Note: read “One of Us” and “The Chaos Heartbeat Booming” first. There are spoilers for multiple sagas.
Early in the morning, Dr. Erwin Stahlberg blips into the lobby of the Faucheuse Foundation, ready to meet today’s patients.
blip
While the Foundation serves as a home for unwanted or formerly abused fluffies, and Fluffy Protective Services, it also serves as a general fluffy hospital. Anyone with a sick or injured fluffy can bring them in, and if you just need a check-up, that’s possible too.
Erwin isn’t the only doctor working here, he just happens to be the best doctor working here.
Before Erwin started working at the Foundation, he had his own fluffy GP. He’s the doctor Calvin and Judy brought their fluffies to for check-ups. His partner, business partner that is, took over after Erwin left for the Foundation.
Erwin has spent his entire life feeling deep shame for the crimes his great-uncle committed, and that was before Hans started working for the Order of Darkness, before Hans cloned Calvin and Miles, and before Hans built the robot formerly known as Caldroid.
Naturally, Erwin has also spent his entire life working to restore the Stahlberg family’s honor.
Erwin invented the Stahlskanner, a medical scanner, initially designed for use on humans, but later repurposed for his patients.
He invented the Stahlkörper 2.0, too. Rather than being a mechanical body like the original Stahlkörper, intended to permanently transfer a human soul into, the Stahlkörper 2.0 is, essentially, a large mechanical armor, that can be entered and exited as needed.
After the battle with Hans in the Netherlands, Erwin added a retractable plexiglass dome, to protect him from simply being removed from the armor by force.
The plexiglass is another of his inventions, Stahlglas, and it is extremely durable.
Erwin uses his inventions to better the world in any way possible.
Whether he’s fighting to protect the innocent…
…or, as he’ll be doing today, finding out what’s wrong with his patients, so he can cure them.
Five minutes after Erwin gets everything ready in the examination room, the first patient comes in.
A unicorn stallion, who has not made any poopies in three days, and is complaining about poopie place owwies.
Erwin places the stallion on the scanner.
The light flashes red.
bzzz
The buzz is designed to not be too loud, so as not to scare the patient.
Erwin looks at the scanner’s screen, tut-tutting, clarifying the matter in a soft, German-accented voice.
“Ah, now I see the problem. Poor guy is just constipated, that’s all.”
Erwin explains to the stallion what constipated means, and prescribes a stool softener, more fiber in the fluffy’s diet, and plenty of fluids.
“You can pick the stool softener up at the pharmacy, madam.”
Usually, Erwin gives his patients a treat as they leave, but the stallion turns it down.
“Dewe awweady enuff poopies in dewe!”
Erwin and the stallion’s owner laugh, and then the owner takes her fluffy over to the pharmacy.
Erwin gets the room ready for his next patient, disinfecting everything the stallion touched.
One of the reasons that Erwin is such a good doctor is because he thoroughly cleans his examination room between patients.
There are several devices in the room that get it done in minutes.
Then there’s the next patient.
Or rather, patients.
A litter of foals, a few days old, still blind, found an hour after they were abandoned behind Mario’s restaurant, along with the corpse of their mummah.
When the mare’s owner dumped the foals there, his fluffy pleaded him not to do so, and he kicked her, accidentally breaking her neck.
Fortunately, there’s been a drone invisibly observing the area since the Cleo and Julius incident, so the ChaotiX found out immediately.
While most of the foals were still alive, one of them had unfortunately died of distress by the time Calvin got there.
A sufficient amount of distress can be lethal to a foal. It can cause their tiny fluffy hearts to fail. You think adult fluffies die too easily?
While Calvin brought the surviving foals to the Foundation and waited for Erwin to examine them, Victor, disguised as one of the owner’s friends, got into position and tricked the stupid asshole into letting Victor into his house.
Victor then blipped the owner to his bunker, blipped back to the house, and took a huge dump in the asshole’s toilet.
To add insult to injury, Victor didn’t flush.
But if he had, that turd wouldn’t have gone down without a fight.
He also drank all of the beer in the asshole’s fridge, drew Sharpie mustaches and beards on every photo hanging on the walls, and poured out a bottle of very expensive dish soap into the kitchen sink.
Victor knows everything else the asshole did, and this is the least that asshole deserves.
Then Victor blipped back to his bunker, to give the asshole the most he deserves.
And Victor also made sure that nobody will ever know that he was in the asshole’s house.
One by one, Erwin places the foals onto the scanner, as Calvin watches, grinding his teeth like he’s high on molly at the thought of what the asshole did to his fluffy and her foals, his eyes flickering between blue and burning red.
Calvin has never once done any drug other than marijuana, and alcohol, if you count that as a drug.
The mare’s body has been removed to be buried with the foal who didn’t make it.
They can at least be together in death.
There’s a fluffy cemetery in the city now, too.
No, the fluffies buried there don’t rise from the grave as zombies. Calvin, who has seen a lot of movies, specified that the cemetery should not be built over any other burial grounds.
Each time, the light flashes green with a ping.
“Wunderbar. Another healthy litter, Cal.”
Calvin stops grinding his teeth, looking obviously relieved. His eyes go back to blue, and stay blue.
“That’s good to hear. Still a shame that one didn’t make it. Vic said he was going to have a talk with the asshole, haven’t heard from Vic yet.”
Calvin is still not aware of Victor’s efforts to ensure that Calvin remains a good man, by killing assholes so that Calvin doesn’t have to kill them.
Erwin nods sadly.
“Well, they must still be talking.”
Erwin is not aware of Victor’s bunker either.
“But all these foals need is a diet of Bestest Babbehs milk. Actually, warte einen moment, we just had Chaos bring in a couple who had lost their foals yesterday, they can take care of these guys.”
Erwin is one of the few Foundation employees who Chaos has given the honor of knowing exactly who “Mister Jester” really is.
Why did Chaos tell Erwin, you ask?
Because he’s Chaos! Don’t you get it yet?
And Erwin has kept it a secret from the normos, as Chaos requested.
Chaos rewarded Erwin for doing so with a roll of extra-soft 4-ply toilet paper that will never run out. For once, Chaos actually explained the logic behind his decision.
“A pack of toilet paper isn’t that expensive, but it adds up! I just saved you a fortune! Think about how many dumps one person takes in their entire life!”
Erwin couldn’t help but agree with this logic, and sincerely thanked Chaos.
Plus, it’s rainbow-colored toilet paper.
“They were pretty good parents to their litter before their owner put the foals in the microwave.”
Calvin starts grinding his teeth again. His eyes don’t start flickering red again, though.
“Please tell me he was just drunk, and mistook the foals for a bag of microwave popcorn.”
Erwin slowly shakes his head.
“But he was arrested for it, Cal. Unfortunately, he had the parents neutered and spayed after the litter was born, so they won’t be having another litter the old-fashioned way. I think they’ll be thrilled to meet these little guys.”
Calvin calms down again.
“Look, I’ve gotta get going, Suzy’s showing me the prototypes of the action figures Faucheuse Toys is making. Can you believe they’re making action figures of us, Erwin?”
Erwin smiles mischievously.
“Will yours come with a little plastic spliff, or are those sold separately?”
Calvin laughs.
“They’re being sold to kids, Erwin, so no spliffs. I tried, but Suzy put her foot down.”
“How are Susan and Xavier doing?”
“Well, I caught Xavier browsing Dave’s ring catalog, so you tell me. But I must be going now. I’ll be checking in later, Erwin.”
With that, Calvin departs, and Mark comes in to move the foals.
They’re clean, so they don’t need a bath. They’re going straight to the saferoom where the couple brought in yesterday is about to get a very pleasant surprise.
Then, there’s just a regular check-up for Cream, one of the fluffies living at the Foundation.
She knows the score, and cooperates happily.
Erwin places the cream and white pegasus mare on the scanner.
Her little yellow eyes are fixed on the screen.
Fluffies can’t read, but she thinks it looks pretty.
ping!
“Looks like you’re good, Cream. Just a bruise on your nose. You poor thing. How did that happen?”
Cream explains, looking a bit embarrassed.
“Cweem wan intu a waww, dok-tow. Cweem wuz chasin baww, an Cweem wuz nu wookin wewe Cweem wuz guin.”
Erwin strokes Cream gently.
“Be more careful next time, okay?”
Cream nods.
“Otay, dok-tow.”
Erwin gives Cream a treat, and Rosa returns the mare to her saferoom.
Cream is rooming with another mare, Cheese, a yellow and orange earthie mare, and they get along well. They’re best friends.
The Foundation tries to make sure that each saferoom has at least two fluffies in it, because fluffies are so much happier when they have company.
Then Drew wheels in another fluffy on a cart, too badly injured to be carried in.
Samuel the angel, in hobo form, follows Drew inside, having walked in on the fluffy’s owner beating him senseless, and he doesn’t look happy about it.
Samuel was this close to raining down holy fire on the owner, but managed to restrain himself, and settled for wrapping the owner up in heavenly chains and letting him dangle upside down from the ceiling until the police arrived.
By now, Samuel being an angel is public knowledge. He still uses the hobo form, because it’s grown on him, but he’s started looking like different hobos, to keep abusers on their toes.
Someone caught him changing forms in an alley and recorded it, uploading it to YouTube.
Samuel wasn’t happy about that, either, but he reasoned that it would have happened sooner or later.
He knows that it’s not like back in the old days, when the only proof of angels was a book that has been rewritten multiple times by people with various agendas.
The Boss didn’t do that to Job. He never touched the guy. People Up There laugh at how much people Down Here get wrong. It’s like the wizards and Harry Potter.
Erwin doesn’t need to examine the fluffy, simply gesturing to an open door.
In the next room, there are several vats, in rows, all identical to the one in Valerie’s lab.
“I’ll just put him in here, a few days in the vat and he’ll be right as rain.”
Drew wheels the fluffy into the regeneration room, and Erwin places the fluffy inside one of the empty vats.
Most of the vats are empty at this time, save for one, the occupant having foolishly jumped off the kitchen table. All of the bones in all four of her leggies were pulverized on impact, and all four leggies had to be amputated.
But here, that’s just a temporary problem.
Drew wheels the cart out, because he needs to check up on a dam who could give birth any day now.
After securing the breathing mask, the vat is closed and starts filling up with regeneration fluid.
The vat and the fluid were both invented by Valerie, but how the fluid works is a secret.
Though it is publicly known that it works better than the healing gels sold by other companies.
That crap can’t regrow leggies.
Samuel puts his hands on his hips, looking most impressed.
“I’m impressed, Erwin.”
See?
“You humans can make terrible things, but you can also make wonderful things. Valerie made these…”
Samuel gestures around the regeneration room.
“You made that…”
Then he gestures through the door at the Stahlskanner, before turning back to Erwin.
“And while you could have made machines to destroy life like Hans did, instead, you made a machine to defend life. And Alpha, he’s also fighting on the side of life now. Still more proof that there is always hope for Man. And that there’s hope for Machine, too. That any man, or machine, can learn from his mistakes. That they can be more than their mistakes.”
Erwin smiles again.
“Thanks, Samm-- I mean, Samuel. Sorry.”
Samuel laughs.
“It’s alright, you caught yourself at the last second. The el part is important, you know.”
With that, Samuel leaves, though he doesn’t specify where he’s going.
The angel will be flying to another city to deal with a fluffy pimp.
The bastard pimps them out to humans.
He’s getting the holy fire, at full blast.
And once he gets Down There, the burning will never cease.
After Samuel leaves, Erwin’s eyes drift toward the clock.
It’s about time he took a break.
The other doctors can handle any patients until Erwin gets back.
Erwin makes his way out of the Foundation, heading to a nearby Starbucks.
Half an hour later, his stomach now containing two cups of coffee and four donuts, Erwin returns to his examination room.
Not thirty seconds after he sits down, Mark wheels in a fluffy covered in cigarette burns, only a few of them being fresh.
One of the cigarettes was put out in the fluffy’s eye, and he’s now half-blind.
Andre follows Mark in, looking extremely angry, and Andre is very slow to anger.
“Nigga couldn’t buy a fuckin’ ashtray?!? Mark, you guys got an empty room?”
“Yeah, we just repainted one of the rooms, don’t ask why, and we haven’t moved any of the fixtures back in yet, it’s completely bare. Why, Andre?”
“I need to blow off some steam.”
As Erwin places the unfortunate fluffy used as an ashtray into an unoccupied regeneration vat, Mark leads Andre to the empty room.
Andre contorts his body into a perfect sphere, and he starts wildly bouncing around the room, screaming various profanities.
The walls in the Foundation are very sturdy, and soundproofed.