The good Dr. Crazystein, chapter 10
Dr. Crazystein’s Fake Surgery
Dr. Crazystein rubbed his head, sitting and trying his hardest to think. How could he remove something without removing it?
He had already said he’d do it, so he couldn’t go back on his word. And at this point, his pride as a scientist was on the line.
The best idea he had was to fake remove it. Maybe by hiding it? That would also spare him the sorrow of un-monstering a neat monster. But how would you hide an entire limb?
He wracked his brain over and over, until finally something came to mind. Namely, white cotton. After he had hurt his eye, after he had gone through surgery, both times the soft white cotton stuff had been taped on to hide the wounds. Who was to say it wouldn’t be able to hide an unhurt wing, too? It’d look like a wound without actually being one.
Best part was, it didn’t need sharpy things either! All he needed was some soft white stuff and some band-aids to tape it on with.
… Which, he then recalled, he had not found anywhere in the playpen.
It was ridiculous. How could an esteemed daycare not have band-aids? What were the fluffies meant to do if someone got hurt, just hug it better??
(Amor confirmed that this was exactly what they did. It did not help Dr. Crazystein’s mood.)
Either way, they were left with the same dilemma. Some of what the good doctor needed just wasn’t within reach. He knew the humans had what he needed somewhere - his owner had band-aids after all, which meant all humans had them - but he didn’t know where. Somewhere outside of this fluffy-filled saferoom, beyond the fence separating their brightly-colored playpen from the duller colors humans liked.
He tried to climb out of the enclosure to check the humans’ area, but the fabric mesh that made up the fence was too soft and smooth to let him get a grip. Amor tried to help, letting the doctor climb on top of him, but even then they couldn’t reach over the mesh.
“What am meanie doctah doing?” asked a filly, and Dr. Crazystein looked over to see Mary. She looked no happier than the last time he’d seen her, watching the two with a suspicious gaze.
“Am twying to weave,” he explained. “Nee’ toows.”
“… Fowevew?” Mary asked cautiously. The little doctor thought about it. If he couldn’t find any band-aids, maybe he really would be gone a forever or two.
“Nu know yet.”
“Otay, Mawy hewp!”
It caught him off guard, but Mary shoved herself in between Amor and Dr. Crazystein and helped boost him up, allowing the doctor to just barely reach and haul himself over the fence. He yelped as he tumbled head over hooves and crashed onto his back on the other side, legs in the air.
“Bye-bye!” Mary called as she hopped off Amor, quickly stepping away with a shake of her hooves as if she’d been standing on a pile of poopies.
“Good wuck,” Amor added, standing on his hind legs and leaning on the mesh fence. “Amow wiww wait hewe!”
Awkwardly rolling over and climbing to his hooves, Dr. Crazystein tried to shake off the ache in his back. His fluff had cushioned the impact, but he’d in no way been prepared for a fall like that. That was unimportant, though - he was out! There were sure to be band-aids somewhere out here.
The non-fluffy area looked very different from the saferoom. The walls were much grayer with big windows on them, and the floor was hard instead of carpeted. There was a big glass door leading outside, and two other doors that lead to somewhere else, but they had no fluffy flaps and overall everything looked … dull. There was a big desk with a chair near the door, where his owner had spoken to a stranger when dropping him off, but the only proper color around came from a sitting area with fatty bean bags and sofas. And even in that area, there were no toys or anything.
The little doctor searched around the bean bags, but aside from a dropped pretzel snack found nothing of use. Below the desk he found a trashcan, but as he was trying to look into it he heard the sound of an opening door, followed by Amor panicking. “Doctah, hide!”
Ducking down behind the trashcan instead of climbing into it like he’d intended, Dr. Crazystein could only hear the sounds of a human walking past. He wasn’t sure why hiding was necessary, but Amor had sounded so urgent about it…
“Hey little guys,” he heard a human lady speak. “Everyone doing good?” She must have gotten a nod or something in response, because she kept talking. “You settling back in well, Mary?”
“Yus, Mawy am fine now.”
“Cool. How about that new fluffy? Crazystain?”
“Uh. Doctah am fine,” Amor replied awkwardly. Very awkwardly.
“… Where is he?”
“Um.”
There was a pause. “No really, where is he? I can see Merlin, Railroad, Lime … Is he hiding?”
“Yus,” Amor agreed at once, and Dr. Crazystein winced. Didn’t the monster fluffy know that such leading questions were tricks to find out if you were lying? Now she’d know for sure that he wasn’t -
“Yeah, that makes sense. His owner did say he didn’t do well with other fluffies.”
Wait, really? The little doctor blinked, surprised both at the lie working and at his mother saying he couldn’t get along with others. As Ivo and the gray filly had proved, he could manage other fluffies just fine! He just didn’t like if they were too loud or too touchy or obnoxious or too big.
“It’s not your fault or anything,” assured the human lady. “He’s just overwhelmed. Just don’t bother him until he feels more comfortable with you, okay?”
“Otay,” answered Amor and then the lady walked on, her footsteps growing fainter until a door closed. For a second, everything was silent. “Doctah can stop hiding now!”
Stepping out from his hiding spot, his initial plan to dig through the trash forgotten, Dr. Crazystein looked around. Amor was still at the mesh, looking proud of himself yet guilty over having lied, and the door that human lady had entered from stood slightly open.
Well, if any room would have band-aids, it would be the one humans hung out in. Nodding to himself, the little doctor pushed the door open a bit further and squeezed through, stepping onto a coldly tiled floor.
He emerged into what appeared to be a kitchen and a living room all at once. It was small like a kitchen and he recognized the big cold food box, but somehow lots of cabinets and a table with chairs had been squeezed in too and the smell of a bitter drink his owner called coffee permeated the air.
Dr. Crazystein was much too small to reach anything other than the bottom cabinets, but there was plenty to look through and they weren’t too hard to shove open. None contained band-aids, unfortunately, but he found quite a lot of soft stuff - an entire huge roll of soft white paper, a yellow squishy block that was spongy and a little damp, a small trash can that he managed to tip out… There was other stuff too, like metal tubes and science bottles similar to those in his mother’s kitchen.
After a thorough look-around, the little doctor decided to make do with the two soft things, carrying the spongy block in his mouth and rolling the paper along until he got back to the mesh.
“Doctah find thingies?” gasped Amor.
“Wmoht,” replied Dr. Crazystein, before realizing that talking with your mouth full was difficult and dropping the spongy thing. “Awmost. Stiww need band-aids.”
Ignoring the head-tilt he got in return, he began to search again. He remembered about the trash can he’d hidden behind earlier and managed to push it over with some difficulty, but rooting through the trash inside didn’t help at all. It was all just papers and wrappers.
Sitting down, Dr. Crazystein put his hoof to his chin and thought hard. What could he do? Should he go outside to look for band-aids? No, that would be silly. Band-aids were found in human places, not out on the street. The other door was still closed, so that was a no-go, and the humans were through said other door so he couldn’t ask them either. So what did that leave?
Dr. Crazystein slowly glanced up to the desk he was now sitting under. It was a long shot, but that was where his owner had talked to a human, so it was clearly a meeting point for them…
The big problem was getting up, but Dr. Crazystein did his best. He had to climb onto the trash can, which wobbled and rolled under his hooves, and from there catch hold of the chair sat next to the desk, which swiveled and turned at his touch. Both items threw him back to the floor more often than he’d want to admit, but finally he managed to secure his footing on the spinning chair.
From there it was almost trivially easy to reach onto the desk itself. The little doctor looked around - pens, papers, a plastic toy with a way too big head that somehow hadn’t noticed him, but no band-aids. As he pushed open the desk’s drawers and looked inside there were no band-aids there either, but he did find a weird little contraption holding what looked like a roll of long, transparent plastic. He nudged at it and was surprised to see it stick to his hooves, like a band-aid without soft stuff or colors or patterns.
If he couldn’t find proper band-aids, this not-band-aid would do, he figured. Picking it up in his hooves, Dr. Crazystein looked around to see the swivelly chair had turned its back to the desk, and realized just how high up he was.
…
That would pose a problem.
As would the fact that the human lady chose that moment to return. Amor’s panic was audible as the door opened and the little doctor had nowhere to hide. All he could do was fall back on his old habit, hugging the roll of not-band-aid to his chest as he turned and gave the stunned lady a hopefully normal smile. “Hewwo.”
“How did you get up there?!”
“Uh-”
It seemed like she didn’t expect an answer as Dr. Crazystein was abruptly yanked into the air by his scruff, yelping as the lady near tossed him back into the fluffy pen.
“Doctah!” cried Amor, rushing to his side. “Am yu otay?!”
“Yus…” murmured Dr. Crazystein, sitting up. Sure, it had ached, but that was mainly from landing on the roll of not-band-aids that he’d still been holding. The softly padded floor of the saferoom was a lot softer than the outside floor. As Dr. Crazystein tried to untangle the sticky stuff from his fur, though, he realized the other things he gathered were still on the human side of the mesh. “Hey! Hooman wady! Can yu gif Doctah Cwazystein softy white-an’-yewwow stuffs, pwease?”
“Like hell!” the lady snapped back. “Goddamnit, there’s junk everywhere… You’ll be lucky if you get food at all, nevermind spaghetti!”
It seemed like an overreaction, but it was also eerily close to his owner’s enraged outbursts, so Dr. Crazystein shrank back and decided to leave well enough alone. He had his band-aid substitute, so he just needed something white and soft to cover the wings with.
“Fwuffy fwuff am soft,” suggested Amor, and Dr. Crazystein huffed.
“Nu am soft enough,” he shot back, padding around the enclosure once again with the sticky roll alternately held in his mouth and his hooves. “Need stuffs softew than fwuff.”
Of all things, the stupid place should at least have something soft, but once again the saferoom was sorely lacking in usefulness. Climbing onto the biggest, most worn stuffy friend once more, Dr. Crazystein looked around to no avail. Just blocks and fluffies and other things that were way too big and thick to work.
As he began to climb down, though, he came across a rip in the stuffy friend’s back, leaking thin bits of white stuff. Dr. Crazystein stopped in his tracks, staring at it - the stuffy friend was wounded, too? And it bled cotton?
It… Probably wouldn’t mind if Dr. Crazystein took just a little, and so he grabbed onto the white cotton and pulled. He yanked out a big chunk, but in doing so opened the rip further and by the time he had enough cotton for his “surgery”, what had started as a small cut had become a wide gash.
“Doctah haf white stuffs!” he called to Amor as he climbed down, nudging the monster fluffy along in behind the stuffy friend to keep the two hidden while he worked. “Otay, su just sit stiww and nu move!”
“What happen tu biggest stuffy fwend?” asked Amor, staring at the gaping wound Dr. Crazystein had caused. “Did Doctah huwt-?”
“Nu wowwy,” the good doctor cut him off at once. “Wiww fix watew, when haf pointy needwes an’ thwead. Jus’ sit stiww.”
Amor’s expression wavered, wings drooping and shifting as Dr. Crazystein tried to place the cotton on them. “Poow biggest stuffy fwend! Amow nu wanted tu get fwend huwt!”
“Sit stiww!” Dr. Crazystein grumbled a bit as Amor kept shaking the cotton off, tempted to bop the alicorn for his lack of obeying. There was another solution, though, and so Dr. Crazystein began the arduous task of taping his new friend’s wings flat against his body.
Lola was far from an experienced fluffy handler, just a college student doing her internship at Safely Fluffy Daycare. It was a fluffy daycare that prided itself on keeping every fluffy safe, rewarding its tenants for not harming each other and for stopping any brewing trouble. So when it came to a fluffy escaping the saferoom and setting up shop on the greeting desk, well outside any other fluffy’s reach, she had no idea what the proper protocol was.
Using her own common sense though, step one had been to throw the offending fluffy back into the saferoom. (She wouldn’t deny that she hadn’t been gentle, but she had been careful not to slam dunk the thing in either.) Step two was cleaning up the mess it had made, which turned out to span multiple rooms, and step three was to get a superior.
By the time she returned with her boss, Mrs. Wrinkleton, the actual first step had been explained to her: Finding out how the fluffy got out so it could be prevented from happening again. The old bat fussed at Lola for being so thoughtless, pointing out how the fluffy had no-doubt escaped once more in her absence.
As the two looked over the playpen, however, they found something else entirely. The alicorn Amor, who was usually somewhat shunned by the others, was running and playing with a big group of fluffies. Lola squinted, then flinched as she realized there was gauze taped over where his wings would be.
Oh god his wings had been cut off. The true meaning of Crazystein’s owner saying to be careful dawned on both women at once, and Lola started to step over the mesh fence before Mrs. Wrinkleton held her back.
“Amor, can you come over?” the old woman instead called, Amor breaking away from his new friends to trot over. The orange alicorn was easily picked up, cheerfully humming as Mrs. Wrinkleton ran her fingers over the gauze. Then she let out a sigh of relief that seemed to jostle her very bones, slumping. “He’s alright.”
Lola carefully reached over and touched the gauze, on closer inspection being a mess of loose cotton and too much tape. She could feel something wiggle beneath it, Amor trying to wave his wings despite them being pinned down. “How did… huh?”
“Doctah hewp!” chimed Amor. “Gif Amow white suwgewy stuffies, othah fwuffies nu think Amow am scawy munstah anymowe!”
Lola glanced up to Mrs. Wrinkleton. Was he… really saying what she thought he was? …
“Is that so? That’s great to hear,” cooed Mrs. Wrinkleton, not skipping a beat. “Where is Doctor now?”
“Doctah am hewping biggest stuffy fwend,” Amor explained. “Biggest fwend haf big owwies and Doctah am using not-band-aids to hewp.”
“I see,” hummed the old lady before meeting Lola’s gaze. “I’ll take care of these guys for a bit. Lola, why don’t you go call Doctor’s owner? I believe you have a bit more context for what’s happened here.”
“Um… Am doctah in twoubwe?” asked Amor, a tinge of worry working its way onto his face.
“Oh no, not at all,” Mrs. Wrinkleton assured, petting his head. “We just need to tell his mummah what a good job he did!”
Lola held back a scoff as she headed for the phone. What a good job he did, huh?
Yeah, that was certainly one way to put it.
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