It was dark by the time Alison and Eric found the front door ajar. The house was eerily silent as she navigated the corpses at the threshold, weapon drawn. Eric was right behind her, his Kriss Vector ready and set to full auto.
They started silently clearing rooms until they reached Shane’s room, where Alison spotted a spent pistol casing and a small pool of blood. Looking back into the hall, she could see a blood trail, and motioned Eric to follow.
Outside, they finally heard voices coming from the barn.
“Let’s try this again. You’re out of fingers so I’ll just be working my way up your arms now. WHERE IS THE FLUFFY!”
“PLEASE! I DON’T KNOW! NO! NO!” Shane screamed before howling with renewed pain.
By this time Alison had peeked around the barn door and spotted the illuminated stall. Again motioning to Eric, she moved silently to the stall door.
“It was so nice of you to leave all this torture equipment here, saved me a lot of time you did! Now that you’re cauterized yet again, let’s try something else, how 'bout an eye?”
“NO! PLEASE I DON’T KNOW! HE WAS RIGHT HERE!” Shane shouted before screaming as a hissing sound was heard.
Alison and Eric rounded the corner to see Shane tied to a chair, his face covered in blood, with a masked man destroying his right eyeball with a soldering iron. Shane’s missing fingers and palms were in a few dozen pieces, scattered on the floor.
“Hands where I can see them!” Alison shouted as she and Eric entered the room. All three men went for their holsters, and all three were dead before they hit the ground.
Shane looked up at them, crying tears of joy from his remaining eye. “You saved me!”
Alison looked at him with disgust. “Thing is kid, ‘saved’ is a tricky term here, as it turns out we work for someone who is much angrier at you then they were.”
Earlier:
Pistol struggled against the leg board, the ultimate fluffy restraint. He was covered in burns from Shane and desperately thirsty, but all he cared about was escaping to rescue his family from Shane’s insane wrath.
Harder and harder Pistol tried, until with a sickening pop, his left shoulder dislocated. Pistol SCREED at the pain, but gritted his teeth. The dislocated limb now had enough range of motion for Pistol to pull it free from the leg board, sobbing as he did.
Pistol then set the dislocated leg firmly on the board and pushed himself up on it. It was agony as only tendons and blood vessels supported his weight but finally he managed to free his front right leg. From there he stopped to breath and sob in pain before using his right leg to help lift his rear legs free.
Then he looked over the edge of the table he was on. Happily, Shane had left a chair next to it, and although Pistol had intended to hop down gracefully, he forgot about his dislocated leg and rolled to a painful stop on the floor after slamming into the chair.
Pistol slowly made his way out of the barn on three legs, huuhuuing all the way to the house’s back porch, under which was a puddle of rain water. After quenching his desperate thirst, Pistol fell into an exhausted sleep just as the masked men marched Shane out the porch door.
As Eric called the local sheriff, Alison looked carefully around the barn and spotted a trail of seemingly fresh mucus, like from a sobbing fluffy. The trail led straight to Pistol, still unconscious under the porch.
“Pistol?” Alison called once she had spotted him. Pistol awoke instantly, but stayed still and silent, suspecting it was Shane trying to trick him.
“Dave sent me to find you, are you here?”
Pistol’s head shot up at the mention of Dave. In Pistol’s injured and exhausted state, a random human saying they were sent by Dave was good enough.
“Pistow am hewe. Hab huwties, nee hewp.” He managed to force through his hoarse horse vocal cords.
By this time, the sheriff’s sirens could be heard in the distance, and Eric had made it to the porch where he delicately extracted Pistol, before noticing the fluffy’s dislocated leg.
“Hey Pistol, look over there!” Eric said before swiftly popping Pistol’s shoulder back into place.
“Owie! Why yu… oh, Pistow nu hab bigges weggie hewties nu mowe. Tank yu nice mistah!” Pistol said before gasping “Pistow nee fin famiwy! Dey dis way!” Eric put Pistol down and Alison followed him inside as Eric went around the house to greet the sheriff and his deputies.
Pistol led Alison to the ‘safe’ room door, which he identified by smell. “Famwy hewe, dis one!”
The door swung open to reveal a distinct lack of fluffies within. “Are you sure this it the right room Pistol?” Alison asked. She had never been in the room before, and did not notice that the dog bed had been moved.
“Dey hewe” Pistol said as he made his way over to the dog bed before shoving it away with a hoof. Beneath, inside a now fluffy sized hole in the floor, were Sally and the surviving twelve foals.
“PISTOW!” Cried Sally.
“SAWWY!” Cried Pistol.
“DADDEH!” Cried Jave.
“RED!” Cried Red.
While the entire family of fluffies looked at Red who quickly changed his tune and greeted Pistol, Alison had knelt down and started lifting fluffies out of their hidey-hole.
There was a heart warming moment as Pistol’s entire fluffy family hug tackled him, before Alison explained what had happened and lead them all to Eric’s car, which they had equipped with four cat carriers for transporting any part of the family they might find.
The Sheriff told Eric that he and Alison were good to go, and Alison, Eric, Pistol, Sally, and all the foals drove off into the night as the ambulance carrying Shane pulled out from the driveway and headed in the other direction.