The good Dr. Crazystein, chapter 2:
Dr. Crazystein’s First Subject
Several days had passed since Dr. Crazystein’s first experiment and its… undesired result. He had been brought to a tall human in a big white coat named “Veterinary” who removed the white cotton thing from his wounded eye and shone lights at him and did - well, the good doctor couldn’t actually tell most of what the man did, by virtue of his wounded eye not being able to see and all. Anyway, in the end he had given Dr. Crazystein a strange-tasting candy and put a different cotton thing over his eye.
“Now, don’t remove that or you won’t get better,” Veterinary (or Vet for short) had told him before turning to his mother. He had talked to her in a hushed tone and messed with some bottles, and when Dr. Crazystein had eagerly asked how he could tell all the samey little bottles apart, he just laughed and showed him the strange squiggly drawings on each bottle. Every bottle had a different ‘label’, said Vet. Every squiggle was different.
For a fluffy that had never thought of identifying things from anything but their colors, this was absolutely stunning news and Dr. Crazystein thought about it the whole way home to make sure he couldn’t possibly forget to label his tools.
However, his mother kept careful watch over the good doctor ever since they got home from the incident. He didn’t know if she was worried or just thought he would start pouring things into his eye again, but either way it provided him with a dilemma.
Namely, without any freedom to move around, he had no opportunity to collect any kind of test subjects. Allowing other fluffies into the house was strictly forbidden, a special rule that she had told him each time there was a fluffy in the yard (at least until she realized that Dr. Crazystein wasn’t interested in letting anyone in anyway), and so he couldn’t bring someone to his saferoom-turned-laboratory. He also wasn’t allowed to bring any of his tools outside of the house, so running experiments on the fluffies that tended to loiter around the yard was another big no.
It wasn’t until a full week after the incident that things changed. “Well, the vet said your eye should have recovered as much as it can by now, so let’s try to get this gauze pad off shall we?” his mother said and picked him up. Dr. Crazystein was delighted! Not that he disliked the cotton thing, but the thought of being able to see with both eyes again was thrilling! He was carried to the bathroom, where his mother carefully removed the obtrusive item, and …
“Oh, wow. That can’t be good.”
Dr. Crazystein blinked, trying to adjust his bleary right eye. It didn’t work, so he closed his left eye and blinked a bit more. “What’s nu good?” he asked. Nope, still no improvement. He could see shapes and colors, but everything was hazy and blurred. He shook his head and opened his left eye again just to find himself facing a pale blue fluffy with an off-white mane spiked in several directions, one eye red and the other… red with a purple eyeball?
“Dat nu wooks wight,” he noted and pointed a hoof at the fluffy’s purple eye, only for it to follow the move and point at his face. For a moment he got defensive, then he noticed how the fluffy was being held by the same mother who was holding the good doctor himself, and relaxed as he realized it had to be a mirror.
Then he figured out what this meant for his eye, and gasped. He HAD found a concoction that did something! It just… turned white into purple… apparently! If he could find a color that dyed purple to white, then that would fix his eye issue for sure!
“So how’s your sight? Can you see anything?” his mother asked, interrupting his thoughts.
“Umm… Can see cowows an’ shapes, but nu mowe.”
The human muttered something and shook her head. “Great. And with my work schedule, I won’t be able to keep track of you…”
“Whazzat?” Looking up at his mother, Dr. Crazystein couldn’t help but tilt his head to the side. He had been unaware of his mother doing any work, and ‘schedule’ was no word he had heard of. Science didn’t follow a “schedule”.
“It’s a human thing, Winny,” she explained. “See, since it’s been Halloween, I’ve been on holiday. But now I’m going to be gone the whole day, and come home in the evening.”
Dr. Crazystein sat still for several long moments to parse this. His mother was going to be gone all day? He wasn’t sure how long a “day” was, but suddenly something dawned on him and he gasped. If she was gone, she couldn’t enforce the rules! It would mean he got a chance to collect subjects!
“Is otay! Doctah Cwazystein wiww take cawe of evewything!” he called up at her. The human raised an eyebrow, evidently noticing his abnormal level of excitement.
“Take care of… what?” she asked.
“Evewything!” repeated the good doctor before figuring out that she wanted specifics. “Wike… seeing! An’ pooping! An’… eating?”
“Are you trying to say you’ll be fine alone?”
“… Yus!”
She still looked suspicious, but his mother finally gave in. “Alright, then,” she said, and that was the end of the discussion. She watched over him and periodically checked to see if his sight was getting any better for the rest of the day, and that night he slept like a baby knowing that he would finally be able to work his science again.
Dr. Crazystein woke up so early that his night-light was still the only source of light in his saferoom, but he was too excited to go back to sleep and batted his little legs against his pillow, half-rolling back and forth gleefully for a little bit before he couldn’t contain himself any longer. He hopped out of his fluffy bed and right over to his chemistry set, starting to mix together his whitening potion. He had labeled every little bottle with a different squiggle, but since this was a color-based potion he still primarily used the colors to tell what he should use.
Thus, he ended up using the bottles A, D and bird. However, as he found, he couldn’t make white from the colors he had. He tapped his chin thoughtfully; to get white, he needed something white. But he had nothing white in his chemistry set. He knew his mother messed with bottles and boxes that had liquid - many of which she drank, meaning they had to be safe - but if she found him using her things she would most definitely be mad.
“Hey, Winny? I’m heading out n–” his mother began as she peeked into the room, then blinked. “What are you doing up?” Dr. Crazystein pointedly ignored her, deep in thought, until the human let out a long sigh. “Doctor, what are you doing up?”
The good doctor tossed up his hooves happily as he turned to look at her. “SCIENCE!”
“You’re not gonna use this ‘science’ on yourself, are you?”
“Nu!”
“Alright. Remember, I won’t be home. If you get hurt, I won’t be there to take you to the vet again.”
“Doctah Cwazystein knows! Nu wowwy!”
With that, the human walked off, and the click of a closing door was heard – and just like that, the good doctor was all alone. He trotted out of his safe room (the door wasn’t closed since he was a very good fluffy who didn’t warrant being locked up) and looked around, confirming that he was alone, then dashed straight into the kitchen. This was where the food and his mother’s liquids were! He couldn’t reach to open the big white foodbox, or most of the other doors to be honest, but the bottom ones he could - just barely - manage to pull open.
After a few doors of nothing but bags and metal things with handles, Dr. Crazystein finally found a bottle. He couldn’t read it of course, but it was large and white with a big label that had sparkly text. But better than that, the picture on that label showed sparkling white pipes with dirty colors literally flying off! This would be perfect, he was sure of it!
He dragged the bottle with him to his safe room, where he bumped it over and with quite a bit of effort managed to twist it open. This was less due to his herculean efforts and more due to his mother not properly closing the thing, but eh, details. Clear liquid started spilling out, so quickly Dr. Crazystein collected it in the lid and added it to his potion before he sealed the bottle again. His potion didn’t turn white as he had hoped, but maybe it didn’t have to be white to work. After all, it had the whitening liquid – it SHOULD work.
All he needed now was someone to test it on.
Dr. Crazystein ran for the front door with such excitement that he missed the fluffy door and hit his snout on the corner of its frame, but he didn’t even have time to whimper about the painful mistake as he pushed through the door and out into the wide world.
The very first thing he saw was a green, wide-eyed fluffy his own size staring at him from the grass. He ran up to the fluffy, who cowered back slightly, and shoved a hoof at him. “Hewwo! Wan be sub-jet!?”
“Nu…” murmured the fluffy. Dr. Crazystein looked closer at him; he had blue eyes but they were reddened - maybe from crying? - so this would definitely be a great chance to try out the color-repairing properties of his potion. He smiled wide. “Is otay, am a doctah.”
Still the green fluffy looked hesitant, eyes darting between the good doctor and the front door. From the outside the fluffy door wasn’t visible, although Dr. Crazystein had no idea why, unaware of how his sudden appearance must have looked.
“… Sketties?” the feral finally asked. “Dat hooman house. Gib sketties if sub-jet?”
The doctor blinked. “… Yus!” he then replied, neither one seeming to think much of the awkward pause that betrayed his not-quite-honest reply. “Suwe! Yu can hab sketties aftah expewiment!”
“Otay!” The green fluffy brightened at once, his ears perking and a big smile appearing on his face, before running for the house and slamming his face into the spot just next to the fluffy door. Dr. Crazystein opened his mouth to say something, but in the end just smiled and followed his excitable new coworker.
Dr. Crazystein became annoyed with the feral in record time. “Is dis way!” he called, but the green fluffy had run off to the kitchen. And then to the bedroom. And then bathroom. Right now he had run off to the kitchen a second time, hopping on his hind legs in an attempt at reaching the handle to the big white foodbox, excitedly cheering for the sketti he would soon receive.
“Sub-jet!” the good doctor shouted, stomping a hoof, but went ignored. “Nu sketties! Sketties fow AFTAH expewiment!!”
“Sketties sketties sketties~! Fowest nu haf sketties befowe!” chimed the feral, falling onto his butt, then his chin so he lay splayed on the floor. He quickly rose back onto his hind legs to wiggle his front legs up at the tantalizing foodbox handle, oblivious to the world around him. Dr. Crazystein sighed, grabbing the green tail that waved all over the place in his mouth, and started to pull.
On the bright side his subject didn’t fight back, letting the good doctor drag him all the way into his safe room. On the other hand, he was HEAVY, and Dr. Crazystein was all too happy to drop him once they reached their destination.
“Sketti nao?” his subject asked with a big smile.
“Nu, expewiment nao, DEN sketti,” Dr. Crazystein replied. Despite his annoyance he found himself smiling as he picked up his whitening potion, looking to the feral. “See, doctah wiww put dis potion in yu eyesies, an’ den nu mowe wed cowow, an’ den sketties!”
The green fluffy looked confused for a few moments, but the promise of sketties made him shrug off any doubts and he quickly agreed with a vigorous nod. Dr. Crazystein briefly thought over what to do; he couldn’t trust this feral to stay still, so a slow and careful maneuver was out of the question.
So he just threw the potion into his subject’s face.
At once, the feral started to scream and back up. Strange-looking smoke was flowing from his face and his eyes were – well – er … The red WAS disappearing, at first. Then the blue disappeared, and the white, and it all turned into red smoke and red liquid and - well, Dr. Crazystein found himself just watching the screaming fluff as he tried to run out and hit the wall, splashing red here and there as he struggled to escape until he finally burst through the front door and tumbled outside.
Dr. Crazystein quietly brought his vial outside and poured any remaining potion onto a bush by the door. Otay, he thought to himself. Use wess white.
He was going to need a new subject.
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