Crocodile Rock

A Security Breach Extended Story

The Present

"Personally, I think he came up with it on the spot. Though it doesn't really matter, I do wonder if Freddy caught onto the lie or not… if he did, he wouldn't say anything anyways. March 25th is now his birthday, and that's that."

Vanessa felt her face flush a bit.

"I know you're probably wondering – then again, maybe you aren't – how I know the finer details of an interaction that happened while I was off duty. I'm going to level with you, Ernest; I hacked Freddy.

"While I wish I could paint you a picture of me doing top-tier, ultra-high-tech wizardry on a computer – you know with the screen covered in numbers and all that as I furiously type, conquering the world with the push of a button… but, eh. No. This place is built for children, and the technology that built the animatronics? Ridiculously refined, and yet ridiculously easy to catch onto. I am well versed in the artistry that is Information Technology," she said with a playful gesture of her left hand, "but a child could interact with the animatronics' technology and have no issues, and that, I know for a fact. The programming is a whole beast onto itself, but primarily because of just how…uh…"

She had to think for a moment, gave up, and sighed.

"Humanity. They have a lot of it. More than you'd think, and probably more than I think. Especially Freddy. He… startles me sometimes. The more 'human' the programming emulates, the more complex it is. It was this programming that gave Afton and Vanny such a rough time of hacking the animatronics. A firewall was necessary for constricting the complex behavioral algorithms, but complexity breeds complications, and let one drop loose and the whole dam bursts. A saving grace, in the end. But anyways…

"So long as it doesn't have to do with their behavior or personality, their tech is easily interactable. And because they're forced to negotiate with defenseless children on the daily, they have very reliable memory banks (…insurance policies and all that). When prioritized, I mean. You could fancy them as a recording system sometimes, and that's exactly what I got out of it: video evidence.

"Still, it never sat right with me to do that, especially without their permission. Freddy doesn't know about them yet, and I'm not sure if I want to tell him today. But he will need them; they both will."

Vanessa looked over at the commotions of the small party, her finger releasing the recording button. The static stopped.

Roxy and Chica were still painting their portraits of Roxy (an easy thing to do when you can bring up the precise image of a memory), and Monty had just begun to make his way down the human-sized escalators, grunting and grumbling as his extremities hit the sides. Sundrop was talking to Gregory who was frustrated over his still blank piece of paper. Freddy, who was sitting in a too-small chair that Vanessa was dying to see break, was still working on his pen drawing of warped lines that was rather interesting. An endoskeleton with unfinished rosy-red plating's (whose name was supposed to be Poppy according to the commission archives) continued to create their army of origami paper cranes. The count was over two large tables' worth.

There was quite a large following of unfinished animatronics they had been able to find in the basement. Gregory, who was prone to performing disappearing acts in want of exploring the Pizzaplex, had found them throughout the deeper parts of the basement systems. It was obvious that they had wandered; most of them had to be excavated out of a few depressing piles of robotic scrappery. They had found eight so far, each of them as pitiful as the last. The archives noted that over twenty-five full-scale animatronics had originally been commissioned for the Pizzaplex while it was still under construction. They had been abandoned in the preliminary process because the higher-ups believed that too many characters would divide the attention too much. (*Cough* it would've nearly bankrupted them back then.) Most of them were turned into endos for scrap parts, compliments for the four uncontestable stars. None of them were able to communicate, and when given a voice box, they remained mute by choice.

Poppy communicated through other means; primarily body language. Since no one was able to figure out what reincarnation Poppy was supposed to have been, Gregory concluded that they were a poppy flower. Surprising to some, Poppy was making progress far faster than even Bonnie, who wasn't functioning at all.

Everyone but Monty and Vanessa kept up the optimism. Vanessa was never going to tell them the truth about Bonnie; that would require a trip to the darkest crevice of the Pizzaplex, and she had already done everything in a frenzy of trauma-induced desperation to make sure that it withered its way into eternity; entirely inaccessible and out of power.

She would have to tell Ernest, though.

"It doesn't have to be a masterpiece," Sundrop tried to reason as Gregory jealously peeked at Roxy's self-portrait. "You just have to have fun!"

"My Chica paintings all sucked! There's no way I can paint Roxy. She'll look awful."

"Your Chica was very egg-like," Roxy said with an impish chuckle. "But it was still cute. I could be convinced to hang up the painting if you at least try it."

"That'd be great, wouldn't it? And if she doesn't hang it up, I can find a good place for it instead," Sundrop promised.

"That's the problem. Then it would be seen," Gregory whined. He gawked a bit at the portrait Roxy and Chica did of him and scowled. They might as well have been tempera copies of a photograph.

"Did not take you for a little coward," Roxy said in good humor.

Gregory bristled as if his honor had been questioned.

"I'm no coward! I-I just need a good- uh, thing to look at so that I can make it good-? Forgot the word…"

"I believe you mean a reference: a concept that you can refer to when creating something new but recognizable or inspired by the original concept," Freddy supplied.

"I need a good reference! A cool pose or something…"

"Use Freddy," Vanessa called out with a raised voice. She was much further back in the atrium than the rest of them were, disallowing her monologue from carrying to them. Gregory turned away from his easel to look at her, his lower lip flexing in mock petulance.

"Why? He's next after Roxy."

Vanessa shrugged. "He's made up of simpler shapes than the rest of them, and I can imagine you painting Roxy's hair atrociously. Hair is hard! Start easy; Freddy's hat should be a breeze."

Roxy ran a few claws through her hair at that.

"And here," Sundrop said as he handed over a pencil with an oval-shaped eraser, "use a pencil to create your sketch, that way you can erase your mistakes. It has googly-eyes, see?" Sundrop began to shake the pencil vigorously, and Gregory had to tussle with him to catch the pencil out of his hands.

Roxy informed Chica that her bow was crooked.

"Hey Freddy, would you pose for me? Right here?" Gregory asked, pointing to the area just before his easel.

Freddy stood, forgot about his own drawing altogether, situated himself in the indicated spot. He had to back up a few paces before Gregory was satisfied, and once he was, Freddy posed with two thumbs up.

Gregory had been hoping for something more epic, like a pause on the dance routines he had to go through for the concerts… but it wasn't like he had been specific, so he shrugged and got started on the eyes.

Chica gave up on fixing her bow to Roxy's standards, so Roxy had to fix it herself.

Monty found amusement by breaking up popsicle sticks to construct a tiny bridge via the diorama Sundrop offered up for the night.

Vanessa smiled, brought the recorder back near her lips, commencing the static.

"Again, everything you should need - all of the recordings and such – they've all been sent straight to my set up in the storage unit. You're going to need to take them to court.

"Let me put it this way; Gregory has no home, no family, no one he can rely on. If he's discovered to be an orphan - or by some crazy clap of bad luck, someone actually recognizes him as a missing boy from the next state over – it'll all go to shit. He cannot go back; he has made his wishes to stay with Freddy quite clear. If you watch the recordings, you'll get all the dirty details of the life he had to leave. You'll know why he doesn't have a family, and why he can't go back to them. The only way he sees himself breaking the surface is if Freddy becomes his legal guardian.

"You heard me; an animatronic children's entertainer is going to try to adopt a boy, kinda like Pinocchio (but the bear won't become a real bear). They only recently came to this decision when a close call happened sometime back around Christmas time. I'll get to that later, but man, I'm seriously digressing.

"Should Freddy become Gregory's legal guardian, Gregory would be given consent through him to live his life without outsider intervention. For reasons I will disclose in a little bit, if Gregory were to be taken away from the care of the Glamrocks, he will be screwed over by a system that will chew him out once they're done with him. As of today (give or take a week or two), Gregory has exactly nine years before he loses his status as a minor. Nine years is plenty of time to get caught, so obtaining guardianship is the only way to go.

"Again, I'll get to all the rest of the stuff in a moment, but I want to tell you this first; I trust you more than I care to, Ernest, but I want you to know why I believe, firmly believe, that Mr. Go-Lucky Fazbear needs to adopt Gregory. I want you to be convinced if you're on board with all of this.

"Of course, Gregory needs anyone other than his birth family to care for him, and that's the reason he'll give you if you were to ask him, especially in front of Freddy (the kid gets jaded in affectionate happenings). But I knew that this would happen way before they did, and I did tell you I would give you the full story of that first morning…"

Directly after the final scene of the "Princess Quest" ending

The ice-creams didn't last, and so neither could the silence.

After they left the twilight zone that became of the Pizzaplex, not a word had been exchanged. He had waited for her outside as if he knew she would come, and she couldn't understand why.

She had walked to him, emotionally barren and at a loss for the proper words. Any pleas she tried to conceive of ran away naked through the night. Somethings couldn't be translated, and sometimes those things utterly made up the person you were in a moment. The only thing that remained of the virus was the taunts of mortification that would let themselves in, and briefly, Vanessa considered convincing Gregory of the person she was before the killer infected her. In an effort to absolve herself of the full burden of guilt, she would've presented outgrown versions of herself like a show-and-tell presentation. She had albums on her phone showing her as the main character of her normal life before the evil sorcerer made his appearance, like all movies are demanded to portray in some way or another. She had a life that was written by herself, the only director, the only author. But now her script, her lines, the pages of her purpose… they all had the ink stains of another.

But these ink stains reeked. Reeked of an inhuman lasciviousness that went entirely beyond her.

And so, she found that there was nothing to say that would reconcile all the things she needed to say.

And so, she remained silent.

With the dangle of a key, Vanessa led Gregory to a Fazbear's ice cream truck, which they subsequently pilfered. Gregory picked out a Freddy Fazbear popsicle and presented it to the duffle bag slung across his shoulder. To Vanessa's surprise, the bag actually gave a response in the form of a soft, deep-sounding chuckle. It was then that she became aware of Gregory's little friend.

Freddy lived on, "Sleepy Hollow" style.

Gregory wasn't her only companion, and Freddy was a head. With optics in mind, it could be said the latter issue was entirely her fault.

And so, she kept silent.

And hijacked the ice cream truck.

Freddy became an accessory to vandalism, petty theft, and grand theft auto. As for Gregory, if they were to get caught, she'd say she kidnapped him. She had the reserves to dig her trench a foot deeper, and rock bottom was the only horizon left for her.

Her condolences to Mr. Afton.

She was surprised that Gregory even got in the car in the first place, though. She expected him to outright refuse, but instead, he buckled up. He had to have known that she had been Vanny...

The drive was uneventful, all cars behaved themselves, all lights kept them in check. She might've sped otherwise; then she'd really get the proper people on them. If caught, the police would have more than just an ice cream-stealing-joy-rider-child-kidnapper. They'd have a reluctant child killer who'd be more than willing to spill the finer points of the crimes she now couldn't see as anything less than true atrocities. Nay, they'd have a woman who'd welcome the cuffs. The rounds of self-loathing would be on her, but make sure to put it on Afton's tab. Amen.

And so, the Fazbear ice cream truck never got to fulfill its dreams of burning rubber at over eighty miles an hour. There was a baby on board, she kept in mind. And Gregory.

Vanessa drove for over an hour, and still not a word had been said. Not wanting to frighten Gregory, she knew she had to stop soon, thus deciding on a blameless scenery: the yawning sun mounting a green hill. The perfect little tree adorned the hill, and it promised a brief moment of respite.

She stopped the car, helped herself to a cone in the back, and sat underneath the tree. Gregory joined her with his treat of choice: a rendition of Freddy's face in a popsicle. The original was freed from the bag and set in the grass between the both of them, his expression the picture of contentment.

Vanessa smiled as she peeked at Gregory - mainly to study his very apparent show of idolatry for Freddy. The Freddy popsicle, the Freddy shoes, the Freddy shirt, the Freddy Fazwatch, the Freddy duffle bag, the… Freddy. She figured that the only thing missing from his getup was the rest of Freddy.

The moment continued on uninterrupted until they ran out of ice cream.

Both Gregory and what was left of Freddy kept quiet, but it was easy to tell that Gregory wanted to say something to Freddy. Vanessa knew that she'd have to be the one to break the silence first-

"Does the name 'Princess Quest' mean anything to you?" he asked.