AnimeCon Harem Bonus: Colorful Interruption (Patreon)

   “Hey Rob—what’s that?”

   Brady leaned over as much as he could within the confines of his giant costume and squinted harder, unable to make out anything but a blur. Damn. I can’t see for shit without my glasses.

   Although he now looked like the unstoppable Ogre King from Journey to the Western River, he wasn’t nearly as flexible. Stooping over to pick up whatever the thing was would be impossible. The rippling ogre muscles were actually rigid carved foam strapped to his body on a framework, he was sweating buckets, and even peering through the gap beneath the chin of the Ogre King’s sneering face like this was a challenge.

   “Rob, help me out, here. I think one of my skirt pieces broke off.” Brady had made a fairly authentic war skirt of dangling ringmail, chains, and small dangling animal skulls. If one of the important ones had already fallen off here, before he even got up in front of the judges…

   “Rob?!” His friend bellowed out in a bombastic voice, stroking his own scraggly beard. “Hmm, who is this ‘Rob?’ I, Bosatsu of the Six Paths, am here to give you aid. What do you need?”

   “There’s something there on the floor, I think I lost something.”

   “Something—what, this?” Rob snorted, nudging the thing with the edge of his geta wooden sandal. “Does that look like part of your costume? Where are your glasses?”

   “Can’t wear ‘em in here. They fog up, and then I can’t fix ‘em. What is it?”

   Brady squinted again at the wooden charm lying on the ground, but he wasn’t able to make out any details. It was a small token of wood, red thread braided at the edges into an intricate pattern. On its face, the squiggly shapes of Japanese hiragana had been printed.

   “What is it? What is it?” Rob harumphed in disdain, jangling the rings on his shakujō with a shake of his hand. “It’s clearly an evil talisman. But, have no fear. I, Bosatsu—of the Six Paths!—will exterminate this evil here and now.” Rob flicked his long sleeves, took the sounding staff firmly in both hands, and raised it up to smash the butt of the staff down upon the charm.

   “Wai—W-Wait!” the pink-haired girl in the dress that’d passed them in line earlier was running towards them now, eyes frantic… but she was moments too late to stop his shakujō from coming down.

   An abrupt peal of shrieking metal sounded out inside the enclosure of the panel room. The wooden haft of the staff exploded into splinters, peppering the sculpted foam of the Ogre King and the unprotected monk clothes alike in an instant. Part of the metal top of the shakujō shattered, in a bursting rainbow of multicolored sparks, and the staff’s sounding rings flew in every direction.

*     *     *

   “Holy shit,” Jordyn mouthed, peering forward through the row of cosplayers at the thunderous clamor. “What the hell was that?!”

   A heavyset guy in a soot-spotted monk robe was flailing away from a cloud of smoke and falling wood fragments as those nearby him scattered back. Stephanie, who’d been hurrying in that direction when the little explosion went off, had fallen back onto her butt in surprise but otherwise looked unharmed. An enormous commotion ensued as people stepped out of their places in line to get a better look, Melanie and Jordyn being no exception. Tiny pieces of broken metal from the head of the monk’s staff were still tumbling down across the sea of empty seats with clinking noises, and something rolled all the way to stop just at their feet.

   “Hey, cool!” Melanie said, bending down to pick up the small piece of metal on the floor. As her fingers came into contact with it, however, a tiny green spark arced into her pale fingertips, and Melanie gave out a small yelp.

   “Yikes, it’s sharp. Or hot? Or… something?” the dark-haired girl said, standing back up to inspect it. There were no jagged edges after all, and it seemed cool to the touch. It was a plain, metal ring of— 

   Her thoughts blurred in a greenish tint for a moment, and Melanie wavered on her feet.

   Before too long, that staffer Fletcher appeared again, apologizing for the disturbance, assuring everyone that everything was fine, and asking everyone to move. The staggered queue of waiting cosplayers were redirected out of the center aisle path, to reform the line instead across the far wall of the room so he and a few volunteers could start cleaning up the mess. After a short investigation, the Bosatsu of the Six Paths cosplayer was escorted past them out of the convention by security. He was bleeding from dozens of small cuts along his side, still loudly insisting he hadn’t put any firework gimmick in his prop staff.

   Melanie wasn’t paying much attention to any of that, however.

   She felt suddenly alert, extremely conscious of every tiny movement in her sight. Her spatial awareness crept out around her in different directions, and it seemed as though she could feel things that were in motion.

   There was a samurai cosplayer several people behind them, impatiently shifting his weight from one foot to another. The flap of that Bosatsu cosplayer’s sleeves up there as he began wildly gesticulating with stern convention staff who were barking questions at him just outside the event room. A replica magic scepter was propped up against the wall well down the line, slowly sliding forward to fall for a brief second, before the blast magician standing nearby noticed and caught it.

   None of those were what she was looking for—but defining exactly what prey her straining senses were searching for all of the sudden was… what was it? Elusive, rapidly slipping away like a half-forgotten dream. ...Huh. That was... fun?

   “You okay?” Jordyn asked, putting a hand on the shorter girl’s shoulder to steady her.

   “Whoaaa,” Melanie grinned, looking giddy as her sharpened senses began to dull back to normalcy once more. “Yeah! Had, like, a really long head rush there for a minute. Look what I found!” 

   “A bracelet?”

   “...Sure?” Melanie toyed with her new trinket, idly rocking her hips and bouncing her butt against the wall behind her, rocking forward slightly only to let herself fall back again. The pale girl’s attention seemed totally absorbed by the iron bangle in her hands, and there was something a little sexual about the way she slapped her bottom against the wall.

   “Uh… okay?” Jordyn decided not to comment on the strangeness of her weird new friend.

*     *     *

   “Sure you’re alright in there?” Brian asked Brady, carefully picking long wooden splinters out of the carved foam of Brady’s Ogre King cosplay. “Your buddy was bleedin’ all over, had all these little cuts.”

   “Yeah, I’m alright. Rather it got me than my Ogre King, though,” a bitter voice came out from deep within the Ogre. “This thing’s my baby. Took me nine months to finish.” 

   “Damage doesn’t look too bad,” Brian said, pinching another sliver of wood and tugging it out. “Just gonna leave behind a bunch of tiny holes on this side. Can’t even tell, from a bit of a distance. What’d you use to cover the foam, originally? Plastidrip? Roofing sealant?”

   “Plastidrip.”

   “It’s definitely not that bad,” Brian assured him, passing a handful of splinters to Stephanie. She was holding a small waste can up for him and the another volunteer who’d arrived with a broom and dustpan.

   “Couple touch-ups here and there and you won’t even be able to tell.”

   “Thanks for helping out, here,” Fletcher told Brian as he surveyed the scene again. “You didn’t have to give up your spot in line, though.”

   “S’alright,” Brian shrugged. “Steph was over here, I thought something might’ve happened. Scared the hell outta me, I thought it was a gunshot or something.”

   “I was really startled,” Stephanie admitted in a quiet voice. “It happened right in front of me, and I—uh, I fell back onto my bottom.”

   “Glad you’re okay,” Brian said, shaking his head. “And that, you know. That you didn’t fall on anyone else this time.”

   “This… time?” Fletcher paused.

   “B-Brian!” Stephanie scolded, swatting him lightly with the small trash bin. “I told you I’m fine!”

   “Still, I’m gonna have to make sure you didn’t bruise or anything, later,” he said with a slight grin. “You said there was just... a flash, and then colored sparks flew out?”

   “K-kind of?” Stephanie blushed and fidgeted with the harem charm she’d picked up when security came over to pull Rob aside. It seemed completely unharmed.

   “Definitely a firework of some kind, then,” Fletcher frowned, jingling the few bits of metal he’d collected in his hand. “Weird as hell, though. I don’t know what he thought it was gonna do. What was supposed to happen? Shaft of the staff must’ve been hollowed out, and he pushed firecrackers down the length, or… something? The whole top metal parts of the staff got completely blasted away. I think we’re lucky the thing was pointed at the ceiling and not at somebody. Convention security’s pissed.”

   “Rob went over the top with everything, this year,” Brady griped from within the giant Ogre King costume. “Just my luck. He’s the only one that knows how to help me out of this thing.”

   “If you walk me through it after the contest, I can help you take it all off,” Brian offered, taking one last look across the exaggerated musculature of the cosplay for wooden slivers. “But, we should hop back in line now, it’s moving along again.”

   “Alright, yeah. Thanks again, man.”

   “It’s all just… weird,” Fletcher muttered to himself as they walked away. He’d held the staff himself some minutes beforehand and not noticed anything amiss. The weapons check booth had even given it a numbered safety band that should match up with their record. Looking around the nearby chairs they’d scattered so they could sweep up the broken wood and metal pieces, he realized that there was something else off about this. “Wait. Where’d all the khakkhara’s rings go?”

*     *     *

   As Brian and Stephanie led the Ogre King towards the back of the line, a girl leaned out with her arm raised high, bouncing on her feet.

   “Ooh, ooh! Here, pick me, pick me!” The dark-haired girl giggled. “Machine-chan, here, here, pick us! We saved you guys a spot in line!”

   “Machine-chan…?” Brian asked, raising an eyebrow at Stephanie.

   “I-I think she means mishin-chan,” Stephanie gave him a weak smile.

   “Mishin-chan…?”

   “Better than calling her a sewer,” Jordyn observed dryly, smiling at the girl next to her.

   “Anyways, hi!” Melanie breathed, waving with both hands despite them being right in front of her. “I’m Melanie, but everyone calls me Neko.”

   “I’m Brian.”

   “I think you’re really hot!”

   “Nah—I’m not even sweating,” Brian joked, stepping aside to reveal the lumbering shape of the Ogre King taking slow steps up behind them. “This guy, on the other hand…”

   “Ohmigod, it’s that cool big guy?!” Melanie squealed, hopping forward to put both of her hands on the Ogre’s immense muscular foam chest. She spun around to make sure everyone else saw him, too. “Look how big he is!”

   “Ah, careful…” A tiny voice called out from inside the Ogre King costume.

   “There’s a person in there! Hello, person!” Melanie stood on her tiptoes, trying to peer inside as she chattered away. “I’m Melanie, but really everyone calls me—”

   “We meet again,” Jordyn smiled at Brian and Stephanie. “What was all the noise and fuss up there about? They just threw a guy out.”

   “Fireworks, we think,” Brian shrugged. “Either that, or the monk guy swung his staff down so hard it practically exploded. Steph was right there, she saw it.”

   “I think it was a firecracker?” Stephanie sounded unsure. She looked like she wanted to take Brian’s arm, but was uncomfortable brazenly doing it right here in front of everyone else. “There were a bunch of different-colored sparks.”

   “I saw a buncha green when I picked up this earring!” Melanie interjected, giving them a big smile and holding up a thick iron ring. “Soon as I touched it, it was like, whoaaa, sudden... acid trippy thing! Not that I’ve ever done acid! Might be cool, though, someday. But, it was all, like, green and everything went wavy like special effects.”

   “...Green?” Stephanie asked.

   “I thought that was a bracelet?” Jordyn quirked a brow. “Looks a l’il thick to be an earring.”

   “No way, it’s an earring,” Melanie insisted. “It’s just, you know, Ogre-sized. See? It matches!”

   They all followed the girl’s eagerly pointing finger to Brady’s Ogre King cosplay, where a matching iron ring was embedded in the ogre’s long pointed ear. A bit of the painted plastidrip coating had torn there where the ring was lodged, and some of the blue foam beneath was visible.

   “I… don’t think that’s an earring,” Brian said, stepping closer to the Ogre. “Sorry... Brady, was it? Did your cosplay have a pierced ear?”

   “Uh… it definitely did not,” Brady’s concerned voice sounded out from within. “...Shit. What happened?”

   “Well—surprise! It’s pierced now,” Jordyn chuckled. “Were you in costume downtown drinking last night? These things happen. You should probably check for new tattoos?”

   “I think it’s another piece of your buddy Bosatsu’s staff,” Brian said. “Didn’t even notice it before—I thought it was part of your cosplay.”

   “So, this is one of the jingly-jangly things from that guy’s staff that asploded?” As Melanie turned the ring over in her fingers, it did indeed look like one of the ones that had been blown off of the exploding shakujō.

   “...Exploded?”

   “Yeah, that’s what I said,” The air-headed girl blinked from the large metal ring in her hands to Jordyn. “Asploded.”

   “Shiiiiit,” Brady said, awkwardly raising his bulky covered arms and trying to grab the large head prosthetic to lift it off.

   “Wait, wait!” Melanie insisted, tugging the carved foam forearms back down. “You should totally leave it, it looks cool just like that! That ring totally looks like an Ogre earring.”

   “Yeah, she might be right,” Brian said. “The ear’s torn a little bit—if you take the ring out, it’ll be a lot more noticeable. I mean, the inside foam’s bright blue.”

   “It was originally foam from a camping pad thing,” Brady said, swearing again. “Fuck. Wish I could see how it looks.”

   “I can take a quick pic for you,” Jordyn offered, pulling her phone out from a pocket along the inside of her coat.

   “That’s alright,” Brady sounded a bit defeated. “I’m not wearing my glasses in here, anyways. Might as well just go up like this, if it looks like a piercing.”

   “Wait, let me adjust it a bit, first,” Jordyn said, dropping her phone back into the pocket and peeling off one of her white Dmitri Dhampir gloves. “For an earring, it’s kinda... skewed a bit wonky.”

  As she gingerly reached up to fix the iron ring stuck in the Ogre King’s ear, a jolt of brilliant purple energy zapped out into her brown hand. The large enclosure of the cosplay contest room seemed to tilt and spin for her for a moment, and dozens of bright violet flower petals seemed to flutter and whirl upon an unseen wind across her vision. 

   “Whoa,” Jordyn blinked and batted her eyes, but the phenomenon vanished so quickly that she’d wondered if it had ever been there. “What… the…?”

   She turned her hand this way and that, not sure what was spurring this sudden feeling of anticipation budding within her. The imagined color had been dazzling, like an amethyst formation hewn out from within ordinary, unassuming stone. Lovely lilac shades of lattice along the outer edges, and then positively purple with potential deep within.

   “You okay?” Melanie asked, cocking her head at an angle. “Hey wait—did you just see, like, a whole buncha green right when you touched the ring? Like, everything is suddenly all WHOO bright green sugar sprinkles— ”

   “Yeah, a little bit, kinda?” Jordyn laughed, turning to look at Melanie with interest. “Not green, though. Purple?”

   “Pink, for me,” Stephanie abruptly joined in with a nervous laugh. The three girls exchanged looks and Melanie let out a giggle.

   “Wait… what exactly are we talking about?” Just as quickly as it had appeared, Jordyn’s oddly specific and extremely confusing purple-hued epiphany was fading away, leaving the black girl in the Dmitri Dhampir cosplay looking confused and embarrassed. She gave them an exasperated look. “It was purple, yeah. But I was also, like, just on the cusp of figuring out something... really big, for a second. I think?”

   “Ugh, I get that all the time,” Melanie gave them a helpless shrug. “Always seems to just, like... slip away?”

   “…I guess?”

   The group all shuffled over a bit as the line advanced several more feet again.

   “Is it... normal for there to be this many costume mishaps?” Stephanie asked after the long awkward moment passed.

   “Yeah, all the time,” Jordyn answered.

   “Oh, yeah,” Brian agreed.

   “Every fuckin’ year,” Brady sighed.

   “My friend Emily has the worst luck with that,” Brian grinned. “She did this Grimoire Saint costume, so she’s covered in body paint, ‘cause she’s supposed to look like a naked statue. Well, she sat down to eat with us in that little cafe the con has, but when she gets up afterwards—the stone-textured paint on her butt had come off.”

   “No way,” Jordyn had been more closely inspecting the iron ring lodged in the Ogre King’s ear when she clamped her hand over her mouth to contain her reaction. “Are you serious?”

   “Oh, yeah,” Brian chuckled. “She was wearing a thong, but it was like, blended against her skin with that putty stuff for hiding Halloween facial prosthetics. So, she’s walking around the con as a Grimoire Saint, white and gray all over... except for these two bright pink spots of skin, one on each butt cheek.”

   “That’s hilarious!” Melanie exclaimed, and they all shuffled forward as the line advanced once again. “What did she do?”

   “I remember seeing the girl with the cool statue costume a couple years back, but I never noticed that,” Jordyn laughed. “She’s that real short girl that’s always with your group, right?”

   “Yeah, that’s Emily,” Brian nodded. “She ended up trying to smear paint over from the surrounding area, but it was really too dry to work. She got so mad at me for not helping her, hah…”

   “Why didn’t you?” Stephanie blinked.

   “Couldn’t exactly have my hands all over another girl’s butt while my girlfrie—uh, while my now ex-girlfriend was standing there glaring at us. Chloe was pissed at that entire situation.”

   “I woulda helped!” Melanie chimed in with a laugh. “I’m not shy at all. I like, wouldn’t have even cared, hah ha!”

   “Hey, keep it down back there,” One of cosplayers ahead of them in line called over.

   “Sorry!” Melanie yelled back in a loud voice. “I got excited!”

   “Was your ex the one with you guys who was always Hera Victoria?” Jordyn asked, frowning. “I had my eye out for her, since she always does HellState cosplay every year. Honestly, I always kinda assumed that other girl was your girlfriend. The statue one, that real short girl.”

   “Emily? No way,” Brian laughed. “We practically grew up together, she’d never be able to see me that way.”

   “I’d see you that way!” Melanie interrupted, flashing him a wide smile. “I totally would.” The dark-haired girl dressed as Blaire Bellefonte had a hyper, predatory gleam in her eyes, almost shaking with anticipation, ready to pounce forward the instant he made a move.

   “Oh,” Jordyn smiled, looking from Melanie to Stephanie and seeing strangely similar expressions. Huh. “Where is she, then? You’re usually with a big group.”

   “Emily’s getting here late tonight... I think. And, Chloe… she broke up with me just last week,” Brian winced. “I’d pre-ordered badges for both of us, and she sent hers back to me right away. So, yeah, I don’t think she wants to be anywhere near here, or me.”

   “Ouch.”

   There was some inkling or thread of thinking Jordyn was overlooking, some missing perspective needed for that strange realization she’d had earlier. Something about Brian seemed to resonate with that weird feeling she’d felt so certain of for in that moment, and she subconsciously took a step closer to him. It was a heady feeling, a purple feeling, lush with blooming... arousal, interest that was deepening a shade further into expectation.

   “Oh, h-hey,” Stephanie cut in. “Guys? We’re, um, we’re next in line.”

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