NOTE

This is another half-night. This chapter might be particularly short for that reason, but since it's only half the full chapter I wrote, that means I'll be posting the second half incredibly soon. Like, tomorrow. (Wanna re-read it and fix any errors.)

I came in a little early tonight. As I left the building last night, I could already see an army of cars in the parking lot. I left at 6, and the building doesn't open until 8, so there being so many cars that it was difficult to find my own car two hours before the building opens didn't bode well for the day crew.

It wasn't a pretty scene when I arrived, but it wasn't horrible either. the building had already been closed for a while, so it was safe to assume the day crew had already finished cleaning most of the mess. Thank god these guys get paid the big bucks.

Not that the CEO has any reason to be greedy. He must have made tens of thousands today.

Making the mistake of showing interest in helping, I was assigned to go to electrical and un-botch what has been botched.

Now, the thing about 'electrical' is that the designated 'electrical' room isn't very good at doing anything. So basically, I was told to go aaaaall around the building, and check that none of the electrical components need tampered with.

This task sounds weird, but the electricity in this building is wildly inconsistent. A random prop/light/room losing electricity isn't the most uncommon thing, but fortunately, the incidents are usually small enough that they go unnoticed by the customers who are entranced in the excitement of whatever the hell they're doing at any given time. Last time an electrical piece going out was noticed at all was when a customer noticed a juice machine wasn't dispensing. Unfortunately, Trudge was the nearest employee at the time, so he was the first one to get notified. This is the story behind where he was that one night where juice ended up everywhere.

This should have been a team effort. We coulda let everyone do one room and we'd all be done in 10 minutes..

grumble..

By the time I start to get annoyed, I'm already most of the way done. Just got a couple of the lower levels of the building to get through, and I took the time to make them all line up, so I could get them done easy peasy.

The kitchen is gonna take up most of the time, and I'm SURE I'll find something down here. I'll very frequently find a small issue somewhere in the kitchen during my rounds, which makes me think that no one comes down here to check electricity like they're supposed too.

Sigh, and I don't blame them. This place is customer friendly in every conceivable way, but the worker areas sure are.. OK. The security offices tend to be pretty alright, which is good for me, but that's about the extent of it.

I barely make it down the stairs before physically bumping into something. A Chica.

A Chica?

"M-Mike!" Chica must've not been expecting anyone down here as much as I have. I stare at her in confusion for a moment before realizing I should probably say hi or something.

"Hello." I say, taking a few steps back to put the two of us at a normal talking distance.

"Ah, y-.. Hi!" Chica fumbles over her words, but fixes her composure before she makes a fool of herself.

. . . . .

"What were you doing all the way down here?" I finally ask after a couple seconds of silence.

"Nothing! I wasn't-.. I'm just trying to stay out of the way of the cleanup!" She chirps happily. She looks kinda creepy in the dim light down here, but I suppose anyone would.

"I see. Excuse me then, gotta make sure everything's working down here."

"Of course! See ya later Mikey!"

Before I think of an appropriate way to respond to being called 'Mikey' for the n'th time, I hear rapid footsteps going up the stairs, and leaving me alone.

I take a second to try and zone myself back out, and continue my train of thought from earlier, but that surprise interaction shook my brain pretty hard.

She said she was down here to 'not be in the way', but that probably isn't fooling anyone. There's plenty of places she could have gone besides the deep dark damp kitchen, like her own damn room for instance.

Chica's more 'food' inclined than the rest of the gang, but since her whole area is fitness related, she never shows any sign of gaining any weight. If I had to guess, she was down here to sneak something to eat from the kitchen. Poor girl, nothing down here is particularly 'ready to eat'. If she asked, I bet I coulda whipped something. Oh well. If she was leaving, I bet that means she's already found something and fed herself.

I can't believe she wasn't super-glued to Trudge. He should still be around somewhere.

I should poke around and see if she ate some raw-dough or something. Or not. I doubt it matters.

The fucking sauce machine is unpowered again- If someone doesn't replace this thing I'm making a new one myself. Fuck.


A hefty amount of agonizing minutes pass by the time I finish getting the sauce thing to work again. It's broken, without fail, every single Friday. No matter what I do, no matter how I fix it, no matter what I replace, it's always broken by Friday, at LEAST.

I don't even feel the pride of fixing something anymore. I just get annoyed standing here and looking at it, knowing it's gonna break again next week.

- brf -

brf?

It came from my faz-watch, but it took me a while to understand what just happened. I got a message from Roxy. I didn't even know this thing could receive messages.

In fact, I'm pretty sure it isn't supposed too.. The UI looks wildly unfinished, and that notification sound wasn't the most pleasent sound I've ever heard. Maybe this is something Freddy's been working on, but hadn't finished. It did seem like he gave me this watch on a whim, so who knows how done it was at the time.

"Where the hell are you?" - Roxanne

I try to respond.

. . . .

How do-..

I don't know how to respond to her, I brought up a text box but there isn't enough room on the watch to include a keyboard, so I'm not sure what it expects of me. At this point I'm just touching random things to make something happen.

. . . .

Oh-.. I get it. You gotta draw the letter you want to type. That's clever, but not particularly time-efficient.

"In the kitchen, why?" - Mike

"I told you to come here first thing every night" - Roxanne

"My shift doesn't start for another 20 minutes" - Mike

"Chica told me you were here." - Roxanne

"I'm busy." - Mike

"Hi guys!" - Trudge

What?

"Oh" - Mike

"I thought this was a chat between Roxanne and I." - Mike

"My apologies, this feature wasn't fully implemented yet. I do not know how Roxanne managed to get it running." - Freddy

"How many people is this connected to?" - Mike

"Only the watches that I've begun to implement this feature in. I've only got a few made, and I've only given the few I've made to the 'nightcrew', which isn't very many people." - Freddy

"I also gave one to Trudge, since he's here at night so often." - Freddy

"Do all the animatronics count as nightcrew?" - Mike

"That's the plan, but I haven't yet made that many watches with that feature in them, so not all of us have access to this feature.. Although, no one should have it yet in general." - Freddy

"Sheesh" - Roxanne

"You made me think I said all that to everyone who works here." - Roxanne

"Apologies for the scare." - Freddy

"I wasn't scared." - Roxanne

I can almost guarantee you she was freaking the hell out until she saw that only a few people have this feature.

"h" - Chica

"Hi Chica!" - Trudge

"I don't think she knows how it works yet." - Mike

"Draw the letter you wish to type, Chica. Then press the blue button to send." - Freddy

. . .

"hi" - Chica

"Hi Chica!" - Trudge

"That took a while." - Roxanne

"featjhers." - Chica

"Ah." - Mike

After a good chuckle from that last message, I interpret the conversation as over, and continue doing what I was doing.

Fortunately, not much was left to be done. Before much time at all, I'm headed back up the staircase. By the time I make it to the regular areas of the pizzaplex, my shift likely will have started.

I have no idea how Roxanne accessed the chat feature, but nowhere on my watch can I find anything like it. I was only able to access it back then when I acknowledged the notification I got from Roxanne messaging the chat.

The notification did absolutely specify that the chat was just between Roxanne and I, so it was natural for Roxanne to assume that the chat was, in fact, just between her and I.

Until I figure the whole thing out, I think I'm just gonna have to access the chat whenever someone else messages through it. No biggie, I guess, since I can just call people if they have their watch on them.

- brf -

"Why does Mike have to come to your room every morning, Roxy?" - Trudge

"He doesn't have to come to my room." - Roxanne

"I don't?" - Mike

I know what she's trying to do, I'm just being an asshole. I don't know what about Roxanne makes it so easy to mess with her. I don't mess with anyone else, ever.

"Yes you do, I mean, like" - Roxanne

"He just has to come tonight, not every night, I misspoke." - Roxanne

"Why?" - Trudge

"He needs something that I borrowed." - Roxanne

"Can I come?" - Trudge

"No" - Roxanne

"Okie dokie" - Trudge

"Do you need something?" - Mike

"Nope, I'll go annoy Chica" - Trudge

At least he's self aware of the effect he has on people.


"..."

"..."

"People still give me weird looks because of you, you know." Roxanne says while prodding my cheeks with whatever make-up contraption she has in her hand.

"You mean from when 'you' hit me?" I respond jokingly

"I said I'm sorry! Jeez- learn to let things go already!"

"I know, I was just kidding."

"Since when do you tell jokes?"

"Since I learned it was the easiest way to deal with you."

"Fuck off already.. Turn."

"Yes ma'am."

"Don't call me ma'am ever again."

"Yes sir."


"..You know I really didn't mean to hurt you, right?"

That was a little weird. Usually Roxanne doesn't speak this sincerely about anything.

"Yeah, it was an accident."

It takes me a while to think about why she brought this up again, then realized the cheek she's working on still has the patch on it from when she cut me. Maybe she's feeling guilty about it. It was an accident though, so she really shouldn't feel bad.

"Don't let this get to your head, but. . I'm- ugh! I'm sorry! alright?"

"I heard you when you said it the first thirteen times."

"I know that, asshole! But I was panicking when I said that, I mean it this time, for real!"

"Then I forgive you, for real."

"I-.." Roxanne fails to form a sentence.

"Fuck you.." She finally mutters

I just chuckle in response.


This time, I'm in Freddy's room. I got curious about the whole message fiasco, so I wanted to get an update from him.

"Hey Freddy."

"Oh-" Freddy turns around to face me. "Hello, Micheal! Look at you!" he chimes proudly.

Oh right, I think this is the first time any of the crew has seen me with this makeup.

"Thanks. I thought.. 'I'd' try covering some of the purple."

"I see! You did well!" Freddy pushes himself up to talk to me upright.

"I was wondering about the chat feature on the watches." I state plainly, hoping this would trigger a tangent from him that would answer all my questions.

I'll spare you the boring stuff.

Since all the watches are interconnected, he can update them without having to work on every single one. Freddy still has to give one to Monty, (whom might be upset if I don't talk to him at some point tonight). Freddy was originally gonna work on some other stuff for the watches before he continued with the chat functionality, but now that it's already semi-in use, he said he'd hunker down and try to finish the chat before he does anything else. I suggested he add a speech-to-text feature, since manually drawing every letter one by one tends to get slow and annoying if you're trying to formulate a sentence more than three words long.

I told him I appreciated it, and headed back out into the corridor. It feels like I've had a whole work-night already, but in reality it's hardly even 1am, so I still got a whole night ahead of me.

I think I should drop by Monty's at some point tonight, as well as find Trudge somewhere. We haven't interacted much since he and Chica exchanged drawings, they're two peas in a pod at this point.

Alright Mikey, deep breaths, you got this..