Jin held up his end of the deal, after waiting a few forevers for him to arrive the next day he gave you a wrapped up bit of paper and told you where to deliver it. After that there was another, and then your nummies. You really liked working for him, every time you returned he would pat you on the head and call you good before giving you your next task. Sometimes you would be carrying more of the paper, sometimes it was little baggies of things and the human would give you paper in return to bring back. The baggies often smelled bad, especially the green leafy ones, so you took those as fast as you could.
You learned a lot from them too! The nummies they got you every night were called ramen, not sketties. They even let you try different ones until you landed on the bestest. Tomato ramen with extra bean sprouts was your all time favorite and they would get it for you every night! After your ramen Jin would tell you about the world. They were part of a big herd of humans that all worked together and took care of each other. Jin and his friends were like toughies, they did things their smarty asked them to. You were so happy to be able to help someone as important as a human smarty!
You also learned about other groups of humans. Bad ones. The men in the blue not-fluff and hats were meanies that wanted to steal from Jin’s herd and give them lots of hurties with their sorry sticks. They were bad, bad humans and you needed to stay as far away from them as possible. They didn’t like the little baggies you carried so it was super important that they didn’t see you or they would give you and your friends the worst hurties.
You also found yourself somewhat different after many bright times running around the city. Your fluff wasn’t as patchy or limp as it used to be and getting up things like stairs and big hills didn’t leave you as winded as they used to. Other fluffies no longer tried to chase you off, if anything it seemed like they were trying to avoid you!
Well, most of them anyway.
“Ugwy fwuffy!” The shout startled you out of your ramen.
Lifting your head, noodle still between your teeth you saw a deep purple unicorn stomping towards you.
“Yu gib Smawty sketties WITE NAO!”
You cowered back from the bowl, not wanting to face a smarty’s wrath but suddenly your view was blocked by Jin standing between you.
“Dummeh ugwy fwuffy nu de-zerb guud nummies wike sketties!” The smarty shouted at him. “Gib!”
You winced. Jin was so nice to you, you didn’t want to see him hurt. You’d been on the receiving end of so many smarty beatdowns that you knew what those marshmallow hooves could do. You prayed silently that Jin would just step away from the food and let this end without hurties.
“Not for you. Fuck off.” Jin growled.
“Ebweyting am fo’ Smawty, DUMMEH!” he spat. “Smawty ge’ aww da nummies an’ mawes an’ nice nesties! Nao gu ‘way ow Smawty gib-”
His demands were cut off by Jin’s foot slamming into his chin, sending him flying. Your jaw hung open as he landed head first on the curb, horn splintering into jagged purple shards that scattered around his limp form.
“Tonto, why didn’t you stop him?” Jin asked you.
You shook the shock from your face before replying. “Nu wan’ huwties! Smawty gib wowstest huwties!”
“Then hurt him first!” Jin sounded angry with you and you shrunk back even further. “Are you a bitch? Are you a baby?”
“N-nu!”
Jin paused, looking you over and chewing his lip. “If you want to keep working for us, you need to be… toughie, you say?”
You nodded. “Buh Tonto nu am toughie. Tonto am ugwy fwuffy.”
“Hm.” Jin kicked what remained of your ramen to you. “Eat. I know someone who can help.”
After a long and uncomfortable trip shoved into Jin’s backpack you were unceremoniously dumped out onto a table in a dark room. You squinted into the bright light hanging over you as your eyes adjusted, seeing Jin and an older man looking you over. You sat while they talked, and then the old man nodded and stepped out of the room.
“This is my friend, he trains fluffies to fight. To kill.”
Kill? That was forever sleepies, that wasn’t good! Fluffies didn’t like going forever sleepies!
“Nu wan’-” Jin’s hand clapped over your mouth.
“Remember how I told you about the bad men that come to hurt us? They will kill us if they can.”
Your eyes widened. You thought it was just sorry sticks and boxes, these humans were monsters!
“They don’t like gaichuba. They come looking for ones like that purple shit, find us, hurt us.” Jin growled. “We do whatever it takes to stop them. Do you understand?”
You nodded.
Jin took his hand from your mouth and pulled off his jacket and shirt. Across his back was the black outline of a snake and some pretty flowers, almost like a coloring book.
“This is what my family does to each other, to mark us as brothers. You can not have one, but my friend can make your horn sharp like a sword. You can be strong enough to kill whoever tries to take from you.”
You studied the drawing. The snake was scary with its sharp fangs exposed. If you had fangs like that no one would push you around.
“Tonto be toughie?”
Jin grinned. “You can. You can be one of us.”
“Den Tonto wan’!!” You said.
“This-” he pointed over his shoulder, “hurt to get done. This-” he tapped your horn, “will hurt as well. But you do it and no one can take it from you.”
Jin wouldn’t be your daddeh, but you would be part of his herd. Though the pain scared you, you nodded. Jin grinned and threw his jacket back over his shoulders as the man returned with some scary looking power tools.
“I will be right here the whole time.” Jin said, sitting down next to the table and grabbing your hoof.
You nodded again. Jin said something to the old man who started up the tool with a loud whirring noise. You watched as the man slowly lowered the tool down to you, muscles tensed to resist fleeing.
You would be a toughie. You would never have to listen to mean fluffies ever again. You would protect your friends. You would endure this for them, for the nice misters that had taken care of you. You grit your teeth and closed your eyes.
The electric sander touched to the side of your horn and the room filled with the smell of burning keratin.
