You are Tarkus, a seventeen-year-old high school senior who was just released for his summer break. You won’t need to worry about school for another two and a half months. While other teens your age are flipping burgers, sweeping floors, or doing other menial nonsense to get some money in their pockets, you’re doing something a lot more lucrative.
You’re hunting for fluffies. While most people tend to only pick up a few strays they happen to see, either for abuse or adoption, they don’t have any game plans in mind. They just pick up the first family they see. You, on the other hand, have a strategy for optional hunting for newborns. Fluffies tend to give birth in the morning in safe locations, so it’s just a matter of tracking them down in the night and waiting for the morning to strike.
But how does any of that help you get some cash in your pocket? ferals tend to be worthless, going for pennies on the dollar, if that. Alicorns, however, especially newborn ones, are different. For whatever reason, stores and various collectors are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for them. While most teens would be lucky to make five hundred bucks in a week, you can make that off a single alicorn even if it has shit colours, so long as it has no birth defects.
The only trouble is that the herds that might actually last long enough to make alicorns tend to be more hidden than your average stray. You can’t just look into an alleyway and hope to get lucky; you need to sneak into where they make their nest, and that means urban exploration.
Speaking of which, you were pretty sure you were close to a nest hidden in this abbadoned parking lot, hearing miscellaneous fluffy babble. God alone knows what fluffies talk about when alone with each other, but it likely has something to do with fucking and eating, knowing the little rats. You stop dead in your tracks and listen, trying to tune into the sound of fluffy talk.
“Fwuffy am soonestie mommah!”
“How mummah knu dat?”
“Because fwuffy’s tummeh huwties an biggest poopies come soon aftew dat dummeh!”
Score! Not just a nest, but a fluffy ready to give birth. If you scare the living daylights out of her, she should give birth, and you can inspect the babies as she runs away. You know just the way to do that too. You push over a few loose bricks nearby, making a crashing sound.
“REEEE!”
“BIG SCAWY!”
“Smawtie gu an check dat nuise fow soonestie mummah!”
Perfect, you think to yourself. You listen carefully to the sound of his footsteps.
“Toughie, gu with smawtie an check nuise fuw dah mawes.”
As the two fluffies approach, you hide behind a column of bricks and wait as they get closer and closer. Waiting until they’re almost right on top of you, you suddenly pop out and scream at the top of your lungs.
“Munstah!” screams the orange smarty, rearing up on his hind legs in a panic.
“WUN!” follows the red toughie, not wanting to be braver than his leader.
Oh yeah, you’re still wearing your gas mask—a LBM, to be precise. While it does keep you safe against all the possible asbestos and saves you the trouble of smelling feral poop piles, it also scares the living crap out of them. Quite literally in this case, as you see the two who saw you make “scawdie poopies,” as they disgustingly call it.
“HEWD WUN, BIGGIE MUNSTAH AM GUNNA NUM AWW FWUFFIES!”
You would call them cowards, but it is actually pretty smart that their first instinct towards a gas mask-wielding lunatic is to run as fast as they can. Which isn’t very fast, mind you, as it resembles more of a panicked waddle, but at least they’re trying. You slowly follow them, screaming more and more in an effort to send the entire herd into a panic. As you approach a pile of cardboard stacked next to a concrete wall, you finally see the herd of fluffies looking towards their leader, then you, and then screaming in panic as they follow the advice of the smarty.
“Hewp soonestie mummah, weggies nu can weach fwoow!”
Target acquired. You shout at the fluffies, making sure that the pregnant one can hear.
“Muntah hungwy fow soon mummahs! Num them an babbehs too!”
The herd’s response to hearing that is a cacophony of “nuus” and reeing as they scatter to the four winds. Looking quickly for the “soonestie mommah”, you quickly find her. She’s a bloated blue unicorn. You lock eyes with her and scream.
“NUMMIES”
“NUUUU!” shouts the mare before her face contorts, her mouth opening wide as she shouts even louder this time.
“BIGGEST POOPIES!”
You slowly make your way towards her, incentivizing her to hurry up. You count the foals that fall out of her, and you end up with five.
“SCREE, weggies work! Mummah am sowwy babbehs but mummah nut fow numing! Munstah num babbehs instead of mummah!”
What a terrible mother, you think to yourself, but at the same time, you understand her logic. She isn’t really in any position to save her babies, and she can always make more. Hell, if she shat out an alicorn, you might even use that new GPS chipping device you bought. She won’t exactly be that hard to catch up with either.
The new mother runs for her life, leaving her babies behind. To seal the deal, you make sure to yell, “DIS AM MUNSTAH WAND NAO, FWUFFY WEAVE OW FWUFFY BECOME NUMIES!”
Your response from the herd is more screams of “nuus” and crying as they flee their ‘Utopia’ of cardboard and left-over pizza. Now to check the spoils of war, you think to yourself as you walk over to the newborns.
Pulling out a rag from your breast pocket, you gently clean each one, having learned the hard way that you can’t be too rough with them. As you clean them, you quickly check their type, colour, and gender. It’s trickier than you would think, as both the wings and horn are incredibly small at this point, requiring a tactile check as compared to a merely visual one.
Four of them are just bog standard, mediocre colours, and normal types; you won’t even bother with them, so you simply set them down on a slice of pizza. On the fifth one, though, you get a pass on both the horn and wings. Checking gender, you end up with a female. Getting more and more excited, you almost reverently clean up the little filly, as even a shit coloured one can get you a few hundred bucks. Seeing a hint of white, you, as delicately as possible, put down the filly and break out your drinking water to help clean her as much as possible with a damp cloth.
White, Pure white. You’ll need to nurse it carefully for the next week, but even if her mane is shit coloured and she ends up being blind, you’ve already made at least four hundred bucks, possibly even more. You reach into one of your cargo pockets and pull out a folded cardboard box, a blanket, and a small bottle of formula. You slowly nurse your paycheck with the bottle, making sure it doesn’t drink too little or too much. When satisfied, you unfold the box, put the blanket in, and, treating the baby like a priest would treat his Chalice at Communion, put it in with the upmost care.
Closing the box once more, you end up remembering that you’ll need to GPS chip the mare responsible for this fortune just in case this isn’t a one-off. Slowly lifting the box, which may as well contain the most fragile of gold, you walk your way to your car. Upon arrival, you take a quick look to make sure nobody sees you, quickly open the driver’s door, and put your prize in the passenger seat. Closing the door, you then open the rear driver’s side and grab your little GPS tracker gun. After making sure your car is locked, you practically sprint towards the now abandoned Fluffy den, and begin to follow the trail of shit.
Fluffies are slow, but they did manage to gain some distance on you with how careful you were with her baby. Thankfully, even the ferals are terrible at covering their tracks, especially when they’re shitting themselves in fear of you. Pretty soon you can hear the huuhuus and the fearmongering they’re making about this new “soon mommah numming munstah.” Towards the rear, you see your target, the previously pregnant blue unicorn. It’s time to make her cry.
You shout at the herd, “MUNSTAH FIND HEWD!” You hear them once again screaming in fear. This time, though, you want to try something; maybe instead of always hunting the herd, you can work out a deal with them. “MUNSTAH NUM MUNSTAH BABBEH DAT MOMMAH MAKE, WAN MOWE. GIB MUNSTAH MOWE MUNSTAH BABBEHIES AN MUNSTAH WET HEWD WIVE.”
To your surprise, this time the orange smarty stops in his tracks, turns around, and looks at you. “Munstah nu nummie hewd if gib munstah babbehs?”
You respond in affirmation. After all, you’re not an abuser; you just want an easy paycheck. You can see the gears turning and steam coming out of the smarty’s head as he tries to comprehend your deal.
“DEN, DEN, SMAWTIE AM GIB AWW MUNSTAH BABBEHS TO MUNSTAH, NUM DEM NOT HEWD?” shouts the orange one. You’re pretty sure he fried one of his three neurons with that, but you’re still pretty impressed.
“YES, MUNSTAH NUMMIE MUNSTAH BABBEHS DEN. BUT MUNSTAH MUST GIB MOMMAH OF MUNSTAH BABBEH HUWTIE FOW MAKIN MUNSTAH BABBEH!”
To his credit, the Smarty nods his head in agreement. Making monster babies was bad after all, and if a monster was to give “sorry hooves” for doing that, he couldn’t disagree. You take out your GPS tracker gun, and the herd, looking at you, mutters varying forms of “scary” and “sorry stick” as you take aim.
“SCREE, NU HURTIES MOMMAH, NU SOWWY STICK.” Screams the blue mare, still a fair bit fat from having just given birth. She waddles away from you as fast as her little legs can carry her, but it doesn’t matter. You pull the trigger, and the chip shoots out, hitting her in the rump as she screams in pain before crying.
You look at the orange smarty and nod your head; your business with him has concluded. He replies in kind, and you both part ways. You can’t help but think to yourself that being a “munstah” must have instilled the necessary fear for a smarty to not behave like a little shit twice as strong as a human is and instead think that this bargain was the only way to live. You hope that he’s the father of your new paycheck, as such high intelligence is rare, and an alicorn having that only increases the price.
You head back to your car, satisfied with your hunt today. A white Alicorn is going to make you more money today than most teens would make in a week of hard work. Sure, you’re going to need to play turn-based games taking full care of your new fluffy before you can sell her, but it’s totally worth it, as if she turns out to have a good colour, she might be worth thousands. You take off your gas mask and start your car. You hear a few concerned chirps from your prize. Ignoring them, you start driving, making sure to go as slowly as you can without getting honked at while keeping one eye glued on that box of yours and making no sudden stops.
While certainly a challenge to your driving skills, you end up making your way home. Parking the car, you climb out with your box and make your way to your room, shouting a greeting to your father, who responds with a grunt. When you finally make it to your room, you head to your desk, put down your box, and gently unwrap it. Reaching in, you feel a bit of poop as you must have scared the little thing, but you don’t feel or see any sign of injury. You place the little thing in a small pen on your desk and pet it, calming it down from scared chirping at this handling to gentle cooing.
“You, my friend,” you say to the little baby. “Are going to be worth so much money.”
As if responding to you, the baby happily chirps, not understanding why its new daddeh is happy with her, but some deep instinct tells her that she just greatly pleased him.