Chapter 5: The Second Night, Pt. 2 (No wee bunny...)
Three college boys walk into a pizzeria. That should be the start of a weird kind of joke or an anecdote being told among laughing friends. Instead the next sentence will basically read as "they were nearly killed by a giant bunny" and there will be no irony or humor. Well, dark humor, maybe. Gallows humor.
I don't know if I'd said it, or if it'd been Jon. We were all stunned for the second or two it took Bonnie to ponderously take those steps, so I couldn't even be sure if someone had even said the two words or if it had in my own head. But the words, spoken after a moment of bewildered silence save for the bunny's footsteps, seemed to act as a trigger for what happened next. Bonnie's foot hit the ground, leaving the last step, and he lunged, once again releasing that terrible, howling screeching noise from his voice box.
It galvanized us. In a heartbeat, three friends reacted to the action with the instinct you'd have expected out of an army fire-team, but not nearly as smooth. Jon, the largest of us, met the charge with a lowered shoulder as he threw his 200 plus pounds into Bonnie's side. Bonnie had targeted Rico as the first of us he'd seen, and it gave Jon the angle he needed to bounce the big bastard aside while he was mid-step. Going from zero to sprint in less than three steps, Jon hit him like a truck. The result was a marked difference from my double-kick, literally knocking Bonnie so off balance his mechanical servos couldn't compensate and the big bunny hit the ground in a sprawl.
In the same instant Jon had reacted, Rico was already on the move. He'd recognized the danger coming for him and reacted more defensively, throwing his body aside in a roll across the nearest long table and landing neatly on his feet, the latino moving with the grace of a hunting cat. He brought the bat up with both hands into a guard position, like he was wielding a broad sword instead of a bat, and watched as Bonnie, almost ponderously, collided with the ground. He acted with the instinct of someone raised with the streets, rushing with his voice uttering a word in espanol that I knew his grandmother would have tanned his hide for as he went for a quick kill swinging his bat down at his attacker's head with a single precise swing.
I myself hadn't been quite so action movie cool, busy scrambling up off my ass to throw myself into the fight, but my second and a half delay gave me the time I needed to see Bonnie wasn't alone. Chica, big and wide with her now altogether too creepy smiling beak, was coming down next, midway down the short stairway and her eyes locking onto Jon while he was otherwise busy knocking Bonnie on his ass. When Rico hit Bonnie in the head with a resounding thwack, I was crying out a wordless warning to my friends just as my hand reached out to grab one of the chairs. They're the cheap metal and cushion jobs, aluminum or something, barely ten or fifteen pounds if I had to make a guess at their weight, hardly a comparable impact to a standing target roughly half a ton in mechanics and hardened plastic.
A standing target.
Jon heard my warning cry and didn't look, he just ducked aside and went to join Rico in pummeling Bonnie, while I was dropping my nightstick, taking the chair with both hands, and sent it hurtling towards Chica. I don't think she'd ever had that done to her two nights in a row, because it hit her in the face without even the slightest hint of a defensive reaction, knocking her off her single foot on the steps to crash down into the stairs and none too gracefully fell into a small sliding heap until she hit the ground and I was recovering my tonfa.
Rico was about going to town on Bonnie's head, and a human opponent inside that suit would have either been too dazed or completely out of it. Rico would have won the fight right there. But Bonnie reached up and caught the bat on the third or fourth swing, I hadn't counted, and damn near yanked it out of Rico's hands with his left hand as he was pushing his purple butt slowly back up on his feet. It almost yanked Rico plain off his feet, but the latino released the weapon at the last possible moment to instead lash his body into a spinning side kick with left boot to catch Bonnie where the floating ribs would be on a human. At that same moment Jon was coming into the fray as well and bringing the green painted steel crowbar into a swing at Bonnie's hip with the blunt side of the hooked end.
I'll be damned if what I saw happen just as I was hopping the table to join Rico didn't actually happen. Bonnie, far too neatly for my comfort, turned as he was going from crouching to kneeling to, I fucking kid you not, use the thin end of Rico's bat to freaking parry Jon's crowbar, batting aside the swinging attack while it took Rico's kick on its forearm and absorbed the blow before pushing Rico's foot back and almost putting the bronze skinned fighter on his own ass. Jon and Rico were quick to recover, but it gave Bonnie the time it needed to stand up completely, dropping Rico's bat with a wooden clatter while it regarded the opponents arrayed against it.
Three on one, I'll bet a lot on us taking out one of these bozos, simply by way of overwhelming our opponent. Jon had backed up out of reach of the rabbit, as had Rico, both of them had themselves in loose, ready postures as I stepped up with the tonfa in hand, the weapon spun to a resting position across my forearm. Rico and I could distract him and Jon would hit him again but this time with the sharp end of that tool and bust a knee, leaving us to bust him apart at damn near our leisure. But I'd forgotten about Chica and it nearly paid in Jon's life as she rose from the ground and wrapped her arms around his torso, locking his arms in place with the natural strength of a man built machine. Jon cried out, more in shock than pain as his arms became useless in his own defense, the chicken starting to lift him from the ground. Bonnie reacted with faster reflexes than Rico and I could have to the sudden change in of the fight's dynamic, rushing again with the ponderous, deceptive slowness of an iceberg towards us. We only got out of the way in time with more luck than skill, both of us diving and rushing around the big bunny and avoiding his grasping hands by what felt like THOUSANDTHS of an inch.
Two on three maybe doable, we were all thinking at that moment, or atleast I was. Jon hadn't let panic take his faculties away from him, swinging his forearms to toss the crowbar at Rico, who deftly caught it with nimble fingers over my head and spun it in his hands like a baton before the two of us rushed Chica like living furies, defiantly shouting our challenge to the animatronic. Chica didn't seem to notice us, just turning to carry Jon away to walk around us and the tables. We could sense Bonnie moving behind us, turning to chase and grab one of us, so we only had the one chance at this. Rico reached her first, quick as a cat and struck home with the crowbar, angling the strike right for Chica's right arm pit. He was doing it one handed with the pry bar at the end, going for reach rather than power, but the accuracy of the strike convinced me Rico should have taken up fencing because damnit if it didn't strike true! Something metallic popped free and Chica's arm dangled free, giving Jon the leverage he needed to slam an elbow into her head, right around her temple.
Again, Chica wasn't human, so she didn't actually have a temple to be pulverised, but it must have done something to daze her, because her grip loosened on Jon enough for him to get the rest of the way free right as Rico yanked back the crowbar and I came dashing in. My tonfa was useless, reinforced carbon or no, except as a defensive tool against blows, but Chica still had knees and I curb stomped a mechanic's boot right into the back of one and it gave forwards. Rico was the next to turn on her, ready to give the coupe de grace with the hook of his crowbar. That was when we all heard a third shriek.
A three v three match essentially brought the whole fight into potential one on one matches against the animatronics, a prospect that didn't encourage any of us to continue the fight, so we'd all begun an immediate retreat from Chica and Bonnie when it dawned on us that we hadn't heard the third mechanical voice from the stage. My hear jerked around to Pirate's Cove's direction, where I saw the curtains fluttering from sudden movement...and Foxy the Pirate was sprinting as quickly as he could towards us! There wasn't even the thought of defending ourselves anymore, we just ran.
We ran right out of the dining hall into another hallway near the restrooms. We ran straight through the open kitchen while throwing doors partly closed behind us and continued on, with Jon in the lead and myself bringing up the rear. I tossed my head around to get a glimpse and let out a heartfelt curse while shouting to run faster. Foxy and Bonnie were damn near on our heels, and gaining ground with implacable speed I could only hope to outpace for another few seconds, so my hand whipped around to hurl my nightstick at Foxy. He slowed only for a brief moment to whip his hooked hand out in front of him and slash the whirling tonfa aside, but it was the moment we needed to put on a burst of extra speed.
Before I knew it, we'd all piled into my security office and I was hitting the button for the security door to slam shut behind us, just in time for Foxy to bounce off the heavy steel magnetized door. He wailed and screeched as he pounded at the door, furiously and fruitlessly trying to get at his prey. Jon and Rico were both gasping for breath, but I had just enough presence of mind to rush over and lock the other door in place, giving us all some breathing space while we collected our wits.
It was real. I hadn't been freaking out from some hallucinogen that'd been left over by some pranking staffer, and the animatronics themselves weren't some sick employees getting their jollies off wearing empty suits. Rico and Jon would have figured that out from the sheer physicality of the encounter, recognizing the difference between human muscle power and the strength of pure machinery. Something was very wrong with Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, and it was killing people.
My two friends must have had that same thought process running through their heads, because they turned and looked at me with the same, horrified expression. I myself could only give them a quiet, painfully aware smile as I pointedly said "I told you so...".
The rest of the night went without future trouble. As it turned out, having an extra pair of eyes along to keep an eye on each hallway while the third was checking the camera so we weren't blindsided by Foxy kept us from too busy to really chat, but I knew that it was also the new information they had to digest and process that kept any of us from feeling too talkative. We only had one close call, when Rico found out how quiet Chica could be before he slammed the door shut right in her face.
When 6am rolled around, Bonnie and company wandered off to their places without nary a glance at us. My friends quickly walked to the front doors with my keys while I hastily jotted out a note explaining there'd been an 'accident' with Chica that'd damaged her arm from a fallen over shelf. Since I'd double checked and saw there was no on-site storage for the camera data (cheaper to have a straight camera hook up than have all the cameras recording simultaneously), and we'd made sure to collect all our gear, there was very little to contradict my story. At 6:30 am, the day manager was arriving to relieve me, and I said nothing to him once more as I walked out into the parking lot to join my friends in the car.
Once I'd closed my door and slumped into the rear passenger door, all of us finally gave eachother a serious, significant look. "So..." Rico said, sitting behind the wheel of the car, his dark brown eyes intense despite their exhaustion. "What do we do?"
Author's notes: This chapter was, surprisingly the least difficult for me to write since I'd often ran over the possibilities of how some fit 20 somethings would fare against Freddy and company in the first game. Specifically some fit 20 somethings that have watched plenty of slasher movies and already know all the rules once they've been established. I have no doubt that the only sane response in the second game would be 'leave the fucking restaurant and bolt the doors', but there's a lot more going on there than there is here, and I doubt I'll visit that setting ever.
But for now? Comment, criticize, or complain to your heart's content. See you all in the next chapter!