Warning: spoilers for the Inhuman Alliance Saga.
A week or so after the war against the Inhuman Alliance, Erwin arrives at the Faucheuse Foundation, for another day of…
Oh, you know what he’s here to do!
Erwin has been feeling rather relieved since the end of the battle.
After all, his hated great-uncle, Hans, is finally dead and gone. All out of extra lives.
Erwin had a brief chance to speak with Hans one last time before Calvin showed up and cut the bastard’s head off twice.
He said “You couldn’t live with your own failure. And where did that bring you, Hans? Back to us.”
At that point, Hans attempted to break out of Quin’s silver death grip to claw Erwin’s soul out, and Quin slapped a power dampener and a silver bracelet on Hans.
Quin still kept Hans in a headlock, because, after everything Hans had instigated, Quin wanted to make the bastard suffer, especially after Hans inadvertently destroyed another future.
Erwin laughed his ass off when Quin kicked Hans in the balls.
On another genital-related note, Projects Goodfellow and Petticoat are days away from completion, much to Asimov and Hershey’s delight. Alpha and Beta have been… ah… field testing them, and they’ve had nothing but good things to say about the new… additions to their robotic bodies.
The Goodfellows are retractable, so Alpha doesn’t have to walk around with his junk hanging out. And the Petticoats are likewise concealable, so Beta doesn’t have to walk around with her lady parts showing either.
Gamma had to promise that he wouldn’t walk around with his junk hanging out before Valerie would agree to install a Goodfellow in his body.
However, she refused to give Gamma a two foot long Goodfellow. Even though he doesn’t have to worry about passing out from all his blood flowing to his “second head”, because he doesn’t have blood, Valerie thought a Goodfellow that big would be ridiculous.
Which is also why she denied Calvin’s request to install a Goodfellow in Calvin Impact, much to Nivlac’s disappointment.
Alpha has privately confessed to Erwin that he’s been wondering what Projekt Caldroid 2.0, Alpha’s “little brother”, would have done with a Goodfellow.
They both came to the conclusion that it would probably try to skullfuck Calvin to death.
It had a one-track mind. Literally. The Nerd Squad’s examination of the Caldroid 2.0’s remains has yielded a lot of information.
Its prime directive was simply “kill Calvin Korkea”, and Hans didn’t care how it happened.
But he probably would have been nauseated if his ultimate creation killed Calvin via cranial fornication.
Hans was never a big fan of sex, after all.
As Erwin arrives at his familiar examination room, he finds his first patient of the day already waiting outside.
A young woman, holding a carrier, a white and grey stallion inside.
“Doc, you gotta help me! Something’s wrong with Priapus!”
Erwin opens the door, gesturing the woman inside.
“Beruhigen Sie sich, I’m sure I can treat it. Please, tell me what’s wrong.”
The woman places the carrier on the examination table, and opens it.
“Show the nice doctor, Priapus.”
Priapus waddles out, and turns around.
When Erwin sees what’s wrong, he has to suppress the urge to burst into laughter.
“Ah. Well, that can happen to some stallions, believe it or not.”
The stallion’s balls, usually white like his fluff, have turned blue.
“Pwee-a-pus haf had speciaw wumps huwties fow a fyoo bwite times, mistah dok-tow.”
“What is it, Doc? Is he sick, or is this magic?”
“Oh no, no no no. He’s just, ah… pent-up, is all. Have you, ah, caught him trying to, um, blow off steam?”
“Oh. Oh! A few times. I’ve had to tell him to stop doing it, though. He keeps raping my slippers.”
Erwin is surprised that the owner thought this would actually work. He’s seen owners make that mistake many times.
He remembers another stallion, who was brought in by Calvin after the fluffy’s former owner cut his balls off with a pair of scissors for knocking up a feral mare against his owner’s wishes.
Calvin lambasted the owner for actually expecting her stallion to just ignore his natural urges, instead of giving him an outlet of some kind. Special Huggie Friends aren’t that expensive. The stallion’s colors weren’t bad, he could have become a moderately successful stud. There were options.
And abstinence programs rarely work for humans, who ostensibly have more smarts, patience, and willpower than fluffies.
Fluffies don’t even know the meaning of the words “delayed gratification”.
That stallion’s name escapes Erwin, but he’s pretty sure it starts with an M.
“Pwee-a-pus wan-ed tu gu fine speciaw fwend, but mummah sed nu.”
“I don’t have room for a litter, Doc.”
“Worry not, there’s a quick fix. I suggest you two go to Flufftopia. Tell them you need a Special Huggie Friend, they’ll help you out.”
“Okay. Thanks, Doc.”
Erwin bids the duo adieu, and Priapus and his owner depart, the stallion happily numming a skettie treat, and Erwin gets his examination room ready for his next patient.
Once he’s sure they’re out of the building, Erwin starts laughing.
Just as Erwin manages to stop laughing, Calvin and Marley bring in his next patients.
“Erwin? Have you been crying? This isn’t about Hans, is it? …Because I’m not apologizing for killing him.”
Erwin dries his eyes.
“No, Cal, it’s not about Hans. These are tears of laughter. Just had another stallion with a bad case of literal blue balls in.”
“Ha! I could use a good laugh right about now.”
Calvin places a basket of foals on the table.
“Found these poor guys in a trash can just across from the School. Seriously, I don’t know why some people would abandon fluffies so close to our HQ.”
“Nu weep fow da dummehs, daddeh.”
“That’s right. Because you’ll be crying all day.”
Erwin places each foal on the Stahlskanner, one by one.
“Any news from the Federation’s science team yet?”
ping!
“Not yet, they’re still getting set up. Once they can analyse the energy signature of our guest in the basement, they’ll probably be able to identify it. …Unless it’s something they’ve never seen before. But the team’s mostly Lumixians, they’re smart, they’ll probably figure something out.”
ping!
“Untiw den, we gutta be cawefuw.”
“Yup. If we fight something as strong as the bastard again, we’ll have to find a way to take the fight elsewhere. We don’t want to wake our guest up.”
ping!
“What about Deston’s guest?”
“Still refusing to tell Des where the phylactery is. We think it might be in one of Hans’ old labs. But on the other hand, that might be too obvious.”
“We haf made dat miss-take befowe, daddeh.”
“Which is why we’re searching the labs anyway, Mar. We’ve found a bunch of other things, like those vials of Hig mass.”
ping!
“So we’ve got that to deal with. I’m surprised Argyrum didn’t make an appearance last week.”
“Hans probably had some kind of plan for that thing. My guess is that he was gonna use it as a backup body, if the clone body thing didn’t pan out. He always preferred metal over flesh, after all.”
ping!
“That’s true. The foals are all healthy, Cal. They just need the Standard Package.”
“Not all of them. Two were dead by the time we found the litter. You got anybody to take care of them?”
“I think Cleo and Julius will happily oblige.”
Cleo and Julius have raised several adopted litters by now. All of their adoptive foals have been adopted out to loving homes, and are all very well-behaved. People are surprised that foals raised by a couple of runaway alley fluffies are so well-behaved.
Deston has actually been talking to the fluffy couple about writing a book about their experiences.
Erwin calls Sasha in, to take care of the foals, and Calvin and Marley depart, promising, as always, to check in later.
They’ve got another training session with Luxi.
They’ll be taking the Tele-Port to Lumix. They could simply teleport there under their own power, but Calvin doesn’t want to teleport into deep space again if he can help it.
He considers himself lucky that he survived doing it twice.
Once the mechanical arms sterilise everything the foals touched, Erwin welcomes his next patient.
Chaos appears in the examination room, in his jester form, one of his regular looks, and holding an extra large rainbow-colored carrier, containing his fluffies, Loki and Eris.
He can lift it effortlessly. He’s Chaos. He could create a rock so heavy, even he couldn’t lift it, and then he would lift it anyway.
Eris is heavily pregnant, and no longer ambulatory, and Loki is hugging her.
As Chaos puts the carrier on the table and opens it, he speaks up in his cheerful, flamboyant voice.
“Just want one last check-up before the birth, dear Erwin.”
Erwin has been keeping tabs on the pregnancy. Chaos wouldn’t trust any other fluffy vet with his fluffies’ health.
He’s seen the conditions some back alley fluffy vets treat their patients in, and felt no guilt when he inflicted a wide variety of bizarre punishments upon those vets.
He didn’t kill any of them, but they wish he had killed them.
One of those shady vets, who happened to be a blatant homophobe, was turned into a very comfortable, sturdy mattress, and gifted to a gay couple with an extremely active sex life.
By now, that asshole definitely regrets his choice of career.
Erwin carefully places Eris on the scanner.
ping!
“They’re all healthy, Chaos. So, uh, what are you going to do with the foals? Adopt them out?”
“Maybe, maybe. Wouldn’t be hard to keep the family together, I can go anywhere. On the other hand, I could just let them keep the litter. My saferoom is as big as it needs to be, Erwin.”
Loki waddles out of the carrier, smiling.
“Woki wub da safewoom. Ev-wee-fing haf su manee cowows!”
“Wike Woki an Ewis!”
“I like rainbows, my dears. You know that old coworker I told you two about? If he adopted a fluffy, the poor thing would be driven mad by the sheer boredom of his domain.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask: what happened to Fate’s domain after Cal killed him?”
“His replacement as the pruner moved in, and remodeled the place. I’d say it’s an improvement. There’s colors besides grey in there, that’s definitely a step in the right direction.”
“So… what’s the new pruner like?”
Chaos chuckles.
“I’ll take him over that bureaucrat, dear Erwin.”
Chaos departs with his rainbow fluffies, sterilising the examination room for Erwin on the way out.
Erwin is on Chaos’ list of Top Ten Favorite Mortals. Calvin, obviously, is at the top of the list.
And like Calvin, Erwin has been invited to Chaos’ parties, where Chaos spoke highly of his medical skills to the other anthropomorphic personifications.
Life was rather impressed with Erwin. Life always appreciates the efforts of those who defend and nurture living things.
The Death of Fluffies also likes Erwin.
Without Erwin’s efforts to better the health of fluffykind, the Death of Fluffies would have a much bigger workload.
Five minutes after Chaos leaves, Danny and Ghost bring in a mare covered in burns.
A light grey and cyan unicorn mare, currently sobbing.
“Huu… Embew nu wemembew wut Embew did tu dee-sewv dis…”
Erwin leads the ghostly duo into the regeneration room, where they place Ember in an empty vat.
Next to a pegasus mare with four broken legs. Yet another pegasus fluffy who stubbornly believed she could fly.
“I can probably guess what happened, Danny.”
“Yeah, this is a no-brainer. We just walked in through the wall, and I let Reilly in. Then she webbed the owner’s feet to the floor, and when he started insulting her, Mayday webbed his mouth shut.”
Phantasm is currently at the psychiatric institution housing Vanessa Valentine, who is now in a padded room, clad in a straightjacket, and softly weeping in the corner as the avenging spirit fluffy rattles ghostly chains.
At least she’s not catatonic anymore.
Vanessa now reacts violently to anything related to Barney & Friends, which is why she’s in that padded room.
When she finally came out of her catatonia, they had to replace the TV she happened to be watching at the time. She broke the screen to make the singing stop, and broke one orderly’s nose while he was restraining her.
To be fair, that’s a perfectly logical reaction for anyone who has had to suffer through watching that show.
“Mayday am nao stan-din awn da see-wing, an if da bas-tuwd twy aneefing, she am gunna make poopies.”
Erwin chuckles.
“Remind me, how long does their webbing last?”
“About six hours, Erwin.”
“Mebbeh Vaw cud make webbies dat wast wong-uw.”
Erwin nods, watching the vat fill with regeneration fluid.
“I think she’s been trying to replicate their webbing, Ghost.”
Danny grins cheekily.
“That stuff’s pretty versatile. If we could equip the ChaotiX with web shooters, we’d have a potent non-lethal weapon to use on abusers.”
“Tawk abowt a stik-ee sit-yoo-ay-shun.”
“Ha! I love it when you crack wise, buddy. Erwin, we should probably be going, we’ve gotta go check in on that abuser.”
“Betchu a skettie tweat dat Mayday haf made poopies awn him.”
“I’ll take that bet, Ghost.”
As the ghostly duo departs, Erwin decides to take a break, making his way out of the building.
He passes through the lobby, briefly greeting Gilda.
He didn’t greet her on the way in because she was speaking to a customer.
The customer was hoping to adopt a stone fluffy, but there aren’t any stone fluffies currently at this branch.
Stone fluffies aren’t found in the wild. Yet. You couldn’t liberate them into the wild like PLASMA did with the original fluffies.
You would throw your back out. They’re a lot heavier than ordinary fluffies. Some abusers have actually been caught using pillowed stone fluffies as doorstops and paperweights by the ChaotiX.
Needless to say, the troll community is not happy about stone fluffy abuse. And would you really argue with a troll about this?
If you have to know: those abusers use concrete saws to get the legs off. A pair of scissors can’t cut through metamorphorical rock.
But Gilda told Rhoobee that Flufftopia most likely has stone fluffies in stock.
As Erwin exits the building, he spots a glint of light out of the corner of his eye, coming from a nearby storm drain.
For a second, Erwin swears that he saw something slither down the storm drain.
Most people would disregard this as a trick of the light.
But Erwin is not most people.
And he is not an idiot.
As Erwin makes his way to Starbucks, he takes out his phone, typing out a text.
“Ah, Hans. You always preferred metal over flesh, didn’t you?”