“Is that him? He looks creepy, not like Angelina Jolie at all. Are we sure he’s a real hacker?” asked Death as a thin, pallid man walked in and started nervously talking to Sally.

  Dr Flibbles blew a derisive bubble. “How much research did you do about hackers before you set this thing up?”

  “Enough to know that hackers all listen to Walkmans, rollerblade everywhere and can hijack military satellites with nothing but a punk soundtrack and dramatically lit typing montage,” said Death.

  “I hate to tell you, but it sounds like you’ve been eating too many women who grew up in the nineties,” replied Dr Flibbles. “A lot’s changed since then. Hackers these days are all middle-aged men who live in their parents’ basements and argue endlessly over computer-game statistics. This guy looks like he fits right in.”

  The prospective hacker brightened up as soon as he saw the fish tanks, then introduced himself as Michael to the actor they had hired to conduct ‘interviews’ for the next several hours, and was already enjoying his first exfoliation of the day.

  A white foot entered the tank, followed by another, and the fish got to work nibbling on skin that hadn’t seen the light of day in twenty years. Decades of inactivity had left them soft, but also thick-skinned, as the layers of dead skin never had the chance to wear down with use.

  Memories came flooding in as Death and Hunger got to work on the hacker’s foot. All the interviewer had to do was keep him there for an hour. It didn’t even matter what he asked, his feet would do all the talking they needed.

  Hunger felt himself sitting in a lecture hall. There was a professor on the small stage going on about SQL injections and the importance of sanitizing anything read in as plain text. It was boring, he knew all this already. There was the girl sitting next to him. One of the only girls in the whole lecture theater. No, she was the only girl in the whole cohort studying computer science, and she passed him a note. His heart fluttered and he felt his stomach cramp up with nerves as he opened it. It was a crude drawing of him with his pants down, his privates covered by a surprised-looking Pikachu. There was a text bubble coming from its mouth that read ‘Pika, pika’. His nerves had given way to an overwhelming sense of dread that washed over him. The note that had crushed him slipped from his rigid hand and fell to the floor with barely a noise.

  He shut his eyes and buried his head in his hands. How did they know? That was months ago, and he thought no one had recognized him. He heard whispers turn to snickers then full-bellied laughter as news spread around the room. His life was over.

  “Woah,” said Hunger. “I think I just learned about actual hacking. Real hacking. And I know a lot about Pokémon too. I mean, a lot about Pokémon,” Hunger shuddered.

  Death caught the brunt of the next memory. It felt like he was really there, looking through a mask, feeling himself walking awkwardly in ridiculous oversized fuzzy yellow shoes. He was at a small, intimate party being held in a large but grimy hotel room that smelled of stale sweat. Everybody there wore a mask and full bodysuit that hid their identities, leaving only their fursonas on full display. Even through their masks he could tell that their eyes all turned on him as soon as he entered the room. Their judging stares burned straight through his bulky costume and left him feeling naked.

  The Pikachu costume he was wearing wasn’t great, but that wasn’t the one that bought his way into the community. No, that costume was in a large box that he gripped tightly; his most prized possession. It had taken him almost a year to save up for it, but he had hired a designer and bought the best anatomically functional Vaporeon costume money could buy.

  Staring at him as he stood in the entranceway were several foxes, one highly anthropomorphized tiger and a giant flemish rabbit that looked like it had been taxidermied by someone who had ran out of old rags and decided to stuff the thing with the first degenerate they could find. And lastly, there she was, Golduck – his best shot at fulfilling a fantasy he had for as long as he could remember.

  “Close the door,” shouted one of the foxes. “We don’t want any normies ruining our buzz.”

  He closed the door and walked inside the dimly lit room, his gaze immediately landing back on Golduck. Pokémon furries were rare. Water-based Pokémon furries were even rarer, but she was his best shot.

  He had always felt awkward at parties, but this time it was worse. Michael considered introducing himself to the foxes, but they had started petting each other in a way that didn’t look entirely platonic. His gaze fell down to the person stuffed inside the skin of a giant flemish rabbit.

  “Hi,” said Michael, holding out his yellow stub of a hand to shake.

  The rabbit looked up at him. “Squeak,” said the man in the rabbit costume. That is to say that they said the word ‘squeak’ without actually squeaking. They picked up a carrot with two rabbit hands and began chewing loudly, all while staring at Michael through black glass eyes.

  “I think I’m going to try the dips,” said Michael, taking any excuse to get closer to Golduck.

  “Squeak,” said the man in what was essentially a bag made out of a hollowed-out rabbit.

  Michael trundled over to the foldable plastic table set up on one side of the room. There was a selection of dips still in the plastic tubs they came in, next to a few packets of half-eaten corn chips. A problem presented itself: If he was going to eat anything, he would have to take his mask off, and he hadn’t been to enough of these things to know if that was considered acceptable etiquette. In fact, he had been to zero of these things, which isn’t many at all. They must take off their masks, he thought, or why would there be dips?

  He put down his precious box containing the Vaporeon costume and reached towards the chip packet with a stubby yellow nub of a hand. He sighed as he realized that a subtle slip of a chip under the mask was going to be the least of his issues.

  With the prospect of a casual snack to break the ice no longer an option, Michael steeled himself and walked over to Golduck. His heart pounded in his chest and his nervous sweating quickly turned his suit into a Pikachu-shaped sauna for one.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m Michael. I like your costume.” A decade of fantasizing about this moment and that was the best he could come up with. The memory of it haunted him. If only he had said something else, things might have turned out differently for him. A sound from the other side of the room caught his attention and he turned to see two of the foxes going at it right there on the other side of the room.

  “Fucking degenerates,” said the woman dressed as Golduck in a rough pack-a-day voice. Then she turned her attention back towards him. “I thought you were Pikachu.”

  “Yes, Pikachu Pikachu,” said Michael, laughing nervously. “I was wondering if you might be interested in trying on a Vaporeon costume. It’s made by Elezra Verta, and it cost me more than I care to admit.”

  “Excuse me?” said Golduck, standing up and raising her voice loud enough to draw the attention of everyone at the party. “Excuse me? You don’t just walk up to a furry and ask them to try on a different fursona. It’s not like that. I chose Golduck for a reason.” She paused and all the furries in the room chimed in at once.

  “My name is Golduck and I like to—” the party goes all shouted on cue. Yes, even those two.

  The furious seven-foot-tall duck-adjacent Pokémon woman made a gesture with one of her hands, interrupting the chant. “I’m not just going to dress up for basic-ass Pikachu who thinks he can buy his way into our clique with a fancy Vaporeon costume, so why don’t you take your yellow ass out of here before we kick it out.”

  “I’m sorry,” pleaded Michael. “I’m sorry, I just—”

  “Quack!” said the woman dressed as Golduck, pointing a webbed finger at the door.

  “Please,” pleaded Michael. “It took me so long to, and it’s just that, because you’re a water type too, I thought maybe—”

  “Quack!” she repeated with growing hostility. “Quack! Quack! Quack!”

  The other furries started joining in, some quacked, others howled or chirped or said ‘squeak’. The couple by the dips even joined in, modulating their moans into rhythmic honking quacks of mocking pleasure. Whatever sound they were making, they were all staring right at him and pointing at the door.

  Death felt a shudder run down Michael’s spine as their chewing triggered the memory in the man. The feeling of shame turned to sadness and he remembered running back to his car, sobbing and losing the head from his Pikachu suit somewhere along the way. Someone at the hotel must have recognized him, and when word got around at university, every day became a nightmare and the trauma left an indelible scar on his psyche. The memory permeated through his skin as he relived the shame of that day.

  “I think I need to wash my mouth out after this,” said Death. “Are you getting anything useful, or just more weird Pokémon stuff?”

  “I am indeed,” said Hunger excitedly. “I know how to socially engineer my way into any computer system in the world. We, I mean Michael, has Kardashian nudes that have never been released, both pre-op and post-op. With this level of expertise, no system will be safe from us.”

  “This is bullshit,” said Death. “You get all the skills and I’m stuck with just reliving weird trauma. How is that fair?”

  “You think you’ve got trauma? You didn’t see the photos,” replied Hunger.

  After sampling the skin from five more experts in their fields, the Murders spent another night banging their heads against the wall as they navigated their way around their new tablets, but this time was different. This time, they had just a taste of expert knowledge.

  “Hunger, how are those accounts coming along?” asked Death. He knew the answer, but he wanted to think through the plan again.

  “Accounts set up,” said Hunger. “We have email addresses @bigpond.com.au, social-media profiles and even a dating profile on Plenty Of Fish.”

  Death swam up and down the length of his tank like a general inspecting his troops. “And what do we know about our two intended targets?”

  Hunger opened a document and started reading off key points. “Our fake inspector Mr Jeremy Allister, aka sigma_balls69; hobbies include sharing right-wing fringe theories, arguing with people in the comments section of YouTube videos, offering to meet up and fight them, and then usually attempting to dox them.”

  Death, of course, knew this, because Hunger knew it, so he asked a question that he didn’t know the answer to. “Why?”

  Hunger thought about this for a moment. “He appears to enjoy the sport of it. I don’t think he even watched the videos he argued about, or read any of the counterarguments. He always goes straight for ad hominem attacks and threats of physical violence.”

  “Fascinating. And Mrs Allister?” asked Death.

  “Mrs Allister is a whole ’nother kettle of fish,” said Hunger.

  “Nice one,” said Death.

  “Thank you,” replied Hunger, bowing slightly in acknowledgement. “She appears to spend an inordinate amount of time spreading more quackery than a duck farm, and outputs more snake oil in a day than a reptile park could produce in a year. No healing crystals are safe, no herbs too expensive and no pseudoscience too dubious for her expert recommendation.”

  Death stifled a laugh, “With all these panaceas around, it’s a wonder how anyone is getting sick at all.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Hunger. “Anyone following a tenth of her advice would either live forever or be dead within the week, leaving behind a bright-orange turmeric-filled corpse and a thoroughly bleached digestive tract.”

  Dr Flibbles swam over to Death and Hunger and tried to look offended. “Well, I hope all this sneaking about on the internet is worth it. It all sounds like a lot of useless hogwash to me, and I don’t see how this gets you any closer to actually getting Murder back, or saving the spa.”

  “We do not expect you to comprehend our methods, Dr Flibbles, but we have already made great progress,” said Death. “Information is power, and with these tidbits we have been able to proceed to the next level of social engineering. On the dating platform, we have made a profile of an attractive young woman named Allison who is into swimming, guns and America. To get the young man’s attention, all it took was a low-cut top and a single like on a three-month-old post about migrant caravans and he is already begging to meet us.”

  “What?” asked Dr Flibbles incredulously. “But you’ve only been at this for a few minutes. I thought human courting rituals took months.”

  A notification appeared on the tablet nearest Hunger.

  “What was that?” asked Dr Flibbles.

  “It’s an image,” replied Hunger. “He appears to have supplied proof of functioning reproductive organs. We did not realise this was a step in human courting rituals. I will take note for future reference.”

  “Okay, so you’ve got her son on the hook. Big deal. It’s the mother that we really need to stop,” said Dr Flibbles.

  “We admit that progress has been slower with Mrs Allister. However we suspect that it being four in the morning could be a contributing factor. That being said, we have initiated contact via an account posing as a wealthy alternative medicine enthusiast called Fernando, and a friend request is pending.”

  At this point Spots decided to swim over and make a contribution. “Maybe you need to send her an image of that thing that looked like a stunted pink eel poking its head out of somebody’s trousers?”

  “Good idea,” said Hunger.

  “When contact is initiated with the female, we shall begin phase two,” said Death. “And with enough pawns, we shall topple a king.”