A/N: I'm surprised that I've still been able to get out these chapters weekly. I don't expect this fortunate trend to survive even as early as next month, however, and it definitely won't be the case next week. Anyways, on with Curse of Dreadbear!
Person: Yeah, it's the Corn Maze. There's no real point in hiding it much longer when it's so obvious.
1 A: Thanks! And yeah, I had no idea this fic would turn out nearly long as it did (though the introduction of Help Wanted and all the stuff beyond that certainly had something to do with it).
Killunatsume: Yeah…as amazing as The Hunchback of Notre Dame was, it wouldn't have been the best movie to introduce Disney to the kids with for that reason.
As for TOYSHNK being whoever's possessing Golden Freddy, I know that's a common theory but I'm not as convinced by it as some other people are, even if it is one of the more probable ones out there.
Jack0Lanterns: Don't worry, we're done with the Plushbabies for real this time XD. I don't increase the brightness for FNaF in general because it would kinda ruin the game a bit for me and because it fucks with the creepy and dark atmosphere. The Plushbabies were the exception because I couldn't give any less of a fuck about beating that level fairly, and neither does Liz.
Ohma flame: I guess you can?
MegaMaster78: Everyone hates Plushbabies lmao. And I have something a bit…different…planned for Corn Maze.
Properman: That's probably because the last few chapters have focused more on Mike and Nightmare, and the nature of the Help Wanted chapters usually focuses on 1 ghost kid at a time (with Jeremy being the most prevalent since he was the one who nearly got fucked over by Glitchtrap). Gabe will have his most dedicated Curse of Dreadbear chapter for sure.
Thanatos D.E.M.: Having Dreadbear and Grim Foxy be "Those Two Guys" is the Curse of Dreadbear chapters is probably one of the best ideas I've ever had XD
AlchemyWriter: There's some catharsis that comes from cheating the Plushkin Patch with the maximum brightness trick, so it's not all bad this time :D
Fnaffan418: If you're talking about the 1 level that will be blocked until all the other ones are completed, then yeah.
Chapter 140 – Curse of Dreadbear Part 2
"You don't look very happy," Rockstar Bonnie observed as Circus Baby took off the VR headset.
"That's because I had to deal with the Plushbabies again," Circus Baby grumbled. Then, her eyes brightened considerably. "At least I got to cheat the level this time!"
"That must've been satisfying as hell," Rockstar Freddy commented.
"You have no idea," the clown animatronic replied. She turned to Rockstar Foxy. "The next level I unlocked is a Pirate Ride level starring Foxy," she reported, holding out the VR headset. "I'm assuming you'll want to do that one?"
"Oh, hell yeah!" Rockstar Foxy exclaimed, all but snatching the VR headset out of Circus Baby's hands. "Thanks! I'm off to go on an adventure!" he declared, nearly jamming the device on his head.
"He takes this way too seriously," the Security Puppet muttered with a shake of her head, but by now Rockstar Foxy had stopped caring. The moment the game loaded (with Liz fortunately having the foresight to reset the brightness back to normal), Fritz immediately made his way over to the Curse of Dreadbear main level hub, taking a few moments to admire his surroundings.
"Holy crap, this stuff looks badass!" Fritz exclaimed, before his eyes fell on the "Pirate Ride" level. Sure enough, the Foxy in full pirate attire was feature on the icon, as if it were personally inviting him. "Hell yeah, let's get this party started!"
The former Foxy inhabitant quickly read over the instructions, figuring that it was a shooting game of some kind. His speculations were quickly confirmed as the level loaded, and immediately Fritz was blown away by what he was seeing. He was standing (sitting?) in a cart of some kind, one that had a gun or cannon extending out of the front. The cart itself was similar to ones Foxy had seen on roller coasters, though this one had two protrusions coming out of the front that reminded him a bit of Freddy's ears. The entire location also reminded Fritz a bit of a roller coaster station, albeit one that seemed rather old-fashioned, and to his left he could see part of the farmyard that made up the game's environment underneath the night sky.
But what really mattered to Fritz was the Foxy animatronic to his immediate right, the moment the spotlight shined on it. This wasn't the decrepit, damaged animatronic that had been hidden behind the Pirate's Cove curtain forever. Rather, it was the pirate fox animatronic in his prime, complete with a black pirate hat on his head and a blue uniform the color of the sea that gave him the appearance of a regal pirate captain. The improved Foxy was standing in front of a backdrop split between sea and sky, completing his new look.
"Holy shit…" Fritz breathed, staring up at his favorite animatronic in awe. "Did Nightmare come up with this? Or did he find this look somewhere else and put it into the game?" Either way, his opinion of the demon lord (or at the very least, his work) skyrocketed, especially if it turned out to be the former.
"Welcome aboard Cap'n Foxy's Pirate Adventure!" Foxy greeted him, moving around slightly as he did so. "Ye can help me with this here adventure by shooting the targets with that there hand cannon." As if on cue, a board next to the entrance of the ride lit up, showing four different targets and their respective point values. 25 for blue, 50 for green, 75 for yellow, and 100 for pink. "Do yer best, or I'll send ye to Davy Jones's Locker! For yer safety, keep yer hands inside the ride at all times. Or you'll end up like me! Heh heh heh heh heh…"
"Oh my God, this is gonna be awesome!" Fritz cheered as the cart began to move. He entered a tunnel that was all but pitch black, but lit up by numerous stars glowing faintly around him. Though he couldn't actually feel the cart, he was able to see it move to the right and up a ramp, moving in a manner similar to that of a roller coaster. "Man, if only a roller coaster like this actually existed," he thought.
Before he could think anything else, a pop-up suddenly appeared out of nowhere in front of him. "Ahoy!" Foxy's voice greeted him, the pirate smiling at him while holding a telescope
"Ack!" Fritz jolted a bit, before relaxing once he realized that it was just a pop-up and not something that could lethally jumpscare him like an animatronic. "There isn't anything that can actually kill me here, right?" he muttered.
He waited until the cart passed through the tunnel of stars and into a larger room, where he could see the faint outlines of things despite the darkness. "Set sail for treasure!" Foxy declared, and the room suddenly lit up as calm and soothing music began to play around him. He could see several cardboard cutouts in front of him and to the left, cutouts in the shape of waves, clouds, birds, and a ship with targets on all of them.
"Oh shit!" Fritz exclaimed as he realized that now was the time for him to act. The former Foxy inhabitant immediately began aiming at the targets and shooting at them, aiming from right to left. He had reacted relatively quickly and was actually able to hit most of the targets, though he missed one of the yellow targets on the birds, earning him a total of 350 points. "Not a bad start," he thought as the lights shut off and the cart started moving again. This time, the cart moved only a short distance, into another larger room.
The setting was similar to the last one, only more turbulent. The clouds had lightning bolts coming out of them, and the ship and waves were both rocking when they had been serene before. The sounds of wind, rain, and lightning were also playing around Fritz, signaling an incoming storm.
"Batten down the hatches! A storm's a-brewin!" Foxy ordered. Fritz got to work shooting the targets, of which there were less than in the previous stage. This time, he was able to shoot all of the targets on the clouds, the barrels, and the ship.
"Got them!" Fritz smirked as he waited for the ride to move on. Instead, however, an airhorn blasted around him, and all of the target lights lit back up as a wooden sign saying "Bonus Round" started flashing. "Oh shit, a bonus round? Hell yeah!" he grinned as he fired on all the targets once again. Once again, he was able to hit all the targets, bringing his total score up to 800 from the 2 sets of 225 points he was able to score.
"So if I hit all the targets in the room I get to hit all of the targets a second time," Fritz thought as the ride moved on. Part of him had been hoping he'd be able to get a third shot at the targets, though he figured that the game wouldn't be that generous. "I better make sure I hit all the targets then, I can get a ton of points from that!"
The cart moved on, but the sounds of the storm didn't stop. The reason why became immediately clear in the next room, which showed the ship rocking on the waves with two large green tentacles emerging out of the water and trying to grab it. "What the hell?"
"This be no normal storm!" Foxy shouted. "This be the kraken!"
"The Kraken? Oh shit!" Fritz exclaimed as he started firing his cannon again. There were more targets compared to the last room, but fortunately almost all of them were centralized on the ship or immediately around it, with the farthest one away being on a singular cloud. Because of this, Fritz was able to shoot all of the targets, triggering another bonus round. By the time he had cleared all the targets in his second run, he had increased his score all the way to 1350 from the 2 sets of 275 points.
"Is Foxy going to fight the Kraken?" the former Foxy inhabitant asked eagerly as the ride moved on. His hopes were answered a few seconds later, as the next room showed Foxy swinging from his ship, attacking the Kraken by swinging a sword at it.
"Take that, ye scurvy mongrel!" Foxy growled at the Kraken as he attacked it.
"Go get him, Foxy!" Fritz encouraged as he fired at the targets once again. Most of them were once again centralized, this time around the battle between the Kraken and Foxy, but now the Kraken's tentacles and Foxy's sword were swinging back and forth, weaving around each other and blocking the targets for brief moments. Fritz quickly fired a ball on the blue target on Foxy's rudder, then began firing frenziedly at the battle, trying to hit as many targets as possible. Fritz was barely able to hit all of them just as the scene ended, earning himself a third bonus round that he knew full well he had only won because he had gotten lucky with his haphazard firing. He wasn't quite as fortunate the second time around, however, as he missed a yellow target, giving him 625 points to a total of 1975 points.
The room darkened, and Foxy yelled "Yarrrr!" as the cart moved on. The lights flashed briefly, revealing Foxy swinging on a rope in the clouds with a single yellow target. "Fire in the hole!" the pirate fox shouted. Fritz tried to fire on him and hit the target, but it had taken him by surprise, and Foxy was already gone before he could get the chance to so much as aim.
"Awwww…" Fritz groaned as the doors in front of him opened, leading outside and onto a track that ran parallel to the building. To the left was the distant outline of a woods underneath the night sky, while to the right was a mural covering the entire wall that showed the battle between Foxy and the Kraken that he had just witnessed.
"This needs to be a real thing," Fritz thought as the cart chugged lazily forward on the track. "This ride needs to be a real thing. Like, holy crap, this is the most fun I've had in a long time!" Obviously, there would be no way for a video game to recreate an actual ride in an amusement park, but as far as the ghost child was concerned this was pretty damn close to it.
A wide door at the far end of the track opened, leading back in. The cart turned right as it went back into the building…and plunged downward, right into the jaws of the Kraken. It was a hideous monstrosity with black, soulless eyes, tentacles flying all around, and a mouth full of razor sharp teeth that led into a vortex of swirling blue mist clearly representing water. A vortex that Fritz was about to fall in.
"WOOOOOOOOO!" Fritz cheered in delight as the cart plunged into the Kraken's mouth, and the monster let out a bestial roar. Once he passed through the gate of the Kraken's mouth, Fritz found himself surrounded by an "underwater-themed" environment, complete with green-tinted seaweed, light blue bubbles, and pink jellyfish with eyes that reminded Fritz of Chica's cupcake. The most notable decorations were a Toy Chica mermaid and a Foxy with bubbles blowing out of his mouth at the end of this section, the latter trying to swim while holding his breath.
"I guess Foxy's getting himself a girlfriend now…heh heh heh," Fritz chuckled at his own little joke as he moved on to the next, and arguably largest, room he had been in so far. The underwater scene was still very much present, with sets of seaweed, coral, a sunken ship to the right, and most interestingly a treasure chest to the left that was being fought over by two ghostly pirates, one with Bonnie's face and one with Freddy's.
"Ghost pirates!" Foxy exclaimed, caught off-guard by the unexpected sight.
"Time to get firing!" Fritz thought. He fired on all of the blue targets scattered throughout the plant life, and as he did so he noticed that every time he hit a blue target, it caused another part of the scenery to change. Hitting the blue targets to the left of the ghost pirates caused crabs to move from behind the scenery, each of them showing a green target. While hitting the blue targets to the right revealed schools of fish that carried two sets of higher targets. Unfortunately, Fritz was taken by surprise by the different mechanics of this room compared to the others, and he was unable to hit all of them in time. Still, he was able to get 275 points from the room, bringing his total up to 2200 points.
"I'm going to have to remember how that works the next time I come here," Fritz thought as the cart moved forward. He had a feeling that the ride was gonna come to an end soon, something that was confirmed with the next room.
Foxy was standing on an island, grinning as he held a birthday cake in his right hand. The Kraken's tentacle was next to him, this time with a birthday hat on it. There was also a pile of gift boxes stacked up to Foxy's left, and multiple sets of colored balloons around both of them.
"The real treasure was friendship all along! Happy Birthday!" Foxy declared, having seemingly made peace with the Kraken.
"Happy Birthday Foxy," Fritz returned with a grin on his face as the cart led him back out into the station where he had started.
"Now – let's see how ye did!" the fully dressed Foxy animatronic told him. To his left, Foxy could see a scoreboard with different ranks: Bilge Rat, Scallywag, Buccaneer, First Mate, Captain, and Admiral. To Fritz's satisfaction, he had managed to score all the way up to Buccaneer on his first try…though that still left 3 ranks left to go.
"Wait a minute…I did all that, and only got the third lowest rank?" he wondered in disbelief. "Even if I'd hit all the targets, there's no way that that would fill up 3 whole ranks. I have to be missing something…but what the hell am I missing?"
It was too late to figure that out in this run, however, as the game had already taken him to the same "Prize Won" room that it had taken Liz. Fritz took a few moments to admire the scenery around him like his sister had, before turning open the gift box. When it opened, he was treated with an ominous figurine of a fiery, demonic Chica holding a Jack-O-Lantern instead of her cupcake, her mouth filled with razor-sharp fangs and her eyes glowing with a cruel and fiery orange light.
"Is this…Nightmare Chica?" Fritz wondered. But something about that didn't seem right. Liz had told them about what Michael had been through some time ago, and as far as he could remember the Nightmare Chica that had tortured her original older brother had never been fiery…or carried a pumpkin.
"I'll figure this out later," he decided. First, he needed to play through the level again and try to see what he had missed. When he went back to the menu screen, however, he was surprised to discover that the third level in "Afraid of the Dark" still remained unlocked, even though he had just completed the one before it. "Do I need a higher score to unlock this? Or is this that one level Jeremy mentioned that won't unlock until we beat all the others first?"
Since there was no way for him to know the answer to that question right now, Fritz instead brushed it out of his mind and instead went right back into the Pirate Ride. He didn't particularly care about playing any of the other levels, not when Foxy's adventure was calling for him to play it again and again. This time, he was determined to get as many points as possible, as well as keep his eyes peeled open for anything that he might have missed. His run went similarly to how it went last time, up until the stage where the Kraken started attacking the ship. Everything was the same as how he remembered it, except that there was now a Helpy wearing a sailor's cap pointing to the right near the ground to the left. A seemingly minor feature, except for one brief but crucial detail.
It had not been there last time.
"Something new?" Fritz wondered. "Or am I just imagining things?" Fritz began firing at the targets, the balls ricocheting off in crazy and unpredictable manners, and as one of them hit the Helpy it turned around and pointed to the left instead. Taking note of this (which only added to his suspicions that the Helpy was definitely new), Fritz shot all the targets a second time in the bonus round before making sure the Helpy was pointing to the left before he moved on. He wondered if he was about to see Foxy battling the Kraken again, but something told him this would not be the case.
And indeed, his suspicions were correct. The cart was not taking him to the battle. And the music that had been playing around him had fallen silent, completely silent. Leaving only the faint whirring of the moving cart.
"Uhhh…what the hell is going on?" Fritz asked nervously. The doors in front of him swung open, revealing something he wasn't expecting at all to see.
He was now in a hallway, decorated in a style that he hadn't seen personally for decades and yet was still shockingly familiar to him. The walls looked as though they had been taken straight out of Freddy Fazabear's pizzeria, complete with the pizzas on the walls and the red and white checkered line that split the gray top half of the wall from the darker bottom half. He was still on a track, though, and for the first time he saw the pink targets that had been worth 100 points.
"Oh, sweet!" Fritz exclaimed as he shot every pink target he could find. He had been wondering why he hadn't seen any the first time he had gone through the level, and it looked like he had found the answer. The cart was moving slowly enough that he had enough time to shoot all the targets despite being taken by surprise, and as he shot the last target it turned to the right and entered a dark hallway, stopping in front of a large metal door with a security camera pointing down at him from above. There was a whirring sound that reminded Fritz of a garage door opening, and the door to the right suddenly opened into a smaller room.
A room that had three pink targets, a door close switch on the wall next to him…and the fiery demonic Chica he had seen earlier as an actual figure, only now fully-sized…and marching towards him.
"Shit! Shit! SHIT!" Fritz's jaw dropped in horror. The former Foxy inhabitant tried to shoot all the pink targets, but he had been caught completely flatfooted by the presence of the monstrous Chica in a ride that he had thought was safe. He managed to hit the 3 pink targets, but he was too slow to hit the red button on the wall. The demonic Chica reached his cart and roared in his face, her empty eye sockets glowing malevolently with unholy light and her beak close enough that Fritz could clearly see the rows of razor-sharp fangs in her mouth.
"YOU WERE SO CONVINCED YOU WERE OUT OF HARM'S WAY," the demonic Chica's raspy voice gleefully mocked him as the screen dissolved into static, "AND WE CAN'T HAVE THAT, NOW, CAN WE?"
"What the hell?" Fritz spluttered. "Why is there a fucking NIGHTMARE in the middle of this ride?" He didn't have time to think as he arrived at the Game Over cemetery, where Dreadbear and Grim Foxy were waiting for him just as they had been with Liz.
"WELCOME TO THE CEMETERY, LITTLE BRAT," Dreadbear greeted him with his deep, menacing voice. "YOU ARE NOT THE FIRST ONE OF YOUR FAMILY TO JOIN US HERE."
"YOUR SISTER HAD TO DEAL WITH THE WORST OF THE NEW LEVELS," Grim Foxy growled, Fritz internally wincing at the mention of the Plushbabies. "COME, TELL US WHAT FATE BEFELL UPON YOU, LAD."
"I died in Pirate Ride because a goddamn Nightmare showed up in the middle of my ride!" Fritz complained.
At this, both Dreadbear and Grim Foxy burst into laughter. "HEH HEH HEH HEH HEH…" Grim Foxy's chuckled, a harsh, guttural, and mocking sound. "OUR MASTER'S LITTLE PRANK HAS CLAIMED ITS FIRST VICTIM!"
"ADDING INFERNAL BONNIE AND CHICA TO THE RIDE WAS THE BEST IDEA EVER," Dreadbear agreed, his laughter booming across the cemetery. "THE SURPRISE ATTACK IS ALWAYS THE DEADLIEST, AFTER ALL…"
"You guys are DICKS!" Fritz complained, earning another round of laughs from the two monstrous animatronics.
"IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE, LAD," Grim Foxy commented once they had calmed down. "YOU COULD HAVE BEEN JUMPSCARED BY FOXY."
"Wait, really?" Fritz wondered. "He didn't jumpscare me at all when I played through the level the first time. Hell, I got a little over 2000 points and won Buccaneer rank!"
"THAT IS HOW THE RIDE IS DESIGNED, YES," Dreadbear agreed. "TO BE HONEST, OUR MASTER WAS RUNNING OUT OF IDEAS ON HORROR LEVELS TO INCLUDE, SO ORIGINALLY HE THREW IN THE PIRATE RIDE JUST FOR A LAUGH. THEN HE GOT THE BRILLIANT IDEA OF ADDING INFERNAL BONNIE AND INFERNAL CHICA INTO THE LEVEL, A FUN LITTLE SURPRISE TO THE UNSUSPECTING." The Frankenstein Freddy's eyes glowed with amusement. "THOUGH THAT IS STILL A MUCH MORE DIGNIFIED DEATH THAN BEING JUMPSCARED BY FOXY."
"TO BE JUMPSCARED BY FOXY, LAD, YOU WOULD HAVE HAD TO SCORE A BILGE RAT RANKING," Grim Foxy explained. "IN OTHER WORDS, YOU WOULD HAVE HAD TO SCORE LESS THAN A THOUSAND POINTS. A STAGGERING FAILURE TO ACHIEVE EVEN A BASIC PERFORMANCE, LAD, WHEN YOU CAN SCORE NEARLY HALF OF THAT VALUE IN THE FIRST STAGE ALONE SHOULD YOU SECURE THE BONUS ROUND."
"IT WOULD BE A MASSIVE DISPLAY OF INCOMPETENCE," Dreadbear agreed, "ONE WHICH WE WOULD HAVE ENDLESSLY AND RIGHTFULLY MOCKED YOU FOR. FORTUNATELY FOR YOU, YOUR DEATH IN THE PIRATE RIDE WAS NOT FROM FOXY, THOUGH WE STILL FIND IT HIGHLY ENTERTAINING HOW OUR SISTER TOOK YOU BY SURPRISE."
Fritz rolled his eyes. "Thanks," he muttered. He looked up at Dreadbear, remembering his thoughts from earlier. "What is that Chica anyway?" he asked. "I don't think she's a Nightmare."
"SHE IS AND SHE ISN'T, LAD," Grim Foxy growled. "THERE ARE TWO FORMS THAT WE ASSUME WHILE MASQUERADING AS THOSE ANIMATRONICS. A FORM MORE SUITED TO THE DARKNESS, AND A FORM THAT REFLECTS OUR INFERNAL NATURE. THE FORMER IS WHAT YOU WOULD CONSIDER AS NIGHTMARE CHICA, LAD, WHILE THE LATTER WOULD BEST BE DESCRIBED AS INFERNAL CHICA."
"ALTHOUGH, GIVEN THAT WE ARE CLOAKING OURSELVES IN THE HALLOWEEN THEME THAT OUR MASTER IS USING TO JUSTIFY OUR PRESENCE IN THIS GAME, PERHAPS THE NAME…JACK-O-CHICA WILL DO," Dreadbear added. "YES…JACK-O-CHICA AND JACK-O-BONNIE IS HOW I BELIEVE THEY ARE CALLED IN THE GAME ITSELF."
"Jack-O-Bonnie and Jack-O-Chica," Fritz repeated. "Got it." He turned to look at Grim Foxy. "So…does that mean you're Jack-O-Foxy?"
"GRIM FOXY," the demonic animatronic replied, a dangerous glint in his eyes. "AND YOU WOULD DO WELL TO REMEMBER THAT."
Fritz gulped and nodded to show he understood.
"THE HIDDEN PATHWAY THAT YOU DISCOVERED IN THIS GAME WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE," Dreadbear decided to steer the topic of conversation back to the Pirate Ride. "THERE ARE MANY SUCH PATHWAYS, AND MORE WILL UNLOCK AS YOU ACHIEVE HIGHER SCORES. THESE PATHWAYS ARE FILLED WITH THE POINTS YOU NEED TO ACHIEVE THE HIGHER RANKS…BUT OUR BROTHER AND SISTER LURK WITHIN THEM, READY TO BRING YOUR RUN INTO AN UNPLEASANT END."
"…there's no way to avoid them if I want to get the higher scores, is there?" Fritz asked the question that he already knew the answer to, no matter how much it annoyed him.
"NONE WHATSOEVER, LAD," Grim Foxy confirmed gleefully.
"…I figured as much," he muttered.
"THERE IS ONE LAST, BUT IMPORTANT DETAIL THAT WE SHOULD MENTION. THERE IS A RATHER…UNFORTUNATE BUG IN THE GAME. THE SCORE COUNTER CAN ONLY HOLD A VALUE UP TO 9975. IF YOU GO OVER THAT VALUE, THE SCORE COUNTER WILL RESET ITSELF TO 0 AND COUNT AS IF YOU HAD SCORED 0 POINTS UP UNTIL THAT POINT," Dreadbear warned. "THIS WILL MOST LIKELY ARTIFICIALLY PLACE YOU IN THE BILGE RAT RANKING, WITH A JUMPSCARE FROM FOXY AS A RESULT."
"Wait, seriously?" Fritz asked incredulously. "Nightmare didn't notice a problem that big? How did he drop the ball that hard when usually he's on point with crap like this?"
For once, the demons seemed almost…sheepish…in their mannerisms. "OUR MASTER DIDN'T REALIZE THAT THE SCORE COUNTER WOULD RESET ITSELF UNTIL AFTER HE HAD ALREADY COMPLETED THE GAME IN FULL, LAD," Grim Foxy reluctantly admitted. "AND BY NOW, HE DOESN'T PARTICULARLY CARE ENOUGH TO FIX THAT LITTLE MISTAKE. IN FACT, I'M CERTAIN PART OF HIM WILL FIND IT AMUSING TO SEE MORE POOR FOOL GO OVER 10000 POINTS, ONLY TO GET SCREWED OVER BY FOXY AT THE END, LAD."
Fritz made a face. It seemed that, despite the discipline Nightmare normally enforced upon himself and the Nightmares, he couldn't resist the urge to indulge in a little pettiness now and then.
"WE ARE INFORMING YOU OF THIS AS A COURTESY," Dreadbear declared. "TO TASTE DEATH BECAUSE OF YOUR OWN FAILINGS IS ONE THING, AND WE WILL NOT HESITATE TO MOCK YOU FOR IT. BUT LOSING BECAUSE OF A FAULTY MECHANIC THAT IS NO FAULT OF YOUR OWN IS A DIFFERENT MATTER ENTIRELY."
"…thanks…" Fritz mumbled. He had been thinking about trying to reach above 10000 points once he heard it was even possible to get that many, but the monstrous animatronics had quickly crushed his enthusiasm with their warning. Still, he was grateful for alerting him in advance, since there was no way he would have figured that bug by himself without experiencing it firsthand.
With nothing left to say, the former Foxy inhabitant restarted the game and played through the same segment until he was passing through the same Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria-based hallway he had gone through last time. This time, he was on alert, looking to see which door opened. The right door opened first, but unlike last time there was no Jack-O-Chica waiting to attack him. It was completely empty, save for three pink targets and the red button to close the door. With nothing to attack him, Fritz took his time shooting the targets before closing the door, watching with satisfaction as his score increased by 300. He whirled around to face the left door, which, as he predicted, now hid Jack-O-Bonnie. The demonic animatronic tried to attack, but this time Fritz was ready, and he was able to shoot all 3 pink targets and hit the door switch to shut the door in front of Jack-O-Bonnie before he could reach his cart.
The front door opened, revealing another segment of the hallway identical to the first one. This time, it was the left door that opened first, and the left room that only had the targets. Fritz happily grabbed the free points, then swiveled around to prepare for the other room. Jack-O-Chica was there, but Fritz was ready and once again managed to secure all 3 points for himself before shutting the door.
There was one more segment of the hallway left to go, and Fritz carefully watched both doors out of the corner of his eye. The right one opened first, but unlike the other 2 times, it had a Jack-O animatronic waiting to attack him right from the start. Fritz briefly had a moment of panic, but recovered much more quickly than he had the first time. However, the hesitation cost him slightly, as he was only able to hit 2 pink targets before he was forced to hit the red switch to prevent Jack-O-Chica from reaching him. "Dang it! Missed one," Fritz mumbled as he turned around to face the left door. When it opened, there was nobody inside, and Fritz was able to shoot the three targets at his leisure. Once he shut the door, the door in front of him opened one last time, and the cart moved into another pizzeria-style hallway with a long window peering into the office, reminding Fritz a bit of the FNaF 3 office window. There were also two more pink targets that the former Foxy inhabitant could shoot along the way, which he did so easily.
"Where am I gonna end up?" Fritz wondered. "I'm pretty sure I went far away from where the ride normally goes." His question was answered a second later, as the track led to the open stretch of ride in the outside that was close to the end of the ride, right after the battle between Foxy and the Kraken. Fritz grinned in anticipation as he waited for the Kraken to devour his cart, and then he played through the Underwater Ghost Pirate section that was the last shooting area. By now, he understood how that section worked, and he was able to hit all the targets both in the normal and in the bonus round. Altogether, the pink targets had helped raise his score all the way up to 4850, with over half of that value coming from the secret hallway.
"There's no way I didn't go up a rank," he thought as Captain Foxy greeted him out at the start/end of the ride. To his satisfaction, he had indeed gone up in rank…but only by 1 rank, to First Mate. "There has to be more secret passages, right? Dreadbear and Grim Foxy mentioned there were more than one, so there has to be more than one."
Fritz impatiently opened up his prize, some kind of candy that he couldn't even be bothered to remember the name of, and immediately went back into the Pirate Ride. He played through the ride again, including the secret hallway with the Jack-O animatronics and the pink targets, looking for any more Helpys that could point to secret areas. This time, the new sailor Helpy didn't appear until the underwater segment with the battling ghost pirates. Fritz shot all the targets twice over, and then made sure to shoot the Helpy so that it was pointing left before the cart started moving again.
As he expected, the cart didn't move on to Foxy and the Kraken celebrating a birthday together. Instead, it moved into a tunnel that was pitch black, falling into complete silence just like the first hidden passageway had. Eventually, the area immediately in front of him lit up slightly, just enough for Fritz to see two green targets that he shot for a quick 100 points.
When the doors in front of him opened, he found himself in another area reminiscent of Freddy Fazbear's pizzeria, although this time the design was very different from the secret passage he had been in previously. This time, he was in a very long hallway, and the hall to his right had a large open window that stretched almost the entire length of the hallway. Though he couldn't make out all the details, it looked as though the window opened into a kitchen of some kind, likely representative of the kitchen in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. At the very end of the hallway was a door…where Jack-O-Chica stood, waiting to attack anything that dared to come across her line of sight.
"Oh, shit…" Fritz groaned. "What do I do? What do I do?" As he tried to look around for something he could use to stop what seemed like an inevitable Jack-O-Chica attack, a strange panel shaped like an X began to scroll across the hallway right behind the window, moving in the same direction as his cart and at a similar speed. The bottom two segments of the X each had a pink target on it, while the top segments had red square panels that looked similar to the ones that had closed the doors on the Jack-O animatronics back in the Hallway.
"Screw it, I'm dead if this doesn't work anyway," Fritz thought as he fired at each section of the X, hitting the pink targets and the red panels. When the second one was hit, there was a metal clanging, and to his immense relief Jack-O-Chica turned around from the doorway and walked back into the kitchen, leaving him clear and free of danger. With the threat of the demonic animatronic out of the way, Fritz could take things easy now, taking the time to shoot any pink targets that he saw and admiring the detail that had gone into recreating the kitchen from the old pizzeria. When he passed the doorway, he saw Jack-O-Chica facing the opposite side away from him, distracted by whatever mechanism he had triggered earlier and oblivious to Fritz as he passed by.
"See you later!" Fritz taunted as he turned around to face the front again, wondering what other threats he would face from Jack-O-Bonnie or Jack-O-Chica. When the door in front of him opened, however, he found himself in a storage room of some kind. There were a few metal carts scattered here and there, but what mattered to Fritz more was the balloon panel decorations on the walls and the stubs on the floor, all of which showed pink targets that Fritz could fire at for free points. "Holy shit, look at all of these points!" he exclaimed as he shot every target he could find. "And there's no demon animatronic to stop me, either! Gimme, gimme, gimme them all!"
The former Foxy inhabitant easily shot all of them down before the cart moved on to the next room, which was another storage area that was even larger than the one he had just left. This time, there several large wooden panels that Fritz recognized as set pieces from the actual Pirate Ride game, only these ones had been either abandoned or set aside for backup. What mattered to him, however, was the fact that there were even more pink targets scattered around on the set pieces and the walls, more free points for him to pick up without any risk of danger whatsoever.
"Man, my score is LOADED compared to what it was before!" Fritz declared with a grin on his face. His score was now over 6000, easily double what it had been the last time he had played when he had cleared through just the office hallway. As he shot the last pink target, the door in front of him opened, leading back outside into the night. Unlike the stretch of open area that was part of the main ride, however, the area he was passing through now was a hidden, inner part of the building the ride was taking part in, and save for a few lanterns giving off faint illumination it was way too dark for Fritz to see any details.
"Where am I going?" Fritz wondered as the cart moved through the darkness. "I don't think I'm anywhere near the end of the level…" Just as he was beginning to fear that maybe he had screwed up somewhere, the cart made a left turn, entering the ascending ramp surrounded by stars that made up the very beginning of the ride.
"Wait, what the heck? I'm back at the beginning?" he asked incredulously. As the Foxy pop-up appeared in front of him, the full implications hit him like a jumpscaring animatronic. "Wait…do I…do I get to play through all the sections AGAIN?"
His suspicions were confirmed a second later, as the first section showing the peaceful start of Foxy's voyage played again…and all of the targets that made up the segment reappeared. Fritz's eyes bulged and his jaw dropped, before an earsplitting grin spread across his face. "Holy shit! I get to play the whole level twice and get all the points in them A SECOND TIME! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!" The former Foxy inhabitant cackled with delight as he shot at all the targets. "ADMIRAL RANK, HERE I COME, BABY!" he shouted.
While this was mostly true, there was one particular caveat that Fritz wouldn't learn until he reached the Kraken's attack. After firing at all the targets twice over with the bonus round (by now, Fritz had gotten skilled and familiar enough with the shooting sections that he could consistently hit the targets and activate the bonus rounds), he tried to force the sailor Helpy cutout to point left so that he could get another round with the pink targets in the secret path representing the Office. However, the ride didn't go on that path a second time, instead taking the normal route to Foxy's battle with the Kraken. "Awwww…I don't get all those points again?" Fritz mumbled with disappointment. "I guess that makes sense…it would be broken as hell if I could get all those points twice in a row."
Still, he had no issue whatsoever with seeing Foxy's battle with the Kraken and the Underwater ghost pirates again, and by the time he returned to the start of the ride he had reached a score of 8000.
"My score is batshit crazy," Fritz thought. "There's no way I didn't get Admiral rank, absolutely no way!" He watched with anticipation as the lights next to each rank lit up…and an earsplitting grin broke across his face when the light next to "Admiral" lit up as well.
"YESSSSSSSSSSS!" he whooped in delight as the sound of kids cheering played around him. "I'm the best pirate captain in the world!" But his task wasn't done. Though he had gotten the highest rank possible in the game, he still wanted a score above 9000…and he wanted to see if there were any other secret passages left to find in the game. After claiming another prize in the Game Won room (this one being a BB mask), he impatiently re-entered the level. To his prize, there was now a sailor Helpy cutout right at the start of the level, next to the Captain Foxy animatronic.
"Oh, we get to start with a new secret path right away?" Fritz wondered. "Cool!" He shot the Helpy so that it was pointing left, and when the ride started it completely bypassed the star-decorated ramp the ride would normally go to, instead continuing straight into the darkness. There was nothing but pitch black for several seconds, until the cart entered a dimly lit room with metal carts, toolboxes, and a few simple pieces of wooden furniture scattered about. The only part of the room that mattered to Fritz, however, were the pink targets that were scattered all about, targets that Fritz wasted no time in shooting down.
"Ooh, we're getting so many points already!" he thought excitedly as the cart continued to move slowly into a much larger room. This seemed to be a storage of some kind, as it was filled with metal lockers that covered the entire far wall. A few of the lockers had some strange panels with wires coming out of them, with a larger button closer to him to the left.
Before Fritz could fully process what he was seeing, there was a metal thudding sound to his left. The former Foxy inhabitant watched with dread as Jack-O-Bonnie walked into the room, his burning and unholy gaze falling straight on him. The demonic animatronic started to walk towards him, and as he did so the large button next to him lit up. Fritz instinctively shot at it, and to his immense relief Jack-O-Bonnie started retreating backwards, away from his cart. As he did so, the other smaller, rectangular panels he had seen earlier started lighting up as well. Fritz started firing at all of them, and whenever Jack-O-Bonnie started advancing towards him again Fritz shot the big red button to force him back. Eventually, Fritz managed to hit all of the fuses, and the cart started moving past Jack-O-Bonnie, who fruitlessly made one final attempt to catch up to him before disappearing out of sight. Three more pink targets appeared on the pathway that Fritz shot at, before the cart finally returned to…
"Wait a minute!" Fritz exclaimed. "I'm all the way at the underwater part already? I skipped past that much of the ride?" Indeed, he recognized the decorations of kelp and aquatic plant life, the cupcake-based jellyfish, and the Toy Chica mermaid. What made this such an issue for Fritz was that he had only scored 1700 points during that whole segment, a number that the former Foxy inhabitant was absolutely certain was less than the total number of points he could have scored if he had just gone through the normal way. "Oh, crap!" he suddenly realized. "I missed out on that hallway right after the Kraken attack! Can I go at it during my second time?" If he couldn't, he might as well reset the level because he could kiss a 9000+ score good-bye.
Fritz looped back around to the start of the level using the kitchen pathway where Jack-O-Chica had attacked him last time, gaining the points that he had missed out on the last time. By now, he had played the level enough times that he could at the very least secure the bonus round for each section he visited, and to his relief he found that he could still take the Office hallway from the Kraken Attack room by hitting the Helpy. He didn't make any changes in how he played up until the long stretch of track outside of the actual building following the three hallway segments with the rooms that had the pink targets and demonic animatronic attacks.
As the doors opened to the plunge leading down into the Kraken's mouth, Fritz suddenly saw another sailor Helpy right before it. The former Foxy inhabitant barely had time to shoot it before he plunged down into the swirling watery vortex of the Kraken's mouth.
But this time, the area that the descent led to couldn't have been any more different. Instead of the watery world of the last section of Foxy's Pirate Ride, Fritz found himself in a metal corridor that glowed with a fiery orange light. The track quickly turned to the right, and Fritz found himself into a vast chamber composed almost entirely of metal, with metal reactors in the distance and many pipes connecting the reactors and running along the ceiling. It reminded Fritz a bit of the boiler room that he had seen in Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental back when he and the rest of his family had gone to blow up the place, and the fiery orange glow that colored the environment turned the atmosphere from cold and unsettling to downright hellish.
Fritz was so taken aback by the abrupt change in environment that he missed the first two pink targets, and he quickly had to collect himself to fire at the next few that he passed by. "What the …" he mumbled to himself as he fired at any pink targets he could see scattered through the boiler room-esque chamber. "Is this room built over Hell or something? This is definitely the creepiest room out of all of them, no doubt about that." It was also the room that came the closest to making him feel actual fear in this otherwise harmless level, though he'd never admit that out loud.
The cart eventually stopped in a cramped shaft on a platform that reminded Fritz a bit of an elevator. "What's gonna happen next?" Fritz mumbled, half expecting the elevator to rise or fall. Neither happened, however. Instead, the panel in front of him slid open, revealing another chamber. There were more pieces of machinery and pipes, though this time they were arranged as though they were forming pathways that led off to the side. There was only one pink target in the center that Fritz quickly shot for an easy 100 points, but the rest of the targets both on the left and the right were orange in color.
"…I'm about to get attacked, aren't I?" Fritz mumbled. Sure enough, he could fear footsteps approaching, and Jack-O-Bonnie appeared, walking down the left pathway. "Shit."
Remembering the earlier Backroom area where he had repelled Jack-O-Bonnie by hitting the switches, Fritz immediately began firing on the orange targets to his left, sighing with relief as Jack-O-Bonnie retreated with each target hit. His relief was short-lived, however, as Jack-O-Chica also arrived and advanced towards him, this time from the right-hand side. This was the first time since Fritz had unlocked the first, Office-based secret passageway that he had been attacked by both Jack-O-Bonnie and Jack-O-Chica. And unlike that other path, he would now have to deal with both of them at the same time.
"Get away from me! Get the hell away from me!" Fritz shouted as he fired at the orange targets. Every few seconds, he would have to alternate from one side to the other, depending on which Jack-O animatronic was closer to him and which side's orange targets were currently active. None of the orange targets didn't seem to win him any points, which was annoying, but ultimately not nearly as important as staying alive. As Fritz shot the orange targets to force Jack-O-Bonnie and Jack-O-Chica back from their relentless assaults towards his position, he could see the cart backing away ever so slightly, a sign that either it or the elevator might be about to move. Finally, just as Fritz was starting to get worn down from shooting all of the targets over and over again, the elevator panel door in front of him closed, blocking off the Jack-O animatronics for one final time, and the elevator platform began to rise.
"Phew!" the former Foxy inhabitant sighed with relief. "I don't think I could have kept going for much longer…" The fiery glow of the boiler room faded as the elevator platform ascended, leaving behind only darkness. A darkness that was now almost welcome compared to the creepy and unnerving nature of the room he had just left behind. "Where am I gonna end up? I'm not going to pass by the ghost pirates again, am I?"
As the elevator stopped lifting and the cart stopped moving again, he could see faint traces of the underwater section to his right, but the cart wasn't going in that direction. There weren't any pink targets (or any targets at all, for that matter) that he could hit either, so there was nothing he could do but wait. After a few seconds, he could hear the music signaling the triumphant end to Foxy's adventure, but it was muffled and distant, and when the light finally returned he could see that he had gone straight to the end of the ride, back in front of the Captain Foxy animatronic and the scoreboard.
"So if I'd hit that Helpy during my first run through, I would've missed out on the Helpy that sends me back to the start of the ride and missed out on all those points," Fritz thought. Taking the pathway leading to the Backroom with only Jack-O-Bonnie might have caused him to miss out on some points, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the massive point loss that would have come from missing out on Jack-O-Chica's kitchen. He looked down at his shooter's point scoreboard and grinned at the number he saw. 9575 points, a new record.
Once again, the scoreboard lit up all the way to Admiral, proving once and for all that Fritz was a worthy pirate alongside Foxy and that his first Admiral scoring hadn't been a mere fluke. "I know that Fazbear Entertainment fucks up everything it touches," he thought as the game took him over to the "Game Won!" room. "But I really, REALLY want this ride to exist in real life."
Except for the flaming demon animatronics from Hell that waited to attack anybody who crossed their path in the secret passageways. Those were probably best left in the virtual world.
Fritz turned the lever on the gift box, and was rewarded with a Buccaneer Bounty candy that had a picture of Foxy's pirate cutout on it, smiling and holding a telescope. The former Foxy inhabitant stared at the candy, stupefied at the sheer coincidence of getting the one prize most closely correlated to Pirate Ride, before bursting out into laughter.
"Okay," he snickered as he returned to the main menu. "THAT was just perfect."
/
A/N: For a ride that's completely out of left field in a horror game (at least, at first), the Pirate Ride is surprisingly one of the deeper and more complex levels once you start talking about the secret passageways.
And yeah, of course Fritz was the one playing this level. It would be an act of literary malpractice if he wasn't the one playing Pirate Ride. He'll gladly play just this level and no other if it means being able to live his own Foxy's pirate adventure. XD
That's all I have for now. Hope you guys enjoyed!
