The repair room in Hollie's computer repair shop was always noisy. Fans, each a foot away from the wall, made up for the lack of windows or air conditioning. She had just gotten done plugging in a customer's tower when the bell rang. The television, hooked to the security camera in the front room, showed a new arrival. Sometimes, Hollie half-expected a line of people to come from nowhere.

Hollie got to her feet and went through the door. It led behind the counter, which spanned the width of the room. The only other doors were to the outside, next to the windows that let natural light and cool air in, and the one to the closet, which was safe on her side of the counter. "Welcome to Hollie's Computer Repair and Recovery," she said. "What problems are you having?"

The balding customer hauled his tower atop the counter. "Ever since a few days ago, it's been extremely slow. It takes a few minutes to even get the internet to open. I tried looking online and doing what it told me, but that only made it slower."

Hollie wrote down his problem and gave him a form to fill out. "May I get your name and contact information?" She gave him another form, more official-looking. "Also, I need you to put your signature here to show you agree I cannot be held responsible for any extra damage caused to your computer while it's being looked at."

The customer took the pen next to the ring-for-service bell and started filling out the papers. "How much do I need to pay?"

"Diagnosis is thirty dollars." The customer paused. Didn't he know he was getting a good deal? "It also includes simple repairs that don't involve needing to purchase a part. If that does happen, you will get a call before I go ahead so you don't have a surprise bill." Most places charged more without even offering the chance for repair.

The man paid the fee and handed back the form and waiver. "Have a good day," she said, moving the tower off the counter. "You should get a call back within a day or two."

He was replaced by another customer on his way out. This one was a younger woman, probably a teenager. "Welcome to Hollie's Computer Repair and Recovery. What problems are you having?"

"Hi, would you be able to help me with my laptop? I can't get it to charge." She set it on the counter. Most of the lid was covered in stickers. The power jack was misshapen.

"Did anything happen around the time when the laptop stopped charging?"

The customer got quieter. "Well, my brother went into my room while I was gone, and he was using it even though I told him not to..."

"It's okay." Hollie repeated the same process -- have the customer fill out the contact form and waiver, ask for initial payment, and tell her the expected turnaround time. "Have a good day."

"You too." The customer left.

Hollie took the tower and laptop in the back room and shut the door. There were now four machines in the check-out queue. She went back to preparing the first tower, hooking it up to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. She pressed the power button. A second into the power-on self-test, the tower kathunk*ed loudly, again and again. Then, the internal speaker beeped twice, and the monitor read, *Error: No valid boot device detected.

Hollie switched off the power supply and took the side plate off. She didn't need to unscrew the hard drive from the caddy; lifting a latch let her take it out. She put it in the middle of the floor. Normally, a crashed hard drive was unsalvageable, unless someone was willing to spend thousands of dollars for clean-room recovery and still have the chance of not being able to save anything.

However, there was nothing a little percussive maintenance couldn't do. When an old stereo didn't work, what did people do? They smacked it and slapped it until it started behaving again. Computers were a little different, though; it worked the same way, but not for humans.

Hollie took a bracelet out of her pocket. It was bright orange, with a carving of a kangaroo's head hanging from it. She put it around her arm. It, and the rest of what she was wearing, became loose as the room grew bigger. She slipped out of her shoes -- not wearing socks -- and took off her shirt. The buttons on the front were fake; the shirt closed with a velcro strip hidden underneath. Her bottom was a robe, hidden from customer sight by the front counter; she untied the string, and the robe fell to the floor, revealing a pouch. Hollie's skin took on a grayish tint, thickening with fur. The fans in the room became louder as her ears extended out. Her nose twitched while it and her mouth stretched into a muzzle. Muscles thickened in her thighs and in her tailbone, which shot out a tail that drooped onto the floor. Though she was now three feet tall -- why did female kangaroos have to be so short? -- she was strong, and her feet were huge.

Hollie hopped upwards, balancing on her tail, and drove her big feet straight at the hard drive. Computers and fans wobbled, and there was a metallic crunch as the broken hard drive was flattened. Again and again she stomped on the hard drive, making everything in the room crawl around. Crushing things was satisfying, even without any frustration to channel.

Slowly, she raised her foot off the hard drive. It decompressed, taking in a breath like it wanted nothing more than to live.

Now, it was the same box shape it had been before, without any sign of abuse -- the circuit board on the bottom was in one piece, and the cover was creaseless. A quick shake with a forepaw next to an ear confirmed there were no loose parts rattling on the inside.

One advantage of this form was that Hollie didn't need to go on her knees so much; she could stand, hunched over, at the right height for repairs. However, getting the hard drive back in the caddy required a bit more dexterity than her paws provided, so she guided and pushed the cables into their ports, then left the hard drive outside the case. She flicked on the power supply and pressed the power button, but it was more like stabbing it with a claw.

The POST passed with a single beep. Then, the system booted with only the quiet grinding of a healthy drive. After it displayed the login screen, she turned off the computer and switched off the power supply. She would need to perform an extended test overnight to make sure the hard drive was truly in good condition.

Hollie walked to the other side of the room, using her tail as a fifth leg when driving her hindlegs forward. The second computer was a laptop -- the same model as the one the young woman had brought in, minus all the stickers. This one had a broken display, curling backwards at a corner. The solid colors it gave off when she turned on the laptop, broken by streams and lakes of black, showed it was getting power.

Hollie turned off the laptop and set it against the wall atop a shelf about two and a half feet from the ground. Taking the battery out wasn't necessary. Standing as straight as she could on her tail and hindfeet, she drove her forepaws at the screen, punching it, scraping it, boxing the laptop against the wall. The screen snapped and barely hung together at some points, and the metal frame holding it in place stuck out. One more punch undid the damage, flattening the lid back out.

Hollie booted up the laptop. The panel was fine, displaying the blurry, low-resolution graphics of the boot process, more than one color at a time. She turned it back off and set it in the 'test overnight' queue. She would need to disable sleeping and play a ten hour long video of rainbows flashing across the screen, then check it in the morning. Those videos were meant for fixing stuck pixels, but they worked just as well for making sure her punches did their job.

Ring. Another customer. From the television, it looked like a middle-aged woman. Hollie took the kangaroo bracelet off her arm. Her muscles atrophied, but she grew taller. Her fur receded -- except on top of her head, where it lengthened to yellow hair -- revealing tan skin underneath. She stretched out her arms, legs, and back, getting used to standing upright without the weight of a tail. The room grew quieter as her ears shrank, and her muzzle was pushed into her face. She slipped on her shoes, put on her shirt, tied on her robe, and went to the counter.

The customer had a colorful tower and a box for a graphics card. "Hello," she said. "It's my son's birthday, and he's currently out of town. I wanted to surprise him with an upgrade for his computer since he's been talking a lot about his games and video editing being slow. The only thing is, I don't know how to do this."

"Thank you for coming. So long as the installation doesn't take more than a few minutes, which it shouldn't, I can do it free-of-charge. Please fill out this waiver, then I'll go in back and install the part."

"Why, thank you." The woman filled the waiver out without reading it and gave it back.

"Do you know if there already is a graphics card in your son's computer?"

"Well... maybe?"

"It shouldn't matter." Hollie hoped the mother did at some sort of research or at least heard her son talk about the card before purchasing it. "Please, take a seat. I'll be right back." Hollie took the equipment and hid in the back room.

Hollie disassembled the case and used a knife to unbox the graphics card, glancing at the surveillance screen every now and then to make sure the woman wasn't getting impatient.

The tower was obviously custom-built by the lights installed on the case and the complete disregard for bundling cords together or even moving them out of the way. Hollie had to unplug every storage device and even take out the RAM sticks to get at the expansion slots. There was no graphics card installed. This was not a gaming rig; hopefully the kid hadn't paid too much for it. Hollie popped out a bracket cover.

Nothing in a computer was supposed to be too hard to put in or take out, but Hollie couldn't get the card in. It would insert ever-so-slightly, then get stuck. The notches lined up, and there were no crumbs or anything sticky in the slot.

After disrobing, she put the kangaroo bracelet back on her arm. The room got bigger, and her strength returned. Hunched over the case, she lined up the card with the slot and jumped, putting as much weight as she could on her forepaws instead of her balancing tail. The card wobbled, then *click*ed into the slot. Hollie hopped away on two feet and took her bracelet off, shifting back to a human. She put her clothes back on and screwed the card into the case.

After putting the computer back together, Hollie plugged it in to the wall and the monitor to make sure it would boot, then hauled the tower out to the front.

The woman stood up. "Did it go in alright?"

"No problems. A few more things need to be done before it works, though. Do you know what a device driver is?"

"Uh... no."

Hollie wrote instructions on a notepad. The monitor needed to be plugged into the ports coming from the graphics card, not the integrated port, and if there was a driver already installed, it was probably out-of-date. She finished the note with the manufacturer's website, then tore the page off and handed it to the woman. "Here are some instructions on how to finish setting up the graphics card. Your son might already know how to do this, but if you're planning to surprise him, this is what you need to do."

The woman read the note, then looked up. "I think I can understand this. Thank you." She shook Hollie's hand and left the store with the tower and box.

Hollie went back in the repair room. The next machine was the tower from the person complaining about his computer being slow. Hollie plugged it in to the testing station and booted it. There was no password on the user account, and logging in took several minutes. The hard drive sounded like an empty stomach, and there was a quiet but piercing whine coming from the tower.

By the rate at which the system was loading, the processor could be older than she was. About a minute after the desktop icons appeared and the system tray stopped shifting around, she dared to move the mouse. The cursor felt delayed. Hollie opened the network settings, connected to the shop's network, and started the internet browser -- one of them. There were shortcuts to four different ones just on the desktop.

The hard drive groaned and ground. After the browser opened, she was greeted with an obviously-fake security warning, claiming to be from some Antivirus Pro Defender Ultimate. There was no option to temporarily disable the blocking. When she tried to open a task manager, it disappeared as soon as it appeared, and a notification about a virus being blocked appeared in the corner of the screen.

A window popped up, begging her to buy the full version of the 'antivirus'. Unfortunately, turning into a kangaroo and performing percussive maintenance wouldn't get rid of a fake antivirus; that only helped with hardware. She unplugged the machine and put it in the overnight queue.

The last computer was the laptop from the girl whose brother had broken the power jack. Hollie hadn't realized just how small the queue was; if nobody came in for a while, she might have time to start some long-term tasks on the overnight machines. Maybe she could get them home to their owners tonight!

Hollie put her bracelet back on, then flung her clothes off. She needed slip-on footwear she could kick off when her feet grew. So far, she hadn't been too slow as to destroy her shoes, but they were ripped in a few places.

She set the laptop on the floor, dented power jack facing her. Then, she delivered a swift kick to the corner of the laptop. Her claws scratched the side before it sailed into the air. With a whack, it crashed into the wall lid-first, then slid down and onto the floor, opening slightly. The port was a little straighter, but not good enough. She kicked the laptop up to the ceiling. It smacked the lights, then bounced when it crashed into the floor. It had taken her months to stop worrying that falling from that height would cause a bigger issue.

Hollie picked the laptop off the ground. The charger port was round, and the pin down the middle was straight. The charger fit when she plugged it in, but it wasn't snug; it rattled and fell out with movement. Instead of kicking the laptop one more time, Hollie spun and struck it with her tail, sending it hinge-first into the wall. She never checked if the walls and door were soundproof, but since she never had a customer comment about the noise, she assumed they were.

Hollie plugged the charger in. It stayed put! She moved the laptop over to the table and turned it on. The charging light was on, but she wanted to make sure the laptop was actually charging -- which, according to the operating system, it was, estimated to be done in three hours. This laptop could be sent back immediately, but Hollie didn't want to raise suspicions about something like this being fixed faster than the time it would take to disassemble the laptop to the point where she could pull out the bent jack. And, there was always the chance the battery would explode when it was full. She could stomp the laptop back together, but the customer couldn't.

---

Hollie sat in the repair room, playing a game on her phone. She wished she could use her phone as a kangaroo; she could swipe and tap, but the lack of thumbs made doing most things infeasible. Also, it was too easy to put her phone in her pouch instead of anywhere else; the skin on the inside was too sensitive to use her pouch as a pocket.

There was nothing to do; tests were busy running on the other machines. Red, green, and blue lights flashed on the laptop with the fixed screen, which faced away from her. An extended self-test was running on the tower with the fixed hard drive; since the estimates for those were accurate, she didn't need to have a monitor plugged in to see when the test was done. The infected tower was running a malware scan booted off a flash drive. The laptop with the fixed power jack was gone; after fully charging it -- which happened much earlier than she was told it would -- Hollie had called the owner, who had picked it up.

The bell rang. Hollie put the phone away, glanced at the television, and stepped out. A boy was there, jittering like he was about to explode.

"Welcome to Hollie's Computer Repair and Recovery." Hollie said. "What problems are you having?"

The boy looked up. "I, uh... Are you able to work on phones?"

"Normally I don't, but depending on what the problem is, I might be able to help."

"So, uh, I wasn't really thinking much at all I was kind of tired and I had put my mom's no my phone on top of my car then I went to go out of the driveway because I wanted to go on a drive in the car then the phone fell off the roof but I didn't know because I couldn't hear it fall then I drove out and ran over it but didn't know since I didn't feel it and once I went out in front of the house I remembered about the phone so I went out and then it was on the ground and it had been run over because I ran over it but I didn't know and so I came here because, because... I needed to, um..."

"Do you have the phone with you?"

"Yeah! Yes. Here." He put it out on the table with a shaky hand, along with a flash drive. The phone was curved like a banana. White cracks crawled over the entire phone like a web. It looked like pieces of the screen would come out with the slightest movement and crumble into dust. "I know you can't really repair a phone like that because it's all broken and everything because I ran over it but I was wondering if there was a way that you would be able to transfer er uh get all the data off the phone like pictures and music and videos and all of that so I could be able to transfer everything to a new phone and the flash drive is for that..."

"I'll see what I can do." Hollie decided to give him the repair price and handed him the contact form and waiver to fill out. Despite his anxiety, his writing was legible. "I'll call you when it's ready or if nothing can be done."

"Alright, thank you." He strolled out of the shop like he was on puppet strings.

Hollie went in the repair room. Nothing happened when she held down the phone's power button. When she plugged it in to the shop computer, it was understandable if the phone wasn't recognized as a storage device, but the computer didn't even recognize it as something that could take power.

She put on the bracelet, returning to kangaroo form, and crumpled the phone lengthwise in her paws. Flakes of plastic and glass snowed onto the floor. Hollie let up the pressure, and the phone straightened into one unbroken piece. After giving it a few minutes to charge enough to turn on, she started copying the files onto the flash drive through the computer. Unfortunately, that meant taking off the bracelet and wearing clothes; kangaroo paws could use a mouse, but not a keyboard well-enough.

Hollie didn't like repairing phones. With broken screens, everyone who wanted to know how she did it was fine with her saying it was a trade secret. A whole phone on the other hand, with all of its internals crushed too... Data recovery was fine, though. Customers didn't expect a working phone back, and they had to sign the waiver...

Her phone rang. It was the person who dropped off the phone. "Hello," Hollie said, "this is Hollie's Computer Repair and Recovery, what do you need?"

"Hi, so uh, I know you're probably still working on the phone, but I was wondering if I could, um..."

"Pick it up?"

"Yeah! Yeah. Would I be able to do that?"

"Sure. I just got done. In fact, I was about to call you."

"Oh! Thank you!" He hung up.

She barely had time to make sure the backup was successful before he arrived. After Hollie handed him the flash drive, he thanked her profusely and ran out. He didn't react when she said the phone had become a total loss once it was prepared for recovery. She went back in the repair room to pass the time, putting on the bracelet so she could lie down on the floor as a kangaroo.

A few minutes later, something moved back and forth on the surveillance feed. Someone had entered the shop but didn't go to ring the bell; maybe they just wanted a break from whatever they were doing.

Despite the number of noise-making fans, both box fans and computer fans, the room was peaceful. She was surrounded by two of her favorite things: fur and computers. Nature and technology. They didn't just coexist; one was helping the other.

A noise came from the other room, like a shuffle against the wall. Hollie looked at the television. There was no signal. Staying a kangaroo, Hollie opened the door a crack. Over the high ledge of the counter, the person from before was now wearing a ski-mask, and his pants bulged. The drawer she had kept the money in was open and empty.

Hollie slammed the door open and hopped over the counter. The person froze, expecting a human defense. Hollie stood tall -- as tall as someone shorter than a person could be -- and stared him in the eyes.

He headed toward the exit, staring back. "What--"

Hollie kicked his back. "Oh!" he yelled, then fell over. Hollie hopped in front of the door.

"What did you do to my camera?" Hollie asked.

The thief didn't say anything.

Hollie stomped on the floor, its groaning reminding him of the force of her legs. "I know you took my money. What did you do to my camera?"

He coughed. "Could you let me up first?"

"No."

By the sounds he made getting on his feet, he wouldn't be walking correctly for a while. "All I did is unplug it. But how... you're a kangaroo. How are you talking?" He knew better than to be in kicking distance.

"Give me my money back, and I'll let you go."

"Alright, alright." He fished around in his pockets for too long, then made a break for the window, going two steps before needing to walk at a crawl's pace. He stuck his arms out the window, then tried to pull himself up.

He was actually doing it. Hollie hopped at the thief. His arms flailed and his voice yelled as he crashed on the floor, pinned under her feet. Something cracked. He didn't say anything more, but groaned with each breath.

"It wasn't an 'or'," Hollie said. "It was an 'and'. You will both give my money back and leave." Even if that meant he would be crawling. She stepped off him to give him the chance to empty his pockets.

He lay on the floor, frozen except for the rise and fall of his chest. After a few moments, he felt his ribs, not wincing at the pain that should be there. He pushed himself onto his gut.

Shock ran down Hollie's spine as the thief got up. His bones were broken! She heard them break!

The thief thrusted his hands in his pockets and gave everything back. "Look," he said with a shaky voice, "I don't understand what magic you're using, b-but that's what it must be. However you h-h-healed me like that, I won't tell anyone. And..." He couldn't look at her. "...I won't come here again. I won't come to this city again. Just please, don't follow me. Please?"

Hollie nodded. The thief scrambled out without any hint of a limp. From now on, she would keep the money back in the repair room instead of having it in the drawer. But, she couldn't believe it -- her power worked on people too!

After plugging the camera back in, Hollie went back to the repair room. She kept the television in her vision. She had plans on what she would do if the secret of her bracelet became known, but she might need to let it be known herself now. Without any medical training, she could be doing wonders, instantly repairing broken bones at the minimum. Maybe she could fix muscles too, or organs, or burns, or paralysis...

Whatever she was truly capable of, only using it for tech support would be a waste.