Trickster Bunny lived to make his sisters jump. He wore his blue TRICKSTER shirt like a badge, and he had one rule he never broke: no prank could ever hurt. A squeak, a splash, a harmless surprise. That was the whole game. But lately the game was broken. He crouched behind the garden fence with a bucket of dry leaves tied to a string. The plan was simple. Isabella walks by, he tugs, leaves rain down, she shrieks, everybody laughs. He waited. Isabella came skipping in her yellow dress, then stopped three steps short. "Nice try," she said. She pointed at the string in the grass. "You always hide behind that fence." She walked around the leaves and left him there, red-eared. Frannie had been just as bad that morning. She spotted his trip-wire before breakfast because he always rigged the same hallway. His sisters knew every spot he used. The fence, the hall, the back step. Each setup gave him away before it sprang. That was the real problem. He had plenty of tricks. He had no place to hide them. A prankster needs a base his targets never check. Fred Fox found him sulking by the fence. Fred was his best friend, a young fox in a green hoodie who loved a good scare almost as much as Trickster did. "They keep catching you," Fred said. It wasn't a question. "They know all my spots," Trickster said. "Frannie and Isabella check them first thing now." Fred grinned and tugged his hood. "So pick a spot they never go." Trickster sat up. He thought about his sisters and where their feet carried them. The garden, yes. The burrow, yes. But one place sat past the field, old and leaning, and his sisters refused to step inside it. The scarecrow barn. Its planks were dark and cracked. A straw figure slumped by the door, and more straw poked from every broken window. Isabella had cried the one time Frannie dragged her near it. They never went back. "They're scared of it," Trickster said. "That's perfect." Fred's grin faltered. "It's kind of scary, honestly." "That's why it works." Trickster was already walking. Inside, dust hung in slanted light. The straw man watched from the corner with its stitched face. Trickster swallowed, then set to work. He strung a bucket of soft feathers above the door. He stacked boxes for a hideout where no sister would ever peek. By the time the feathers were ready, his fear had turned to a buzz of excitement. He had his base at last. A safe spot where every setup stayed hidden until it sprang. Then a sound stopped him cold. Something shifted deep in the barn's back stalls. Not straw. Not wind. A slow, heavy scrape across the floor. Trickster froze, feathers forgotten. He wasn't alone in the barn. And whatever shared it had been here first.