Chapter 2.
I'm Still Here, Problem? Talk to my Attorney.
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"It appears a spec is on the lens outside. Send the rookie to remove it. Why you ask? Because big problems come in small packages, or, in this case, blind spots."
-Writ 2 of Surveillance.
Darkness always was a welcome thing at bedtime, it kept you asleep, allowed your mind to wander while you snored like an running truck in the muffled confines of a pillow, and it just had this aura of quiet that took away from daily stress.
Normally, he appreciated darkness during sleep.
Normally, he found it easily bypassed during the day.
However, NORMALLY, Phillip wasn't quaking in terror to the possibility of an evil, demonic, robotic stuffed animal coming from under his bed and tearing him apart.
In the end, he had been forced to drug himself in order to rest, basically, having slipped three herbal pills down his throat with a quaking hand that made more of his cupped water end up on his shirt than in his mouth. He choked on at least one of the pills, hacked it up where it stuck to the mirror of the bathroom, and he'd scraped it off and retaken it anyway.
His mind was fuzzy when he woke that morning, so by the time he finished inspecting his house for animatronic murderers, swallowed a cereal bar in one bite, and was awake enough to see his job started in three hours, the antics of attempted rest were forgotten.
The first thought in his mind was how he could possibly survive in that dump again, now that the furry freakjobs KNEW he was working there, they were bound to up-the-attack the more he showed. And besides, why in hell's name would he go back?!
Blatantly, you'd have to be some moron to simply put a dumb grin on your face, shrug, and waltz back inside the pizza-palace-o' death, with the saying of 'Oh well! Times are hard!'
Yeah, YEAH! Times are hard you piece of rotten garbage! REALLY hard! Especially with your body being torn to shreds and you slowly bleeding to death while you WATCH monsters EAT YOUR INTERNALS! YEP! Difficult cycles to put god-damned bread on the table, RIGHT?!
WHO NEEDS ORGANS ANYWAY?! I GOT A CHECK FOR MININUM WAGE! I'M VALUED!
Dang his conscience and its mental rants.
"Frag you karma ," Phillip growled as he slammed the door to his car. "And up-yours economy."
He was going to have a word with this... This MANAGER, as he called himself, about what it meant to have your face broken. For, by the time Phillip pulled into the parking space of the joint, his tires screeched to a halt inches before the curb.
Snatching hold of his uniform, he dashed for the door, fists pumping by his sides.
"BOSS!" He barked, the door swung aside, revealing the emptied internals of the building, the same menacing threesome standing idle on the stage.
"Boss get out here!"
Phillip waited another minute before the rather short, and pudgy little old man rounded the corner from the kitchen in the back, he rubbed his ear with an annoyed expression.
"Your yelling why? Precisely?"
"BECAUSE YOU ALMOST GOT ME EATEN!"
Phillip even surprised himself with how loud he belted his boss, and the old man flailed like a piece of newspaper caught in a bad breeze while stuck to a streetlamp.
He blinked, shook his wrinkled head to clear it, and gazed towards the animatronics.
"Eaten, you say?" The manager muttered.
"YES! TORN TO PIECES! FEASTED ON BY THE SONS OF HELL!"
"Quite prophetic, Mr. Linn! You should by the new scribe for Freddy's-!"
"OOOOOHHH NO," The rabid security guard snarled. "-You aren't hood-winking me with any more paranormal paratrooper jobs, you prune!"
If phased by his insults, the old man didn't show it, he simply rubbed the stubble beneath his chin, adjusted the belly-button high trousers he wore, and jabbed a finger to the animatronics.
A disappointed expression worn his face, and he seemed to be chastising the robots, not PHILLIP.
"I expected they'd be dormant for some time..."
"WH-WHAT-I-?!" Phillip stammered, shook like an after tremor of an earthquake, and stopped himself with a heave of breath.
He cleared his throat, and regained composure.
"You better start talking before you see the inside of your own skull via my fist."
"Calm down, Mr. Linn, I'll walk you through..." The manager whispered the last part, a brow raised to the animatronics. "-In DETAIL."
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"Their old, Mr. Linn, VERY, very old. My retired engineer, all the way in Chicago, believed the actual suits were pieced together around the 50's, though which exact date or," Phillip's boss shook his head, and smacked an old newspaper down on the roof of his desk. "-Precisely who, or WHAT, did that piecing together, I couldn't tell you."
At least Phil had calmed down a bit more, and sipped an iced coffee the manager insisted he have for free, he nodded to the newspaper clipping on the cluttered desk from his stance in the chair facing it.
The office was small, walls covered in dusty, aged World War 2 and Swing propaganda, the lights from the ceiling were wire hung, naked bulbs, even the wood of the desk was wearing down, a garden chair was the guest seat facing it.
Said chair creaked as the guard leaned forwards.
"What's with the article?"
The manager looked thoughtful, smiled sadly.
"The Bite of 87', c'mon Phillip." He chuckled sarcastically in tease. "It's the closest inkling we have to our friends' outside and their real nature."
"There ain't nothing NATURAL, here, man..." Phillip snapped, interrupting himself mid sip of the coffee.
"Allow me to ask, about last night," His boss asked, unphased by the prior speech. "Which ones gave you trouble?"
"Too the point, eh gramps?"
The manager snorted in response.
"Well let's see, I had the bird, the rabbit and-" He stopped mid-sentence, debating now, heavily, of the importance of what information he gave out.
Figuring on the odds that the manager was trying to help, as, with what he'd explained earlier, now questioned Phillip's desire to quit and leave others to pay for his fear, the elder couldn't be setting him up... This was advice, and he needed to know the truth.
At least... That's what Phillip processed.
He could always crack some heads in case of a betrayal.
"-Uh... T-the F-Fox, the Fox showed up too."
"Really?" For the strangest of reasons, the elder seemed... Intrigued, no, more like FASCINATED with that last statement, the other two didn't get anywhere near a reaction.
"So... What does that mean?"
"A very peculiar development, Mr. Linn. Bonnie and Chica are the most active, their harassing of you last night is not surprising, however... The old girl hasn't been active in... Well, around a decade."
Phillip raised a brow, and leaned in closer to the article still laying across the desk, indeed, the picture in the center of the frame, black and white, dulled but discernible, was of a less rough-looking Foxy being locked up in that booth, a medical vehicle parked outside the building.
He gulped, and stared at his boss.
"You knew it was a... SHE?"
"Oh yes-"
"And SHE was responsible for the 87' thing?"
The manager sighed, and was quiet for a short while, the cushioned, retro-styled chair behind the desk squeaked as he sat in it sluggishly, and with haste.
Folding his hands, interlocking fingers, he nodded to the outside of the office.
"Aye. Aye she did it. There's no use hiding it, ole' Foxy practically caved in that man's forehead, put him in a vegetative state..."
The young man suddenly found the headache from yesterday's screaming fit returning, but this time, for stress, confusion. He rubbed his right palm over his face, and realized he had probably been... SOCIALIZING, with a ploy.
Because he believed one of the animatronics had some form of good... It-or, rather, SHE, had tricked him into false trust.
"Crap..." He mumbled. "-I don't understand... She seemed so... Uh, I dunno-"
"Not like the others? Shy? A bit TOO human?"
Phillip shut his jaw and shook his head in an affirmative. The senior leaned forwards a bit, rapping a knuckle to the newspaper.
"That's my point. It's always been my point, not to just you NOW, but she didn't do it out of free will. It seemed she didn't know how else too... DRAG that man away from... Whatever had him."
"Drag?"
"Of course the papers and the journalists screwed up the truth, their reporters, it's in their blood. That animatronic, despite the end results, probably saved that man from a very grisly end."
The manager eyed the office window, seeing the gradual descent of shadow, the lackluster sunlight failing to flood into the rooms to a darker state still.
Crickets began to sing outside, and likewise with their tune, he raised a finger to the stage with the three-freak band in the back.
"They still haven't let her live that down." He pointed out. "-Look, Mr. Linn, I can't force you to keep this job, much less make you risk your life against your will... But you are the only capable person within the tri-state area, and, that's a fact."
Phillip leaned his head back, and growled in agitation to his already realized situation, he didn't even flinch when the manager laid an early check in his previously coffee-holding hand.
Welp, pay for being the nobleman who kept some other poor schmuck in the world from getting brutalized. Looks like America had a new martyr...
"Look, boss, you keep the fixes I made on that-that, GOD-AWFUL generator you taped up back there, and you up the checks, give me tips to control these freaks... I'll do it. I have nothing else."
"Please, Mr. Linn," The old man shook his hand gruffly when the renewed guard stood. "-Call me Matt."
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When the sun vanished, the tendrils of black swept inside Freddy's like an ocean of ink, and Phillip thought he broke the buttons on the doors for how hard and fast he punched them.
When the building settled in its usual grim silence, lights flickered as always, the camera in the restrooms was the dead one tonight, and the office was eerily quiet, since that rickety fan was still in pieces in the trash bin.
Curling up tighter in a near fetal-position on the chair, he flipped through the tablet views a few times, practically scrunching his face up in despair when the trio of death began to sift around when his eyes left them.
What the hell? What was he THINKING?
Yeah, true, all he had to do was sit behind the locked doors, watch some possessed robots walk about on their own, maybe have a staring contest with one through the windows, but with God as his witness, this was just UNLIKE him.
If Matt hadn't explained things the way he did, Phil would've told the geezer to go scratch! Sod off! Get some stupid town boob to do it...
Yep, the image of him sitting in this freaking chair with a pointy dunce-hat flashed for a millisecond, before the stress and tension was relieved a bit through his 'Figures' expression to the wall ahead.
Idly, he flicked the lights on both doors, and saw nothing to the left. The right one came on, and even though he was safe, he still jumped in his seat, his heart leapt, when the waling chicken came to view in the window, mouth ajar in a creepy smile, eyes to him.
Holding his chest, Phillip cursed and buried his nose in the tablet.
"Feathered-bitch... Go back to the poultry-farm... Jesus..." He muttered.
Similarly, when Chica departed about twenty minutes later, he flipped the left light on, jumped a bit again, and scowled at the smiling killer hare.
"Silly rabbit, doors keep out pricks!" He rapped a knuckle on the metal, and yanked out a magazine from under the desk.
Very quickly, being locked in the office began to grow boring, albeit better than walking around out THERE, but nonetheless, to say the least, Phillip was using his hands to reenact a fantasy sword battle amid his recline in the chair by 2 am.
"Pew... Ch-chank... Ching!" The worst sword impressions left him, and he did a fake, low-volume death scream as his left hand twitched and fell to a crumpled heap on his lap.
"I have defeated you, vile Baron-!" As he spoke in a English accent, he checked the lights again, gave Bonnie a raspberry followed by a quick "Shit face!" before resuming his imaginary movie lines.
The play grew old too, and he tried to use his imagination, switch the scenes up, he thought of space battles, larger scale modern warfare, Shakespearian plays, mysteries, comedy... ANYTHING to keep him preoccupied.
While Phillip sung an old 1910's song he had heard on an Xbox game he used to play, his vocals went silent when he checked the tablet.
CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK
His brow twitched, and he sighed audibly when the door thudded three times.
Indeed, the good old curtain in Pirate Cove was hastily pushed aside, and the last inhabitant that now at 3 am, he hadn't heard from until now, was missing from her usual spot.
Flicking the light on outside the window, he saw the nervous stance of a shadow flinch under the sudden illumination, a tail flicked in agitation before said animatronic stuck her head in front of the window, and gave a brief toothy grin.
CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK
"Alright-Alright... Keep your shoes on..." He said, stepping from the chair, he gave a last check around his visitor, and went for the door button. Stopping briefly, he remembered WHY Foxy had been responsible for that bite, gave a quick prayer, and pressed the glyph slowly.
The door creaked open, and the rough-looking animatronic ducked inside with a quick motion, standing after the frame, centerwise the office as he shut the entry again.
"H-Hi..." He greeted, once again, awkwardly, waving a hand. "Um, how can I help you? Uh... Foxy?"
The creature's ears rose to him addressing her by name, even the eye-patch flipped to stand straight up over the still-usable eye it always laid atop.
Holding her hook in her palm, Foxy began to open her chops again, and he heard that strange sound of a broken toy car once more, the whining of a malfunctioning voicebox. Phillip couldn't decipher a word that garbled out, and Foxy looked at him, then the floor, and grumbled.
Rearing her fist back like the previous night, she actually had time too, and DID complete the action.
Phillip raised a brow and drew back his head a bit when the animatronic literally reared back her balled hand, and belted herself in the throat.
A clank of metal, her eyes bugged, a spark of light by her clavicle, and static hissed from her partly ajar maw.
She made a cleared throat noise, stretched her head and neck, and shook them for good effect.
Phillip watched this a tad worriedly.
What the heck was THAT?
"H-HELL-HELLO-Hello... H-Human." Foxy gradually overcame the machine-like drabble of her tone, and Phillip startled at how HUMAN she sounded.
Roughly, she had the vocals of say a twenty-five, thirty year old female, pretty good seeing as she was technically older than most women lived, she appeared giddy at having spoken to him, and he noted so.
"S-So you CAN talk." He stuttered
"Y-yes... I can... I can talk." She struggled.
With the ever-present fact that as of right now, he probably resembled the most INSANE person on Earth by now, Phillip found his talking to the animatronic a tad bit high on the weirdness meter.
For the entire time of his dayjobs here, he'd never SEEN Foxy this... Directly, he had heard of an existence in the Cove booth, some kind of off-limits equipment or information, whatever... Until now, though, he hadn't known that WHATEVER was an animatronic.
Phillip couldn't help trying to keep his distance, in a polite shuffle of small, unreadable movements, he gathered distance towards his chair.
"U-um... How long, have you been... Uh, BACK there?"
"In the Cove?"
He found her stabled speech frightening on his end, as, now the position of stuttering had switched hands.
"Yep?" He tried.
Foxy's grin faded like a departing cloud of steam, an ear drooped slightly, she made a coughing sound, which, even for a non-human he could tell was faked.
"Didn't you know?" He almost hadn't heard the meep of speech, and he immediately felt stupid for quizzing what he already knew.
"1987?" Phillip listed.
A quick, dismissive nod from the animatronic, and the conversation of that said point had concluded, he needed no vocal command. Foxy's tail swished behind her, her forearms crossed over the seal of medical tape on her torso, her eyes drank the office briefly before gluing back to him.
He still wondered what made her friendly from the others.
"I guess y-you and your buddies have been... ACTIVE, for awhile, then?"
The bolts on her jaw-hinges whined from the force of being clenched, the hook she always hid behind her back flashed briefly to vision to flip the little eye-patch, still sprung, back down.
"I don't have 'Buddies', human..." He supposed his questions would begin to agitate her sooner or later, he tested the buttons satisfyingly well in results to her annoyed tone.
"I take it the trio-of-death exiled you? In some way?"
A tiny hint of laughter from the fox's smile, but that was wiped away as she narrowed her one visible eye to him, her ears lay back.
"I take it, YOU'RE RIGHT." She grumbled. "-Know why?"
That countered query gave a smug grin on her end, and Phillip found the newly conversational atmosphere enough to forget his prior actions of limited distance. The chair squeaked as he sat in it, he raised a brow to her.
"I have an inkling."
"I'm a traitor because I talk to YOU, the only people I've ever related too... Are HUMANS, of all things..." Foxy had a face of resentment to her, her shoulders balled, forearms clenched tighter in her self-protective manner.
Yet, her answer gave him interest.
"You've talked to humans before?"
"Dumb, right?" She snickered with venom. "Matthew held good discussions of my innocence... That man with the wrench... He moved away. He used to talk to me about my prior years..."
"The mechanic dude in Chicago?" He blurted.
"Mechanic... DUDE?" She obviously had no idea what that word meant, and her head cocked with wide, quizzing eyes, arms drooping to her hips.
Alright, now that oblivious reaction was pretty funny, and he snickered against his will to the sight of it, leaving a bewildered Foxy to glare awkwardly. Her tail flicked, and Phillip composed himself.
"I heard he's in another state."
"Figures..."
"Well, if your so upset over the two of them blowing you off why did you come to me?"
Foxy frowned at him, and laid a knuckle to her waist.
"Are YOU going to leave as well?" She asked without a hint of punishment or insult, she incited an honest tone, like a factual lecture from a college professor, and that too was just bothersome coming from the living robotic suit.
"No, I'm here for-"
"It gives us both something to do RIGHT?"
"Uhhhh... I guess-"
"And it keeps my 'Buddies' from even peeping through the glass-" She stepped to a window, and tapped it with her hook, stowing it behind promptly as usual. "-RIIIIGGGHHHTT?"
Phillip pouted, in no further mood to be interjected.
"Then I don't see a problem." She shrugged.
The weight of the whole thing came down on him then, like a big, freshly manufactured penny added the benefit of a good polishing, flicked off the Empire-State Building by a set of fingers, and then smacking him upside the head deftly.
Yet after such an elaborate little explanation, the same tiny little fact continued to smug inanely.
He just came back to the Chuck-E-Cheese-rip, axe-murdering foster home for quite-real monstrosities for the SOLE purpose of saving some other dumb ass from its grasp, and now, he was having a CIVIL DEBATE, with a member of said monstrosities.
God damn it, someone just HAD to have slipped meth or something in his breakfast.
This was just... Yikes.
"O-Okay..." His head spun, and with a stumbling few steps, he sat in the chair once more to steady his quaking world. "-I-I guess just... Do... SOMETHING, and I'll... I'll be the innocent guard and look PRETTY."
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"Do humans still use au... aut-autom... Ugh..."
"CARS?"
"Maybe?"
"Yeah I drive one to get here."
"What does it look like?"
"I dunno, it's a Ford... It's blue."
"..."
"What?"
Foxy had the left portion of her chops angled upwards in an expression that just jabbed fingers of 'Your cheap' towards him, she raised a brow and huffed.
It was already 4 am, and the animatronic hadn't ceased her volleys of quizzes, questions and queries of his OWN personal opinions on said things. Phillip hadn't explained what a College Campus was to ANYONE before in such detail...
Nor a truck. Or a bus.
Or a plane.
Or an elk.
Or Black-Tie Mouse Cake...
To say the conversation jumbled about was an understatement.
Finally, he continued to notice Foxy's unimpressed glaring.
"WHAT?" He asked louder. Again, she made that shuffling little giggle she had apparently trademarked to him within the two nights of seeing her, and it was clear she found him evidently amusing.
"So now I'm funny?" Phillip grunted.
She nodded her head with a paw covering her snout, eyes closed from the comedic wracks of her shoulders.
"Funny as in 'Hoo hah!' or funny as in 'OMG Lolzers?'" She didn't know what either of those meant, but the funky way he accented both of these alien words was enough for her to snort more laughing, she slowly doubled over, and her hook was struggling to stay hidden.
"Oh that's golden!" Phillip snickered. "Just call me Dr. Phil! Only I don't solve mental problems, I cause them."
Foxy made a choking hack, and the office became the one source of sound in the whole building as the animatronic's balling laughter echoed faintly from behind the closed doors and windows, she banged her fist into the desk she stood near, and went to leaning an elbow.
Phillip, although initially startled by the reaction to his poor puns, found a grin creeping across his face whilst she cracked herself up, and strangely, he took pride in the way he had made her react.
She struggled to find a word to say, chuckled a bit more, and held a paw up to him.
"I-I was-" A cackle. "-I was originally staring a-at you, because your descriptions were so..." Foxy took a deep, heavenly breath to calm herself, a wide smile still on her as she resumed. "-So blunt, vague and bland. I haven't seen outside in..."
Phillip tilted his head when her jubilancy simmered out of her like a drainpipe, that nice little smile on her just creased, ever-so slowly out of sight, obscured by a thin line, her eyes sort of glistened with sudden guilt.
Foxy returned to her timid self the second the atmosphere of reality was given a split-moment opportunity to reenter.
She once again self-consciously, and most likely without really noticing, hid her hook behind her hip again, her chin lowered, nearly pressing to her collar. Phillip became grim at the mere sight.
"-In around... Twenty years."
Shyly, she shifted on her feet, and even though the security guard had much to adjust too, he figured that the old coot up in the office, Matt, was a tad right about this animatronic. He figured if there was anyone who was going to help him contain the freaky trio locked in here, it was her.
It was the ex-freaky trio member that was his key.
"W-Well, I'll be more... In-depth, from now on. Alright?"
Foxy was silent a moment more, and nodded barely.
Phillip had long stopped keeping an eye on her to make sure this whole 'Friendship' or whatever, wasn't an act to impale him with that claw of hers, he refocused on the tablet, checking the other cameras, though, he noted that quackers wasn't in her usual spots... Again.
He grumbled.
"Hey uh... Fox'?"
Her ears perked up to his hail, and he gestured to the window she leaned near.
"You know how the buttons work, right?"
"Mmhmm." She made near inaudibly, still dulled from before.
"Hit the one that says, LIGHT."
Her suspicion rose to that one, her brow raised, and she stepped over to the panel, eyeing the window with a dangerously venomous stare, she seemed angry, but not in the overly stereotypical way. Her forehead didn't indent, she didn't bare fangs, no growl...
The animatronic just held this cold, blank, icy stare with wide eyes almost daring the suspected felon to enter with her inside.
She clicked the button, and Phil naturally jumped a little in his seat.
Indeed Chica stood there in all her strange, ugly, double-jawed wonder, beak parted and vision plastered to the poor guard's general direction, though, it seemed to shift lightly to the scary appearing Foxy.
Phillip's eye twitched as the animatronic let loose a thrum in her throat, a growl, finally, but one that actually sounded animalistic.
The demonic bird actually moved while this transpired, her mouth flexing in a biting motion, a dirtied palm drew across the glass in a squeak of movement. Chica gave off a gurgling noise.
"I-It's safe to assume... She's calling you out, r-right?"
Foxy said nothing, and began a trot to the door.
"W-wait! Don't do that-!"
Phillip had attempted to rise to stop her, but with so little effort, that it frightened him, Foxy's paw snatched to his chest, stopping dead mid-rise, and a flick of her fingers, he plopped back down into the chair with a blank visage.
"A-All right... I tried."
"QUIET." She snapped, jamming a knuckle into the door's opening button.
It was instantaneous, really, Chica's sluggish, sometimes nonexistent movement vanished in a flurry of yellow as the killer bird swung herself to lunge around the bend of the window's corner at her outcast kin.
The lupine animatronic took said leap head on, and Phillip watched with a yip of surprise as that dastardly looking hook she always hid, with now even MORE apparent reason, swept in a dash of red fur and shimmering, rusty metal.
Chica gave a harsh hacking sound, a portion of matted fur on her gut vanished in the hook's arc, so fast, that it was torn clean off, alongside a thin trail of sparks from impacted steel.
She recoiled, and the angry fox leaned back with her balled claw, and, much to his pleasantly comedic surprise, wailed an upper-cut on the bird like a furious ninja-gal in one of those kung-fu movies belted some douchebag villain.
Needless to say, Chica's head flapped back like a ragdoll, from his distance, even HE could see her fake eyes spin loops in her head.
Foxy only pressed as the foe stumbled back towards the hall she came, the hook sung again, and a yellow, fur covered shoulder was torn bare with its joint-like interior.
"Come back with more bite, bitch!"
Foxy's speech gave the human a face one could only describe as a small child hearing their parent scream out a profane jumble of queen-mothers precariously combined into some sentence that used said F-bomb in multiple instances.
A mouthful, but Phillip's lipline grew to the size of a penny, appearing as a '.' shape.
"I'll smack your ass harder than ole' Bonn' EVER could in your romps! You damn-!"
CRASH!
Foxy's further rant was cut off as Chica tumbled over a metal drawer set down the hall, frantically flipping about with flailing limbs to escape.
So now, derogatory terms of the feminine sex spewed forth from a perturbed member of said gender, who, you know, happened to be an animatronic living robotic suit.
Well, whatever. It was still pretty cool when the grumbling lupine stomped back inside the office, the fur atop her head frazzled, her ear-coat similarly messed, and prior structures angled in opposite directions in a lowered state.
Steam was practically venting from her flared nostrils and her ears.
Acutely, she watched without really seeing, her claw slapping the button to close the door, as Phillip slowly peaked his head from behind the chair.
"Y-You..." He stuttered. "-I-is she g-gone?"
Foxy grunted something unintelligible.
"G-good..." He grinned. Then he frowned again. "Remind me to never grind-your gears, demon-lady."
"Stupid DIKE..." She spat, possibly half hearing him.
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