The morgue was brimming with fish—the app all but ready to launch. They weren’t meant to be taking orders until the following morning, which is why getting one came as quite a shock.
There was a distinct ping. Loud. Unignorable.
Gary reached for his phone.
New Fish Order!
Customer: Crawford Thorne
Delivery Address: 666 Kingfisher Drive, Herne Bay
Item: 1 x Snapper
Status: …are we even open?
Gary frowned.
“Bros, did we, like… accidentally launch?”
“What are you looking at me for?” said Gorbachev.
Gideon glanced at the screen. “Who’s Crawford Thorne?”
“Our first customer, I guess,” muttered Gary, his mind racing.
“What did he order?” asked Greg.
“A single snapper,” said Gary. “The question is, how?”
“What’s going on Vlad?” Gary shouted into his phone. “Why have I got a new order a day out from launch?”
“Its qvite ze mysteryz to me,” Vlad replied. “I vas testing ze app and zen from out of novherez… PING!”
“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do?”
“I mean, ze customer iz alvayz right, isn’t it?”
Gary sighed. How the hell could they pull this off?
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Tomorrow, they were implementing a motorbike sidecar delivery service, but today he had nothing. Not even a single lousy bike.
“I’ve got shit to do, bros,” said Gary, who was racing the clock to be launch-ready. “So… who’s gonna deliver this fish?”
“None of us can drive,” said Gideon.
“I can drive!” declared Greg (he definitely couldn’t).
“Great!” said Gary. “There’s a scooter out back.”
Two hours, sixteen crashes, and two altercations with a canine later, Greg made it to Kingfisher Drive, where Crawford Thorne stood watching from the driveway.
In his red right hand, he held a white artisanal fish-handling gauntlet. A lesser man may have mistaken it for a glove, but Crawford Thorne knew better! For this was no mere glove. This was an artifact. A relic of power. Hand-crafted from unethically sourced stingray leather, tanned in the oil of deep-sea predators, and finally, forged in the fires of Mount Doom.
He’d overseen its creation personally, rejecting lesser fabrics that could not capture the weight—the gravity—of what was to come.
Thorne had sent back the first prototype. Not weighty enough. The second? Its slap lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. In fact, it wasn’t until the fifteenth model that they achieved it… that all-important metric… optimal slappability.
Thorne had read the Code Duello cover to cover. He knew the rules. All of them. The fishmen had dishonoured him. They’d encroached on what was rightfully his—the ocean, and Crawford Thorne wouldn’t stand for it. As Greg approached, snapper in hand, he saw his moment—and sprang into action.
The glove sliced through the air in a crisp satisfying arc, hitting its target with a euphonic THWACK!
The resonance alone was worth every minute of research—sinless, duel-invoking perfection.
“You have insulted my honour, fishman!” Thorne declared, as Greg insulted it again, slapping Thorne right back with, you guessed it, a wet snapper.
Thorne exhaled heavily. “Well played,” he said with a violent smile. “But I have challenged you—not to a slap off—but to a duel. A contest of commerce. A battle of industry! Where whoever sells the most fish in a calendar month will claim the ocean for themselves.”
“We already have dominion over the ocean!” Greg roared. “It’s the land we’re after.”
“You have dominion over nothing!” laughed Crawford Thorne. “Which is why I’m even prepared to sweeten the deal. I’ll give you three months. Three entire months! Outsell me in any of them, and I’ll retire, and all that’s mine is yours, including Thorne Oceanic—which, might I add, controls the lion’s share of the seafood industry. But…”
The pause hung for an eternity.
“But if you fail,” Thorne finally continued, “then I take Fish Direct?, and better still, your lives!”
“You’ve got yourself a duel!” said Greg, extending a scaly palm.
Thorne seized it in a crushing grip.
And so, with a handshake soaked in hubris and fish slime, the battle for the ocean began.
