Authors Note: Okay, so after seeing Chapter 3, I thought it was pretty good. But I ended up feeling VERY underwhelmed. Mainly because I was expecting to see the Smiling Critters play a bigger role! I know this is Poppy Playtime, not The Smiling Critters Game, but still, with all the details that went into making those characters be unique and individual only for them to not even play a part in the game is annoying. There isn't even a BODY to show the player "look here, something terrible happened, wonder what the story is here!" So you could say this is my attempt to fix the chapter how I would have written it. Not sure why I'm trying this, my last big fanfiction has slid into perma-hiatus, but let's see how far I can go! Enjoy!
CHAPTER 1
The smell of ozone and gasoline managed to spark Alex awake from where he lay in the cabin of the wrecked train. Opening his eyes he saw sparking wires. Gasoline smell, and a spark… without a doubt those things would lead to fire.
"I gotta get out of here," he thought.
Stumbling onto his feet he crawled out of the large open front window and slid down along the smooth blue plastic shell of the boiler. Ahead of him the whole tunnel was pitch black, the only lights coming from the flickering headlight of the train. The GrabPack on his back felt like a lead weight wanting to make him fall onto his back, and he genuinely forgot he was carrying it, using his own weak arms to try and hold himself up as he slowly slid off the train to the ground below. His shoes clomped on the concrete floor as he landed, thankfully it seemed he'd not broken anything.
He didn't have long to dwell on this thought as a soft fwoomp sound, accompanied by a bright orange light from above. Looking back, he saw a small fire on the other side of the train. Time was running out. Quickly, Alex took off running, or rather stumbling down the tunnel, trying his best to step on top of the concrete ties and not between them. He couldn't afford to fall now. He got a couple yards away before with a loud FWOOSH and a flash of bright orange light at his back, the train became engulfed in fire. It didn't blow up, but Alex figured it was best to not wait around. He turned to look back at it, watching as the fire blackened and burned and melted brightly colored plastic and metal. Behind the engine the coaches were similarly in a mess.
"Poppy… is she…. ugh…" he said, pausing to curse that thought.
Poppy, that treacherous doll! After all the crap he'd had to deal with tonight; two killer toys whose soul desire was to devour him from head to toe while still breathing, puzzle after puzzle in order to escape one death trap after the other, and that stupid living doll had suddenly turned traitor. She said she'd help him escape and instead had sent him deeper into this hell.
He had come here to find where the employees had gone and found nothing but death awaiting him. The smell of copper, the dark shadows of a children's wonderland turned into a nightmare, and the weight of his heavy GrabPack resting upon his shoulders made his whole-body ache. But these thoughts could wait, right now he needed to start finding his own way out of this place. Poppy wasn't going to help anyways, so now if she was gone and out of his hair, the better.
The empty vast darkness of the tunnel ahead greeted him. But at the far end some light seemed to glow. It had to be a way out, or it could lead that way. With the train blocking his path, he had no way back. He would need to press on and hope that it went somewhere.
"Off I go again," he grunted.
The light turned out to be a station. A child-like subway station at that. The name in filthy cartoon letters gave it the name Playcare. Guarding the exit turnstiles was a large silver Huggy Wuggy statue… stained in dried blood.
"Ugh… how did anyone survive… what ever happened here?" Alex asked himself.
Climbing up onto the platform he looked around the empty platform. Rows of subway style security gates guarded the escalators leading up. They were just narrow enough that even if he wanted to slip through and forget paying a fare, he couldn't do that. On either side of the gates were some yellow employee only doors. Using deductive reasoning, which had become oddly always right in a nightmarish wonderland like this, Alex figured that possibly something in that space might offer an alternate path forward or a way to open the path he was stuck on. The right door was locked, but the left wasn't. Slipping inside, Alex saw this had to be a security room of sorts as a bank of static filled tv screens filled the opposite end of the room. Clearly this place had power, but the power to the turnstiles had to be on another circuit. Fix that and he might have a chance to get through.
The only other door leading out of the room led right, under the escalators which were blocked off by a chain link fence. Moving to the other room, Alex saw a pair of familiar nodes and a power pole. But as he reached down to grab his dangling GrabPack, he noticed to his shock that both hand cannons were broken in two! The ends only stayed on by because of the two hands at the ends. It had to have happened from the crash. There was no way he could fix them though, and no way he could use them.
"Oh come on!" Alex shouted out, his voice echoing around him. "It wasn't enough that that crazy rubber spider broke it once, now it's completely totaled!"
Angry he dropped the broken arms and let it dangle by his side as he looked around for some other way out of this place. Going back wouldn't be an option, the train blocked one end of the tunnel, with the other end blocked by a collapse. Suddenly there was a ringing. It was clear, and coming from the room he'd just been in. Walking back to the security office. Alex soon found it. It was a portable red phone with a chunky antenna. He picked it up, groaned at the very preschool-like design, and placed it to his ear.
"Hello?"
"Hey! Can you hear me?" a young boy's voice asked.
"Uh… yes. Who is this?"
"Oh good," the voice said in relief, ignoring Alex's question, "I didn't know if this phone could connect out there, but I guess it can. Anyways, you look lost. We saw the train on one of the monitors here. What a wreck! I'm glad you survived."
"Uh, yeah, but now I'm stuck here. My GrabPack is broken, and I don't think there are any exits from here."
"That is bad. Hmmm well I think I can help you get through the gates and to here. The system says there is a third backup feature for the gates in cases like these. But that way will bring you into Playcare. There is another way, but you don't seem tall enough to make it that way."
"Look, kid. I don't want to go to Playcare, I want to find the nearest exit out of this hell."
"Well, there is an exit, but it's a dangerous one… if I tell you how to access it, will you help us? We're trapped here."
"No way out, no way out!" a girl's voice said in the background.
"Who's that?" Alex asked.
"Hey, you have to stay quiet," the first voice said. "I'm trying to talk!"
"He'll kill him if he comes here! You have to stop!" the second voice said.
"Hold on," said the first voice.
Click, the line hung up. Alex looked at the phone and found it very weird. Hearing the voices of children in a place like this shouldn't be possible. Without his mysterious caller, Alex looked around the room.
"Maybe there is some duct tape or something here. Maybe I could rig this thing to work again," he thought.
Looking at the filing cabinets, Alex pulled them open. One had some rotten files in it. The other had a big black block in it. Pulling it out to get a better look at it, Alex saw it was a big battery. At least twice as big as a 6 volt, and with a glowing green ring around the top.
Briiiiiiiiiing briiiiiiing briiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!
The phone rang again. Hitting the answer call button, Alex listened.
"Okay. Sorry about that. I had to calm her down. Oh, I see you found a spare battery. You're in luck! That's the third backup feature for powering the turnstiles. Take that battery back to the other room, find the battery slot, plug it in, and eureka, you got power!" said the young boy's voice.
"Uh great," Alex said. "But you've not answered my question of who you are. And who was that other voice?"
"I need to know if I can trust you," said the young boy. "Ever since it happened, we've been trapped down here. Trapped in this prison. If you help us, we'll help you in return. Getting you out alive is our mission. You need us, and we need you. If you plug that battery in, it'll open the way down to Playcare. There is a path here that could lead to an exit, but we can't open the way forward."
"So you need me to do it for you?"
"I'll help where I can, but please? Poppy says you're really good at what you do."
"Poppy? How di-"
"Anyways, just plug that battery in. We'll talk later."
Click
Once again, the line disconnected. Alex grumbled. That doll was still alive, and she had made her way into this Playcare place ahead of him. And what did that mean; 'good at what he did'?
"Looks like I have no choice," he sighed. "Not like I can go anywhere except sit here and wait to die."
Traversing back to the power room, he found a small door in the wall. Opening it, he saw the large square slot that was big enough for the battery itself. The moment he plugged the battery in, a surge of power made the lights flicker. It might be a small battery, but it stored a lot of energy.
Quickly backtracking to the platform, the turnstile lights were now green. Pushing through them and climbing up the unpowered escalators brought him to another small waiting area with some kind of booth taking up the middle. The sign overhead read, "See the world through a child's eyes. Ride The Elliot Express."
"Hmmpph that sounds a bit egotistical for someone who's image has been removed from public records," Alex huffed.
Outside this area were a couple dark and broken vending machines, as well as a couple cardboard cutouts with more buttons to push. A blue elephant and a yellow chicken. These characters seemed vaguely familiar as well.
"Ugh… I used to work here; how come I can't remember who these guys are?" Alex wondered to himself.
Reaching out he pushed the button of the elephant cut out.
"Hi! I'm Bubba Bubbaphant! Hey, I remember you!" the speaker said.
Alex blinked. This was weird. He'd pushed the buttons of other cutouts, and their lines were never so on the nose like this. It was just a pre-recorded message after all. He pushed it again.
"An elephant always remembers!" the blue cardboard elephant said proudly.
"Ugh, right," Alex mumbled in response. before pushing the button again.
"Want to know what I remember about you?"
Alex thought, what was there to know? He could remember working here but every detail was so fuzzy he couldn't really recall. He wondered just what this cutout would say. Pressing it again, the speaker belted out a horrific and pained scream that went on and on for what felt like a minute before it cut off. This hadn't been very helpful nor comforting.
"Okay, hopefully you'll be different," Alex mumbled as he went over to the other cutout and pressed its button.
"I'm Kickin' Chicken! Wanna go outside and hang out?" came the really rad response.
"Jeez. Hello? Yeah, the 90's called, they want their radness back," Alex snorted, before pressing the button again.
"It's looking pretty rad outside!"
"Mmh, yes, that's why I want to leave!"
Another push.
"I've…never been outside before," came the much more toned-down response.
This struck Alex. This was certainly different from other cutouts he'd listened to. Most of the time the dialog stayed normal before it became weird at the end or was corrupted. He pushed the button again.
"Will you come with me? …I'm scared."
If this character was the "cool" kid, these lines sounded very genuine. Another button push.
"Here, follow me. I'll step out first."
"Step out? From where?" Alex wondered.
Another press of the button delivered another horrified scream. The narrative these two cutouts were weaving before him was hardly comforting. In the first, the memory of him was enough to elicit screaming, while the other had a character desiring freedom that ended in screaming too. Whatever it was, Alex felt he didn't want to know, everything he'd seen already was too much.
Moving into the room with the strange lift, he looked around. Dropped bags, backpacks and other litter lent a very disturbing air to the space. The other places he'd gone to were left in a state, but this was different. It was evidence of people having been here at one point instead of scratches, broken tiles and a few spotty blood stains. It was like looking at pictures of Pripyat, the rooms left abandoned even years later. The lift looked like an old-style elevator, but looking in the space behind it, Alex saw a steeply sloped tunnel with a rail hanging from the ceiling. This was no elevator; it was an aerial cable car of some kind.
"Jeeze, they had a working train and a cable car here? If they had a monorail then I'll be surprised," Alex huffed.
A quick inspection of the rest of the room showed two levers, one on either side of the wall. Figuring one of these would have to open the car and also send it down into this Playcare place, Alex flipped each one. With a groaning shriek the doors of the car opened with a shower of dirt sprinkling down from the top. Clearly no one had ever ridden this for a long time and like many things, Alex felt this would be a one-way trip.
"No guts no glory," he grunted and climbed on.
As if signaling his presence, the cable car door slammed closed behind him and with a lurch began to roll down the track and into darkness as the car did not possess a light. Soon another sound was heard. Alex looked around before seeing a closed-circuit TV in the corner. It sounded staticy and distant and clearly was just playing a looped message. This one sounded as if it was recorded live at a press conference of sorts and was used to introduce this new place he was going.
Ignoring the ramblings of Elliot Ludwig in his grandiose speech of what the world was really missing, Alex looked outside and saw dark concrete walls. But they soon vanished from sight as the tramway opened up into a vast dark space.
"What the heck? Where am I now?"
Looking into the gloom, he could see long pointed objects from the floor and ceiling. Stalactites and stalagmites… this had to be a cave of some kind. A vast one given he could barely see the walls. But further away, coming into view was a large manmade structure that looked completely out of place. It was a large cylindrical structure with a massive domed roof! The closer he got; Alex realized this structure was as big as a stadium!
"Holy crap! What the heck were they doing down here?" he wondered.
"Creating monsters using people and maybe kids, building weird underground bases… typical evil villain stuff. Wait till you see the missile silos and Frankenstein labs," said a voice in his head as if he'd missed the point of all this.
Down the track the car rolled along. A large heavy metal door on the dome itself flopped open to allow the car to enter. As the car passed through the lip of the door, a shower of red tinted smoke drifted down, obscuring his view inside and making it look like a pit to an inferno or something. As it passed in the smoke, some weird hose or wire appeared and noiselessly thumped against the window.
Suddenly a heavy THUD on the roof made Alex jump, and stumble as the car shook and swayed! It was as if something heavy had landed on the roof. A couple more heavy thuds sounded out, sounding like the thudding of huge heavy feet, followed by screeching metal sounds like whoever was on the roof had claws and was trying to dig into the metal. It didn't last long before whatever it was leapt off the cable car to an overhanging catwalk in the wall of the dome. Alex could barely see it before it vanished, looking very purple.
The cable car continued its slow way down to the bottom. Elliot's speech began to wrap up, having proclaimed this space was Playcare, a place where orphan children would live, learn and later be adopted.
"Or be turned into toys and monsters," Alex thought grimly.
The cable car came to a stop and the door at the front opened. Climbing out and looking around Alex was struck by the sight before him. This Playcare place was very spacious and if he ignored the very artificial way things looked, and the chaotic mess this hidden garden of Eden was in, Alex felt he could pretend he was outside again. Almost. Around him he saw a large government-type building, a quaint looking store, an old-style looking mansion, a similarly designed schoolhouse, and a big yellow circus tent. In the middle of it all was a massive statue with 8 cartoon animals atop it. Or there would have been 8, if one hadn't tumbled onto its face. Looking at the figures, each with a large open mouth grin, a memory was surfacing. Calling them animals didn't feel right. There were more-
Brrring brrrring brrrring!
Another phone call from his mysterious caller stopped his train of thought. He accepted the call.
"Whoa! That was close! I thought he was going to get you!" the young boy's voice said.
"Who? Who was going to get me? That thing on the car roof?" Alex asked.
"Yes, that was Catnap, one of the Smiling Critters."
Smiling Critters, that's the name of these toys. Alex remembered hearing about the show and how one of the toys had to be recalled. Which one, he couldn't remember, but that's what these things were.
"What do you think of Playcare? Cool, huh? Well... it looked better long ago. The kids used to live here, but... now look at it," said the boy's voice. "We used to live here too. Well… kind of."
"Wait, you lived here? But you sound like a kid. And… It's been years. What are you? Who are you?" Alex said demandingly.
"I'll explain in a moment. You see the statue? There is a door at the base. Ring the bell, and I'll let you in. Talk to you soon."
Click.
Frustrated, Alex made his way down the steps from the cable car to the ground below. Now that he was closer, the beauty of the sight began to fade. The lush green bushes and trees? All fake. The grass? Also fake. As fake as the very obvious clouds painted on the walls and that hung from the ceiling. He could hear the sound of bird song and insect noise, but he felt sure that this was just a recording. Coming to the base of the statue, he found a bright red access door. A keypad to the right was completely smashed, and a small push button was in its place. Giving it a push, he thought he could hear a soft ringing sound from the other side. Clearly an improvised doorbell. A couple seconds passed before the door gave a pneumatic hiss and slid open revealing a set of stairs leading down. It took a moment to get his legs moving as the dark tunnel leading down made him feel nervous. Without his grab-pack, he felt vulnerable again.
However, the memory of whatever that thing that had landed on the cable car roof came back. It was big. Big like Huggy Wuggy had been. If he stayed out here, no doubt it would find him. Down under this statute, there might be some safety. It was a risk, but what other choices did he have in this topsy turvy world he'd once been a part of? He headed down the dark stairway. The moment he passed through the doorway, it closed behind him.
"No going back," he thought.
At the bottom of the stairs, Alex stepped into the dimly lit area. Looking to his left, he saw a small bank of TV screens like from the security office; some showed static, but most seemed to show areas of the Playcare itself. Sitting in the chair facing these screens, atop a few books and with a headset fixed atop his small head, was a blue elephant the size of a small child. He turned and gave a smile to Alex who stared at the toy with a growing sense of dawning surprise and annoyance.
He'd been talking to another living toy.