Character Bans

Pocket Protectors was not a very popular game these days. It was practically a fossil in terms of video games for the mobile phone, since it was almost four years old. Holmes Handerly still had a soft spot for it though.

It was a character collecting game, but all the characters were little rubbery toys. You played by fitting as many as you could into a shirt pocket displayed on the screen. Then if you matched with someone nearby the two pockets would fight, launching attacks at each other based on character synergy and positioning.

Eventually one pocket would take too much damage and all the characters would fall out the bottom, which was a loss. It took wins to earn tokens, which could be used to get characters out of a digital slot machine.

Holmes had found a fight, there of all places. Her phone beeped in the very specific way that indicated another player of Pocket Protectors was in range, and they could duel. She had time. Mangst Breadslaw wasn’t scheduled to speak for another twenty minutes or so. The real problem was getting to her phone.

She was seated in a folding chair for a person of normal proportions, but she was enclosed in a stuffy ‘fursuit’, as the community called it, which made her bottom almost twice as wide. Her neighbors, a flying squirrel and a floppy-eared bunny, were spilling out of their seats as well, compressing the video game journalist who was having trouble remembering how she got herself into that exact situation.

Her arms managed to wriggle out of their furry sleeves and into the body of the suit, allowing them to slither down to her jeans and fish her phone out of the tight crevice her pocket had been reduced to. It nearly slipped out of her hands, all the way down her suit leg and into her puffy lynx feet. There might be no recovering it from there without blowing her cover.

Only the bottom half of the suit looked like a lynx, as it had proven difficult to source one of the suits on short notice without purchasing one. Two of her Squeak’s associates eventually offered pieces of unfinished costumes that could be combined, so Holmes was prowling around in the paws of a lynx while looking through the beady eyes of a badger.

It had been good enough to gain her entry to Pinecon, which was all she needed. That, and perhaps some deodorant. The suit’s heat had crept up on her and now her proper clothes were drenched with sweat. There must have been some kind of ventilation procedure she had neglected to ask about. She could make a note about it for the next time, but she very much hoped there would not be a next time.

The gamer tag of her opponent was difficult to read through the smear her perspiration put on the screen, but she wiped it down on the suit’s interior and saw it: Nordicbagel. This Nordicbagel was an experienced Pocket Protectors player indeed, with a maxed out denim level of seventy-five. Holmes matched it of course.

She initiated the challenge, but there was no response. Whoever they were they must not have been looking at their phone. She twisted around in her seat, as much as the suit allowed, to look at the crowd. The player had to be someone close by, but here that meant more than two hundred people.

The convention was in a hotel, in a space the owners had probably always intended to be for company retreats and tech shows. Instead the auditorium and attached hallways were infested with colorful woodland critters of all stripes.

Grizzly bears strutted around with purses on their hips that their paws couldn’t possibly fit into. A few skunks worked security, looking authoritative in their black and white uniforms. Holmes wondered if they had pepper spray dispensers hidden in their tail fluff for added authenticity.

None of the carnivores were on the hunt, so all species interacted jovially. In fact, there was more hugging going on than Holmes had ever seen. Almost none of it looked obligatory as well. This wasn’t forced Thanksgiving family hugging where you would cringe when grabbed by a racist uncle or drunk aunt. It was enthusiastic. Their tails would’ve wagged if they could; she even swore she could see a few of them doing just that.

Nothing she saw suggested one of them was distracted by their phone inside their suit, but someone else did catch her eye, as well as the eye of everyone else there. The very scent of him seemed to disturb some of the more sensitive snouts around.

Every creature big and small gave him a wide berth. They knew he wasn’t supposed to be there; he reeked of a toxic mind that didn’t belong in their den. None of them wanted to hear him speak, but there was only one stage, and they might lose their seats if they didn’t sit through his presentation.

Some left anyway. Others wriggled in their seats, which Holmes now recognized as the struggle to use electronics within their confines. Inside their bat and fox ears they were popping headphones onto their human ones, scrolling through libraries of music, shows, movies, and games just to find something to drown him out.

The nerve of him. Holmes was none too proud of her own efforts at assembling a suit; it was obvious she had only done the bare minimum. Yet she hadn’t really violated the spirit of the event. Nothing about her appearance suggested she disrespected the furries, or their space, or their time.

Mangst was different. As he approached the stage he was wearing a wolf suit. There were a few packs of wolves around, some quite fanciful, but Mangst’s coat made a statement. That statement was fascism.

There was a black mark on the suit’s upper lip like Adolf Hitler’s toothbrush mustache. The suit was black with a white belly. To him there were no gray areas, and he was always right. The edge of the belly was made up of swastika bars. A mark like an arm band was proudly displayed. This beast had all the trimmings of an S.S. officer even without wearing any clothing.

She knew he wasn’t exactly rolling in the dough anymore, so there was no way he had commissioned such a suit just for one speaking engagement. Perhaps the individual that had forced his participation bankrolled it, and had been too cowardly to wear it themselves. Not Mangst. He had no shame as long as he was faceless.

It would’ve been so simple, Holmes grumbled to herself. All she had to do was peel off her suit, run up to him, and rip the stupid dog smile off his face. A hundred people would snap his picture and he would be all over the internet in hours, identified in a few hours more.

But she wanted a career, not one successful stunt. Tearing off a furry’s head didn’t seem very respectful, and for all she knew it might count as a form of assault. No, there was a right way to do this. She could destroy him without ever touching him, and all she needed to do was aim her magnifying glass properly and precisely. The heat would melt him, inside a suit or not.

Most of the crowd was too agreeable to boo anyone, but they certainly didn’t applaud when he took to the stage and grabbed the microphone. The program said he was going to give a talk about censorship, but Holmes knew that was a lie before the first word came out from between his fangs.

Censorship was the government interfering in matters of opinion. Mangst liked to use a different definition:

Censorship -noun- The act of disagreeing with Mangst Breadslaw, or of pretending his opinion is not fact.

He was going to rant about his recent ‘silencing’ and the emptying of his bank account. They were in for at least twenty minutes of angry woe-is-me rhetoric, but he would have to tie it into the furry community somehow to justify his presence in front of them.

She didn’t really care how he was going to do it; everything that came out of his mouth would be pure codswallop anyway. Holmes kept her suit’s giant eyes aimed at the stage but bent her true head toward her lap. She sent another challenge request to Nordicbagel. Mangst beeped.

He was less than a sentence into his drivel when it happened, emanating from somewhere around his thigh, but he had lowered the microphone in that moment and it had picked it up. He apologized for the interruption and smacked his leg a few times to silence the device through the layers.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

“Hello Nordicbagel,” she whispered behind her badger teeth, clenched in determination. The wifi there was good, even through a donation bin worth of fabric, so she set to work searching his gamer tag on various game sites and forums. While she did so she was barely listening.

“With cancel culture getting wildly out of control, reasonable people will seek the refuge of anonymity anywhere they can get it,” Mangst argued. His voice was grating to her, acidic, like a sour candy dropped onto the sclera of her eye. There wasn’t a chance he was more than twenty-two or twenty-three. Surely the only censorship he had actually experienced was his own family telling him to shut up and stop whining.

“Furrydom, whether you like it or not, is going to see a huge influx of people like me. I think I’m something of a pioneer. It’s genius when you think about it. Here the mask is the whole point. Even body type can’t be gleaned through these exaggerated animal proportions. You offer safety in silliness.

Are you going to tell me I’m wrong for feeling safe here? Are you going to look in my puppy dog eyes and tell me I don’t belong here? I’ll anticipate your argument because I’ve heard it in other venues a hundred times before. Some of you think I’m taking advantage of your hospitality, that the community you want will fall apart if it doesn’t have strictly controlled borders.

That’s my whole point. Speech is supposed to be free. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find an argument for anything else being fully free. I want you to kick me out, if it gets you to be honest. Tell me you hate me, so that I can tell you that I hate communists, that I hate people who rip sexy women out of video games because they’re so angry that they’re ugly, that I hate black people who think being black is only about rap music and gang violence.”

“At least you’re consistent,” Holmes muttered as she scrolled through the evidence. There were several chat logs and ban records for Nordicbagel across several video games, not just Pocket Protectors. He had accounts for Military Clarion, Bumper Car Battle Royale, Be a Brutal God, and Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

That last one was Jenny’s game, but not a big surprise. It was extremely popular. Still, she would be none too pleased to know that particular worm was wriggling around in the earth she tilled.

Everywhere he went it was pretty much the same. He got himself into an argument after inserting himself into a conversation. A handful of instances later he got banned. It made sense he was still hanging around the hanging gardens though, as that game didn’t have permanent chat logs. You had to screen capture someone saying something offensive and then report them directly to the developers to get a ban to go through. Most people didn’t bother.

“I’m sure some really ugly girls are good at video games, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be even better at making sandwiches. It’s all about giving your best effort where it belongs,” he had argued in Military Clarion, mostly to typed cheers from his teammates, which was to be expected from that game.

“Jews control the metagame,” was what got him temporarily banned in Bumper Car Battle Royale.

“Since there is no organized Nazi party anymore you have to assume anyone who says they’re a Nazi is joking.”

“If we hadn’t nuked Japan their brains never would’ve been irradiated enough to come up with anime, so you’re welcome Japan.”

“Long painted nails are like high heels for the hands. They’re great because they are women telling the truth. No, they’re not going to try and do any work, because they’ve made their hands fragile and awkward. Girls in high heels don’t try to run and girls with long nails don’t try to game. It makes their worth and purpose plain.”

“As if you’ve ever had a girlfriend,” Holmes growled in a tone that could put an actual badger to shame. Was the live version finished yet? She looked up. He was strutting across the stage, getting louder and louder. Some of the furries started to boo him while others cringed away from the conflict, putting their paws over their false ears.

It sounded like he was off script at that point, given that he was just talking about what perverts furries were and how he was only wearing the suit in jest. When the booing got too loud he even had the nerve to drop the microphone dramatically as if he’d just made some kind of stadium-silencing statement.

As expected, he was only there to mock them. Unless they had loved him. Then it would’ve been different, serious. He would’ve talked about the love of joining their den, how his fascist wolf suit was comfortable enough to sleep in. The sheep in wolf’s clothing tried to flip them all off as he left the stage, but his paws couldn’t handle such a precise maneuver, so he turned it into a Nazi salute instead.

Holmes gave up her seat to a vole waiting in the wings. Her badger head suffered a temporary slit throat, but only so she could vomit up her phone. One hand had to come off so the screen would register her taps. As she set up the camera she scurried after Mangst. He was awfully fast for someone with his tail between his legs.

“Mangst!” He didn’t slow down, didn’t even turn his snout. She picked up the pace. He quickly led them off the main convention floor and into one of the hotel’s hallways. He was trying to lose her. If an employee caught them outside of their strictly enforced corral there could be trouble.

Even through the suit she could smell chlorine. They were near the pool, confirmed a moment later when a soaked woman wrapped in a towel wandered by them barefoot. She stopped and stared, unable to get past the animal suit part enough to recognize the fascism part.

“Mangst! I’m a journalist! Don’t you like interviews? You sure like hearing yourself talk!” He wasn’t taking the bait. This was her only shot and it was shuffling away on slipper feet. Holmes threw off the badger head to lighten the load, but if she took the time to wriggle out of the legs he would be gone already.

“Mangst! Now that your bid to break into the furry community has failed, where will your desperate hate-peddling take you next? The KKK? Anti-vaxxers? The diaper fetish forums?” That last one hooked him, but only enough to get a response. He still fled at full speed.

“Maybe this is the end of Mangst!”

“Are you saying you’re giving it up? Will you reveal your identity and apologize to the people you’ve hurt?

“Not the end of the message! Tons of people love hearing it, just a couple tons less than hate it. It doesn’t have to be under the Breadslaw label you dumb bitch.” He took a corner and went down a short set of stairs. Holmes nearly lost her balance down it.

“They didn’t love hearing it enough to keep you famous and fed! They’re all leaving you! What you’re left with is me, and I’m honestly asking you why you do this when it doesn’t even get you anything anymore.”

“Because others always tell people like me that we’re not good enough, when I know that we’re the fucking best.” The fucking best attacked the glass door that let outside to the pool. It swung open. The fresh air was packed with people, likely spillover from a different event. Most of their chatter stopped, replaced by curious sips at their drinks as some kind of feral Hitler-beast pushed through them.

Holmes was catching up. The crowd was slowing him down too much, so he was going to have to ford the river. There was only time for one nervous glance at the pool’s rippling surface and back at his pursuer before he jumped as far in as he could.

It was the deep end, and thanks to his suit he immediately sank. Holmes made the same judgment, that she could not push through the people fast enough, and so plunged in right behind him. That was a mistake. Without her badger head on the water poured in and weighed her down. She leaned desperately to get one foot in the shallow end.

Even though she succeeded her head was still underwater. Her extended arm kept the phone dry and breathing, and at the moment its life was the only one that mattered to her. The chlorine burned her eyes, but she needed to see where she was going. The upholstered Nazi U-boat in front of her couldn’t doggy paddle, so he was walking across the bottom.

By the time she was halfway he was already on the other side. He clambered up a metal ladder and rolled onto the decorative tiles. Now it was his turn to vomit something up, furry neck opening to expel the water that had infiltrated his hide. As she grabbed the ladder Holmes realized she had made a fatal error when decapitating herself.

Far more water had made it into her fursuit, and she found it essentially impossible to pull herself up the ladder from the extra weight. Having only one arm free to do so made it burn like hell as she tried. Meanwhile Mangst was crawling across the ground, stumbling to his feet, and running away on squelching slippers, to another glass door leading back into the hotel.

As Holmes’s head reemerged and she gasped for air she heard him doing the same thing. He sputtered and coughed and gagged, but he never lifted the wolf head enough to reveal his face. This she would discover a few minutes later when she reviewed the footage and got nothing but his lower lip in frame.

Some kind guests grabbed her by the shoulders and helped her off the ladder, where she promptly collapsed and felt the water she’d swallowed splash against her insides. The only energy she had left was used to lift her head, to watch Mangst. Through a blurring skin of chlorine she saw him finally take off his head as he ducked into the building.

He was turned away, so he thought he was safe to catch his breath, but Holmes saw his reflection in the glass door as he pushed it in. It wasn’t a strong reflection, and her vision was blurred, and there was more than a handful of feet between them, but she saw enough to get a sense of his face’s character.

The blur wasn’t anyone she recognized. It wouldn’t be enough to publish, even if she spent through the nose to get a sketch artist to draw up what she saw. There was no doubt he would be in a car within five minutes, speeding away, perhaps never to do another live event again.

“Are you okay? Can we help you with something?” a nice young woman asked, leaning over the partly drowned animal.

“Yeah,” she answered. “Donate me to a wildlife sanctuary, because I’m done.”