The good Dr. Crazystein, chapter 3
Dr. Crazystein and Mr. Hyde
The worst part of science was the clean-up.
Dr. Crazystein was a fluffy, after all. Scientist or no, the fact he had stubby hooves in lieu of anything even slightly prehensile limited his options. Ever since that first test subject, who just HAD to run into walls and get blood everywhere in his blind dash for the exit, Dr. Crazystein had been forced to clean up after his experiments.
It was dirty work and he didn’t like it much, but the alternative was his human mother finding out about the way he had been breaking the rules, so he wasn’t left with much of a choice.
When there were just some blood splashes, it was easy enough to clean up with just his tongue. (Gross, but easy.) But a few times, a fluffy had managed to hit a beaker out of the good doctor’s hooves or knocked over one of his many ingredient bottles in their attempts to get away, and those stains Dr. Crazystein would swab it up with his tail. It got him chided and bathed and left his tail in a messy uneven disarray, but that was a small price to pay for an intact tongue.
None of his experiments had yielded the right results, so far. They all ended with some kind of eye damage, from eyes melting to blindness to, in one weird case, color blindness. He refused to give up, though. He was so close to a breakthrough! He kept using whatever liquids he could get a hold of, combining various bottles and even branching out to other colors than white. His most recent acquisition was a bottle with a rat and a cross on it that lent his concoctions a vibrant, swirly green color.
But his newest test subject had decided the potion looked tasty and drank it before he could stop her. The good doctor was currently finding that getting rid of a dead body was a tad more difficult than getting rid of some blood splashes.
“Why… yu… haf to be… so HEAVY?” he complained between pulls as he dragged the limp, black-grey body to the exit, shoving it through the fluffy door with some effort. He followed the pile of fluff outside, and after looking around for a bit decided on his usual dumping spot for extra potions and waste he was done with (IE, an increasingly dead-looking bush). The grey fur stuck out something terrible, but nevertheless Dr. Crazystein hoped the dead body would go unnoticed.
But now that he was out on the porch, the good doctor became aware of noise. That of a crowd, to be specific. He looked toward it only to find four fluffies investigating the yard - what luck! Ever since he’d started his experiments, the amounts of fluffies who came by had gradually grown fewer and more skittish, until getting a hold of subjects was actually becoming difficult.
Even luckier, a purplish young mare had strayed away from the other three, providing an ideal new subject now that Dr. Crazystein had been left resultless (although he should probably alter the concoction before trying it on her, what with the death and all).
Hopping down into the grass, Dr. Crazystein walked over to his new subject and held a hoof to her. “Hewwo! Wan be sub-jet?”
The mare tilted her head to the side. “What’s a sub-jet?”
“Is a sub-jet! Dey hewp science!” The good doctor clapped his hooves giddily. “Jus’ wet doctah Cwazystein do a test on yu, an’ den yu get sketties!” Nobody had EVER refused sketties, and everyone was super obedient when he promised some, so he had made it a point to include a sketti promise. This mare was no exception, ears perking and a smile growing on her face.
“Weawwy?! Yu gif Fwanny sketties!?” she called out. Dr. Crazystein nodded, but before he had any time to show her inside the mare was pushed back and he suddenly found himself facing a very big, dark green fluffy.
“Yu haf sketties?” the big fluffy rumbled, his voice not shrill and demanding so much as a dark, threatening tone. “Den gif. Am toughy; sketties awe fow toughies.”
Dr. Crazystein was absolutely dwarfed by this fluffy, so much that he was somewhat at a loss for words. So, he fell back on his default and smiled nervously up at the green fluffy, waving a hoof. “Hewwo! Am doctah Cwazystein!”
“Am mistah Hyde,” the big fluffy replied evenly. “Nao. Whewe awe sketties?”
“Mistah Hyde! Nu faiw!” cried the mare, but one stern glare from Mr. Hyde silenced her and she backed away with a whimper. Dr. Crazystein felt uneasy, but nevertheless begun to walk back inside with Mr. Hyde close in tow.
“So whewe awe sketties?” Mr. Hyde asked, looking around as they walked to the safe room.
“Yu get sketties aftah expewiment, mistah Hyde,” Dr. Crazystein explained patiently. This was the most common question he would receive, so he barely even thought of his reply. He turned to Mr. Hyde to tell him what to do -
-and then found himself tumbling across the floor breathlessly. “W-What awe yu doing!?” he gasped, coughing to recover the air in his lungs as his would-be subject walked up to him with a dark look in his eyes.
“Nu. Gif sketties, NAO,” the green fluffy growled. “Nu cawe about expewiment! Mistah Hyde wan sketties, so DOCTAH Cwazystein gif sketties!”
The good doctor couldn’t help but feel offended at the emphasis on his name, but that was hardly the most pressing issue here. “Yu get sketties AFTAH expewiment! Nu cawe if yu nu cawe about expewiment!” he protested as he got back up to his feet, earning him a glare from Mr. Hyde that made him all too quickly understand why that mare had backed down so easily.
“Gif. Sketties,” the feral repeated once more, slowly and deliberately as he approached Dr. Crazystein. The doctor backed away; his would-be subject followed, up until he found himself trapped against a wall. “Otay, doctah?” Mr. Hyde’s tone had become nearly taunting, a crude grin. “Mistah Hyde know dis am nu-see-pwace house. So yu gif sketties, and mistah Hyde wet yu go to nu-see-pwace othah fwuffies. Dat sound GOOD, wight doctah?”
Dr. Crazystein’s heart sank. He knew. “E-Expewiment nu am meant to bwind fwuffies,” he protested lamely, earning him a burning pain to the right shoulder as he was struck. He let out a yelp, hurriedly running to the left to escape Mr. Hyde. To get some distance. This wasn’t going right at all. He had no contingency plan for this kind of thing!
“Doctah,” the green fluffy said as he walked calmly to the center of the room, “mistah Hyde nu cawe what expewiments MEANT to do. Yu know what mistah Hyde cawes 'bout?” He smiled. “Mistah Hyde cawes 'bout sketties.”
Dr. Crazystein winced a bit. “Yus, 'bout dat,” he replied with his nicest and most reassuring smile, tinged with unease and nervousness. “Thewe awe nu sketties.”
Mr. Hyde’s head tilted to the side. “Nu sketties?” he repeated, as though he understood. Dr. Crazystein nodded, relaxing a little bit. “Nu sketties.”
And then, all too quickly, the green fluffy dashed at him. The good doctor had no time to react before he was tackled across the padded floor with a choked yelp. Suddenly he was on his back, legs flailing at the sky, and then Mr. Hyde was above him and slammed a hoof down onto his chest.
“Yu WIE!” the large fluffy hissed. “Yu awe house fwuffy! Houses haf sketti! Thewe is sketti, and yu know whewe!”
“N-Nu! Doctah Cwazystein nu can–” he tried to explain, but had to cut short for a second as the pressure on his chest increased. “Nu can make sketti!”
“Wies,” came the calm, threatening reply. Just one word, and a glare that could kill. “Whewe is sketties, doctah?”
“Nu- nu sketties-” protested Dr. Crazystein, only for the hoof to rise and slam into his chest again. There was a burning pain, much worse than before, and a sound that shouldn’t have been there. “STOP! STOP st-- stop–!” He found himself gasping for breath, trying desperately to get away but unable to get anywhere with the size difference being what it was.
“Mistah Hyde awweady said, doctah,” said Mr. Hyde, hardly even reacting to the smaller fluffy’s struggles. “Yu gif sketties, an’ mistah Hyde wet yu go. If yu NU gif sketties, den mistah Hyde gif yu fowevah sweepies. Aww yu haf to do is teww whewe da sketties is, doctah.”
What was he going to do? He had no sketties to give, and he definitely didn’t want to die. Dr. Crazystein looked around the room, but there was nothing even remotely helpful (I mean there was a stuffy friend, but he was fairly sure his stuffy friend had never liked him anyway seeing how she hadn’t tried to help him yet) and nothing sketti-like. The pain in his chest increased as Mr. Hyde pushed down, and he realized he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t want to die. He couldn’t die. Not like this. Not when he had so much science to …
He noticed his chemistry set. He hadn’t gotten rid of the rest of the potion that killed his last subject. Painfully, he raised a hoof to point at it. “Th…ewe.”
Mr. Hyde looked to the half-full beaker of poison, and then frowned. “Dat? Dat nu wooks wike sketties,” he replied.
“Is… is bettah … dan sketties.”
He looked doubtful, but the green fluffy thankfully couldn’t resist and stepped off, walking over to the concoction. He sniffed at it, then took it in his hooves. “Thank yu, doctah. Not so hawd, wight?” he taunted before downing the whole thing. Dr. Crazystein couldn’t reply, struggling and managing to turn onto his side only for the horrible pain to renew. His chest felt like it was shattered - maybe it actually was, that would explain the SOUND - and he couldn’t breathe. He made little gasps, but he couldn’t breathe right, hardly at all. He couldn’t see right, either, black flecks flimmering across his gaze.
He felt like he would cough up shards of himself if he tried to move further.
Still, he had to take some glee in the fact that Mr. Hyde soon felt the same pain. The green fluffy started convulsing, dropping the beaker and then falling onto it, glass container shattering and digging into his body. Mr. Hyde started to scream but in doing so gagged and threw up, a mixture of bile and blood and poison spilling across the floor. He gasped, yelping and crying for help as he tried to push out the shattered glass with his hooves, only succeeding in digging it deeper in and twisting it into the wounds as he rolled onto his side, still convulsing and choking.
Finally, Mr. Hyde arched back and with a final shudder went still. Dr. Crazystein wanted to laugh, but that was hard when his voice wouldn’t work. His legs weren’t working either, and his sight was very quickly giving out.
On the bright side, he didn’t feel pain so much as just very cold as his consciousness gave out.
Candi glanced around as she returned home. She was early, thanks to a power outage at her work place. A trio of fluffies were talking to each other, apparently running a vote on leaving someone behind (nobody wanted said person in the herd anymore, for some reason) and a dead fluffy had been shoved into her rose bush.
There was always something going on with ferals. Well, whatever. She decided to pop into Winter’s room and check on him, so she headed straight to the safe room and popped her head inside. “Hey, Winn–”
In the safe room there was a big, green fluffy dead on the floor in a pool of blood and vomit, and Winter was lying unmoving some distance away. “Oh Jesus!” Candi screamed. “WINNY!” She instantly ran over and snatched up her pet, hands shaking as she felt for a pulse. For breathing. For anything. She could just barely feel his heart beat, and fumbled to get up her cell phone as she ran out the door. “Is this the vet’s office!? There’s an emergency, I think my fluffy is dying, I’m coming over now!”
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