Alrighty, here's my take on Poppy Playtime after a quick and rushed watching of playthroughs for chapter 3 and research into the lore and some of the other characters. And I have to say...Chapter 3 is waaaaay more disturbing than the previous two. Eugh.

Anyway, DogDay quickly became my favorite character, even though he supposedly dies via scarabs from The Mummy. And so, I decided to take matters into my own hands and created this "fix-it"/"good ending" version of that scene.

Also, the player is a male ex-employee, Head of Production as a matter of fact (according to fan theories, except that the player is suspected to be female instead), and the characters he'll be paired with are actual creatures that were created from the ground up, instead of human experiments. However, everyone else, like the villains and hostile toys, will remain the same.

This is also cross-posted on AO3, so feel free to head there if you'd like some more tags and the more explicit, smutty version.

Andrew cursed as another "Smiling Critter" plush, or Mini Critter, threw itself at him before he ducked and sent it scurrying away into the cover of darkness with his GrabPack's Flare Hand. He sighed and shook his head before he pushed through a door and descended a spiral staircase. Hopefully, that'd be the last he'd see of those little monsters. Andrew hated dealing with these damned, demonic cretins ever since he set foot into the Playhouse. He hated everything he'd dealt with ever since he received that VHS tape from Poppy several days ago. This place was even more decrepit since his last day almost 10 years ago, and the horrors that were already present back then had apparently only gotten worse, judging by the absurd amount of blood everywhere, from a toy or otherwise.

Andrew Parkinson had started his career at Playtime Co. in 1988 when he was but a starry-eyed, optimistic 18-year-old fresh out of high school. He had a brilliant mind that was noticed by Mr. Elliot Ludwig himself. He was the youngest employee to be promoted to an administrative position at 22; four years of hard work and constantly moving up the ladder had paid off. However, the day he was made Head of Production was also the day that the Bigger Bodies Initiative was introduced by one Dr. Harley Sawyer. The scientist intrigued Andrew with his proposal, and the newly minted Head of Production was 100% on board with it, as Mr. Ludwig had expected of him. Until the actual reality of what was going on behind the scenes of Playtime Co. broke through the delusion clouding Andrew's mind.

What the hell was Harley thinking? No...what was Mr. Ludwig thinking about...about using orphans as experiments for creating living toys? Of course, Andrew was a bright-eyed, open-minded higher-up alongside Mr. Ludwig, Leith Pierre, and Harley Sawyer and was initially intrigued by the concept. But as the years went by, with failure after consecutive failure - and only a handful of successes, Andrew's conscience began to catch up to him. The reality of using orphans to inhabit the toys Playtime Co. created to replace most of the human staff finally broke Andrew. He couldn't take it. No more…

Andrew later resigned after the new initiative had been in effect for some time.

That was in July of 1995, a month before the factory shut down for good.

And now, ten years later and at the age of 35, Andrew found himself back in the place of nightmares, fighting against the creations he had a hand in creating. Was he here to right his past wrongs? To find a sense of salvation and redemption by correcting the mistakes that Ludwig, Pierre, Sawyer, and himself had made? He didn't know for sure, but…Andrew felt he had to do this to save Poppy, Kissy Missy, and whoever else wanted out of this hellhole. His hands were as dirty as Ludwig's, Pierre's, and Sawyer's were, and he was determined to wash them clean.

"You…"

Andrew jumped and looked around, finding himself in a cushioned knock-off of a prison. He was so lost in thought that the man didn't realize he had escaped from the hive of Mini Critters and ended up here, a decrepit place surrounded by walls seemingly made of foam and leather cushions and dimly illuminated by candles. And then there was her. Andrew gawked in horror when his eyes landed on the sorry sight of what was supposed to be DogDay; whatever was left of her, that is.

The orange-and-yellow-furred canine mascot of the original Smiling Critter crew was strung up on the wall, her arms splayed to the sides and secured to the wall behind her via leather straps. Blood coated her lower half, which was missing from the waist down, and splattered the floor and wall; a leather belt was tightly wrapped around her waist to keep her insides from spilling out. Her eyes were a black void and a pair of sizable breasts, stained with blood, dirt, and grime, sprouted from the mascot's chest. Andrew questioned if that design choice should have been reviewed before the Smiling Critters were created.

"... You're Poppy's Angel…" DogDay's voice was gravelly, pained, exhausted. Her eyeless sockets locked onto him whenever she raised her head, even for a brief moment. "...Come to…save us…" She groaned, her arms and legless torso shaking from the strain of talking and lifting her head. "There's… there's nothing left to save. Not here. You're in CatNap's home, Angel. Their home."

Andrew shrugged off his GrabPack, letting it fall to the bloodied floor, and approached DogDay. "I know. I'm trying to find a way out of here. I've been rerouting the power from the other buildings to the generator beneath the statue. Poppy, Missy, and Ollie have been helping me ever since I arrived at Playcare."

DogDay coughed and hacked, and a few drops of blood dripped from the corners of her mouth. She attempted to spit out the rest, but all that came out was a dry sputter. She shook her head and kept her eyeless gaze on Andrew "Then you know…ah…why you can't stay here. A million pairs of eyes are on you right now. Watching, waiting, hungry. They want nothing more than to crawl beneath your skin and eat you from the inside bit by little bit, to fill what feels empty inside themselves." Her head went limp, and she remained silent for a while. Andrew was worried that she had expired on the spot before she suddenly spoke again. "That…thing, that monstrous mockery of my best friend, is not CatNap. He killed her. He worships the Prototype like it's his God. And this is what he does to heretics. Those little toys follow CatNap to avoid the very same fate, and, in turn, they are fed."

"Fed what?" Andrew asked, already dreading the answer.

"You'relooking right at it," DogDay said menacingly, not looking at him as her voice distorted before returning to normal. "We…the others and I…we tried to fight it, the Prototype's control. But we were picked off and fed to those little monsters one by one." She then looked at Andrew one last time with her eyeless sockets and frantically said, "Listen to me! You need to get out of this place! You need to live. You and Poppy can fix this and end the Prototype once and for all; end this…madness, the torment, the–what are you doing!?"

Andrew put on his GrabPack, stepped into the cell, and began undoing DogDay's leather bonds. Once her arms were free, the dying mascot dropped to the floor, crying out in pain. She was then grabbed by the arm and hoisted over Andrew's shoulders. The human looked straight into her eyeless sockets and said, "I'm getting you out of here. I need all the help I can get, and I'm not leaving you here to die."

As soon as the words left his mouth, the muffled pattering of dozens of little feet reached his ears, and a horde of the little monsters poured from the walls of DogDay's cell. As DogDay screamed in terror, Andrew cursed and hobbled away to freedom. The mascot that was his burden protested and attempted to escape from Andrew's grasp, but the on-off bleeding caused by the lack of an abdomen and hanging from her arms for an extended period of time had sapped nearly all of her strength. She was helpless as Andrew carried her through the winding, padded tunnels of the Playhouse. All DogDay could do was voice her desire to be left behind:

"You…can't save everyone, Angel. No…gah…no matter…how hard…you try… P-please…leave…me…to my fate."

"Not a chance," Andrew muttered darkly as he briefly freed his right hand to launch a flare at the horde of Mini Critters blocking his escape, scattering them back into the crevices from whence they crawled. Ugly little fuckers, he thought before continuing on his way. A few twists and turns through padded tunnels and a slide ride later, Andrew found himself at the edge of a sizable gap with an elevator on the other side. He looked down at his feet and saw a launch pad. Quickly switching to this purple hand, Andrew backed away a few paces - being mindful of the little freaks catching up behind him - said to his passenger, "Hold on tight," and broke into a run. Once he reached the pad, he activated the Pack's right hand, launching the human and his living cargo across the gap and onto the lift. Andrew landed awkwardly, his legs buckling as he collapsed with the added weight on his shoulders, sending DogDay rolling across the lift floor. Her pained cries caused the human to wince in sympathy and guilt for the ruined mascot. But he couldn't stop now, as the sound of hundreds, if not thousands, of the Mini Critters stampeding towards them reached Andrew's ears.

He quickly scrambled to his feet and searched for the lift controls, finding a small console with only a single button. With a bemused expression, Andrew pressed it, and the lift ascended at an agonizingly slow pace. Andrew silently willed it to move faster, ignoring DogDay's groans and the muffled pitter-patters of the Mini Critters from the other side of the walls. He didn't want to stay in this place any longer than he already had, and DogDay needed help; who knew how long she would last in that state?

Pushing the morbid thought aside, Andrew silently watched as the lift finally reached the top and crawled to a halt. Once the safety gate opened, the human walked to DogDay's prone form and carefully hoisted her over his shoulders again. He exited the lift, coming to a dead-end room with a slide as the only exit. But then he noticed something out of the corner of his eye; another cardboard cutout of the Smiling Critters. This time, it was DogDay. Instinctively, Andrew reached out and pressed the button, and a cheery, upbeat voice garbled out of the aging speaker hidden inside the cutout:

"D-DogDay says, 'Fetch!'" it chirped, almost playfully, entirely in contrast to how the mascot sounded now.

Andrew pressed the button again. "Go, go! As far as you can! " He pressed it again. "Why are you…just standing there?" The cutout's tone had switched to a somber one, and Andrew could feel the sadness in her words.

"A-Angel," DogDay croaked weakly. "What are you…what are you d-doing?"

Andrew ignored her, too invested in what this cutout had to say. It couldn't be any different than the others, right? Even so, he couldn't stop himself. "You can't be here. You can't stay."

"Angel, stop. We must leave. Now ."

As Andrew reached out to press the button one time, DogDay wriggled out of his grasp, causing him to drop her, and she slapped his hand away with a large furry paw. "Don't…" she wheezed. "Don't touch it…again…please…"

Andrew gave her a quizzical look. "Why not?

"It's… You don't want to hear what comes next, Angel," she said. "Trust me. Besides, it brings back some unpleasant memories that I'd rather not go through again.

"Oh," Andrew said, looking away from her guiltily. "I'm sorry. I…I didn't know."

"It's okay, Angel," the canine reassured him. "You couldn't have known."

Andrew nodded silently, staring at the cutout that showed the mascot midjump and with a more cheerful expression than the one she currently had despite the permanent smile she wore. So far, all the previous cutouts he'd encountered revealed what had happened to the other Smiling Critters, save for CraftyCorn and CatNap with the former having not been discovered yet and the latter sounding like it had a frog stuck in its throat.

With a sigh, Andrew readjusted the GrabPack's straps and turned to DogDay. "Alright, let's get the hell out of this place. I've had enough of it already."

DogDay hummed in agreement as the human bent down and picked her up, holding her in a bridal carry. She wrapped her oversized hands around Andrew's neck and rested her forehead on his shoulder, gazing at the mangled remains of her abdomen where her legs used to be. "Yeah, you and me both, Angel."