Author's Note

Hey, everybody! Sorry for deleting Chapter 3 before and making you all wait extra time for the story to progress, but I wasn't satisfied with how the chapter originally turned out, and I couldn't leave it be in good conscience. For those who've already read the chapter, not much about the actual plot has changed. However, I have overhauled Candace's interactions with a certain character, focused more on her inner thoughts before and during her return to the park, and changed the details of her encounter with a certain animatronic.

Without further ado, let's get into the chapter!

- KromeDome97

Chapter Three: Stage Fright

"No, no, no, no, no..." whispered Candace as she trembled before the gates of Freddy's Fantasy Park, her pen-sized flashlight jostling in her quivering hand. How could Caleb have ended up here, of all places?

Caleb wrote in his letter that he snuck off to Mei's house, that he was just going to cool off there for a few hours before coming back. Candace was far from happy with that arrangement, but she would have preferred it over what actually happened. When she drove to Mei's place to check if he arrived as planned, and her house was close enough that he definitely could have, both the girl and her parents insisted that they didn't even know he was coming. This began hours upon hours of restless searching. Through the dusk and into the night, Candace drove around every nook and cranny of her suburban domain, hoping that she would find Caleb alive and eager to leap into her arms. However, no matter how many street corners she turned, no matter how many times she drove down the same stretches of road, there was no sign of her little boy. The longer she looked for Caleb, the more she feared that she would next see him in a ditch, or at the bottom of some shallow body of water, his body savaged beyond recognition. The image of DiDi, the life stripped from her mangled corpse, became as fresh to Candace as it had been all those years ago, and the thought of Caleb suffering such a fate reduced her to a quaking, hyperventilating mess, her knuckles whitening as she clenched the steering wheel.

Candace knew that she needed to call someone about this. She had already wasted enough time going on this wild goose chase by herself. Maybe if somebody with the right credentials and experience took over, they could still rescue her child before he slipped away from her for good.

Someone with the right credentials and experience? she backpedaled, Like the Freddy's employees who couldn't be bothered to help a mother who was frightened for her child? Like the cops who showed up just in time to clean up after my baby girl's murderer?

Like hell, she would call somebody. Candace realized that she was on her own from the very beginning. The last time she begged for help, the best that she got was an apology and a shrug, and everyone this side of the U.S. knew where that led. She drove on.

It wasn't until she braved the outskirts of town and reached a conspicuously absent parking lot when her headlights revealed a clue: a warm, half-empty water bottle, which lay at the start of a winding, gravel path where the cracked asphalt ended. At first glance, it looked like could have been anyone's water bottle, marked with nothing more than the obligatory brand name and legal mumbo-jumbo. However, something compelled Candace to take a closer look, perhaps sheer desperation. She parked the car, fished a flashlight and a miniature can of pepper spray from the glove compartment, and stepped out to investigate. With the flashlight to guide her, she made her way to the bottle and squatted down to pick it up. Once she did, she immediately noticed the name Caleb D., scribbled on the cap in permanent marker, just as she instructed Caleb to do to many of his belongings. It wasn't like Caleb to drop something as large a water bottle without noticing, but the writing didn't lie, and besides, he had hardly been acting like himself recently.

At that point, yet another dark scenario played in Candace's head, one in which Caleb fought with all his might to escape a predator's sinister grasp, dropping his water bottle in the struggle, only for him to fail and be dragged screaming into the woods for some unfathomable purpose. Adrenaline surged through her, and she jolted up and shoved the bottle in her back pocket before trekking the path ahead. Her legs hadn't fully recovered from the day behind her, but fear alone gave her the strength to continue walking. She swept her flashlight through the forest, praying that Caleb would be hiding in the next bush she shone it on, or behind the next tree. Every few steps, she called out to him, but the only voices that answered were the occasional chirps of a cricket or the chittering of a raccoon. This process continued for many long minutes, only for her to stop dead in her tracks once she reached a very familiar gate.

Which brought Candace to her current state - shivering as the Freddy Fazbear carving stared her down and denying that her son could have wandered into such a place. What could've possessed him to venture to the park that killed his big sister? Of course, there was still the sickening possibility that he didn't enter willingly, that some maniac could be using the park as a hideout to bring children into and do abominable things to them undisturbed. That thought fueled her determination just as it did her fear. Though the park carried the worst of Candace's memories, she knew that she had a duty to protect Caleb from suffering DiDi's fate, no matter the cost. If she failed at that, it just might kill her too.

With a reassuring breath and one last glance at the Freddy carving, Candace forced herself through the gate. It was already cracked open just wide enough for a child like Caleb to squeeze through, so it didn't take much strength to pry it open that extra bit. What did take a lot of strength was walking up to the help desk and re-experiencing the blinding fury of being brushed off by that attendant all those years ago. Still, there was a chance that Caleb could've been hiding around or in the booth, so she probed it with her flashlight. Though she didn't find him, searching the booth drew her attention to something very... odd about it. The gate may have shown the expected signs of age, but the booth was just as pristine as it was on opening day, aside from a sheet of dust that had collected in the meantime. The brochures still hung on the back wall, as glossy as ever, and the rotary phone on the desk still waited patiently to be dialed.

When Candace finally ventured into Fazbear Plaza, she found that the booth was no outlier. The brick-laden, circular pathway, the stage with its curtains shut tight, the assortment of kiosks, tables, and chairs, everything in the plaza hadn't aged a day. From what little she could make out as she shone her flashlight down each branching path, Bonnie's Rockin' Gym, Chica's Kitchen Coop, and Foxy's Treasure Cove appeared much the same way. It was like the park itself was wearing a disguise, trying to fool Candace into believing it was the friendly place that myriad advertisements once made it out to be, but Candace wouldn't fall for the same trick twice. She knew firsthand how cruel the park's underbelly was; the night sky and the lack of bustling crowds simply made it more obvious. That made it even more urgent to find Caleb and hightail it out of this godforsaken place, never to look back again.

Before she could begin searching the plaza, a deep, melancholy voice broke the silence.

"You shouldn't be here," the voice admonished.

Candace whipped herself around, and her flashlight clarified the silhouette of a man, who jerked back from the light before returning to a relaxed stance. He wore a wrinkled, burgundy uniform, not unlike the ones worn by Freddy's employees. Though Candace didn't shine her light directly in his skeletal face, she could tell that he had a stubbly beard, a pointed cleft chin, and dark-brown hair wrapped in a clumped ponytail. He looked about as young as Candace was during her college days, albeit not nearly as healthy. Furthermore, his skin was eerily pale, and a festering scar wrapped around the front of his neck. To say that Candace found him unsettling would be an understatement.

"This is private property," the stranger continued, "I suggest that you leave now."

"What if I refuse?" retorted Candace, feeling for the can of mace in her right side pocket, "What if I have a perfectly good reason for being here?"

The stranger's response came out slowly, like he was carefully picking his every word, "There is no good reason to be in this park. I should know."

"Oh, really? If that's the case, then what are you doing here?", deflected Candace, who cautiously backed away from the man. Unbeknownst to the two of them, as her voice grew louder, the curtains on the stage began to move.

The stranger sighed, "I'm here because I have to be, because I have a job to do. I trust that you don't have the same excuse?"

"As a matter of fact, I do. I'm looking for..." it would probably be a bad call for Candace to reveal who she was looking for. If this guy had a hand in Caleb's disappearance, she didn't want him to realize that she was on to him, "...something important."

"Would that 'something' happen to be a 'someone'?"

Too bad. He figured it out, regardless. While Candace fumbled for an answer, the curtains parted ever so slightly.

Without even waiting for a response, the stranger moved on to his next question: "How long have you been here, anyways?"

Candace didn't feel the need to lie about that, "Not for very long. I don't think it's been five minutes since I walked through the gates."

"I see," the man mumbled to himself, turning his gaze to the ground, "Then there may be another."

"Well, I can't hear what you're mumbling about, and to be honest, I don't trust you one bit," Candace continued to step backwards, edging herself closer to the stage. A bright blue eye flickered on from the darkness between the curtains and observed her. She brandished her pepper spray, "so here's what's going to happen. I'm going to walk away and keep looking for that important thing I need to find, and you're going to stay right where you are if you don't want a face full of capsaicin."

The stranger realized where Candace was headed, and his clouded eyes widened.

"Wait!" he suddenly shouted, throwing his arms in the air, "Stay away from the stage!"

With a grinding, metallic roar, the curtains flew open and out lunged the massive, animatronic form of Freddy Fazbear. At least, that was what Candace assumed when she turned to it and recoiled in terror. All of the key features were there: brown fur, top hat, bow tie, red vest with black buttons. However, the robot's fur was matted and dingy, and while his sunken eyes shone a bright blue, his pupils burned red with rage. His muzzle protruded from the rest of his face, baring a gaping maw with an oversized set of blocky teeth and a second, metallic jaw that hid just behind it. Couple all that with how he was at least a head taller than her, and Candace had to wonder how any child could have found this rotund beast endearing. She didn't have time to wonder for long, however, because Freddy leapt off of the stage entirely, his arms outstretched to flatten her skull between his meaty paws.

Candace fell on her behind before an ear-shattering clang sounded above her. Her flashlight slipped out of her hand as she landed, and Freddy loomed over her while she scrambled to retrieve it. Hoping to drive the beast away, she let loose a stream of pepper spray towards his face, but that just provoked another grating roar. She then tried chucking the can straight at him, only for him to catch and crush it in one hand, continuing his approach like nothing happened. Candace knew that she had no time to reach her flashlight, get up and run, or even scoot back. If Freddy could jump from the stage as quickly as he did, he could grind her into a bloody puree before she could so much as flinch. She prepared for the inevitable.

"Hey! Over here, you overstuffed teddybear!" yelled the stranger, who apparently snuck behind a nearby kiosk during the commotion, "I'm the one you're looking for!"

The man then made a huge performance out of pointing to his face. Although Candace couldn't make out its features now that she was without her flashlight, Freddy seemingly could. The sight worked the bear into enough of a frenzy to abandon his earlier prey and charge straight for the kiosk. Candace took the opportunity to grab her flashlight and stand up, then watched as Freddy smashed the kiosk in a single swipe, sending bits of wood and Freddy Fazbear apparel flying in every direction. She realized that the stranger wouldn't survive this assault for long.

Candace entertained a devious thought: maybe she could leave the man to his fate and run off to another part of the park. If she found Caleb quickly enough, the two of them might be able to sneak out before Freddy was done with his new prey. Besides, she still didn't entirely trust the stranger. Who was to say that he was saving her out of the goodness of his heart? What if he was simply keeping her alive for some nefarious purpose? Upon further reflection, however, she realized that she'd never forgive herself if she abandoned the one who saved her life. If she did that, she'd be no better than the Freddy's employees who ignored her when they could have helped her save DiDi. With her mind made up, she eyed the flashlight in her hand, took the now-crumpled water bottle out of her back pocket, and quickly formed a plan. It was a long shot, but time wouldn't afford her better options.

The stranger was in the ruins of the kiosk, preparing to dodge a bone-crushing blow, when a woman's scream stopped Freddy short and a plastic bottle hit his fuzzy back. They both turned around to find Candace barreling towards them like a madwoman, her flashlight turned off, but held right in front of her. Just as Freddy wound up to take a swing at her, she flicked it on, sending a torrent of light streaming into Freddy's mechanical eyes. The animatronic seized for a bit, then lashed his arms every which way, perhaps hoping that he might hit someone by pure happenstance. The man took this opportunity to run towards Candace, but he couldn't help but glance back at the flailing bear in awe.

"Ma'am, that was brilliant," he panted, "How did you know that a sudden flash of light would overload Freddy's optical receptors?"

"I didn't," she admitted, "but I had to try something. I couldn't just leave you there."

The stranger opened his mouth to respond, but a roar in the distance interrupted him. Freddy probably wouldn't be incapacitated for long.

"Follow me into the stage," he directed Candace, "What you just did to Freddy gave me an idea."

Candace's distrust resurfaced. She wasn't too keen on the idea of being in a dark, enclosed space with this man that she didn't know. Still, she knew that the alternative to being alone with a shifty-looking guy was being alone with a raging, mechanical monster. Besides, if the stranger tried any funny business, she would just throw him back to Freddy.

They bolted to the stage, hoisted themselves onto it, and slipped between the curtains just as Freddy regained his bearings. Grumbling with fury, he swept his searchlight eyes around his plaza, then peered down each of the paths to his friends' domains. The two grown-ups who crossed him were nowhere in sight, so he turned his gaze to the stage.

Meanwhile, Candace and the stranger were surrounded by nearly pitch-black darkness, as well as scattered instruments that they struggled not to trip over. She really wanted to turn her flashlight back on and get a feel for her surroundings, but the stranger had told her to keep it off for the time being. She hoped that he knew what he was doing, or else they'd both become smears of blood and flesh on the stage floor.

"Freddy's going to come in here soon," the man instructed, "When he does, let's head to opposite sides of the stage. I want you to wait until he looks directly at you, then shine your flashlight at him like you did before. After that, I'll sneak up behind him and push him down, which'll give you enough time to run for the park's exit."

Candace began to insist that she wasn't going anywhere near the exit, but she silenced herself when she heard Freddy stomp up to the stage and saw his round silhouette trudge into view. Just as planned, the pair each snuck to a different side of the stage, careful to avoid the instruments along the way, then waited for the perfect opportunity. Sure enough, Freddy began to scan the stage for them, and it was then that Candace realized how their plan could fall apart. What if Freddy found the stranger first? Freddy would probably crush him before Candace had the chance to do anything about it. She couldn't let that happen, so she took a deep breath, then stamped the ground with as much force as her sore leg could muster. That got Freddy's attention, alright.

With a glare and a bellow, Freddy rushed Candace, but she drew her flashlight and blinded him quickly enough to impress a gun-toting sheriff. Catching his cue, the man tiptoed to Freddy to topple him as planned, only to narrowly miss a swing from the beast. The bear swiped the air even more erratically then before, tossing around random instruments in the process. Candace ducked under a flying cymbal, while the stranger had to jump out of a projectile keyboard's way. To make matters worse, Freddy began to wander around aimlessly, still striking at whatever was within reach, and the pair struggled to stay out of his path. His berserker rampage got to the point where he even tore chunks of wood from the stage walls. In their attempt to debilitate Freddy, it seems that they only made him more dangerous.

As more and more pieces of the wall were broken off, and Candace and the man continued their scramble to stay away, an ominous creaking emanated from the stage, followed by a rumbling.

"The stage is about to collapse!" warned the stranger.

The pair tumbled out from behind the curtains and rolled themselves to the ground. Though the impact was painful, it was nothing compared to the thrashing that Freddy was about to get. The bear regained his composure a split-second too late to make a frantic escape, only managing to poke out his head and arms before a heaping pile of wood and fabric crashed down onto him. His torso and legs buried, Freddy squirmed and clawed at the air before letting out one final howl. After that, he shut down with a hum and a click, and the fearsome beast was as good as scrap metal. Candace and the man sat up and observed the rubble.

There goes my chance at getting to that room below the stage, the stranger lamented to himself, but he wasn't going to let that bother him. With Freddy out of commission, he had all the time in the world to figure out how to accomplish that. What did bother him, however, was that this lady still wouldn't take the hint and book it for the exit.

"I really do appreciate the assistance, ma'am, but I expected you to run for the exit the instant that Freddy was distracted with me," he gently scolded.

"Well, sorry for having a heart," snapped Candace as she stood herself up, "Besides, I told you once, and I'll tell you again: I'm not leaving until I find..." he had earned enough of her trust by this point, "...my son."

That certainly explained it. If there was anything that could erase all sense of self-preservation, it was the will of a parent to protect their child. Persuading her to leave would be futile.

"Regarding Freddy, trust me, I would have been fine," the stranger began, but his tone grew grimmer mid-sentence, "but if your son really is in this park, then we need to find him and get him out as soon as possible. He's in terrible danger."

Candace had figured as much before she stepped foot into the park, and her near-death experience with Freddy Fazbear confirmed it, but hearing the stranger say it out loud still formed a pit in her stomach. What did this man know about the park that she didn't?

"Tell me, what kind of danger is he in?" she croaked, unable to hide the dread in her face.

"Freddy isn't the only one roaming this place," the man explained, "Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy are here too, each with their own little quirks. I haven't ventured outside of the plaza often, but the few times I have were... unpleasant, to say the least. The only saving grace is that the mascots usually stick to their territories - Bonnie to the playground, Chica to the food court, and Foxy to the gaming area - but that might change, now that we've retired their lead singer," he gestured to the broken Freddy.

That was informative, but Candace was still confused about one detail: "How did the animatronics get back here? As far as everybody else knows, they've been missing since -" she nearly choked on her words, "- the Fazbear Slaughter."

"They were never brought back. They never left," the man replied matter-of-factly.

Of course, that statement raised more questions than it answered, but Candace was in no mood to dwell on the subject. She did have a child to find, after all.

"I guess we'd better get out of the plaza soon," she suggested, "but first, we need to figure out where to look next."

Candace gave the plaza another once-over with her flashlight, and she noticed something that didn't catch her eye the first time. At the beginning of the path to Chica's Kitchen Coop, a partially-eaten bag of El Chip's Tortilla Chips, Caleb's favorite unhealthy snack, lay wide open on the pavement. She called the stranger over to investigate.

"Yes, this is most likely your son's bag of chips," concluded the man, "Freddy's never sold El Chip's at the food court or the kiosks - a crying shame, if you ask me. Your son probably had an encounter with Freddy and ran off to the food court to hide, dropping this bag in the process."

"Then Chica's Kitchen Coop is where we're going," Candace declared.

Just as they were about to head there, she realized that she had one more question.

"What do I call you, anyways?" she asked.

"I'm Mike..." he paused for a second, "...Schmidt. Mike Schmidt."

Mike extended his right hand to Candace, and as she got close enough to shake it, she noticed... oh, God, what was that smell? It was a step above normal body odor, that was for sure. She had been too preoccupied to notice it during their altercation with Freddy, but now she struggled to keep herself from gagging. Perhaps Mike had been staying at the park for even longer than his stubble suggested. Still, she knew better than to criticize the hygiene of the man who saved her life, so she eked out a grin and awkwardly shook his cold, clammy hand.

"Nice to meet you, Mike. I'm Candace."

Adamant as she had been about finding Caleb on her own, the Fates provided her with a partner anyway. What jokers, they were.

With introductions out of the way, the pair set off to continue their search at the poultry-owned food court. While they went down the path, something began to shift around in the inert Freddy Fazbear. A metal claw gripped a corner of the bear's mouth from the inside, and out peeked the head of a miniature Freddy, with a tiny top hat to match. It's eyes were beady, white, and pupil-less, and its snarling mouth bore a permanent, fanged smile. It swerved its head to and fro, scouting the plaza outside, before it hopped out of Freddy's maw, revealing itself to have a matching bowtie and vest as well. The mini-Freddy crawled on all fours, each paw bearing a set of knifelike claws for digits. After taking one last look around the plaza, it turned to Freddy and chirped, and two identical creatures climbed out of his mouth in response. They huddled in a circle, scheming with each other through growls and chitters, until they howled in unison and parted ways. One bounded over to Bonnie's Rockin' Gym, one crawled to Chica's Kitchen Coop, and the last scuttled to Foxy's Treasure Cove. Clearly, these three little Freddys had one big trick up their sleeves.

Closing Note

Alrighty, then. Now that that's over with, I can finally move on to working on Chapter 4. Part of the problem with the original Chapter 3 was that I rushed it a bit, so I'll try not to do the same thing with Chapter 4.

On a side note, you probably noticed that my description of Freddy and the Freddles (I won't bother hiding it, since its obvious that's who the mini-Freddys are) slightly differed from their canon appearances. Since I'm imagining this story as an alternate universe, this is completely intentional. To distinguish them from their canon counterparts, I have dubbed my versions of Freddy and the gang the Wrathful Animatronics (so Wrathful Freddy, Wrathful Bonnie, etc.). I don't see any reason to call them that in story, so I figured I'd mention it here.

As always, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and make sure to leave a review! I appreciate the positive feedback that I've received so far, but constructive criticism is always welcome, of course.

'Till next time!

- KromeDome97