WARNING: contains spoilers for “The Talk”.
In an alternate universe, where Pierre wasn’t fast enough, and everything that could go wrong did go wrong…
You’re on your knees, in your apartment, silently cursing the day that you met Pierre Faucheuse. You blame Piccolo for being such a horny little bastard, but deep down, you know that none of this is his fault.
You know whose fault this is.
You are currently covered with soot and ash and blood, the latter not being any of yours, and your clothes have mostly burned away, but your body is otherwise intact. Unfortunately.
The apartment is currently on fire. And completely destroyed.
The flames have already covered the rest of the building.
They are now spreading across the entire city.
They’re not stopping anytime soon. You know this. You were there when it started.
Judy, the love of your life, has burned to death.
Seth and Andre, your two best friends, have both burned to death. They futilely tried to shield Judy and the fluffies from the blast.
Dr. Pierre Faucheuse, smartest and richest man in the world, has also burned to death. He had just made it through the door when the fireball consumed his body. Whatever parts of him haven’t been burned to cinders have been melted into slag. So he was a cyborg all along. Huh. You’d be amazed if you could feel anything other than crushing remorse right now.
Piccolo, Snowball, Caelum, Magic, and the babbehs have all burned to death. The big fluffies were all trying to shield the babbehs. But fluffies and fire should never mix, you know this.
And Marley, the last survivor, besides you, is currently burning to death.
Only Dave was spared from burning to death, because he was spending the day with his baby mama and their son.
Well, you say spared, but by now, the flames have probably caught up with them.
Marley strains to look up at you, and in his last moments, visibly feeling betrayed, he says his final words.
“Am aww daddeh fauwt.”
You feel a chill go down your spine when he says those words.
In this moment, your spine is the only chilly thing in the room.
It’s the only chilly thing in the city.
By now, it’s probably the last chilly thing on the planet.
And then the flames devour him too, just as, you know, they’ll devour the entire world, and all who call it home.
You look up, straight into the bony face of Death. Right into those glowing blue eyes, deep in the eye sockets, that remind you so much of the eyes of the dead man you now despise. The ghosts of your closest friends, Pierre, and the woman you love are behind him, glaring at you, all of them knowing that this is all your fault.
It was all your fault. You can’t deny this.
Next to him, a smaller shape, the Grim Reaper’s fluffy counterpart. So every species gets its own Death, even artificial ones. You’d think it’s cool, but nothing is ever going to be cool again. The ghosts of your fluffies accompany him, glaring at you exactly like your human loved ones are.
None of them are even remotely singed. The flames are going right through them.
IT! WAS!! ALL!!! YOUR!!! FAULT!!!
“Do it. Please. I can’t live with this guilt. Just do it already.”
YOU WON’T HAVE TO LIVE WITH IT, CALVIN KORKEA. NOBODY WILL. OUR WORK HERE IS ALMOST DONE. YOU WON’T BE CROSSING THE DESERT ALONE, I CAN ASSURE YOU OF THAT.
The Bone Fluff nods in agreement.
DA BUWNIES WIWW CUNSOOM EVEWYFING. DA WHOWE PWANET. MAYBEE EBEN DA WHOWE YOO-NAH-FUWSE. NUBUDDY WIWW ESS-CAYPE IT.
Death lifts up his scythe, preparing to swing. Good. Let’s just get this over with already. There’s nothing left here for you now.
KNOW THIS, CALVIN KORKEA. THINGS COULD HAVE GONE DIFFERENTLY. DESPITE WHAT YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS MAY BELIEVE, NONE OF THIS IS YOUR FAULT, MR. KORKEA. THERE WERE FORCES AT PLAY GREATER THAN YOU COULD HAVE EVER IMAGINED. GOODBYE, CALVIN.
With that said, he swings the scythe, and frees you from this wretched mortal coil.
Finally.
Wow, that got dark, huh? Let’s move on, before we have to break out the tissues. Sniff. Ah-he-hem! Meanwhile, back in the main universe, where things aren’t so depressing…
You are Marley, and you have no idea what is happening right now.
You’re all in your housie. Which is actually an app-pawt-ment. It’s like a lot of little housies, all inside one big housie. Hoomins. Always making things so complicated. You sometimes wonder what the world would be like if fluffies were running the show.
Anyway, your daddeh, your mummah, your uncles Seth and Andre, and all of your fluffy friends are here with you. You look over at the babbehs, who you’re like an uncle to.
Mistah Dave is here too, and you’ve noticed that, even though your daddeh says that he and mistah Dave don’t like each other a lot, they sure do spend a lot of time together.
And mistah… what was it, nice shiny hoomin, met him and his fluffies at the pawk, just moved in downstairs… Oh! Mistah Fuh-choos. You think that’s it. But he’s here, too. He just got here, right after it happened.
Oh wait, he said it was dok-tow Fuh-choos. You’ve heard stories about scary dok-tows from other fluffies, but the dok-tow your daddeh and mummah take you and the others to sometimes is a very nice hoomin, and this one is too.
Then you look at your special friend, Caelum. Daddeh said it’s okay for you to be special friends already, but he also said no special huggies until Piccolo and Snowball’s babbehs are out of the housie.
You can live with this, thanks to the Special Huggie Friends he got for you and Piccolo. He said that they used hoomin magic to make them look just like your special friends. Which was, honestly, kind of neat! You didn’t know that was possible.
You actually think that it’s for the best, because you felt like you could use the practice.
You’ve already learned one thing:
Don’t use it when the real Caelum is around. You don’t think you’ll ever forget the look on her pretty face when she waddled in on you, uh… using your Special Huggie Friend.
Then, finally, you look back at your daddeh.
Right now, he’s the only one in the room making a sound. Er, make that two sounds.
That’s not counting the babbehs, who haven’t even opened their see-places yet, and are too widdwe to really get what’s currently happening. They’re chirping, because they’re still chirpy babbehs, and chirping is what chirpy babbehs do.
You’re the only one who hasn’t been staring at daddeh the whole time. Not counting the babbehs, who can’t stare yet. Right after the babbehs came, daddeh gave you a num of the feew-gud nummies that he had also given Snowball when the babbehs were coming, and then you had a surprisingly pleasant conversation with another fluffy who looked like he could use a good bowl of nummies. But he vanished before you could ask daddeh if he could give the fluffy some nummies. So then you asked daddeh if he could give you some nummies, because for some reason, you had the wowstest tummeh owwies. Even though you had just nummed some feew-gud nummies!
So, to get to the point, what you’re seeing right now isn’t the strangest thing you’ve seen lately.
That, and you’ve just taken another num of the feew-gud nummies, so you’re feeling pretty… what word did daddeh use? Oh right, mewwow.
Daddeh is laughing a lot, and there’s also a crackly sound, coming from his right handsie. That’s what those not-hoofsies hoomins have are called, you know now. And the bottom ones are called footsies, apparently.
It’s what’s in his handsie that’s so strange.
He’s holding a baww of buwnies, what do the hoomins call it, oh yes, a fiyah-baww, in his handsie, and the really, really strange thing, is that it’s not giving him any buwnie owwies.
You hear mistah Fuh-choos speak up. He sounds annoyed, but he also sounds pleased.
“Ah, pyrokinesis, a wonderful starting power. Well done, Cal. Congratulations. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll save a fortune on lighters, believe me. I know how quickly you go through those. I was hoping that I could isolate you before it started, but oh well, this isn’t a complete disaster, and I can work with this. Never say that it can’t get any worse. Ladies, gentlemen… welcome to the Fluffy Cabal. It’s not what it sounds like.”
You don’t really understand what that’s all about.
But you can’t help but feel like something horrible has just barely been avoided.