Disclaimer: I do not FNAF!
For those who are wondering, yes, Bonnie's and Lala's relationship in the past was pretty horrible until something happened later on afterwards.
Now that Mari knows why Jeremy came to work here, how will he react to it?
With that, enjoy the story!
2nd Day: 7:00 AM
"So I heard that Jeremy is trying to find out about the Missing Children's Incident?" Lala asked Mari as Balloon Boy sat beside her, leaning on her arm.
Mari nodded. "He did."
"So what did you say to him?"
He closed his eyes, remembering what had happened slightly more than an hour ago...
Just an hour ago...
"No, I'm not going to tell you."
"Wh-what?! Why?! But you're the oldest one in the franchise of the animatronics! You should know what happened!" Jeremy had asked him in shock.
"Those Missing Kids have their rights to privacy, and they don't want you to know about it, that is all," Mari turned around to explain.
"B... But..."
"Shut your mouth, Fitzgerald. What do you know? You aren't privileged to know anything about that. You can try to find out about what happened, but I'm not going to tell you, is that clear?"
"Marionette! I need to know what happened! This is important!" Jeremy begged as he continued to flash the flashlight at Foxy who was about to sprint down the corridor. Mari could faintly hear a loud yell of agony before it went quiet again.
"Why? Because you're working for the police? Because you care for those kids whom you don't even know?"
"Because I want to bring the culprit to justice! Nothing has happened for the past two years, but I don't want another incident like this to happen again!"
Mari glanced at Jeremy with an unimpressed look on his face. "What are you going to do after to find out who the murderer is? There's no clue which points to the murderer, plus no one's going to believe you."
"Murder...? So those kids were really...!"
"Save that for your little imaginary mission here, Jeremy Fitzgerald," Mari mocked as he turned around and left. "If not for the fact that you can easily handle me whenever I try to attack you, I would have killed you on the spot."
"... You actually continued to let him live? I'm surprised. I thought you were the one who was so bent on killing the security guards," Lala chuckled sarcastically.
"Don't be so sardonic, Lala. Plus, why's Balloon Boy with you? Shouldn't he be in the Game Area?"
"I like Sister Lala! I want to spend my time with her!" Balloon Boy grinned back at Mari as he leaned even closer towards her.
"... BB~? That's actually a little creepy, considering how you're a part of Lala's soul," the old Chica's voice erupted from a corner as her purple eyes flashed open.
Withered Freddy's eyes opened and he looked at her. "Chica, they may have half of the same person's soul, but they're still their own being and their own consciousness, just like us and our counterparts."
"Yeah... I guess so. But after seeing my counterpart, now I know why I was so hated by some of the kids..." she sighed. "I didn't know I was such a bitch, ugh. Hopefully I won't be like that again in my next life or something."
"That's if we can even get out and free ourselves from this place," Withered Bonnie snorted in satire as he proceeded to fold his arms, only to realise that his left arm was long gone and sighed.
"By the way..." Chica said as she turned to the red fox in another corner, "Foxy, are you okay?"
"That son o' a biscuit eater! He flashed the god damn flashlight so many times in my eyes, they're probably goin' t' roll away into the sea anytime soon!" Foxy complained in a gruff voice as he rubbed the top of his eyelids.
"Pfft, Why do ya still care about him, Chica?" Bonnie sneered as he looked at Foxy with a look of hatred in his red endoskeleton eyes. "He caused our demise, but look at the rest of us! Yo' mouth's all messed up and yo' hands are gone! That ballerina's droppin' her synthetic hair like a maniacal old lady or somethin', her voice box is crappy as shit now, her right eye's gone with damaged face plates, and both of her arms are gone except for her endoskeleton parts! Freddy isn't that damaged, but parts of his wires are still hangin' out like some sort of tentacles! And I have lost my entire face, and have no left arm at all! Now look at him! He ain't that damaged like us, except Freddy who deserves to be still intact!"
Bonnie drew in a deep breath from speaking a monologue for so long. Meanwhile, Foxy's eyes were glowering a bright golden as his anger rose. Slowly standing up, he glared at the purple bunny animatronic.
"You better watch that wretched mouth of yours, Bunny Bitch, before I throw you into the sea to feed the sharks!"
"Oh yeah?! I'd like to see you try, asshole!"
Growling in anger, he grabbed Bonnie by his bow tie. "Ye want t' see me try? Then how 'bout ye turn into yer human self now, so that we can see just how durable ye are!"
Lifting him up in the air, Foxy slammed Bonnie onto the ground with a glint of fury in his eyes. As metal collided with marble tiles with a loud clanging sound, Chica screamed in terror and ran towards Foxy, grabbing onto his arm. Gasping in surprise, the red fox animatronic turned towards her.
"Foxy, please! Stop! It hurts me to see you guys fight!" she begged as she squeezed her eyes shut. "I don't want anyone, especially you, to get hurt!"
At that moment, his facial features softened as he looked away from her and replied hesitantly, "I… Ugh, okay, fine."
Meanwhile, Freddy shifted towards Bonnie. "Hey, are you okay?"
"I'm fine… I guess. I think more of my endoskeleton parts had shattered though."
"… Bonnie, I know you're always dumb, but I didn't know you were dumb enough to engage a fight with Foxy of all people," Lala sighed and shook her head. "He's someone who can fight and easily defeat you if he had wanted to. Can't you calculate the chances of you winning that fight at all?"
"Oh, shut up!"
"Fine…" she muttered under her breath as she huffed and folded her endoskeleton arms in irritation.
"By the way," Freddy said as he turned towards Mari and asked, "By any chance, did you see Goldie?"
Mari pursed his lips together and frowned. "No. Why did you ask?"
"Oh… oh, no. It's nothing. I'm just curious."
He glanced skeptically at the brown bear animatronic before he turned to the rest of them and said, "Hey, you guys should rest for the day. The next night is going to be a long one for you guys, including the following nights when you all have to be active. Have you guys come up with a plan yet?"
"Most of us do, but Lala's is a little different from ours…" Chica replied as she looked at the ballerina animatronic.
Mari looked at her curiously. "Oh? What is it?"
"I was planning to use this strategy so that I can kill him more easily, but it has a lot of risks, especially if it doesn't work," she told him. "I'm planning to use our abilities to turn into human to make him believe that I am one, and take the chance to kill him once I manage to get close to him."
"You do know that it's going to cause lots of problems in the future if it doesn't work, don't you?" Freddy queried. "Then what are you planning to do about them?"
"Jeremy won't try to spread the message to everyone else," she explained to them, "I know that for a fact. If he did, others would think he is crazy and he would get sent to the mental asylum instead. Even if he finally manages to realise who we all really are, it isn't really going to change much because he doesn't know who was the perpetrator, is it?"
"Yeah, how clever of ya, Dancy Pants," Bonnie taunted as he sniggered a little. "But you're missing one little detail: how are ya gonna explain to that Fitzgerald guy about your appearance? Y' do know that we all look pretty darn screwed up when we turn into humans since our endoskeleton parts literally just turn into bones, and any messed up parts becomes so god damn disgusting when turned into human flesh that it'll probably scare everyone away from ya."
"It's simple," Lala shrugged. "I'll just act like a victim to an attack from the animatronics, and plead with Fitzgerald to call for an ambulance. While's he's making the call… I think you guys get the gist, so I shan't explain any further."
"That actually seems like a pretty good plan if everything goes as smoothly as we presume it to be," Mari voiced out loud as he pondered on it.
"Pfft-HAHAHAHAHA! A good plan? Are you drunk or on drugs too, Mari?! How's that a good plan?" Bonnie guffawed loudly as he started rolling on the floor.
Lala shrugged again as she replied nonchalantly, "Well, a dumb-ass person like you wouldn't understand it, of course."
"OI!"
"Alright, alright kids," Mari whispered, shushing them down. "Go to sleep. You have a long night ahead!"
The rest of them nodded and shut themselves off to conserve power for the next night. As silence started to fill the air again, Mari sighed in relief as he headed back to his striped box and went back to sleep.
3rd Night: 12:00 AM
As usual, Mari decided to hide in a corner as he watched Jeremy pick up the telephone. Maybe he could get a closer look at what Jeremy had been reading when he was in the pizzeria...
Jeremy always had a pile of case files and a notebook with him whenever he came to work, and he always wrote something inside the notebook whenever he thought of something. Mari was curious. What exactly did he write inside?
"Hello hello!" the Phone Guy greeted with a warm tone. "See? I told you you wouldn't have any problems!"
"Haha, yeah..." Jeremy chuckled nervously.
The Phone Guy asked, "Did...uh... Did Foxy ever appear in the hallway? Probably not. I was just curious. Like I said, he was always my favorite..."
He shook his head and muttered, "Oh, but he did..."
"They tried to remake Foxy, ya know?" the man on the phone continued. "Uh, they thought the first one was too scary, so they redesigned him to be more kid-friendly and put him in Kid's Cove. To keep the toddlers entertained, you know..."
Jeremy raised an eyebrow. "... 'Him'? Huh, I thought the new Foxy looked more like a female than a male..."
"... But kids these days just can't keep their hands to themselves. The staff literally has to put Foxy back together after every shift. So eventually they stopped trying and left him as some 'take apart and put back together' attraction. Now he's just a mess of parts. I think the employees refer to him as just "The Mangle." Uh..."
"No wonder the new Foxy looked like a huge wreck... sigh."
Suddenly, Phone Guy spoke up again. "Oh, hey, before I go, uh, I wanted to ease your mind about any rumors you might have heard lately."
"Hm?" Jeremy turned towards the red telephone, a hint of curiosity in his voice.
"You know how these local stories come and go and seldom mean anything. I can personally assure you that, whatever is going on out there, and however tragic it may be, has nothing to do with our establishment. It's just all rumor and speculation... People trying to make a buck. You know... Uh, our guard during the day has reported nothing unusual. And he's on watch from opening til close."
Mari realised that Jeremy's expression had gone serious as he looked back at his notes and case study files. "No, something's definitely happening here."
"Okay, well anyway, hang in there and I'll talk to you tomorrow."
The recording ended with a click. Instinctively, Jeremy picked up the tablet to wind up the music box before he checked the show stage.
"Huh, Chica and Bonnie have already left the stage? Where are they?"
"Hello?"
"Ah, darn it. Balloon Boy's on the move..."
Mari sniggered to himself as he continued to watch Jeremy starting to panic when he heard radio static starting to play. Jeremy flashed his flashlight down the hallway and gasped when he realised that both Foxy and Mangle were there.
"OH! Hi! Flash flash flash flash flash! Okay, good." Jeremy sighed in relief before he checked the vents only to realise that the new Bonnie was there again. In the nick of time, he shoved the empty Freddy head onto his own as Bonnie came to inspect for him.
"Huh... no one's here except for... Oh, hey Freddy, have you seen Jeremy Fitzgerald? Why are you here instead?"
Mari observed Jeremy as he shrugged. "I don't know... I was already here when I woke up. I still have no idea how it happened."
The blue bunny animatronic raised an eyebrow. "Huh... okay... Then I'd better go first. See ya, Freddy!"
The masked animatronic shook his head in disapproval. "He doesn't get it..."
Jeremy pulled out the Freddy head, his hair in a huge mess. Wiping a bead of sweat off his head, Jeremy continued his night shift as usual.
Creeping to another corner closer towards the security guard, Mari eyed the green notebook on Jeremy's table. How was he supposed to get it at this rate? Jeremy would definitely see him steal the book...
... Unless there was a distraction.
Mari quickly whirled his head towards the entrance in front when Jeremy flashed the light down the hallway again. Bonnie was standing there, his glowing red eyes glaring back at Jeremy. A grin slowly started to spread behind his mask as a plan hatched in his head.
"Oh-OH! It's the previous Bonnie! The older models are really coming alive!" Jeremy gasped under his breath as he quickly slammed the head onto himself.
The older Bonnie turned towards the left, while Balloon Boy peeked out of the right air vent with a smile on his face, only for it to fade when he scanned the area to see no one there.
"Aw... there's no one here to play with me..." Balloon Boy pouted as he headed back inside.
Jeremy glanced at the cameras only to have a huge shock in his life when he realised that both of the older models of Bonnie and Chica were in their respective vents. Mari had a quick peek, and realised why Jeremy had reacted so dramatically. They did look pretty freakish under the harsh glare of the vent lights.
"I'm actually surprised he hadn't noticed that I'm here..." Mari thought to himself as loud banging started resounding in the vents and Bonnie emerged from the left.
Jeremy quickly flipped through the cameras once more to wind up the music box before placing the tablet down, and gasped in horror when he saw the destroyed purple animatronic in front of him. He quickly threw his Freddy head on.
Seizing the opportunity, Mari quickly snatched the green notebook away from the wooden desk and skittered away when the lights disabled for a moment. Collapsing at the Prize Corner in front of his box, Mari placed the book in front of him and read the cover.
"'MCI'...? I wonder what he has been tracking down..."
"M-Mari? Wh-What is tha-a-at?"
Mari turned to look up at the ceiling and greeted, "Oh, hello Mangle. This? It's Fitzgerald's notebook."
"Eh...? But wh-why would you t-t-take Jerem-my's notebo-o-ok?" the mangled fox animatronic asked curiously.
"He has a motive for coming here. I know that. It's just..." Mari paused before he continued, "I need to know how much he knows about us before we take further action."
"Wh-What...?"
"Hehehe, don't worry, Mangle. This only bothers the older animatronics, which means only your counterpart will be affected by this," he told Mangle smoothly.
"Huh... i-if you say s-s-so... See you lat-ter, Mari..." Mangle bided as they swung to another room.
Mari stared down at the book before he picked it up again and wandered towards the storage room, where Lala and Foxy were still hiding. Foxy had already tried to attack Jeremy a couple of times, but Lala was still waiting for the right time to strike.
However, he was suddenly called out by someone else.
"Hello there, Mari. What are you doing outside your box?"
He turned towards the chubby bear. "Oh, hey Freddy. What is it?"
Toy Freddy shrugged. "Nothing. I'm just curious about why you're outside your box."
"Well, I need to tell the older models about something, and it's pretty urgent."
"Hm? What may that be?"
Mari waved his hand at him. "Don't worry, Freddy. It doesn't concern you and the other newer models too much."
"Oh, come on. You're going to tell those old animatronics about some important information, but you aren't going to tell us anything about it even though we're better than them?" he shook his head. "Looks like you have really bad tastes, boss."
"Don't worry, Freddy. I will reveal the information to you guys at a later date, but for now, it'll have to do," Mari replied as he smiled back at Toy Freddy.
"Sigh... alright, fine. If that's what you want to do, it's your choice," he shrugged arrogantly as he turned and walked towards the security office.
Mari turned his head towards Toy Freddy's direction and shook his head before he continued his way towards the storage room, where he suddenly heard a conversation between the two animatronics.
"... come on, Foxy. Just do it. She would be so happy to find out!"
"No! Do ye know how embarrassing it is?!"
"Foxy, if you really love Chica, just go and confess to her! No one can blame you for falling for her, she's such a sweet girl! Plus, you should be brave and take the initiative. As much as you guys may feel awkward and all when you confess to a girl you like, it will be worth while, don't you think? If you don't do it now, when are you going to?"
Mari stepped into the storage room and turned into his human form for the first time in the week, making his presence known. "I didn't know that you had love issues, Foxy."
Foxy glared at Mari through golden eyes before he turned away.
Lala looked back at Mari and asked, "What's with that notebook you have, Mari?"
Mari nearly grimaced at Lala's appearance, but cleared his throat.
"Oh, this? It's Jeremy Fitzgerald's notebook. We need to find out what he's been up to, and what exactly he is thinking," Mari told her as he lifted the notebook up.
"Have you read it?"
"No, but we should read it now. Gather now."
Foxy glared at him again before he huffed and stood up before heading outside. "I don't need to deal with this."
Lala made a quick scan of the notebook. "He's very well-informed. There's all of the info about the murder. He even wrote all of our names down, and made inferences about how our corpses were stuffed into the animatronic suits... which are correct..."
"Basically, he's just trying to find out if that's true, huh."
She nodded. "He's trying to find out if our souls are really possessing the suits, which is actually true. This guy's surprisingly accurate for an average paranormal researcher."
Mari questioned, "Is there anything else?"
"Other than the fact that he's trying to figure out who the murderer is, no," Lala said as she picked up the book and flipped to another page, looking closely at it. Suddenly, her only animatronic eye widened.
"Actually... Mari?"
He looked at her curiously. "What is it?"
She handed him the book. "You may want to see this..."
Accepting the book from her, Mari looked at the notes of the case study, and was shocked to realise what Jeremy had been studying the whole time other than the Missing Children's Incident and Gregory's death in 1983.
The heading read, 'Murder at Fredbear's Family Diner'.
Silently, he read the page, his eyes travelling downwards towards the end of the page before he put it down onto the floor again, still in shock.
"How did he...?"
Lala picked up the book again and read it one more time.
"On 23 May 1979, the body of 8-years-old Morrie Divus was found in front of Fredbear's Family Diner. The murderer is unknown, but the wound is a clean, 10 cm deep wound in the chest and heart. It was probably made by a knife. This incident had caused Fredbear's Family Diner to close, but was later bought a few years later by Fazbear Entertainment, where it created a sister location to it after opening Fredbear's Family Diner again called Freddy Fazbear's Pizza..."
She analysed Mari's reaction, and stared at him with a shocked expression. "Wait a minute, you're Morrie Divus, a child who was killed in the first branch of Fredbear's Family Diner?! Why didn't you tell us anything about that?!"
Mari stayed silent as he looked at the ground. Then he replied, "... Tell me, Lala. Don't I deserve some privacy about my past if I want to forget about it?"
Lala had a hugely confused expression on her face. "Th... then what happened to your body? It can't have been stuffed into this suit that you have now, so how...?"
He spat, "It was cremated. But because of that damn knife that Damno Spyros had used, my soul is forced to stay inside this revolting puppet suit that I detested so much..."
This time, it was Lala who stayed silent, an unreadable expression on her face. Then she scooted over and patted his shoulder, causing him to turn over to look back at her in slight surprise.
"I'm sorry... I never knew that this happened to you."
"It's okay, I've kind of gotten over it already... Is there anything else important in the book?" Mari quickly changed the subject.
Lala raised an eyebrow at him, but replied, "I'm not too sure. I haven't looked at all the pages. Hang on."
Browsing through the book once more, Lala came to a pause at one of the last few pages of the book that Jeremy had used, and read it silently before muttering, "… Oh wow. I didn't know that he was actually trying to…"
Confused by Lala's constant trailing off of her sentences, Mari snatched the book back from her. "Trying to what? Let me see."
He read the page that was labeled as 'Motive', which seemed to be a diary entry of sorts.
"People call me dumb for wanting to take this job as a security officer at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. I can see why, since this place only give a hundred bucks per week. But this has nothing to do with earning money. I want this job because I want to know more about what happened in this restaurant. How did the Missing Children's Incident happened? What about the Murder of Morrie Divus? Who exactly is the culprit? Why do the animatronics' mouths ooze out mucus and blood? Why is it that all of these happened in this one franchise? I want to know more. I'm sure that these animatronics are actually Morrie Divus and the kids who went missing in the MIC, and I'm sure that they are trying to get their revenge on their killer.
However, as I started working, I realised that they specifically target one group of people: the security guards. Could it be that their killer was one of the security guards who works here? That's actually pretty scary to think about, that the killer may actually be someone that I know… I'm more convinced that these animatronics are possessed by the kids' souls. They are self-aware, and they can speak to each other!
When I spoke to the Marionette last night, he challenged me with one question: what am I going to do once I find out the truth? I thought that my motive was to bring the culprit to justice, but no, I don't want to do that. So what if the killer is finally arrested? That isn't going to change much, is it? I thought about it after my shift, and I came to a conclusion: As much as it seems crazy, I want to free their souls from this place which is probably giving them nightmares. I don't want them to suffer any further, especially since they're the souls of kids! I'm sure that my paranormal and supernatural research will somehow come in handy, even though I know that thinking in this way is really naive.
Even if the animatronics don't accept me, I will try to find a way to help them. I may not be able to understand all of their pain, but if I manage to know more about them, I'm sure that I would be one step away to finding a way to finally free them from their suits.
- Jeremy Fitzgerald, Paranormal Researcher"
Face-palming, Mari groaned. "Is he serious? He's trying to find a way to help up? It's impossible. He doesn't understand the gravity of the situation at all!"
"It's the first time I've seen you so frustrated in my life, Mari," Lala commented. "By the way, what are you going to do with the book now? We've already finished reading all of his written pages…"
"… You haven't gone into the security office yet, have you?"
The disfigured doll shook her head. "No, why?"
Mari handed the book to her. "Hand it back to him while you're trying to get rid of him. We can't leave any traces of suspicion around, not especially around all of the other animatronics. Plus, if Jeremy Fitzgerald somehow still manages to survive tonight, we can't let him know that we stole his book. I have already specifically made arrangements for tonight for them to be much more active so that he doesn't notice that we had stolen this from him."
Lala gave him a nudge to his shoulder as she took the green notebook from him. "So this is a secret between the two of us…?"
"I'll be telling the rest of them after his shift as it concerns them. We need to discuss about what we'll be doing after this."
"Alright, got your back, Mari. I'll go do my job now," Lala flashed a friendly smirk at him before hiding the notebook somewhere under her skirt and walking out of the storage room, leaving him alone inside.
Once she had left, Mari sighed in mental agony and ran his fingers through his hair, a huge turmoil of conflict going on in his heart as he started to have second thoughts. Jeremy was the only human who was willing to help them, and could tell that they were really possessing the animatronic suits, unlike the others who thought that they were malfunctioning when they heard their cries...
Should he keep Jeremy alive and allow him to help them? Or should he just kill him and forget about what he had seen? Mari didn't know what to do anymore. Stepping out of the storage room and turning back into his animatronic form, he walked slowly in a daze. If he were to be in human form any further, he would probably feel a real migraine coming into his head.
Turning towards the hallway, Mari watched as Lala slowly started to advance, her animatronic body slowly contorting into a grotesque scene of what looked like a zombie about to prey on her victim. As he watched, a sudden thought came into his mind.
Maybe, just maybe, he should give Jeremy Fitzgerald a chance if he can survive this night.