Part 3
That night, no fluffy was dumb enough to stay in the big room. Especially not Smarty. He went back to his nestie, added another blanket, and got nice and comfy with his special friend, making sure she had tummeh babbehs.
Smarty had ignored the voice. Why would he care what it had to say? Rules? Smarty was in charge! Fluffy Land was his! It was Smarty Land! Yeah!
All of this was to say, he didn’t use the stupid litter box. And he yelled at the dummehs that did in his room. “Why yu use wittew box? Smawty say no nee use!”
“No wan make messy…” was the dummeh’s excuse.
Smarty didn’t actually have a good response to that, so he shouted, “Yu is dummeh!” and stomped off.
Now it was morning, and he eagerly awaited the door’s opening. It felt like he’d been waiting here forever! He started to get really annoyed, and wanted to break the door. But…well it wasn’t like a pet door, it was a sliding door he couldn’t actually figure out how worked. He’d broken his own pet door easily. And broken plenty of others. This one was too much, but no one else needed to know that.
Amidst his thoughts of his amazing breakout from his dummeh mummah’s housie, the door began to open, finally! He shouted, “Dowr is openin for Smawty! Bout Time!” and proceeded to walk smack dab into the door. “Owwies!”
While the door had begun to open, it stopped just big enough for maybe a foal to slip through, a fluffie’s face if they really tried, but it might get stuck. The Smarty had been so confident the door would open smoothly that he’d walked right into it. “WHY DOWR HUWT SMAWTY?!” he demanded loudly, but of course, the door didn’t answer.
Those fluffies that had joined him in his room had heard his shout and eagerly come to go get ready for nummies. So, they now gathered around behind him and started complaining.
“Why dowr is only little open?” his special friend asked.
“Smawty dunno! Dowr must be bwoken!” he started hitting it with his hoof, over and over, and soon his tuffie joined him. It didn’t do anything but tired them out and hurt. He noticed though, that his special friend had pushed her face into the opening. “Stupih special fwiend. No can fit. You is too biggies!”
“No try squeezes, trying sees. Sees fwuffy fwiends!” She exclaimed, before shouting, “Fwiends! Helpies! Dowr bwoken!”
Wait, the other doors had opened? But that would mean…NO! They would get nummies without Smarty! That would get to eat all the sketties on top of the kibble! This was unacceptable! He moved to his special friend, who still kept shouting to get help, and started pushing her out of the way. Her head got caught in the door and it squeezed her in a way that hurt a lot, making her cry as she fell out of the way, demanding why he would hurt her, but there was no time for that! Sketties were on the line! His sketties!
He stuck his face into the opening and started to once again shout at the top of his lungs. “SMAWTY NEED HEWP! OPEN STUPIH DOWR! HELP SMAWTY WIGHT NOW!”
His shouts got a lot of attention, and several fluffies came over to see what was happening. Dutiful subjects to their smarty herd leader, they started trying to pull or push with their hooves, ask the door nicely, and, like he had already, tried hitting it. Nothing seemed to work!
They would have no doubt kept trying to help if the voice hadn’t come on.
“Some fluffies were bad fluffies.” It told them, the speaker above the door and the one in the big room all sounding at once. How could a voice come from many places? That confused Smarty a lot. “They still made…” there was a pause, “They make bad poopies out of the litter boxies.” It audibly pained the voice to speak like a fluffy, trying to get through to them, but to Smarty it went right over his head.
“So, those rooms that had bad fluffies don’t get to leave today. Or to eat. But good fluffy rooms where no one did bad poopies get to do whatever they want.”
The unbelievable rage that built in Smarty was exceptional, and he started off on a tirade of shouts and demands at the stupid voicey! The gall of this stupid voicey thinking it could keep smarty from his sketties! All the while knowing that he had in fact been one of, if not the only one in his room, not to use the litter box.
And then, the clock hit 10, and the food was delievered. The smell of fresh sketties wafted through the air, and all the fluffies free to roam began their mad dash to eat nummies.
“Tomorrow, if you all use your litter boxies, you can have food again.”
And then the voicey went away. But Smarty couldn’t believe this! All of his fluffy herd that had been dutifully trying to help their smarty had left him the moment the food arrived! He cursed at them, called them all the kinds of dummeh fluffies he could think of, but was completely ignored.
Behind him, soft huuhuuing sounded as fluffies, having only just been giving proper meals that left them bursting, lamented their lost luxury, the smell of sketties, and started asking dangerous questions. Like, who made bad poopies? Smarty would have to give them all a good yelling next for one of them making bad poopies.
It had pained him to talk a bit more like a fluffy, but it seemed to help, that and the threat of being cut off from their precious sketties. After a few more days of using that deterrent, keeping the doors opened juuuust enough for them to suffer seeing happier, fed fluffies and smell the sketties, enough of the little fuckers were using the litter boxes set out in their rooms that he could finally step back from them. No more ‘voicey’ for a while. Which was good, because being too involved would hurt the experiment. But he was dealing with ferals, so he needed to be sure they understood what a litter box was there for. If they eventually went back to ruining their environment, well, he’d have to let it ride.
There was still the shit that got left behind from their first few days, and that would remain a problem, but that was a problem for them. Anything in the central room he’d hosed down once it was empty. And now that they were using the litter boxes, he just changed those. He really hated that job, and vowed to make sure any assistant he may get when the experiment got going was bound to do that for him. The litter boxes could be blocked off, slid out, and then slid back in when they were cleaned, ensuring absolute isolation.
Now, Steven was in a routine with all of this. After a week of setting them straight, they were finally set up to succeed. Well, succeed to breed themselves up to the habitat’s limits. Which with fluffies, wasn’t an accomplishment so much as an inevitability.
In that time, the first litter had been born! A fluffy that was heavily pregnant already when they’d came in. She’d panicked the most of any fluffy being cut off for a single day from food to give her babbehs milkies, and to the fluffies credit, this one nice yellow fluffy brought kibble over to the door’s opening to be given to her. Steven had worried more that that might fuck up his punishment system, which it luckily hadn’t, but once it was over he was impressed to see a fluffy that wasn’t the daddeh care to help.
Now it was a little over a month into the project, and there had just been an absolute explosion of babbehs flooding the place. There had been two pregnant mares when they entered, and those first two rounds of babbehs had already reached juvenile stage. The one surviving babbeh of that unfortunate broken horned unicorn fluffy had grown up, along with the 3 other foals that had entered and lived with them, and now there was 4 different litters being birthed all around the same time. On a count, which had taken quite a bit of time to work out with them keeping their babies in whatever cubbies they chose to nest in, there was now about 46 fluffies already.
The safe, secure environment was doing wonders for their desire to make more fluffies, and if there was another big wave of breeding he thought they might push their numbers past 100 before they even had a chance to realize they’d gotten close. But well, how they dealt with that would be interesting to see.
Which brought him to his fluffy counter. He realized that he needed a better visualization method than the numbers out of 100 thing. So, after some intense creative thinking, he went on the internet to get ideas on what fluffies might be able to understand. He ended up with a progress part that looked like a tower of blocks.
5 blocks stood stacked, unevenly to really sell it being blocks, in different colors. Now that there was over 40, the first two blocks would be lit up their colors, blue then yellow, and that would be that. He’d have highly preferred 10 blocks since he was dealing with 100 as a concept, but apparently most fluffies could count up to 5 and anything beyond that was a roll of the dice. So, five blocks it was.
Today, before he released the fluffies from their rooms, he switched out the 19/100 to 46/100 and stuck it next to the tower of blocks. He wasn’t exactly dealing with the equipment to keep it live updated, so he’d need to keep numbers himself unfortunately. Another task to put on an assistant if he ever got one.
The screen itself had also been divided. The clock was in the top right corner, the counter now took up the rest of the right 1/4th of the screen, and he had pretty images and sometimes even Fluff TV shows play on the rest of the screen. He wanted their eyes constantly checking out the screen, so at least unintentionally they always saw that new counter. The images and Fluff TV he’d introduced two weeks in and it added another form of entertainment.
It did however need to get turned off a good while before the doors closed, otherwise he got some dumb fluffies sitting there hoping it would come on again, and getting locked into the big room. Where they got the full treatment of cold wind, dark, and monster noises. By keeping that up, they now firmly believed that there was a monster in that room when it got dark, they’d just been lucky enough not to end up like that one foal.
For now though, he observed the fluffies as they cared for their new litters. Any proper pairings had the father fetching food as soon as it dropped. The greedier ones scarfed down sketti, ate their fill of kibble, then brought more kibble to their special friends. One fluffy, the red unicorn tuffie that didn’t seem to follow around their herd’s smarty as much as the other one, was the exception. He gobbled up a little sketti, since Steven wasn’t sure it was possible for them to resist it without a real need to, then hurried to bring some to his special friend, making several trips to bring her kibble too.
He made a note to pay close attention to how his litter ended up. The only other exceptional case was that, the Smarty of the group had pretty much ignored his special friend’s request for food. He gobbled up as many of the top layer of skettis as he could before running into another fluffy, ate his fill, and then ordered his loyal tuffie, a bright green earthie with a brown mane, to bring his ‘dummeh special fwiend’ some kibble. He’d note that too if he wasn’t already sure the Smarty would end up causing problems eventually.
Everything was routine for the fluffies now. Just over a month was enough time for things to get really familiar and set in your ways. Fluffies dutifully waited around the doors for them to open in the morning, waded around until the clock announced food time, hurried to the food and ate their fill.
Two changed could be noted. One, they no longer stampeded, as they knew there would be more than enough food. Some still sprinted to get as many sketti as possible, but most were happy to get there when they got there. Two, they stopped eating to bursting, that had taken longer than he thought it would, easily two weeks before they seemed to get they really would always have plenty of food.
Steven made notes on the developments he was seeing. One was, the fluffies that were paying attention to the numbers on the clock had seemed to learn the concept of minutes, vaguely. Some started walking to their rooms before the recording warned them to leave the big room now, just with a look at the clock. They probably had no idea what times really meant, but they knew that went a few numbers were in certain places, it was almost door closing time.
The surplus of resources meant they were still mostly sharing toys, though few blankets remained that weren’t already pulled into cubbies to be part of their nests. And now, he was seeing something he’d expected but came far later than he assumed. Fluffies pairings with babbehs began moving to less occupied rooms, until all four rooms were pretty much balanced. It was like they could tell there would be too many babbehs in one place if they didn’t.
There was a cacophony of mummah singing going on, daddehs happily trying to play with their young, and babbehs peeping up a storm as they waited to get fed. It was a sight that was hard to hate, especially when he was literally trying to get them to breed.
His change of the blocks tower seemed to catch their attention, but didn’t get more than some attention mentioning that there was ‘blockies on scween.’ Well, at least he knew they saw it.
It didn’t take long though before he saw something he’d only heard about. Mummah fluffies beginning to choose favorites, and discard those with ugly colors. One of the Smarty’s litter was a ‘poopie babbeh’, and was immediately put to the very back of the line for milk. A ‘bestest babbeh’ being chosen for looking the most like the Smarty. Another litter saw two foals discarded for different reasons. One was a ‘munstah’ babbeh with great colors, thrown out of the cubby immediately and left chirping desperately. The other was a runt with a mottled grey fluff, kept inside the cubby but neglected.
Once more to the red tuffie’s credit, he also seemed to have a foal with ugly colors, a foal of barf green often lumped in with poopie babbeh colors, but it was kept inside the cubby and loved like the rest. He didn’t know if that would last, but it helped the number climb, more steadily when the babbehs would actually grow up, so he was happy to see it.
Steven sat back and just watched the new fluffy families at work. Admittedly, this was the most interesting the project had been in weeks. He finished with his notes though, and started work on other things, still nothing to do but wait.
There was so many babbehs! Lemon could hear them everywhere. It made him so happy! Even happier because he knew he’d be a daddeh someday too! He’d found a special friend, made the bestest special huggies, and was so happy!
“Wemon! Come pway baww!” his special friend ordered, and he turned with a smile to do just that.
“Otay! Comin special fwiend!” He called back happily, ignoring in bliss that commanding tone the mare used. His special friend could be loud, and sound kinda meanies, but she wasn’t meanies! She loved Lemon, and he loved her! She hadn’t had a name, but she was neon pink, and a pink like that reminded him of pretty flowers, so he’d started calling her Flower. She even had a dull yellow mane, a yellow like Lemon! It was perfect!
He hurried over to her, and giggled happily as he pushed the ball towards her. She glared at him all annoyed, but played with him. And soon, just like he hoped, she was giggling and happy again! His special friend was funny. Sometimes Flower was the bestest special friend and so nice! Sometimes though she got really meanies and yelled a lot. He didn’t know why, and she didn’t know what he meant.
Lemon had helped her with her last babbeh, since she got hurties by the munstah the same dark time it took one of her babbehs. That was sad, Lemon was really sad his special friend lost a babbeh to the munstah. But she still had some of her horn! It wasn’t completely stolen by the munstah! It was like a little nub and Lemon thought it looked just fine!
Flower’s lastest babbeh was a big fluffy now. She was in another cubby in their room, making her own nestie. Flower had said she didn’t know how to make namies, so Lemon named lastest babbeh too! Lastest babbeh was bright orange, like an orange, or a sunset, so he named her Sunny! He wanted to name her Orange, and tried that first, but special friend called that stupid. But he loved Sunny like she was his own babbeh, and couldn’t wait to give her bwuddas and sissies!
He and his special friend played and played, having the best time ever! She got meanie again sometimes, and said he played with the ball like a dummeh, but then she’d get nice again and say he was so good at playing ball! It got confusing to Lemon, so he usually just ignored when his special friend got meanies. She didn’t mean it, she was just meanie sometimes.
Lemon was happy. He’d felt so alone seeing all the herd start to find special friends and have babbehs and sleep together in nesties. Now he wasn’t alone! Now he didn’t have heart hurties in dark time. He didn’t want heart hurties.
“Stupih baww no wowk!” Flower shouted, and pushed the ball off in another direction, ending their game. “Wemon is stupih dummeh! Why you no pway baww wif Fwower wight?!”
He sighed, “Am sowwy, special fwiend. Wiww get bawl.” He hurried to go get it again. She didn’t mean it, he knew that. Really. And soon she’d be nicey special friend again.
He couldn’t wait to be a daddeh.
I appreciate people liking the story. Thanks for reading.