchase as everything shifted and turned.

“Next in line, please.”

“Next! Over here.”

Two of the people in front of her went to one booth and another person was called to the other booth, leaving Rebecca next in line to buy single-day passes. She frowned, torn with indecision, and shifted her balance from one foot to the other in readiness to abandon the line. She couldn’t make legible sense of what was going on with them through her dreamsight, but something was clearly wrong, because everything was all of the sudden in total disarray.

Attempting to focus in on the landmarks she thought she knew was only more baffling. Emily seemed to be positively seething, to the point where the waters seemed to be going everywhere but where they should. There was manic red light twinkling from within the caldera formation as it began to break up, and despite the tumultuous earthshake a pink wildfire was rapidly spreading everywhere and had taken on an entirely dangerous hue.

It... really burns, now. I mean, of course it always burned, it’s flame—but now it BURNS. It—it HURTS. What the forbidden fey is even going ON with them over there?!

“Next, please,” the staffer manning one of the booths called out to Rebecca. “Single day passes are twenty-five dollars.”

“Yes! Um, thank you,” Rebecca hurried forward in a whirl of her tunic skirting and scrambled to open up the leather pouch belted at her waist. “Could I get two single-day passes, please?”

---

“Brian—I already told them everything,” Chloe said with a slight tremble to her words, as if she was putting on the bravest front she could so that her trauma could finally be over. “Everything you’ve done.”

“Okay?” Brian was at a loss. “When do I get to find out what you said I’ve done? Because I certainly haven’t—”

“Brian,” Chloe warned. “You know what you did.”

“I know I haven’t done anything wrong,” Brian shrugged. “What have—”

“Brian, look at me,” Chloe cut him off in an emotional voice, pointing towards her own face. “Do I look like I’m okay, after going through all of this?”

“What the fuck?!” Emily blurted out. “Bullshit. You look sad, so he’s guilty? How the fuck does—”

“YOU don’t get a say in any of this, after everything you’ve—” Chloe tried to sound distraught, but the venom in her tone was apparent.

“Yeah, I was gonna ask about that—‘cause, you looked totally fine when you left my hotel room this morning,” Megan said, crossing thick arms in front of her. “I mean, you were bein’ kinda pissy with everyone, but you weren’t like, crying or anything.”

“Uhh, no, I was crying. All night long,” Chloe refuted angrily. “Obviously. Thanks for even noticing.”

“You were crying, all night long? Aww—poor baby,” Kelly teased. “You want us to believe you’ve been all sad and suffering by yourself and bravin’ out the storm all night—but can’t put in the effort to do more than half-ass the makeup for the look?”

“What?” Chloe tensed and her furious glare turned to Kelly.

“If you’re gonna use lipstick on your lids—lemme guess, had no rich tones in the eye shadow palette on hand?” Kelly regarded her with an amused look, as if she was looking at a total buffoon.

“Then, honestly, you’ve gotta blend the color with a fingertip and not your concealer brush. The color didn’t distribute correctly, so of course it’s not gonna look like you were really crying. You should’ve done the same along the bottom of your nose too, to actually sell the look. There’s literally dozens of ways to easily irritate your eyes, but yours aren’t red at all—wow, guess that part was too much of a hassle?”

“This isn’t about makeup, this isn’t about me—I-I’m not even wearing makeup right now,” Chloe retorted with a tremulous hitch in her voice, eyes darting towards Andrea with a look of helpless frustration in search of the sympathy she was owed. “Can you please, please just tell them to—”

“Wanna bet one of my makeup wipes magically cures your pity me I’m so sad and helpless look?” Kelly challenged, going for her purse. “Here—feel free.”

“No, get away from me,” Chloe cried out as she shrank back a step. Both of the two male staffers seemed to take that as their cue to move forward and stand slightly in front of Chloe. “You’re, you’re going to do something to me—I don’t trust you!”

“We’re… we’re not talking about makeup right now,” Andrea stepped up to mediate after a momentary pause. “All of this is about—”

“About a certain someone being manipulative, to push her false narrative?” Emily chimed in with a giddy smile. “And... what, you guys are just eating it all up?”

“She attacked me last night,” Chloe accused, stabbing a fingertip through the air between them towards Emily. “She jumped on me, physically assaulted me, and I’m going to press charges for—”

“There has been evidence that she’s been harassed by—” Andrea started to say.

“What? What evidence?!” Emily spat.

“These, do you see these bruises?!” Chloe cried out, thrusting her left cheek out. “I could have been—”

“Looks like makeup to me,” Kelly commented.

“Emily—she, she stepped in to protect me, when Chloe started hitting me!” Stephanie exclaimed.

“I did step in—Chloe threw the first punch and started all that,” Emily agreed. “Yeah, I stepped in. I didn’t start it, but yeah I’m gonna finish it.”

“And now she’s threatening me?!” Chloe protested in a sob of indignation. “Lying, and threatening me! She’s lying. She’s—she’s—you can’t believe anything she says. I don’t believe in violence for any reason, that’s not who I am, and I have literally no reason to ever strike anyone. My conscience is clean, I—”

“You broke up with Brian, and then turned into a rabid fucking animal the moment other girls express interest in him,” Kelly said. “That’s a motive, duh? Jealousy?”

“Wait, wait, everyone, please—” Andrea tried to intervene.

“First of all, I did not break up with Brian,” Chloe hissed, “So, don’t even start trying to—”

“Wait, wait,” Brian couldn’t help but interject. “What? What? How are we not broken up?”

“I never explicitly said we were over,” Chloe argued, glaring daggers at him for daring to speak up. “I don’t know how you’d ever even make that fucking assumption. Until I officially say so, we are—”

“No. It’s over,” Brian said with a slow shake of his head.

“Chloe. It’s been over. For a full month all you do is shriek at me, bitch and complain about anything and everything, and then one night when I come home from work, you’ve moved all of your shit out, and don’t answer my calls or messages. Chloe—it’s over, we broke up.”

“Brian, it was a break, not a break-up,” Chloe hissed in a low voice, pointedly signalling with her eyes not to make this scene here in front of the others. “Emily was supposed to tell you that, but apparently all she did was make up some bullshit story so that—”

“Yeah, the whole pregnancy scare bullshit thing you tried to—”

“WHAT?! Shut your fucking mouth. And you. Do you really want to do this, Brian?” Chloe demanded, turning to give a disgusted gesture towards the girls standing behind him. “Out here? In front of everyone? Do you really want to just throw away everything we’ve had together, and for them?”

“Chloe…” Brian trailed off, his eyes hardening. “Explain it to me, please—just what did we have?”

“Excuse me?” Chloe began to swell with indignation.

“What did we have?” Brian questioned. “We weren’t together, it definitely wasn’t a relationship between two people.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Chloe spat, looking at him as if he was crazy. “Are you even being serious right now?”

“I did have feelings for you, and I did try my best to make you happy,” Brian said. “Even when that started to mean making a lot of compromises. It’s just—there’s a fucking limit to that, alright? At some point I just started thinking, does she even care about me, care about making me happy?”

“Oh, sure,” Chloe snorted. “Yeah, right. Of course! WAAAHHH. Naturally this has to be all about you, all about you and your crybaby fucking fragile male ego!”

“Not all of it, no,” Brian shook his head. “But, at least half, right? At least some part of our relationship has to be about me, or it’s not a relationship between us, a relationship between two people—between equals.”

“Equals?!” Chloe lit up. “Okay, yeah—equals, let’s talk fucking gender equality, here! I have fucking statistics to back up my side—what do you have besides WAAAAHH I don’t get everything I want and DURR HURR HURR I’M A MAN, why isn’t everything about ME?!”

“Oh shut up with all that bullshit!” Emily tried to interject. “Have you even listened to yourse—”

“Stay out of this, SHITSTAIN!” Chloe shrieked, whirling upon Emily with manic ferocity. “You don’t get a fucking say in anything between me and Brian you little fucking goblin!”

“Jesus, Chloe—” Brian began.

“Can you... all please lower your voices for a—” Andrea tried to mediate.

“Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!!!” Chloe screamed. “Don’t you think for one fucking second I’m going to let you or any of these fucking whores silence me! I’m done being fucking oppressed with your machismo bullshit! We’re not done just ‘cause you fucking say so, I’m not a fucking object you can pick up and discard whenever you fucking please! Can you for once take some fucking responsibility? We were living together, so, common law marriage states that—”

Her tirade was interrupted by the overweight male staffer motioning her to stop, because he’d finally spotted the appearance of a barrel-chested man in a security uniform jogging up carefully throughout the interspersed attendees moving across the foyer of the convention hall. He was broad but not fat, with graying hair, a cop mustache, and a no-nonsense expression. They’d all been standing just beside the convention center’s entranceway, and when Mr. Gary arrived, everyone shuffled backwards a step as he planted himself uncomfortably close—within arms reach. Hemming in the entire small group, as if ready to immediately subdue any of them against the nearest wall. The scene they’d been making that had been drawing onlookers suddenly felt much more private.

“Hello there, everyone,” Mr. Gary put his hands on his hips, turning an evaluating look across each of them. “What seems to be the problem?”

“These... guests were asked to leave, but are refusing to do so,” the volunteer staffer explained in a rigid tone, gesturing towards Brian and the four girls with him. “Disruptive attendees may be asked to leave at the discretion of the staff at any time.”

“I see,” Mr. Gary grunted in a no-nonsense voice. “Well. Have you folk been disruptive in any way?”

“No.”

“Nope.”

“We have not.”

“No.”

“They have been disruptive, on the AnimeCon Forums,” the neckbearded staffer explained. “We’ve already had to lock three different threads, because of all the—”

“Oh my God, are you serious?!” Megan rolled her eyes in disbelief.

“Wee-ooh wee-ooh, somebody call the cyberpolice,” Emily mocked.

“Err, if that’s true, if that’s what this is about, then why was I being singled out and asked to leave?” Brian gave the staffer an incredulous look. “I haven’t been on the A-con forums in ages. I’m definitely not involved in any of that.”

“You were specifically named as someone who was making others feel unsafe attending the convention,” the overweight staffer shrugged. “That’s all the evidence we ne—”

“What the fuck,” Kelly laughed.

“Are you fucking serious?” Emily spat. “How? Why? That’s such an obvious line of bullshit with no—”

“I’m sorry—this is something going on, on a web forum?” Mr. Gary raised his hand to indicate everyone should settle down. “This young gentleman was accused of something on the web forum, and you’re taking that as grounds for his removal?”

“...Yes,” the staffer affirmed with a nod.

“Listen, here’s what’s really happening; a certain someone we’ve run into at the con here has a vendetta against us and is out to make things difficult for us,” Emily elaborated, hiking an unsubtle thumb towards Chloe. “We’re being accused of harassing that someone, without any evidence beyond her word.”

“I, I just wanted to be at the convention without having to fear for my safety!” Chloe rebutted with a pleading look.

“Alright, first things first,” Mr. Gary said. “As far as I’m concerned, an accusation is definitely cause for investigation. Not for immediate removal without looking into things. What, exactly, is the accusation?”

“I don’t feel safe being here, when they’re here,” Chloe summed up for him. “I’m not safe here.”

“That is not an accusation,” Megan argued. “That’s just your feelings. Which no one had any control over, apparently. Least of all you.”

“You—you do though, you are—you make me feel terrified for my own safety, and for the safety of other attendees here,” Chloe shot back. “You’re all dangerous and completely out of control. All of you.”

“You don’t exactly look terrified to me,” Emily laughed.

“Okay, okay,” Mr. Gary said with a slow sigh. “All of you are registered AnimeCon attendees, with event badges?”

“I am,” Megan said, holding up her badge from where it hung on the lanyard around her neck. “Three-day pass.”

“Three-day pass,” Stephanie echoed, presenting her AnimeCon badge.

“I’ve got mine,” Kelly held hers up while turning a malicious grin towards Chloe.

“Three-days also,” Brian joined in.

“I... had the one-day pass you gave me yesterday,” Emily winced. “Thanks again for that. Rebecca—you remember Rebecca, in the viking getup—she’s in line buying passes for us for today.”

“Yeah, right,” Chloe scoffed. “The security guy’s here, and you don’t have a pass. You can’t weasel out of that with excuses—no badge, no rights. You need to leave.”

“And, your pass, Miss…?” Mr. Gary arched an eyebrow at her for the interruption.

“They stole mine,” Chloe gave him a helpless shrug. “I had a three-day pass, but Brian took it from me. It’s probably one of the ones they have right there.”

“That sounds like a better starting point, then,” Mr. Gary nodded. “Stolen badge. We can track down a stolen badge. Okay Miss, did you buy your badge here at registration, or did you pre-order it online?”

“It was… pre-ordered online,” Chloe hesitated, gritted her teeth.

“You pre-ordered your own pass?” Brian asked, arching an eyebrow at her. “When?”

“No,” Chloe bit out with reluctance, glaring at him. “Brian pre-ordered the passes. But, one of them was mine. They took it from me.”

“Uhhh you mean the pass you decided to return to Brian?” Emily chimed in with glee. “When we asked you to either work things out with him and go to the con together, or give it back so you can have a clean break?”

“That wasn’t what I decided—and, we didn’t break up,” Chloe protested. “They took the pass from me. That isn’t what I wanted, they’re twisting everything around.”

“Okay, so—do you have an attendee badge, right now, on your person?” Mr. Gary asked for clarification.

“I do have one, but they took it,” Chloe explained. “One of their badges is mine.”

“Is this what happened?” Mr. Gary turned to Brian for clarification.

“The badge previously intended for Chloe was returned to me, well before the convention. Like, a week before-hand, and then on Friday I gave it to Kelly here at the convention,” Brian said.

“Mm-hmm!” Kelly toyed with the lanyard that hung right in front of her cleavage. “Brian gave me a gorgeous dress that was meant for Chloe, too. Oh, wait—you already saw that yesterday, didn’t you Chloe?”

“She just—she just admitted it!” Chloe’s voice rose in pitch and her face was turning a shade of red. “Are you hearing her? That badge is mine, and now she just admitted to stealing a dress, too! The dress—that brand dress, it was mine!”

“Ladies, ladies, calm down,” Mr. Gary held up his hands to silence them. “This Brian fellow paid for two attendee badges, correct? Then, whatever private issues occurred, and he decided to instead give one of them to this young woman. Is that right?”

“That’s right!” Kelly agreed in a sweet voice.

“It’s not right!” Chloe sobbed, finally breaking into apparent tears. “They took it—they took everything, they’ve been after me all weekend, taking things, constantly harassing me—she squirted out mustard all over my cosplay, both of those two physically attacked me in the hallway of my hotel, and—”

“Hey, this whole convention center’s like, full of cameras, right?” Emily asked. “Can’t we just go through the video to verify the truth?”

“Yeah, except you attacked me at the hotel, not the convention!” Chloe cried.

“Fuck it—you threw the first punch,” Emily shrugged. “Get that security footage, too.”

“I didn’t! I didn’t!” Chloe turned to Mr. Gary for sympathy. “Y-you have to believe me, I didn’t!”

“He doesn’t have to believe anything,” Stephanie finally spoke up in a cold voice. “He can check the videos.”

“I didn’t, though!” Chloe sobbed. “I didn’t hurt anybody! Th-they just keep coming after me and I don’t know what to do and please I just want to be safe!”

“She was following us yesterday,” Stephanie remembered. “I didn’t even know who she was—she approached me and told me I was supposed to meet Brian outside by the loading docks for something. As if she was relaying a message from him. But, she wasn’t. Then, she stole Brian’s phone—”

“Now they’re accusing ME of STEALING?!” Chloe exclaimed in disbelief, turning her pleading eyes towards Mr. Gary for justice. “Can you BELIEVE this?!!”