Monty met him in the space before Fazer Blast. Gregory exclaimed, "That's five! So, we only need two more: the one from the maze and the dance place! Since the maze is right next to Parts and Service, that'll be the easiest to get to. So, I'm thinking we can go there first. What about you?"
Monty nodded. "Eh, yeah, that's true, Little guy. We will need to go there, eventually. May as well go now."
Gregory's eyebrows furrowed. "What's wrong?"
"There are… it's a pretty dangerous place," Monty admitted. "You jus' need to be cautious is all."
Gregory chuckled. "It's funny hearing you say 'cautious'. You normally just charge into things."
"Heh. Yeah. Yeah! C'mon! Let's do this thing!" Monty's reluctance faded and he tipped his head up and lashed his tail.
Gregory's eyes brightened and he followed Monty back to the stage lift. The lift sank beneath the atrium. Taking the first turn on the right, he found a large break in the wall leading to another light-bricked hallway with lime trimming. But as he turned a corner–
A pair of metal pincher-like hands grabbed him and whirled him around so he was face-to-face with Map Bot. It let go of the terror-frozen kid and held out a map. "Hi. Please take this map."
Gregory reluctantly took the map.
Map bot stood up straight and faced away. "Thank you. Please enjoy."
Gregory glared back at it. "Ugh! I hate that thing!" he spat.
Monty grunted, eying the bot, "You ain't the only one."
Gregory opened up the ratty, white-and-blue map as he approached another door. "Hmm… well, wasn't all useless. It's a map of the utility tunnels."
Gregory knocked his head on a partially opened garage door. He spat a word he'd learned from an oblivious teacher and held a hand to his head. Blinking the stars out of his eyes, he looked into the room presented to him. He pushed the map back into his pocket with his other hand.
Cement pillars rose out of the cement floors and touched cement walls. A few laundry baskets and a forklift occupied the room. Aside from the mechanical broken parts strewn about, they were alone in the well-lit, empty room. Well, at least none of the other animatronics were here. This would be a really bad place to meet them.
When he got to the end of the room, he found Monty lagging behind, eyes darting from shadow to shadow. Wariness crept up on Gregory and he backed up so he stood by the animatronic alligator. "What's wrong? Is there something here?"
Monty stopped. He growled low to himself, almost too low for Gregory to hear, "Stupid, you're scaring the kid." Then at a normal volume, he said, "No, it's fine, kid. Well, for right now. Here. There's probably nothin' here. In the warehouse–education maze, there are endos-in-trainin'. The others… they don't really know much about them. I don't know if they even know about them."
"Are you scared of them?" Gregory edged. He could feel Bonnie's nervousness as well.
"No! No, course not," Monty scoffed, staring ahead at their goal rather than down at Gregory. "I'm jus' bein' real with you, Little guy. They're dangerous. I ain't scared of a few endos, but I'm Monty Gator. Heh. Uh… you're still jus' a kid. No offense, o' course!"
"He's right about that; you couldn't fight off an endo on your own much less multiple. You'll need to be sneaky if they're aggressive."
Gregory frowned. "You're lying. You won't look me in the eyes."
Monty set a hand on the back of his neck. "Kid…"
"Bonnie's scared, too," Gregory offered.
"Got that right. We should just skip this place and go back to the Daycare."
"He says we should go to the Daycare instead. But since we're here, I think we should go ahead with the plan. I-I'm kinda scared, too."
Monty looked down at him and Bonnie. "Bonnie's always been the smart one." He grunted. "Smart and kind and soft. Everything I'm not. He never needed to be brave. Never had anything to be afraid of." Monty growled to himself and said, "But I'm not him. I'm not smart or nice or anythin' like that. But I got the teeth and the claws and the big roar, so everyone thinks I'm scary an' brave. If I don't got that, what else do I got?"
Is that what everyone thinks?
"…maybe. The other band members don't."
Gregory huffed. "You've been helping me all night! You've been nice to me even though you didn't have to, and I never would've gotten through the whole Pizzaplex on my own. You got in big trouble with Vanessa and with Moon because you were helping me. A-and… and it's easy to be brave around you, you know?" He thought for a moment and then pulled out his golf score sheet. Monty gave him an odd look and gently took the paper. "When I was failing at playing mini golf, you taught me how and got me a new golf score sheet. I don't know who keeps telling you that you're mean or you're dumb, but whoever they are, they're freaking liars."
Monty sighed and looked down at Gregory. "Thanks, kid. This… this means a lot. I can't take this, though. It's yours." He held it back out to Gregory.
Gregory shook his head. "No. It's yours. You're helping me escape the Pizzaplex. I want you to remember you're cool."
Monty's eyelids fell a little. "Heh. Kid, everythin' I hold gets torn, remember?"
Oh, right. The kid thought for a moment and then nodded. "Okay. How about you write a note to yourself on it? If you're feeling bad, I can show it to you."
Monty chuckled. "You're a persistent kid, ya know that? Alright."
"Oh, and write something about our time travel adventure, so you don't forget about that, either!"
Monty snorted. "I ain't forgettin' about time travel any time soon, but sure thing. Got a pen…? No? Ah… well, how about we wait 'til we get back to my room? I got a pen there."
"Okay, I guess." Gregory, making a mental note to start carrying around a pen, took the paper back, folded it, and stuck it in his pocket again.
Gregory turned a corner, passed some boxes, cement bags, and an orange truck, and walked through another garage door. Crates covered in orange tarps and tables of various shapes set in various positions filled the space, forcing him to move from side to side rather than just a straight line. There was one point he could walk in a straight line. An endoskeleton stood near the end of it, hunched over and limp.
Then, as Gregory approached, it pulled its head up and slid into a position to walk or run. Red lights glowed through hollow disks in its eyeballs. Gregory dove behind a table and peeked his head out to watch the thing standing there menacingly.
…
Gregory slid back behind the table. Alright, so it wasn't moving. But it was blocking his way. Maybe he needed to–were those footsteps?
Monty hissed and took a few steps back. "Little guy, look at it!"
Gregory peered out from behind the table and slapped a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming. While he was thinking to himself behind the table, the endoskeleton walked from its place to roughly two feet away from Gregory. But if it had just walked, why did it stop here?
Monty went on, "It only moves if no humans are watchin' it. But it don't matter if bots are watchin' it, so it's gonna ignore me. Keep your eyes on it."
Gregory lowered his hand and nodded. "Okay." He stood up and stepped back a few paces. It didn't follow. He scooted to the side, keeping his eyes and meager flashlight on the thing. Again, it didn't move. Gregory sidled past it, keeping it in his sight.
He backed into a stack of boxes. When he went to navigate around the boxes, he didn't hear anything change. When he looked back, he saw nothing but a few obstacles between them.
Weird.
When he went to continue down the hall, he ran into a chain-link fence. He asked, "Hey, Monty? There's a chain link fence blocking the way."
Beep! [If I break it, it'll let its friends out. I ain't letting more of those things out. You sure there's not a gate?]
Gregory stole a glance back before looking back at the endoskeleton. "Nope, no gate."
Beep! [Then I can't follow you. Those things ain't right in the head. Without personality chips and not being fully trained, they'll attack anything but another endo–including humans and other bots. But they can't move if they're being watched by a human. So just keep an eye on them and they won't attack.]
"Then maybe there's a way around." Gregory's eyes fell on a large, open vent. A few cardboard boxes that would obviously hold Gregory no problem stacked under it.
"How does he know so much about endoskeletons?"
Gregory edged closer to the vent. Wait, you don't?
"No. I only vaguely know they exist, like you know skeletons exist. Since, you know, I had one. I didn't know anything about 'training'."
He climbed onto the boxes and crawled into the vent. A shiver ran through Gregory as he had to walk through cobwebs. The cobwebs fluttered in the slight breeze created by a fan at the first turn. "Bonnie asks how you know so much about them."
Beep! [Heh. I don't know if you heard Vanessa, but I get threatened a whole bunch by the staff. 'You keep this up and we'll replace you with one of the endos!' So, I got to learn what they are. Turns out humans started getting scared of me after I got my claws. That creepy clown and I have something in common after all.]
After walking through the bazillionth cobweb and knowing he was probably covered in spiders, he heard something metal hit metal and a clicking noise. Cymbals crashed together.
"Not again!" Gregory crawled faster, spitting at the sticky webs covering his hand as he moved straight through one. Could the vents please not be covered in spiders when there was a metal spider music man thing already in said vents?!
Gregory crawled out onto a green case and hopped to his feet. He jumped to the ground half a foot down and backed up. The creepy metal thing walked up to the end and then turned and skittered back the way it came.
Ew.
He stood up and brushed himself off. "Why would they give you those claws if it made them scared of you? They sound dumb."
Beep! [Hah! You're smart, Little guy! You ask the right questions. They just told me it would make me better with the guitar. That's it.]
More clutter, including a whole cluster of vibrant trash cans printed with various characters' features, made his walk suffocating. He went through a set of garage doors.
He came face-to-face with a Moon plush sitting on a small stack of tires.
Gregory glared and walked past it.
On his right was a giant poster with an endoskeleton with a medkit kneeling in front of a hurt kid and applying a bandage to the kid's knee. A green checkmark was on it, but someone with purple spray paint crossed it out and added bunny ears.
More importantly, the thin hall made thinner by more clutter continued further. Another poster with an endoskeleton was on it, but he couldn't see what it was. Halfway down the hall, he spotted a monitor with a cartoon version of Moon's head with his eyes closed and the Moondrop candy under it. What, were these endoskeletons some fans of the Daycare Attendant or something?
An empty doorway he hadn't noticed broke off on the opposite side of the TV. The hallway was short and connected back into the main one, though.
Then Gregory approached the door at the end. An endoskeleton holding a red balloon stood before a girl with pigtails standing in front of a male parental figure. She held the endoskeleton's hand. Another green checkmark was on this wall.
Near the wall was a Freddy-head-shaped button on a thin pedestal. As he did with everything in life, he pressed the big glowing button.
He looked up as the "poster" hissed and the entire section of the wall rose up. "That wall just moved!" he exclaimed.
"Ever the observational one!"
He moved into the now winding hall flanked by unmoving conveyor belts. Some boxes and a yellow Chica plush sat there. There was probably a Bonnie plush on top of the boxes, but it was high up and he wasn't certain the color was actually purple.
Gregory stopped. An endoskeleton, fully awake and staring straight at an inactive S.T.A.F.F. bot, stood in a once colorful room with a rainbow and another endoskeleton "poster" on one wall. This one was of an endoskeleton chasing a child. A red X was painted on this one.
Another TV trying to sell Moondrop candy sat before a kid's table and set of chairs, sending white and blue light over the surrounding area. Kids couldn't be allowed down here. That would be insane. But there was kids' stuff here and some plushy objects from the daycare resting on boxes against the walls and this TV with Moon on it. Training, right. They probably needed to get used to kid stuff.
"Yeah, probably. Though with so many endos… why wasn't I recreated?"
Gregory shrugged. Maybe you're irreplaceable. You are pretty special.
He walked past the endoskeleton and a couple of inactive friends. A button on a pedestal sat beside the TV. He had to turn his back to press it, but only for a second. The endoskeleton didn't properly turn around.
Gregory watched it as he scooted by. Unfortunately, he couldn't go down the next hallway backward as there were a couple of corners. Besides, what if he tripped over something? So, after a second of watching the endoskeleton, he bolted. He ignored the plush walls and toys and steam coming from pipes and a couple of giant colorful blocks with another Moon plush on them as he turned another corner.
He slowed down and walked through a set of open chain link gates. An inactive endoskeleton stood near the gate. Gregory discovered a second one next to it as he passed. At the end of the hall, "PARTY" spelled in silver balloons attached to the wall. A S.T.A.F.F. bot leaned forward, but Gregory couldn't see anything from the shoulders forward from around a corner.
The hallway expanded a little bit after the corner, showing the S.T.A.F.F. bot leaning over a table. Its decapitated, mangled head with a cone hat sat by a slice of cake.
…
Gregory inspected the poster wall. It was another endoskeleton, of course, this time with a birthday hat. He pressed the button opposite the poster wall and hurried through. He could hear the endoskeletons he previously passed activate.
A short hall lined with chain-link fences and large machines with steam hissing out met him. A mangled S.T.A.F.F. bot lay propped against the fence at the end of the walkway before a bend. The poster wall to the left of him was an endoskeleton with a party hat at a table, flipping the cake on a plate over and causing the little girl sitting at the table with a hat to turn her head and raise her arms in defense. Another X was painted above it. Gregory decided to take a right turn.
He passed an open chain-link part of the fence. Another Moon plush sat on a box and this time at the end of the hall was a full portrait of Moon, his eyes closed, and head tipped to rest on his hands. The left side of the fork in his path was a door, the right side was more hallway with another two endoskeletons on it. Gregory walked down that hall, past the endoskeletons, and into a small room with another button, this time before a painted poster of Moondrop candy.
He pressed the button.
The two endoskeletons behind him came to life.
Gregory, his flashlight on them, walked around so that his back faced the wall at which he'd arrived.
…
Gregory bolted in the opposite direction of the endoskeletons, who immediately gave chase. The poster door on the other side of the mangled S.T.A.F.F. bot was open, and Gregory wasted no time in racing through it. Another endoskeleton whom he'd lost previously spotted him as he went and decided to give chase as well.
The next bit of hallway was cement, but the walls were mostly covered in drapes, a rug that ran through, and a few plastic kiddie benches sat to one side–all themed with blue. The benches had red tops that housed another Moon plush and sat across from a TV advertising Moondrop candy, shedding more blue light over him as he went.
Three inactive endoskeletons slumped in a corner with soft blue walls and more blue rugs. Red curtains pulled back in an empty doorway that opened into a small room. A few TVs, a couple of which were turned on to show Moondrop candy while others were either off or showing static, and more Moon decorations scattered about, including a plush. He pressed a button on a pedestal beside the Moondrop TV and kept going. The button activated a few more endoskeletons.
The halls stopped being completely Moon-themed, though they had a lot of kid's stuff and another Moondrop poster. After a bend, he saw a poster wall. This was the same endoskeleton with a med kit and crossed-out checkmark as the one in the beginning.
Passing a Moondrop candy poster painted on the wall, he got to a slightly more open space with a giant open doorway on the right.
As soon as Gregory entered, the yellow-and-black-striped doorway closed with a giant metal door.
Inside the room were soft walls and soft floors like some sort of weird copy of the daycare. Except, there wasn't a play place or a ball pit, or even a place leading to a naptime room. There was a short wall of green interwoven bars like the wall of the play place structured at the end of the octagonal room. One would think anyone obsessed with an animatronic meant to put children to sleep would have at least one bed. But nope. Instead, this room was decorated with endoskeletons all along the walls and a security desk. The security desk sat on a cement square lined with black and yellow striped tape.
"It's the Security Office. Hmm. Should be one of those badge things in here."
Gregory decided to check the space behind the green barred wall. More giant daycare objects were stacked there. A Moon plush sat on the ground. He went back to the security desk, where he found a Freddy Head Security Badge holder on it. A Moon plush sat behind it. A black Security cap sat on the other side, in front of a computer filled with static.
What kind of alarm will this trip?
"Got it!" Gregory exclaimed as he pulled out the security card. The once inactive endoskeletons all around him hissed to life. "Oh, come on!" he yelled and darted out of the now-open door. The med kit endoskeleton door opened.
Gregory escaped.
They followed him outside of the gate that they opened. Gregory wove back through the clutter, hopped onto the green box below the vent, and crawled inside.
The little metal spider thing followed him again, but Gregory crawled quickly and threw himself out the other side.
He took a second to breathe, to regain his energy and calm his fluttering heart. There couldn't possibly be anything worse than that in this mall, right?
Right?
The endoskeleton in this room was gone. Gregory still inspected every shadow with his flashlight as he walked. Maybe it somehow went back and joined its brethren in trying to kill Gregory. That would be fun.
Monty spotted him around a bend. "Hey, Little guy! You got the badge!"
Gregory nodded, grinning. "Now all I need is the one from the West Arcade. Though… I only have one more badge to get."
Monty nodded. "What are ya thinkin'?"
"Well, when you were broken, they took you to Parts and Service and I was able to fix you and now that virus isn't causing you to go crazy anymore, right?" Gregory pointed out. "I already said we could fix them. Now that I can go pretty much anywhere, we can do it!"
Monty lashed his tail and laughed. "Yeah! But, uh… do ya really think you'd need to break them? I could carry any one o' them myself."
Gregory pointed out, "You wouldn't listen to Vanessa, and you tried to kill me, remember?"
Monty muttered, "That's true. Maybe you could try talkin' to 'em, though. Chica's a sweetheart."
Gregory nodded. "Okay. I'll go find her, then." So… you thinking what I'm thinking?
"Most likely not. What are you thinking?"
I'm thinking since every time they even look at me they attack me, I could knock her out and then blindfold her or something. Maybe if she doesn't see me, she won't attack me. And if she still does, I can probably take her down.
"…just… please don't hurt her. How do you plan on doing that?"
The note he found in her room talked about how crazy she went for Monty's Mystery Mix, and how it was hidden in the bowling alley. Since he got a ticket for Bonnie's Bowling from Fazer Blast, part one of his plan was in the bag!
"How are we going to get her to find it when we want her to find it? What if she finds us on accident just in the atrium or on the balcony and attacks us there?"
Gregory, having left Rockstar Row after getting Monty to sign a note to himself on his golfing score sheet, hesitated in the atrium. He continued moving. We'll just have to deal with it.
"That's not a good plan."
Do you have a better one?
"There's a cupcake delivery system. You might be able to hide the syrup in the icing vat and then get the delivery bot to deliver it to wherever we're going. She probably won't find the bot since she's looking for you. If she does, she'll be busy eating the cupcake and you'll know where she is."
That… okay, that's a good plan.
He climbed the stairs up to the third floor. Only a few bots were on the second and third floor. Gregory looked behind himself at El Chips and MAZErcise. On the opposite side of the third floor was a big sign painted on the wall: Bonnie Bowling. A blue rabbit from the shoulders up wearing a striped red and black shirt smiled and held up a bowling ball. This one was bulkier than Vanny with a warmer smile and bright round eyes with whites and round pupils. "Why doesn't he look like you?"
"I have no clue why he looks more like the original Bonnie. I don't know why the staff do most of what they do."
Gregory wrinkled his nose. Adults are weird. He glanced at the Bonnie Bowling ticket in his hand and forged on.
Another ticket bot was there to stop him until he presented the Bonnie Bowling ticket, at which point he was given a short celebration and then was quickly forgotten.
The elevator didn't take long and soon he was on an ill-lit checkerboard floor in a hall plastered with ads and pictures of the band.
The mystery mix was in the back of the ice cream storage. When he checked the CAMS tab, he saw an ice cream parlor beyond the bowling lanes.
Step One: Monty Mystery Mix.
Step Two: Lure Chica.
Step Three: …something…
Step Four: Free Chica!
Gregory was the best at plans.
Unfortunately, more S.T.A.F.F. bots littered the arcade machine area and around the bowling lanes, which were accessible by a few sets of stairs going down. None of them approached the ice cream parlor overlooking the bowling lanes, which was nice. While Gregory would have loved to hide under tables and behind machines for three hours, they couldn't waste time.
Do you know any tricky back entrances or something?
"From here to the ice cream parlor? Yeah, but none that would take less time than just going straight through the arcade. You'll need to be sneaky, that's it."
Gregory narrowed his eyes. Sneaky… like I was sneaky with the endos? I just ran past them!
"You could freeze them in place by looking at them! Gregory, don't!"
Gregory darted onto the floor. He ran around a security bot whose light shown a little too close to him and then around the arcade cabinets. A second rolled around from the other side and he took a few steps back and then ran around that one, too. He waited for way too long in front of a pair of shutters to go out onto the main floor between the arcade section and the bowling alley. Then Gregory was in front of the ice cream parlor beside the bowling lanes.
He cackled and looked back at the slowly patrolling bot.
"Are you insane?! You could have been caught!"
But I wasn't~!
He tromped by multiple small tables and chairs and the bar with bar stools lining it. Small ice cream wheeled boxes settled by the bar. At the end was a circular stage with a red curtain around it. "THIS ATTRACTION IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED" with the smaller words "PLEASE ENJOY ANOTHER ATTRACTION" beneath printed on the sign in front of it. Gregory asked, "Was this yours?"
"Yeah. That was my little stage. In front of my room."
Beep! [Are you talking to someone? You're in the bowling alley already!]
"Yeah, I'm talking to Bonnie," Gregory said. "He told me this little stage was his and it's in front of his room. Did you ever get to visit Bonnie?"
Beep! [Oh, uh, yeah that is Bonnie's stage. …yeah, I visited him once or twice.]
"He did. We weren't exactly friends, but he did."
Beep! [You seem fond of him! Did you ever get to meet Bonnie?]
Gregory grinned. "Yeah! Mom took me here a few years ago when Bonnie was still in the band. I got to see him play on stage. After the show, I tried to meet him, but there wasn't enough time. Mom had said she'd take me next time." His wide smile fell. "But the next time my mom took me, Bonnie wasn't here, anymore. The person I asked said he went to the farm. He wouldn't tell me which farm he went to. So, Mom bought his plushie. Turns out this plushie is really special, though. Bonnie didn't leave. He came back as a plushie."
Beep! [Did he, now? I'm sorry you didn't get to meet him properly, Little guy. He was a nice fellow.]
"Hey, let's stop talking about me, okay? You know what happens when you talk about me too long."
Gregory grimaced. Yeah. But Monty's not like that! …okay. "I'm gonna keep looking. See you soon!"
Beep! [Alright! See you soon, Little guy.]
Gregory took a deep breath and looked up at Bonnie's stage again. To the left was a way to get behind the bar and to a door that led to a couple of small, cluttered rooms with a doorless doorway between them. Down the left end of the room, past some boxes and bowling balls, he climbed on a few boxes pushed up against a metal shelving unit. Atop the shelving unit were a couple of boxes of Monty Mystery Mix.
Step one accomplished! Now, he needed to do Step Two and Step Three extremely close together. He could probably lure her quickly, but then what would he do? Where was her cupcake factory again? That was… by… Monty Golf and Kid's Cove? Yeah, because Fazerblast was beside Roxy's Raceway.