Chapter 58: Family Worries
After familiarizing himself with his new abilities, Chris checked the time and saw it was almost dinner. He headed downstairs to the living room.
However, upon arriving on the first floor, Chris realized that Lois wasn't making dinner.
Something was wrong. He glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall and was shocked to discover it was already April 15th.
"Damn it! I should have realized this sooner!"
Understanding the time discrepancy, Chris bolted back upstairs, burst into Stewie's bedroom, and demanded, "Stewie, what did you do? Why is the time in both worlds synchronized?"
Stewie, who'd been hugging his teddy bear Rupert for comfort after the suffocation incident, jumped at Chris's sudden entrance. After collecting himself, he replied calmly, "I created a temporal synchronization device. As long as you wear the wristband, no matter how long you spend in an interdimensional world, the same amount of time passes here in the main world."
A malicious grin spread across Stewie's face. "Otherwise, it would've been a tremendous waste if I couldn't watch you panic when you got back!"
Hearing Stewie's explanation, Chris laughed bitterly. "You really are something else!"
But now wasn't the time to argue with Stewie. Chris had spent seven or eight days in the Final Destination world, and with synchronized time, that meant he'd been missing from home for just as long.
No wonder the house felt eerily quiet—Lois and the others must have gone out searching for him.
After being gone for over a week without any word, Lois was probably losing her mind with worry.
"You know where Lois and the others went to look for me, right?"
"Oh, that's what you're concerned about?" Stewie seemed genuinely surprised. He hadn't expected his scientifically-enhanced older brother to actually develop real feelings for these family members—even stronger bonds than the original Chris had possessed.
But Stewie didn't particularly care either way. Since Lois and Peter came home every night, he answered dismissively, "No idea. Maybe they're at the police station waiting for leads? Or perhaps they drove to neighboring towns to search for you. You know, I've been too busy enjoying your predicament these past few days to pay attention to what they were doing!"
Hearing this, Chris hurried next door to Joe Swanson's house. As expected, Joe wasn't home.
Fortunately, his pregnant wife Bonnie was there.
"Hey, Mrs. Swanson! Is Joe working late at the station?"
Bonnie, who'd been clearing the dinner table, heard someone calling. She turned toward the window and saw Chris standing outside.
"Oh my God! Chris, where have you been all this time? Do you have any idea how worried Lois has been about you?"
Bonnie stepped outside and gently asked Chris about his whereabouts during his disappearance.
"Uh... well... you see..." Chris stammered repeatedly, unable to come up with a suitable excuse. He could only stare at Bonnie, speechless.
Seeing the difficulty written across Chris's face, Bonnie decided not to press further. She went back inside to make a phone call. "Never mind, I'll call Joe first and let them know you came back on your own. Lois is at the police station too, so don't go anywhere for now."
While Bonnie was on the phone, Chris frantically tried concocting an excuse to explain his week-long absence.
As Chris stood there deep in thought, he could hear both sides of Bonnie's conversation—and Lois's shrill voice coming through the receiver.
"Yes, he's fine. He doesn't appear to be hurt."
"Bonnie, keep an eye on him! Don't let him wander off! I think this might be lingering effects from Chris's head injury—maybe he's been having some kind of episodes."
"Don't worry, Lois. He's standing right at my doorstep and looks completely normal."
"Okay, we're heading back right now."
Bonnie hung up and waved to Chris. "Lois will be home soon. Why don't you come inside and wait? Can I get you some iced tea?"
"No thank you, Mrs. Swanson. Stewie's still home alone, and I'm worried something might happen to him, so I should head back."
"Well..." Bonnie remembered Lois's instructions, then looked at Chris's perfectly normal demeanor and nodded. "Alright then, you go ahead."
"Thanks, Mrs. Swanson!"
After thanking her, Chris turned and headed back home. Bonnie watched him enter the Griffin house but didn't follow. Instead, she remained standing there, keeping watch on the Griffin family's front door.
Clearly she still had Lois's concerns in mind, worried that Chris might have another episode and disappear again.
"Ooh, ooh, ooh! Joe wasn't home, and you were alone with Mrs. Bonnie—didn't you try to make a move?"
The moment Chris walked through the door, he found Stewie waiting with a mischievous grin, making a suggestive remark.
"What do you think I am? Some kind of pervert? Besides, Bonnie is Joe's wife—how could I have thoughts like that? I didn't even go inside her house!"
Faced with Chris's defensive explanation, Stewie became even more animated. He cackled loudly and accused, "You still claim you didn't have any thoughts! If you truly didn't, you wouldn't even be concerned about propriety.
The very fact that you're so defensive about whether you entered the house or not proves that you absolutely had such thoughts, but your ethics and morals restrained you, making you deliberately avoid any compromising situations."
"Uh..." Chris looked at Stewie speechlessly. If he weren't absolutely certain that he'd had no inappropriate reactions whatsoever, he might have been convinced by Stewie's twisted logic that he really was some repressed predator.
But his body told him that, having just returned exhausted from the Final Destination world, he'd had no such thoughts at all.
So, regarding Stewie's warped reasoning, Chris simply chuckled. "Believe whatever makes you happy. I'm not arguing about this with you."
Seeing Chris's dismissive attitude, Stewie's expression shifted, and he shouted defensively, "You're not allowed to use that bad luck ability on me again, or I'll really get angry!"
Chris raised an eyebrow. It seemed the previous small lesson had genuinely frightened the toddler genius.
However, Chris truly had no intention of using the death-accident ability on his family members again—Peter excluded, of course.
And for Stewie causing Lois and the others to worry for over a week, Chris had a much better punishment in mind.
"Don't worry, I promise I won't use the bad luck ability on you again. But I'm warning you now—eat whatever you want while you can. Because you won't be able to eat anything soon."
Stewie completely disregarded Chris's ominous warning. As long as Chris didn't use that supernatural bad luck ability, he wasn't afraid of anything.
In fact, once his anti-probability-manipulation device was completed, even if Chris went back on his word and used the ability again, Stewie still wouldn't have anything to worry about.
Just then, the front door flew open, and Lois rushed in and embraced Chris on the sofa, crying, "Chris, you had me so worried!"
"It's alright, Mom. It's my fault. I left too quickly—I only left you a note before I went."
Chris hugged the exhausted Lois, comforting her while simultaneously setting a trap for Stewie.
"A note? What note?"
After confirming Chris was unharmed, Lois wiped away her tears and looked at Chris in confusion.
"Huh? I gave it to Stewie to pass along! Didn't he give it to you?" Chris looked at Stewie with apparent confusion, his expression perfectly innocent.
Stewie, meanwhile, stared at Chris with genuine bewilderment, not understanding what his brother was scheming. Had there actually been a note?
Just as Stewie was processing this, Chris slapped his forehead dramatically and exclaimed, "Oh no! That note couldn't have been accidentally eaten by Stewie, could it? Will that cause damage to his digestive system?"
"What?!" Hearing Chris say this, Lois, who'd just begun to relax, immediately panicked. "I've been so busy searching for you these past few days, I haven't been monitoring Stewie properly! What if something's wrong? What should we do?"
"Ooh, I know, I know!" At that moment, Peter excitedly stepped forward. Like a samurai whose lifetime of training finally had a chance to shine, he swiftly proclaimed his expertise.
"It's a stomach pump! Stewie needs a stomach pump in this situation!"
Seeing Peter's perfect assist, Chris looked at him with genuine approval. The look of validation made Peter even more excited. He scooped up Stewie and turned toward the door.
"I'm taking Stewie to get his stomach pumped right now! Lois, you just rest!"
Chris waved cheerfully at the struggling Stewie and said with a wicked smile, "Don't worry, Stewie! Just follow Peter's instructions—this is all for your health!"
Stewie screamed and cursed, "Screw you! Chris, you son of a bitch, I'm going to kill you!"
Hearing Stewie's outburst, Brian sensed that things weren't quite as Chris had presented them. However, when he turned his head, he found Chris staring at him with ice-cold eyes. Brian immediately feigned a yawn and said, "Man, I'm exhausted! Think I'll go rest."
Meg hadn't clearly heard what Stewie said, and frankly didn't care enough to pay attention. She simply turned and headed upstairs to her room.
Watching events unfold exactly as he'd planned, Chris comforted Lois for a few more minutes, then excused himself and headed upstairs to his own room.
Tomorrow he'd need to come up with a convincing explanation for his disappearance—but tonight, watching Stewie get an unnecessary medical procedure seemed like adequate payback for the synchronized-time prank.
Fair was fair, after all.
If you enjoyed this chapter, leave a Review!
P*atreon/Soulforger (30+ advanced chapters)
Buy me coffee - ko-fi*com/soulforger01