Author's Notes:

Hope you enjoy the chapter!

Chapter 149

Morals

Michael pulled himself up against a wall, gasping in pain, but he didn't say anything. He just stared at Hedy with a hateful squint.

She returned it before heading back to the table with Andrew.

Henry swallowed, his eyes following her. He glanced at Timmy. "Kid...you're...uh...dead too, right?"

He may hate this insane job (especially now) and always think the worst of the bots and Ruby, but...dead kids? How the fuck was he supposed to react to that?

"Henry," Jerry scolded, a little breathless.

Henry frowned at his best friend. "Well, how else are you supposed to ask? Not like there's an easy way to say it."

Jerry actually didn't have an argument for that.

Timmy watched the exchange but just nodded. "For a long time," he said. Quickly he added, "I wasn't one of the kids killed here though. I died before." He sounded very calm but Hedy knew he didn't like talking about it.

Hedy didn't add anything and the day shift wasn't sure if it was even polite to ask Timmy anything more. It wasn't like dead people etiquette was a thing people taught.

This was a kid. A little kid who was dead.

Olivia unabashedly stared. The boy didn't seem more than a few years older than her son, and she felt some sort of anger slowly boil the longer she thought about it.

"When did this place get so weird?" Marco moaned and it took Hedy a second to remember it was him and not Teddy speaking.

"It's...always been weird," Hedy said as she lifted her tool bag up on the table beside Andrew, pointedly ignoring Michael now as he slunk near the wall. "You guys were just blissfully unaware of it all. I'm really sorry. It's hard to process. We'd prefer other people be in the dark about it all for their own sakes."

"But...you haven't been here as long as some of us..." Jerry said.

"I was one of those kids Shit Ghost over there tried to kill, remember? I got away, but I grew up and came back to work here."

Harrison was staring at her now. "You're the mechanic's kid, aren't you?" He asked softly, hesitantly. "Your dad worked at the old place." He sounded so sad.

Hedy nodded and climbed up on the table with a grunt, ignoring how a couple of them nearly moved to offer assistance. "Did you know him?"

"...No. Not really. I sort of remember you were in the news. You were such a little kid. I didn't even recognize you..." He gestured at her. "When you were hired."

Hedy nodded again.

"Are there...any more ghosts?" Harrison asked further.

"Yes, the other kids are here too..." she didn't miss how the older man stiffened in grief. "But they aren't like Timmy. They're… disturbed. Take anything they say with a grain of salt if they show up. They went insane a long time ago and have yet to completely snap out of it. If they even can."

"They're here?!" Izzy sounded about to cry.

"Does the boss know about all this?" Frank asked, his voice dipping as his eyes shifted in the direction of the Manager's office.

Hedy immediately scoffed before she could stop herself, both at Frank calling the manager 'boss' and what he asked. She reached for Andrew's side to undo some of the suit.

He freaked before she could answer Frank.

"What are you doing?!" Andrew tried to jerk away but cried out in pain.

Hedy blinked. "Sorry. Habit. Spring usually just lets me work on him. I need to fix that." She pointed at his side.

Andrew looked a bit ill. "Can't you..ah..can't you wait until we switch back."

"You want to lay here all day with it hurting? And let Spring come back to being in pain?" There was a little judgement in her voice. She had told Andrew to be careful. This wasn't his body afterall.

Timmy sighed at her tone a bit as he came to sit next to them. He could recognise when she was quickly losing patience.

"...no..." Andrew admitted, cautiously glancing at the ghost that sat on Hedy's other side.

"Trust me, it won't hurt too much. I know what I'm doing."

"What were you doing?"

"I need to peel back the suit."

"Peel back the suit?! But isn't that..."

"It's not like skin. The bots actually don't have much feeling in the suit. Just the metal skeleton and the wiring."

Everyone was looking both weirded out by the talk of suits and skin, and horrified at the thought of more dead kids hanging around.

"And...Ruby knows about this all too?" Harrison asked after a moment of Andrew staring at Hedy as he tried to decide.

Hedy and Timmy both stopped moving for a moment and shared a glance.

It was quiet before a sound of stifled laughter caught their attention.

Michael abruptly cracked up laughing and both Hedy and the ghost kid looked irritated at the older ghost.

"You don't say!" Michael said.

Hedy sneered at him. "Yes, Ruby knows. She very much knows. She knew some of my own past before I even did." She winced, not meaning to be even more cryptic. "By that, I mean at the very least, Ruby knew about my old friends as ghosts before I even came to work here. She didn't know the whole story, like me and Spring and what Michael did. We learned and I remembered more when...ah...Springtrap showed up."

"Ruby usually knows everything that's happening in the building." Timmy shrugged.

Most of them were concerned over that because they still did see Ruby as a minor.

"Andrew. I really need to work on Spring," Hedy said, her hand twitching a little as she gripped a wrench a little too tightly. "Even if it's you in there. I'm not going to hurt you."

Timmy saw her hand shake a little and frowned. It had been a while since Ruby's coma. Was she still trembling? Hedy didn't seem to notice so he didn't say anything, not that he would in front of the other people anyway.

"Hedy, this is very weird!" Andrew said with a higher pitch. "It's li-like surgery." He tried to shift and cried out in pain. "AGHH! Why does this hurt so much?! I'm a robot! How does Spring deal with this?!"

"It can't possibly be that bad..." Marion mumbled, shifting as he remembered Hedy wanting to do some maintenance on Foxy as well. He shuddered at the idea of anyone poking around inside him while he was conscious. Maybe Foxy's phobia was more understandable..

Timmy looked at him. "Don't let Ruby hear you say that. She's very protective. She's already going to be annoyed with Andrew."

"I didn't even do anything. OW!"

Hedy looked irritated. "I can make the pain go away immediately, Andrew. There's not a healing period like with people. I just fix whatever's broken and the computers cycle through the feedback a few times before everything goes back to normal. And you did do something. You wandered off when I asked you not to."

Some of the others shared glances as they watched Hedy speak (lecture) with Andrew. They half expected her to pin the teenager down and just fix whatever was wrong. It was interesting how set on getting his permission she was.

Timmy leaned a little closer. "You're going to return to your body eventually so do you really want to give Ruby a reason to be mad with you?"

Hedy gave the ghost a look. She at least was trying to be nice about it, despite her impatience.

Timmy could be a tiny bit mean sometimes. Or maybe he was just sneaky (with a hint of manipulation). Was he always like that? Or was that Ruby's influence?

Either way, Hedy wasn't super impressed.

Andrew stared at the ghost and numbly shook his head. He hesitantly looked at Hedy and gave the weakest nod.

Hedy sighed and shifted closer. Her deft fingers removed the paneling and suit piece quickly before Andrew had a moment to process or change his mind.

They were all a bit shocked by how quickly she moved.

Hedy ignored some of them moving closer in curiosity.

Timmy sat back and swung his legs as he watched. The simple truth of it was that he was a nice kid and he adored all the bots, Hedy and Ruby. He liked Jeremy and Mike too. But he didn't know these people. He wouldn't want them to get hurt but at the same time, he wasn't as nice to them as he was to the others. He could be manipulative like the other kids sometimes.

He was aware that it was bad but sometimes it was necessary.

Like that time he manipulated Ruby into sleeping after three days straight of staying up. He understood nightmares but that was much too unhealthy.

Hedy turned away to grab a tool.

"Oh my gosh..." she heard Izzy 'breathe.'

"That's weird. That's really weird.," Andrew mumbled as he nervously poked a finger between what he thought was something like ribs. "Oh geez, am I hollow? I mean, is Spring?"

"As if," Michael scoffed, tensing a bit.

The look Timmy shot Michael there was harder than usual and it actually made Michael fall silent.

They still had a weird relationship that no one really understood.

Hedy's thin fingers went into Andrew's side as she took a small screwdriver to something that looked weirdly compressed and he shuddered at the visual. She glanced at him.

"You good?"

"My mind is stuck in the body of a giant yellow rabbit, which is definitely not my fursona. Absolutely not."

Hedy froze in teasing out the spring locks and slowly looked up at him with a glare.

"It was a joke!" Andrew insisted while some of the younger staff covered their mouths trying not to laugh. The older ones were looking very confused.

Timmy also looked confused.

That wasn't exactly a conversation she wanted to have right now...

"We do not speak of such things here," she said warningly. "If you ever mention that to the bots, I will make you regret it."

Andrew was quick to agree, being in such a vulnerable position. He stared at her as Hedy wielded a long and somehow sharp-looking screwdriver.

Timmy had that look in his eye that suggested he was just going to ask Ruby.

Which...actually she really wanted to be around Ruby when that question got asked just so she could see her reaction.

The day shift looked at her, worried for her sanity when she abruptly snickered at the thought.

With a swift movement, she pulled the pieces in Andrew's side apart until she had to yank her hands away to avoid the snapping metal catching her fingers.

Andrew cried out, more from the suddenness of the snapping rather than pain.

Everyone but Timmy and Michael were watching in concern. The two ghosts were locked in some sort of weird sibling staredown.

"You're... really good at this," Olivia observed and Hedy remembered that she was also studying engineering.

"Is she?!" Andrew said, "I can't tell. I'm a bit distracted by her literally... " he eeped as Hedy turned something, "Her literally messing with stuff inside me."

The normally chill teenager was twitchy and freaked about Hedy's work.

"Oh weird, is that the skeleton?" Marion asked, really interested as he leaned close, Foxy's long snout blocking the light. He reached to poke something in Andrew.

Hedy quickly grabbed Marion's snout and glared at him, noting that she could tell some of Foxy's teeth were still a little crooked as they poked into her palm.

"No touching," Hedy snapped. She pulled his metal hand away and tapped the metal inside Andrew, making him shudder. "It's endoskeleton. It's the structure for the wires, which are like their nerves. The motors are like the muscles. The suit clips into place in various places on the inside." Hedy made a face as she scraped Spring's insides and removed a thin clump of cat hair, Andrew whimpering at the feeling of her fingernails gently scratching the inside of the suit. "Ugh. Spring."

"Does Spring keep Kitty in there? Aw, that's adorable," Izzy said.

"That's creepy," Henry said.

"Is that even safe for the cat?" Frank asked.

"I don't think so, but Spring's very aware of his body. He swears he knows what he's doing," Hedy said.

"So...um...what happened?" Andrew asked, gesturing at his side, still sounding like he was moments from crying.

Hedy hummed. "You moved too fast and some of the spring locks got caught on themselves."

"Okay...what even are the spring locks?"

"Deathtraps," Michael muttered under his breath.

Hedy hesitated, ignoring the ghost. "Spring was originally designed to be worn like a suit. There is a wrench somewhere that locks into a notch in his back. It winds up the smaller parts of his skeleton so there's enough room for a person to get inside."

"What the flying fuck?" Henry demanded in horror.

"That doesn't...sound right..." Jerry said.

Hedy frowned. "The suit function wasn't even properly finished so the locks are finicky and can snap back into place easily."

They all looked pretty horrified at that and even Michael looked away. He was intimately aware of that particular detail.

Timmy didn't even look all that sympathetic with him for once so the kid must be really annoyed with him.

"That's horrifying," Jerry said.

Hedy made an odd noise and shrugged, but she didn't deny it. "That's how Michael died."

She wasn't too interested in his privacy.

She missed how Andrew's eyes widened in dawning horror and he slowly looked down at the hole in his side.

He suddenly felt dirty, guilt seeping into every fiber along with sympathy for the creepy looking yellow rabbit who had his body on loan.

"Spring killed him. Better than he deserved. Don't ask Spring about it. Please don't even bring it up."

Henry suddenly looked triumphant about something (while Andrew gradually felt more ill) and Hedy zeroed in to glare at him.

"Yes." She interrupted him. "I just admitted to one of the bots actually killing someone."

Her eyes hardened and she stared Henry down. "A man who tortured me to the point of death and brutally murdered five little kids and got away with it under the eyes of sane humans like you. And pervertedly enjoyed it. You still don't even know the whole story. So what, Henry? What are you about to say that's so righteous? So right about how dangerous the bots are? I'm dying to know."

The man trapped in a bot wilted a bit under her glare but he didn't seem to have too much common sense still.

"Killing a murderer is still not legal or right," he told her. "It proves they have the potential to kill which makes them dangerous."

"To who? To a murderous psychopath who would go on killing children because he was smart enough to get humans to look the other way long enough?" Hedy hissed, clearly pissed. "That bastard..." she pointed at Michael. "Didn't leave Spring much choice in the matter. Spring still feels guilty about it, if you could believe it. But he feels even more guilty that he wasn't able to stop Michael earlier. You don't know shit, Henry. I will make your life hell if you try to bring this up in front of him. But that's kinder than what Ruby will do to you."

"Did he…" Olivia whispered but cut off her words and looked apologetic.

"No," Hedy said simply.

This was a far more serious topic than what she would talk to Ruby or the bots about. But these were human adults and teenagers who better knew the context of the horrible things people could do. Not bots who might still have a modicum of innocence. Ruby understood, of course, but she settled for taking her justice out on Michael rather than talking to Hedy about it because she was so sure there was nothing she could say to really help Hedy. Ruby thought she sucked on the emotional support front and maybe that wasn't untrue. She was aware of her flaws and focused on what she could do.

Revenge was very much in Ruby's comfort zone.

But philosophical debates about killings? Morals? Ruby knew the grey area between black and white better than anyone Hedy knew, but sometimes Hedy thought that meant the teen was too mixed up sometimes to have a proper talk about it. Or to recognise the two sides as different...

But at the moment, it was a strange feeling of relief to tell someone about Michael. Someone not her family. Someone, or multiple someones, who otherwise had nothing to do with the past.

She almost laughed at the sudden stroke of irony. There were twelve "strangers" here. Same number as a jury Michael might have faced...

Frank was a bit impressed with Hedy. She was far calmer than how he would react in her situation. He glared at Henry.

Jerry shifted. He knew Henry wasn't a bad guy. But his moral code was...not forgiving to individual situations. True lawful neutral. But he could be an ass about it.

Olivia, however, was livid. "I read in the news about a father who killed another man because he...abused...his little girl." She frowned, unable to say the horrible word she wanted to. "I'd be more than willing to kill someone if they hurt my son." 'Goldy's' eyes slid to Michael as Olivia glared at him, not sympathetic in the least to the horrible way Hedy described his death. In the back of her mind, she marveled at how quickly she accepted the insane things Hedy had told them. Ghosts. A past no one knew. A murderer who was literally always there. Then again, she was in a ghost's 'body' and Goldy was out there doing something in hers. Today as a whole was very strange.

They didn't have a moment to breathe.

"I walked in on Hedy bleeding out while that bastard gloated above her," Ruby's voice cut through the room, sending the tension rocketing up as they turned to see her leaning on the doorframe. There wasn't any sign of the bots behind her. "If he had been alive, I would have killed him. And there is nothing you could say that could have stopped me." The words were said so simply, so confidently.

Her calm demeanor set them all on edge. Only Hedy, Timmy and Michael had seen her like this before.

"I wouldn't sit around and let 'morals' get in the way of ending the monster who had just attacked my sister."

Hedy blinked in slight surprise at the title that came straight from Ruby's mouth, then smiled softly. It was very strange to realize she and Ruby hadn't called each other 'sister' before. Not directly at least. Still, she paused working on a tense Andrew and her eyes lit in concern as she watched Ruby's movements carefully.

In the back of her mind, she noted that Andrew was going to catch the springs of another lock, possibly in his back, if he kept physically tensing and made a sudden move like sitting up.

Henry stilled like an animal caught in the eye line of a predator, unsure if Ruby was going to attack him or not.

Michael also didn't move. He didn't run just yet, but he tensed as Ruby pushed off the doorframe and walked past him like he was nothing.

"That's still murder," Henry squeaked. He cleared his throat. "Th-that's still..." He trailed off as he remembered this was a teenager. This was a literal child he had known for months now speaking about killing someone with no remorse in her eyes and about laws and morals as if they were inconveniences.

This was why Hedy hadn't wanted to have this conversation with Ruby in the first place.

Ruby smiled at him as she stopped right in front of Henry. It wasn't a nice smile.

"If Jeremy wasn't between me and the bastard that caused my parent's deaths, he wouldn't be in prison right now."

Henry stilled and Hedy wondered just how much the day staff really knew about what happened that morning. The newspapers might be slow, but the radio stations and news on the tv weren't always.

"He'd be in a graveyard," Ruby continued lightly. "But Jeremy got to him first. So now he'll get his trial. Or he'll take a plea deal. He'll pay for what he did in the eyes of society. But my parents are still dead. And he's not."

The silence that fell after was heavy.

"If I did get to him first, or if he wasn't safe in prison, some would call what would happen murder. Personally I'd call it justice. An eye for an eye. A life for a life."

Hedy realized she had been anxious about a moment like this since even before that morning, weeks ago when Jeremy told her about his case. She could see the anger bubbling just below the surface but Ruby had a tight leash on it so it wasn't affecting the building. Yet.

The teen tilted her head to the side, looking almost curious.

"If you had the opportunity to end the life of a serial killer but you don't because 'it's murder', and then he goes on to kill again, are you an accomplice? Those deaths wouldn't have happened if you'd just killed the murderer after all."

"That isn't..." Henry said, stepping back.

It seemed wrong, the way Ruby stared at the man in BB's body. It was even more wrong hearing that fear come from BB's voice. But it didn't seem to bother Ruby.

This was easily Henry in her eyes. Henry could have been wearing Hedy's skin and Ruby wouldn't have held back her words. She saw people for who they were and treated them accordingly.

"That isn't my call to make," Henry tried, "Th-that isn't anyone's, Ruby."

"But you're still making a choice. You're making the choice to not do anything. And the result of that choice is the deaths of other people. Deaths you could have prevented if you'd made a different choice." Ruby continued relentlessly, stepping forward for every step he took backwards. She still kept her tone only mildly curious. "The world is not black and white Henry. There's shades of grey to everything. Only children think in terms of absolute right and wrong. Adults have to learn eventually that there's no perfect answer to anything. Doing nothing, staying out of it, deciding that it's 'not your call to make' is the coward's way out because you don't want to make the hard choices."

She had him backed up against the wall now. "So let's look at this situation objectively shall we? If Spring had not killed Michael when he did, Michael would have walked away. The company covered up the murders so he never got caught for them. So he would have then continued to target children and kill them. He would have more than a body count of six on his record. All because 'it's not right to kill him'. Is that the preferable conclusion for you?"

"I..." Henry tried to speak. But he didn't have an answer. "..."

He'd never been more grateful than when Hedy spoke up then.

"He gets the point, Ruby," Hedy said. There wasn't overwhelming sympathy in her voice but she was clearing trying to stop the teen.

Ruby stared Henry down for another moment before looking up and walking over to Hedy.

"Apparently Jeremy didn't appreciate me getting into a fight with some idiot at the convention over lightsaber designs." She gave the older girl a sunny smile, giving the others emotional whiplash. "So I'm back early. "The others will be another hour." Her eyes slid over to Michael. "He bothering you?" she asked lightly.

"Surprisingly, not much," Hedy answered, equally lightly as if she knew being unbothered would piss Michael off more (she did). "Said a few idiotic things, but nothing out of the norm."

Some of the employees looked at Hedy, disbelieving. She couldn't be serious. But they didn't say anything.

Jess glared at the adult ghost, also noticing that the kid ghost was staring at Hedy with a slightly disappointed look behind Ruby's back.

"Well," Ruby pulled herself up on the table. "He would be stupid to be antagonising you after everything. I mean, he must have some intelligence."

Michael looked torn between a little bit of relief and fury.

Hedy knew that Ruby was baiting him. Well, so was she, technically.

"I got to use the BB gun you made me," Hedy said. "I shot him every time he called me Wiggy. I think he's learning."

"You sound like you're training a dog," Jess said dryly.

Harrison eyed the ghost.

"Dogs are more intelligent," Ruby answered immediately. "How'd it work? Need any tweaking?" she asked Hedy.

"The aim is a bit off. It got him in the eye. I'm a bit squeamish about eye injuries, you know. I was aiming for his cheek."

Michael looked insulted.

Andrew snickered weakly. "I thought it was on purpose. Dang, Hedy, I'm supposed to be impressed with my doctor," Andrew joked, still on the table, too afraid to move.

Hedy looked suspiciously at the teenager. "Have you been hanging around Mike? That and what you said earlier sounded like a Mike joke."

"He's cool," Andrew said, unsure if he was supposed to be defensive or not.

Ruby eyed him. "Did you ignore Hedy about moving carefully?" she asked him in irritation. "You know she says things for a reason, not just because it's fun."

Andrew squirmed under her look but was too distracted by how much it still hurt to really be scared.

"It was an accident," he whined.

Hedy huffed and finished what she was doing, gently easing the last lock back into its default position, careful not to get pinched. She only had to snap the others because they were tight and in a bad spot. "Better?"

"Still feel it..."

"Give it a second. That's the feedback looping. It will suddenly go away in a moment."

"How does Spring deal with this?" Andrew asked while he closed his eyes, already feeling the pain abating scarily quickly.

Spring truly had a disturbingly high pain tolerance.

"He's used to it," Ruby answered, giving him a hard glare for a moment before turning to glare at Michael. "High pain tolerance. All the bots have pretty high pain tolerances." she paused. "Except BB. He's a baby about any scratch in all honesty."

She didn't mention that was because BB didn't get hurt very often anyway and the last time…

She had plenty of reasons to beat Michael up again, but she could wait a little longer.

"I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact they can feel pain at all," Liam admitted, having gotten over his fear of heights enough to move across the room closer to them and further from Michael. The man currently in Bonnie's body squinted at them a bit. "And the fact I think Bonnie needs glasses."

"Ooh. That would look weird..." Olivia chuckled, still awkward about what just happened.

Hedy winced and focused on closing Andrew up.

Ruby suddenly got that expression Hedy had grown to know as her 'bad idea' look.

"Bonnie doesn't need glasses, Ruby. He needs to let me sort his eyes out," She told the teen firmly.

"But...little Harry Potter glasses..."

"No," Hedy insisted. "Get up Andrew. You're fine."

Andrew didn't seem to be in pain but he was certainly moving more gingerly now.

"Does Bonnie not let you look at his eyes?" Liam asked, "Because this is a bit irritating. I think I have a headache."

"Yeah, you mentioned Foxy doesn't like to be worked on either," Marion said.

"Not all humans like doctors but you don't force them to visit do you?" Ruby shot back, hackles up as always in defense of her bots.

Marion held up his hands and backed off.

"Alright. Let's hear it. What have the bots done in our bodies?" Harrison sighed, changing the subject before Ruby got more worked up.

"Can we show our faces in public you mean?" Izzy added, wincing a bit.

"My bots did nothing wrong," Ruby practically growled, in full overprotective mode.

Hedy had to calm her down before she'd tell them. Although she didn't point out that Ruby technically called the Toys and Puppet her bots too.

"We went walking, Puppet doesn't like being outside and BB has no concept of crossing the street safely." There was a flash of anger but it was gone as fast as it came. "We played a game of laser tag but not everyone played. Then they tried ice cream which was adorable. Foxy and Puppet got into a drinking contest and I'm pretty sure they're both drunk. Chica, Freddy, Teddy and Chi are scandalised. Mangle was drinking while no one was watching and damn she's got a high alcohol tolerance apparently. Don't know why she was so happy. Tequila is a foul drink. I left them at the convention. Last I saw, Bonnie was dressed up as Darth Vader and Foxy was having a pirate fight with a Luke Skywalker cosplayer."

Hedy looked absolutely hurt.

"Please tell me Puppet and Foxy are both still drunk," Hedy begged, despite knowing they probably wouldn't be by the time they got back. She had to see it.

Ruby gave Hedy a sweet smile. "Video of everything, just for you." she held her phone out. "Even got Jeremy legitimately pulling his hair out when he saw Mangle drinking."

Hedy looked at Ruby like she was an angel, and not the usual demon, as she gratefully took the phone.

So much blackmail material, so little time to use it.

"By the way," Ruby grinned. "Puppet is a clingy drunk. He kept hugging Jeremy."

"I have to figure out how to get the bots drunk their own way," Hedy mused.

"Is that even possible?" Ruby asked curiously, deciding not to mention that Hedy revealed she had already figured out how to. But she had been ghost-drunk with the building at the time and it wouldn't end well for Ruby if she reminded Hedy of that hilarious night. Something for later.

"I want to figure out a way to make it possible. Maybe a weird stretch of code that affects certain senses and logic procedures. Who knows?"

Did Hedy forget or was she just avoiding admitting she had it figured out in front of Ruby?

Jerry groaned. "I'm going to have a hangover..."

Marion echoed him.

"How much did Mangle drink?!" Izzy asked, alarmed. "I've never had a hangover!"

Ruby actually gave Izzy a sympathetic look.

"Drink lots of water."

Izzy moaned and covered her face the best she could with a snout in the way.

Ruby leaned over to Hedy to whisper. "Seriously, Mangle drinks like a fish."

"That is both funny and yet deeply concerning," Hedy said. She glanced at Marion, a bit irritated she wasn't going to be able to fix Foxy's stupid squeaky ankle and lopsided ear before they got back. Not to mention Foxy always made it too difficult to check his spinal structure. Great, now she was going to be annoyed about it all day.

"And you said they'll be back in...an hour?" Jerry asked.

"Dammit," Hedy hissed, having forgotten about Puppet for a minute. She'd never even got a chance to look at what shape he might be in.

Ruby looked thoughtful for a moment before speaking to Marion and Jerry in particular.

"You do what Hedy tells you to or I'm pranking you for a month," she declared. "I can convince them to stop in at the nearby doughnut shop to give you more time?"

When did she get so good at reading Hedy?

The concept certainly got a few stares.

"Donuts. Perfect," Hedy said. "Marion, sit down. Jerry, strip."

"Wait what?"