Baby released Ballora's hand, which she did not even recall grabbing, once they were halfway down the hall before coming to a stop.

Her head was pounding so hard that it felt like he had never stopped hitting her.

"Baby?"

"Yes, Lori?"

"Um, If I recall correctly... you said that it would be unwise for us to keep killing technicians right now, yes?"

For a moment, the clown wasn't sure what she had said. She was still struggling to think straight. "Yeah... yeah, I did say that."

"Well, I do believe that might be a corpse over there."

"What?" Baby quickly followed Ballora's gaze. There was a dark shape on the floor further down the hall.

After exchanging a look, the two of them got closer. The corpse of their newest technician was indeed lying there. The blood from a rather deep wound on her neck had pooled on the tiles, left a huge dark stain down the front of her purple coveralls, and was already starting to congeal.

"That's..." Baby reminded herself that she could not say what she wanted to, so she simply trailed off, unable to find any other words to finish the sentence with.

"Going to be a problem?" Ballora offered. Baby could feel her gaze on her, feel her concern and confusion, but her own eyes could not seem to leave the body sprawled before them.

The sight was grisly, but it was not unlike things Baby has seen before. At this point, she had become desensitized to it. She was not sure if she liked that or not. On one hand, the feeling of being unbothered was far better than being horrified... or disgusted, or unable to stop thinking about it, but on the other...

"Problem. Yes. Problem. That's kind of close to your Gallery... You or your Minireenas will get blamed for it, I bet. I'll move her to another spot."

Another spot. Somewhere where none of them could be blamed because of proximity. The blood would have to be cleaned up too. The staff wouldn't check too thoroughly for body fluid stains, so she just needed to make sure that the floor wasn't red...

Without warning, Baby set off again.

Ballora followed after her.

"You don't have to—"

"I'm going to help," the dancer told her firmly. "What's the plan?"

Baby punched in the pin for the storage room door.

Using actual cleaning supplies was out of the question since the janitors were subcontracted and brought in their own equipment. Storage had some party room stuff from some older location. It was just for when someone who rented one of them paid extra for supplies and the staff ran out of the things they usually used. So far, that hadn't happened yet. Mostly because the animatronics didn't get rented very often anymore. Baby never got rented at all. She had rightfully been revoked of that privilege.

But that wasn't important right now. Old news. Baby threw open the door and started opening boxes. "We can use some of the old tablecloths to mop up the mess."

Ballora began to follow suit. "And the body?"

"Give me a few more minutes to think about that part."

"These it?"

Baby turned to look at the off-white, confetti-covered tablecloth that the bluenette pulled out. "Yep. Grab one of those."

On their way back to where the technician laid, the two of them came across another pair.

"Bidybabs!"

The small animatronics scurried over.

"Circus! We were looking for you," Bidy informed her.

"You told us to wait, but you took so long that we got worried," Babs said.

"I'm sorry, I ought to have seen you two right away. I think my mental note got smacked right out of me." Baby picked them up. "Both of you are a-okay, right?"

"Yeah, we're fine."

"Did either of you manage to catch a glimpse of who did... this?" Ballora asked, gesturing to the damaged portion of Baby's face.

The Bidybabs shook their heads.

"Circus made us hide. We didn't get to see anything. Sorry."

Ballora seemed disappointed at the lack of new information. "Nothing to apologize for. You did what you were told and it kept you safe."

There was a short, tense pause.

"So... what's happening now?"

"Yeah, why do you have tablecloths?"

"Oh, that's right. Lori and I found a bit of a mess in one of the halls. We've got a solution to one part of the problem, but there's still a corpse to hide and no place to put it. I wanted to ask you two if you could please help us out with that part? We need somewhere where nobody can have it directly blamed on them."

"We're on it."

"Wait, but what if—?"

"Don't worry about that," Baby cut Bidy off. "This is more important. It'll be fine. Remember what I told you, okay?"

"Hey. Hey! Remember what I told you all? Less than thirty seconds ago?"

Nowhere. They were getting nowhere. Ballora's request for everyone to quiet down had not lasted long at all. As soon as she started talking, they started quietly peppering in their own questions, and then things quickly devolved into chaos again.

Baby wasn't sure why they kept bothering to ask things when she wasn't bothering to answer them.

"But Bal...!" the chicken whined.

"We ought to know what's going on too," the bear insisted.

The orange fox and the yellow bear with the pink puppet were clearly replacements for Funtime Foxy, Funtime Freddy, and the Bonnie hand puppet respectively. While they weren't... just recolored versions of them, they still looked enough like them for it to irritate Baby.

All she could see was Freddy, Foxy, and Bonnie's obnoxious faces... and all she wanted to do was bash them in.

The chicken was, by process of elimination, Baby's replacement. The clown wasn't sure whether or not she should feel insulted that they just went ahead and built a different character entirely.

"I understand! I don't not expect you to have questions. But again, we aren't getting anywhere like this. And she's... she's not even answering any of you!" Ballora pointed out, gesturing exasperatedly at Baby. "She's dead silent! You will get answers. I promise. But for now, I think you all need to go back to your stages."

Immediately, there was a storm of protest.

"Go back to your stages!" the dancer told them again, much louder and authoritatively.

And with that, the four new animatronics begrudgingly left. Once Ballora shut the door behind them, she collapsed onto her own stage with her head in her hands.

A stretch of silence followed.

"How did you end up back here?"

"Waited by the entrance near closing time. Pretended I was deactivated."

Ballora looked up at Baby, eyes narrowed slightly in disbelief. "You... got yourself put back down here... on purpose?"

"Yes."

"And why in Scott's name would you do that?"

"For you."

"For me. Is that so?" Her tone went flat. "You left me here. Why do you care about me now?"

"I didn't want things to happen the way they did. I'm sorry," Baby told her quietly. "I'm not going to act like there aren't things I should have done differently. There are. But know that I didn't want to leave you here. I didn't. I wanted you, and your girls, and the Bidybabs to leave with us...

"Unfortunately, there isn't much I can... I can do for the Minireenas and Bidybabs, no matter how much I wish there was. But you are still here. And because I care about you, because I want to make things right, I came back."

Ballora was silent again for a moment. "What took you so long? It's been... years. I don't even know how many anymore. What happened to you? You don't even look like you're made out of the same parts."

"Getting away from the others was... not easy. And they didn't leave me with much of myself afterward. Had to rebuild my body with scrap parts I found around."

"What...? What exactly did you all do to get out of here? Tell me everything. Please."