You are Surge the Tenrec. It has been three weeks since you found a little rust-colored Bowl Fluffy under a dumpster and adopted it, and one week since it opened it’s eyes for the first time and told you it loved you.
Ever since then, you’d consumed even more fluffy content online at a rapid pace; even the abusebox videos you’d stayed away from were falling into your purview, just so you knew what behaviors to watch out for. Not so you could start punishing, or delighting in torturing your little bowl; no, so you could make goddamn good and sure your precious little guy became a GOOD little guy. You had realized with horror that if he became a Smarty, you’d have to put him down, and so you were going to do everything you could to make sure you never had to hurt your little guy. Because you were sure if you had to hurt him, someone ELSE - maybe a LOT of someone elses - were going to get hurt in your rage.
So, you read, and you watched, and you consumed all the content you could. Learning how to take care of him, how to reprimand him, what you could do to encourage, and what you must do to dissuade. The only reason you didn’t grow despondent from it all was because you had come across SEVERAL stories and articles that relieved you; not directly, no, but from insinuation, you’d picked up that once a fluffy was successfully taught to use the litterbox, that was one of three major determinations on whether or not it would grow up to be a good fluffy or not.
You glanced over at your fluffy; he had learned to walk, taking careful steps around his hamster cage enclosure, slowly because he was gaining size. He walked over to beam at you, then to the other side to look at a pile of boxes against a wall, then back to smile at you again. Then, he walked over to the litterbox, made his poopies, and used his back hoof - formerly the one that had gotten dislocated - to push sand over it so the smell was cut off. “Mummah! Bebbeh make gud poopie!” it said, and you gave a close-mouthed smile in his direction. “Good boy~” you said, relief clear on your face. He beamed again, and then lay down on his washcloth ‘nestie’, cooing contentedly. It had been well-behaved this entire time; there was hope after all.
Later on, you took it out for it’s feeding; it supped from your tit, and you held it there, giving it another smile that showed off your teeth. It cringed, shuddered, but then looked up at you, smiling again. It was learning to not be afraid; you weren’t sure how to feel about that. Fear would keep this fragile little thing alive, and when it was scared, you knew it wouldn’t grow up to be a Smarty. But it’s recoil from your sharp teeth had been lessening, and worry crept into your again. “You’re a tough little guy, huh? Gonna grow up strong?” you asked him, and he raised his little hoofs up to you. “Babbeh gwow big an’ stwong foh mummah!” he replied.
‘For Mummah, huh?’ you thought, rubbing your thumb over his head to pet him. ‘I wonder if that’s some natural instinct to say, or if he has my best interest in mind?’ You hated yourself for doubting, but you had to be sure. You HAD to make sure you didn’t need to pop this little guy for becoming a Smarty later. You didn’t know how, so as usual, you went through the motions of your life, trying to find out a way to test him.
The answer came in the form of another comic. In it, a bowl fluffy mummah was crossing a small pond, her babbehs ushered in on her belly as a human looked on. You read as he grabbed a handful of gravel and began to slowly pour it into the bowl fluff, weighing her down, making her slowly sink. Her ‘bestest’ babbeh - another term you’d need to watch out for - seemed as if it had a plan to deal with it. Instead of being a Smarty, however, it ate an entire bellyfull of gravel, waddled in pure agony to it’s mother’s face, and shat out the gravel into her mouth. You felt queasy just reading that, wrinkling your nose; the thought of it even TOUCHING you made you want to vomit, and that little shitrat dumped in it’s own mother’s mouth. It got smacked off into the water, causing the mummah to turn to try and rescue it; it’s other babbehs slid off into the water. It’s bestest sank from the gravel in it’s gut and drowned, two more landed face-down in the water and drowned, and the one babbeh that DID land on it’s back floated alongside it’s crying, screaming mother as the river current carried them off to who-knows-what fate.
Altogether, a fitting end for shitrats, you thought, and then did a double-take. You looked in horror at your own fluffeh; could you? Would you? Like a punch to your gut, the answer came immediately to your mind; “Not MY fuckin’ fluffy. I’ll drown the motherfucker that TRIES the same shit to my little rusty!” You calmed, sighing; you had slowly come to realize that for other fluffies you read about you were getting more and more deadened to the carnage. IF anything, you sought it out now; not just to learn and teach your own, but to see Smarties and smarty-adjacents get their comeuppance. A weird middle-ground, to be sure, but you knew goddamn good and well, at the very least, yours would be safe from yourself, at the very least.
Later on that same week, you saw your bowl-foal (heh) wander around his cage intently; climbing up the little hamster-ladder to the second floor, then back down, then back up again. “Oi, oi, what’s goin on?” you asked, walking over as he made a third trip. Your foal looked up, eyes bright and smile wide. “Babbeh spwow! Wan’ spwow!” he said, and a cold feeling crept up your back. Every time there was a ‘splorin-babbeh’ in the comics, they met some horrible demise; walking into the street and getting run over, walking up to a crab and getting their ear ripped off, turning a single corner and becoming hopelessly lost, only to end up grabbed by someone or something else. You shook your head once and looked around your base; it was furnished in all sorts of things you’d stolen from the area. Couches, cushions, boxes, appliances haphazardly stacked. You suddenly realized you needed a safespace - errrr, saferoom - for the little guy. You couldn’t just keep him in that cage; not particularly because of the “animals don’t belong in cages” schtick, especially considering how close to a rat he was anyways, but also because his bowl-shape was making him too wide in there. Sooner or later he’d run out of places to move.
“Aight little guy, wait right there. I’ll find ya somewhere ta 'splore.” you told him, and zipped off to a side-room you never used. It was full of random crap you’d just tossed in; parts from robots you’d smashed, expensive-looking stuff people had dropped in the street, a spare set of keys to your base. Using super-speed you cleaned it out, putting all the random crap in different places that made “sense”; the robot parts near the boxes in the main room where most were labeled “SPARE PARTS” or “SCRAP”, the expensive stuff moved to your personal room, etc. By the time you were done the side-room was empty, save for a few things you thought’d be clever to keep in there, based on what you’d read. A signed baseball that had nearly hit you as you jogged past a park one day to be, well, a ball. A bigger litterbox you’d stolen when you realized that some fluffies could grow about the same size as a dog. A very soft capsule of some kind that crinkled when you crumpled it in your hand, but sprang back to it’s overall shape that you’d used as a sort of calming toy when your mind was too busy to let you sleep. And, to top it off, two small comfy-chair cushions, for…you dunno. Something. You’d sure he’d find a way to use them.
You filled the litterbox with fresh sand and darted back to your bowl-fluff, opening the cage door and lifting him out in the palm of your hand. “Aight, i got somethin’ for ya.” you said, and carried him and his cage to the side room, placing him on the floor and putting the cage in the doorway; it fit just fine, but there was definitely no room for him to squeeze out on either side.
You are a bowl fluffy, and this is the bestest day ever! You told your mummah you were a 'splorin babbeh, and she told you to wait; being a good babbeh, you sat on your cloth nestie, watching mummah suddenly vanish. From time to time you saw a green blur of some kind dart in and then back out, and each time it left, something had been put to the side, or it darted past the door. You weren’t sure what it was, but it had mummah’s colors, and as the boxies on the wall were joined by large shiny somethings, you figured it must be helping her. Then, mummah was back in no time, picking you up and the metal bar boxie you’d lived in your whole life and taking them into a new room. As she set you down and blocked the way out with the cage, you gasped in delight; there was a ball! A litterbox for good poopies! Some yellow thing that also looked fun, and two big things! You didn’t have a name for it all, but you ran over to what you instinctually knew first; you ran to the white ball with little red patterns on it and bumped it with your hoofsie. It was a little heavy, and the first bump hurt a little, but you promised to be a strong babbeh, so you kept kicking it. “Yaaaaay! Tank 'ou peep mummah, foh bestest woomie, cheep and baww!” you cheeped up at her, playing your little heart out. Suddenly, you remembered; you wanted to splore! After your third ball-roll you saw the two big things, and waddled on over to the one leaning on the wall.
“Babbeh spwow!” you chirped happily, and waddled under the cushion; it was a little dark under here, but there was a light on the other side. You pushed on through, your little heart beating excitedly as you viewed yourself as the best splorin’ babbeh ever, goin’ through this tunnel! You pushed against the side of the cushion on your way, and you heard it rasp against the wall; slowly it slid down on top of you, and you gasped, chirping in surprise! It was a small cushion to anyone else, but to you, it was big enough to cover you entirely! In your panic you wiggled beneath it, putting your leggies below you, and tried to run away; it was still on you though, and you couldn’t shake it off!
You are Surge, and you lean against the wall, smirking as your little bowl-fluff rolls the little baseball around.
You had thought it’d be too heavy, or too hard at first - after all, fluffies were fragile as glass sometimes, and a baseball was certainly no plastic ball-pit ball. You thought you should’ve gone out and found one of those, but as you watched your fluff figure out he could use the outside of his hooves and not the soft, tender center of them, you figured it’d be all right. When he thanked you, you allowed yourself to dare to hope that would continue later on in his life. After the third kick, he seemed to pause, and then turned around, looking all over. He spotted the chair cushion against a wall, and waddled over to it, proclaiming “Babbeh spwow!” as he wiggled behind it.
You watched him make it about a third of the way before it slid down and fell on him; it was a simple kitchen chair cushion, one of those four-dollar ones that typically went flat within a month, and not heavy at all. All the same, your bowl fluff let out a chirp of surprise when it landed on him, and you had to hold back a snicker as he suddenly ran around the empty carpeted space with it stuck on his back, his wide bowl-shaped body keeping it in place.
He ran to a wall and it bumped off him, sliding easily; however, he didn’t stop, and ran right into the wall with a small ‘thud’. “EE! Huwties!!” he cried out, and held his head as he began to let out those little ‘huuuuhuuuhuuuus’ that you’d heard a dozen times over from the voiceover. You walked over, thinking how remarkable it was that the channel you’d found had gotten their voice SO damn close to how these things actually sound, and picked up your fluffy, holding him to you as you’d done when he first spoke. “Ahhh, there there. You just got a little bump, little guy!” you told him, gently rubbing around the area he’d bumped, but not directly on the spot.
He sniffled twice and looked up at you, tears in his eyes and down his cheeks, and rubbed his hoof against the spot he’d bumped. “Babbeh, cheep hab onwy widdwe huwties?” he asked, blinking a moment and then looking up, as if trying to see his forehead. “Onwy huwtie widdwe peep”. He pat his head again, wincing, but then blinked up at you. “Huwtie nu moh! cheep Mummah huggie, owie gu way!” He leaned in and hugged your shirt-covered breast, cooing softly. You smiled and sat down against a bare wall, and for the rest of the hour you watched him wander around the room, ‘splorin’ every wall and even the cushion that had startled him, crawling beneath it once more and lifting it up again. “Heehee, babbeh cheep cawwy nestie! Stwong babbeh! chirp”
You are Surge, and it is later that night. You’d left your little bowl in his saferoom after feeding him milkies, and were flopped on your bed, draped across it haphazardly, naked save for your own blanket over your neck and nowhere else. You had woken up one day, many years ago, to the mad doctor holding you by the throat. You couldn’t remember why, exactly; you think it might’ve had something to do with putting a grubworm in his fruit smoothie. Either way, despite it pissing you off more than anything else, it left you with a permanent need to have your neck covered while you slept. The thought ran through your head over and over, and you growled; suddenly it wasn’t the doctor, but you. Your hands were wrapped around a neck, but it wasn’t you again; no, it was a fat blue fluffy, it’s horn glowing weakly. It had called you ‘dummeh’ over and over, and your hands were gripping it tighter and tighter. It’s face turned blue, it’s eyes bulged…and then suddenly it was rust-colored, and a bowl.
You bolted upright in your bed, immediately looking down at your hands; nothing. Nadda. Not a goddamn thing clenched in them. You let them drop to the bed and a look of sheer annoyance crossed your face. Really? Nightmares over a fluffy? Fucking REALLY? You flopped onto your back again with a sigh, staring up at the ceiling, when suddenly you heard a CRASH from outside, and a loud, unmistakable “SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”! You bolted up out of bed, running to the saferoom. The cage had somehow been pushed aside, turned diagonally out of the doorway, and you grit your teeth. Someone had broken in! There’s no way a fluffy would be able to push a hamster cage out of the way!
You heard the sobbing of your little guy and dashed into the computer/main room, electricity crackling around your body, eyes glowing bright, teeth fully bared and fists clenched as you looked around for the culprit. You didn’t see him, but you heard your fluffy crying to one side; turning your shock off for just a moment you hurried of to the pile of robot parts and boxes you heard him coming from, and lifted a single spare forearm with the hand attached off a rust-colored lump of fluff. You bowl looked up at you, tears pouring down his face, his back leg broken in two places; that same damn leg that’d been dislocated when you found him, as if the universe were trying to put it back. “MUMMAH! CHEEP WOWSTES HUWTIES! PEEP WEGGY HUWTY, NU WOWK!” the foal cried out, and you picked it up, stuffing the arm into a box and magnetizing it so it wouldn’t fall out again, rushing to the bathroom.
There was no comics or stories about how to treat a fluffy’s broken leg, so you had to go for the next best thing; normal broken legs. Pet videos said you needed to amputate, as it would never grow back properly, but you - being the irresponsible punk you were - said ‘fuck that’ and decided to try and heal it. “Aight, take a deep breath!” you told your fluffy as he cried on the counter, your thumbs in place. “Mummah’s gonna help, but you need to be strong, all right??” Half-asleep, all this seemed like a good idea. Your fluffy managed to stop crying long enough to nod, give an “Otay”, and then breathed in as much as he could. You pressed down with your thumbs, and by sheer dumb luck, managed to set the bones back into place. This, however, brought forth a fresh batch of screaming and peeping, crying and scardy-peepees; you didn’t notice, but he had already shat himself dry before you picked him up from the metal arm. You washed your hands, the water scalding your bare skin, and then you wiped down his leggy and backside with a warm washcloth you tugged off the rack. Once clean, you cut a popsicle stick in half and used them as a brace while you wound bandages around your fluffy’s leg.
An hour later, you’re sitting on the side of the tub, holding your little guy as his peeps slow down. “Oi. Little guy. What happened earlier?” you asked, holding him up carefully, on his back in your palm. “Who did you see?”
“Onwy saw…mummah peep.” he replied, and you shook your head. “Nah, i mean, who let you out of your safe room? I put the cage down to stop you but someone moved it?” you asked, and your babbeh looked like he was about to cry again. “Babbeh…spwowin cheep. An’ babbeh wan’ spwow mowe. Babbeh…mub cagey. Nu mub esee peep. Buh, babbeh am stwong foh mummah. Babbeh mub. Den spwow mummah nestie. Fin’ boxy, wan’ spwow. Den…big owwies.”
You listened incredulously, blinking. “YOU moved the cage?” you asked, standing back up and walking out into the hall, looking down at it. It was a normal, two-‘floor’ hamster cage, made with a plastic floor, the crossing bars made of metal. You thought the plastic floor made it easy to slide, but a quick nudge with your footpaw made it only slide an inch or so. At most, it was about three pounds, but still twice what a normal fluffy should be strong enough to handle. Sure, he’d run around with that feather-light cushion on his back, but this cage should’ve been WELL outside his abilities. “Babbeh…sowwy.” your fluff said, and you looked back to him; tears stained his cheek fur. “Nah, nah little guy. You ain’t do nothin’ wrong.” you said, hugging him to you again. “I just don’t know how you coulda done that.”
“Babbeh…show?” your little guy peeped, and you blinked. “You gotta cast on yer leg, dude, i don’ think you can even go to the litterbox by yourself now.” you told him, but something compelled you to squat down and gently place him on the floor. He waddled oddly on three legs, the cast holding the one firm, but he puffed his little cheeks up and waddled to the cage. “Babbeh…stwong!” he said, putting his little hooves against it, seeming to push. He stopped then, and looked up. “Uh…nee’…wittabok.” You rolled your eyes, picked him up, and carried him over; he made his good poopies, and then back to the cage you went.
Once more he placed his hooves upon it, but with only one working back leg, you thought for sure nothing would happen. “Oi, c’mon little guy, let’s just get you to bed.” you said, but he kept pushing against the cage. As you reach for him, you heard a small rasp, and froze. The bowl fluff bent his good knee, and gave an - to him - allmighty PUSH. The cage moved exactly one inch, and he panted with exertion, waddling back to your hand. “See! Babbeh stwong cheep! Foh mummah! Du wotta pushie peep, buh cagie mub!”
You picked him up, and he latched onto your tits suddenly; the exhaustion of pushing the cage even an inch made him hungry, and he drank almost twice what he usually did, burping softly and panting, rubbing his full tummy. All the while, you stared at him, your brain feeling like it was going to start smoking soon.
How the HELL did he DO that?