Crocodile Rock
A Security Breach Extended Story
Vanessa began the recording with a clench of her finger, and a static noise came from the recorder after the click. A piece of confetti fell from her head, and there were containers of tempera paint littering the surface of the small party table she sat at. She eyed the confetti as the static continued, looking closely at the caricatured logo of Freddy's head that was imprinted on it.
It was meant to be an exaggeration, an over-the-top jubilant rendering, but it was true to the bear, nonetheless.
She smiled when she began to speak.
"I've always wanted to play with these portable recorders. They're the kind you see in movies – especially the ones we watch on our Monday sessions. You've got a strange love for tear-jerkers, Ernest. You're a strange therapist in general… real unorthodox about it all. That's why I needed – well, need you – but you already knew that… and that's why I need you to hear this recording."
She paused, gave the recorder a second to pick up the laughter and protests in the background, then continued.
"Well, he needs you. I've never told you his name before; you know him as 'the boy,' but it's Gregory. Just Gregory. He doesn't have a last name, though he might be getting one pretty soon if all things go well. More on that later.
"I know you tried to look up his name after you realized I worked at the Fazbear's Pizzaplex, but trust me, we made sure it remained hush-hush. Not even the higher-ups know about that night last November, and all my fellow coworkers knew about it was the absence of camera footage from 11:17 to 12:22. Things like that are easy to sweep under the rug at Fazbears, as I'm sure you're well aware. In fact, the police still refuse to pick up the missing children's cases again, and it's obvious they've been paid out."
She inhaled, gave a nasty frown to the star-shaped Chica centerpiece.
"How foul. I've given them so much evidence, but I gave it to the wrong people. If I wasn't a coward, I would've given it to the children's families just as Freddy said I should've. I told him I would take care of it, and so they all trusted that I would, Gregory included. Messed that up colossally. You're my last hope on this front, and so I will leave the key and following info to my storage unit along with this recorder. All back-ups of the evidence are there, along with everything else you will need to know. Use those connections you're always going on about."
Another pause. Then: "You know who the culprit is. We all do. Infuriatingly, like Freddy and even Monty… Sundrop and Bonnie too, perhaps… you never blamed me for my part in it. Gregory didn't either, which is the worst part. I think those arcade games he told me about affected him more than he realized. I've stayed away from them after I played the second one… but I don't regret playing it. It made me confront what my true problem was, and how to rectify it.
"More on that later-"
Vanessa gave a small jump as the robust first few beats of a song busted throughout the atrium before quickly being turned down. She turned her head up in surprise at the sound booth on the third floor of the atrium, saw the far-off blur of primary green.
"Sorry about that!" Montgomery cried from behind the booth's controls.
A bout of laughter followed; Vanessa's included. "Break my Stride" continued to play as background noise. She had to stop a moment to make sure her voice would still be heard, began to speak again when she knew it would.
"You heard the man," she said, amused as she watched Monty begin to dance in perfect coordination to the music.
Sundrop, who was still directing his finger-painting session in the open area before the stage, began to squat and stand from side to side in time to the beats. Chica watched as he did this and began to mimic him even though she was still working on Roxy's portrait, which the wolf animatronic tried to remind her of as she worked on her own painting of the same subject.
"Maybe I should explain the ruckus; today is Gregory's birthday. With such a special occasion, it's an afterparty after a full day of parties. That's right, a kid with no last name somehow remembered the date of his birthday. Color me surprised."
A Month Ago
Gregory had successfully turned the originally heart-shaped yellow popsicle into a perfect circle by the time the doors to the main entryway to the atrium opened, setting the crowd that was gathering behind it loose onto the scene. Sure, the atrium was full of pockets of families before this, but the crowd that filtered in now was made up of preteens; a whole football teams' worth: Home and Visitors.
Freddy Fazbear, the center of attention, was at the front of the herd, the shepherd to the sheep. Two human escorts flanked him, both doing their best to keep the area in front of Freddy's legs clear enough for him to walk without stepping on the odd kid or two. It was a very slow procession, especially after the escorts had to firmly remind a few kids not to try and grab him. They were ignored, leaving Freddy to have to stop every few steps for their safety.
At least he didn't have a tail as Monty or Roxy did; those things always seemed to have a grubby little hand on them, particularly Monty's since Roxy was never shy with voicing boundaries.
Gregory had seen just how big the party count could get (around fifty kids or more, parents not included), but he hadn't seen one quite this big before, not even during the awful holiday season. Then again, it was Valentine's Day.
Looking at the wrist banners the crowd wore, it was obvious that this Meet 'n Greet was an amalgamation of two large parties. He reasoned that Freddy was booked for two parties at the same time with some bozo in party management failing to schedule him properly and fix the error.
If it had been a smaller crowd, Gregory would've stayed well away only for the fact that it was early in the afternoon, and Freddy knew that he would begin his day around eleven in the morning. The popsicle was his breakfast, and he didn't like Freddy's scoldings, no matter how forgiving they were.
Freddy wasn't his dad, or so his pride, self-consciousness, and self-doubts would have him think.
He was his best friend and roommate, thank you very much.
Freddy never scolded the other children after all, which Gregory thought was unfair. But with the huge crowd, there'd be no way for Freddy to spot him or have the audacity to fuss over his choice of breakfast in the first place. He needed to keep a low profile anyway - no matter if he was given faux legitimacy to his daily walkabout the plex through Vanessa - so he usually avoided all of the Glamrocks during open times. But crowds were the best hidey-hole…
Since the S.T.A.F.F bots were still setting up the party tables with plate after plate of food, Freddy had resorted to balloon art to give the kids something other than himself to grab at.
Gregory had never seen balloon art.
He left his table from the ice cream court and approached.
Freddy's comforting voice carried throughout the atrium. "It would be my honor to give the birthday girls and boys some presents of my own! Let us use our first names' alphabetical placement to determine who will go first."
The five birthday girls and boys in question would've fought amongst themselves if it weren't for Freddy's boisterous intervention.
"Now now, you will all get your very own animal balloon, do not fret. And the ones that wait for the longest get more time to think about what they want! Does anyone's name start with an 'A'?" he asked.
A bunch of hands went up, but none of them were a part of the birthday elites. Freddy laughed good-naturedly, his ears twitching this way and that as his shoulders shook.
"The birthday girls and boys get their balloons first, and then you all will be next, I promise." He looked down and then down some more to look at the five kids with the birthday crowns who circled him. "Tell me your names, Superstars!"
They did, and the first girl to get her animal was Brielle, who wanted a purple flamingo. Gregory hadn't been in school ever since he left his "home," but he was pretty sure that flamingos were pink.
With an inhuman (yet still characteristically animatronic) amount of grace, Freddy picked at something from within Brielle's hair before opening his hand to show her a deflated purple balloon that, by all accounts, came from behind her ear.
Gregory thought real hard about that one for a good minute or two, and by the time he gave up, Freddy had already finished the birthday kid's balloons, complete with their own little magic shows for turning up the unworked balloons. He learned from observation that Freddy had an inflator somewhere behind both his canine teeth, though he didn't know what to do with this information.
By the time Freddy moved on to the regular kids, the two escorts had managed to line them up in alphabetical order in front of him. Because the line wrapped around him several times, it still looked garbled enough for Gregory to blend in with the kids who also weren't on the guestlist but still wanted to see the show.
For each animal made, Freddy would look each child in the eyes (sometimes crouch a bit for the smaller ones), ask them their name, ask for their animal and birthday date, do an incredible magic show that would result in a balloon somehow ending up between his fingers, ask them why it was their favorite (when they asked for an actual animal rather than for a balloon replica of himself or the other Glamrocks), and then he'd help the child name the animal before moving on. After one kid managed to pop their animal, Freddy quickly remade it without question whilst giving out advice for how to avoid that.
"Never exert too much pressure on them, and make sure to keep pointed objects away from their surfaces," he explained slowly as he formed a simple green snake. "Otherwise, this will happen!" He poked the snake with a claw and it went out with a loud POCK sound. The children giggled excitedly, the intended result.
After about seventeen minutes, Freddy had made seventy-eight animal balloons for the entire party, and yet the S.T.A.F.F bots still hadn't finished setting up the table. Because children and parents alike seemed to be mesmerized by the performance, Freddy continued to make balloons for the kids outside the birthday party. On their own accord, the kids got into alphabetical order starting from Freddy's right. Gregory moved about too, only to keep under the radar. He was somewhere amongst the "K's," but he made a mental note to keep moving around so that Freddy wouldn't spot him. He was still enjoying his popsicle and wanted to keep it that way.
No matter how closely he looked at the process, he still couldn't figure out how Freddy made them without letting his huge hands and claws get in the way. Most people assumed that because the animatronics were so bulky, they lacked grace, but in fact, their bodies were made out of machines, so precision came very easily to them. This was necessary for playing an instrument, holding cooking classes, racing, playing golf or Fazerblast, etc, etc. They excelled at basically everything they did, which of course Gregory never marveled at them for. Made sense; clumsiness and lack of competence only had its place in comedy skits, and for when your central programming was taken over by a brain-washed acolyte of an insane and abominable killer set on turning you past tense: cue the closing credits, adieu cruel world, bring in the government-funded child casket, but hey you won't have to pay the caterer when the only attendee is an animatronic bear.
Gregory felt that, if he had died that night, his funeral (he liked to believe he might've had one) would've lacked a certain offense to the world that did him so dirty. Although he did survive, he knew the situation was an "if I will survive," only because of Freddy's guidance and guardianship.
Speaking of which-
"And what is your favorite animal, Gregory?" Freddy asked out of nowhere, singling him out a second after he finished up the latest balloon animal.
He had been aware of him the entire time.
Gregory, who was looking closely at the gloriously constructed peacock balloon belonging to the kid that stood in the "C" crowd he thought he had blended into, gave a start and adopted a thousand-yard stare at the back of the kid who stood in front of him. He knew Freddy had moved onto the "G" kids a minute or two ago, but he didn't, for a second, think that Freddy had known he was there. Never once did the bear ever acknowledge him, and even worse, he didn't ask for his name like he had to for the other kids. Scratch that; what was worse was the fact that Freddy moved back up the crowd he had worked through to get to Gregory in the "C" part. Now everyone was following Freddy's gaze to stare at Gregory, even parting for him a bit because Gregory didn't walk to the front of the crowd like the other kids had to. When he finally got the nerve to look up at the animatronic, he balked a bit in his answer, his face flushing and a strange heat flare running through his body. He forgot about his breakfast entirely.
Freddy towered over the crowd, his eyes somewhat lidded as they focused on the boy, his head tilted in question, his ears flicking softly. It took Gregory a good ten seconds of befuddling silence to find his voice, but Freddy remained perfectly patient.
Say something! Animal? Which animal? Is there a right answer?! I've never had a favorite animal! What would my favorite animal even be?!
"A-a bear-!" he blurted stupidly. Of course, this was the first thing that came to mind. It was still the truth, though.
His face was fine-tuned into an even more aggressive red as his lips tucked in on themselves in shame.
No one else had asked for a bear; they would ask for a Freddy balloon instead.
Freddy's jaw opened in a wide smile, his ears moving up and down in rapid succession. Gregory's face pruned, on the other hand.
"One bear coming right up, my Superstar! What color would you like it to be?"
"Pink," Gregory replied, feeling faint.
Freddy nodded and said "Alright" as he reached down to gently poke Gregory's stomach with his right index knuckle. Unthinkingly, Gregory looked down just in time for Freddy to bring his hand up and pinch his nose before twirling his palm over to present the pink balloon to him.
He got played like a cheap kazoo.
Freddy hummed a tune as he expertly constructed the desired pink teddy bear. With the sharpie he'd been holding in his left hand, he began to draw small facial features, ill at ease. Gregory's soul had vacated the premises, on the other hand.
"When is your birthday, Gregory?" Freddy asked pleasantly between his humming.
The only date he thought he remembered was sometime near the end of March.
"March 25th," he mumbled.
Freddy's eyes lit up. "March 25th? Why that is next month! We will have to celebrate it," he said as he took the finished bear's right paw in his own to make it wave down at him. It was much simpler than the other balloon animals, but Gregory preferred it that way anyways.
"What will you name them?" Freddy asked as he gifted him the balloon.
"Bob."
As he inspected the bear, Freddy softly patted his head; something he didn't do for the other children.
"'Bob' is a wonderful name!"
That required no response, so Gregory thought that was the end of it and began to turn away, ready to bolt once he was out of sight. He stopped short when Freddy's voice addressed him once more:
"Also, please make sure you eat something along with that ice cream. I have been told that the ice cream here is quite delicious, but it is not very substantial. You can get a stomachache if you are not careful."
The audacity.
Gregory could do nothing but stand there and nod like a good little boy.
"I have word from the staff that Chica's kitchen is offering their famous soft-taco buffet, and I know that's your fav-"
"Noted! I'll go there now!" Gregory called over his shoulder, power-walking through the dense crowd and towards the escalators before Freddy could finish his sentence. Freddy would've been put-out if he ran since it's forbidden for safety reasons.
Freddy smiled again as he watched the boy make his swift exit with Bob clutched closely to his chest, glad to see that he was going to eat a proper meal. A few indignant children began to tell Freddy what they ate for breakfast, and soon the conversation turned into a fest over food. Freddy did his best to give them the same amount of interest he gave to Gregory, but it was an active effort.
Although he wasn't hungry, Gregory managed to eat two chicken and cheese tacos, but don't ask him why; you won't get much in the way of a straight answer.