HAPPY 2023! This is actually the year fnaf 3 takes place omg? This will truly be the year of all time.

First two-parter of the act! this one is very important lolz, a new character and some lore!?

and I had this ready two days ago but the upload thing wasn't working for some reason? if this chapter glitches out it's because I had to upload a file and not pasting it

Song: Wonderland by Caravan Palace!

Enjoy!

Chapter 96

Wonderland, Part 1

It was official.

Bonnie hated Shadow.

It was easily the worst thing he'd been through. Legitimately worse than dying (though he probably shouldn't admit that to the others). All day, every day, the activity was Sit Or Try To Entertain The Children. Since Bonnie didn't have much of a maternal instinct, his activity was more like Sit.

Oh, and the guitar he'd come in with? Given to Jojo to promptly play the most off-key, ear-bleeding songs he'd ever heard in his life, more awful than when he'd given the guitar to Foxy. Who was actually kind of cheerful, but then again, when was he not?

"Hey, what's up?" Freddy asked, coming over to sit beside where Bonnie was spread out like a carpet on his stomach.

"Nothing."

"What're you thinking about?"

"Suicide."

Freddy smacked him on the arm. "Shut up, you. I know it's not the best arrangement, but at least we're all alive and together, and isn't that the important thing?"

"Whatever." Bonnie rolled onto his side. "I still think we could've gone through that portal Ruby came out of."

"Do you really think it would be that easy?" Freddy said gently. "And she disappeared too fast for any of us to go through. And we don't know what could have happened once we were out there."

"I guess," Bonnie sighed. "I just hate sitting around and doing nothing. You know we can't do this forever, we'll go insane."

"We won't go insane. Look at Mari!"

"Look at Mal, he barely even talks anymore. God, Freddy, look at Cassidy. She's completely broken. I don't want that happening to us."

He shook his head. "Don't say that about them. Those are our friends."

"I'm just saying. The three most messed-up people in our group? The three who've been to Shadow. Don't even say it's because they were captives of William, Joey's doing just fine and she's had the worst done to her, captivity-wise." Bonnie gave him a look. "You know it's true."

Freddy nodded slowly. "I guess you're right. About Jojo, too. From what I've seen she's got regular emotions and she's a happy kid without any sort of mania. Mari's surprised, actually, but I think she's just adaptable."

"Like us," quipped Bonnie.

He laughed. "Like us? If I remember correctly, you were the one curled up in a ball on the floor for two straight weeks. The technicians thought you were bugging out, but they couldn't find anything wrong with your wiring."

"Oh, very funny, using my childhood trauma against me," Bonnie said with a roll of his eyes. "And I'm sure you and the others took literal death with open arms—oh wait, who did Chica have to keep tending to 24/7?"

"I guess neither of us are really adaptable," Freddy admitted. "That's just Chica."

"And Foxy." He gestured over to the pirate-fox, who was singing sea shanties at the top of his lungs and merrily strumming the guitar, Mangle splayed out next to him with an agonized expression. "Though, I don't think I've ever seen him in a bad mood."

"Huh." Freddy mulled over this. "...same."

"Hey, guys." Chica plopped down beside them, her yellow ponytail swinging. "What's up?" When Bonnie offered her a lazy shrug, she continued bubbily, "Ruby's coming soon."

"Dude, she has a girlfriend," Bonnie groaned. "Just don't bother."

Her expression didn't change. "Maybe now she has a girlfriend, but that's gonna change. Don't you know high school relationships never last? I'm not going anywhere, so we can hang out for all eternity! And besides, me and her girlfr…Myah…have the same body shape, so I'm obviously her type."

Before Bonnie could open his mouth and tell her how stupid of a mentality that was, Ruby teleported beside them. She wore her old black Fazbear staff hoodie with a pair of gray cotton shorts and black thigh-highs, her hair long and messy with her four signature red-and-white barrettes firmly clipped in.

"Woohoo! I am pumped! Hi guys!" Ruby rushed, falling onto the ground with her legs crossed and shaking rapidly as she flicked her gaze between the trio at turbo speed. "I just did an in-cre-di-ble workout. Fifty squats. A hundred bicycle crunches. Two hundred push-ups!" She rolled up her sleeves to emphasize. The plastic-wrap-like burn scars decorating her arms rippled as she flexed her muscles. "I'm jacked! Look! Look!"

"Oh, I'm looking." Chica mumbled, her aqua eyes following the movement. Bonnie gave her a glare but didn't say anything.

"I feel like I could run a zillion miles!" Ruby continued, rolling back her sleeves. Then, she stopped. "Actually, I am going to go run a zillion miles. Do you guys wanna come?"

Bonnie pondered it. "That's…huh, I wonder why we never thought of moving from this place we spawned in."

"Awesome idea, Rue!" Chica chirped, and Ruby beamed.

"Okay, well I'll go wrangle the rest. A walk will do everyone some good, even if there isn't much to look at." Freddy stood up, heading over to the rest of the group to consult them.

After an uncomfortable three minutes of watching Chica fawn over her very much oblivious crush, Freddy was finally back with everyone else in noisy, noisy tow.

Bonnie sighed. He was, admittedly, excited for the prospect of a walk, his bones aching from unuse. I just hope we find some lost headphones on our way.

~lll~

"I spy with my little eye…something that is black!" Jojo yelled, skipping dotingly behind Mari with her corn-husk-coloured pigtail braids bouncing.

Mal thought. "Mm...the floor?"

"Yay, you got it! Your turn!" She cheered.

After a great deal of thought; "I spy with my little fly—"

"You silly, it's eye!"

"Oh. Okay, I spy with my little eye, something that is black."

Jojo crossed her arms and pouted. "Copycat."

"Joey," Mari chided. "Give him a chance."

"Fine. The ceiling."

"Yay, you got it."

Jojo cheered, bouncing with excitement. "Did you guys hear that?! First try, first try!" She smashed into Bonnie, sending him stumbling forward. She gasped and slapped both hands in front of her mouth. "Oopsie-daisies. Sorry, bunny!"

Bonnie ran a hand through his annoying blue hair with the annoying blue rabbit ears getting in his way and sighed raggedly. "Ruby, how much longer?"

"Dunno. Woah, it's getting foggy!" Ruby exclaimed as a purple mist started to float just below their waists.

Foxy swatted at it like a cat to a fuzzy toy. "Aye! Appears to be some kind of poison gas!" Cassidy inhaled deeply, then shook her head in response.

"I've never seen this before," Mari said wonderingly, squatting and swirling it around her slender fingertips. "It's so pretty."

Freddy furrowed his brow, assuming immediate responsibility. "It may be pretty, but it's unknown, and that makes it a threat. Be careful, you guys."

As they moved through the fog cautiously, it started to get thicker and rise like an ocean of stardust, violet glister and gleam. They could almost hear an ambient sound like white noise mixed with a low whistle, faint and echoing off nothing. Eventually, the haze was so high and so thick they had to squint to see their own hands.

"Should we turn back?" Freddy asked worriedly.

"Like hell we're turning back! This is the most interesting thing that's happened to me ever!" Ruby said, pushing forward.

Chica swatted the mist out of her face, blinking rapidly. "Y-yeah, um, what she said!"

"Okay…" Freddy said doubtfully. "But we should all join hands so that we don't get lost."

"Should we braid each other's hair and gush about dreamy boys too?" Cassidy retorted, waving her hands spastically.

"Now's really not the time for sarcasm, hon." Mangle said, taking her hand and Foxy's in the other. Cassidy bared her teeth at her, and the fox-girl snapped them right back.

The group formed a long daisy-chain as they ambled further, when all of a sudden Ruby froze up—and was immediately toppled over and buried by her nine companions.

"What the heck?! Why'd you stop?" Jojo complained, popping her head out the top of the heap. Ruby squeezed out on her hands and knees and just pointed wordlessly ahead, where an indistinguishable yet human form was bent, hunched over a blob of…something. It was hard to make out in the fog, but it almost looked like the thing was eating.

"Can we—"

"No. Absolutely not." Freddy cut into Foxy's question firmly. "That thing is most likely a ghost, and in order to get here you have to either do something bad or be out for revenge, and we are not going to interact with an angry spirit who probably hasn't made contact with another person in who-knows-how-long."

"But Freddy! This spirit might be nice! They could help us find out how to get you out!" Ruby urged.

"No buts. The most important thing right now is that we're all safe and together, and I'd like to keep it that way."

Then the thing turned to stare it's many, many glowing eyes at them.

Freddy stopped, holding up his hands in front of the group protectively. "Don't make any sudden movements."

It blinked one, twice. Then, with an animalistic shriek, sprinted towards them on all four clawed limbs.

"Should we still not make any sudden movements?" Mal asked innocently as Mari scooped him up into her arms.

"I think now would be a great time for sudden movements," Freddy hissed as he pushed the group forward. "Go, go—" He suddenly cried out, short and sharp as the creature slashed his back open with razor claws.

Bonnie whirled around. "Freddy?" Then he saw him. "Oh God, Freddy!"

He swayed, stumbling to the side before his eyes fluttered closed and he collapsed against Bonnie. Blood the colour of a blue raspberry slushy gushed down his pants and dripped onto the pitch floor. Chica and the kids screamed and the creature roared, talons scraping at the floor, and Bonnie finally got a better look at it.

It had been a human once. That much was clear from the stark white human-like bones jutting out of a body that was completely held together by a sticky black substance, as if a child had tried to make a toy with yarn and popsicle sticks and smothered it in hot glue so it wouldn't fall apart. A heart dangling from a bundle of wiry fuchsia veins beat erratically just below the ribcage. Eyes like headlights were everywhere—it's head, it's chest, and when it raised its arms, one on each palm. The leering, lipless teeth were flat like a human's and stained with purple (blood?), jaws spilling and frothing with rabid pink goo. Any flesh it once had had long since decayed, and instead it oozed ink dripping down its exposed skull, down the femurs, pooling in the cracks of its curved spine.

What had happened, Bonnie wondered with a sudden jolt of terror, to make this ghost turn into…this?

And worst of all, would it happen to them too?

No time to think. "Somebody get me something to wrap him in! Now!" He barked, eyes blazing. Without a second thought, Ruby pulled off her hoodie and tossed it to him, leaving her in a tight camo tank top. Chica probably would have been a blushing mess if they weren't trapped in a life-threatening situation.

As Bonnie and Chica wrapped the hoodie around Freddy's waist, Ruby turned to Mari. "Give me the guitar."

"Um, okay, just don't break it or Bonnie'll kill me." Mari handed the smooth wooden instrument over and Ruby took it by the handle, wielding it like a baseball bat as she whipped her head around to face the growling beast.

"Let's dance," she muttered, and clobbered it over the head with the guitar.

It bellowed in anguish, momentarily stunned, and Ruby used that opportunity to strike it's knees and cause it to stumble. She was running on pure, sweaty adrenaline with her heart pumping so fast she thought she may pass out. She straddled the large being on its stomach and flipped the guitar over, driving the head between the tears in its chest three times. It made a gurgling noise like mouthwash and choked up vile black tar from it's gaping maw which spattered on her cheeks. She wiped it off with her fist and kept stabbing, before sucking in a harsh breath through her teeth as she felt knives rake across her thighs and tear her stockings. She flung a frantic glance back at the group. Bonnie, Chica, and Mari were tending to the unconscious Freddy, and the rest wouldn't be much help in a fight. But she knew two who were. "Mags! Foxy! Help me out!"

"On it!" Mangle unsheathed long black claws, Foxy brandished his hook, and both fox-hybrids flattened their ears as they pounced on the creature. Foxy slashed apart its eyes while Mangle tore off it's leg. Ruby rolled off and let Mangle rip into the chest and sever the neon-pink heart from the veins. She spat it out onto the floor, wiping the black off her tongue with a retch of disgust.

The thing made a growling noise of agony, thrashing once more before it finally lay still with psychopop-pink blood drooling from the carcass.

Ruby coughed, shakily standing up and over the corpse of the beast. Oddly, the glowing eyes had begun to collect in a swarm of tiny spheres. Like fireflies, she realized, and had the sudden urge to grab them despite being a feather beyond her reach. They floated up into the sky, dancing and spinning like a constellation of shooting stars, until they joined the rest of the pink-and-purple glitter sparkling in the black void, barely noticeable unless you were looking for them.

She ignored the throbbing pain in her legs and hobbled over to Freddy as fast as she could manage. "Is he okay?"

"I don't know." Bonnie's face was ashen, voice tight and grim. "We stopped the Remnant from flowing, but he's not responding."

"Ruby!" Chica gasped, gesturing worriedly to the cuts on her thighs. "You're bleeding!"

"Oh yeah! I forgot about those guys!" Ruby laughed, swiping her finger against them and wiping the blood off on her shirt.

Chica rolled her eyes. "You're gross. Also you've got something…all over your face."

Ruby ran her tongue over the drying black substance and then spat on the ground. "Ewww, that's disgusting! What even is that?!"

"Monster barf!" Jojo cheered.

"Yuck." She scrubbed it off with the heel of her palm.

"Guys!" Bonnie cried suddenly. "He's waking up!"

Instantly everyone crowded around him as Freddy fluttered his deep blue eyes open.

"Nhh…what's going on?" He slurred, throat raspy. He tried to sit up, but Bonnie pushed him back down.

"Nope, you aren't getting up. You lost a lot of Remnant. I'm not having you pass out on me again." Bonnie's tone was firm, but couldn't help the tiniest drop of affection through.

"...fine." Freddy cleared his throat, blinking hazily. "Is the thing gone?"

"Yep. I killed it." Ruby answered, beaming with pride.

He nodded. "That's good."

"Chica, do you think you could whip up something small with your baking kit? He needs something to fuel him." Bonnie requested.

Chica nodded and got on making some mini cupcakes with the barebones cooking kit she'd spawned in with.

Suddenly, Ruby's body began to fade in and out of transparency. In the corner of her ears, she could hear a faint voice calling her name. "Oh crap, I think someone's waking me up. I'll try and head through the portal as fast as I can, 'kay?"

"Okay, bye!" Everyone called as she disappeared into the void.

~lll~

The portal wooshed as Ruby crawled out of the hole, hoisting herself up and collapsing on her stomach, sucking in oxygen. She'd kept on her outfit, which dried the moment she stepped out of the portal. "Ugh. I had to get my clothes wet."

"Deal with it," Bonnie retorted.

"Gee, thanks. Why don't you be a little more impressed that I kayaked all the way down the shore, hiked through a thorny forest, and held my breath for seventy seconds just to see you guys, huh?"

"I'm impressed!" Chica piped up.

"Me too," Freddy, who had blue frosting on the corners of his mouth, agreed.

"Thank-you. And—" Ruby ripped off the tape holding something to her back with a slight wince before tossing it over to Freddy; "—guess who brought bandages!"

He caught them and grinned his thanks, handing them over to Chica, who began helping wrap them around the wound. Luckily, the cut had seemed more dramatic than it actually was, and after getting his strength back, could walk like normal again.

"So, are we going to continue plundering this wasteland?" Foxy asked as Mangle doodled absent-mindedly on his arm.

"As long as we stay clear of those things, I don't see why not! It gives us a better understanding of where we are, after all." Freddy decided.

Ruby was heading out further when all of a sudden she felt something cold and wet squish between her socked toes. She looked down and gagged. "Ew, gross! Guys, look at this monster corpse thingy!"

It was another one of the things, though this one had more of a spring-orchid colour scheme rather than pink. It had no claws or teeth of daggers, but long, shiny buck antlers made of glistering bone, its chest ravaged and slain by the other beast. No glowing fireflies joined the sky, and Ruby guessed from what she'd seen at her first job that the other creature had consumed every drop of Remnant from its flesh, a literal soul-sucker.

"Poor thing," Mari murmured, "these are people, aren't they? People who've been here so long that they've become monsters.."

"I don't wanna be a monster," Mal mumbled into Mari's shirt.

She held him close with gentle, soothing back rubs. "We're going to escape, sweetie. It's okay. It'll be okay." She sounded as if she was convincing herself just as much as Mal.

After walking for about twenty more minutes, Foxy gasped and jabbed his hook in the direction of a tiny, wriggling blue snake. "Egads! What is this dastardly kraken tentacle?!" Ruby squinted as his normally yellow eye dilated into pure black. Weird.

"It looks like a baby Amazonian anaconda!" Jojo exclaimed. "We watched about them on TV!"

"Wait, where's it going?" Chica pointed out. "It's moving so fast."

And indeed, the tiny Amazonian anaconda was slithering, smooth as water, in a very specific direction slightly to the left of where they'd been walking.

"I'm gonna follow it," Ruby announced, and did just that. The others shrugged and went after her. And as they walked, they began to notice odder and odder things. Tiny amethyst clusters shattered into shards on the floor. A trail of electric-blue Remnant leading to nowhere. A bouquet of hot-pink flowers blooming out of the ground. They discovered two more carcasses of lost souls, most worn down to bone. To keep the tone lighthearted, they sang songs and told stories from their past, like when Mangle was alive and got a ride in her dad's army helicopter, or when Ruby was nine and convinced everyone in her class that she had rabies using leftover toothpaste. Ruby also helped fill them in on the latest pop culture news, like In Space With Markiplier and the new song Dolls by Bella Poarch.

Ruby was in the middle of detailing the latest vlog from TWICE (Chica was apparently a K-pop fan now) when she noticed something. "Wait, where did the snake go?" They'd all been so busy talking that they hadn't noticed it disappear.

Mal tugged on Mari's sleeve, and she shook her head. "Not now, honey, we're busy." His tugging grew into yanking and Mari frowned. "Mal, what is it?"

He pointed wordlessly behind them, where a cluster of the gigantic black things hovered, hung over with gargantuan, spindley arms draped by their sides and impossibly sharp teeth drooling in shades of pink and purple.

"Time to run," Ruby decided, and everyone agreed.

The roaring things lumbered behind them on all fours, shockingly fast for something so large. Mari and Freddy each carried a child, so the others surrounded them like a human shield.

Then, Ruby got an idea. "Cassidy! Your pencils regenerate, right?"

"Um, yeah?"

"Can you pass me the package?"

Her black brows furrowed doubtfully as she thought, finally tossing them to her. "Okay. Don't lose them."

"Sweet! Thanks!" Ruby grinned as she spun around, pulling out two pencil crayons and closing one of her eyes and holding her thumb out to get the correct angle. Just like darts. The first pencil she threw missed and clattered to the floor, but the second stuck right in the smallest things' indigo eye. It let out a wail and fell to the floor as the other creatures trampled over it like a stampede of gazelles.

Ruby handed Cassidy a handful of pencil crayons in various shades of autumn, and together they rapidly fired pencils into the creatures like lead bullets.

Ruby whooped, pumping her fists in the air. "Guys! We did it!"

Her first instinct was to give Cassidy a bear hug, but settled on a semi-awkward high-five.

"Good job. I guess." Cassidy mumbled, not meeting eye contact. "Now give me my pencils back."

"Um, you two might wanna rethink that handshake." Mangle pointed very high above them and Ruby groaned as she saw that the creatures had not died, or even wounded. Instead, they merged and melded into a gangly mass of black slime and glowing eyes, bones jutting out here and there. Its stomach yawned into a gaping cavern lined with needle-sharp ribs for teeth and it let out a deafening roar.

So, naturally everyone began to run for their lives.

"What do we do? There's too many of them, and we can't run forever!" Mari cried, clutching a bored-looking Malcolm to her chest with a python's grip.

Ruby racked her brain for solutions. They could all try and team up against it, but it was nearly twice the size of their entire group stacked on top of each other. And Mari was right—they couldn't run forever. She was already beginning to feel the strain in her calves and the wheeze of her breath, and she could only imagine what some of the more out-of-shape members were feeling, despite the adrenaline boost.

Then, she squinted. A few yards away, the black air seemed to waver with curvy lines of rainbow, like sunbeams through a crystal. Ruby shook it off, figuring she was just seeing things from running for so long.

Suddenly, she slammed into it at top speed. With a yelp, she stumbled back, clutching her sore nose. "What the-? Guys, watch out! There's some kinda force field here!"

Everyone screeched to a halt. Chica prodded at it curiously. "Hmm. Weird."

"Holy crap," Bonnie said suddenly, "there's people in there! Look!"

And sure enough, when the rainbow shimmers shifted, Ruby could make out the fuzzy outline of two people—both blondes—through the force field.

"Hurry, we have to get their attention! They can let us though!" Freddy called, shooting a fearful glance behind him as the thing drew closer. Luckily, it seemed to move slower when they were combined. Everyone started to kick the force field and scream at the top of their lungs. Jojo rammed into it full force until Mari stopped her, and Cassidy shouted profanities until Mari stopped her as well.

Ruby pounded with both fists, and then she noticed one of the shapes drawing closer. A flicker of hope went off in her chest. Yes!

A rectangular hole cut through, about the size of a door. It swung open, and there stood a guy about her height with sandy blond tufts poking out from his white beanie and headphones. He was wearing an oversized white button-up tee and baggy dark gray cargo pants. Ruby barely had the chance to continue describing his outfit with how quickly he grabbed her arm and pulled her through, the others hurrying in after.

"Katy, close it!" He shouted to the spiky-haired blonde woman who Ruby recognized as the one who let her into Shadow at the seance. The hole-door immediately turned back into the transparent shield and the thing slammed right into it, falling apart into chunks of black-and-pink goop on the floor.

Ruby wrenched her hand free of the man's grip, shooting a glare in his direction. She didn't take well to being manhandled. "What the heck is going on? What is this place?"

It looked basically the same as the outside, only this time there were objects scattered about—a laptop with stickers all over the back, a bean bag shaped like a sliced lime that Katy sat on, some stray fishing rods. Further out sat a huge obsidian pentagon. She looked to her friends for guidance, but they all looked just as lost as her.

Then the pentagon spun around as if it was on a rotator, and Ruby saw that it wasn't some strange pillar, but a throne of smooth, hard onyx. But Ruby soon realized it was occupied. She was met with a huge cloud of smoke, with a humanoid body and a head like an alligator's, with cold red eyes and three layers of gnashing teeth. When it opened its mouth, Ruby could see a long, demonic tongue like a snake's twisting the syllables like licorice.

"Well, well, well," the impossibly deep voice said, syrupy sweet. "Who do we have here?"

A/N

Dun dun dun! Some strange demon thing! Any guesses as to who? Guess correctly for clear skin.

Question/Challenge: do you have any new year's resolutions? Mine are to get this story's word count to 500k by the end of the year and to try new things, which is very broad LMAO but idk it could be fun

Have an amazing day/night!

~ghost