“Homecoming”
“Part 4, Interaction”
Author:It_that_watches
The humming of the engine and grind of tires on the poorly paved country road leading home lulled Matthew into a sense of security. Though naturally everyone returns home at the end of their day, there was still something comforting about the drive home. The hills of the valley were always quiet at night, but this was a special kind of quiet.
His thoughts drifted to that of his work.
When Matthew started working at Hasbio his heart swelled with dream of what genetic engineering could do to improve lives and bring amazing and unique new forms life into the world. His work was laborious, unrecognized, and fraught with heartbreaking setbacks. When his line of engineered life went into final testing and pre-production, he was at his highest point.
And now…
Matthew swerved into the left lane to avoid a petrified teal fluffy blinded by his headlights.
“Jesus… These things…” He spoke, neutral expression fading into a frown, “Forests are no place for fluffies.”
And now his role at Hasbio was to maintain the integrity of their current line, ferreting out mutations, resequencing existing templates for holidays and special occasions, coordinating Hasbio’s Department C, and his least favorite role, playing doctor for Hasbio’s particularly rich client’s pets. He felt responsible for their sorry state, despite having advocating for every bit of autonomy that they currently had, or perhaps because of it. It’s hard to decide where intelligence began, but his interference had certainly tipped the balance towards them seeming alive.
As the committee designed them, they were to be almost trapped inside their own heads, watching in a daze as their bodies reacted on autopilot. It was revolting, the earliest models would break down crying if they were to walk into a corner, believing themselves irreversibly trapped. The “Sorry-Box” wasn’t even a concept at that point, as you couldn’t really “punish” a machine. They spoke only a few phrases and were incapable of learning more. Sometimes they just seized up and “stopped working” for no discernable reason.
He turned off the main road onto the community drive, sky occluding as the canopy grew thicker. It was only about a mile until he would be home, and back with his beloved little girl.
He wondered what she had done while he was at work. He would have brought her like she normally does, she even has her own lab coat and ID, it was just that Corporate HQ was not the place to bring her. Though she was his proudest creation she was also considered a substantial loss for the company, and a huge legal liability. The fact that she both knew this and understood what it meant complicated matters even further. To put it bluntly, she was extremely dismissive and rude to almost anyone wearing a suit and a white-striped ID card instead of a lab coat.
He sighed and his expression softened. “Oh, Twily…”
He looked at the passenger side seat, and the “work” that he had so generously decided to “take home with him”. Just innocuous things really, things that weren’t even being used in the Series Six line. Things like a medical port scrubber, some saline solution, psychotropic chemicals, and a few individually contained phials of… dubiously legal, untested biopharmaceuticals.
A canister labelled “H-S4BL#44” could be seen rolling side to side.
The Hasbio Series-Four Biotoy Line, dubbed “Little Ponies”, were constructed upon much more advanced neural designs (a human brain), and special, individual genetic tuning via programmed retrovirals. Anything else that was out of balance could be corrected as it arose with self-destroying bacterial plasmid integration. Simple, clean, and effective, at least until Washington got involved. Apparently using viruses to reprogram everything wasn’t safe enough for the old men running the world from DC, and almost every new technology he had helped pioneer had been regulated to the point of uselessness or made entirely illegal.
It’s not like the retrovirals were dangerous, they weren’t even transmittable from one pony to another. It might be remotely possible, he supposed one were to eat another Little Ponies’ flesh, but that was unthinkable barbarism. The Series Four weren’t even capable of reproduction! No males were ever “born”.
Fluffies on the other hand could not be trusted not to cannibalize one another and were very capable of reproducing, any viral agent introduced into one could quickly spread throughout the population. Their pain however was now long out of his control, thanks to PETA.
“They were never meant to breed outside Hasbio facilities. Stupid bastards.”
Matthew drove past his mailbox without even thinking to check it.
None of that mattered now though. Matthew’s only concern was acquiring the materials he needed from work to fix a brain condition afflicting one of Twilight’s siblings. Her panacea wasn’t far away, he could feel it.
As he pulled into his driveway, something felt off. It was easily apparent his property had been invaded as evidenced by the fluffies fleeing into the shadows and around the corners of the house, but there was something more.
There were no lights on. Twilight would have at least one light on.
She would be waiting for him.
But, as the headlights swung around and illuminated the yard, he saw that she was not inside. She was hiding in the shadow of the house, and she was covered in blood.
Before she could even finish shielding her eyes from the glare of the headlights, Matthew slammed the parking brake, dismounted, and hit the pavement.
“TWILIGHT!?”
With the amount of blood he saw on on her, he probably didn’t have much time.
She guarded herself from the light.
“TWILIGHT NO!”, any movement in that condition could be fatal.
“DON’T MOVE I’M COMING!” Matthew heard his heart pounding in his head, and his whole body felt light as adrenaline surged through his brain.
With every step closer he took, she seemed somehow bloodier. “SWEETIE, PLEASE BE OKAY!”
He practically dove into her, throwing aside her wings to assess the damage to more vital areas.
“I’ll be able to save her.” His fevered mind raced, “Because if I can’t I’m going to take an ocean of blood for every drop of hers was taken.”
“DAD WAIT STOP!”
As Twilight was knocked to the ground, she pleaded with her overbearing father to let her explain herself. She partially succeeded.
“Dad, DAD!” She cried out, “I’m fine! Let go before they catch up to us!”
His focus flickered off of Twilight for only the briefest of moments, and, confirming that there was a mass of fluffies closing in on them he wrapped her in his lab coat and made a break for the front door. Before she knew what was happening, she was inside. This did not make her happy.
“Dad why did you grab me? I’m not hurt and I was on a secret mission and you left my project out-”
“Twilight. Calm down.”
Both Twilight and Matthew hated being told to calm down. It was a matter of principle, something about not feeling bad about having natural human emotions. Emotions like anger.
“Me calm down? Me calm down!?” She retorted with more than a bit of irritation, “How about YOU CALM DOWN!”
(Wham)
Matthew had dumped her with little delicacy into the tub.
“Owwch! Dad what the hell?”
Matthew responded to her by turning on the showerhead and dousing her in freezing water. Blood ran like rivulets down Twilight’s brightly colored body, and mixed around her hooves into a slick of gore the porcelain. He looked her up and down, finding no injury.
“I don’t know where to begin. Are you hurt?” Matthew said, gesturing at her poorly bandaged forehoof
“No, dad, but my project is gonna be ruined if they kill Muddy.”
Matthew strained his mind as he soaped up a loofa. “Who the fuck is Muddy?”
“He’s a fluffy I was trying to drag inside before you tackled me, and he’s gonna be a dead fluffy if I don’t get back out there and find him.” Twilight’s now soaked hair served to blind her as she tried to stand and leave the tub. Matthew finished the job by throwing the loofa at her face and quickly mashing shampoo into her mane.
She groaned in disapproval.
“Stay here and wash off. I’ll get your…”
Matthew paused for a moment.
“Friend?”
“No. Not friend.” She replied.
“Subject.”
Be Muddy
Have hurties all over
You try to move towards the big green housie doors, but they are so far away, and every step is so painful
“Dewe am poopie fwuffie!” cries out a quickly approaching fluffy
“Gu ged bad fwuffy an gib wowstest hewties fow gu tu smawties nu wand!”
You recognized that voice, it was the meanie blue pointy-fluffy that took away your under-big-tree-housie
“Baddes poopie-fwuffy gib wowstest hewties tu Cheewy!”
“Yu make Cheewy hab sickie—wawas an’ nu tawkie hewties!”
“Dummeh poopie-fwuffy! Yu take foweba-sweepies!”
Even though you were ahead, they closed in fast
No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t climb up the housie stairs
The herd surrounded you, pushing you against the steps
You already hurt all over, and the sorry-hoofsies pushed you to tears
”NU WAN! NU WAN!” you squealed, but the sorry-hoofsies still came
Finally, one of the toughies made his way through the crowd, and you braced for the worst
(BANG)
The fluffies around you were startled by the noise from behind you, and backed away
“Wook! Hooman!”
The smartie saw the human and suddenly looked like he had worstest scardies
You felt your guts clench as fear overtook you, if you had eaten in the past few days you surely would have made scaredy-poopies
“WUN WAY HEWD!”
Before you knew what was happening you were running away too! But you didn’t get very far
A human pressed their hand into the scruff of your neck, pinning you to the ground and making your everything hurt
“Huhuu… Pwease nice hooman nu gib Muddy vewy moaw hewties, awweady hab su many.” You whined
“Gotcha.” Was all the response you received
Soon another hand came down upon you and gave you upsies
Not bad upsies like you had expected, but good upsies that didn’t hurt at all
But you could hear growling. The human was taking you to the vroom-vroom-monster
“NU! Pwease nice mistah, nu wan be vwoom-vwoom nummies!”
The human put you into a big box on the monster with no top, and you tried your best to stay in one place as the monster shook you around
After what seemed like at least half of a forever, the human spoke to the monster
“It’s okay vroom-vroom friend, Muddy is a good fluffy, and I know that you only eat bad fluffies.”
The vroom-vroom monster stopped growling, and closed it’s glowing eyes
“Yu am fwiend wif vwoom-vwoom munstah?”
The human chuckled.
“Only that one.”
You were brought into the housie
You tried to look around the housie, but it was so big on the inside, and so bright that your eyes got more hurties until you closed them
You could hear the sound of rain from somewhere nearby
“Can pwease wet fwuffy gu tu wain? Fwuffy nee’ dwink gud wawa.”
The human replied “Uhh, sure, but let me get a bowl for you.”
A bowl? Was it… Could it be…
“Am yu nice mistah?” you asked
“I like to think I am, but that’s up to you to decide.”
Summoning all of your strength, and all of your love for your family, you said aloud words you though you would never say
“Muddy am sowwy nice mistah, but nu can hab nu daddeh wight now.”
The nice mister went into a room that smelled like lots of good nummies, took a bowl and started towards the rain again
“Am vewy sowwy for du dis but nee’ fin’ puwpow munstah an’ sabe babbehs.”
“Are you saving them from the purple monster?” The nice man asked, as the rain got louder and closer
Nu tink, but nu know. Puwpow munstah say dat it kno wewe Muddy famiwy am.”
“Oh really? Did she say where they were?”
Your mind raced; had the monster told you?
The beatings, malnutrition, fear, and monster fluffies blended into one big scary head-picture
You started to cry, but the human either didn’t notice, or didn’t care.
You cried for until some of the saddies had passed, and opened your eyes to see a bowl of clean clear wawa in front of you
For the first time since the herd attacked you and destroyed your home, you felt like you could let your guard down
Matthew rolled up his sleeves and set about vigorously scrubbing the blood, gore, and fluff out of Twilight’s mouth. When he was done, he moved onto bathtime as usual.
“Twilight?” he called out.
“Why did you send me outside to collect a barely functioning pariah?”
“Uuuuuuuuuuhhhh… A what?” Twilight gazed on with a vacant expression.
“It doesn’t really matter in the end.” Matthew spoke in a monotone as he pulled a tooth that had somehow gotten tangled in her hair. “Where did you put the others?”
“Dow-“
FUCK.
Matthew’s lips curled into a slight smile “So I leave you alone for 10 hours, and you take hostages and lock them in the basement,” Their eyes met glancingly “I’m not sure if I’m angry or impressed.”
Sheepishly, she mumbled in response “How about you be impressed? It ends better for both of us that way.”
“Mhmm, sure. Clean up, dry off, and meet me downstairs. To confront your sins.”
“Let’s go dirtball, your family awaits.”
Muddy looked up in fear at the unreadable human towering above him.
“F-Fwuffy nu am cawwed diwt-baww…” he stammered out, unable to maintain eye contact. “Fwuffy am caw-”
Matthew turned and started to walk away. He knew that the fluffy would follow, after all, that’s what they are supposed to do. Family in danger, only human help leaving, being left in a room with a monster, in a strange new place…
The patter of his soft hooves on the hardwood was an inevitability, the cry of “Nu weave fwuffy!” even more so.
“These poor things…”
In the bright kitchen light, every bruise and bunch of torn out fluff was easily seen even on skin stretched to the bone. Every step he took filled him with renewed agony as his contused muscles craved release from service. Hopefully, everything was going well downstairs.
As soon as light flooded the stairs down into the basement, Matthew heard an all too familiar sound.
“SCREEEEEEE!!! NUUUUU!!! PWEASE NU HEWT FWUFFIES!”
He paused a moment to breathe in the air of the situation.
“AWW BABBEHS AWW GUD BABBEHS!! MOSSY ONWY BE GUD MUMMAH!”
“SPESHAW FWEND!” Muddy yelled, running towards the source of his bereaved partners cries.
“Speshaw fwiend! Muddy am hab wowst owwies pweas nee’ huggies fow make bettew!”
This was the kind of thing that Matthew missed about fluffies. He missed how real they could be, how much humanity he had conjured up from an assortment of jumbled DNA. In Department C, his role had changed from one of a kind caretaker to that of an uncaring god. In the bowels of that steel fortress life was created, manipulated, subjugated, and obliterated all in the same day. Sometimes on the same life.
But what he saw as Muddy and Mossy tearfully reunited was different. These were not machines printed on some assembly line, they were complex and dynamic, each with their place carved out by their own actions and mistake.
And where had it led them?
To love, hope, and companionship.
And it seemed, as he heard the distant peeping of foals and a green topped filly poked her head out from behind a beanbag chair, it seemed that their path had led them to family as well.
Matthew remained silent, giving them all the time they needed to pull themselves together.
“Dis sniff dis fwuffy am Muddy speshaw fwend nice-mistah.” He spoke, turning to address Matthew. “Speshaw fwend am cawwed Mossy.”
“It’s nice to meet you three, even if you did break into my house.” you can call me Mr. Winston. “Sparingly.”
Muddy stepped back to assess the situation, and mirroring his actions, so did Mossy. They spoke in unison: “Wewe Wock gu?” asked Muddy. “Wewe Twiggie gu? asked Mossy.
Mossy began to look all around the room in a panic “Fwuffy nu knu’ wew am Wock gu, nu gu wook fow Wock inna housie.” She made eye contact with Matthew.
“Wock am nu in housie.”
Matthew cocked an eyebrow, and posited a cynical “Really?”
She wasted no time in babbling out her reply.
“Yus fwuffy am knu Wock nu in woom.” She then tacked on a very convincing, “An’ aww babbehs awe gud babbehs an nu dummeh babbehs.”
“Did you hear that Muddy? It looks like your special friend lost track of one of your babies. Was Rock your favorite?” Matthew inquired with exaggerated concern, “I can hear chirping babies nearby, are you sure he’s not with them?”
“NU!” Muddy barked, puffing out his cheeks and taking a steady stance.
Matthew was surprised, and now regarded the fluffy before him with a chill indifference. “Think very carefully before your next move. Twilight wanted you alive but I’m not her servant.”
He loomed over the fluffy, eyeing it the same way that he would a dead cockroach.
“She doesn’t always get what she wants.”
“Muddy an Mossy nu hab bestest babbehs! Aww babbehs nee’ same wuv!” hearing this, Mossy advanced to stand at Muddy’s side, even mumbling “Wuv aww babbehs…”, though she would not look up from the floor.
Again, his expression softened.
Every fluffy prototype that escaped containment during the PETA raid had a host of engineered mental issues that he had introduced to their genome himself. Color recognition and self-identity had been so intertwined in the earliest models that some dams would only accept their offspring if they matched their colorations EXACTLY. An insipid, designed by committee demand that was supposed to make fluffies identify and desire inanimate or legacy products. On the day of the incident, the problem was still being worked out, but they still misidentified some green, and most brown, fluffies as waste material.
Matthew blamed himself for their sorry state, though he was relieved to see that these abandoned fluffies were capable of finding some degree of happiness. At least they were able to isolate the problem genes and partially omit them, yellow fluffies almost shared in their fate.
Matthew could only see one foal, and its colors were similar to those its parents. He stepped over the couple and in short time found a jumble of soiled Tupperware containers, the only still unsoiled one containing a pile of peeping foals not even a day old.
Matthew knelt to examine the babies.
First impressions:
These foals were obviously not the progeny of the pair in the room, as they were a brown and green pair of earthies, and these babies were 3 brightly colored unicorns and 2 brightly colored pegasi.
They had all been recently born, all bearing damage consistent with recent umbilical separation.
They were cold, unable to produce enough bodyheat even in their sad excuse for a fluffpile.
And something wasn’t right with at least one of them one of them, as evidenced by Mossy’s panicked attempts to stop him from interacting with them.
“Cheep!” went the teal one,
“Peep!” went the red,
“Eeep! Squealed the pink ones, trilling with dread,
“Beep.” went the grey, who Twi’d dropped on its head.
“What?” noted Matthew, such a curious sound,
as Mossy’s dear heart, sunk straight to the ground.
“Now yu see aww babbehs awe gud babbehs yu can gu now an teww scawy munsta dat aww babehs aws gud babbehs.” Mossy’s eyes were filled with panic and pleading. “Pwease nice mistah gu teww munsta aww babbehs gud.”
“What did you do?”
“MOSSY NU DU ANYFINK!!” she sqeaked, tears quickly gathering on her eyes. “Mossy wook at aww babbehs when scawy munsta frowed Mossy inna house!”
She continued on in,now in even more distress, “Scawy munstah teww Mossy dat Mossy take cawe munsta’s babbehs an nu make dem dummehs ow foweva sweepies, but wittow gwey babbeh AWEADY DUMMEH!”
“HUUUUHUUuuHUuuu… Mossy nu can fink what du…” She then collapsed under the weight of her grief, and Matthew shoved her head into one of the soiled containers. “Don’t snot all over my carpet.” The scent of salty tears mixing with ammoniac waste was disgusting. Muddy ran to attend his special friend, and Matthew turned to leave.
As he neared the stairs a tiny voice flitted from somewhere in between the sobs “M-mistah?”
Matthew froze in place with one foot resting on the bottom step. He didn’t even bother to turn his head to look at her. His voice was calm and clear.
“Yes?”
“Umm… Weww…”
“Speak up dear, your mother is making a scene.”
“Yu nu gif Wock hewties, wight?” Leaf’s voice somehow managed to get even quieter than it already was, “Weaf nu tink dat Wock can haf mow hewties an’… an’ not take fo… foweva…”
She trailed off, and Matthew took another step up the stairs, listening even more intently. “Nu gu! Mummah say dat hooman huggies fix aww hewties. Yu pwease gib huggies tu Leaf bwudda Wock an’ make aww betta maybe?”
Matthew turned in place and sat on the steps. “I thought your brothers were both lost.”
She visibly squirmed under the accusing statement. “Wock… Wock am in housie… Wock am in dat woom.”
She turned a tiny hoof back towards her parents. “Mummah hide wock cause gway babbeh am dummeh… Pwease nu haf maddies at mummah…”
Matthew looked around the corner and rested his eyes upon the room and its myriad containers. Even if he remembered where he had them originally, or even what was in them, it would take hours to search them all, and a huge pain to do with a pair of fluffies pestering him. Hence the reason there were so many boxes down here. Sorting them would require a great effort. Or hell, just any effort at all. That wasn’t going to happen.
“Sorry Leaf, I could probably fix your brother but he’s hiding and or hidden, and I’m gonna assume that you mom would rather have a heart attack from stress than turn him over, so unless you can bring him out I can’t help.”
Leaf wavered before returning a brief “Otay…” and set out back towards her family.
As Matthew climbed the staircase, he shouted back to the captive fluffies.
“IF YOU MAKE A MESS DOWNSTAIRS, IT WON’T END WELL FOR ANY OF YOU.”
Matthew scowled and muttered to himself. “Goddamn Twilight, what the fuck did you do?”
The door shuddered as it closed, and from the top of the basement he could suddenly hear both the babbling of the fluffies by the woodpile, and the sound of the shower that Twilight was still trapped in. He decided that the most prudent issue that needed dealing with was… his laundry. Both he and Twilight’s coats were after all, covered in fluff and blood. “And Besides…”, he thought to himself, it’s cold out and I can hear them out near the dryer exhaust. “It’ll keep them warm for a few hours, or at least lure them all into a warmer pile.
It didn’t take all that long to get back to Twilight in her porcelain prison.
Matthew shut off the water and allowed her to drip-dry for a moment.
“So Twily, the family of fluffies downstairs say that you kidnapped them. That true?”
She shook her head, partly to shake water off, and partly to answer in the negative. “No. The big green one fell in through the window I opened, and I gave her kids to her.”
She scowled as Matthew roughly drying her with a heavy towel.
“You should know about the brown one, you brought him inside.”
“But Twilight!” Matthew exclaimed in a voice mocking surprise, “The family downstairs only has only one foal with them! What did you mean by kids?”
He picked her up out of the tub, took a hairbrush from the counter, and continued, “Are you referring to the five foals that are very clearly not related to them, or have they somehow lost a child?”
Twilight struggled to remember.
“Hmm, when I left out the window, there were 5 of the tiny ones, 2 small ones, and the one big one.”
She shrugged with her wings, “I guess she lost one.”
“Well then, Twilight…” Matthew mused his brushing forced her to make eye contact, “How would that have happened? Do you think it just got up and ran away? Why would it leave its mother?”
“Didn’t you tell me all fluffies are both stupid and terrible parents? What’s not to get?”
“Twi, think. Think real hard about why one of them would have disappeared.”
She reconsidered their status in more detail.
“Which one is not missing?” she inquired.
“The one with green hair.”
“Well, the other one was injured, so if it moved, someone helped it. That means at least one of them knows where it went”
“Why would they need to do this?”
Twilight was getting annoyed by this line of questioning. “I don’t know, ask one of them!”
“The filly told me that the mother hid her child intentionally, because one of the babies you tasked her with looking after had recieved brain damage. Did you threaten her, or her child?”
“Oh yeah!” Twilight exclaimed.
“I said I’d pop Rock like a grape if she killed or broke any of them!” She spoke with joy at having remembered, but her enthusiasm melted quickly back into annoyance.
“Why, did she kill one?”
“No, Twilight, but one of them does have a head injury.”
“Is it they tiny grey one?”
“Yes.”
Twilight chuckled.
“I dropped that one and it started making funny noises. That one was busted before I gave it to her.”
Matthew struggled to suppress a grin.
“Did she know that? Did you tell her one of them was already damaged?”
Twilights snickering evolved into full on laughter, and it took her a bit to composer herself enough to answer.
“Nope!”
Matthew smiled and pulled her into a hug.
“You little bastard, She’s scared out of her mind.”
“Do- (Hehehehe!) Uh, do I- Uh, should I go down and tell her?”
He scratched her chin. “At some point, yeah. Ideally when you next see her.”
Matthew glanced upwards. “I’m going to go give your sister her medicine, and then crawl into bed. It’s been a long day, and I really don’t want to deal with more fluffies right now, especially ferals. You coming along?”
“Of course!”
“Great, go warm up the bed.”
Twilight scampered off towards his bedroom and set about rearranging sheets and plushies, while Matthew gathered his borrowed mutagens.
Soon, he held the frail frame of Twilight’s little sister.
“This last round of retrovirals should do the trick.” He mumbled to himself, “I swore this curse of mine would never be passed on. I won’t let you suffer it too. I can’t fix myself, but I sure as hell can fix you.”
“Sleep well, sunshine. We’ll see you soon. I promise.”
Finally, at liberty to escape into his dreams, Matthew undressed and pulled himself under his heavy blankets.
“Love you, Twily.” He spoke.
“Love you, Dad.” She replied.
And together, they drifted free from the tethers of the waking world the way we all do.
Slowly, and then all at once.