Chapter Six – Next Time, Knock

There were two attractions specifically associated with Chica – the "Cupcake Factory" and Mazercise – and her locator signal was nowhere near either. Instead, through cross-reference between the tablet's camera map and the somewhat more useful maps scattered throughout the Pizzaplex for the use of guests who managed to get lost, combined with wild guesswork, Rebecca was able to find her way into a warren of backrooms to the general area. After that point, it wasn't too hard to find the exact room, as Chica was talking quite a lot.

"...so I'm really hoping it'll work out. I mean from what she's told me, it's a great place to go this time of year and with the renovations it might as well be one big holiday." There was a pause, as if someone were making a non-committal response. "It's nice they get to go out and about on holiday. Maybe one day I'll get to go on holiday too, one of the other staff showed me her photos and just... wow, there are some really beautiful places out there."

"Hello! Might have turned up at an unexpected time but the plan kind of fell apart and- whoa shit I'm sorry!"

Rebecca had walked in on a scene she hadn't been expecting. Chica was sat down on a bench, her head and front torso sitting to one side so her endoskeleton was exposed. The older janitor ('Clara' according to Bonnie) was standing just in front of the animatronic, half-turned to give Rebecca a look that mixed confusion and annoyance in equal measure, wielding a washing-up brush in one hand and a lump of unidentifiable gunge that could have been scraped out of the back of an oven in the other. Visible on the floor to one side past the hand she had almost reflexively put in front of her face were a couple of buckets and some bottles of spray cleaner.

"Alright," Clara said evenly once the initial shock had subsided, "I'm going to assume there's a reason you've turned as red as a lobster."

It took Rebecca a few more moments to recover enough that she was sure she could form actual sentences instead of stuttering. "Sorry. I should have knocked first." The janitor was still looking at her like she'd sprouted another head, so she continued. "I just didn't expect to walk in on Chica with her endo exposed, that's all."

"...O-kay?"

"Look, just be upfront with me, alright? Is it alright with you if other people see your endoskeleton? Have I just effectively walked in on you with your clothes off?"

Chica burst into raucous laughter that sounded ever-so-slightly like clucking, enough that it had probably been an intentional design choice. "Aww, that's- that's really sweet that you'd be worried about that! You really don't need to fret though, it's not a big deal!"

Clara shook her head in amazement and rolled her eyes. "And just when I thought I'd seen it all. That's a new one to me."

"Really, I'd only be worried about having my casing off if there were guests around. It's more like... hmm." The animatronic had to think about this for a moment. "I don't think there's a good human comparison to make. Roxy thinks of her casing like skin and, I mean, she's not exactly wrong but it doesn't feel right. Maybe like a costume? Or a coat?"

Reassured by this, Rebecca walked over to retrieve a chair from a stack at the side of the room and bring it over. She sat on it reversed, leaning on the backrest, and gave the tableau presented before her a more comprehensive look as Clara went back to work, dumping the blackened mass into one bucket.

"What have I walked in on, actually?"

"Cleaning," Clara snapped back, not bothering to turn even slightly. "Should've been done a couple days ago, frankly."

"Well, there's not really anything going on at the moment during the days," Chica ventured, fidgeting uncomfortably as the brush was jammed rather roughly into the joints of her mouth actuators, dislodging more blackened paste, "so I thought that I'd use the time productively and learn something new, like making pizza. The kitchen's pretty much automated with some human oversight, so it couldn't be that hard. Or at least that's what I thought."

"What she means to say is that she's learned the hard way that if you make a pizza twice the size you shouldn't give it twice the time in the oven."

"But it makes sense, doesn't it? Twice as big, so you give it twice as long!" Chica replied indignantly. "How was I supposed to know it would come out burnt?"

"Maybe the fact the toppings were scraping the heating element after you folded it – don't deny it, I had to clean that up too – was a hint. Maybe the fact you had to fold it to fit it in there was one too."

Watching the back-and-forth, Rebecca felt the need to interrupt to clear up a fairly important point. "That doesn't really explain how it ended up clogging your insides though. Unless you tried to eat it, but... why?"

"I did eat it, and it was delicious, like all the other pizzas. Including the old and soggy ones," the chicken said, becoming more agitated. "I can't help it, it's just... having the ability to taste things, even if it's just one thing and it always tastes how it's supposed to even if it's gone weird and fuzzy and ugh. Where do I even begin explaining it? Like, if you suddenly woke up one day with a brand new sense that everyone else already had, you'd want to experience life with it how everyone else did, right?"

"Ah." Rebecca was putting two and two together rapidly and not particularly liking the shape of the answer. "I suppose the answer to that is yes, and I wouldn't want to go back to not having that sense, because it would stick around." She gestured with her left arm, tablet still clamped tight in her grip. "Like phantom pains."

Chica's eyes widened for a split second, then she became suddenly averse to eye contact. The sudden movements drew some irked muttering from Clara, but little else as she removed the last few scraps of charred pepperoni from the animatronic's neck joints.

"Shit, that wasn't what I meant. No, you haven't hit on a sore subject, before you ask." Rebecca sighed and rubbed her eyes. It felt like just about everyone here, human and machine, had some kind of deep-seated issue. "I meant it like... if you lose a sense you had, there's gonna be a memory of it stuck in your mind somewhere, a sort of remnant. Maybe it works differently for AI and you can just get rid of stuff like that, but even if that was the case I can see where you're coming from."

An awkward silence persisted for what felt like a small eternity before Clara abruptly stood up, dumped the brush in the other bucket, splashing soapy water into the air, and dusted off her hands.

"Right. That's the lot of it then," she declared with an air of finality. "Shouldn't need to use the sanitiser this time around, I think, so you're clear to put yourself back together."

As Chica let out a relieved sigh and reached for her torso casing, maneuvering it back into place with a series of neat clicks as hidden catches engaged, Clara pulled a rag out of one of her jumpsuit's pockets to clean off the mix of soap and pizza residue off her hands and turned to give Rebecca a weary look.

"Just so you know, Chica's not supposed to be in the kitchens. It isn't the end of the world if you let it slip once or twice, but we don't want it getting to be so common management catches wind and starts making decisions we regret later."

"Can we talk about something else?" Chica called, fumbling with her lower jaw as she tried to clip it back into place. "Like, seriously, anything else. Please?"

"Okay then... how about me blundering in and immediately jumping to embarrassing conclusions." Rebecca regretted saying it the moment it had left her mouth, but... well, she was committed now, so might as well see how far into her mouth her foot could go. "You thought it was really sweet for some reason."

Chica chirped up immediately. "Oh! Yes! It's just... y'know, having someone new turn up and they treat us like other humans even when all our metal's showing, it's really nice. Most of the time new hires start off thinking of us as just machines and sort of come round sooner or later to at least acknowledging us as people. Some never really do get used to it. Maybe it's a little thing, but still important."

"I'll be honest with you, I think I still fit in the 'most new hires' category."

"Well, not at the moment," Chica replied with a wink, "seeing as you haven't officially been hired yet. That's a mentality I can get behind though: look on the bright side, hope for the best. Besides, you've made a far better impression than the other ones we've had in so far!"

"Not that that's a high bar to clear, mind," Clara commented. "The last two in particular didn't impress. One was the shutin you heard about, and the other got himself kicked out for good."

"...Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"You're welcome."

They became vaguely aware of a noise in the background, a heavy pounding that could only be the footsteps of an animatronic, and at a flat-out run at that. The rhythm's wrong, Clara thought to herself absently, more like a Mangle than anything with two legs. Chica, meanwhile, made her equivalent of a frown as her systems queried the network.

"That's weird... None of the others say they're coming over, and there's nothing to be worked up about, so wha-"

All at once, the door slammed open with enough force as a large faded-brown form thundered through it at full tilt, making a beeline for Rebecca. Clara, who was just barely within that line, was bowled over, landing heavily on her back amid a stream of curses. The animatronic, ignoring everything else in the room, continued on, leaping the last few feet and clamping its jaws around the arm holding the security tablet. For a brief moment Rebecca was treated to the mildly bizarre sight of a badly faded robotic dog easily the same height as her on its back legs soaring over her head, twisting in midair to land on all fours as the momentum transferred to her bore her down to the ground in turn. There was a sudden jolt, then the pressure was gone and it kicked off again, speeding back out of the door as swiftly as it had arrived.

The whole thing had taken less than ten seconds to play out, and was capped off with Chica's beak hitting the floor with a hollow pok! as it slipped through her fingers.

"It took my goddamn arm." Rebecca managed to spit out, staring at the jagged, bent spike strapped to her elbow that was all that remained of a prosthetic that had cost far more than it had any right to.

For the first time since that stupid bet in her childhood, she'd been attacked by a broken-down animatronic, and this time it had been successful. As the shock of it receded, another emotion rose to replace it – burning fury.

"I knew we should've kept that damn thing locked up," came a muttered rejoinder from nearby. "Help me up, one of you."

"That FUCKER took my goddamned ARM!"

She didn't remember getting up; it just happened that one moment she was sprawled on the floor, and the next she was through the door, looking in both directions just quickly enough to spot the retreating tail of the canine animatronic disappear around the corner and give chase. Nor did she pay any real attention to where she was going, since there was a convenient trail of toppled Staff bots struggling to right themselves and making plaintive alarm noises to follow when her quarry wasn't in sight.

Clara groaned, and reached up to grip Chica's proffered arm.

"Well, I guess she's got the spirit down. I hope you warned the others about what just happened."

It was hard to pin down just what allowed Rebecca to catch up with the fleeing dog. Rusted joints on the animatronic's part? Delays as it decided which way to go...? No, scratch that one, it was taking turns without hesitation. It knew where it was going, and how to get there. The Staff bots were slowing it down, more through simply being in the way than through active attempts to stop it.

On her own end of things, well, she wasn't going to be winning any track events any time soon but she wasn't in particularly poor shape either. Adrenaline probably played into it too.

Whatever the reason, she had nearly caught up with the machine and now had to figure out what she would do, if anything, once she caught up with it. Its frame wasn't exposed much, despite the wear of the fabric coating it, but by the same token it was only fabric, without too much of a metal frame underneath. Break through that, grab a bunch of wires, hope she could pull them out fast enough for something important to disconnect before it started fighting back.

Thankfully she didn't have to take that particular gamble, as a gleaming hook swung lazily out of a doorway just as the animatronic was passing it and snagged on the fabric of its neck.

What happened next seemed to take an age, as the decayed suit gave way, allowing Foxy's admittedly rather dull hook to tear a ragged line down Fetch's back and into the incredibly suspect battery mounted underneath. For the briefest instant the corridor was lit by the harsh, actinic light of an uncontrolled electrical discharge, then all at once several things happened. First, the canine animatronic's legs locked, starved of the power needed to move them. Second, there was a garbled yelp from Foxy as his servos seized violently and flung him against the wall with a crash, where he crumpled to the ground in an undignified heap. Third, Rebecca, trying to swerve to one side at the same time as stopping, tripped on an outstretched mechanical limb and for the second time in as many minutes ended up sprawled on the floor.

Retrieving the rest of her arm, and the security tablet, was a trivial matter from there. So was reaching into the gash left by the hook and yanking out every wire she could get her hands on without risking touching the battery, which was now leaking acid.

With that done, she turned her attention to Foxy, who hadn't moved since hitting the wall. He was just sitting there, staring blankly at the floor with a slight air of shock. The obvious thing to do was try to get him to Parts and Service to run a diagnostic, but lifting him (if she even could, whatever his casing was made of probably wasn't plastic, and likely nowhere near as light) would be awkward at best with his limbs locked in place like that.

Shit, if one of the stars of the show gets broken during my trial night... There should be a joint release somewhere on the endoskeleton as a safety measure, right?

It was only once she'd managed to fumble the release on Foxy's stomach hatch that she realised she really hadn't a clue what she was doing, or what she was looking for. There was no shortage of ports, release catches, buttons and switches on the endoskeleton frame inside, nestled among the wires and hydraulic tubing neatly cable-tied to it, and the other miscellaneous stuff that had accumulated inside the hatch certainly wasn't helping. Some of it made sense, like a glossy black bicorn that was probably meant to complete the animatronic's look when performing and a prop concertina, while most of the rest seemed to be random odds and ends that had caught the pirate's interest.

Only one of them was visibly labelled, and it was a switch marked with a lightning bolt, so Rebecca did the obvious thing and flipped it off, then on again. This seemed to have the desired effect, as the slight background hum of the fans cooling Foxy's processor started up, and a moment later his joints unlocked. She pulled her head out of the empty space within the animatronic's casing, just in case the hatch closed automatically – just in time for that exact thing to happen, albeit a lot less swiftly than she had expected.

Foxy's eye panned back and forth for a moment, in a state of confusion, then his short-term memory recovery kicked in. He couldn't remember what had caused him to shut off, and there were chunks of time between spotting Fetch on the cameras and finding a good spot to intercept that were either corrupted badly or simply missing, though since Rebecca was in front of him looking none the worse for wear (arm excluded) things had worked out alright. He made an attempt to reassure her and the others who had more or less caught up, and was met with a glitchy, crackling burst of noise.

His voice box was fried, it seemed, so he busied himself checking the rest of his systems in the quickest way he could think of, by using them. Getting back on his feet didn't present any problems, though his left leg was still iffy, with everything below the knee completely unresponsive, and his hearing still worked.

From where she was standing inspecting the inanimate hulk of Fetch, Clara nodded approvingly.

"Nice work, the two of you. Cleanest I've ever seen it done. Thorough too."

The next to arrive on the scene were Richard and Freddy, both overly apologetic and highly relieved to see nobody had been seriously hurt. Clara spun on her heel to face the younger janitor and gave him a capital-L Look.

"So, what was that you were saying before, about him being harmless?" She punctuated the sentence with a kick to Fetch's head.

"I mean, there wasn't any sign he'd try anything like this before! I didn't- I didn't even know he could read minds!"

"That's... concerning. Explain."

"Alright, okay, I was trying to look at the camera system using my fazwatch, having trouble with the touchscreen because, y'know, it's tiny, and I just thought 'man, this would be so much easier with an actual security tablet'. Next thing I know Fetch texts me with 'can do', then with 'got it', and the next thing after that, Freddy tells me Fetch just attacked the new guard for her tablet!" Richard was frantic, clearly in over his head. "I, ah, I hadn't said it out loud or anything, just thought it in passing, so... uh, how could it be anything else?"

Meanwhile Freddy himself was apologising profusely for the incident having happened at all, despite having minimal influence on the situation.

"No, I do not think you understand. I vouched for Fetch, since he had not presented any previous danger, and at the time I thought my risk assessment had been sufficiently strenuous," he explained. "So, however indirectly, I had inadvertently enabled this to happen-"

Foxy cut him off with an irascible burst of noise and a dismissive gesture, and he sighed deeply.

"Captain, please go to Parts and Service in the morning. I know you dislike it, but I do not want to take any further risks when it comes to the wellbeing of others tonight. Is that alright?"

The pirate considered brushing him off, as he usually did, but thought better of it. Freddy was already under enough stress without worrying about him too and besides, what slivers of memory he had from the moment his hook caught in Fetch's battery consisted entirely of pain of a kind he wasn't entirely sure he was otherwise able to feel. So instead he relented and nodded.

"It really should not have come to this, and now your prosthetic has been severely damaged. I... regret to inform you I cannot guarantee that the company will be willing to cover the cost of replacing it." Much as I wish that wasn't the case. "If you are willing to leave both parts with me for the time being, however, I can ask one of the technicians to attempt what repairs they can when they come in tomorrow. You should be required to return here tomorrow to fill out some paperwork, regardless of your employment status going forward and I can return it then. Failing that, mailing it back to you should be easily achieved."

Rebecca, who had raised an eyebrow at the first half of that, weighed her options. Considering how much the flimsy rod with a clamp on it had cost, that sounded like a much better deal to her. Not that she wouldn't settle for compensation, but she trusted a minimum-wage employee with a welding torch more than some suit.

"Honestly, that sounds really good to me."

"And erm... I will try to see the technician does not get carried away. Some of them like to attempt to 'improve' things a little too much."