AnimeCon Harem 14: Life of Brian pt 1 (Patreon)

   “...Are you Chloe, or are you Christine?” the pink-haired girl asked.

   “What the fuck is going on?” Christine demanded, holding up her hands and staring at them. “What’s happening to me?”

   “How bad is Brian hurt?” Emily asked. “What happened?”

   “He’s… bad,” Christine admitted. “He wasn’t conscious.”

   “Fuck,” Kelly swore. “So—you don’t… do you think it’d be safe for us to take him? To like, move him? Transport him? Get him the fuck out of here?”

   “No?” Christine looked at the redhead as if she was insane. “Are you kidding me?”

   “What happened?” Emily repeated.

   “I was—” Christine froze. “There was… a fight. Brian and these guys were, uh, they were shoving each other, and then Brian was on the ground, and—they just kept kicking him. He wasn’t moving. They, I think… they only stopped and ran when the police sirens got close.”

   “Hghk,” Stephanie’s voice hitched in a small sob and she covered her mouth. “Sorry, I—s-sorry.”

   “It was—” Christine almost choked on the words. “It was my fault. I’m. I’m not going to say sorry, because it’s not something I can even begin to ever apologize for. What happened to Brian, it was my fault, and everything, all of it, this entire weekend, I was… I think I am crazy? I’m going crazy? I, I don’t know how the fuck else to even describe what the fuck is going on? Other than, I’m losing my fucking mind.”

   “She…” Emily stepped forward to pull Stephanie into an embrace as the girl quietly had a little breakdown. “So, she’s not Chloe. Right? That’s good, right?”

   “She might not be Chloe,” Kelly nodded slowly. “But, we don’t know for sure what her—”

   “What the fuck do you mean I’m not Chloe?” Christine stared. “Emily, you know who I am, I know you fucking recognize me. Of course I’m Chloe. What is going on? Why is my hair gray? Why is everything… different.”

   “Okay we uh,” Emily peered over Stephanie’s shoulder with a stiff expression. “We come in peace? Truce? We just wanna talk, please. No hostilities. You’re not Chloe, you just look like her. Or, you used to be Chloe, whatever. If you’re not Chloe, we’ve… got no beef with you. Right?”

   “Long story short, you got pulled into magic bullshit with us,” the redhead Kelly said, eyeing Christine warily. “So, you either kissed Brian, or you got a uh, a bit of his blood in your mouth somehow.”

   “Blood?” Christine echoed. “Magic? What the fuck are you talking about?”

   “We can explain, we have answers,” Emily offered. “But, we need to know if Brian’s okay, and—we need you to promise you’re not going to hurt us.”

   “She’s not going to hurt us,” Stephanie sniffled. “She’s—”

   “Yeah, well you’ve been wrong about that before,” Emily grumbled. “Remember?”

   “She punched me,” Christine jabbed an accusing finger at the pink-haired girl.

   The movement was fast, far faster than she’d intended, and when her finger stabbed forward it cut through the air so quick it made a sound. There were still several feet separating Christine from the girls she was pointing towards, but all three of them flinched back at the sudden movement all the same.

   “You uh, y-you hit her first!” Emily exclaimed, pulling Stephanie back another step. “Remember? Last night at that other hotel. In the hallway. You started that. Or, that wasn’t exactly you, anymore? And uh, we’re—we’re all square on that and even, right?”

   “And you, you tackled me and were hitting me,” Christine remembered. “How does—”

   “Chloe,” the redhead girl stepped forward to impose herself between Christine and the other girls. “You are… exceptionally dangerous right now. I’m not sure if you understand that. If you want to hit us, any of us—”

   “Kelly!” Emily hissed, eyes flitting from Kelly to Christine and back again in a panic.

   “—If you lose it on any of us, this will all escalate very, very quickly,” Kelly finished. “You don’t understand how strong you are, right now. How fast. If you were to hit us now, that’s it; it’s over. You will literally maim or cripple or mangle any one of us girls right away, and probably immediately kill us. I realize you’re probably furious, I know that—but, if you cross that line, you will not be able to go back to being human. Ever.”

   “To being human?!” Christine murmured, feeling manic despite the calming halo of silver that seemed to hover over her. “So, what the fuck am I? Right now. You say I’m not even fucking human. What the fuck is going on?!”

   “Do you remember last night, in the hallway?” Stephanie asked in a soft voice, pulling away from Emily. “I, I held up my hands, like this, and I said—I don’t remember what I said. You called it my ‘mystic weeaboo magic,’ o-or something like that? I-I wasn’t being stupid, or ah, or silly, or whatever it is you thought. The magic is real. It’s real.”

   “How uh, how much do we want to tell her?” Emily was still trying to pull Stephanie backwards. “No offense, but—”

   “All or nothing,” Kelly’s eyes didn’t leave Christine. “We either put all our cards on the table, and get her on our side, or—we’re seriously, seriously fucked.”

   “She’s not broken anymore,” Stephanie said, still holding her hands up. “But… she’s not exactly right, either, I-I don’t think. Something’s… off. I can’t tell much more than that, I um, I can’t really see into her.”

   “Yeah, you won’t be able to because of her thing,” Kelly grimaced. “Yeah. Blood magic’ll be what’s making her feel off. I… hope.”

   “What the fuck are you talking about?!” Christine hugged her arms across herself.

   “Okay. Okay, uhh, well I’m sure you noticed, but your hair is silver now. And, your eyes, uh your pupils, they’re scary fucking red,” Emily said, stopping to tap at Stephanie’s arm. “Stephie here, she’s pink, and she’s an empath. So uhh, feelings, not thoughts or mind-reader stuff. She was blonde back before she started getting into the magic shit, apparently. I’m blue. Obviously. You just fucking saw me yesterday, you know what fucking color my natural hair color is. Dunno what my uh, my power is yet, still getting a handle on it. Kelly here—”

   “Her hair was dark yesterday,” Christine interrupted. “Yeah. I remember her. She slapped me.”

   “You can slap me back, if that’ll make you feel better,” Kelly held up her hands. “Just, not now, not soon. I’m sorry. You would kill me. Literally. You would either swipe my head right off my shoulders, or your slap could just squash my entire skull in like you were smashing an egg—”

   “St-stop, stop,” Stephanie murmured, putting her hand on Kelly’s shoulder. “Emily?”

   “Uh yeah, Kelly—red, obviously—she can send memories to her past self, and she gets memories from future Kellys, except it’s actually a lot more complicated and we don’t really understand it that well yet. She saved your bacon though, so. Don’t kill us? Please. If you could not, that’d be great, and I know we’ve like, never ever really gotten along, but—”

   “Emily,” Stephanie said.

   “She uh, she sent Brian early,” Emily sputtered out. “To rescue you. Even though yeah she knew it was a trap, she, Kelly didn’t want to—she refused to let you get gangraped. Even if Brian got hurt, even you still hate us, or even if you are gonna be the same psychobitch Chloe that’s out to get us. So. Please let that fucking count for something? Please? Christine?”

   “I’m,” Christine paused as her mind whirled. “I’m not Chloe, exactly. I guess. How did—how do you even know my real name is Christine?”

   “Like she said, my magic thing is getting heads-up from the different futures,” Kelly sighed. “In all of the bad ends for you, the ones where we either let karma run its course or otherwise failed to save you from being… sexually assaulted, you would eventually join our group as Christine. Where we tried to, um. Put the pieces of you back together after your mental breakdown. With varying degrees of success.”

   “I wasn’t raped,” Christine insisted. “I’m not Chloe. I don’t know that I’m really Christine, either, I—I don’t know what the fuck is going on with me, I—you’re saying I’m not even fucking human anymore?”

   “Something like this happened to Rebecca in one of the really bad timelines,” Kelly stared at her. “If you promise to help us, we may be able to help you. Do you still have a heartbeat?”

   “Do I—?” Christine wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the question, but a bolt of fear shot through her instead. Do I?!

   Her heart beating was something she would always take for granted, because if it stopped, then she was dead. Right? But, nothing about her circumstances or situation seemed the least bit normal right now, and in a flustered panic Christine pressed her hand over her heart and then put her fingers to her neck to feel for a pulse. For a terrifying moment she couldn’t detect anything, but then she felt it—a slight, sluggish pulse, steady but improbably slow for her expectations.

   “I, I—I have a pulse, my heart’s beating,” Christine reported. “It’s… slow?”

   “Okay,” Kelly seemed to sag in place. “Good. Good. Then, you are still human, for now. When—I mean, if your heart stops beating, you will instead be something like… something like a vampire.”

   “A vampire?” Christine’s voice rose in pitch. “Like, not as in as a metaphor? I heard you all talking over there across the room. Before you even walked up. Because I can hear just about fucking everything now somehow. I, I thought that. I thought you just meant—”

   “Yeah,” Kelly winced. “I know how stupid it sounds.”

   “It—no, it’s…” Christine held her entire palm against the side of her neck to ensure she could still feel the steady rhythm there. “It makes… it actually makes a lot of sense, actually…”

   “I don’t know what happened back there with you and Brian in the alleyway,” Kelly explained. “But, somehow or another you’re on this blood magic path instead of the love magic sort of track us three are on.”

   “Us… four,” Emily muttered.

   “What? Oh—yeah, Rebecca too, I guess,” Kelly said. “So—so, from what I understand, for us, for the love magic stuff, it’s this very gradual thing, and our ‘magic’ has a ton of limitations, starting out at least, that we have to build up past. Yours? Doesn’t. You’ve pretty much gone from zero to sixty right away. However, that also comes with a real heavy cost. Blood. You’re always going to be thirsty, the craving only gets worse, and if you don’t feed, you uh, you will not be yourself and you’ll go feed anyways.”

   “O-okay,” Christine felt sick. “So—”

   “We can still save you,” Kelly said. “Your heart’s still beating, you’re still alive, so—not a vampire yet. Technically. Just, uh, listen, you cannot feed or have any blood. Whatsoever. That’s gonna advance you along the blood magic path, which increases the difficulty of what we have to do to turn you back, and uh. If you drink too much blood, your heart will stop, and you’ll just straight up become a vampire. So—don’t do that. At all. Please. I do have to know, though; how much of Brian’s blood did you take?”

   “None,” Christine shook her head. “None, nothing, not—if there was any, it was just—I, I just—there might have been a tiny bit from when, I uh, I think I kissed him? There was blood all over when. I um, I went over to him, right after it all, right when, he was hurt and, I went over to him to see if he was, was still alive even, and it was maybe just a drop of blood? Whatever uh, whatever was on my lips from just. Kissing his forehead, his cheeks. His face. I—”

   “No, no, that’s good, that’s really good,” Kelly’s shoulders seemed to straighten again. “That sounds like it must have just been… the bare fuckin’ minimum? Fuck. That’s—great, actually. I—honestly I didn’t think our chances to help you were optimistic, like fifty-fifty maybe, but now? Now, I legitimately think we can help you.”

   “How? Why?” Christine asked, tears forming in her eyes. “You’re, you’re telling me all of these things, an-and none of it makes sense, and—can you just tell me what the fuck is going on?”

   “Okay,” Kelly said. “I just went through all this with these two. The—”

   “Hold on,” Emily shifted, scrabbling for the pocket of her hoodie. “Might be Rebecca.”

   Christine watched as Emily pulled out her phone, frowned at it, and then accepted a call.

   “Hello?” Emily said, pausing a moment and staring off towards the doors into the intensive care unit. “Okay. Stop, stop. This is about Brian? Because, I’m at the hospital now. We’re here in the waiting room already. Yeah. Okay—yeah. Thank you.”

   “Rebecca?” Kelly asked as Emily hung up.

   “No, some police officer Judy,” Emily frowned. “I uh, I guess Brian must’ve put me down as his emergency contact, last time he got his ID done? Instead of his mom or dad. Which makes sense, I just. Never even thought that—”

   “Officer Judy’s the one who was taking my statement, she gave me these,” Christine gestured to her new sweats outfit. “I—thought she was still around, I don’t know where she took off to.”

   “Well, she’s meeting us here in a second,” Emily looked around. “With news about Brian’s condition.”

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/// Yeaaahh we're just gonna gloss past explaining any more fine details to Christine, since we just did that for a bunch of chapters. Let's move on to Brian!