Foxy decided to give the whole question thing another try the next day.
He poked his head into Elizabeth's office after work.
She was going through a bunch of paperwork by the looks of it.
He took a deep breath and knocked on the doorframe a few times to get her attention.
"Riley?" He corrected himself. "Sorry, Elizabeth?"
She looked up at him almost immediately.
"Hey, what's up?"
"I… uh,"
Once again, Foxy forgot what he was going to say.
He wanted to slap himself.
No matter how hard he tried he couldn't remember the proper wording; the tone he intended to use… nothing.
"Could you…"
He attempted to come up with something to say. If he wasn't going to ask the stupid question he at least needed to say something.
"Could you help Freddy with a math problem? He's playing 'Fredbear and Friends: Learning The Power of Multiplication' on the computer and he's stuck on a problem." He quickly added on: "He wanted me to ask you."
Technically not untrue. Foxy had seen Freddy playing it on his way over. And he was struggling a bit from what he could see.
Elizabeth quickly glanced down at the paper in front of her before meeting his eyes again.
"Well, I'd love to help. But you know I absolutely suck at math. Like, a lot. I'd ask Lor instead."
Foxy squinted his eyes. "Alright." He stood in the same spot for an uncomfortably long period of time before awkwardly shuffling away.
That hardly went any better.
Foxy wasn't quite sure what his problem was, but it was clear that he just ought to try something else.
But what?
He brushed shoulders with someone as he walked down the hallway.
"Oh, sorry, Bal."
"It's alright."
He stopped suddenly, whipping around to face her again.
"Wait!" He shouted.
Ballora flinched slightly at the volume of his voice.
"Yes?"
Foxy grabbed the dancer's shoulders and her guided further down the hallway and around the corner.
He poked his head back around the corner again, making sure Elizabeth didn't come out of her office before turning back towards Ballora, who had an eyebrow raised in question, looking at him expectantly.
Then he lowered his voice, remembering that despite the fact that Elizabeth's hearing wasn't very great it was possible that she'd hear him shouting ten feet away from her office.
"Alright, you're really smart and stuff. I need your help with something." Foxy looked over his shoulder once more before continuing. "It has to do with Baby."
"Does it, now?"
"Yeah. Have noticed how she's been kinda different since she came back?"
"Well, yes. She nearly died, Foxy. I don't think a slight attitude change in her is completely out of the realm of plausibility."
"I know," Foxy said quickly. "I thought the same thing. But now I think it's because of something else."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. That's what I'm trying to figure out."
Ballora looked at Foxy as if what he was saying was totally absurd.
"Okay, it's not even just the way she's acting. There's other stuff too. Like this!"
Foxy reached into his back pocket and pulled out the photo, practically shoving it into Ballora's hands.
But try as she might, her horribly blurred vision couldn't make out the photo.
It was just a smudged, vaguely square-shaped thing to her, really.
She handed the photo back to him. "I'm sorry, but I can't tell what this is."
"That's right," he wasn't sure how he forgot that she could barely see. "I'll just tell you what it is. It's um, i-it's of a dead body…"
Ballora's eyebrows shot up.
"Do we know whose body it is?"
"You see, that's the thing. It looks like…"
His voice trailed off into something barely audible, but Ballora still managed to catch it.
"Are you absolutely positive?"
"I mean, it's a little hard to tell. It's all dark and the body's a bit… er, mangled. But it can't be a coincidence, can it?"
"I don't know," Ballora said uncertainty. "That doesn't make any sense. Where did you even get that?"
"Charlie gave it to me. Didn't get the chance to ask where she got it from, though."
Her words echoed in the back of his head but their meaning didn't register.
"We need to figure out what's going on. I tried to ask her a subtle question about it, but it didn't go too well."
"Is that why you ran off yesterday?"
Foxy nodded sheepishly. "Yeah. I tried again before I ran into you but that didn't go well either. So clearly, I need to try something else. And that's where you come in."
"You want me to help you scheme?"
"Yeah! I think -"
He then fell silent as Elizabeth very suddenly rounded the corner.
She somehow seemed to make no noise when walking over.
She quirked an eyebrow. "What're you two plotting over here?"
Ballora stood silent as Foxy started to say incoherent nonsense in the most suspicious way possible, his eyes darting back and forth.
Elizabeth did another one of those uncharacteristic smiles.
"Jeez, I was kidding. Chill."
Her face then turned to a more serious expression.
"Unless you two actually are plotting something over here."
"Uhhhh…."
Ballora finally cut in. "No, of course not. Foxy was just telling me about Freddy's math problem."
"Yeah, I figured. Better not leave him hanging for too long." She messed up Foxy's hair and continued down the hallway.
Ballora and Foxy waited until she was completely gone before continuing.
"Thanks for the save."
"You're welcome. But I'm not sure if I know how to help you with this."
Well, that sucked.
"You don't?"
"I just don't there's a way to be indirect about this. We'd have to be upfront with everything. But knowing Baby, she probably wouldn't give us open answers. Not unless she was stressed to the point of cracking."
"Well, there's gotta be some way to get answers." Foxy racked his brain for a solution.
There had to be something they could do.
Suddenly, it came to him.
He snapped his fingers.
"Oh, I have an idea!"
Foxy went into full detail on a plan he had just thought up, making up many of the finer details as he went along.
The look on Ballora's face did not seem the most supportive as he spoke.
"Not trying to sound rude, but that is almost as insane as everything else you just told me."
"I think it's a good idea!"
"Foxy. We can't do that."