Fluffy Run Away
Almost. ALMOST.
He knew it was a doomed endeavor from the start, but his pride wouldn’t let him give up. He had to get as far as he could, at least. Which, as the game over screen came up, turned out to not be very far at all.
Sonic bapped the ‘A’ button on his controller as hard as he could - it had four large buttons, each labeled with a letter and a bright color to set it apart, and was sturdy enough to withstand any blow he could give it. Again the stage restarted, the fluffy’s cheeks puffed up in defiance as he begun to play.
This time he was doing well. A, D, Blue, Blue, Red, Green. B, D. His eyes were fixated on the screen and this time, this time it looked like he was going to make it. He WOULD make it, he had gotten this far! If he’d beaten all the other levels, then surely …
And then he lost. He stared at the game over screen with a hoof still vaguely hovering over the ‘C’ button, the message “Aw, too bad! Try again!” emblazoned across the black screen.
Slowly he pulled his hoof back. He was tearing up; the most unthinkably cruel thing was happening. The game was cheating. The game was CHEATING and he couldn’t even tattle on it because daddy had told him he had to beat all these games all on his own!
…
Still…
“DADDEEEEH!”
Martin flinched, slamming his hands onto the keyboard and pressing a few hotkeys he hadn’t meant to, making his character fire a flurry of magic at a particularly unlucky NPC. Someone in his voice chat laughed and urged him to go check on his ‘hedgehog’ since they were going to take a break anyway, so he pulled off his headphones and looked down at the blue fluffy standing by the foot of his swivel chair. Sonic’s eyes were tear-filled but he looked more angry than he did distraught, so presumably the issue was going to be game-related.
“Fwuffy Wun Away cheats! Is too hawd!”
Yep, nailed it. “I’ve told you, games can’t cheat. How will you move onto real games if you can’t even beat baby fluffy games?”
“Nu! Daddeh, it CHEATS!” Sonic protested and stomped his hooves. “Fwuffy Wun Away is im-poss-bweh!”
Martin rolled his eyes. An avid gamer, he had bought Sonic solely because of his blue fur and spiky mane, and had decided to teach him in the ways of all video games. Of course, before he could move onto any kind of real game, Sonic had to master the jokes that passed for “fluffy games”, a task he was evidently failing at.
“Impossible, huh?” he asked as he set his character to idle and stood up, stretching. “I’ll show you just how impossible it is then.” Perking up at once, Sonic turned and waddled over to his TV. In lieu of a safe room, Martin had turned one of the corners of his gaming room into Sonic’s spot. It was filled with stuff from the local thrift store; a few pillows, an old box-like television, a food bowl (for cats), a litterbox(for emergency angry poopies), a fluffy-sized Pikachu plush…
The only item that wasn’t a thrift store find was the four-in-one plug-and-play fluffy gamepad. There were a few used fluffy toys lost under the couch somewhere, but none held a candle to this marvel of gaming. In the weeks that he’d lived here Sonic had cleared three of the games, but “Fluffy Run Away” had him stumped.
Martin sat down and picked up the gamepad, while Sonic waddled over and sat among his pillows to watch. The level selection screen, resting on level 7 out of 10, showed a far-too-saccharine scene plastered with flowers and hearts as a fluffy played in its safe room by an open glass door. Pushing A selected the stage, and the little fluffball ran outside as the sky darkened.
It was a simple obstacle-dodging game, a quick-time-event game in disguise. As the fluffy ran down a dark and rainy forest path, a large bear roaring and chasing after it, Martin just kept hitting the colorful buttons indicated on the screen. Sonic was watching with bated breath, and he couldn’t help but chuckle as he noticed.
Then one of the commands vanished just a tad too fast, the little fluffy tumbling over a fallen branch, and a slightly too realistic cry playing as the bear pounced onto it and the screen went black. Then, cheerfully as if nothing had happened, the words “Aww, too bad! Try again!” popped up in a cutesy font and he was booted back to the level selection.
“See!” Sonic complained. “Is nu faiw!”
“That was a test run,” Martin grumbled. “Of course I mess up if I’m thrown into the thick of it, I’ll play through it from the start.” He switched over to the first stage, and this time the fluffy was on a perfectly normal grassy plain, cheerfully bouncing along. There was only one button that needed pressing and he was given an insultingly long timeframe to press it, so out of curiousity he didn’t push anything and let the fluffy tumble and fall, making a cute little sob sound before the game over text popped up.
He could tell that Sonic was staring at him in disbelief even without looking. “I wanted to see what would happen,” he replied pre-emptively as he restarted the stage. The first few stages were insultingly easy, but as he progressed the environments got darker and darker. The carefree hopping turned to scared galloping then to a terrified dash, and enemies started appearing that looked like they could pull the little animal pixel from pixel. The difficulty curve was almost non-existent until stage 5, where it instead rose sharply.
And then, on stage 7, he died again. Martin growled to himself; it was a game for FLUFFIES. How could he, an experienced gamer, fail at a game made for fluffies!? Again he tried the stage, and though he got far - almost to the end - he died again. It wasn’t until a few more tries that he finally got through the stage and the “Fluffy’s Run Away!” victory text popped up.
If he had to compare the experience to anything, it would be the first hovercraft level of Battletoads. It was way beyond any fluffy’s capabilities, and he still had three levels to go… “Okay. I admit, this one you don’t need to beat,” he murmured to Sonic as he started the next level, which was outrunning a tsunami. Suffice to say, he did not beat it on his first try. Not on his fifth try, either.
“Daddeh?”
“Not now, I’m beating this thing if it’s the last thing I do.”
“But, Sonic am hungwy. Sonic gun stawve if wait untiw game’s ovew.”
As the pixel fluffy was once more swept up and drowned with a vaguely disturbing sound, Martin let out a long sigh. “Yeah, maybe.” He put the gamepad down and went to fetch some food - as it was probably just as nutritious as kibble, he liked to feed Sonic donut-shaped cereal and Sonic seemed to like the taste - but paused as he saw his guild had started reassembling. He put on his wireless headphones as he continued to the kitchen. “Sup guys.”
“Done cleaning up the hedgehog poopies?” snickered someone on the other side.
“Oh shut up, Archercat,” interjected someone else. “But yeah, what did he want?”
“What do you get when you combine Battletoads with quicktime events?” Martin replied as he returned to the fluffy corner, refilling the cat bowl while being careful not to obscure the TV screen as Sonic had apparently decided to try and beat the next stage while he waited. He didn’t even get two moves in. “Sonic’s game. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is, I think they just expected the fluffies to get scared of the death scenes and stop trying.”
“What, like, gore?”
“Sonic isn’t scared of that stuff?”
“Maybe watching me play gory shooters took the edge off of it,” he shrugged as he put the cereal aside, nudging Sonic toward the food bowl and picking the controller up while he was distracted. “And no outright gore, I think, just implied stuff and way too realistic death cries.”
“So it took you what, two tries? Did you seriously die on it?”
“I’m still playing it, honestly,” Martin replied and let out a dissatisfied grumble as the pixel fluffy was swept up by another wave. “It’s impossible, I swear. Try it for yourselves if you don’t believe me.”
“Yeah, right! You’re fuller of shit than your shitrat is.”
“Yeah well, call him that again and I’m gonna let him take my spot in the raid.”
“Dude… dude, please don’t. We don’t need to go through that again.” Archercat’s tone had changed in an instant. “I’m sorry, just don’t let him on the computer.”
He snickered to himself. Sonic had managed to climb up to the keyboard once during a mid-raid bathroom/snack break, and apparently decided to take over until Martin came back. Once he returned, he had found a near-total party wipe and Sonic leaned over the mic, talking shit at the game enemies (even though his character was dead). Nobody involved had managed to live the event down.
“Anyway, I’ll be there as soon as everyone’s ready. Gonna try to beat this stupid … aah, damnit!” The little yelp of the drowning game fluffy broke Martin’s concentration. “This is so ridiculous …!”
“Honestly, you’re making me curious now too,” one of the quieter guild members spoke up. “I think Rosie used to have one of those four-in-ones, I’ll go see if I can dig it up later.”
Martin ended up playing the stage over and over until Sonic started to complain about wanting a turn, and that night slept fitfully. He couldn’t get over Fluffy Run Away. A game for fluffies had no right to be that difficult, and he just couldn’t let it best him.
The next day he found that not only the quiet girl, but also Archercat had gotten curious enough to search the game out. The girl had pulled an all-nighter and was confident she could beat stage 8 once she was less about to pass out. Archercat on the other hand was unable to beat stage 6, which he loudly complained about.
“Come on, step it up,” Martin snickered as he checked on his fluffy (asleep, hugging his Pikachu plush in an angry cuddle as though seeking comfort). “Even Sonic managed to reach level 7 all on his own.”
“Yeah well, I have better things to do than play games all day!” Archercat protested. Everyone knew that was a blatant lie, so he quickly continued: “I pulled the code out of the thing and managed to make it work on the computer. I put it up online a couple hours ago to see if there’s ANYONE who can beat it.”
That piqued Martin’s interest, and he turned off the fluffy’s TV as he walked back to his computer. “Yeah? Any results yet?”
“Well, there’s some impressively eloquent rage if that counts. Here, I’ll link you.”
A few links popped up in the guild chat, providing forum threads and videos. Archercat was right - people were swearing about the game’s difficulty, some making jokes about the intended target audience being Super Saiyan fluffies or how badly the bear mauled newbie players. The videos had the titles you’d expect: “THIS is a FLUFFY game?!”, “How is a fluffy supposed to beat this?!”, “The most DIFFICULT fluffy game EVER” …
It was a lot of fun, but it was when he started checking the comments that Martin got curious. Some claimed to have beaten it, of course lacking any videos or images to prove they’d done so, but more than that … Someone had claimed the final stage was nightmare fuel. As in legitimately scary to people. It got memed to hell, of course, with counter-claims and jeers galore until it was unclear just what the final level actually contained, but …
Martin found himself itching to play it again. He could beat the tsunami level, he was sure of it. And soon, some pro DDR player or something would upload a “Fluffy Run Away All Stages” video, and the mystery would be gone.
“Yes! Finally!” Archercat cried out in triumph. “I beat the damned level!”
“Yeah? Congrats,” said Martin as he got out of his chair. “Enjoy the bear.”
“The what?” asked Archercat just before he took the headset off and went to get breakfast. If he was gonna do this, he had to be prepared.
Sonic stirred to the sound of a pixelated fluffy drowning. He blinked awake and looked up to see his daddy still fighting hard with Fluffy Run Away, gamer snacks strewn around him and Sonic’s ring bowl filled to the brim. “… Daddeh?”
“Oh, hey.” Daddy flashed him a grin. “Glad you’re up, I’m almost through this. Figure you wouldn’t wanna miss it.”
The fluffy’s green eyes widened. “Weawwy?!”
“Check it out.” As his daddy turned back to the game Sonic watched with bated breath, refusing to blink lest he miss the World Record For Beating Level 8 Of Fluffy Run Away, up until an input got fumbled and the fluffy drowned.
“… Ah, man,” Daddy started with a hint of disappointment, and Sonic made sure to cut him off before he could remark on his performance.
“Yu can do it!” the fluffy cried excitedly. Sure, he’d lost, but he was so close to the end! “Daddeh’s supew good! Yu awmost won, yu can do it next time fow suwe!!”
The human jumped, caught off guard, then let out a short laugh. “Thanks, bud. Didn’t really need it, but thanks.”
It took another try to clear the level, something which Sonic personally chalked up to his great cheerleading skills, and then they were on to level 9. Sonic gasped softly as the screen faded into view; It was the same woody place as before, but now it was all on fire! (Why a tsunami would be immediately followed by a wildfire was nothing Sonic questioned, but there was at least one meme about it.) Everything was scary and red and the little pixel fluffy was running from a wall of flames, thick smog blocking the top half of the screen.
The half where the button prompts were. It didn’t make them impossible to see, just a bit tougher, but it was enough for the pixel fluffy to soon trip and vanish into the flames with a painful cry. Even though he knew silence was important to focus, Sonic couldn’t help a quiet “nuuu…” from slipping between his hooves.
Daddy exhaled. “Okay, that’s not as bad as I feared… Still doable.”
“What daddeh mean?” asked Sonic, slowly lowering his hooves from his snout. “Wooks weawwy hawd…”
“Yeah, the smog mechanic’s bad. But it’s not getting faster,” explained Daddy. “Same speed as the tsunami level, I just have to adjust so I see through the smoke.”
“So coow,” Sonic replied quietly, watching with adoration. Sure enough, his daddy was getting really far really early on, and Sonic watched unflinchingly … aside from when his belly reminded him he was really hungry, at which point he scarfed down the majority of his ring cereal. Daddy took a break at one point too, scarfing down a bag of snacks with the same vigor.
He wasn’t sure how long it took, but a few tries higher than he could count later, they got through! The familiar “Fluffy’s Run Away!” text popped up on screen as the fluffy vanished into the trees, fire filling the screen and then fading to black.
“Oh yeah, the next level’s apparently real creepy, so … Go sit in the box,” said Daddy.
Sonic didn’t quite get what could be so bad - sure, the fire and bear had been scary at first, but being exposed to the same thing over and over had a way of dulling your fears. Still, he trusted that daddy knew best, and so he parked his butt square in the Angry Poopies box as he watched and waited for the next screen to reveal itself.
Except it didn’t. Well, it kinda did, but then it got stuck halfway. When the “Go!” text came up as bright and clear as ever, Sonic realized with growing horror that this was it. The final awful, scary thing to run from was the darkness itself.
Then the screen flashed white with a boom, and he understood why he’d been warned - it was enough to make Daddy near poop himself, so Sonic didn’t stand a chance. He cowered down into the litterbox, trying to keep his whimpers as quiet as possible as daddy did his best. When the pixel fluffy failed this time, there was no cry or little animation, just a weird scrunching sound and the fluffy vanishing from sight.
He thought he’d be prepared for the white flash the second time, but he wasn’t, because there was no flash. There was something - something lunging from the dark that he could only barely make out, then dots of red, but there was no telling what was what or when.
If he wasn’t so enthralled by his daddy’s playing, he would have covered his eyes long ago.
Martin understood why the final level was supposedly so scary, now. How any fluffy was expected to handle it he didn’t know, but the level brought to mind childhood nightmares caused by many supposedly child-friendly games. Guess even fluffy game companies kept that tradition.
He was mid-way through an attempt when he realized that, even if he cleared the game, he would be no better than the little comments having no proof. It was a realization that made him die again, but still. “Oh, I have an idea.”
“Huh? What idea?” asked Sonic, but he didn’t answer. As he began moving things around, dragging the TV and game pad to face his computer and fetching his webcam, the fluffy began to get downright fretful. “What daddeh doing? Nu take Sonic TV, pwease!”
“Hang on I’m just setting up … You can play for a bit if you want.”
As Martin sat at the computer and started setting up a recording, Sonic climbed out of the litterbox and over to his controller. A little tap, the fluffy running out of its saferoom, and then … Darkness. Sonic squinted, but before he could even see what he was to press, the crunchy sound happened and the game over text appeared.
The fluffy tried a couple more times, his fear at odds with his gamer’s pride, but a very clear issue made itself known very fast. “… Daddeh, nu can see game!”
“Yeah it is a bit too dark. That or I messed up one of the cables when moving it.” Martin stepped away from the computer to fiddle with the TV, upping the brightness as much as possible. It still wasn’t great, but it was certainly more visible than before, and Sonic looked less like he needed glasses as he resumed playing. Or… Starting the game and dying. Same thing, really.
“Man, fuck that bear,” Archercat complained as he put on his headphones. Martin smirked.
“It’s okay to quit,” he reassured. “You’re on the level of a fluffy now.”
“Fuck you.”
“Anyway, I’m on the last level, gonna try and record it. You guys wanna watch? I can stream it too, pretty sure.”
“… Yeah, sure, why not,” agreed Archercat, and so did a few other guild members. Even those who hadn’t bought into the hype couldn’t help but be a little curious, and so Martin had a bit of an audience helping out in voice chat as he finally set things up and hit Record.
Sonic was just starting up a new round, and as the Darkness Level began he stared at it, hyper-focused, before slamming down a hoof and … Actually hitting the first prompt! His focus was broken in an instant, the fluffy gasping in awe and missing the next prompt as he turned to Martin with a delighted smile. “Daddeh! Daddeh see dat?! Sonic got one!!”
“I saw, buddy. Good job!” Martin laughed as he went back over to the TV and sat down, fluffy moving aside and then cuddling up to his lap to get a better view. And then, aided by the background noise of someone teasingly asking Archercat if he could beat that record, he started playing.
It took many attempts, and up to 40 minutes - it was a pain not just because of the difficulty seeing the prompts, but the lightning flashes would throw him off and sometimes the voice chat got so excited about his progress that they threw him off. But finally, he had the perfect run. Sonic lay frozen in his lap and the voice chat collectively held their breaths, Martin only thinking in the letters A, B, C and D. When the pixel fluffy escaped off-screen, Martin stared with his hands hovering over the buttons as though another prompt would appear for a solid few seconds before he realized he was done.
“You did it!!” erupted from voice chat and fluffy alike, a cacophony of excitement shattering the silence and Sonic giving him a big hug just to get some of the energy out. “GG, dude!”
But then everyone hushed down again, or at least returned to normal speaking levels, as a short cutscene began to play. It was a simple one, really - most notably, the text that appeared didn’t read “Fluffy’s Run Away!”.
It read “Fluffy’s Run Back Home!”.
The saferoom from the menu appeared, now during night-time, and the little pixel fluffy ran straight from the fields back inside and nestled deep into its bed. Slowly, accompanied by a female voice, more text appeared.
“Running from home might seem fun,
with a big wide world to see.
But there are many scary things out there…
This little fluffy was lucky, unlike most.
Can you run faster than a monster or a fire?
If not, then just know…
Your place is at safe at home.”
That was cute, a nice sentiment to tell fluffies not to run off and get hurt. Too bad it was literally impossible for the intended audience to reach the dang thing.
“So what now?” asked someone, and Martin blinked. He wasn’t sure, actually. Just like having finished a good book, he felt vaguely lost in what to do.
As he looked down, he found Sonic staring up at him expectantly, green eyes locked onto his. He exhaled and petted the fluffy, letting his shoulders slump.
“… Anyone know any good kid’s games?”