This is my OC, please don’t steal.
Dr Deimos Jackson took a quick swig of whiskey from his hip-flash before he walked into the room, inside were the four most powerful people of the Fluffy Brand.
Patrick Davidson; CEO of Fluff-TV.
Jennifer Highcastle; Owner of Mummah’s Little Helper Daycare.
Franklin Sinclair; Founder of Fluff-Vegas Casino Park
And Richard House; Director of Hasbio.
The room was darkened with only five spotlight focussing onto the four Heads of Hasbio and the fifth on the presenting spot that Deimos was to make his pitch. He quickly checked the covered cage in his hand before walking up to the presentation spot and placing the cage onto a nearby table.
“Good afternoon Gentleman, Ms Highcastle. As you’re all aware, our attempts at expanding the Fluffy Brand has been… mixed to say the least. For every Sea-Fluffy we have a Bat-Fluffy, or a Plant-Fluffy, on an Angora-Fluffy.”
“The hell’s an Angora?” Franklin spat out of his double-chin.”
“It’s a Rabbit Frankie.” Richard cooly replied, taking a long drag of a cigarette, the ashes dances along his moustache. “And they weren’t a failure, we just didn’t market them hard enough.”
“We tried to get them on Fluff-TV.” Patrick began to explain. “But none of the Fluffy Actors could work with them, thought they were ‘monsters’. After one too many tantrums we gave up.”
Deimos cleared his throat and continued. “Yes, well the point is we’ve tried to reinvent the wheel and it’s failed more times that it hasn’t. Well we at R&D believe that we were overcomplicating things, when in face we should’ve been simplifying them.”
“How the hell do you simplify a Fluffy?” Jennifer chuckled mockingly. “All they do is eat, sleep, shit and fuck. You can’t get more basic than that.”
“You would think so.” Deimos answered with a coy grin. “But we think we managed it. Lady and Gentlemen of The Board, I give you… The Slothie.”
Deimos ripped the fabric cover of the cage and revealed the new creation of the R&D Labs, inside was what looked at first like a Fluffy, but on closer inspection it’s limbs were long, gangly things akin to a sloth. It’s back legs were arched inwards but looked like they could be extended for hanging on trees, while its front legs were lanky things that extended the creature’s length by twice, maybe even three times as long. As well as that, it’s hoofs had been redesigned to be one long hook rather than a short little stub at the end of a stumpty leg.
The effect was… offputting the say the least.
“Jesus Jackson, what the hell is that thing?” Sinclair recoiled at the uncanny sight of the creature.
“It’s a Slothie Sir, a Fluffy version of a Sloth, we call this one Sid. Say hello there Sid.”
“Heeeeeeyyyyyyyy. Whaaaaa am up doooooodssssss?” Sid spoke in long, drawn-out sentences, each syllable taking an age to leave his mouth. Patrick looked closer and saw Sid’s eye were half-closed and his mouth was chewing on the empty air.”
“God he looks stoned. Is he supposed to look stoned?”
Richard stubbed out his cigarette and leaned in closer. “Deimos, we’ve given you chance after chance to prove yourself. We understand that what Eris did wasn’t your fault and that her death has weighed heavily on you, but we need better results than what this is. So you sell this to us and you sell it good or your future with the company is in jeopardy.”
Deimos gulped before calming himself down quickly. “Yes, yes of course sir. Well we, uh…we designed the Slothie to, come here a moment Sid….”
Deimos reached into the cage and lifted Sid off of the ground, the Slothie reached his arms around Demos’ neck and held on, gripping his hind legs onto Deimos’ waist for extra grip.
“…We designed the Slothie to be a much more passive creature than your regular Fluffy, something that didn’t require as much attention but could still fill the role of a Fluffy pet. Their lowered threshold for activity means they can be engaged for countless hours in front of the TV or with simple blocks. We’ve not detected any Smarty Symptoms yet but we understand that we might have just not found the right triggers yet, we have seen this however though. Sid, would you like something eat?”
“Ssssssummmmm skettiiiiii be niicccccceeeeee.”
“Oh I’m sorry Sid, we don’t have any spaghetti at the moment.”
“Beeeeeeee a wot cooooowaaaaaahhhh if yu did.”
“Tell you what, I’ll give you some treats now, and I’ll cook you up some spaghetti when we get home.”
“Thaaaaaaankkksssssss dooooooood.”
Deimos reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of gummy treats, he handed them to Sid who took them with one hand while keeping the other around Deimos’ shoulder. Deimos kept talking while Sid lazily ate the gummies.
“We’ve managed to distract the Slothies from throwing tantrums so far, so we believe Smarty Syndrome can be kept at bay.”
“Why does he keep calling you ‘Dude’?” Jennifer asked, still eying Sid with disgust.
“Rather than ‘mummy’ or ‘daddy’ a Slothie will refer to its owner as ‘Dude’, regardless of gender.”
Sinclair snorted. “And just why would you do that?”
“To appeal to our core target market. Stoners.”
All four board members fell silent, all but Richard who had a small grin growing larger and larger on his face as he saw what Deimos was going for.
“Go on.”
“Stoners are an untapped market for Fluffies, they won’t buy regular Fluffies because they’re constant demands ‘Harsh the vibes’, but a Slothie will be, to quote my daughters, Chill A.F. They’re low maintenance, highly sociable and we’ve modified their DNA so that they can inhale marijuana smoke without having any effect, although we’ve set it so that they giggle after smoking and get the munchies to help their owners remember to feed them. So far their diet consists of pretzels and crisps which hasn’t left good impressions on their life expectancy but we’re working on giving them craving for fruit and vegetables. This is more proof of concept than anything else right now, but we have hopes this can be the next big thing for Hasbio.”
The room was silent for a moment before Richard finally spoke up. “Thank you for your presentation Deimos, I believe that will be sufficient enough to keep your job for now. We’ll discuss this further between ourselves, you may go now.”
“Of course, thank you sir, gentleman, ma’am.”
“Diiiddddd Siiiidddd doooo guuuuuuddd?”
“Sid did very good, nice work buddy.”
“Wiiiiiighteeeeeeeouuuuuusssss Doooooood.”
Deimos placed Sid back into his cage and left the room, the board waited until he had gone and the door was closed before turning to one another. Richard lit up a cigarette as he looked at his fellow board members.
“Well… what do you think?”
Sinclair snorted again. “God fugly little thing, wasn’t he? Don’t know if we can sell that?”
“Oh I don’t know Frankie, we have you and you did alright for yourself.”
“Why you insurbordinate little…”
“Sinclair sit down.” Jennifer snapped with the tired tone of someone who had spoken those exact words a thousand times before. “And Richard, stop antagonising him.”
Richard just smirked and took a drag of his cigarette. “You are right Frankie, it did look strange, but we can work on the design, that’s the reason R&D exists, the make the best ideas we have better before we sell them. What about marketing, you think you could work that Patrick?”
Patrick thought for a moment. “It’s possible, I don’t know if Fluff-TV could do any advertisements, you think they found rabbits weird, how do you think Fluffies would react to those thing? But we can drop words around campuses, hand out a few samplers to our doners kids to show off, get the others students interested. I hate to admit it but Jackson’s right, this would be a big hit with Stoners.”
“I’d change the use of ‘Dude’.” Jennifer piped in. “Low maintenance Fluffies might be a good sell for the elderly, and if Deimos can work out the fruit intake, we could have a health-pal on our hands to keep people from eating too much junk-food.”
Sinclair turned to Richard. “You really think he can do all that? He hasn’t pulled out a good sub-species in years?”
Richard nodded. “Deimos can do it, you forget he was next in line for the board after Mulberry dropped out. If his wife hadn’t pulled that shit he’d have your job right now. Alright people, you know the drill, send out a few feelers, get a gauge on whether there’s a market for Slothies or not. We’ll reconvene here next month to discuss what we’ve found.”
All four members nodded and set off towards their tasks, Patrick, Jennifer and Sinclair all got up and left the room until Richard was alone, sitting at his table, with a cigarette burning in his hand and his eyes skimming the notes he’s written for Deimos’ presentation.
“God I hope you got a winner here Jackson, you need one.”
Stubbing the last of his cigarette out on the ashtray, Richard gathered his notes and left the room, his face still smiling at the memory of Sid like a private joke only he and a select few knew about.
Which in a way, it was.
I’m not making Slothies a proper subspecies idea, I just wanted to come up with the most useless animal hybrid I could and see how I could sell it as a genuine product.
Typical BFM taking an ongoing issue and reworking it to fit his world like the narsasistic cockwomble he is.
