Author's Note: Thanks so much to Ghost and Panda for their help with this arc. Hope everyone is enjoying Sister Location so far.
Chapter 185
Night 3 Take 5
"Is there a plan? Or no?" Andre asked in the car on the way back the next night.
Alex was quiet, glancing at Hedy sometimes. They hadn't talked since their argument, neither really sure how to break the ice.
Afton resisted the urge to sigh, and ultimately decided to ignore the sarcasm. "Ideally I'd like to find those servers. We need a way to more easily enter the rooms."
"How're we supposed to do that if most of us are stuck in one room anyway?" Alex wondered.
"The vents to the left opened last night. Hopefully we can see what's in the other room tonight. I brought the blueprints with me," Afton explained.
He parked the car near where Ruby was leaning against the wall, waiting.
"We could just leave out the service doors Ms. Fitzgerald uses," Andre pointed out as he unbuckled.
"As it was pointed out previously, the system is tracking us. We don't know what would happen if we only started using those. The less attention we draw to ourselves, the better," Afton said, climbing out of the car (and cursing his knees).
Ruby waited until Hedy was out of the car before walking forward.
"Hm," Andre said, thinking it wasn't the best excuse if they weren't entirely sure about that. But he climbed out and grimaced at Ruby, like usual.
"Same old," Hedy said. She frowned as she handed Ruby the keys.
Ruby took the keys and flipped Andre off where Alex and Afton wouldn't see it. She didn't even change her expression. Then she headed off to unlock before he could complain to deaf ears.
Afton walked quickly to catch up with Ruby before she took the elevator and left them behind. He had a feeling she really would do that.
The teen held the door open and called back to the others. "Are you coming or not?" She asked impatiently. She'd call Hedy's phone again so that the mechanic could listen to whatever Hand-Unit said tonight.
Alex frowned a little but shot Hedy a look before following.
Andre huffed before giving up and doing the same.
Hedy frowned as she waited outside. The nights were getting colder fast. She wouldn't be surprised by ice– maybe even snow–sometime soon.
The elevator started moving like usual and Handunit's voice came through.
"Welcome back to another pivotal night of your thriving new career, where you get to really ask yourself, "What am I doing with my life?", "What would my friends say?", and most importantly, "Will I ever see my family again?"."
They all gave the ceiling an incredulous look.
"We understand the stresses of a new job, and we're here for you! To help you reach a more stable and relaxing frame of mind, we offer several musical selections to help make this elevator ride as relaxing and therapeutic as possible. We offer contemporary jazz, classical rainforest ambiance as well as a wide selection of other choices."
"Oh hell..." Ruby sighed.
"Using the keypad below, please type the first few letters of the musical selection you would prefer."
Afton sighed as he tried, in vain, to punch in "none," cursing the designer's sense of humor. It would be funny if there wasn't so much wrong with the place.
"It seems you had some trouble with the keypad. I see what you were trying to type, and I will auto-correct it for you. Thank you for selecting: Casual Bongos."
Ruby thunked her head against the wall as the music started. "At least it wasn't jazz," she muttered under her breath.
"Now that your elevator experience has been customized to your needs, and you're thoroughly relaxed, it's worth mentioning that due to your lackluster performance yesterday, your pay has been decreased by a substantial amount. Please enjoy the rest of your descent."
She twisted her head to look up at the ceiling. "Good thing Handy-Dandy gonna-die-soon Unit isn't paying us." Not that a decreased paycheck would ever stop her anyway.
Afton frowned.
"The hell did you and Fitzgerald do?" Andre sputtered a little, disturbed. They already figured they were being watched but having consequences made it more real.
"Maybe...they took too long getting the systems back on because Hedy was shutting down the shocks?" Alex suggested.
Ruby hummed in thought. "It could be the fact that she shut down the shocks too. Which is more worrisome."
The elevator came to a stop and they quickly made their way through, Ruby hurriedly letting Hedy in.
"Due to unforeseen malfunctions from today's shows, your nightly duties will require you to perform maintenance that you may or may not be skilled enough to perform. It became necessary for technicians to attempt to disconnect Funtime Freddy's power module."
Ruby exchanged an alarmed look with Hedy.
"However, they were unsuccessful. Allowing them to try again would be an inefficient path forward, as we would need to allow six to eight weeks for recovery and physical therapy."
Andre spluttered in shock behind them.
Hedy was getting more concerned about how little Hand-Unit was trying to hide that something was off about the place. If a technician like them was still here this far into the week, maybe there was some reason why they couldn't quit.
"You will need to reach the Parts and Service room on the other side of Funtime Auditorium to perform the procedure yourself. Let's check on Ballora first, and make sure she's on her stage."
"What do we do?" Alex asked. "What did that all mean? What happened to Funtime Freddy? In general, what the fuck?"
Ruby shrugged, not having an answer.
Hedy was tense.
"What other technicians are they talking about? And what shows? Is this place actually open to the public?" Ruby muttered. She still doubted it.
Afton hit the light for the left room. They could see Ballora's shadow on stage. Not her though.
"Great. It looks like everything is as it should be in Ballora Gallery."
They all looked a little confused at that. At least it wasn't telling them to shock the bot.
"Let's check on Funtime Foxy. It's important to make sure she's on her stage before entering."
Afton pressed the other light button and revealed Funtime Foxy on stage. Ruby immediately squished her face against the window to get a look at the fox.
"Great. It looks like everything is as it should be in Funtime Auditorium. There is no need to check on Baby tonight. Please refrain from entering unauthorized areas. Proceed directly to Funtime Auditorium. Unlike Ballora, Funtime Foxy is motion-activated. For this reason, it is important to keep the room dark, as to not accidentally activate her. You have been provided with a flash beacon. Use it if you need to get your bearings and to ensure you don't bump into anything. However, use it as sparingly as possible. Proceed forward to reach the Parts and Service room."
Ruby poked at a box next to the now open vent. "Guess this is the flash beacon."
"Has that… always been sitting there?" Alex wondered, eyeing it suspiciously.
"I don't think so," Hedy admitted.
Afton was frowning. "Funtime Foxy never liked bright lights. I can't imagine she'll like a 'flash beacon' any better."
Hedy pulled out the flash beacon. It basically looked like an old camera without a lens and just a small box with a powerful photography speed light on the top. As a test, she pushed the button and they were all blinking away purple spots as their eyes recovered from the bright flash.
Ruby was muttering curses as she rubbed her eyes. No wonder Foxy hated bright flashes. That was terrible. And they wanted to use that around another fox? Mangle didn't like flashes either, even if they didn't hurt her the same way.
The device made a whine as the voltage-booster powered up the light again.
"Ow," Hedy said, rubbing her eyes.
"This sounds more like provoking Funtime Foxy than avoiding her," Ruby muttered, blinking rapidly to restore her vision. "And another dark room we can't see the entirety of. Perfect for hiding extra rooms."
"Yeah..." Hedy said. She pulled out her flashlight, her brightest one. Luckily she had changed the batteries recently, but if Funtime Foxy's room was as large and light sucking as Ballora's it might not help much, and that still left the problem of how to handle Funtime Foxy and keep her from attacking them.
Afton pulled out the blueprints from his bag. "I don't remember seeing any rooms on the plans besides the one on the other side. Parts and Services."
"But it's not like blueprints can't be doctored," Hedy pointed out. "These might just be the accessible ones and the actual blueprints the construction was based off could be different."
"Hmm, that is a fair point." He spread the plans out and Ruby wandered over to take a look. "You two have been in more rooms. Can you tell if anything is different on the plans?" He gestured at the notes they had made the first night.
Hedy looked for a minute then pointed at the power control room with her foot. "The wall in there doesn't make sense. There were cables running through walls that shouldn't go anywhere or have anything else behind them, according to this. And the hallway we used to come back from Ballora's room was longer than it says on paper. There's at least, I dunno, ten meters missing?"
Ruby crouched down to look while Alex walked over to see as well. Hedy was almost fairly shocked that the teenager was still here and hadn't bolted off to meet the fox as soon as the vent opened.
"The vent system is all wrong too. I could hear a lot more vents in the front room than the ones it's showing here." she frowned. "Hey Hedy, doesn't Ballora's room look too big on the plans? It felt smaller than that."
Hedy nodded with a frown. "It's a big room, but not that much. It's too long and the door to the hallway we left through doesn't seem like it's in the right place."
"The stage is in the wrong spot too," Ruby mumbled.
Andre watched them all for a long moment, glancing into the right room. This was ridiculous. They were wasting time.
Hedy jangled the keys Ruby had handed back to her for safekeeping and gestured at the door. "This door is the only "secret" door visible. But that doesn't mean there aren't more." She moved over to where she could open it and cautiously rolled out into the hallway to peer into the darkness with her flashlight. "This service hallway doesn't even make sense and neither do the customer access hallways."
"This entire floor plan doesn't make sense!" Ruby gestured vaguely at the plans and at the building around them. She didn't even notice as Andre moved behind her and the others, presumably to look out the window.
Andre winced as he made a little noise crawling through the opened vent while the others were distracted, dragging the flash beacon with him.
They were all very involved in discussing the different parts of the plan though. Even Alex was leaning over and pointing out how the electrical system didn't seem to make any sense.
He got through to the other side without drawing any attention to himself. The pitch-black room was very unnerving though.
It was quiet too. In the disturbingly heavy way a pitch-black cavern was. Already, he was feeling disoriented and didn't dare shift his feet in fear of losing his bearings. Now, where was the Part and Services door?
He fumbled with the flash beacon, fingers looking for the button.
Why wouldn't they have a light switch inside that he could just flip? That rubbish about a motion-activated robot was probably just for when people entered the room and it activated.
The inkling of a thought about what Afton had told him that morning came to the front of his mind, but he shoved it away. He didn't want to think about it. He hadn't decided if he wanted to think Afton was crazy. But what was the alternative?
He dusted himself off and pointed the flash in front of him, hoping he had it pointed the right way.
He walked for a minute, periodically using the flash, before he heard something in the room. He barely caught it over the sound of the flash beacon charging up again.
He froze, waiting for the noise again. He didn't hear anything though so he kept moving. He tried to mentally judge where he was by how many steps he took, but when he didn't run into the door like he expected he stopped and lifted the flash beacon in front of himself again.
The bright flash lit up the room for only a moment, but it was enough.
The first thing he noticed was that the animatronic wasn't on the stage he found himself facing by accident. The next he noticed was he had gotten turned around and was definitely not standing where he thought he was. Then of course, there was the fox standing off the stage and near the vent he just exited. Staring at him...
It was dark again and Andre froze despite himself as the inky blackness swallowed everything and the purple spots in his vision faded. Why was he afraid? This was stupid.
He heard Funtime Foxy move toward him and he found himself taking a few blind steps to put distance between them before he even considered how ridiculous that was.
He faintly heard the sound of something in the vents and irritably wondered if it was Ruby.
But…that wasn't right. The sounds of those vents weren't coming from the right direction... Did he get turned around again? But he was sure he hadn't even moved that much.
He could hear Funtime Foxy's footsteps but there was something wrong. They were soft, like the animatronic was purposefully keeping its steps light to make tracking her more difficult. That was ridiculous though. Absolutely ridiculous. Right?
Andre backed up and yelped as he knocked over something, probably a bucket. It was deafeningly loud in the silent room and he broke off into a panicked sprint, stopping after a few feet to avoid running into anything. His breath was sharp and he struggled to quiet it. His hand brushed a wall and he set himself against it, pressing his back and staring out into the darkness.
Where was she?! Why was he freaking out? He shouldn't be letting what those girls said get to him like this.
The room was eerily silent now. Thanks to his panicked sprint he'd gotten even more turned around and now didn't know which direction the vent or the animatronic was.
She could be a couple of feet away and he wouldn't be able to see in this darkness.
With slightly shaky hands he lifted the light again.
It flashed and he screamed.
Funtime Foxy was barely ten feet in front of him.
He saw the barest flash of teeth and the beginnings of her leaping at him.
He jumped to the side on instinct and something hit and dragged his side as the animatronic slammed against the wall.
The bot was barely dazed by the contact with the wall and suddenly there was a crushing weight on top of him, teeth digging into his arm which he raised to protect himself.
He screamed again.
Just as abruptly as it had started, it ended.
There was a loud clang and Funtime Foxy let go of his arm and stumbled backwards. Andre blinked as he was suddenly blinded by the light of a flashlight. Ruby was standing there with a baseball bat.
She glared at him. "Get to the vent you idiot," she snapped at him as the fox suddenly dove for her. She sidestepped the bot and hit her in the back, making her stumble forwards and away from them.
Andre sat frozen, staring at the deep wounds in his arm dripping with blood. He had never bled so much that the blood actually dripped.
"Move!" Ruby yelled.
"Where's the—?!" he asked in a panic. He was completely turned around.
Ruby cursed and darted forward, roughly pulling him up and turning him around, shoving him forward.
"Go!"
Andre scrambled to the vent, half-crawling his way there and practically dived into the opening, banging his arm against the metal and nearly knocking himself out with a forehead to the hard edge. He shouted when it hurt to put weight on his arm and crawled with one elbow, his other arm to his chest. He didn't notice he was smearing blood everywhere.
Meanwhile Funtime Foxy managed to get her hand over Ruby's shoulder, claws digging in just above her collarbone.
"I liked this jacket," she muttered in annoyance before jerking forward, a move that startled the bot, since it effectively sliced her shoulder to ribbons. The girl was in the vent and out of reach before the fox could recover from the abrupt movement.
Andre exited quickly, rolling out of the vent a bit and gasping on the floor as the pain began to set in.
Afton helped him up as Alex came closer, eyes wide.
"What on earth…!?" the older man said quietly, staring at the bite wound in Andre's arm.
They didn't get long to process it. Ruby was absolutely livid as she exited the vent.
"What the hell is wrong with you?!" she demanded, yanking her ruined jacket off. Her shirt was also sliced through at the shoulder and the already red material of her t-shirt was rapidly darkening with blood.
Hedy stared at the scene in eerie silence, her eyes flicking to the blood-soaked jacket as it hit the floor before shifting up to take in the stained shirt and what of Ruby's skin she could see.
Afton's eyes widened more, and he turned an ashen gray, "Ms. Ruby," he said.
Both Ruby and Andre's wounds looked bad.
Ruby ignored him and lifted her shirt slightly, squinting at her shoulder. The way her lips pressed together told Hedy that she didn't like what she saw.
Alex had dropped next to Andre, reaching out to help him with his arm since he seemed pretty much frozen. Her hands hovered over him in panic, not knowing what to do or how to help.
She jumped as Hedy nudged her with a pair of scissors.
"Andre, take your coat off if you can. Alex cut his shirt sleeve off at the elbow," she ordered coldly. She looked at Ruby and passed her a box from her bag.
Afton was trying to look at Ruby's wound. "What...How did this happen?" he asked shakily.
They hadn't been able to see much from the window besides the occasional muted flash of light that initially caught their attention. Even Ruby's flashlight hadn't lit up much from their perspective. They'd heard Andre's screams pretty damn clearly though. The teenager had hardly hesitated before she'd disappeared through the vent with just the flashlight she'd swiped from Hedy and her bat. Her bag of supplies had been too far to grab in the moment.
"Her claws and teeth have definitely been sharpened," Ruby muttered, taking the box and opening it with one hand. "I liked this shirt. And that jacket." She sounded annoyed. She tossed the flashlight back to Hedy so she could direct the stronger light where needed.
Andre was still sitting still, looking like he might be in a bit of shock.
Afton looked between the two before he muttered something under his breath and took the box from Ruby, which was easier to do with her balancing on one foot and leaning on a wall to rifle through it.
"What do you need out of here?" he asked, his voice strained. He handed Alex a couple of packages of gauze and silently marveled at Hedy's foresight to bring a well-stocked first-aid kit.
Ruby looked at him, annoyed, seemingly oblivious to the growing bloody patch on her shirt. "I'm just going to clean it with the disinfectant. I'm not going to bleed out so I'll be fine."
"But...that seems like quite a bit," Afton said as he dug out a small bottle of liquid. "You should at least..."
"Hey Andre?" Alex snapped her fingers in the man's face. "Dude, uh, I think I'm gonna need to cut your jacket if you don't take it off yourself."
"What?" Andre muttered, looking up with a blink as he slowly came back to Earth.
"Take your jacket off," Hedy snapped.
Ruby pointed at Andre. "Go help the moron. I can handle myself." She snagged the disinfectant and some gauze. She only let out a low hiss as she slapped the soaked gauze on her shoulder after lifting the material again. She was considering just taking her shirt off and wearing her jacket when she was done. It was a sturdier material and had less blood on it.
Afton frowned in worry and he gave the teen a look.
"Ms. Ruby, I insist you sit down at least," he said as he turned to hand Alex the box.
"Uh. Hedy, what the hell do I do?" Alex asked, feeling queasy at the blood as Andre painfully pulled his jacket and his outer used-to-be-white dress shirt off until he was in his t-shirt, shivering.
It was cold down there.
"Clean it off," Hedy said, hoping neither injured party was going to need stitches.
Ruby wouldn't be willing to go to a hospital this far from home.
Andre, like a reasonable human adult, might insist on a trip for himself.
Ruby had already started pacing a bit. She always did that when she was hurt and she hated sitting still while getting treated. She hated being treated at all but she was too practical to leave it bleeding.
"I'm fine," she muttered. "They're deep but not enough for stitches." She shot Hedy her patented 'I'm not dying so no hospital' look. "Disinfectant, then I'll bandage it and I'll be fine."
Upon seeing that no one was dying or in shock, Hedy nodded and picked up Andre's bloody clothes, rolling them up. Fighting Ruby right now wouldn't help. She could get a better look when she had the teen back at the hotel room and Foxy on the phone to guilt her into a proper check up.
Andre looked at her in confusion and winced as Alex wiped the blood off from around the wound. "Ow.. hey..."
"Sorry," Alex said as she wadded up fresh gauze and used a cloth bandage to wrap the arm, making sure to leave Ruby some too.
Hedy waited until she was certain they were both fine and not about to collapse before she suddenly boxed Andre's ear with his rolled-up bloody clothes she'd been holding.
He yelped as his head snapped to the side.
"What the fuck is wrong with you? What were you THINKING?!" Hedy snarled, echoing Ruby's earlier question. She was seething.
The sudden fury startled all of them. Alex squeaked and cringed while leaning away from Hedy. Afton flinched and leaned away.
Ruby braced herself and took a step back out of habit before realizing that, for once, she wasn't in trouble for being reckless. It was an odd feeling to not be the one in trouble.
But Andre definitely deserved a lecture from Hedy in her opinion. A proper one like the ones she gave the Toys when they really screwed something up.
The teenager plucked the bandages out of Alex's hand and started wrapping her shoulder with practiced movements while they were distracted, keeping an eye on the dark room that housed the fox at the same time. She hadn't really got a proper look at the bot since she was more focused on hauling the moron out of trouble. She hadn't said anything or even really made any noise. Baby had spoken to them, at least they thought she had. Ballora too. The other two had also spoken the previous night. Funtime Foxy hadn't made a sound yet and Ruby was dying to know what she was like.
The foxes always had the most interesting personalities, no offense to the others.
"I just..." Andre stuttered as he raised his other hand to protect himself from another blow.
"You just what?!" Hedy snapped. She hadn't hit him hard enough to hurt him, just startle "You thought you'd just go ahead and head to Parts and Services on your own? Were you trying to prove yourself? Prove that Funtime Foxy wasn't dangerous?"
"It...it's a malfunction..." he insisted, looking at his arm. "A...dangerous one... but..."
Ruby could have told him that that was a stupid route to take when Hedy was mad at you. Cold hard facts were your only hope of getting out of trouble. That, or hopeful excitement. That worked when Ruby wanted to get out of trouble for a particularly bad mess she made and keep playing whatever game they were busy with.
"She was hunting you, you dim-witted piece of shit," Hedy snapped. "That was not a fluke. That was you not knowing what you were getting into!"
"And you do?!" Andre said.
"Clearly more than you! You not only got yourself hurt, which would have been one thing. But Ruby had to jump in and save your ass and she got hurt because you didn't care to pay attention to the concerns of the rest of the group. Could your ego not take a couple of 'girls' doing all the work yesterday?! Are you really that stupid and arrogant that you're going to ignore EVERYTHING going on?"
Andre spluttered incoherently, unable to really say anything in his defense.
Alex just watched quietly with wide eyes, fidgeting with her sleeve and pointedly ignoring the drops of blood staining the floor. She hadn't really seen Hedy this mad before.
"Say something. ENLIGHTEN US! Since you seem to know what you're doing," Hedy said. She harshly threw his clothes at him with enough force to make him grunt. "Funtime Foxy almost murdered you. Fucking act like it."
"It's...it's a machine," Andre said weakly. "A bug. We just... if we just shut it down somehow we can get inside and fix it."
Now Afton shifted. He blinked away his shock at Hedy's vicious reaction. He could never really condone one employee assaulting another but he wasn't sure how to handle that part just yet.
Ruby scoffed, straightening up after packing away the leftover bandages. "It's a 'bug' that she stalked you across a dark room? That she hunted you?" she sneered at him. "It was deliberate and you're an idiot if you can't see that."
"That's..." Andre said. He looked at Afton and swallowed. "It's not possible…"
Afton looked back at him, disappointed. It seemed his earlier words were not as effective as he hoped. Did the sincerity in his gut-wrenching stories really not reach the man? Or was Andre that stubborn?
Andre looked away awkwardly. "We're years away from that kind of technology. From thinking…sentient… robots. That sort of thing might…never be possible…"
Afton sounded oddly irritated as he spoke up, his tone surprising the others. "They've always been learning AIs," he murmured. "That's not...if it was faulty programming she wouldn't be able to think enough to do something complicated as... as hunting. That requires choice and complex decision making."
However, he didn't bring up that they could feel too.
Andre frowned at the floor but didn't argue anymore.
Hedy looked at Afton for a minute and shared a glance with Ruby. It was odd Andre wasn't arguing more but Hedy wasn't in the mood to give the man any credit.
"We need to be careful. All of us." Hedy narrowed her eyes at Andre. "We now have confirmation that the bots are really out to hurt us. As such, we need to be strategic in what we do next."
Afton looked at the girls. He was very uncomfortable with how sure of the situation Hedy sounded, especially when he wasn't even sure what was happening. He was supposed to be the most informed here. And yet he was floundering. He needed to confront the two about that. Soon.
At the moment, however, he was in too much shock. He was trying to wrap his mind around what Funtime Foxy and the others could possibly be thinking. How did things get like this? He...he needed to speak with them. He needed to let them know he was there. But without understanding what happened to them, he was a little afraid they would attack him. Would they? He never would have imagined they would attack strangers like this. Strangers. What about him?
Ruby tugged her jacket on, wincing slightly as she pulled on her shoulder. "We need to finish with the night's task Hedy," she reminded the angry mechanic softly.
Since when was it her job to be the voice of reason!?
Hedy hissed. "Can you move your arm? Enough for Betty?"
"I'll be fine." She waved a hand, testing the range of movement in her injured shoulder. "It's not my dominant arm." It hurt but she'd functioned through less.
"Hm.." Hedy huffed.
"No…" Afton cut in, "No I think, you should all go home. I will figure something out, but I cannot…" He paused, taking in the injured teenager and the stubborn man before him. He seemed to make up his mind and shook his head, "No, I've asked too much of you all."
"Don't be an idiot," Hedy said sharply before Ruby could say something even ruder.
Afton blinked, a bit shocked she was willing to call him an idiot. She had been mostly respectful toward him up to that point.
"You can't handle this alone. If you really believed you could, even without the more concerning things happening, you never would have hired us in the first place."
They stared at each other for a moment.
William wasn't blind. He saw the familiarity Hedy and Ruby moved with throughout this mess. While he wasn't sure why that was the case (although he had an uncomfortable suspicion), he was beginning to think it would be very unwise to send them away, even with the danger.
"I take it you have an idea then, Ms. Fitzgerald?" Afton prompted with a sigh, feeling even more inadequate than usual. But unfortunately, she was right, he knew he couldn't do this by himself. It did also seem as if this only happened due to Andre's reckless behavior, rushing in without listening to what the rest of the team had to say. Perhaps for now, pushing forward would be alright…they just needed a little more time.
"The Hand Unit wants us to finally look at a bot," Hedy said. "Something happened to Funtime Freddy since yesterday. So we need to get over there. I don't know what to look for so you need to go, but not alone. Andre stays here to keep an eye on the other rooms while you, me, and Alex sneak around to Funtime Foxy's room from the hallways, then we can get through the room while Ruby goes through the vent and distracts the fox."
"Why do I need to go?" Alex asked.
"To push me," Hedy said. She strained a smile at her friend. "And we might need more hands with the bear..." Ideally, she would prefer to keep Alex out of harm's way. But if they were careful...
"You could stay here," Afton suggested, though even he sounded like he would prefer Hedy came.
Ruby snorted. "Good luck telling her what to do," she muttered, rotating her shoulder a bit to try and loosen the tense muscles a little.
"You're insane," Andre said.
"Well, you don't have to worry about it since we're leaving you here," Hedy snapped.
"Alone?!"
Hedy wordlessly handed him her clunkier taser. "If you think something is coming from the other rooms, point your flashlight through the window and flash it like crazy." She and Ruby shared a glance.
Ruby making a face. If that happened, then the teen knew she was the one who was going to have to save the man. Again. Not that he would be grateful about it since he certainly didn't seem now.
She wasn't going to deny that it was a risk, leaving the most vulnerable of them alone in the control room that had vents to everywhere else. But he would be less of a risk here than out there with them.
He'd also be useless probably since he seemed like he had a really low pain tolerance. He was barely moving his arm and was still flinching. He looked a bit pale. Hopefully he wasn't going to pass out. Between the three of them, it would be very difficult to drag his unconscious body to the outside.
Hedy and Ruby continued to eye each other, each thinking the same thing and neither happy about it. If something came for him, Ruby could probably get to him in time. And Timmy would stay with the man. They didn't even need to ask. He was too kind to be comfortable leaving him alone even if he was probably also mad about Ruby getting hurt to save him.
"This is kinda getting insane, Hedy..." Alex admitted. "We...were actually trying to go work on a bot when another tried to kill one of us?"
"There's got to be a reason," Hedy said.
"But we don't know that reason," Alex pointed out.
"We're not going to figure it out sitting here," Hedy said, a touch softer, sympathetic to Alex's fear.
Ruby was standing next to the vent now, shifting restlessly. She'd already gone through her bag and grabbed what she needed.
"When you know what you're doing, it's really not all that dangerous," she said flippantly. "When you're not an idiot of course."
Andre opened his mouth to snap something.
"Save your strength," Afton said, mostly to avoid another argument. He could understand why Hedy was so upset over the teenager getting hurt because of Andre's reckless decision. But a fight wouldn't help any of them.
"Hedy, I don't know about this," Alex said anxiously.
"Just stay with me and you'll be okay," Hedy promised. She managed a smile at her friend. "Don't run off on your own or anything."
"I'll keep her off you. Just go," Ruby shooed Alex towards Hedy. The teen was bouncing in place now.
"Give us about a minute, then make a lot of noise so we can hear when it's safe to come in," Hedy said.
"I really have to voice my disapproval of this," Afton said, eyeing Ruby as he held the door open for Hedy.
Ruby rolled her eyes at him and turned to face the vent, picking up her bat again and tapping it against her leg.
"See you in a bit. Oh, and ignore the screams of frustration you're likely to hear. Do you think I can get her to swear?"
That seemed to worry Afton more but Hedy snorted and gestured for him to follow. They didn't want to dawdle for too long. Even Ruby had a limit.
Once they were gone, Ruby waited the required minute, ignoring Andre's glares. When she reached sixty second though, the teenager grinned widely to herself before diving into the vent with more than a bit of eagerness.
She wanted to play. She'd been dying to play since arriving here.
Ballora didn't really give her what she was looking for, but the foxes usually did.
Once on the other side, she clicked her flashlight on. She carried a flashlight that wasn't as bright as Hedy's since she considered it cheating to use against the foxes. It still worked to give her a general understanding of the area.
Absently she noted that the room was built weirdly. It wasn't a rectangular shape like the plans showed. The walls were curved. It would be near impossible to get to the other side safely in the dark.
"Come on fox. Let's dance," she whispered as her light landed on the surprised bot.