A/N: Apologies for the long delay! Things happened I didn't have the time to write. Now, enjoy the next chapter!

Chapter 20:

A Kin I Related Not II

What could the so-called restricted area possibly contain that people should know not?

"I can't believe wolves are portrayed as a big, hairy, dirty antagonist in a children's fairy tale. They are supposed to be cool and awesome, not eating people's grandma!"

"Ha! Eating people's grandma? What a joke! Meanwhile, alligators can eat lots of kinds of animals just by swallowing them whole, even humans. They have incredibly powerful jaws that can easily rip your arms off. My bite might not be as strong as theirs, but nothing can withstand my overwhelming punch!"

"Well, I'm just an ordinary chicken, or a hen since I am a girl… What about you Freddy?"

"…A child told me that bears eat honey and that they hibernate through winters. You know, like sleeping for a very long period of time. Fascinating, is it not?"

"Oh…"

"Huh, I actually expected more."

"Well, aren't bears the cutest of them all?"

"And here I thought the white fluffy ones are the most adorable."

"Talking about being fluffy, it's no doubt that they are the sweetest."

"I cannot agree more! Do you think that as well, Bonnie?"

The pallid shades of the trees around echo resonated with the footsteps of those who ventured within. Barks of all tones, hues, and colours pushed skyward, grappling for the warmth and comfort of the setting sun. The trunks intertwined, twisted, or rose, straight-backed and proud from the ground. Their hearts lay within their roots, where once their innocent, untamed seeds scrabbled for life. The force of this life, the sheer unbridled passion of the tales told by these ancient behemoths created a sense of life, or rather it created a sense of consciousness, a brave emboldened spirit of the so-called "forbidden forest".

The woods were the same as before all had first had their foot kiss the soil beneath, yet there was something uncanny about the place itself that none knew what mysteries it bore. The echoes of the sounds in the frigid woods rebounded from the trees with vigour. Within a time, a brief span that meant nothing to the inhabitants, the troubles and heartaches of one lone soul were known by all. The soft patter of falling seeds was muffled by the thick, lush carpet of leaves. Their small, wax-wrapped consciences burrowed into the earth to begin stories of their own.

The shuffling sound of steps reverberated from the trees, crunching the dried leaves and pebbles underfoot. Until it too ceased to make noises as the brave adventures, including an animatronic bear, stopped on their track. All eyes were locked on an unexpected mark of three long lines forcefully embedded on a bark which happened to be so unfortunate to carry such a scar.

Everyone was shocked. But Freddy was the most terrified.

Hands scratching the chin, Daniel hummed amusingly. "Huh… Looks like someone got caught up in a fight."

The "scratch" seemed to be an accidental work of a ferocious and savage furry beast rather than an assertion of dominance in natural wildlife. It tore deep into the bark, creating three wide cracks as it stretched along the furrowed and patchy waves of wood. Witnessing the sight alone was enough for a word of warning to whoever was foolhardy enough to enter the forbidden forest. Whether with or without a companion, a team, a squad, or perhaps, an entire force, neither might be able to imagine the consequence of challenging the unknown predator. For whatever could have committed such acts of intimidation by leaving a tasteless taste of their otherworldly strength onto an innocent tree, one ought to know their places in the unforgiving food chain.

Gregory stared at the claw mark, he was both attentive and oblivious at the same time. "I guess this is the reason why they have this place locked up. This part of the woods must be filled with predators!"

"Well, wouldn't that be a good thing?", the man mused.

"Excuse me?", Lily was greatly flabbergasted upon hearing it. "How is that a good thing?"

"We could show our guy Freddy here more about animals and maybe have a chance to come across bears as well. Besides, it's not like they would prey on us when we are literally standing next to a gigantic, impenetrable, seemingly invincible, bizarre-looking bear-like animatronic creature that is basically an alien to this forest.", said Daniel with his usual carefree tone. "He could be our bodyguard. Something like that. Really cool, right? His metallic shells are impossible to bite through, let alone his crushing weight. I don't know how fast he runs, but I doubt that we can outrun him."

As a matter of fact, Gregory could outrun the animatronics, although that statement alone wouldn't be always true due to his limited stamina.

Daniel then turned to look at the animatronic bear, who was blankly staring at the claw marks on the bark. "Right, Mr Fazbear?"

Freddy blinked as his head took a quick snap of reality, he looked back at the man, ears wiggling up and down simultaneously. "I can run as fast as a person riding their bicycle… at a normal speed that is. If I were a little lighter, I might be able to sprint much faster. Much as I tried, I would never be able to outrun a dog."

"How can you know for sure? You have seen a dog before?", the boy was curious. "I thought animals aren't allowed at the Pizzaplex."

"Asides from seeing them through pictures like most of the time, I once had a chance to interact with a police dog, a German shepherd, to be precise. My friends and I spent—"

"Hold on, a police dog? That's… odd." Lily did not hesitate before interrupting the bear, she was the first to quick to notice the oddity within the sentences themselves. "What was a police dog doing there at the Pizzaplex? Did something happen?"

Freddy jerked his head back a little as though he had realised what the girl meant. Everyone else soon caught up with her quick-witted thinking, waiting for a response from the bear. But none of them did not expect to receive a blank stare and silence to be the final answer. A few seconds later, Freddy's eyes started darting from left to right so slightly that one could hardly ever notice the shifting difference. Another few seconds later, he closed his eyes for a short while, then laid his hand on his head, much like what a human person would do whenever they experienced a headache.

Lily was afraid that she might have triggered an information blockage within the bear's processor. "Um… Are you okay? You look like you have had a headache. Can robots experience headaches?"

"Well, I wouldn't be surprised if the guy said no.", remarked Daniel. "A police dog at the scene where animals are prohibited from entering could only mean one thing – sniffing for some fishy stuff, like a piece of evidence. Obviously, something fishy must have happened… Something that relates to the missing children incident, in this case."

Upon hearing that, one could only do so much but exchange each other dreadful gazes. Everyone had their face darkened, everyone excluding Freddy.

The bear relaxed his arms. "Ah… A very interesting guess, but that was not what had actually happened, though.", despite the gloomy air, he managed to keep his tone unchanged. "It seemed that the memory I was looking for dated very far back from the past. Approximately somewhere near the late 20s, I believe."

Daniel was rather disappointed at what he had just been told. On the other hand, he was a little intrigued. "Late 20s? Wasn't that when the Pizzaplex had just been built recently? That'd explain why you took some time trying to retrieve that part of your memory. Still, I wonder how you were able to store tons of memory in your database without it filling up the space. Pretty sure it's not infinite storage, so probably something else."

Freddy's ears perked up as though he was rather excited to fulfil the man's curiosity. "In order to not cause information overload, memories that had been in storage for a definitive amount of time will automatically be marked as "temporarily deleted", in which, information about said memories will be seen as empty spaces so that newer memories can be processed and stored. You can imagine a flashlight casting a bright circle of light onto a dark wall, the lightened area is the freshly processed memories that stay in the database for at least three days, whereas the shadow area is the "temporarily deleted" memories that are ready to be retrieved at any moment. When old memories are recalled, they replace the spaces taken by the ones close to being "temporarily deleted" and will last the same three days as the others. That is how memories are stored and remembered without causing any information overload."

"In other words, RAM… or something like that.", concluded the man.

The bear raised his index finger in exclamation. "Y-Yes! That is correct! It works quite the same as how RAM is supposed to work. The stronger my chips are, the more space I can keep recent memories and the faster I can recall the old ones."

"But that doesn't explain what really happens to the files when they are deleted, though…"

Mysteries of the world!

The children shot him their confusing eyes, while Daniel's expression appeared to be fairly normal. Fair enough, Lily was just an eleven year's old girl. Knowing how to use a digital camera didn't mean she was an expert in the field of Information Technology. Gregory used to spend most of his time sitting in front of the library's computer, and yes, he did learn a few basic concepts. At first, he was eager to learn, that was until he came across coding and even more complicated terms. Eventually, he stopped trying to understand.

Computing was definitely not for him. Perhaps, not right now.

Silence smothered the air for a considerable amount of time.

"So, um… Are we going to ignore an apparent claw mark right in front of us?", said Lily.

And as soon as the girl said so, cold air chilled the spines, just like what they had felt at their first sight.

Now that it was mentioned again, none could know for sure what kind of animals could leave such a big, deep mark.

Carefree as Daniel might have been, still, he was just an ordinary person with common sense to acknowledge what a threat was. Yet, he couldn't care less. As he had stated earlier, Freddy would likely be the sole reason why it was best for the predators to keep their distance away from him and everyone else. Practically speaking, no beast would be dumb enough to duel themselves with "a gigantic, impenetrable, seemingly invincible, bizarre-looking bear-like animatronic creature". Bears were known for their towering height, especially the brown ones. Being seven feet tall was more than enough for a threatening stance – an opposing barrier of natural dominance.

Lily, on the other hand, wouldn't stop scanning the surroundings behind everyone's back, as though she feared that something could be lurking from afar, behind those walls of bushes concealing whatever nature could behold. Being a huge geek in science, she could guarantee that no animals could have "scratched" a tree trunk that violently. Whatever thing was capable of accomplishing such a dreadful feat, she would make sure that there would always be an emergency escape when the time came.

Gregory was by far the most cautious one. Thanks to the maddening chaos he had gone through back at the Pizzaplex, standing in an environment where the killer had the high ground was not much of a surprise to him. So, when it came to running, he could run, fast, very fast. And perhaps he could run faster than the siblings were he to pay enough attention to where he was heading. He had outrun the killer animatronics before, escaping from possible predatory furries should be the same, right? Two legs versus fours… Well, he was reconsidering that thought at the moment.

And then, there's Freddy – the only animatronic bear member of the human group. And strangely enough, he was the only one to not be disturbed by the perhaps territorial mark of an unknown animal. Yet, he still kept his gaze locked on it. Focused. He was so focused to the point that his eyes were refrained from blinking, or rather, he could not blink at all. It was just like how one would do when they didn't want to miss any important part that might slip through their line of sight unpredictably… and forever left undiscovered.

Perhaps, he really was disturbed by the scene. Thanks to the personality chip, that feeling of uncanny discomfort were now slowly coursing through his circuit veins. Damn, fear wasn't what he would experience back in the days at the Pizzaplex, and neither was pain… if he considered himself to be able to feel pain, that was. To add more of the anxiety, the fact that such animals were capable of causing damage like this, whatever appearance this creature bore, he shuddered upon thinking about it.

How dangerous was the outside world, really?

"Well, it's just claw marks. We see it on TVs all the time. Why act like this is your first time seeing them?", shrugged Daniel as he proceed to continue walking on the path. "Come on, there isn't much time left until the sky turns dark. Freddy, keep your hood on just in case we come across another person."

Lily's eyes widened; she then hurriedly followed her brother. She didn't have any other option, nonetheless. "B-But… it couldn't have been any predators, right? I mean, just look at it! Even a brown bear can't cut that deep into a tree bark!"

Like a natural reflex, Freddy's ears drooped even more upon hearing the girl's statement. Even his real-life counterpart couldn't even have possessed such destructive raw strength. It was too much for his limited imagination to picture the mysterious creature, whatever it was or could be referred to. Much as he attempted to familiarize himself with this incomprehensibly anxious feeling, one that the humans would call fear, remained the shuddering.

Alas, the fear of the unknown sparkled from within.

He had decided to stay silent, for there was nothing he could comment on nor anything to say at the moment.

He had decided to stay at the furthest back, for there was something, or someone was preventing him from joining his friends.

The chattering was audible, yet awfully muffled to him.

Was he deaf? – No, his sound perceiver still functioned just fine. And it seemed that he wasn't so bothered by that fact.

Of course, he must have gotten used to being like this before. That would explain why he was calm and collected. And whenever something like this happened, it was because he had fallen so deeply into the sea of mind.

Unconscious movement. Wiggling ears. Extra-focused concentration.

There was something he wanted to do right now.

There was something he wanted to remember.

He would remain in that half-aware, half-focused state for a considerable amount of time, depending on the moment when he was snapped out of it by an external force – either involuntary rammed straight into a tree, or took a misstep and rolled down a slope, or tripped over a stone and fell into a brook…

"Hey… Hey! Wakey-wakey, Freddybear!", a sudden noise ruptured the muffling silence as it interfered with the sound perceiver, causing his eyes to shift and his pupils to dilate upon noticing the man's fingers.

…or get slapped into the face by a person, in this case – Daniel himself. Well, the man was the only one tall enough to reach his head anyways.

"Well, bunnies are fluffy… like cotton balls! They have soft, white fur, though there are other colours as well, white seemed to be the most iconic. They also have long, sensitive ears just like me. Oh! And they can run pretty fast, too! The children told me that they could outrun wolves by unexpectedly turning left and right when being chased, causing the predator to be confused and have a hard time catching up to them. Imagine the speed they are running at in order to not be eaten! We couldn't even outrun a nine-year-old child."

"Oh, dear! Poor the bunnies! Mother nature can be so cruel sometimes! Then again, that's how things work for the animals to survive in the wild, right?"

"…"

"… H-Hey, don't give me that look! Even if I were a wolf, I wouldn't eat my bunny friend."

"Doubted it. Even if you said that, how can you be so sure? If I remember correctly, there's this thing called natural instinct. Saw that term when reading a magazine given by Vanessa. The mag said that it was like a blood mark inside each one of the animals, making them react in a specifically certain way without having to learn or be taught by their parents. So, when you happened to come across a rabbit, you wouldn't wait a second before mauling it into pieces. Good luck befriending the guy, it'll be a matter of time until your stomach starts growling. Heh."

"Shut up, you gator!"

Freddy was snapped out of his inner sea of mind, blinking a few times rapidly before regaining his focus on the humans standing in front of him, bearing perplexed expressions

"Freddy, have you been… sleepwalking this whole time?", Gregory couldn't help but raised a brow. "I didn't know robots could do that."

"N-No… robots are incapable of sleepwalking, let alone sleeping, literally speaking.", replied the bear, he then looked down at the ground for a few seconds before returning his gaze to everyone. "How long have we been walking?"

Just that, more confusion.

"Um… It's been five minutes.", said Lily.

His eyes widened a little. A five-minute walk was pretty long, considering how he didn't stop walking and kept his speed steady. "Oh… Apologies if I looked disquieting to you guys."

"What's with those soulless eyes of yours just then?", demanded Daniel. "Haven't heard you speak anything for five minutes straight, so I turned around to check on you. But I didn't expect to see you walking in such an unusual fashion. To be honest, you looked a lot like a stringless puppet. No offence."

"Y-You do not have to be worried about it. I was just trying to remember something, something important. But attempting to recall it would require more concentration than the last time, which means I had to stop whatever I am doing, even walking. So, in order to catch up with you guys, I split half of the concentration. One half for recalling, the other one for controlling the movement. Thus, you would see why my movement was a little out of the norm."

"Huh…", mused the man. "Care to tell what you are trying to remember? Must have been very old and valuable to you if it took like five solid minutes to retrieve it."

Eyes blinking rapidly, Freddy directed his eyes to a nearby brush, fingers twirling like a six-year-old child.

"Well, privacy isn't where everyone should stick their nose in. It's okay, you can say it whenever you want."

"I… I will consider it."

And just that, they continued the expedition.

The man remained carefree. The children resumed their talking. The bear went on retrieving the old memory.

Time did not pass for long until the group suddenly ceased all their movements. Affected by the abrupt halt, Freddy almost bumped into Gregory and Lily. Luckily, that outcome only occurred in his processor. Colliding with children while his shell was made of hardened metal alloy wouldn't end well for their skull.

"What is it? Why did you stop?", asked Lily, somewhat frantic as she started looking around.

Daniel stood as firm as a statue, every flinch of his movement jerked the children back. His head twitched sharply yet barely noticeable. Freddy might have noted it, though. Still, nobody knew a thing what the man was trying to inspect, whether it be in close or far away proximity.

"Daniel, is something wrong?", the girl demanded again, this time with a higher pitched tone.

The man didn't move. Some mumbles were heard being whispered by him. "Shouldn't have drunk that much soda…"

Just like that, in a span of a second, her alert meter dropped down to zero. Along with it, was a sigh of relief and a grunt of annoyance. Lily was fed up with her brother's terribly attempted jokes. To be more precise, she had always been fed up since the moment the guy had his first contact with comedy. So, in order to dump all those boiling sensations that had been being kept inside for a while, she delivered a painful blow to his right arm using the head of her knuckles for sorer pain.

"Ouch! That hurt a little… Hehe.", the man recoiled, then chuckled as he laughed the sharp ache away.

"Serve you right!", exclaimed the girl. "This isn't the time for your cringy jokes! We are literally trespassing here, so don't try to do anything stupid again. Or else."

Daniel scratched the spot where he was hit. "Jeez, girl. Take a chill pill, will you?"

Having witnessed the entire "big bro and lil sis" moment, Gregory could only do such as smile while performing an eye-roll. He might as well exchange some gazes with the bear to see what his reaction was upon this comical matter: Confusion as usual.

Another sigh, then she said: "If you want to take a piss, just do it already instead of wasting time." To which, she received two pairs of widened eyes from the boy and the bear.

Another sigh, then she continued: "The sun is about to set, we don't have much time left until this place becomes a hunting ground for predators. And I doubt that Freddy alone could single-handledly fight them. Just because he has the raw strength, doesn't mean he can fend for himself without our help."

The man scratched his chin, he was rather impressed with the girl's rebuttal. "Sounds logical. But I don't really have to do that at the moment."

"Then what was that all about?"

"Just trying to mess with you three. But that's not the main reason.", shrugged Daniel, he then pointed his finger to the far right. "Look, see that vacant spot over there?"

Upon hearing that, Freddy zoomed his eyes in the pointed direction. He could feel his curiosity side begin emerging from the depth thanks to the ticklish sensation within his circuit. When that happened, it meant something in the distance had caught his attention.

True to his curious self, from afar, he could see a single tree situated in a middle of an unoccupied land of grass, where the trees were prohibited from growing tall and mighty. But the tree, he spotted no green of sort. Green was missing from its colour spectrum. Odd, shouldn't every tree have leaves for photosynthesis, a process that was crucial for its own life and perhaps every other living thing?

And then, there it was again. He saw it.

"Yeah, it isn't far from here.", remarked Lily as she narrowed her eyes while holding her glasses. "That's… weird, it looks like a place for camping, but that doesn't make any sense since this is a restricted area—"

"I can see it." Blank and monotonous, the robotic voice of Freddy startled everyone as their attention was all on him.

"See… what?", inquired the girl.

"How can you…", Daniel was about the protest, but shut his mouth after realising. "Oh, right. I nearly forgot you can zoom in and out. Neat feature."

For some reason, the bear was reluctant in saying what he had seen. Eyes still blinking, but the eyes themselves were frozen in time.

"Freddy, what do you see?", it was Gregory's voice that snapped him.

He blinked again, then shook his head as he turned to look at the humans standing around and beside him. Another blink as he returned to look at the distance.

"I see it, the stick figures."

There was a dead tree in the forest. It called only to the desperate and dying.

Surrounding it was the usual greenery of grass and bushes, except… the closer they reached the withered tree, the same fate they shared with the tree itself.

The twisted tree trunk protruded out of the silt like earth, covered in crude knots and lanky dead branches; the trunk hovered over the small stretch of the hill it sat upon. The rough, callous bark of the foreboding tree a dark hazel splattered with sections of sunken grooves. A shadow casted upon the intruding tree, darkening the bottom section of the once splendid trunk to a sinister shade of black. The upper top half of the trunk splintered, as if its own structure and size had betrayed itself and broken the tree from the base. Golden light hit the top portion of the splintered trunk exposing the olive-coloured moss and stark grey lichen clinging onto the expiring tree for life.

And then, there were the stick figures.

Impassively dangling under the threadbare rope, each represented somewhat an outline similar to that of a human being; each symbolized a desolated hope, an unbalanced and unpredictable life depending on the constant carrying of the winds of fate. It looked somewhat comparable to a doll, a doll whose purpose was to trap a soul of a human as if they had just betrayed their contract with the devils and were turned into these things as a punishment. Then again, it could have just been some works of handcraft, or a religious sign made by crazy cultists, or a warning against an unknown dangerous creature from a myth book.

And it was obvious that no one expected this coming, let alone an animatronic bear who knew almost nothing about the outside world.

"Holy shit…", muttered Daniel with hands clasped against each other hovering in front of his mouth. "This is… This is…", he took a deep breath, then a cough to clear his throat. "Everyone, it might sound crazy, but I think the witchcraft-cultist hypothesis had the most stable ground here. This is some next level Blair Witch shit! Whoever did this is too serious to even joke about."

"L-Let's… I think we should get going now. I feel like the longer we stay, something bad might happen…", Lily stuttered as she wrapped her arms around her chest despite having already worn a jacket. "… Gosh, we shouldn't even be here in the first place. This place is giving me the creeps! Gregory, Freddy, let's go, my brother can fend for himself even in the most extreme environment. He had gotten sleep at the front door more than enough to know some survival skills."

"Now that is a bit exaggerated. Too exaggerated, to be precise." Despite saying that, the man gave a discreet smirk of pride.

"I don't know, Lily. This place looks pretty fascinating… Um…", said Gregory as he slowly trailed off after his eyes met the girl's stern glare. "Well, yeah, I don't think it's a good idea to stay in this place for too long. But… a few pictures wouldn't hurt, right?", he tried to force out a beam.

Daniel gave an approving thumb. "The kiddo's right, loosen up and enjoy your time in this truly mesmerizing and ominous scenery! Just imagine the controversy your pictures could start. Oh yeah, the meme would probably last for months!"

Freddy perked both of his ears up. "Meem? What is that?"

"M. E. M. E. Meme. You can understand it as a quickly spreading joke on the Internet, either a text, an image, a GIF, or a video. Memes don't tend to last long on the trending tab as they soon get overthrown by newer and better ones."

"How interesting…"

"If you want to know some memes, I have tons of them on my phone, you can take a look at them tonight."

The girl snorted. "Yeah, tons of cringy outdated memes, that is."

Daniel walked to Freddy to whisper something to him. "Don't listen to her, she's just an uncultured nerd."

"I heard that."

The man giggled, and as usual, Freddy remained confused.

Lily was a clever girl, being called uncultured wasn't so accurate. Perhaps, he was the one being uncultured.

After a good laugh, everyone started ambling around the withered tree and its surrounding for a good inspection to see if they could find anything that might be out of the norm. But it seemed that everyone had their attention on the tree, they wanted a closer and more detailed examination of these strange looking handicrafts. So, with that in mind, Freddy decided to look somewhere else that wasn't near the tree, somewhere away from here, from this gloomy, depressing grave of a dying tree decorated with strange-looking stick figures.

Do not wander too far away from everyone. Return back to the group immediately if notice something unknowable to self or could be imposing a certain threat.

In the meantime, he would repeat these temporary rules if he wanted to go on a short expedition without unwarily getting himself in trouble.

The car slowed down until it eventually stopped in front of the steel gate. Seb promptly opened the door to his left, with his hiking boots stomping the ground firmly. That stomp alone was enough to show how experienced the man was in his field: a forester, or a ranger, as many would call one.

But would they expect him to be a monster hunter as well, if he proclaimed himself to be so? Who on earth would take it seriously? Then again, he just couldn't care less.

Nonetheless, having waited no time to pass, he quickly jogged toward the gate so that he could lock it. Truth to be told, the campsite which was a part of the forest he looked after wasn't that widely known. This wasn't a really good choice for camping if one wanted to spend their time during the holidays. Even if there were campers hanging around, they wouldn't be that idiotic to even think about trespassing.

Right?

Well, looked like someone had noticed that the gate wasn't locked, so he or she had decided to take a stroll around the woods. Only the people at that campground he knew were possible of committing such an unlawful act. The person, or some people might have already left, but it wouldn't be exhausting much were he to check again. Besides, he still had some unfinished work to do, which was scheduled for tomorrow, but he did it now, there would be less work to do the next day.

The sun was setting, there was still plenty of time left.

And thus, Seb opened the gate and drove his car into the woods.

"Wait… W-Where's Freddy?"

It was Lily's sentence that cause Gregory's heart dropped like a thousand tons. He had been too focused on analysing strange stick figures that he had completely forgotten about his animatronic friend. He even thought that the bear was standing beside him, doing the same as what he had been doing. But he was stupid, and wrong, deadly dead wrong.

He anxiously turned his head to look around the tree and behind him. No sight of an animatronic bear. "Oh shit… Fuck, fuck, fuck…"

"Wow, such foul language.", remarked Daniel, even Lily was a little stunned.

What made his heart even heavier, was the fact that Freddy was nowhere to be seen. It confused him, just like how Freddy was confused by everything the boy viewed as normal. The reason was, despite being a newbie in this vast and open world, and somewhat childish as well, the bear wasn't the kind of person, or a robot, that would be so reckless, like Daniel here, to venture into the woods by himself while being aware the potential risk he could encounter. Surely, the bear should be around here somewhere.

"Come on, guys, help me find him! Freddy! Freddy, where are you?!"

Shouted as he might try, no response of sort could be heard. His heart started pounding harder.

"Freddy! Freddy, where are you?!", the girl tried to call out.

"Freddy? Freddy! Come back! We are about to return to the campground!", the man tried to help.

Again, no response whatsoever.

Great, just great. How fucking stupid can you be, Gregory? The boy muttered under his breath, scolding himself for being too careless, just like when he couldn't hide the van and let the siblings find it, and have Freddy been seen as a result. That was a lesson for him to learn, and now, he still failed it. Spectacularly failed it, of course. Looking after Freddy was as easy as looking after children at the daycare, but he still couldn't do it properly.

Numerous outcomes began flooding his brain, making him imagine the worst to the worst of the worst consequence that could possibly happen. But it was certain that all pointed towards the power being drained, and when that happened, he-…

Was this what Freddy must have felt back when he was trying to look for him as well? He was just trying to pull a prank on him, no harm meant, he just didn't expect the bear to be that desperate. Gosh, now that he had fully recalled the event of that first night in the forest, he now understood how wrong it was to play with an animatronic's emotion, especially during the harsh time the two were trying to overcome.

After what seemed to be thirty seconds of living in Hell, his panic could finally be eased down.

"Look! There he is!", exclaimed Lily as she point in the direction she was looking at. "Freddy! Freddy!"

Gregory turned his head to look. It was true, Freddy really was there, standing with his back facing him not far from this place. Perhaps, he was right about the bear being very mindful after all.

Yet, questions remained lingered in his head: Why wouldn't Freddy say anything? What was he doing there? And why wouldn't he budge when hearing his name being called? As could be seen under broad daylight, the bear seemed to not move at all, firmer than a stone statue.

Daniel was bewildered. "What is he doing out there?"

Gregory and the sibling exchanged confounded gazes and worried looks before all went to approach the bear.

As he strode closer, step by step, a peculiar smell entered his nostrils. It smelled weird at first, but the closer he got to Freddy, the more intense the smell became.

"F… Freddy, are you okay?", he attempted to call the bear again.

Now, it smelled putrid.

Wait… hold on. Was it something that he was thinking? It… couldn't be.

He and the siblings had now arrived beside Freddy as all were standing next to him, all were looking at what the bear was currently staring at.

And he wholly regretted that decision.

Gore. Blood. And organs spilt out from the stomach.

"Oh my god…!", without hesitation, Lily immediately covered her mouth and nose with her jacket sleeves, but she was too late as the gag almost made her vomit.

Daniel used his fingers to block his nose, but couldn't help but let out a gag. "What the fuck…?"

Gregory was speechless. But he did manage not to gag at the unthinkable scene. He turned to look at Freddy…

… his eyes were soulless.

"Everyone…", the bear finally spoke up after seconds of staring at the horrendous sight. His voice was truly monotonous. "… do you know what kind of animal this is?"

An easy question, too easy for him, even for a toddler. But he couldn't give an answer. The siblings couldn't give an answer. Could not or did not want to? He knew not. And his mind went fuzzy.

The bear remained silent for another second, before continuing: "If I remember correctly, these distinctive features: the head, the ears, the snout, the fur colour…"

A moment to process. The bear turned his head at him. "This is a bear, is it not?"

"Relate not by blood, I feel the brotherhood.

A body of a bot, kin I related not."