Chapter 63
Night 1 Take Three
Ruby arrived for the night as ready as she'd ever be. She waved at the friendly bots as she passed through and even greeted Hedy who was still mad about the whole 'deal' thing. She paused a moment at the door separating the main building from Fazbrear's Fright.
"Here goes nothing." She muttered as she stepped through.
It felt…different. The hallways seemed longer, more rundown than before. The décor looked creepier. Strange sounds echoed through the otherwise silent area. She had a feeling that the building wasn't just making Springtrap stronger, it was also changing his part of the pizzeria.
She suppressed her shiver and popped into the office. It was almost time to start and she wanted to be ready.
Settling into the creaky chair she picked up the tablet for the horror attraction and sighed in annoyance at the extra settings. She had a feeling she wouldn't just be able to ignore the ventilation… Time ticked down until it hit twelve and the phone rang.
The familiarity made her lips twitch into a smile until the caller spoke again. She leaned back to listen.
"Hey man, okay, I have some awesome news for you! First of all, we found some vintage audio training cassettes." The voice enthusiastically exclaimed. "Dude, these are like pre-historic! I think they were, like, training tapes for, like, other employees or something like that."
Ruby sat up straighter and stared intently at the phone while mentally cringing at the overuse of 'like'.
"So I thought we could, like, have them playing, like, over the speakers as people walk through the attraction. Dude, that'd make this feel, legit man."
"Yeah, training tapes, real spooky." She muttered under her breath with an eye roll.
"But I have an even better surprise for you, and you're not gonna believe this! We found one. A real one."
Ruby could practically hear him hyperventilating from excitement.
"Uh-uh-uh, gotta go man. uh, we-well look, it-it's in there somewhere, I'm-I'm sure you'll see it. Okay, I'll leave you with some of this great audio that I found. Talk to you later man!"
The abrupt end to his call was confusing but she didn't have long to think on it when the audio continued.
"Uh, hello? Hello hello?"
"STEVE!" her ecstatic shriek could probably be heard beyond the pizzeria. She hoped it scrambled Springtrap a bit.
"Uh welcome to your new career as a performer slash entertainer for Freddy Fazbear's Pizza." 'Steve' continued, unfazed by her outburst of course.
"I missed your tapes Steve. What do you have for me tonight?" she was bouncing in her seat excitedly.
"Uh, these tapes will provide you with much needed information on how to handle, slash climb into, slash climb out of, mascot costumes."
She paused in her bouncing and tilted her head. "I thought I was trying to avoid that?"
"Right now we have two specially designed suits that double as both animatronic and suit. So please pay close attention while learning how to operate these suits, as accidents, slash injury, slash death, slash irreparable and grotesque maiming, can occur."
Ruby sighed. "Ah the old Fazbear legal stuff." She thought for a moment. "Two bots? Spring and Goldy maybe?"
"First, we will discuss how to operate the mascots when they are in animatronic form. For ease of operation the animatronics, are set to turn and walk towards sound cues."
Ruby glanced at the tablet and noted that yes there was an option to make noise. She pressed it and BB's signature 'Hi!' echoed through the building.
…
…
She snickered.
The idea of big bad murderous Springtrap being led around by the nose by little BB was too funny.
"This is an easy and hands-free approach, to making sure the animatronics stay where the children are, for maximum entertainment slash crowd-pleasing value. To change the animatronics to suit mode, insert and turn firmly the hand crank provided by the manufacturer."
"Suit mode?" she wondered as she got her snickering under control. "Is that why Goldy seems like an empty suit? I know she doesn't have an endoskeleton but is this why she can still…I don't know, be conscious?"
"Turning the crank will recoil and compress the animatronic parts around the sides of the suit, providing room to climb inside."
"This isn't safe is it?" she asked casually.
"Please make sure the springlocks are fastened tight, to ensure the animatronic devices remain fixed. We will cover this in more detail in tomorrow's session."
"Yup, totally not safe." She sighed.
"Remember to smile. You are the face of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza." She could practically hear his big cheesy grin.
"Always the optimist." She sighed as she flicked through the cameras, finding Springtrap being all creepy in one corridor. "Wait. If you did the training tapes for Spring and Goldy then… dude! How old are you?!" she stared at the phone for a solid minute before an obnoxious alarm went off.
A quick check proved that yes, it was the stupid ventilation system.
"It's got to be authentic…" she muttered irritably to herself in a condescending voice that she mentally paired with whoever came up with this stupid idea. "For the experience…" she continued muttering as she rebooted the stupid system.
Something caught her attention in her peripheral vision. She looked up and near had a heart attack.
BB stood there smiling away, looking aged and discoloured by dirt and grime. The little bot leapt for her and she rolled out of the chair, hitting the floor before spinning around with Betty in her hands.
The office was empty.
Breathing hard she looked around in confusion, her heart pounding in her chest.
"What… what the hell was that?!" she stood frozen for a moment before she checked the cameras again. Springtrap had moved and was grinning at her it seemed. That sparked her irritation enough that she snarled wordlessly and grabbed up her bag.
This game was always going to be different from the others but… she didn't expect THAT. Whatever that was. She took a deep breath and shoved the fright away, focusing on her anger and irritation instead.
As she stepped out of the office she glanced to the right as she heard the sound of shuffling feet. She could see the outline of a broken down Freddy for a moment before he faded back into the darkness.
She stared for a moment before muttering under her breath.
"You're really shoving the whole 'supernatural' thing in my face this time aren't you?" she murmured, absently patting one wall of the building. "Well, fair enough. It's…new. But I'll deal."
She steadied her nerves for a moment and focused on her goal again.
"Okay, so creepy possible hallucinations aside, gotta focus on tonight's mission. He's expecting to give me a horrifying, traumatic experience while I run around in a panic and survive by the skin of my teeth. That's not all that appealing so I'm going to see how much humiliation a murderous ghost can take. While surviving by the skin of my teeth probably." She straightened up and checked the systems again, eyeing the ventilation button with distaste.
She really needed to find out who came up with that idea.
Then she needed to beat their skull in.
The teen smirked slightly as her nerves settled again and she set off to show Springtrap exactly why she won this game twice before.
Springtrap strolled through the halls, enjoying feeling back at full strength. He was giving the idiot girl some time to be hit with a few Phantoms before he went after her properly. He'd never figured out why but the ghostly hallucinations followed him everywhere. They were fantastic at terrifying new victims though.
He was annoyed to find that the sound clips still glitched him out, causing him to head towards it immediately. It had to be Balloon Boy's voice didn't it? He hated that irritating robot.
However, since the first clip he hadn't heard it again. Although he had heard the ventilation alarms go off. She'd undoubtedly met at least one Phantom then.
He smiled to himself. He'd play with her a bit, drive her to terror-induced madness. Then he'd end it. Painfully. He really didn't expect her to last past night one. She was just a silly, reckless girl after all. What could she possibly-
His smug train of thought was cut off by a steel baseball bat to the face. The unexpected nature and strength of the blow sent him off balance and he fell backwards. Bewildered and angry he looked up with a glare to find the teenager standing in front of him outside the office with one hand on her hip and the other holding the bat over her shoulders. There was an annoyed scowl on her face.
"You looked too smug for your own good." She glared at him. "And I'm highly annoyed with the weird hallucination things so I'm blaming that on you too." She jabbed the bat in his direction, staying out of reach even if he was still winded from surprise.
The little brat! She didn't even look wary never mind scared!
Ruby raised an eyebrow as he seethed and jumped to his feet, intent on strangling the life out of her.
He got a face full of glitter instead as she neatly sidestepped him.
"Please give me more of a challenge than that." She smirked mockingly. "The Toys did better than that. Sometimes."
He spun around to glare at her. If looks could kill… She just smiled serenely back at him.
"You decided to underestimate me because I'm just a stupid teenage girl right?" she pulled something out of her pocket as he advanced again. "Bad mistake."
He didn't think he could hate chocolate as much as he did when whatever it was that she threw at him covered him in the substance from head to toe. It got into his joints and slowed him down as she went running off again, laughter trailing behind her.
He glowered darkly after her, his good mood forgotten. Maybe he had underestimated the girl. She seemed strangely unaffected by the Phantoms and she was clearly resourceful.
Slowly, he smiled as he brushed as much of the chocolate off as possible.
"Perhaps, this might just be fun after all little night guard." He chuckled darkly before disappearing down the shadowy corridor himself.