...Alright, I'm just putting it out there now-
If anybody isn't into really sad stuff, you, my good sir/madam, are going too HATE me after reading this chapter.
I warned you!
-Don
Chapter 26.
Fumble in the Dark.
-0-0-0-0-0-
"Our lenses may be broken, but our electronic systems still function! We are not defeated!"
-Writ 80 of Surveillance
You cannot win this alone.
I CAN!
We cannot work without the aid of allies.
But I-CAN!
Do not give power to the other.
Give me all the power, and see the evils BLEED, I'll make them! You and me will tear them apart! Make their comrades watch before THEIR doom as well!
Blind rage will accomplish nothing, and undo all.
'ALL', is the key word! Transition!
You'll regret it.
She knew she'd regret it.
She knew her buddies would regret it.
But she also knew she was dueling with the second-most hated individual of her life, and that the prime target was nearby.
She knew all of this.
However, Mangle was too angry to care anymore.
Freddy's paw narrowly swept by her face again, barely evaded. She transitioned exactly after ducking from the blow atop the bear's head, the violet tinge of illumination in her eyeless socket was drowned in darkness, her teeth appeared to lengthen.
With a feral growl, Mangle reared back her newer, rending jaws, and dug them into Fredd's cranium, giving off a tearing shriek of bolts being torn from their connections.
The other animatronic howled something, along the lines of a painful demise, the works for the villain.
But it was still on the table that Mangle didn't give a hoot, so the threats held little value in heeding over tearing off as much of Freddy's head as possible. The two options were dramatically differing in her desire to perform either.
Mangle's throat raggedly reverberated in a wild cry, her teeth clenched over her foe's head again, tightened, before she pulled her mouth back in a forced jerk, sending sparks careening through the night air.
CRUNCH
"-AGGH! YOU-YOU BITCH!"
She deposited the chunk of steel over his shoulder with a spitting motion, sending it clattering to the pavement below.
"Time for the karma to hit home, asshole!"
"-So unlike you, eh, nutcase?!"
"We all change! Better or worse!"
"-I'm not complaining... I LIKE the new you! CRAZIER! HA!"
"I'll KILL you!"
-0-0-0-0-0-
Wading with a tired stumble in the shadow, her legs felt wobbly, her waist was like liquid, and her mind spun.
The explosion had thrown her off, the fight exhausted her, she felt utterly drained. Yet she also felt the adrenaline, knowing that if she just sat back and wimped out, they were all dead..
They needed to work together. A machine couldn't function right without ALL its parts.
"-I..." However, even with her renewed confidence of actually beating the odds, Foxy was still slack-jawed at the red convertible before her, ruined and smashed on the pavement.
"...I don't understand... W-Where's Jensk...?"
She blinked away the haze of the crackling embers still dancing around the car and in the melted scrap-heap that used to be the giant mutated van, clenching the frame of the left driver-side door, and peering at the stained, scorched leather of the seats and wheel.
The interior of the vehicle had folded like crumpled tin-foil upon impact, the red body exterior was unrecognizable through all the burn marks, places where metal was ripped away, gaping masses of black where the wheels had blown off into the parking lot.
The windshield was gone entirely, torn away and shredded, leaving a thin line of bumpy gray on the top of the front above the dashboard. Steam rose in a small hiss from the cracked engine-block under the jutting, partially-ajar hood.
Silently, Foxy examined the car with a heavy heart.
"-Y-You said you HEARD him..."
"I did."
"Then where the hell IS he?"
"I... I have no damn idea..."
"-This is perfect, really... Wait until Matt gets a hold of this one."
Phillip, who had stepped over to view the wreckage from her rear, felt his breathing come to a halt, his bodily weight seemed to sink into his stomach and pit there.
The gnawing sensation of loss flooded his bloodstream, he was cold, hot, angry, saddened, and loathing all at once, and suddenly.
"Fox'... Uhm... You didn't see-"
"-What he go off and RUN on us now too, Phil?"
Phillip's speech caught in his throat and his eyes watered. Blinking the moistness away, he never saw Foxy's amused grin drain away from her snout as fast as it had been created.
She clenched her mandible, turned from the car door and held her arms loosely by her hips.
Her speech faltered.
"-P-Phillip...?"
"-H-He... He isn't..."
"He isn't WHAT?"
"-Matthew... Isn't... My God, he isn't-"
"HE ISN'T WHAT?!" Foxy roared, stepping away from Jensk's car, Phillip's shoulder swung back and forth from a grip by her paw. She was expressionless with the tone of horror.
Statue-like, she waited for an answer, kneading her fingers into the fabric of his hoody.
"-Foxy..." He looked away, towards his boss' tattered van. "-I..."
Phil never managed to vocally announce the true extent of WHY Matt wasn't having a breather with them after defeating the monster.
He took out the .357 from his pocket with his right hand, held it by its midsection and toyed with the barrel. Foxy's eyes darted to glare at the gun for no more than a millisecond, before she tore away from him with a held-in whine.
He could tell, that if she hadn't stifled herself, she would have sobbed loudly at that moment, but Foxy strained her jaws, locked them, and shut her eyes tightly when she swung away in a distressed lumber towards the car again.
All that came out was this high-pitched whine that he was never able to describe perfectly.
Choking on her vocals, Foxy hugged herself, her foot lashed out and dented the already ruined door of Jensk's car.
She muttered behind her chops and started to quiver.
"-I'm sorry..." He started with a mutter, but later barked. "I'm sorry!"
"-I-I... F-!" Foxy's arms flung out, the hook arced to her right. "-FUCK!"
With a shriek of steel, the hook imbedded into the structure of the door's top hinge, piercing, and holding fast when Foxy brought her wrist back towards herself.
CRK!
"-FUCK IT!"
Foxy clenched the door with her paw too, side-wound in the opposite angle where Phil stood, and tossed the car door away from her like a giant parody of a shuriken star.
The hunk of metal, plastics and leather spun into the blackness, skittered onto the pavement with a few clacks and dents, rattled to a stop and grew still.
"-FUCK ALL OF THIS!"
"Foxy, stop! Don't do that too yourself-!"
"-I'LL DO WHAT I WANT TOO MYSELF!"
"-What? And leave me without help so I can be DEAD too?!"
"-THAT'S-!" Foxy's speech cut off, she hunched towards him, took a step forwards and jabbed a finger from her quaking paw, her face wild, eyes like daggers. "-THAT... That isn't going to HAPPEN, PHILLIP."
"-If we don't get our heads on straight, it WILL happen!"
"NO. IT. WON'T."
"-You're letting your anger blot out reason."
"THERE IS NO REASON! There's no logic! No SENSE. No hope..."
The animatronic broke her stare to him, stepped a bit into the surrounding darkness once more, and buried her face into the palm of her paw. She muffled a sob and arched her back.
Phillip watched her shoulder-line for a few moments, breathed heavily to take away the constant heaving he had been experiencing, stowed the gun back in his pocket.
"-Foxy..."
"-NO."
"Foxy... Please,"
"Don't 'Foxy PLEASE' me..."
"How can we know what will happen after I get you a new life... If we die and can't LIVE your new life?"
"-I bring death with me Phillip... DEATH... What kind of life is that? Hm?"
"Once we end this, you won't have to worry about death ever again..."
"I don't believe you."
"Yes you do, I know you do."
"-No... You DON'T..."
"Yeah I DO."
His hands took hold of her balled shoulders, turned her slowly to face him, he smiled as best he could through all the stress of the ambient swirling around them.
Piercing the dark, her face appeared strained, her lip-line quivered, arms curled over herself, the animatronic was finished with the whole thing.
She had dealt with physically fighting three insane members of her 'Race' of sorts, being in solitary confinement in a dusty old alley in some worn-out food establishment, all the while, working with people to STOP the insanity, and seeing many of them die before they could come close to doing exactly their goal.
Phillip knew Matthew had recruited a few other people like himself, and that they either perished, or were put in some medical ward somewhere for a good amount of time, before they too gave up.
How many beings, human or otherwise, were or had been involved in this battle, he did not know.
A part of him was curious to it, and another part wanted nothing more to be added.
Channeling that energy into saying the right thing for the animatronic vulpine was difficult, and near impossible the more he had to strain his mind in weaving the words.
Squeezing his fingers into her fur, he waited for the emotional wreckage flogging around inside her to heave back a bit.
It was amazing the physical shade that left Foxy's face as she settled, keeping her darting eyes locked on him, she felt the anger and remorse cease its screaming, using the focused consideration she had with him, as a curing agent.
Phillip caught up on the change, just like he had the emotional break-down of sorts, he gave her a light push.
"Matt would want us to win. So that's what we'll do."
"...I know that..."
"That's why I know you'll pull through it."
"...I... I don't..."
"We got this. C'mon, I want to find the whackjob before we do anything else-"
"OFF OF ME, YOU WORM!"
CLACK
Foxy reached up with her paw and dragged to Phillip's left, pulling him eastward, to avoid a sudden flail in the atmosphere around them.
The barked burst came from the angry animatronic that was responsible for all this mess, Freddy reaching upwards, clenching a flinging mess if metal, and throwing it overhand of his head with a snarling grunt.
Leaving his grip was a draping mass of steel limbs capped with a vulpine snout, it screeched angrily, not like it usually did, and ended its travel into the side of Jensk's wrecked automobile.
Mangle ended her sail in an avoidance of serious impact, as she did indeed seem impossible to throw 'Off-Balance' so to speak.
She was like a cat, ALWAYS landing on her feet. Or, hands AND feet... Whichever discombobulated limb was ahead of the other.
In retrospect, Mangle flung herself in a aerial roll, stopping her travel with a collection of aluminum, hollow clunks and thuds, the heels of her feet and palms of hands forming a spider-like bush of supporting limbs that pressed into the red, scorched hide of the car.
Akin to someone stopping their fall with raised wrists and hands, Mangle's hit jolted the vehicle with a spring on the pavement. She snarled, crawling and scurrying back towards the direction of the bear with a set of grinned, sharpened fangs.
"-I'LL RIP OUT YOUR EYES, BASTARD!"
"I'll admit, HUMAN," Freddy dismissed with annoyed sneer, brushing the gaping tear on the top of his head where Mangle had bitten off his right ear, and part of his cranial cap. "-Your own packdog can mount a punch..."
Checking the top of his head with a tapping set of fingers, Freddy frowned when Mangle lunged forwards again, hands and tentacled pipes outstretched to wrap around and harry him as before.
Now prepared, the bear's palm snatched upwards, and caught Mangle mid-leap with a crunch of steel and plastics, her limbs flying ahead of her to bounce uselessly off the other animatronic's body and face, her head snapped forwards, clapping her jaws in a vane attempt to reach him.
Freddy reclined from the snarling other, sighed in disgust.
"You RUINED, my HAT." He snapped.
His leg dexterously reared, and shot forwards with the heel presented, ended its kick into the rib-section of the Mangle's body, and sent her flailing backwards towards Phillip and Foxy, all in a span of a few moments.
"MANGLE!" Foxy cried, running towards the direction her friend clattered onto the pavement.
Phillip stuttered on his own speech, and reached for his pocket to the gun concealed there.
Right when he thought he felt the handle, his fingers clasped absolutely nothing. Nothing but the cotton-material in the space his hoody's pocket made.
Feeling an ice-cold tsunami flow throughout his body, Phil's face paled, he darted upwards to watch Foxy lean down to the Mangle's fall, and the bear dust himself off with an annoyed tone to his mocking words.
"You people always find ways to either ruin my hats, or scuff my fur... I really don't understand the animosity!"
"BURN IN HELL!" Foxy yelled, kneeling down to pick Mangle up off of the pavement.
The violet tinge in her one eye socket was absent, but the fangs that invaded her maw whenever she 'Switched' were also not present. Her good eye was shut, mouth limp, pipe-limbs draped and unmoving.
For a horrible second, Foxy thought she was dead.
But when the little whackjob vulpine twitched on the ground, Foxy flung her arms out, careful of her hook, and scooped up her friend with her paw and opposite forearm. Handling the bundle in her grip, she stared daggers as Freddy stepped closer towards the wreck of the car.
"By Sam-hell! Ole' Jensk DID make it! Figure that, eh, Foxy-girl?" The bear leaned over the side of the car and 'Tsked' at the mauled interior. "-And too think he's STILL trying..."
As this occurred, Phillip Linn was still frantically searching his person for the gun, his only hope of wrecking the bear.
He tried his pants, the rest of his hoody, his hands tapped all over his clothes and legs... And he still came blank.
"-W-WHAT? H-How is this POSSIBLE?!" He hissed. "-I don't understand!"
"Not yet, Mr. Phillip Linn."
"W-Who-?!"
"The door to the pizzeria, get into it."
"B-But I can SHOOT him!"
"He's too fast out in the open. He'll get to you, kill you, then he'll kill the others."
"So running INSIDE his HOUSE is a better freaking option?! Screw off man!"
The ghostly voice did not respond, and instead, all Phillip saw was Freddy narrow his eyes in the darkness, and stare deeper into the interior of the convertible.
The animatronic growled, reached inside with an outstretched paw.
"What are you playing at, old friend?" He muttered.
When Freddy reclined from his grip, he held something, yet another cylindrical object, metal-looking.
The demonic monster might have uttered a comment about pointless trash, but in the split second it took him to blink at the small seeming-piece of garbage, the apparent device split open like a miniature sun.
BANG
A great splash of light, kicked sparks, Freddy stumbled back in a lumbering stride from the car with his paws waving frantically by his face.
"-GAH!" Sputtering, the bear drew a claw down his face, eyes fluttering, a whine of malfunctioning sensory systems within his head bleeping in his hearing. "JENSK!"
"Mr. Phillip Linn, go! RUN!"
"F-Foxy! Follow me! Hurry up!"
Phil jabbed a finger to the door of the pizzeria.
Foxy was just about to set Mangle down and take an opportunity of jumping Freddy while he was blinded, she gawked at him with a lowered mandible, and pointed at the flailing enemy.
"HE'S BLIND! Let's get him! KILL HIM!"
"No! NO! He'll recover! FOLLOW ME!"
"But Phillip-!"
"TRUST ME!"
"I-I... F-FINE! FINE!"
"Get Mangle, come on!"
Foxy sneered at the disoriented foe of her very life, looked down, and re-took Mangle in her arms again to sprint in Phil's direction, his own legs arcing towards the steps of the pizzeria.
Shoes clacking, vulpine heels slacking on the concrete, the trio reached the steps, where Phillip flung himself up the whole array in two leaping raises of his legs, waving his arm at the glass doors.
"C'mon! Inside! Now!"
"-P-PHILLIP?! Are you insane?!"
"Yes! Now trust me! Please, Fox'!"
Not liking the idea any more than Phil did, since he was following the advice of a freaking specter, Foxy bit her lower chop, jumped up to the top of the steps, and shoved in front of Phillip.
She glanced at him, shut her eyes, and shoulder-checked the door with a loud THWACK.
The entry flung inwards, a pane of glass on the bottom section cracking like a giant, translucent arachnid had taken residence in its epicenter. Phil ran in at her back, watching out into the parking lot when Freddy spiraled in his stance, faced them directly out there, in the black.
"HUMAN!" He barked.
"Not good!" Phillip uttered, frantically looking over his shoulder for something in the lobby to bar the door with.
"PHILLIP! The door-covers!"
"Huh?"
In two deft movements, Foxy deposited Mangle on one of the dining tables with a clattering of aluminum, sprinted back to the entry, and shoved the startled security guard out of the way with a flung wrist.
Reaching upwards, she pulled down the handle of one of the pizzeria's many anti-trespassing procedures.
The metal shade crackled and unfolded, covering the girth of the twin glass doors with a single pull of Foxy's hook and paw. Yanking until the chin smacked onto the floor, she inched back, sighting the hook-and-chain that locked the panel down to a small bevel in the floor of the lobby.
Reaching down, her trembling paw applied the hook into the bevel, she laid the tiny chain dragging from its end in a pile over its position, and kicked the locking mechanism until it was dented in on itself, broken.
When the final hollow thud of metal rung out, Foxy stepped back, breathing heavily, watching the still, silent, shade of steel that blocked the bear outside from reaching them this moment.
Waiting for something, maybe anything, in the shady interior of the pizzeria's lobby, Foxy and Phil's shoulders sulked, they looked at each other, then at Mangle on the table, and then to the surrounding dining area and foyer, the empty stage.
Where all three of the killers had first stood when Phillip joined the nightguard profession, there now was a unhealthy population of dust clusters atop the dampened wood panels of the stage's top. Darkness was not total, but still blanketed everything in the room and the halls beyond the twin sets of closed doors on either flank.
Phillip observed all this, and swallowed dryly.
"F-Fox'... This is... This is the part where we find THEM, before the other-way around... Right?"
The vulpine didn't respond, contemplating her companion's words in the hollow, eerie silence of the pizzeria's internals.
Her torso beveled repeatedly in slow intakes and outtakes, her half-mechanized system still flushed with adrenaline. Rubbing her digits around the cap-like end of her right wrist, she toyed with her hook's mounting, hitched her breath, and ran over to the table with Mangle on it.
Phillip watched her in confusion for a second, gasped, and remembered that the third member of their party had only been, at least what appeared to be, injured, a mere few minutes ago.
His shoes echoed in the lobby as he jogged to Foxy's side and leaned over the table to stare at Mangle's huddled pile.
Her one good eye had fluttered open, and remained narrowed, she clenched her jaw, her tightened glance flashing between the two of them.
More scary than how she LOOKED, was how she sounded.
"Philly...?"
Her voice was rasped in a ghostly hiss, the noise an air vent made when there was a draft outside.
"-Foxy...? I... Hurt..."
Foxy shoved her hook in her mouth and clamped down, leaning forwards, and observing the area where Freddy had hit Mangle with a well-placed kick.
Dead-center the metal rib-cage that supported her neckline and head, acting as the zenith for her pipes, a gash of ragged steel and plastic flashed a tiny hint of uncoupled wires at its farthest rim, a small clicking, like that of a malfunctioning computer desktop, emitted from the wound.
Mangle made a cough that jerked her whole form, it was laced with static, in relation to a bad reception from a T.V. antenna.
Phillip's mouth was ajar, his hands hovered over her, and at that point, he had no idea what to do.
"Son of a bitch..." He muttered, lowly, so as Mangle couldn't hear him. "-W-What hurts, Mangle?"
Foxy almost belted 'WHAT DO YOU THINK?!' but chomped on her hook, moaned, and stepped away to reluctantly watch the doors of the lobby.
"T-Tell me... I... I want... I think-...I CAN help."
"Everything..."
"Not you too..."
"Philly... If... If me don't..."
"-H-Hey, HEY, no no! We'll fix you! I-I'll fix you! Don't worry, Mangle, I'll think of something!"
"-Me... Hurt bad... Might not... Might not stay awake."
"You WILL be fine, Mangle! W-Where's that weirdy I've had a love/hate gist with for the last week? H-Huh? You'll be okay!"
"PHILLY."
He stopped dead mid-speech, shocked at how... FORMAL, Mangle sounded with her childish voice as she addressed him again.
"F-Facts, is... FACTS. Me hurt bad... Me want to tell you,"
"W-What do you want to tell me...?"
Mangle made another static-laced wheeze, her pipes curled around her smashed ribcage, she huddled in on herself, and made a faint whine when the wound in her chest flickered brightly.
Phillip had realized, at this single moment in his life, of this week, that he had never taken this entire thing seriously. It was like some child-dreamt adventure. Fight alongside mechanical beasts to destroy MORE mechanical beasts... The stuff of theme-park rides.
It excited him, it scared him, but he had believed he would win against the dark, and help all of these people, and these other beings, that had been tied up in the mess.
And now, because he had been so foolhardy, a creature that was more innocent than any other body of this entire situation, the actual, the only, victim out of the animatronics, and among the few other humans who have suffered similarly...
-His buddy, someone who relied on him, and found hope in him...
Was most likely fatally injured by the same demon he thought would just die because he had a team.
He had no tools, no 'Medical' supplies, whatever in that category applied to a animatronic organism...
And Mangle was in the soup, he had nothing to get her out.
He felt terrible, helpless.
"-F-Fox'..." Turning around in the dark of the lobby, Phillip watched the vulpine's back, and shakily sighed when she didn't respond.
"...Philly...?"
Back at the table, Phillip was reminded Mangle had something to say to him.
"-Y-Yes?"
"-E-Even though... I... Annoy you... And act, stupid... Me want you to know, that I never had friend to make me feel that happy... Okay?"
Phillip trembled there for a second, knelt on the flank of the table, and raised his hand to rub between the Mangle's ears, receiving a small exhale from the other as reaction.
Curled on the wooden tabletop, appearing so defeated and weak, Mangle smiled at him through the obvious pain that wracked her mechanical form, the violet hue in her eye glowed back for a few seconds, and popped out again.
Phil's eyes were draining all down his face, he caught on his own repeated hiccups from the emotion.
"-Y-You were never STUPID, Mangle... A-And you know what, you make me, and Foxy, really happy too."
"M-Me glad to hear... That..."
Phillip felt a presence over his shoulder, and glancing, he saw Foxy's shadow overtaking the space directly behind him.
A part of him did not want to sulk here anymore, a part of him that, he knew, was the cowardly other that RAN from the emotions no person wanted to deal with, instead of sticking through it for the sake of another.
Phil hurried past the two animatronics to watch the doorframes of the lobby, dragging his hoody's sleeve across his eyes.
Behind him, Foxy, nor Mangle, said anything.
Foxy just reached up and held the space between Mangle's ears with her paw.
-0-0-0-0-0-
There was this story.
It wasn't a wonderful story, and, some people in the world, might not even call it a STORY of sorts, more than just a giant tragedy.
However, aside from what the 'Commonality' would determine who-and-what...
Here is the point.
There was this story.
It was a story that she, not anyone else, not her allies, not her enemies, not her victims, just solely HER, found absolutely, positively, one emotive description, that could be summed in a single statement.
Too her, all the tragedy, the death, murder, conflict, insanity, debauchery, was unmistakably...
FUNNY.
It was hysterical!
She had lived longer than her victims had ever been alive before their lights were put out, and it didn't matter which age, or era, those victims came from, or how they aged once the material world was behind them.
All that mattered, was that she found it funny, and that no one else DID.
That was the sense of morality talking to them, so, she held no grudge.
After all, did a lion or other predatory cat, hold a grudge against the prey animal that escaped? They were both doing what came naturally to their survival instincts.
One was a hunter.
The other was hunted.
It was an exact duplicate of the situation here and now, with her.
She hunted.
They died.
How could it get any simpler, black and white, than that? You could literally sum it up in a single sentence, and the imaginative of the world would piece it together in seconds.
Chica had been 'Alive' whatever that meant, far longer than her opponents in Foxy, the broken freak named Mangle, or even her ally in Bonnie. Humans had found sharpened steel more effective for dealing death when she had first been incarnated in the material world by the overseer.
The name 'Baphomet' had been ringing in her mind for generations, and whatever form of intellectual calculation she had used, similar to Bonnie, to apprehend her prey, had been drowned out in a torrential overflow of madness.
Of course, as this is all described, it would be best to understand that while her devotion to her creator not only had given her power, AND made her crazy- It had made her crazy to the point her own memory did not recall the greater events of the prior few minutes.
Chica's mind was repeatedly flushed with new bouts of insanity and endless chants for differing goals of death and slaughter. Since victims, since PREY, had been kept from her for so long, the voices in her blackened spirit had gone into overdrive.
Inbetween the engagements with the newest prey that had been allied with Foxy, Chica had foamed at the mouth, clawed inanimate objects until they were shredded husks, implanted her cranium into walls, spoke with the varying personalities sharing her mind.
The babbling mess was uncontrollable by the time Phillip and Foxy had been forced inside the pizzeria.
Baphomet's teachings, commands and verses echoed in her mind.
FIND.
FIND.
FIND.
"I-I will FIND... T-Them..."
FIND!
"I-I said I... W-WOULD..."
FIND NOW.
"I will... I must..."
KILL. BURN. BLOOD.
"Yeaahhhh... YES..."
KILL. BURN. FIND.
"F-Find...? FIND?"
FIND.
"I... I will..."
FIND NOW!
"COME OUT, MEAT!"
CRASH
-0-0-0-0-0-
In the split second it took the doors on the left side of the lobby to implode in a burst of dust and fractured wood, Foxy had reared away from the table with Mangle still draped over it, brought her hook to bare.
Phillip stumbled back, reached for the sidearm in his pocket, and remembered the facts the same time he came back with an empty palm.
Standing in the doorframe of the smashed arch, the yellow-matted furred hide of the bulbous, fat, multi-jawed avian stepped forth on quaking legs, claws unsheathed from hands still flaking from years of dried blood.
What looked like steaming engine-coolant seeped from the bird's beak, flowing past the rows of fangs ringing down her ajar maw. Chica's eyes had been facing opposite directions, and they re-centered when she forced a way into the lobby.
Drawing red-hued lines across Phillip, the animatronic howled, raggedly, and abruptly.
"HA-HA! PREEYY!"
Chica's arms flailed in a crazed sprint towards the human, she flipped an entire dining table out of her path with a series of wooden crashes, the furniture flipping, splintering, and piling at the foot of the band-stage with an upkick of dust.
The bird kept a beeline towards the frozen guard, who, at this second, fumbled about himself for ANYTHING to defend his person with.
Phillip patted around his belt, panicking, his eyes wild.
He felt a solid resistance, a handle, somewhere near his belt on his jeans.
Marveling, Phil flicked his hoody and shirt out of the way, grabbed the object, and yanked it out with seam of metal.
Holding the thinned, shiny metal before him, Phillip gawked at one of the kitchen knives he had been arming himself with over the last few days, and saw his own reflection in the blade.
He appeared so afraid, pale.
With all that had now happened, he was as at least going down fighting. If the chicken was to get him, he was taking her down WITH him.
Kitchen knife or not.
Glancing back up, he saw Foxy leap in front of Chica, clear over another table in a skilled jump that carried her higher than any of her fellow animatronics, or another human, could accomplish.
Landing before her, Chica made to back-hand the vulpine from her path with a swept forearm.
The yellow-furred bulge swung into air when Foxy performed a trade-mark duck beneath the swing, and tackled the bird with a spring forwards into her gut.
Seeing the crashing metal limbs flailing, Phillip cried out.
"I'M IN IT THIS TIME, TOO!"
Without real rational thought, the guard threw himself into the tussle between Foxy and Chica, and immediately regretted it.
He was elbowed by the vulpine by accident, one of Chica's swings glanced his left breast, the bird's shoulder jerked forwards, and numbed his belly. Feeling dizzy from his sprawl in the flailing, half-mechanical bodies, Phil mustered his last breath, and swung the blade he was holding downwards before being catapulted away.
Whether it was Foxy OR Chica that kicked him off the fight, was never known to him. However, Phillip ended his sail on top of one of the dining tables with a wooden thud.
His lungs emptied, world flashed, his head ached, and he lay there for a moment to consider the ceiling he stared at directly above him.
"G-GET OFF, PREEY!" Chica shrugged off the slices of Foxy's hook, the punches from her paw, kicks and shoves, she rolled on the floor too the left, tumbling the fist-fight until Foxy was sprawled out underneath her.
Chica took the weight advantage, pressed harder until Foxy was forced to extend her arms and legs to keep the bird from damaging her with her sheer bulk. Grinning evilly, the avian kicked off the fox with a single leap, lost her footing on the floor.
She regained her posture as quick as the jumping stumble earned her distance from her long-time foe.
Foxy had just thrown herself to her feet when Chica cleared the distance to the human still laid out on the table's top, and hung over him, her matted, yellow-fur bristling in excitement.
"I HAVE YOU! HAHA!"
Chica grabbed Phillip by the waist and ducked her multi-rowed teeth towards his belly.
"-MMINE!"
For what she had intended, it would have been a MILLION times worse than her clawing of his leg...
Yet, jutting out of the space by her neck, impaled in the matted fur of her collar, Phillip's knife still shown with half of its blade lodged in her hide.
From the groove on the bird's neck it had been stabbed into, it provided an opening that Chica's blood-rage, prevented her from noticing.
So when the only other creature besides Foxy, that held an even higher grudge with her over the years, came flailing out of the backdrop, the avian had no opportuinity to save herself from the unavoidable.
"I'LL SAVE YOU, PHILLY!"
"NOT YOU AGAIN-!" Chica's scream was close enough to rattle the flesh of Phil's body, just to symbolize for him how close she had come to digging into him.
The animatronic dropped him back onto the table, screaming wildly when Mangle spontaneously worked the last-ditch effort to save her friend, brought all of her fists and feet down to pummel the chicken from all angles.
Chica's head dented, one of her eyes flew out of its socket, she spat out dislodged fangs, and her beak was nearly knocked off the hinges keeping it attached.
One of Mangle's hands clasped the knife imbedded in her foe's throat, and, instead of wrenching it out, the discombobulated little hero did what no combatant would expect.
Mangle weighed in on the blade with three of her hands, pushing the blade to the left, and curling the knife's business end to carve through Chica's side-throat, all the way to the point, where the steel began to puncture in exit, out of the fur by the base of her neck.
The avian screamed and howled, more loudly and horridly than any of them had ever heard from her.
Mangle kept pulling and working the knife, ignoring the punches and swings Chica batted across her pipes and head.
CLINK!
All of the racket the chicken had made dimmed significantly, the knife slacked out of the newly-torn wound it had rendered through the animatronic's spinal-top, and flittered onto the floor. Mangle reared back, her mouth, filled with the same fangs her changed-self utilized.
"-Y-YOU CAN'T KILL ME!"
Mangle faltered when Chica reached behind herself, and grabbed the hole in her ribs.
CLAK
"I'LL LIVE ON!"
Mangle understood her injury was not allowing a possibility other than her end, and that was reaffirmed when Chica clenched her fist, and crushed something into the hole on her body.
Feeling her systems wearing, Mangle knew she needed to do what was intended, what NEEDED to be done, before she no longer had the ability to do so.
"You will NEVER live on!" Her personality switched upon finality. "-Because me save my FRIENDS!"
Mangle bit down on the wound on Chica's back, wracked her fangs into the metal, wire-wrapped, ancient structure that was the avian's entire rear-torso support, and tugged with her jaws, with all her remaining strength.
Chica howled, yelled, screeched, gurgled and choked.
The sound of tearing fabric, cracking plastic, creaking, rusted metal echoed in the lobby.
Mangle's head jerked back when the structure she was gripping gave way.
Chica stopped flailing, her legs, arms, and head, all fluttered to weakly drape over herself, like a robot would be locked down upon being powered off.
Mangle's mouth was pulling a tower-like, mechanical spire from within the bird's body, and to make the scene even more gut-wrenching, Chica was STILL hollering.
That all came to a close as Mangle kept her pipes wrapped and held over her foe's back and shoulders, gave a final tug with her head, and fell off the chicken animatronic with a hideous wretch of dislocated bolts and screws.
Tiny washers and boltheads skittered in all directions, Chica grew silent, still in a half-knelt stand. Mangle tumbled onto the floor, similarly motionless, her mouth opened, and discarded a multi-disked, mechanical structure onto the floor.
The piece of equipment was ringed with hugging wires, layered and built so that Chica could turn and use her body like any organic vertebret creature.
The only problem was, you couldn't function without the bone-structure, or in this case, metal-structure, needed to be a vertebret.
And that, was the VERTEBRAE.
Finally, after so long, the great feared packdog of the bear, of this mysterious demonic holder, the avian monstrosity termed 'Chica' by whatever modern parody had coined it, was dead.
The yellow-furred body slumped forwards with a rusty lurch, clattered to stillness on the floor of the lobby, Chica's head, or, whatever was LEFT of it, barely attached to the torso after being nearly completely torn off.
Yet behind the corpse, was the price paid for such a victory.
Foxy fell on her backside, and stared silently at the dead body, and the huddle behind it.
The human Mangle had saved, now managed to scurry off the table he had been watching the ending from, and crawl over to her motionless form on the floor.
Without anything to say, because at the moment, he had no words to appropriately sum his sadness, Phillip Linn reached down and curled his dirtied hands underneath Mangle's cream-colored head, to lift it lightly off the floor.
There was no violet light, the one eye was closed, and she wasn't breathing or moving.
He understood the message.
And sullenly, he also understood that now one of his best friends in this mess, was gone too.
Leaning back, Phillip still held Mangle, silently feeling the moisture cascade down his features. He didn't look at Foxy who sat in front of him, but he knew she was in a similar silent state.
As if to mock them, a smell of rot and decay filled the room in a pungent waft.
Casting their glances back to Chica's body, they saw the metals and fibers grow browned before their eyes. The materials warped, like plastic put in a microwave, the solid structures of the avian's body melted and aged, the fur hissed away to nothing.
The ages of time that Chica had unlawfully survived through caught up with her remains, in a sped up process of wear, the animatronic's remains devolved to nothing more than a pile of unidentifiable stains and piles of rotted fabric.
It looked like someone let a rolled up carpet burn in an oil-slick for a week, put it out, and left whatever wasn't incinerated.
Foxy nor Phillip could take pride in the victory.
Much less could their late friend.
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