Early one morning at Flufftopia, the employees get everything ready for today’s customers before opening.
Since the robbery at Flufftopia, thwarted by a miniscule mystery woman before the police or the ChaotiX could get there, things have been peaceful. Just regular business. Crime rates in the city have steadily been dropping since Calvin Korkea and the ChaotiX first went public.
In fact, the crime rate actually drops even lower when Calvin is known to be out of town, because everyone also knows he’ll be back, and if he comes back and sees criminals wreaking havoc in his city, he will be extremely unhappy indeed. And then, he’ll make the criminals unhappy, too.
Few normos are stupid enough to fuck with a guy who can break the planet in half with a punch.
And everyone knows it’s only because Calvin is so patient that he doesn’t actually do so.
Few people are stupid enough to exhaust his patience.
And the ones who are don’t deserve mercy.
At the pens, Kyle Jones and several other employees feed the fluffies awaiting new owners. A few other workers are changing the litterboxes. Because the fluffies sold here are well-trained, the poopies are almost always in the litterboxes.
The pens emptied by the previous day’s customers were cleaned before closing.
The new occupants will be arriving soon.
They feed the fluffies by hand at Flufftopia, because this way, they’ll be used to humans feeding them.
Kyle looks down at one foal, only weaned a few days prior, as Kyle fills the food bowl with ÜberFluff Bestest Nummies kibble, and he also fills the water bowl with ÜberFluff Bestest Wawas bottled water.
It comes in multiple flavors, along with sparkling variants. It’s not just ordinary tap water like most bottled water is.
“Everything go alright last night, little guy?”
The foal nods.
“Yus, mistah Kai-wuh. Babbeh sweep wike a wock. Chirp!”
The rate at which foals stop chirping and peeping isn’t always the same for each individual foal. Marley and Piccolo, also only freshly weaned when Calvin first brought them home, stopped doing it a few days later.
But other foals can keep doing it until they’re almost not foals anymore. Cheech, almost a stallion by now, is still doing it, although it’s becoming less frequent, and Kyle thinks Cheech will stop doing it entirely within a week.
Kyle’s theories are usually accurate, despite what everyone he knows used to believe.
He hasn’t been gloating about just how right he turned out to be, because Kyle isn’t that arrogant.
Kyle now has a lot of friends with fluffies of their own, who don’t mind looking after Cheech while Kyle is at work, and there’s a good fluffy daycare near the apartment building, so Kyle doesn’t have to worry about Cheech being lonely until his daddeh comes home.
Some rare fluffies actually never stop chirping and peeping, for reasons still unknown. Valerie, who has extensively studied the fluffy genome, theorises that it has something to do with their bird DNA, but she can’t confirm it yet.
And of course, a sufficient amount of distress can cause an adult fluffy to revert to chirping and peeping.
As Kyle feeds the foals, over in the toy section, two of the burlier employees are moving large, quite heavy boxes onto an empty shelf.
The boxes contain fluffy-sized electric cars, and both men are lifting them like they’re made of styrofoam.
One of the employees, an Iranian man with gelled black hair, turns to his coworker.
“These things are pretty damn cool. Did Mr. F or Val design 'em, Dwayne?”
Dwayne shakes his head.
Yes, this is Dwayne’s day job.
“They can’t take the credit for this one, Aziz. Someone else designed them, Mr. F just improved them a bit. The battery life was a bit short.”
“So who did design them?”
Dwayne shrugs.
“Some blond nerdy guy. Dunno his name, but he likes to wear booty shorts and thigh highs for some reason. Dude looks like a lady. But there’s nothing wrong with that. He was on the news last year, he took a bunch of handicapped fluffies in, and made these cars for them. He’s a really cool guy, actually. Mr. F generously compensated the guy for giving him the idea. Hell, he offered to fund the guy’s work outright, and the guy said he’d think about it. Of course, Mr. F is is retired now, but Val and Suzy will both be happy to help the guy out if he accepts.”
Aziz raises an eyebrow.
“Handicapped? What happened to those poor fluffies?”
Dwayne sighs sadly, as he places another box on the shelf.
“Whaddya think happened to them, Aziz? An abuser happened. It wasn’t illegal back then. Cal said he’s gonna invite the inventor dude and his fluffies to the Foundation. A week in the regen vats, and the little guys will be right as rain.”
“What about the asshole who abused them?”
Then Dwayne manages to smile.
“He’s dead now. Some hobo stabbed him in the back of the neck and ran. And no, it wasn’t Vic in disguise. Vic said he was gonna go have a talk with the asshole, but the hobo beat Vic to him. And Vic also knows who the hobo is, and that he didn’t mean to kill the asshole.”
Dwayne smiles wider.
“And our thin friends told us that the asshole got reincarnated. As a fluffy. Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
“That it is, Dwayne.”
“But that’s not all, Aziz.”
“There’s something else?”
Dwayne winks knowingly.
“Cal thinks that the inventor guy is X-Positive. He thinks the guy could cross Threshold X any day now.”
At 9 AM sharp, the doors open, and the first customers quickly arrive.
Kyle sees one customer, who looks a lot like James Oldman did as a human. Long black hair, black jeans, a T-shirt with some heavy metal band’s logo on it, and big black boots, with dried fluffy bloodstains on them.
The customer makes a beeline for the pens.
Kyle groans, and turns to Dwayne.
“Keep an eye on that prick, he’s got abuser written all over him.”
Dwayne sees the customer and grins.
“Hey, I know that guy! He tried to buy a fluffy from Dave a while back. Ha, joke was on him, he didn’t know Dave is a half-demon.”
Kyle grins too.
“And I bet he doesn’t know that you can bench press a truck, either. I bet he spends all day at home abusing fluffies. He probably doesn’t have a damn clue about what goes on outside his little world.”
Dwayne winks at Kyle, and, as the obvious abuser looks through the pens, Dwayne sneaks up on him from behind and clears his throat.
You’d think the idiot would notice someone that big sneaking up on him, but he doesn’t, and he jumps.
Dwayne puts his best smile on, his voice dripping with feigned friendliness and cheerfulness.
“Can I help you, sir?”
The abuser turns around slowly, and his jaw drops when he sees just how jacked Dwayne is.
He starts stammering.
“Uh, no, I was just, um, I wanted to, er…”
Dwayne towers over the abuser, the smile not fading off his face, continuing to speak in the friendly, cheerful tone.
He does not actually touch the abuser at any point.
“You wanted some new stress toys, didn’t you? Bet you love the way they scream when you rip their legs off, don’t you?”
This is when the abuser fucks up.
“Oh yeah. So you can help me out? I keep breaking them too quickly.”
The smile on Dwayne’s face evaporates, and his voice doesn’t sound friendly or cheerful at all now.
“We do not allow that shit at Flufftopia. That shit is illegal around here, stupid. So here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going over to the counter. You’re giving them your real name and address, and they’re going to take your picture. Then we’re putting you on the list of banned customers. Banned from all of our stores, and we’re warning everyone else in the area who sells fluffies to keep an eye out for you. Except my friend Dave, but you’ve already met him, haven’t you? He’s a hot piece of ass, isn’t he? Bet you weren’t expecting that shit, huh?”
A damp spot appears around the abuser’s groin, as he remembers his visit to Fluffy Auschwitz, which he has been trying and failing to forget.
Dwayne indicates a badge on his uniform.
The badge is shaped like an octagon, with an X inside.
“You see this, asshole? You know what this means?”
The abuser timidly nods.
“So you know when to fold, yes? This conversation is being recorded. You pull any shit here, we’ll have proof. We already have you admitting that you’ve killed fluffies before, and we’ll be informing the police as well. So I humbly suggest that you do as I say, and go home. You need a change of clothes, and, judging by the smell now coming from your backside, you need a shower, too. Actually, you needed a shower to begin with, because your hair is so greasy. What do you use as shampoo, Crisco?”
The abuser quickly realizes that Dwayne is holding all the cards, and that there’s no way to win this fight.
The abuser runs over to the counters, giving them his name and address so quickly that they have to ask him to repeat himself slower.
As this happens, Dwayne chuckles to himself.
“Heh heh. Didn’t even have to touch him. It’s just like Prommy says, power must be used carefully. Or not at all, if you can help it.”
As the abuser runs out of the store, leaving a trail of bodily waste behind him, Dwayne sighs again.
“Although that wasn’t worth it. Yo, Glenn! You want help with that?”
No, not that Glenn. This Glenn has a perfectly normal human head.
Glenn, one of the janitors, a tall, brunet man in a blue jumpsuit, smiles as Dwayne walks over. Glenn had already started mopping, and was grumbling as he did so.
“Thanks, man. You know, I used to work at a hospital, and none of the staff there ever offered to help.”
Dwayne grabs a mop as well, and starts mopping.
“Really? Jeez. You’d think doctors would be more grateful, considering the messes they make.”
Glenn beams at Dwayne.
“Let me tell you about this one asshole who dropped a penny in the door and broke it on his first day…”