Author's Notes:
Hope you enjoy the chapter!
Chapter 156
"Don't do that again."
When he got back to the cars, Goldy was the first to catch sight of him.
She searched his face, hoping he was all right.
He ignored her. No one asked him about how it had gone and the mood was somber.
That was it. That was the last of the things that needed to be done. But they were still here.
"What now?" Spring asked as they all started getting into the cars.
Hedy sighed. "We get back to the restaurant, first of all. If there's something else to be done, we'll figure it out there. Alright?" She pulled out her phone to call Ruby and tell her they were on their way back.
Ruby answered cheerfully and she had to wonder what she'd done to the poor day shift to sound like that.
She faintly heard Liam with Bonnie's voice shout in the background. "HEDY! HURRY BACK, PLEASE!"
Hedy groaned as she put her phone on speaker and concentrated on driving. "What did you do, Ruby?"
"Me? Nothing! Liam, however, really sucks at getting around Bonnie's closet glitch."
They heard a moan, and Ruby cackled.
"So what if I took advantage and put a ton of glitter bombs in there? And the girl's bathroom. And Puppet's box. Did you know Puppet has code that encourages him to stay in his box? I didn't. Oh, and Henry tried to hide in the vents and ran into my traps in there. I haven't seen him in a while..."
Puppet had a deadpanned look as he listened to the phone but stared out the window. "Hm. I was honestly not expecting human minds to be that easily manipulated by our coding." Then he blinked as the comment about glitter in his box caught up with him. "You what?!"
"Why are you still surprised when she does that?" Spring asked innocently.
"It'll come out. Eventually."
There was an explosion in the background.
"Honestly, they keep falling for it. I've just had to sit back and watch. It's glorious"
Hedy sighed. "As long as I can put them back together, I suppose... We'll be home soon. I'm worried about the building switching everyone back the second we get inside, so maybe don't be having the staff do anything potentially damaging or traumatic when we get there."
"Technically, I'm not doing anything. I just put my traps around and they keep walking into them. Except Andrew. He seemed to get the idea that moving around was bad and won't get out of the chair because he's convinced it's rigged to explode or something if he does."
"I mean... I don't blame him," Spring admitted quietly, wincing in sympathy for the poor teenage boy stuck in his mess of a body.
"Spring," she sounded amused. "I didn't trap that chair."
And she hung up.
Hedy rolled her eyes.
Spring laughed a little and sat back in his seat. "Today was interesting."
Hedy frowned a little and BB and Puppet, the only other two in her car, stayed quiet. "I would agree."
"Not trying to sound depressed, but it's kinda sad how much we missed out on just...not being humans."
"It was fun," BB agreed softly. "But I don't like how much I need to pee right now."
There was silence for a moment.
"Are we there yet?"
"Don't you fucking start BB," Puppet muttered.
Hedy couldn't help the laugh that bubbled out as she focused on the road.
The ride from the graveyard to the pizzeria was disturbingly short. The damn place was within walking distance. Long walking distance, but walking distance nonetheless...
The sky still had that threatening overcast and Puppet eyed it warily as he climbed out, ignoring the chatter of the others as he studied their building from the outside.
BB raced past him, not as intrigued by a last look with human eyes as he was about a bathroom.
The moment they stepped inside, they could see that Ruby had been busy. Glitter and paint were everywhere and the bots' bodies were covered in it.
Except for Foxy, Spring and Mangle.
"They don't have weird code to take advantage of," Ruby told them from where she was sprawled out on a table, watching the chaos.
Spring frowned. "What about that 'following kid voices' code I have?"
"You what?" Andrew asked.
Spring blinked at him. "Don't worry about it..."
Ruby waved a hand around. "No kids. Besides, Hedy would kill me if I got paint in those circuits she's working on."
"Can I have my fucking body back now!?" Henry shouted, sounding distant. Which vent was he in?
BB came back from the bathroom, smirking at the sound of his own voice.
Henry popped BB's head out of a vent and stared. "The fuck did you do to my hair?!"
BB's grin dropped a bit.
"There's peanut butter in the kitchen," Hedy said apologetically. She looked around and frowned. "BB and I will help you work it out."
"Uh. What now? Did we do it right? How do they switch back?" Mike asked.
There was an awkward silence.
Hedy and Ruby both did a quick head count.
"Who's..." Hedy turned to see Puppet still outside, a few feet away from the threshold.
He was looking up at the sky.
It was raining now. Just a light sprinkling. Puppet held out Jerry's hand, feeling the raindrops as they quickly got heavy.
Jerry opened his mouth to ask Puppet not to get him soaked, but halted at the haunted look on the bot's borrowed face.
Goldy looked sad, walking back to the door.
"Puppet...?" she called, reaching outside.
Puppet startled and looked back down, staring blankly at all of them for a moment. His hair and shoulders were damp now, but Jerry still didn't complain.
After a moment, he sighed. "Brace yourselves," he said dryly, taking a slight hop to push himself into the building without looking back again.
It shuddered and Puppet's eyes rolled backwards as he and the others all collapsed. The human eyes rolled and the animatronics' eyes flashed and went dark as everyone crumpled.
Mike yelped as he had to stop Chi-or Jess actually- from hitting her head.
"Fuck!" Jeremy shouted, kneeling to check on Andrew. "You didn't need to be dramatic, you asshole."
"I would prefer we get it over with," Puppet's proper voice retorted, strained over the sounds of pained groans.
Ruby looked at the ceiling. "We need to teach you more finesse."
"Or Puppet how to give better warnings!" Bonnie snapped.
Liam agreed by shakily holding up a middle finger and moaning. "Headache..."
Ruby looked around. "Well, that was certainly an interesting day." There was a smirk curling her lips, and some light was back in her eyes. Hedy suddenly couldn't be too mad at the building anymore.
Spring waved his hands in front of his face. "Is it just me or is our eyesight kinda shit compared to humans?"
"First of all, did you just swear?" Hedy deadpanned.
Mangle growled.
Spring looked sheepish.
"Second of all, I would think your vision only has as much resolution as the cameras built into your eyes."
"Cool," Andrew groaned.
Jerry moaned. "Why does my head hurt?"
"I think you're still hungover."
"Oh, thanks Puppet."
"Thanks Foxy," Marion said, equally sarcastically.
Foxy just shrugged carelessly, and Puppet completely ignored them.
"You guys get what you needed?" Ruby asked them, dismissing the day staff mentally now that the bots were back. Hedy may need to have another talk with her about empathy to human beings…
Puppet stiffened a little. "Yes," he groaned out.
Mangle smirked. "Heck yes. I got to cuss out a postal worker."
A loopy looking Izzy lifted her head. "You what?"
Ruby just cracked up at Izzy's horrified reaction.
Hedy smirked but got to work checking everyone, bots and humans, over with Jeremy and Mike helping. Jeremy had a bit of medical training, but he just made sure no one hit their head.
Goldy was up in the air again, since apparently Olivia couldn't figure out how to float or was just too freaked out by it.
Ruby looked around at everyone. "That was funny." She then looked at the ceiling. "But don't do it again," she added sternly.
"Aw man, did we miss it?"
Toby yelped and then immediately winced at the headache.
The rest of them looked at the door Puppet had just come through to see Ricky holding George's hand.
Ricky pouted. "I wanted to see the body swap thing, but George wanted to pet a cat."
"Hi mommy!" George said, waving wildly. "I got to pet a cat!"
Ruby immediately switched to 'big sister' mode and swept the two out of the rain. "Where is your umbrella?" she scolded Ricky, already scouting out a towel to dry their wet hair with.
"We were barely in the rain!" Ricky complained. "It just started!"
Ruby, naturally, ignore him and attacked them both with towels.
Eventually the boys escaped her and Ricky hid behind Bonnie while George jogged over to his mom, hair standing on end.
He patted Olivia on her head. She still looked rather dazed. "Mommy?" He glanced curiously at Goldy again. "You in the right head now?"
"Yes, sweetie," Olivia promised, pulling him into a hug.
"Ms. Goldy is softer. But you smell better," George said, reminding everyone how brutal little kids could be.
Goldy just looked amused, though.
Ruby cackled in the background. It was good to hear her laugh again.
Spring patted Goldy's arm. "It's okay, Goldy," he said with the sincerest sympathy he could muster. "At least you don't smell as bad as I do. Wow."
Puppet resisted the urge to snort.
"Hedy, can you order more Fabreeze for me, please?" Spring asked, "I think I'm getting moldy." He said it with such a grin.
Teddy and a couple other Toys blinked in surprise, wondering where the joking, relaxed side of Spring came from.
Hedy rolled her eyes. "Is everyone okay?"
The next couple hours mostly involved Hedy giving the bots a checkup while scolding a couple of the day staff. Meanwhile, the day staff drank water, took pain meds, complained about soreness and headaches and some sand in uncomfortable places.
Puppet escaped in the mild chaos, ducking inside his box in the Prize Corner. He had some thinking to do.
A knock on his lid interrupted him.
"Hedy, I would prefer to be alone please," he said with a careful edge of sternness.
"Um…sure. But I'm not Hedy," the male voice that Puppet had spent a day getting used to said.
He cracked his lid to stare at Jerry.
"...You do realize that swapping bodies, as personal as that is, does not obligate us to be friends."
"Oh yeah, of course," Jerry said awkwardly. He ran his hand through his now messy hair, glad to have it back. He was standing and shifting a little oddly, getting used to his own legs. "Um, I just thought you should know. It kinda…It really hurt. To be you, that is. All your joints hurt a lot. Actually, everything really hurt. I could deal for the most part. Hedy mentioned you don't let her work on you. I just thought I should let you know Hedy had me take your suit off so she could look. She seemed pretty upset."
Puppet stared at him. "Thank you for telling me." He closed his box.
Jerry was quiet for another minute. "You…uh…ever going to let her look at you?"
"Why should you care and why should I care to tell you?"
Jerry shrugged before realizing Puppet couldn't see him. "Dude, if I felt like you do every day, I would have gone to a doctor for, I don't know, spine surgery or something."
There was just silence.
"Puppet?"
No response.
Jerry sighed and left. Well, he tried.
Puppet pushed his irritation for a human getting in his business aside. He folded his arms and "curled" up in his box. He could either spend the next hours thinking over the bizarre day, or he could go to sleep.
He settled for shutting down. The lights in his eyes dimmed, and he tilted his head, dearly hoping he wouldn't have any dreams this time.
Ruby leaned against the wall, unseen as Jerry left the Prize Corner. She frowned to herself as she replayed the conversation she'd heard. She didn't like what a lot of that implied.
Sighing, she wandered away to a quiet area of the pizzeria and settled down against the wall to think.
It had been one hell of a day and admittedly, despite the annoyance, it had helped straighten out her head. She had a lot of thinking to do and even though it really hurt, she needed to face it without shutting down over it.
She idly wondered if she should start going to see her therapist again…
With a groan, Ruby rested her head on her knees.
…
She was going to need to make a phone call.
Her parents weren't the only ones to die that night. To be… murdered.
Sally's had been collateral damage to Black. And she deserved to know.
She let out another aggravated sigh. Everyone would have a fit if they knew that she was about to do this…