(Continued from Part 1)
The unnamed fluffy struggled to wrap his tiny little mind around this situation. Instinct told him this wasn’t how things were supposed to go. New Daddies were supposed to give fluffies love, hugs, homes, and food, and they were supposed give them gratis.
“Nyu daddeh… wan’ fwuff?”
“That’s right. You will only get food if you give me your fluff.”
No, thought the unnamed feral. No, this can’t be right. Fluff was one of the most important things in the world, right up there with nummies and huggies and making good poopies. A fluffy without fluff is just… well, the feral wasn’t sure. But losing fluff was definitely a bad thing. So why would new Daddy want to take it away?
“Wai nyu daddeh wan’ fwuffy fwuff? Fwuffy nee’!” Surely New Daddy would reconsider in light of such a reasoned and well formulated argument.
“You need food, too, right? It’s one or the other. No such thing as a free lunch.”
The Man’s response sent another cold pang of hunger surging throughout the biotoy’s body. The happy feelings that rose within the poor creature when New Daddy agreed to adopt him were dim and distant now. A chill gust of wind ruffled his fluff - how he loved his pretty orange fluff! - and exposed just how tightly the starving creature’s skin was pulled against his ribs. The fluffy realized just how cold his legs felt. Fatigue crept up from his limbs, and he struggled for a minute just to stay standing.
“Mebbe… mebbe fwuffy get nummies, den gib fwuff? Tummeh am suu empties,” the unnamed fluffy bargained.
“No, I’m sorry. Those are the rules. You have to give me your fluff, then you can eat,” came The Man’s steadfast reply.
This was all wrong. Fresh tears stung the fluffy’s eyes. His sphincter puckered - had the fluffy eaten in the past few days, he would be releasing scaredy-poopies. But you can’t get blood from a stone, so the parking lot remained mercifully unsullied by biotoy waste.
“P-pwease? Fwuffy nee’ fwuff! Fwuffy am suu cowd…” the fluffy punctuated his plea for mercy with a shiver that rattled his entire body. The Man did not respond. Trembling, the fluffy turned his snout towards the ground as he turned the proposal over in his shrunken brain.
“Nu wan’ wose fwuff… Bu’ tummeh am suu owwies… Fwuffy nee’ nummies… nu wan’ gu’ sweepies…”
In a display of self-preservation remarkable for a fluffy pony, fear of imminent death won out over fear of possible discomfort.
“O-otay,” The fluffy looked up, sunken cheeks cracking into a forced smile. Getting a new Daddy is a happy occasion, something told him, even in circumstances like these.
“Nyu daddeh can hab fwuff. D-den gib nummies?”
A perverse grin formed on The Man’s face.
“Pleasure doing business with you. Now give me a hug.”
Tears began to well up anew in the fluffy’s eyes, only this time, out of joy. He had never, not once in his life, not ever been hugged by a human. The concept awakened a sleeping instinct within him and the idea of a hug consumed his entire being. Even his gnawing hunger and the cold ache of his dirty limbs seemed distant in the face of actual human contact.
The fluffy sat back on his haunches, jittering slightly as his hindquarters impacted the cold, hard ground. He raised his forelegs, knowing as a matter of instinct that this was the right way to hug. Without a healthy paunch to hide it, the fluffy’s sheathed cock - flaccid and underdeveloped with cold and malnourishment - was clearly visible between his splayed legs.
Rather than actually hugging the pathetic little beast, the man squatted down and wrapped his right arm all the way around the fluffy’s upper torso. Leathery little hoofpads, cracked and dry from the cold, batted with genuine affection at The Man’s torso. The Man balanced the fluffy’s neck in the crook of his elbow as he brought the starving, shivering biotoy closer to his body.
With the fluffy’s windpipe snugly between his bicep and forearm, the man began to squeeze. Tightly. The fluffy suddenly found it difficult to breathe.
“Daddeh am huggies tuu tight! Tuu stwong! Huwties fwuffy! Huwties-!”
“By the way,” whispered the man, “Your name is Bartholomew.”
“Buh-buhfowwuh -” the fluffy choked as it tried to stutter out its own name.
A four syllable name is stretching the limits of what any fluffy would be capable of pronouncing, let alone an untrained feral. Still, “Bartholomew” was one of the genetically encoded names a fluffy was capable of recognizing, and so the programmed response was an inevitability.
“Bafowomyu w-huark-wub nyu n-namesie-ack!” was the reply, broken up by Bartholomew’s strangled coughing.
Bartholomew’s vision darkenened as the man maintainened his chokehold. It takes the orange and blue fluffy almost two whole minutes to lose conscious. A limp dribble of reeking urine spatters from the the creature’s nethers as Bartholomew loses all muscle control. No feces - after all, the fluffy hadn’t eaten in days.
When Bartholomew awoke, he felt a strange chill below him, and he was still just as hungry as he remembered. Figures - it was just a dream. No way he could actually get a new daddy, even if he had to give up some fluff to do it. He blinked sleep away from his eyes.
This was not the vroomie-munstah-place. This wasn’t outsidies at all. Bartholomew looked around. He was definitely inside, but the floor was still cold and hard. But the walls were pretty! They were all colors, and they were about as high as he could see. Beyond them stretched only darkness, so Bartholomew focused on the eye-level decorations, meager as they were. This must be a saferoom! Bartholomew knew that fluffies should have a nice, fun saferoom to live in. This wasn’t quite what he imagined - dark and chilly with a cold gray floor - but still! Bartholomew was inside! And that means he has a daddy!
Bartholomew started to rise to his feet when he felt a strange chill on one of his leggies. A twinge of fear rushed through his body as he remembered the deal he made with daddy. He glanced down at his leggie and the fear grew into terror.
His beloved orange fluff was gone. There was nary a patch of fluff on his entire body, let alone his leg. The exposed skin was a ruddy pink.
Ugly, thought Bartholomew. Genetic coding told him that a lack of fluff was inherently undesirable, even if he was unlikely to freeze in this ‘saferoom’.
He bemoaned his cicrcumstance out loud: “Bafowomyu nu wan be ugwy nu-fwuffy…”
As Bartholomew moved his legs around himself in a crude one-pony hug, he felt itching across his entire fluffless body. The itching starting to turn into stinging. His eyes widened in horror as he examined his belly. There were at least a dozen tiny shaving nicks, each a splinter of red in his pinkish flesh. They were mostly around the bony protrusions of his ribs, ribs poking out from under his skin due to malnourishment.
“Owchies! Fwuffy hab’ huwties! Where daddeh gu’? Hewp Bafowomyu!”
Then, suddenly, he saw it. Right in front of him, a just a couple feet away, was a bright green bowl full of kibble and a bright blue bowl full of clean, clear water.
The realization came to Bartholomew between mouthfuls of the dry kibble. When Daddy said he wanted fluff for food, he meant it. Bartholomew paused, swallowing the first meal he’d had in nearly four days. The fluffy looked down at his bare limbs as what passed for logical reasoning in his bio-engineered brain began to feel a twinge of fear.
Bafowomyu nu hab’ fwuff nu mowe. Wha’ gib to Daddeh fo’ nummies nao?