What if...Ruby was Being Rhetorical

Part 9

The Fixer

Derrick got up to leave, heading towards the door

"Prize Corner Puppet!"

Spring and Goldy jumped at the faint voice from down the hall.

Scott suddenly scowled and grit his teeth.

Derrick was surprised to almost walk into the Puppet just outside the Staff Room, the manager of the building looking just as surprised to see him as he stopped her aggressive stalk towards the bot.

There was an awkward moment where they stared at each other before the cop politely excused himself.

He needed to find Rose and hold her tight before he tried to explain what had happened. He didn't have the energy for this lady.

Inside the bathroom though, Ruby had sat upright, eyes going to the door and narrowing.

Goldy and Spring were panicking about Puppet having heard at least some of the conversation and Scott was just scowling in general.

He had a lot to scowl about and he wasn't too pleased about the added stressor.

Ruby hopped to her feet and looked at the door, listening with her head cocked to the side.

Scott was startled to realise it was the same move Foxy usually did when listening.

It was awkwardly silent for a moment as the manager waited until Derrick was out of earshot before turning on Puppet.

"What the fuck are you doing just standing here!" she snapped. "Don't you have a job to do?" She then finally looked in the room, stumbling at the sight of Goldy and Spring. Her eyes widened.

Oddly though, she didn't seem to notice Ruby yet.

"Cawthon! Why the hell are they out here?! They're supposed to be in storage! And we can't have..." Her voice trailed into a squeak as she looked at all the blood still soaked on Spring. She stalked in the room, heading straight for the rabbit.

She still didn't seem to notice the teenager, even when Ruby took a step toward her to intercede. In fact...the woman walked right past Ruby without noticing her. Which made her willingness to scream at them more confusing than upsetting.

Puppet grabbed her arm and yanked her back. "No. Don't you touch him." He nearly snarled the words.

The woman ripped her arm away from him like she had been burned.

"Get your hands off me," the woman hissed, poking him in the chest and shoving him back. "I've had it with you affronts to nature. This is the last straw. Look what happened on your watch! And yours!" She snapped at Scott. "My fucking job is making sure this place doesn't close down, so either you clean that rabbit or I'm making the cleaners do it! I don't want any of you freaks talking to the police until we have a story straight. Am I clear?!" She looked back at Scott, glaring. "If you want to make sure nothing happens to your friends, then you better fucking walk to your office right now and make sure there's no trace of Michael Afton having ever worked here!" She sounded stressed but it was hard to have any sympathy for her with those words.

"Are you insane?" Scott asked, unable to keep his mouth shut.

The woman looked a little stunned that he was talking back to her.

"No," Scott hissed at her. "He needs to be held accountable! He needs to pay for what he tried to do."

"Alleged!" She snapped. "Allegedly. Get that word in your vocabulary! Right now. We need to get on the. Same. Page. And you!" She turned back to Puppet. "Need to do your job. If I hear you speak a word to the police pretending like you're a person then not even Santa Claus is going to save you from the junkyard when this place closes down!"

The lights above them flickered and then settled.

Ruby slid smoothly between the woman and Puppet.

"Hello, nice to meet you. I'd just like to get to know the woman who wants to interfere with evidence and actively attempt to hinder a police investigation." Her smile was friendly but sent a shiver down Scott's spine. "Oh, I should introduce myself, shouldn't I? I'm the teenager who Michael Afton went at with a knife when I stopped him from killing a six-year-old boy. Hmm, he doesn't work here huh? That's odd since he was wearing a security guard uniform and had access to areas of the restaurant that non-employees shouldn't."

Ruby tilted her head slightly and her smile widened.

"Not to mention he's the son of the owner of these bots. What an odd coincidence. Which reminds me!"

She clapped her hands together.

"You do remember that the company doesn't own these bots right? They were all lent out to the company with very specific requirements on your side. What were those again?"

She tapped her chin thoughtfully before snapping her fingers.

"Right! No alterations or unauthorised maintenance."

Her smile reminded them of a shark.

Maybe the others were a little stunned but Spring at least was staying quiet because he wanted to see how this would end.

"I'm sure now that nothing like that happened," Ruby stepped forward, forcing the manager to step back. "No altering software with facial recognition technology, no altering designs, no deconstruction or reusing parts."

The woman was very pale as Ruby continued to speak. She'd looked surprised and then annoyed when the teen interrupted her. But gradually she'd lost most of the colour in her face.

"I feel like I'm forgetting something else," Ruby mused, eyes never straying away from the woman. "Ah, yes. I remember now."

The teen's hand shot out to twist the manager's shirt in her fist and she jerked the woman down to her level.

The Manager nearly twisted an ankle. Heels were not her friend at the moment. Not even the smallest, most conservative ones.

"Profits and company reputation are not on the same level as human lives," she hissed, fury lighting in her eyes. "You want to get rid of evidence that could convict a man who tried to murder children. He was going to kill them. Those kids wouldn't have had a future. They wouldn't get to grow up, fall in love or find what they loved to do. Their families would lose someone they love. And that kind of grief? That doesn't go away. That kind of grief eats away at you and you never stop thinking about the what ifs. What if you'd watched better? What if you'd gone looking? What if you'd been better?"

The teen shoved the manager away from her, disgust twisting her lips.

"You're just as much a monster as that man. Writing off human lives as collateral. As something you can write off so that your profits aren't hit. People like you? Should be the ones facing down a murderous psychopath with a knife while other people write off your life as inconvenient."

"W-who..." the woman stammered, scrambling for some semblance of control as she caught her balance. "Who are you? You...you can't talk to me that way." She looked at Scott for help. "Doesn't she know who I am?!"

"No," Scott said. "But it doesn't matter. I don't think you work here anymore."

The Manager scoffed with a surprised crack in her voice. "Excuse me?!"

"You don't work here anymore."

She snarled and some semblance of vicious confidence slipped back into her eyes because she laughed at him with enough derision to curdle milk. "You're only here because of me you ungrateful son of a bitch! You can't fire me. You don't own any part of the company anymore. You have no say here!" She raised her voice but still glanced at Ruby anxiously. She unconsciously backed up into the doorframe as Ruby took a step closer.

"You and I both know that it was fraud." Scott looked at Ruby. "She's right though. I can't fire her..." He sounded pissed to admit it. "Someone stole my identity a while ago. Sold off all my shares of the company, my house...and a bunch of other stuff I'm still trying to fix." He narrowed his eyes at the woman. "I should be grateful they let me stay as Head of Security." The sarcasm was obvious.

"Right, grateful," Ruby's tone matched his perfectly as she watched the woman.

The Manager must have seen something in Ruby's eyes that the other's missed because she switched tactics, desperation slipping through.

"Y-you don't understand," the Manager said. She put out her hand to keep Ruby away as she took a step forward again. Her voice was lower, gentler as she pleaded. "Wait! Wait. Don't let her attack me Scott. I'm trying to help you. What happens to the animatronics if this place goes under? What happens to you!?" She looked at Puppet. "You have nowhere else to go. Do you know how hard I worked to get us back on our feet after the diner!"

Goldy flinched and Spring glared at the woman.

"I see it's 'us' and 'our' now," Ruby noted, gaze glacial as she watched the manager with disdain.

It was almost unbelievable how shitty of a person this woman was. She seemed like a caricature! She made Ruby's usual manager look…well…not "good," but tame in comparison.

The difference seemed to be she had a spine. A crooked one, but it was there. The other Manager would have completely folded by now.

"I-I did my job then!" she defended. "Scott. Scott, you know I did! I made sure Timmy didn't get in the papers. I made sure no one knew what really happened! That's what I was supposed to do! I got the police to look the other way with Elizabeth! I did my job! It's not my fault your nephew is a monster! I'm not the monster, he is! I bet he even had something to do with Lizzy."

Ruby darted forward and they were all alarmed to see the teen slam the manager against the wall.

"You know," Ruby said conversationally. "When I was ten, I lost my parents in a car accident. Terrible storm that night. The papers all wrote about how the roads were so wet it wasn't a surprise something happened. No one from the other car survived. A couple and their young son died that night along with my whole world."

No matter how the woman fought, she couldn't shift the teenager. Ruby could hold most bots down with the right combination of position and body weight. She wasn't going anywhere.

"Kind of really messed me up," Ruby continued. "I went off the deep end. Tried to join them a few times. Because I had to have done something wrong. Distracted my dad because the roads were so damn wet."

Scott was actually a little concerned for the manager's safety at this point. There was a dark look in the teenager's eyes that froze them all in place though.

"You know what's funny though? What I found out just this last year? It hadn't rained in weeks."

Ruby glared at her, grip tight enough to tear the manager's shirt.

"Not a drop of rain. Nothing but cut brakes and fucking cover stories. Nothing but bribes from a company with too much money and too few morals."

She huffed out a laugh.

"Well, I can't really talk about morals. I'm not above a bit of blackmail myself you see. But I have lines. And I don't cross those lines. You? You don't have any anchor except your next paycheck."

She abruptly pushed away from her, the manager sliding down the wall with a gasp. Ruby studied her coldly for a moment before speaking again.

"Let's review shall we?" She chirped brightly, a manic smile spreading over her face.

"Lizzy."

Scott swallowed. That's what her brothers and Goldy called her. It hurt hearing someone say it again.

"Elizabeth Afton," Ruby clasped her hands behind her back and rocked back and forth on her heels. "Despite what you've been saying, there was actually an investigation. It was all hush hush and money greased the bureaucratic wheels, but it was a fair and square investigation. The death was ruled as accidental, bordering on negligent. But it didn't go further. William Afton paid a heavy fine and lost his daughter. You kept it out of the paper and used a grieving man's money to keep his family together. Bravo. Such a good little morally grey manager."

She reached out to mockingly pat the manager's cheek.

"You were paid though," she said, smile almost gentle as she pointed it out. "With a bonus too. That's what Afton hired you for. You're the 'fixer' aren't you? So, why are you acting like everyone owes you anything?" she cocked her head curiously. "You did your job perfectly well, but you were compensated for your efforts. And you can hardly claim any moral high ground considering your, hmm, methods. Rather heavy handed with the blackmail there hon."

She shrugged and straightened up.

"You'll all be relieved to know that Mickey boy didn't have anything to do with Lizzy's death," she told them all. "That one came out of left field for our fledgling psychopath. He did watch the master hide it all away from the public though."

She eyed the manager pointedly before clapping her hands and continuing.

"Timothy Afton."

They all flinched again at the name.

"Was bullied relentlessly by his older brother Michael. A prank gone wrong. He died in a coma a week later. However, this was an accident. Michael never meant to kill, or even hurt him. He's a bastard, but he does love his little brother. He felt remorse over what happened. Michael still went to prison though. He still stood trial. He was still punished. You kept Timmy's name out of the papers. That was all. It was a tragic accident reporters would have gone on about for weeks and harrassed a grieving family over. Any decent human being would have done that to spare them that pain. So brownie points I suppose? The bare fucking minimum. You still got paid for it though. So not done out of the goodness of your heart. Fully paid, no debt to you."

It was strange how a teenager was keeping them all in place through her words alone. Ruby was... she was dangerous in this moment. There was no other word for it.

"So, Michael is a right bastard," Ruby concluded. "But all evidence points to him loving Timmy and Elizabeth. Complete psychopath, but no one's pure evil. He's not who we're really discussing here though."

She studied the woman still cowering against the wall again.

"No, we're not talking about Mickey. We're talking about you. And now that this imaginary debt is cleared up, since you were fully paid for your work, this is where things get interesting. See, William Afton disappeared for quite a while. Some think he's dead."

Goldy stiffened and glanced at Scott in worry.

"You know he isn't of course. You covered up the fact that he's in a psychiatric facility after all. Hiding all the dirty laundry, that's you."

Ruby crouched down in front of her, eyes dark even as she poked the woman almost playfully in the nose.

"While he's gone though, things get rather strange. Like one of the only other shareholders that disagrees with you loses his ability to fight you. And the board is suddenly making calls they have no authority to make. Oh so convenient isn't it? And so very beneficial towards certain people. Everything was just going your way, wasn't it? You kept the skeletons buried, you kept the company squeaky clean. And you made certain people very rich. And then Mickey very inconveniently tries to commit a mass murder. Ugh, it really threw out your day, didn't it? You'll be late to that coffee date now with that blue eyed guy you've been crushing on. You'll miss your favourite television show tonight and you were just so looking forward to finding out who did it."

The manager grew even paler as Ruby dropped fairly personal tidbits about her life.

"You've got to do what you do best now. Cover the shit up so that the company doesn't stink."

The teenager leaned in to look her in the eyes, smile nowhere in sight now.

"Not this time. Not today. You're not protecting this particular Afton. And you're not protecting the company to the detriment of anyone else. You're not making it easier for a man who actively tried to commit premeditated murder to walk away, free to do it again. Not today honey. And if you try? The company is going to be paying someone to cover your murder up next."

Ruby smiled sweetly at her and patted her cheek.

"I hope you've been listening. There's been enough blood spilled today, don't you think? The cleaners need a break."

"She also manipulated Dad a lot after I died."

Everyone froze. Ruby looked over her shoulder to find Timmy standing in the middle of the room. The little boy shrugged.

"The building was worried when you started crying and it couldn't send Hedy back…obviously…"

Ruby grimaced. Oh that would have been horrible.

"...So it sent me. Which was really confusing with no warning." He scowled at her, arms crossed and pouting at her. "I was reading."

"In my defense, I was being rhetorical," Ruby muttered. "What were you saying about your dad?"

"Oh, she manipulated him a lot. Made his relationship with Mom crumble a lot faster and tried to isolate him. Uncle Scott was the only one who she couldn't push away and she hated him cause of that. She liked to do monologues when she thought no one was there. She talked about herself a lot. I was stuck listening to it too since I hadn't figured the ghost stuff out yet. Else I would have been a proper poltergeist for her." He huffed in annoyance at the memories. "I did manage to drop a ceiling light on her once though. She was in the hospital for a week."

"Nice," Ruby nodded in approval. "Was that before or after this?"

Puppet suddenly pitched forward before crumpling, ironically like a marionette with cut strings and shutting down.

Scott shouted in alarm as he tried to catch the lanky bot but Puppet had already crumpled into a heap before the man even moved.

Timmy blinked. Not expecting that reaction. Too much all at once, he supposed...

"Oops," he said.