(This turned out much longer than I planned, but I wanted to at least get to the part where the fluffies actually came into the story.)
On a large plot of land, a few miles outside of the suburbs of a medium-sized city, sat Eren’s home. It had been nearly finished when the incident happened and the charred remains of the foundation were still visible from the front of the house. They had been living in the old house that was on the property while the new one was being finished with the hopes of using it as a guest house once they settled in. About that time Eren got sick; not wanting to spread it to his family he decided to quarantine himself in one of the finished bedrooms while he got better.
It was just a couple days into it when he was awoken in the dead of night to a window rattling explosion, debris bouncing off the exterior walls. The lights of the fire danced on the walls of the room through the windows as he suddenly realized what was happening.
Barefoot and half-naked, Eren ran to the roaring flames of the inferno he once called a home. He would have run into the blaze in hopes of rescuing his family if it wasn’t for fact he ended up tripping on the smouldering remains of his son. Several feet away, closer to the house was his wife, finding a similar fate. Shock, grief, and…helplessness overtook him and he blacked out.
It wasn’t until just after dawn that he was awoken by a firefighter, they were surprised to find Eren alive considering the surroundings. After recovering in the hospital for a couple days, he was told it was the result of a gas leak. That did little to give him peace of mind.
Shaking the thoughts out of his head, Eren sat down, attempting to enjoy his breakfast as he slowly scrolled through his phone to look up what he might need for a fluffy. He was a bit appalled to see so many websites dedicated to fluffy abuse and tools available, he knew that it was a thing, of course, but always thought it was a community on the fringe. Who would want to hurt something so cute and innocent?
Parsing through page after page, Eren finally feels comfortable enough with the basic supplies needed for a playroom. He quickly made a list of the various items that he needed before trying to decide on which room to convert to the saferoom.
For convenience, he chose the small bedroom next to his own, it even had a door connecting the two rooms. Originally, it was going to be the nursery for his daughter until she got older, so it was already painted and decorated in a bright, whimsical manner. He thought the idea would make him sad but, surprisingly, he stopped to smile. He liked to think that if his daughter had asked for a fluffy, he would have done this. With that, Eren hopped into his minivan and began the trek to the local FluffyMart in town.
As he entered, Eren was greeted by a couple voices from different parts of the store with a “Welcome to FluffyMart! Where we strive to meet all your fluffy needs.”, before the employees turned back to their tasks at hand.
He was assaulted by the rank smells and cries of “Be nyu daddeh?”, “Wan’ housie! Wan’ sketti!”, and “Bestest babbeh dancie for nice mistah!” as he approached several holding areas.
There were several fancy looking fluffies that held outrageous price tags, including two alicorns, one a deep red with almost purplish wings and horn and a ebon-black mane with a “SOLD” tag on the cage and the other a bright yellow with a long, soft-looking white mane, wings and horn. Eren lived comfortably on his savings from his time programming in the tech industry, so money itself wasn’t an issue, but he couldn’t see himself shelling out that kind of money.
He eventually found himself in the bargain area, finding only demanding, ill-tempered smarties, a couple pillows, and anl earthy-brown foal that looked beyond hope. None of the fluffies in the store really seemed to vibe well with him.
“Anything I can help you find?” asked a young woman, approaching him.
Shaking his head, Eren replies “No, none of these seem to be what I’m looking for.”.
Tilting her head, the employee asks “Oh, what exactly type are you looking for? I can try calling the other stores in the city to check their stock.”.
“Thank you, but no. Honestly, I don’t know what exactly I want yet.” Eren says, trying to offer a friendly, yet awkward smile. “But I do know I’ll need some supplies for a saferoom. Will be my first fluffy.”.
“Well, my name is Grace. Let me show you what we have.”.After about 30 minutes of being guided down the aisles, placing items into the cart as recommendations are given to him, Eren finds himself at the register to pay for his outing.
As he places his bags in the cart, Grace hands Eren his receipt and a scrap of paper with a phone number on it. He quickly responds “Sorry, I’m flattered but…”
Letting out a light chuckle, Grace interrupts “While you seem nice enough, that is so I can give you some info for some of the breeders around here that I know. Maybe one of them can help you.” as she offers a warm smile and a shrug.
Embarrassed, Eren quickly moves to get out of the store as he says “Oh right, thanks for that. I’ll text you if I can’t find anything soon.”.
Heart racing, Eren quickly loads up his supplies and leaves, pulling into a parking lot just a few blocks down the road. Trying to calm himself down to avoid another panic attack he thinks to himself “I’m such an idiot. Why am I even doing this? Are these things really going to be able to help me?”
After a few minutes of calming down and listening to a couple songs from his phone, Eren feels ready to get back home. As he is getting ready to pull out of the parking lot he notices that just across the street is a fluffy inclusive shelter.
Eren lets out a heavy breath, thinking “…What do I have to lose?”
Upon entering, Eren is greeted by a tired, yet cheerful, older woman. “Greetings, how can we help you today?”
The warm nature of the woman helped put Eren at ease, returning a friendly smile of his own. “Oh, well I was hoping to see what fluffies you might have available for adoption.”
Suddenly looking deflated, the woman leads him over to a doorway nearby. “Well, mostly we still just cater to dogs and cats. We are relatively new to taking in fluffies, just a few weeks now. Unfortunately, we only have a few foals left that were brought in the past couple days. The rest of the ones we have are microchipped and are waiting to hear back from their owners or are confirmed smarties. We had more but they were recently adopted, or ran out of time and sent to the incinerator last night.”
Eren stayed quiet for a moment, waiting for the rest of the joke that never came. “Incinerator? You’re joking, right?” He pauses again, a sickly feeling washing over him as images of flames dance in his head.
He is snapped out of his building panic as the woman continues, shaking her head “Sadly, no. They tend to be rather abundant and prolific so they don’t get long windows of time here. Current industry standards use the incinerator as the most cost efficient way of dealing with them. I wish the owners of the shelter would change their minds on this, it breaks my heart every time. Still better than getting adopted by some or our…regulars. I would ban them outright, but the owners won’t let me. Can’t prove they are abusers and even if I could they technically aren’t doing anything illegal since fluffy are just biotoys, classified as soap.”
Sadness, shock, disgust, and anger held on Eren’s face as the old woman directed him over to the holding area, trying to offer comforting words. “Seems you are new to all this. I’m Julie, let me show you the little ones we have here.”
Leading Eren over to the open-top enclosure, Julie sees the three young colts running to its walls to get close to the approaching humans. The first to speak up was a plump, candy-red unicorn with splashes of dark cherry running throughout his coat and a diminutive horn to match, cascading down its neck and sprouting from his rear was a fiery red-orange mane and tail. “Hewwo nice mistah! Bestest fluffies need nyu housie and wuv and nummies!”
Just behind him, running in a serpentine trot, was a stunning royal blue pegasus with steel grey spots. His mane and tail were two-toned, patches of sky blue and white, but unfortunately, there were signs of abuse. His wings were wrapped, but Eren could still see some steel grey feathers poking out, charred at the end and several burns, probably from cigarettes, in several spots including its sewn shut right eye. “Whoosh! Fwuffy am so fast!” This brought a smile to Eren’s face, glad to see the poor thing still had an upbeat nature.
Trailing behind was a chonky, graphite grey earthie with patches of thin fluff and a shotly-cut, smoky-colored mane. “Wait, tu fast! Nu wun gud!” It wasn’t until the thing turned to look back at a noise behind it did Eren realize that its backside was marred with several scars and that it was completely missing a tail.
Eren leaned down so his face was closer to them. “Well, you look like an excitable bunch. Are we a good group of fluffies?”
In an attempt at speaking simultaneously, the three colts bounced around saying “Yesh!”, “Fwuffies am bestest!”, “Su gud at wunnies and pway!” “Bestest smarties!”, and “Su stwong!”
He felt a bit more with this group than the ones at the petstore, maybe they knew their time was limited or maybe they had survived a rough life so far.
Out of curiosity, Eren decided to ask them bluntly. “If I was going to only be able to take one of you, who should it be?”
While each one was initially about to speak up, the grey and blue colts quickly settled down from a quick glance from the red one as it spoke up. “Am bestest babbeh and nao bestest fwuffy. If nu bwing hewd then nice mistah onwy need da bestest.”
Eren paused a moment to take it in, clearly unsure what he just witnessed. He turned to Julie to ask her about it when he realized that she was over by a cage, checking on what looked to be a couple flufflies.
As he approached, he could hear the others shouting “Nice mistah be nyu daddeh?” “Why gu wook at dummeh fluffies?”
Kneeling down, Eren could see a large, yet still young looking fluffy, somewhere between a weanling and a colt or filly, letting out an occasional soft cry as it slept. From what he could tell it was a powder-blue earthie with a dark, mahogany mane and tail. Next to it was young, forest green fluffy with a jet black mane and tail with some ivory dapples along its back. its front legs wrapped around in somewhat of a hug as it softly spoke “Nu mowe bad sweepies, hugs and wuv make gud fwuffy hurties gu away.” Its looks up to Julie and Eren, “Nice wady nice mistah, am bwave fwuffy be otay?”
Julie responded with a heartwarming smile. “Of course, sweetie. He should be better soon, just keep giving him hugs and I’m sure he will be up soon.”
The green fluffy gives a quick “Fank yu.” before turning its attention back to the light blue, sleeping fluffy. It was only then did Eren notice the fluffy was missing both of its back legs.
Julie turns to Eren and says “Sorry about that, I just wanted to check on these two while you were talking to the others.”
Eren glances to all five of the fluffies, briefly, before turning back to Julie. “So what is the story with them all?”
“Well, the red unicorn and the blue pegasus were brought in off the streets. Apparently, their mama was a runaway that died trying to protect them and their siblings from a couple abuser. A couple scared them off and brought the two living ones, the pegasus seeming to have received the worse out of the two. The grey one was a surrender, an old woman had passed away and her son decided to give it up after a week.”
Julie looks over to the cage again, “These two are a little unclear. From what I have been able to manage is that the green one had been thrown out of a window into a pile of trash after having her back legs broken.” In a quiet tone she continues. “She is actually an alicorn, but her previous owner ground down her horn and cut her wings off.”
Eren giving a quick nod “And the blue one?”
“He actually helped save the green one. Had her hop onto his back and went out of the alley to ask for help…Surprising really.”
“But then why is he crying in his sleep here, did something happen?”
Julie stayed silent for a moment before deciding to continue “Well, he was fine when he was brought in. He actually had a couple siblings with them too. But when we brought the green filly back to have her legs removed we had put them in with the rest. There was another fluffy in there that had a mean streak and it did quite a bit of damage while we were distracted.”
Giving an uncomfortable glance around, “It ended up attacking the blue one and his siblings for not listening to it. He tried to protect them and ended up having his testicles crushed. The blue foal passed out originally but woke up to the cries of his siblings, apparently he lunged up and crushed the windpipe of the attacker. That is what got our attention but before we could make it back into the room the two siblings and their attacker were dead and he was out again, crying loudly. This is what I was about to piece together from what the other colts told me.”
Eren’s heart went out to the little guy. Staring, he asked, “So I’m guessing he won’t be having any kids then.”
Julie, giving a faint nod, says, “One was completely detached so we had to remove it, the other was ruptured but we were able to repair it. There was too much damage for him to ever be a father, but it will at least give him the hormones he needs to grow up healthy. That and his scrotum was beyond repair so the remaining one had to be sealed up when we closed the wound so he wouldn’t even be able to regulate the temperature properly to produce anything viable even if it was undamaged.”
Just then, the bell to the front door went off and Julie moved to greet them as Eren stepped back to the three foals. As she got to the doorway she suddenly pauses before sputtering out, “One moment Mitchell, I’ll be right with you.”
She quickly steps back to Eren. “That is one of our…regulars that I mentioned earlier. I recommend that if you want any of these I would choose quickly. He is likely to take some, if not all that are left. I’ll be back in a moment.”
As she reaches the doorway again Eren calls out to her “Ms. Julie, I’ll take them.”
Blinking in surprise, Julie responds, “Oh? The three in the enclosure or the two in the pen?”
Shaking his head, “No, all of them.”
The three foals in the enclosure loudly shout, “Nyu housie!? Nyu daddeh!?” as he gleefully run about while Julie stands there stunned.
Eren lets his thoughts wander a moment before thinking to himself, “…What do I have to lose?”.
