Pierre walks through Facility X-88, an employee by his side filling him in on recent events in the facility.
Facility X-88 is one of the breeding facilities where… unusual fluffies are bred, for a number of reasons. Most of these variant fluffy breeds are not available to the general public, again, for a number of reasons.
While Pierre played no part whatsoever in the creation of the first generation of fluffykind, he has since contributed several subspecies to the fluffy kingdom.
But this is a routine check-up, and nothing out of the ordinary is going to happen, like Twinkle’s little temper tantrum over in Facility B-34.
By the way, not long after the incident at Facility B-34, Ronald moved into a bigger apartment. He’s a good employee, and he had earned a generous pay rise. Pierre still smiles when he remembers the look on Ronald’s face when he gave young Ronald the good news. Pierre’s encouragement has done a miracle for Ronald’s self-esteem issues.
Twinkle has moved in with Ronald, and thanks to some… help from Deston, who doesn’t enjoy having to do that kind of thing to a fluffy’s mind, Twinkle is now a perfectly happy, well-behaved fluffy who doesn’t remember Star or their former litter at all. She has also been spayed, because neither Pierre nor Deston is stupid.
So, let’s move on. Instead of covering Pierre’s uneventful inspection of Facility X-88, we’re going to talk about some of the variant fluffies he has bestowed unto the world, many of which are being bred right in this very building.
We are doing this, because I feel my stories haven’t focused enough on fluffies recently. This is how I am making it up to you. Let’s get started, shall we?
SUPERFLUFFY FLUFFIES
There’s a smidgen of alpaca DNA in the fluffy genome. It’s why they’re so… well, fluffy. Pierre discovered that, by adding a bit more alpaca to the mix, he could vat-grow fluffies with softer, warmer, fluffier fluff. Almost too fluffy.
After some further tinkering with the Superfluffy Fluffy variant’s genome, he succeeded in giving the Superfluffy Fluffies thicker skin, which boosted their resistance to low temperatures and their resilience to environmental hazards, and Pierre then tweaked with their brain development, altering their personalities to make them less adverse to having their fluff removed. They still don’t exactly enjoy it, but Pierre makes sure that they are left with just enough fluff that they don’t start complaining. He ensures that his creations are treated well. The only downside is, Superfluffy Fluffies can only be bred with other Superfluffy Fluffies, otherwise the foals will be perfectly ordinary foals with perfectly ordinary, and thus useless fluff.
The fluff harvested from these Superfluffy Fluffies is used in the manufacture of many of Flufftopia’s products. They’re the only part of any fluffy’s body that you’ll ever find in any Flufftopia product.
The fluff goes on things like Bestest Bed Friends, Special Huggie Friends, and the new Bestest Babbeh Friends. For mares who want babbehs, and would love them, but, their owners know, wouldn’t be able to take care of them. Not necessarily because they’d become bitch mares. Mares who have been spayed, or lack milkie places due to injuries or birth defects, definitely appreciate their Bestest Babbeh Friends.
Twinkle has six now, all looking like miniature versions of her. They come in a variety of color combinations, and custom ones can be made, just like the Special Huggie Friends, and if they’re rejected, you can fix it with a spray bottle of Bestest Babbehs Smell-Pretty. It’s a synthetic “good babbeh” pheromone, before you ask.
Before we move on, you must understand one thing:
There are mares who think that their babbehs are, essentially, just their toys.
Not all mares are like this. Many of them, we’ve seen, are genuinely capable of loving their offspring. As are many stallions, as Blueberry can attest. As can Piccolo, and now, also Marley.
But Twinkle is one of those mares who isn’t. One of those mares who views her foals as, basically, just extensions of herself.
And some bad habits die hard.
THE SUPERGENIUS FLUFFY (G-00)
One of Pierre’s failures, I’m afraid. He attempted to vat-grow a fluffy with supergenius level intellect, by splicing his own DNA into the mix.
Unfortunately, a fluffy with supergenius intellect is capable of comprehending the existential horror of its own existence, and the poor thing promptly went completely insane.
Pierre ended up putting it down, not just for its own good, but because the screaming was getting on his nerves.
So, that didn’t end so well. Moving on!
FLAG FLUFFIES
Yes, these are some of Pierre’s creations too. While other parties had already bred some of the simpler flag patterns, Pierre went above and beyond, with his Union Jack fluffies and Stars and Stripes fluffies. His facilities breed higher quality Flag Fluffies than, say, the French Flag ones that Pierre found, that were being sold outside the Louvre. Fluffy-sized berets costing extra, naturally.
A year before he started the Flag Fluffy project, he saw the pen full of French Flag Fluffies, offended and enraged at the poor quality of the novelty souvenir fluffies being sold by the competition, and the conditions the poor little things were being kept in.
I mean, really, most of those sad little fluffies had dropped dead before their new owners were even on the plane back home! It was an outright scam!
When Pierre sees a problem needing fixing, and/or fluffies being mistreated, he simply cannot ignore it.
FauCorp’s Flag Fluffies are now being sold in forty-seven countries and counting, and their Flag Fluffies are just as healthy and happy as any other fluffy they sell. Very.
They actually make it onto the plane back home.
And, you’ll think this is very impressive, they can actually speak the languages of the countries they represent.
Well, a few words.
One or two. Ten, at most.
As Pierre has discovered, fluffies have severe difficulty understanding any language other than English and Fluffspeak.
Speaking of which…
NIKOLA (G-01) AND AUDREY (G-02)
Yes, even the million dollar twins were created by Pierre. Vat-grown, engineered to start off with alicorn-level intelligence and gradually get smarter from there. and they are now among the smartest fluffies alive. Though, y’know, compared to most humans, still not very bright.
They’ve only just memorised the entire alphabet, they can spell any word with up to four letters, and can count up to a hundred and add and subtract. They’re still getting the hang of multiplication and division. Don’t even ask about Pierre’s attempts to teach them French. They can read, too, but a third-grader would finish the book by the time Nikola and Audrey have reached the end of the first page.
Pierre accomplished all of this by adding a bit less of his own DNA to their genomes. Not so much that they’d go the way of the Supergenius Fluffy.
Pierre considers Nikola and Audrey to be his children, and whether he has sired any actual children is unknown.
Victor, on the other hand, has sired, and outlived, a fair amount of children. He’s a cad. Dave would applaud him if he knew.
Neither Victor nor Calvin is aware of this, but Victor is actually Calvin’s ancestor. From how far back, you ask? Victor’s not telling. His third biggest secret is exactly how old he is.
PHENOMENON X-POSITIVE FLUFFIES
Pierre isn’t responsible for the initial creation of fluffies, or Phenomenon X, but he’s taken some of these fluffies under his wing, so we’re including them here.
Phenomenon X is a relatively recently discovered phenomenon, tied to the human genome, which grants those who have it genuine superpowers.
Because the fluffy genome is comprised of DNA from a wide variety of species, including human DNA, but surprisingly little actual horse DNA, fluffies are also capable of developing superpowers.
Pierre has begun taking in humans and fluffies who test positive for Phenomenon X, or monitoring them from a distance, and teaching them how to use their powers. So that, at the very least, they can live their lives without their powers going out of control and possibly killing everyone they love.
Some of the fluffy cases of Phenomenon X include Diablo, who like his owner Drake, and like Calvin, has pyrokinesis, Surge, who has electrokinesis, Bolt, fastest fluffy alive, Gemini, who can split into two fluffies, Scarface, who, like his owner, is immortal, Cannonball, who can turn his entire body into steel, and Mayday, Piccolo and Snowball’s red and blue alicorn filly, who can walk on walls. And ceilings. Mayday is now being taken care of by Reilly, who has the same power. Among others.
Lavender, Chris Oldman’s former fluffy, now living with Chris’ brother and sister-in-law on their farm with her new best friends Daisy and Rose, was recently proved to be X-Positive as well, besides also having the notorious Syndrome-P53.
Her power is telepathy. She can sense her owner’s presence, and detect psychic intrusions into her mind. Deston was very surprised to discover this. While he was undergoing a psychic intrusion into her mind.
The Faucheuse brothers decided to leave the Oldmans alone, only checking in occasionally.
Deston, by the way, is not a cyborg, and probably not X-Positive either. His power comes from… somewhere else.
And then there’s Calvin. Oh boy, there’s Calvin.
Calvin is an Omega Class case of Phenomenon X. He is, thus far, the only known Omega Class case. He has the potential to become the single most powerful mortal in the entire universe. Calvin does not know this yet. But there’s a version of him in another universe who figured it out. There’s nothing in that universe but the ever-hungry flames, now.
Tommy Fonda was also recently proved to be X-Positive as well. His power is that he can always see what’s really there. This usually requires years of intense, specialized training, the kind that Deston has undergone.
And yes, Pierre is workshopping a better name for Phenomenon X. He doesn’t want a lawsuit from Marvel when they finally go public.
Pierre concludes his tour of the facility. As expected, all is operating as usual. A new litter of Superfluffy foals has been born in Room 17. The Flag Fluffy division has started work on Turkmenistani flag fluffies. Aaaaah. Now those will be tricky. But if they can pull that off, doing any other flag will be trivial. Pierre sincerely wishes the team the best of luck.
With his work here done, Pierre exits Facility X-88, walks to a secluded part of the premises, takes out his blipper, and vanishes.
He needs to see how Calvin’s training is going.
Everything depends on Calvin.
Pierre doesn’t even know how to tell him that it’ll be up to Calvin to save the world.