“A stolen phone, now, too?” Gary gave their group a hard look as he made another note in his tablet. “Okay, whose phone was stolen?”

“I didn’t steal anyone’s phone!!!”

“I… don’t know that my phone was stolen,” Brian admitted. “Not for sure. But, it did go missing yesterday. I set it down for a moment when some people asked for my picture, and then, afterwards it was gone. I reported it, up at the front desk, in case someone found it or turned it in or something.”

“Wait—was it a Ceres Series Six?” Megan asked. “‘Cause—Rebecca found a smashed one in the trash can back at the hotel room, after Chloe stayed with us.”

“Ceres Series Six?” Brian blinked. “Yeah, it—”

“Oh, yeah right!” Chloe blew up again. “They’re all together—they’re all in this together, so of course she’d say that. Of course everyone’s against me. Of course it’s always—”

“Emily?” Rebecca called over from across the foyer, her stride faltering as she took in the way the security officer and staffers had the entire group corralled off to the side against the wall. “...What’s going on?”

“She’s with them,” Chloe raised a hand to point at Rebecca. “She’s part of what they were all doing.”

“Chloe?” Rebecca asked with a quizzical look.

“I remember you from yesterday,” Mr. Gary motioned her over with a sigh. “Could you please step over here, Miss?”

Rebecca complied, crossing the rest of the distance and stopping next to Emily.

“Here, single-day pass,” Rebecca lifted up a lanyard to give to her friend as she glanced about the tense situation with a worried expression. “Or, um, am I too late?”

“No, it’s, uh, thank you,” Emily accepted the AnimeCon pass from Rebecca. “It’s Chloe, she had some drama she thought she could involve all of us in somehow. How much do I owe you?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Rebecca brushed her off. “I take it... this is about the altercation last night?”

“Among other things,” Emily growled.

“An altercation, you say,” Mr. Gary prodded. “Were you present as well?”

“Yes, they had an, um, physical disagreement in the hall just outside the room where Megan was gracious enough to allow us to spend the night,” Rebecca explained in a calm voice, indicating each of the relevant girls with a gesture. “I was fortunate to be close by and stop things from going too far.”

“You didn’t stop things, you assaulted me!” Chloe protested. “Rebecca you fucking threw me to the ground and then held me down! I’ve never, ever—”

“I had to pin you for a moment, yes,” Rebecca nodded. “Things were a little heated, and needed a moment to calm yourself down and think about what you were doing.”

“I wasn’t doing anything!” Chloe argued. “You all were the ones who—”

“Oh yeah fucking right!” Emily exploded.

“Chloe was the one who—” Stephanie tried to get a word in.

“She was thrashing and screaming and like, clawing at Rebecca,” Megan exclaimed. “She got all scratched up trying to subdue her and get Chloe to even stop.”

“That’s not what happened,” Chloe shook her head. “That’s not what happened.”

“Okay, and all of you were present for this?” Mr. Gary was still typing out a note on his tablet.

“Nope, Brian and I were elsewhere and very busy doing other things,” Kelly beamed in Chloe’s direction.

“Chloe threw a total fucking shitfit walking in on Brian and Kelly,” Emily elaborated. “That was at the Westerlin, Rebecca had to fucking drag her out of the room. Then when Stephanie was still kind enough to help Chloe find a different place to stay, Chloe throws another spaz tantrum and attacks her, over at the Sherriott.”

Andrea exchanged an awkward glance with the other two staffers present as if unsure what to believe.

“That’s not what happened,” Chloe shrugged, holding up her hands in disappointment. “Not even. It’s not. At all. If for one single second—”

The radio clipped to the security officer’s belt gave out an insistent chirp, and Mr. Gary made a face.

“Okay, I think I’ve got the gist of the situation,” Mr. Gary gave up on typing the situation into his tablet and used it to wave at the girls standing with Brian and then Chloe and the AnimeCon staffers. “This group and this group have whatever issues with each other, to the point where things became violent, at some hotel around here. Is that right?”

“That’s what I’ve said all along!” Chloe quickly agreed. “I’m not safe. There’s no way I’m safe if any of them are anywhere—”

“The simple solution is; the convention center here doesn’t need any of your problems—take them elsewhere,” Mr. Gary decided. “All of you. Cause problems for the event here, be immediately removed. You’d forfeit your badge, and be escorted by me off the premises. If that’s what you all want, please say so now.”

He took the time to hold each of them in his stare before continuing.

“If you’d like to continue to enjoy the event instead, please, do so,” Mr. Gary said. “Keep to yourselves, don’t start any trouble. If you and you or you and you see each other and start getting upset, just turn around and walk in some other direction. AnimeCon’s a big event.

“Now, I don’t see any reason for there to be any more problems after this point. You’ve all been warned. You’re all smart kids. If I get another call from the staff here about any one of you causing problems, you will be physically removed from the area by me—you don’t want that—and held to be handed over to the city police—you don’t want that, either. You will not have a pleasant night. Am I understood?”

“You can’t be serious,” Chloe’s face fell. “What am I supposed to do if they—”

“Enjoy the event,” Mr. Gary cut her off by pushing a single-day AnimeCon badge without a lanyard into her hands. “You’re the only one here without one of these, if I’m correct? If there’s any problems, contact security right away. I don’t want there to be any problems.”

Chloe turned her expression of disbelief towards each of the uncomfortable-looking staffers standing beside her as Mr. Gary tucked the tablet under an arm and grabbed the radio off of his belt.

“Security, go ahead,” he grunted.

“There’s a fight in the Atrium,” someone on the other end reported. “Two LARP guys— actual fight, not a LARP fight thing.”

Rebecca straightened, and the girl’s eyes flashed dangerously for the first time throughout the entire conversation.

“On my way,” Mr. Gary grunted again, and then he was off, hustling away without giving their group another glance.

“I’ve got to go!” Rebecca told Emily, giving the girl’s shoulder a squeeze. “Stay out of trouble, please. Be good.”

“I… yeah, okay,” Emily said.

Silence descended on that out of the way corner of the foyer as Rebecca trotted off, the volunteer staffers exchanging another uneasy look as Chloe remained planted firm where she stood, glaring furiously at Brian and the others.

“Umm, okay!” Andrea clapped. “That all just happened. Whhhhy don’t all of you go on and head that way, and then Chloe you can head in this direction, and just. Yeah. Don’t cause any problems. I guess?”

“You have to remove them,” Chloe insisted, beginning to tear up. “Andrea—Andrea please, you can’t listen to that guy, they’re—”

“Whoa, nope—nooope,” Andrea held her hands up in the air and took a step back. “I don’t even know what all’s really going on or who’s story is what and... yeah. What Mr. Gary said. Stay out of each other’s way, and nobody start anything. Okay? Okay. Great.”

“No. No,” Chloe blurted out as her expression went from shock to rage to frantic in quick succession before she managed to attempt to make herself look like the victim being cruelly maligned once again. “This doesn’t—none of them proved anything. Andrea, everything I told you before is true. You have to remove them from the convention, ban them. You’re convention staff.”

“Well,” Brian finally spoke up. “All of us are going to head towards the vendor’s room and shop for an hour or two. So, uh, we call dibs on that for now, and if she runs into us in there, it’s only ‘cause she followed us.”

“You don’t get to fucking just walk away from this!” Chloe barked, flashing a hand to her forehead and grimacing with a flicker of her eyelids as though beset by sudden headache pangs. “Andrea— all of you, please. Please. You have to listen to me. You have to know… what this is about. What Brian did to me.”

---

Chloe was livid, and maintaining the charade of how unfairly victimized she needed to look right now was next to impossible.

Invoking the convention center’s security force just wasn’t necessary, and it almost ruined absolutely fucking everything. AnimeCon staffers had the authority to remove attendees. It was as simple as that. When Brian and his sycophants became stubborn, Andrea and the two male feminist staffers she’d wrangled up somehow revealed themselves to be completely impotent cowards. Unwilling to exercise their own power and instead bucking the problem to someone else to solve. Which made EVERYTHING worse!

The dumbfuck security guy was exactly the wrong person for this situation. He was a stupid fucking patriarchal old man, completely fucking deadset on reasoning out where blame is due, which adheres to the letter of the law while completely ignoring the spirit of the law—her emotional appeal! The whole point of having systems of rules in place was so that she could always feel safe, and it was mortifying that everyone wanted to pick apart every little thing she said in search of excuses and loophole rationalities.

I shouldn’t have to ever fucking justify how I feel! Chloe inwardly raged. Haven’t I obviously been through enough? Why is the onus of proving whatever they’ve done on ME? The apparent fucking victim of all this bullshit?

Tinkling mirror shards ground their way up and down the insides of her head, they stabbed and sliced and ripped and gouged the meat of her very being in the most invasive and overpowering migraine Chloe had ever experienced in her life.

That Brian hadn’t ever stalked, harassed, or abused her was already long since immaterial—because he absolutely deserved to be treated like he actually had. They couldn’t understand that, because they hadn’t been through this horrible stress and frustration that Chloe had. They didn’t have a stake in what was happening right now, and so every single one of these cunts needed to shut the fuck up and listen to what she had to say.

“I… I never told anyone,” Chloe said in a small voice. “About... what Brian did to me. Back then, on that day. I should have, I wanted to—but, I was too afraid. Of what people would think, of what Brian would DO, of—of everything. I’m so afraid. I’m afraid… of what Brian did to me—”

---

The most unpleasant, glaring, and sickly shade of radioactive pink was flooding Stephanie’s mind. Despite being forced to retreat a step back from Brian’s side to stand instead beside Kelly—an action that only served to amplify the nausea and rage welling up within her—Chloe was too physically close. Whatever field of charm power Chloe was manifesting, it’s proximity was too much to bear and Stephanie couldn’t tolerate it right in her face for more than a moment. It was screaming silver grit, it was metal shavings whirling and grinding against her thoughts, it was a hellish nails-on-chalkboard chorus of screeching that just climbed in volume as each minute here passed.

—I hate her—I hate her—I hate her—

Worse yet, whatever horrifying wrongness that Chloe was putting out seemed to reach right through Stephanie’s empathic sense and trigger a physiological response from her body. It was as if a live chainsaw was in operation mere inches from her face. She couldn’t breathe, her muscles seized up until ever part of her was completely tense, her insides felt like they were being wrung out, and only the overwhelming fear and sheer terrifying madness kept her stunned enough to not hyperventilate on the spot.

Kelly had now noticed and was gripping her hand, but the growing concern she felt from Kelly was distant and ephemeral and completely out of reach right now. Only Emily’s hatred for Chloe was maintaining Stephanie’s sanity. The Latina’s hate was an off-colored blue of a disgusting consistency that dribbled over into Stephanie’s mind and intermingled with her own bad hue of pink to become a gross purple. It wasn’t good. She knew this wasn’t good at all. But, it was also the only thing that made complete and total sense to her right now.

—I hate her—I HATE her—I hate her—

She wasn’t able to share in Emily’s exact thoughts, but Stephanie felt like she knew them anyways, simply from the melody of emotion they were singing together. It was the same song, and the words just naturally filled themselves in and came to her right away. Chloe was speaking, and Stephanie listened to her spell out the lie with a growing sense of horror. Because Chloe was implicating Brian in the worst, and every syllable that left that hated mouth was a malicious curse upon him, words that couldn’t easily be taken back or brushed off.

“You’re—you’re lying!” Stephanie interrupted.

“That’s all complete bullshit!” Emily shouted at the same time.

“You know what he did!” Chloe drew out the words with vindictive malice. “Well, now all of fucking AnimeCon is gonna know! HEY, EVERYONE! LISTEN UP! YEAH, OVER HERE! RIGHT HERE! DO YOU SEE THIS GUY STANDING RIGHT HERE? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS GUY HERE DID? Do you know what he DID to me? He RAPED—”

---

“He sure as fuck didn’t rape you,” Kelly interrupted in a loud, provoking voice.

She sauntered forward with confidence, blowing her own brilliant red bangs off of her brow with a puff of her lip. If Chloe was going to go for broke with shameless smear tactics like this, how could Kelly not step up to the challenge and fight her every step of the way? If Chloe was going to try to shout, well, Kelly was no stranger to addressing a large audience, and she was completely confident in her ability to project her voice. All they had to do was dilute Chloe’s narrative with dissenting voices at just the right times.

“If that’s where you were really headed with this line of bullshit. Brian never hit you, he never abused or harrassed or mistreated you—and he certainly never fucking raped you. The worst thing he did to you was not step up and check your headtrip power bullshit. You’ve become an inflamed fucking pustule of your own greasy self-importance just ready to pop.”

“YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW HIM!!!” Chloe roared, swinging her arms down. “YOU DON’T EVEN FUCKING—”

To top it off, she’s completely unable to cope when situations that don’t go her way, Kelly couldn’t help but cringe at the theatrics. She’s fucking terrible at reining in her temper so that she can adapt and switch tacts when something obviously isn’t working. Chloe, the more you flip out and lose it here, the more you sabotage your own credibility. What the hell kind of easy life have you been living up until now?

“Brian never fucking raped you, you stupid taint infection,” Kelly continued with a look of absolute disdain. “Crying rape, that seriously crosses the fucking line. Soon as you don’t get your way, you immediately go for the nuclear option. Why not, right? You’re Chloe, you can just shit out whatever accusations you like, and then it’s someone else’s mess to clean up, not yours. What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

The convention-goers, anime enthusiasts, and occasional cosplayers streaming in through the multiple sets of double doors were lighter today than they had been on Saturday, but the sheer volume at which the two hostile beauties were rebuking one another with still caught the attention of dozens upon dozens of people. Heads began to turn, traffic through the entrance foyer grew sluggish and congested, and, as always—onlookers loved to see people making a scene.

Eyeing Chloe up and down again, Kelly had to admit that Chloe did almost have the looks to support the overly inflated self-conceit. She had refined, picturesque facial features beneath the slapdash makeup attempt. Maybe the set of her eyes made her appear slightly too prissy, and perhaps her mouth was slightly too wide, but there was no doubt that any number of guys would willingly coddle her until her ego turned her into this sort of prima donna.

“I mean, look at you!” Kelly laughed. “Fucking look at this. You’re obviously in the middle of this total mental meltdown, and you just come across as this total out-of-touch psychopath. Hollering out RAPE to a crowd of random passerby, like you’re hawking wares at a cattle market? Aren’t you really making light of a serious fucking crime? Reporting a rape isn’t some flippant thing you bring up to a big public audience whenever you’re feeling a little pissy. It’s so stupidly obvious that you’re trying to rile up an idiot mob to act on your behalf, because boo-hoo-hoo, Chloe didn’t get her way! Well, guess what? No one is that fucking stupid. I get that you’re feeling petty and spiteful or whatever over the breakup, but crying rape? On Brian, of all people? Nah. Just, nah. You’re a fucking psychopath.”

“YOU’RE THE FUCKING PSYCHOPATH YOU GODDAMN FUCKING WHORE!!!” Chloe screamed, clawing at her hair and almost doubling over with the force of throwing her voice out as loud as possible. “You don’t even get a say in this! You’re a cocksucking whore, an actual, literal whore. You sell your filthy probably diseased body to degenerate fucking creeps like Brian. BRIAN—BRIAN THE FILTHY RAPIST CREEP!!!”

The male staffer with the handset had already been attempting to radio Mr. Gary back to them and was forced to flinch back from Chloe, clamping his hands over his ears at how loud she was being.

“Please, can we all—stop, stop!” A mortified Andrea rushed between the girls in an attempt to intervene before they could collide. As she made the mistake of taking Chloe by one of her arms in an attempt to tug her back away from Kelly, however, the staffer girl instead received a vicious backhand from the hysterical girl as Chloe pivoted to shrug her off. Andrea took most of Chloe’s wrist to her face and stumbled back, completely stunned, tapping fingertips to the inside of her lip and then checking them for blood in disbelief.

Brian stepped up at almost the same time, taking Kelly by the waist from behind and guiding her backwards and away from the immediate threat of Chloe.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Awww shit.”

“What’s going on?”

“Catfight, catfight, catfight!”

The gathering crowd of attendees rubbernecking nearby shifted and twisted into disarray, with a half dozen grimacing in distaste at the ugly scene and hurrying to put it behind them, while even more moved in to gawk at the spectacle of it. At least two people nearby had already raised their cellphones and begun to capture video. None of them knew what was going on, and for the most part—none of them altogether even cared. None of them except Ryan—hipster mister, who happened to be crossing the lobby with his coffee half-raised to his lips when recognition hit him.

Ryan had been seriously worried about Chloe after she disappeared on him when they were in line early the day before. She hadn’t seemed like the kind of girl who would randomly ghost on him for no reason, but nor did he expect to encounter her blowing up on some other people like this. He blinked and even rubbed his eyes with his free hand, but yessiree—it was Chloe. She hadn’t vanished or been abducted, at least. Instead—she’d apparently lost her fucking mind.

“THAT GUY, RIGHT THERE, HIM AND THOSE WHORES!!” Chloe shrieked, advancing several more steps forward and jabbing a finger towards Brian’s face “LOOK AT THEM. EVERYONE, DON’T YOU SEE THEM?! DON’T YOU SEE THESE FUCKING RAPIST PEDOPHILE QUEER FUCKING FAGGOT WHORES—”

“Name-calling? You’re just name-calling, now?” Kelly burst into laughter. “If you’re not gonna explain yourself to everyone, then why should we listen to any of this bullshit coming out of your rancid toothy prolapsed fucking throat-hole?”

Chloe had been in the middle of taking a deep breath in preparation for the next onslaught of her tirade when she gagged and lurched forward to retch out a furious coughing sputter. It was one of the most deeply satisfying reactions one of her lines had ever elicited from someone.

“FUCKING—FUCKING DISGUSTING, YOU PIECE OF SHIT STUPID FUCKING SLUT—! YOU’RE THROUGH. YOU’RE ALL THROUGH!”

“C’mon,” Emily made a conflicted face as she tugged on Brian’s arm. “I want to beat her fucking face in—but we should just go. Let’s all go, like, make a break for the vendor’s room. Chloe’s just playing this up, she just wants us all caught up in her big fucking disruption and thrown out. Fuck that, fuck her, and—”

“No—no,” Stephanie shook her head in a daze, unable to tear her eyes away from Chloe. “She’s serious. She’s completely—I, I hate her.”

“How did y’all even meet this girl?!” Megan demanded. “Like, what the fuck?”

“Well, it’s all thanks to you, Chloe!” Kelly called out with a villainous smile. “Because of whatever little guilt trip game you were trying to play, I met Brian. We all met Brian. Actually, we kinda fucking like him, and I think we’re gonna keep him. Thanks! Oh, and that dress! Yeah, that was meant for you at first, huh? That thing was fucking gorgeous, and he ordered that just for you. Wow, too bad. Calamity Queen, by Noblesse Oblique, I think. Don’t those go for like, eleven hundred some dollars?”

“YOU THINK I can’t hurt you, you fucking pissant shitstain?!” Chloe’s voice finally broke. “You—you think you’re safe?”

“Chloe—stop,” Brian could only give her an incredulous look. “What are you even hoping to accomplish, here? If you—”

A sharp clap sounded out as Chloe crossed the last few feet between them and slapped Brian.

“Oh, you wanna hit me back, huh!?” Chloe goaded in a now hoarse tone, jumping in and putting herself right up in Brian’s face. “Do it then, incel faggot. Do it, I fucking dare you. Hit me. Hit me. You’re such a big, aggressive manly man, huh? Hit me then, see what fucking happens to you. C’MON, FAGGOT! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!”

“Chloe,” Brian bit out. “I’m not. Going. To hit you.”

“Yeah? Yeah, you’re not. Bitch,” Chloe slapped her hand against his cheek again, this time hard enough to turn his head. “Little bitch boy, scared of a girl. Little faggot. Don’t even have the fucking balls to—”

Her snarling face was suddenly and inexplicably smashed backward by a fist, the leading outline of knuckle reshaping and completely deforming the flesh of Chloe cheek and then her nose as it powered into a meaty, solid impact.

The abrupt throw of Stephanie’s punch sent her lunging body toppling Chloe over, Chloe’s head snapping back from the sheer force of the blow and saliva from her now slack jaw flicking up into the air. Stephanie landed on top and immediately attempted to hit her again, but by now the crumpled and sobbing Chloe was thrashing and shrieking in stunned horror horror and attempting to put her hands up to protect her face. She kicked and flailed her feet in a frantic panic as Brian hurried to pull Stephanie off of her, and everyone could see her nose was already gushing blood down her blouse.

“Oh my God—Stephanie,” Emily mouthed in surprise.