The psychotic gentlegriff

Anubis’s POV

I awoke to feel an odd sensation, it was like nuzzling but from a tiny creature. Throwing the sheets off me, I was met with the little cub. It must have woken up but how, I didn’t order it to…. Unless no I couldn’t have, could I? I must have spoken in my sleep, that’s a little concerning but right now I’ve got a cub nuzzling up to me thinking I’m her dad.

“Sigh* well good morning little one.”

“Good morning daddy.” She was digging her claws into my side and it was oddly cute but right now I had to check up on Soft, I guess this little rascal is coming with me.

“Well come on then, we’ve got a busy day ahead of us.” She just nodded her head vigorously.

Getting up and pulling the cub off of me, I opened the closet and grabbed a lab coat. The cub stood on her hind legs, flapping her little wings. Trying to take flight, so I picked her up and placed her upon my back.

Sitting her down at the dining room table, I quickly prepared breakfast for fore. Two portions for myself, one for the cub and one for Soft. Even though the cub didn’t need to eat, adding biomass to the little thing would allow her to grow over time. It was a little difficult to wrap my head around the fact that she had no soul and was acting like this due to instinct and memory. I wondered if I’d be able to give her a real soul one day, now if I could do that. It’ll be revolutionary but I’d need that last artefact, hence why I’m trying to make a stronger, faster and more affordable airship.

“Thank you daddy! That was really yummy, um please can I have more?” I subconsciously gave her a bit of my own breakfast, I chocked her well articulated speech pattern up to the effects of my blood and artefacts…. Well that’s the only way to explain why she’s so well spoken…. Wait why did I give her my food? I was about to eat that….

“Okay well I’ve got work to do little one, so let’s get you cleaned up and head downstairs.”

“Mhm mhm okay.” I cleaned up the bits of food over her beak and placed her onto my back, then a sharp pain shot up my spine. Spinning my neck around, I found her pulling on one of my primary feathers.

“Excuse me but let go, that hurts.” She looked dejected but no amount of cuteness could save her, i was going to use her for science but even though she was soulless. I refused to dissect her, it was the line I couldn’t cross. I know I didn’t enjoy it by any means.

Carrying Soft’s breakfast down to her, I found a pile of pillows and cushions in a circle with the heat riddled hen in the centre. It reminded me of a bird’s nest. If I remember correctly, male birds would build the nest, so why has she built one? Maybe her heat is driving her to make it and get accustomed to staying in it for prolonged periods of time? But why would griffons need a nest? They give birth, not lay eggs.

Pushing her food through a small trap door, I watched as the hen peered over the wall of pillows and began sniffing the air. Once she picked up the scent, she began skulking towards the plate of bacon, eggs and hash browns…. Don’t ask me how I made bacon. She ate up the meal greedily.

“Well I think she likes it, I hope the pill I put in the hash browns gets eaten.”

“Daddy, what’s wrong with that griffon?”

“Ummmm…. Well it’s complicated and nothing you need to worry about….”

“Oh…. Is that because you’re going to help her?”

“Yes, that’s right….” The fact that she didn’t have a name was getting noticeably awkward but I don’t want to get attached to the thing. “Anyway let’s leave her be for now, I’ve got a big job for you.”

“Oh really? What, what is it?”

“See this room, I need you to solve all the puzzles inside there. Once you’re done, I’d like you to come and find me.”

“Okay daddy! Can I start now?”

“Sure thing, go right ahead.” I didn’t know how I felt about being called ‘daddy’ by this cub but the research was valuable, even though I could directly control her. It was fascinating to see this living corpse develop and learn on its own.

I went to check on my other test subject, who was very busy with herself! I adverted my gaze and walked over to a bench, beginning to take readings and trying to find which parts of the brain was responsible for the increase of hormones. Taking an educated guess I decided that the hypothalamus might be responsible, so I needed to find a mixture of chemicals that would only affect the hormones responsible for a female’s estrus and reduce its production.

I began reviewing the data from the bio scanners that I left on in there, as soon as Soft entered the habitat. I’ve found out that the hormone that’s responsible for estrus is a large amount of estrogen, so that meant the dominant follicle was responsible…. Good to know, so if I introduce her body to enough progesterone, then that should theoretically fix the problem and restore her ability to function normally.

Immediately getting to work on a new drug that was very promising. I turned around to find patient zero staring at me with a wild look in her eyes. It was very concerning but I believe the more than feral state was due to this being her first time experiencing estrus, poor thing.

Getting back to work I lost track of time, I was brought out of my extreme focused state by something wet on my tail feathers, looking back I found the culprit. It was the cub, she was crudely trying to preen my tail feathers. It was a wonder I didn’t feel it sooner, the sight was amusing to watch. “Cough!* Cough!* hi daddy, I finished all the tests…. Um I tried to clean your feathers but…. I think I wasn’t supposed to lick them so much…. Sorry?”

“Heheheheheh!! It’s fine…. But let’s go and see how you did, come here.”

“Yay!!!”

Meanwhile Jernick was juggling the needs his griffons had and the textbooks Anubis had given him. The stress was getting to him but he would have to persevere, the others needed him to. Anubis needed him to.

“Sigh* okay Jernick, you’ve got this. What needs to be done?”

“Um my lord, we need to hunt more food and if it’s not too much to ask for but a somewhere to clean ourselves would be nice…. Oh and the roof needs repairing, because of some heavy rain from the Everfree.”

“Oh thank you Rosie, so I’ll work on the roof. Have a team go hunting and once I’ve fixed the roof, I’ll work on making a bathhouse.”

“Yes of course, my king.” Rosie rushed off to round up a team of griffons for a hunting party whilst Jernick flew up to the roof and began repairing and improving it with the knowledge from those textbooks.

Upon taking a look at the roof he noticed that it was missing something vital from the textbook, it didn’t have anywhere for the water to go. He began to fix and reinforce the roof and supports, then he got to work on gutters.

About 2 hours later and half a dozen failed attempts that he had thrown off the roof he eventually made a fully functional gutter system. A wide grin began to spread across his beak as he looked at his work.

“Excuse me, my King but the team that went hunting has returned and by the looks of it. It wasn’t a terribly successful one but they didn’t return empty clawed.”

“Oh really, well that’s better than nothing, so lead the way. I’ll see what we have to work with.”

———————————————————————

“Daddy, what are you doing with that sleeping pony?”

“Ahhhh! um? nothing, now scurry off up stairs and do some exploring but no going outside.”

The little cub ran off to explore the expensive house whilst Anubis was elbow deep in a corpse, that he had infected with a virus that he managed to artificially create under the correct conditions.

He was examining the rate at which the virus starts to reanimate the organs, nervous system and then the muscle tissue. The reason why he was looking into this form of reanimating the dead was because of the restrictions of his abilities, a virus meant that he could weaponise it if needed and infect a large number quickly.

But he was running into trouble because this strain of the artificial virus wasn’t reanimating the body. He’d have to run some tests and figure out why it wasn’t working, Anubis theorised that the problem was that this strain was designed for humans and not the magical creatures. Securing the body to the table, he decided to take five and to make lunch.

Heading up stairs and into the kitchen, Anubis opened the cupboard and was attacked by the cub. She jumped out at him and latched onto his face, demanding food. He found it oddly amusing that she had set up an ambush for him, not to mention that she wanted food…. She had never asked for anything to eat before, so what’s changed?

Prying her off and seating her at the dining table, telling her to wait until it was ready. Walking back to the kitchen, he peeked into the living room and had to take a second look. It was completely destroyed, everything was a mess, thrown about and the coffee table was turned into a scratching post. “Sigh* you have to be fucking kidding me…. I’ll fix it later, and probably find more things to fix along the way.”

Entering the kitchen and grabbing bread, butter, cheese, chicken and mayonnaise. Anubis made six sandwiches, giving the cub two and taking the rest down stairs in to the labs. He slid the new drug into one of them and gave that plate to Soft, leaving him to relax and enjoy his sandwiches.

Fore hours later he noticed a difference in the hen’s behaviour, she wasn’t trying to find a way to him now. Soft also wasn’t acting like a mindless animal either but instead she had calm down and disappeared into her room. Anubis knew she was fine but something seemed off about her, not knowing what annoyed him but there wasn’t much he could do other then check the scanners every 10 minutes.

Anubis decided to go and clean up the mess the cub had created, when he found the cub he was surprised to see that she had fallen asleep on the couch. It would have been cute if she wasn’t surrounded by the mess she had made, picking her up he put her to bed in one of the spare bedrooms in the mansion. Afterwards he went back to clean up her mess, igniting his claws he began tidying up the living room, dining room and kitchen as well as the hallways and storage room. Even some empty rooms that the cub had somehow managed to make a mess out of, how she did that Anubis would have to figure out another time.

He eventually finished cleaning the mansion’s library and went over to the reading desk and pressed a button located in one of the drawers. A bookshelf swung open and an elevator was exposed, Anubis got in and pressed the third button down. The gates closed and the bookcase followed suit, hiding the secret elevator. The dimly lit elevator began it's descent at an orderly pace, the griff inside was holding a blueprint that was a step by step guide to making a interdimensional portal to the Dreamscape.

The gates opened and Anubis swiftly hopped out and began laying out the blueprints and got to work on constructing the portal, he knew that it would take him a long time to complete but he had been putting it off for too long now. Zodiac had given him the information he needed but it was so complex and confusing, Anubis took weeks to make blueprints for the device.

“To think that Zodiac can find a weak spot between dimensions and naturally create a portal, whilst I have to make a machine to replicate it…. How much power does that cosmic friend of mine actually possess?”

After getting cleaned up and dishing up dinner, Anubis gave the two occupants the food before going back to the elevator. But this time he pressed the second button, the trip down was shorter and he exited the elevator. The door locked behind him as he put on a insulated suit and entered a freezer filled with dead creatures. Everything from ponies and griffons, to beasts of the Everfree. All in different stages of decay and rot, the body of the ponies and griffons had came from the Canterlot cemetery.

He ignored them and went to the very back where he was met with a keypad, putting in a five digit code. Unlocking the heavy steel door, he pulled it open and went in. Grabbing a few vials and placing them into a case before leaving and locking up the place.

He began testing how each one reacted with the blood of the corpse that he was testing on. His way of going about it was quite primitive but it would eventually yield results, the method was trial and error. Mixing the vials bit by bit in separate tubes, it would be a slow process but he didn’t have enough knowledge to go about it any other way.