Entrant 6: Pit

Night 1

12 AM

The white-winged angel stood before the desk and pinched his chin as he scanned the merchandise laid out thereupon. His blue eyes narrowed to lazy slits as they stopped on the ringing phone.

"Hello? Hello, hello?" began the message from the other end of the line. "Uh, I wanted to record a message for you to help you get settled in on your first night."

"Lady Palutena, can you hear this?" asked Pit.

"I can hear it loud and clear, Pit," echoed the voice of the goddess Palutena in his head. "Remember?"

"Oh, yeah. I forgot."

"And you might want to pay attention."

"Uh, let's see, first there's an introductory greeting from the company that I'm supposed to read. Uh, it's kind of a legal thing, you know."

Pit paid the man on the phone no heed for the time being, instead searching the disheveled desk for anything of use. Finally, his hands rested on a security monitor half-buried beneath several wads of crumpled paper. He dusted it off and activated it to see three human-sized anthropomorphic animatronics: a brown bear with a black top hat, a lavender bunny with a red bowtie, and a yellow duck-like chicken with a white bib that read "LET'S EAT!" in bold, yellow type.

"Blah blah blah, now that might sound bad, I know, but there's really nothing to worry about," continued the man on the phone.

A crude, 8-bit mini map of the entire building adorned the lower right corner, which Pit tapped to flip between views of each room. As he flipped back to the view of the show stage, he noted that the bunny animatronic had begun to move. His eyes roved to the battery indicator blipping at the lower left corner of the monitor. "99%," it read.

"Evidently, I don't have that much power for the building," said Pit.

"That's true," said Palutena, "so you'd better conserve power if you want to stand a chance of survival."

"After what I went through with Hades, the Underworld army, and the Aurum back in Kid Icarus: Uprising...uh, wait. Who is this Kid Icarus, anyway?"

"I thought it was just a title change, so that the first game would appeal to a wider audience. Specifically, European and American ones."

"Oh, yeah, because the Japanese title was-"

"Hold that thought. Here comes the most important part of the phone call."

Pit's attention snapped back to the phone message.

"Uh, now concerning your safety," it continued, "the only real risk to you as a night watchman here, if any, is the fact that these characters, uh, if they happen to see you after hours probably won't recognize you as a person. They'll p-most likely see you as a metal endoskeleton without its costume on."

With that, Pit returned to his chair and roved his head between the security doors flanking him. Beside each one, he saw a pair of large, square buttons, a red one labeled "DOOR" and a white one labeled "LIGHT".

"Now since that's against the rules here at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, they'll probably try to...forcefully stuff you inside a Freddy Fazbear suit. Um, now, that wouldn't be so bad if the suits themselves weren't filled with crossbeams, wires, and animatronic devices, especially around the facial area. So, you could imagine how having your head forcefully pressed inside one of those could cause a bit of discomfort...and death. Uh, the only parts of you that would likely see the light of day again would be your eyeballs and teeth when they pop out the front of the mask, heh.

"Y-Yeah, they don't tell you these things when you sign up. But hey, first day should be a breeze. I'll chat with you tomorrow. Uh, check those cameras, and remember to close the doors only if absolutely necessary. Gotta conserve power. Alright, good night."

The phone clicked into deathly silence as Pit turned his eyes to the ceiling. There, he saw a large, square air vent grate.

"Hmm..." he mused.

"What is it?" asked Palutena.

"So, what that man said was...that as long as the animatronics think I'm in costume...they'll leave me alone..."

"Don't tell me you're going to do what I think you're going to do."

"That depends on what you think I'm going to do."

2 AM

The East door sealed to keep Chica outside, Pit opened the desk drawers and dug through the papers scattered therein until he finally unearthed a dusty screwdriver.

"Aha!" he shouted in triumph as he scooted the swivel chair beneath the air vent and stood atop it.

"I knew it," said Palutena as Pit set to work unscrewing the vent grate from the ceiling. "You're going to crawl through the vents, head backstage, take an empty animatronic mask, and then head back to the office."

"It's a wacky idea, but it should work, right?" said Pit as the grate clattered on the floor in front of the opened West door.

He hopped off the chair, checked to see that Chica was gone, and then opened the East door. Turning back to the West door, he saw Bonnie peering in to the Office. When he tried to shut the door with the red button, however, it failed to respond.

"Oh, no!" panicked Pit.

"What's wrong?" asked Palutena.

"The door! It won't close!"

"Bonnie must've disabled it somehow."

"What now?"

"The air vent."

"What air vent?"

"The one you just opened. Get inside."

"Oh, yeah. Right."

Pit pushed the chair near the center of the Office, mounted himself on it, jumped off as Bonnie entered the room to attack...

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

...bounced off the animatronic's head, and scrambled into the opened vent.

"Good thing the animatronics can't jump," he grunted as he crawled through the cramped, metallic space.

4 AM

The journey through the cramped maze that was the air vents was uncomfortable, to say the least. Pit could hardly tell where he was going, much less see. As he crawled, he wondered just how far he had strayed from his intended path, until finally, his hand rested on the lip of a short chute to the grate below. He peered down to see the vague shape of a metal endoskeleton sitting on a table, its head swiveling from side to side.

"This must be it," he gasped in excitement, which soon morphed into dismay as he failed to jar the grate loose.

All at once, he realized that he had left his trusty screwdriver back in the office, but he also realized that it wouldn't help him undo the screws that held the grate in place.

"Okay. Think, Pit," he thought. "You're stuck in the air vent and the backstage room is directly below you. You need to get a mask in that room so you 'll be safe from the animatronics. Question is, 'How do I get out of here?'"

As he thought, he almost pricked his hand on the exposed point of one of the screws, and his eye snagged on the rings around his wrist.

6 AM

But by the time he dislodged the last screw from the grate, the doorbell of the morning signaled the end of his first-and only-night at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. He was fired for general unprofessionalism and attempted property theft.


Next time on Fazbear's Gauntlet...

"Pit made it through this. Pittoo made it through this," she whispered under herself. "Surely, I cam make it through this too..."