27/2/20XX
11:32 AM
The camera is rolling.
“Is this thing on? Good. My name is Dr. –bzzzt–, damn, audio’s still glitchy, oh well, and today I am continuing my ongoing investigations into the phenomenon known as Syndrome-P53, with another new subject. The previous subject had to be terminated, due to the previous iteration of the formula’s unpredicted side-effects.”
The doctor’s voice is deep, and sounds foreign. And there’s something off about it.
He looks old, but oddly spry, and his eyes seem to glow a faint blue. But that might be a trick of the light. He’s bald, and wearing what look like metallic gloves.
The doctor walks away from the camera, into another room, the walls lined with cages. Barely audible is the chatter of high-pitched voices, making their discontent known.
“Pwease wet See-Fwee-Tu owt! Nu wike sowwy box!”
“Huu… huu… Eff-Sebben-Sebben wan huggies… huuuu…”
The doctor extracts a fluffy from a cage marked “U-86”.
“Nice mistah doktow be nyu daddeh fow Yu-Ate-Siss?” the fluffy asks.
The doctor doesn’t respond, as he carries the fluffy back into the laboratory, over to a pen, with tall, clear walls, in clear view of the camera. After making sure the door to the fluffy room is securely shut (that room is designed to be airtight when properly sealed off, with its own air supply, for reasons that will soon become apparent), the man walks over to a cupboard, pulling out two things.
One is a stuffy friend, made for an adult fluffy.
The other is a bottle labeled “P53”.
“I am about to apply several drops of Pheromone 53 to the stuffy friend. But first, I must administer the new… for lack of a more accurate term, vaccine.”
Pulling out a freshly filled syringe, the doctor walks over to the pen and, with surprisingly fast movement, injects the fluffy.
“Wut doktow doin–owwies!”
As U-86 starts huu-huuing, the doctor walks over to the desk and applies a few drops from the bottle onto the stuffy friend.
U-86’s demeanor changes in an instant. His little eyes swivel around, looking for something out of sight.
“Now I shall place the stuffy friend in the pen,” the doctor says, as he does exactly that, “and hopefully this time the subject will not-- oh merde.”
With a high-pitched snarl, the fluffy tears the stuffy friend apart.
Sighing, the doctor pushes a few buttons, and mechanical arms descend from the ceiling, picking up the fluffy and the stuffy, and unceremoniously dropping them both into a nearby incinerator, before more arms appear to clean up everything, erasing all traces of the pheromone. The fluffy had the pheromone on him after mauling the stuffy friend, and it would take a longer bath than either the fluffy or the doctor would be willing to put up with to get it all off. The doctor turns back to the camera, with a weary look on his face.
“Damn it all. Of all the fluffies I’ve been working with, only 30% of them proved to be immune, and none of the various formulas I’ve injected have achieved the desired results. The iteration before this one just made it worse; causing P53’s effects to become permanent in any injected fluffy. I destroyed all samples of that iteration immediately, and my notes on that formula. I shudder to think about what someone could have done with that and a bottle of P53. Clearly, I still have plenty of work to do. I need to find a way to neutralise the effects of P53 soon. I don’t know how many fluffies are naturally immune, and the pheromone detectors are only buying us time. I will begin work on the next iteration immediately.”
The doctor presses a button, and the camera stops recording.
The doctor looks at a large screen, the words “INCOMING CALL” flashing on it.
“Accept.”
The image of a man appears on the screen. He too looks old, but with long hair, white-gold, and deep blue eyes.
“Doctor.”
“Doctor.”
“Listen, I’m calling to let you know, we’ve got another case.” says the doctor on the screen.
“Another? Where?”
“In –bzzzt–, sorry, I said in –bzzzt– what’s going on?”
“I’ve been suffering from audio glitches all morning. Never mind, continue.”
“I just got a call from one of your store’s employees. He was at the park when it happened. It wasn’t his fluffy, it was someone else’s, but it was a Flufftopia fluffy.”
Aaah, Flufftopia, the doctor thinks. I started that little enterprise to fund my experiments, but I’ve actually started taking pride in it.
“What did he do?”
“Told the man to go home and lock his fluffy in until he got a call. I need his address and phone number. He’s a Flufftopia customer, name of Chris Oldman, should be in the system.”
A few minutes of tapping on a keyboard.
“Got it, I’ll send you the details immediately.”
“Good. And get another detector ready to ship out. Any luck with the formula yet?”
“Not yet, I just finished another failed test run. Back to the drawing board.”
“Ah, well. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavours.”
“Likewise… Brother.”