And then there was the most terrible ear-piercing screech.
As Warmy and Booboo had hugged, they had accidentally crushed one of Warmy’s ‘foals’ between them. Wide-eyed, with adrenaline pumping, Booboo immediately jumped back, revealing the twitching, shaking grey foal which promptly flopped lifelessly onto the floor. One of its legs was bent out of shape, and a small puddle of blood was already forming beneath it as it screeched and screeched.
In their shock, they had both also accidentally dropped a foal.
Booboo’s green earthie and been flung off of him, and smacked into the floor such that three of its legs had snapped instantly, and the blood-bags within had popped. It screamed as the fake blood poured out of it. Warmy’s other foal, the blue earthie, had fallen behind her straight onto its neck- which activated its leg flailing, but crushed its speaker. Blood also began to leak from it.
Warmy and Booboo both began to panic and shout in terror, while Twinky had fallen over on his side at the sudden noise, his orange pegasus dropping down beside him with an audible crack.
Shakily, Booboo lunged down to the foal that had been crushed, and tried to pick it up. Its blood flowed down over his hooves, and as he hugged it, its circuits began to fail, causing its legs to flail wildly for a few seconds before it finally cut off silently.
For Booboo, he believed he had just felt the life leave a foal right in his arms. He collapsed into a pile, about to wail, but accidentally crushed his other foal beneath him. Its circuits were broken immediately, so it didn’t flail or make noise.
Warmy, meanwhile, had scrambled backwards away from the first crushed foal before realizing she had dropped her other. She laid down next to it, trying to soothe it as it thrashed away, “babbeh! Babbeh- it otay! IT OTAY! Sowwy fo’ huwties, su sowwy! Pweez nu go foevah sleepies! Foevah sleepies bad! Haf makie-bettah huggies wif Wawmy, maek huwties gu 'way!”
She futilty wrapped her hooves around the foal, crying. It shrilled out choked 'mummah save me!" chirps and just as her snout gently pressed against it, the circuits failed and it went still.
Twinky simply stared at the crumpled, convulsing foal beside him, its shrieks stabbing his very soul. After a few seconds, the blood within began to seep through its fluff and dripped out towards him. He didn’t even move as it pooled around his neck and face.
It eventually stopped moving and shouting squeaky “I am hurt mummah, please hug me!” chirps, and he was left cold and shaken, as Warmy and Booboo cried together behind him.
It was then the smell hit them.
A terrible, grave smell.
A smell like darkness itself had form and ensnared their snouts.
It reached deep down into their souls, penetrating their very being. Every synapse in their tiny engineered brains was set on fire by it, every muscle stiffened, every heartbeat suddenly hit like a sorry stick. Their noses physically curled at it, their eyes blurred- not just from the tears. The fluff stood on its ends, and every little sound became a deafening roar.
It completely overloaded their senses and their minds. They felt dizzy, and weak- every instinct told them to run, to hide, to fight, and scream all at once.
They were scared so utterly that they couldn’t even react, let alone move. Frozen in place by the horror they had just smelled. A horror incomprehensible to fluffies.
This was the power of BX-32. It was terror. It was despair.
It had broken them.
The employee returned after 20 minutes in the break room.
Somebody had eaten all the iced donuts.
As he walked across the training floor, he noticed many of the fluffies in the other pens were looking up towards the direction of the special training pen. Despite being far away from the other pens, it seemed that they had heard or smelled something coming from it.
He knew what.
Indeed, upon arrival, the special training pen was a mess. The ‘foals’ were all lying alone in their own pools of fake blood, each mangled in some form.
Warmy, Twinky, and Booboo were huddled in a corner, with a thousand yard stare towards the ‘foals’, blotches of red all over their fluff and skin.
He hadn’t expected them to fuck up this fast.
He stepped into the pen and stopped just before where the blood would touch his boots, “what have you done!? You- you gave these poor foals forever sleepies!” his feigned shock might have won awards.
“N-n-nu… nu m-m-mean…” Warmy choked out, “b-babbehs… sowwy… s-sowwy… sowwy…”
Booboo sat up against the wall of the pen, his front legs wrapped around him in a self-hug, “huggies make ebwyfing bettah… huggies m-make e-eb-ebwyf-f-fing b-bettah…”
Twinky merely rocked in place.
The employee stepped over the blood and ‘corpses’ towards them, "Well, I see no other options- you’ve all been such bad fluffies that you’re going to get… " pause for dramatic effect, “forever sleepies!”
That got them to snap out of their trance immediately.
“NUUUUUUUUU! NU WAN FOWEBAH SWEEPIES! PWEEZ NU!” Booboo shouted, falling over himself trying to run over the the employee’s feet.
Warmy followed after him, begging much the same. The pair prostrated themselves at the man’s feet, grasping his ankles, “PWEEZ NICE MISTAH, PWEEZ NU GIF FOWEBAH SWEEPIES! HUU HUUU! NU MEAN TO HUWT BABBEHS! PWEEEEEEEEZ! NU MEAN! NU MEAN!!! WIWW BE GUD FWUFFIES! WIWW BE GUD, PWEEEEEEEZ! HUUU HUUUU!”
Twinky had not yet moved, but he cried and wailed all the same.
“I don’t know…” the employee said, crossing his arms, “Hmmm… but I guess there is one way-”
“WE DU DAT! WE DU DAT! HUU HUUU HUUUUUUUU! PWEEZ! NU FOEVAH SWEEPIES! PWEEZ SOWWY! PWEEZ SOWWY!”
“Alright then… but we have to take away your leggies to stop you from hurting more babies- and you’ll have to live in a special box which you won’t be able to leave, too,” Booboo and Warmy’s faces flashed a hint of confusion behind their terror, “its either that or forever sleepies, the choice is yours,”
That was the question that would seal the deal, the fluffies almost always said ‘yes’- and this time was no different.
Warmy and Booboo both nodded solemnly, letting go of the human’s ankles and sliding onto the floor, defeated.
Twinky still lay in the corner, rocking and crying. The employee approached him and kneeled down. He could smell the BX-32. It was like rotten eggs mixed with truckstop diarrhea… and there was a hint of something worse underneath, “did you hear what I said?”
“Mhmm…” Twinky moaned out.
“And do you want forever sleepies?”
He took a second to answer, “… n-nu…”
And that was that. Without a further word, the employee stepped out of the pen and retrieved a deep cardboard box. He placed the three fluffies into it, who offered no resistance at all, and off they went to the processing floor and to their new ‘lives’.
They’d been sitting in their cage in the processing floor for a few hours, hugging for comfort, all while the BX-32 scent was still on their bodies- not as strongly, but enough to keep them agitated.
At first, some of the other prisoners nearby retched and complained at the smell, a few condemned mummahs even frantically searching for the 'huwt babbehs".
Sleepy-time eventually came though, and the main lights in the hall were switched off, sending the trio into near darkness, with only a dull red service light to give them sight in the night.
Most of the other fluffies in their cages had gone to sleep (they were the ones reserved to fate), but a few whispers and quiet sobs could be heard all around every once in a while.
Frankly, if fluffies could conceive Hell, this might be what they would come up with.
Twinky hadn’t said much since the foals, and had fallen asleep in the corner. Booboo and Warmy cuddled next to the cage door. At this point, neither of them said much either, just breathing, crying, and waiting for the end together.
It gave Booboo time to think, which wasn’t something he’d really done before: he wasn’t a smarty, he was a toughie.
Was.
The death of a foal in his arms had changed him.
His whole life had revolved around hugs.
The first thing he could remember was his mother scooping him up into her soft chest fluff. He hadn’t even opened his eyes, but he could remember the feeling: the tickling of her hairs on his snout, her squishy hoofpads massaging him, her warmth, her soothing voice… and the fulfillment of that need for immediate love and care and attention that all newborns have.
He’d hugged his mummah pretty much as often as he could as he grew. When he first started to talk, the first thing he did was ask for a hug. When he first started to walk, he waddled right up to mummah and hugged her. She was so happy with him, and he was happy too.
He was the bestest baby as well. He got the best huggies, he got the first milkies. He clung to her always, tucked snug into her neck or chest fluff.
It eventually became a problem, though. He started to get aggressive with the other foals. He regretted that now.
Mummah wanted to hug them too, and at first he would only push them away, then he would shout and throw little tempter tantrums. Near the end, he would get into regular fights with his brothers and sisters as they crowded around, trying to pull him off. He usually won.
The day his brood was supposed to ‘graduate’ to training, he had to be peeled from his mother. He was almost the same size as her, and was starting to crush her. He screamed the whole time, and even bit the human taking him. The last time he saw mummah, she was crying.
Her tears stained her yellow fluff, and her little wingies drooped at her side. He wanted to hug her better, but he couldn’t escape his plastic container, and he remembered thinking at the time that even if he did escape, the humans would hurt her.
He was dumped in the training floor and told he was “very bad”. It hurt his heart a little, but not as much as not being with mummah. He’d tried to give the other fluffies in the pen hugs, but every time they would attack. It was so lonely…
But then he met Warmy.
She was soooo pretty and smart! She looked just like mummah too. When he tried to hug her, she didn’t even attack him.
When she started singing the mummah song to calm down Twinky, and when she cradled those foals, it had awakened something deep, deep down inside him.
He loved Warmy, he really did, but that deep, deep something was too strong. He… had to give huggies. A special kind of huggies, but he wasn’t quite sure what. Something instinctual- and that feeling was suddenly all the more urgent now that soon he wouldn’t be able to give hugs of any kind ever again.
He looked down at Warmy, cradling his chest fluff.
She’d been quietly sobbing the entire time they’d been in this cage. Being this close to her for so long… it gave him very good feels. Different from when he gave or got hugs, different even than the good feels he got when he thought about his mummah.
These good feels weren’t in his head or his heart, though- they were somewhere a little bit lower than that.
He rose up from the floor of the cage, Warmy’s hooves slipping off of him.
“Buubuu pweez gif mo’ huggies…” she asked, wearily. Her answer came in the form of a nudge to her side, pushing her over onto her belly. It didn’t hurt, but did disorientate her, “Buubuu, nu wan’ pway wan hug-”
Suddenly, he was on top of her, his stomach pushing down against her lower back and his legs trapping her on all sides. His head pressed into her back, just above her wings.
“Buubuu, wha’ am dis game? Nu wike…” her voice wavered.
The she felt something poke her backside, a little off center below her tail. A hoof? No, all his were on the floor… It prodded around for a few seconds, Buubuu himself straining and breathing heavily as it did, until, finally…
“EEP!” Warmy’s eyes shot open as that something- no, his… something went inside her no-no place! “Nu wike! Buubuu, nu wike!” she tried to twist and turn but he held in her place, “Buubuu! Nu wike, pweez stahp!”
He bit down hard on her neck scruff- enough to really hurt- stopping her from turning her head.
“BUUBUU PWEEZ STAHP! GIF HUWTIES! NU WIKE HUWTIES HUU HUUU!”
He knew that this hurt her, and that hurt him, but he needed to do this. He needed to make more babies before he couldn’t anymore. She would understand when she had the babies herself, right?
That was more important than either of them, he thought; maybe his babies would be better than him.