CHAPTER 7

Alex immediately began to struggle all the more! The big monster toy's grip remained firm, the mitten smothering his voice and keeping any sound he could make nothing beyond a muffled grunt!

"Hey, calm down! It's okay!" a girl's voice said nearby.

Alex blinked and looked into the shadows as part of the bush moved. Then a small flashlight clicked on, held by a truly tiny figure. A doll sized figure. Instantly his annoyance spiked, it was that treacherous blue dressed doll!

"Kissy, please release him. He's here to help," she said.

Looking back at the creature who embraced him, Alex saw this was indeed not Huggy Wuggy, but Kissy Missy. A memory flashed in his mind recalling her in one of the hallways, just on the other side of a closed security gate. She'd been helpful that time, and if Poppy was trusting her, that had to mean something. Of course, the porcelain poppy scented doll had driven him deeper into this hellish nightmare, so that didn't mean too much. In the glare of the light, the big monster toy's cartoonish lips pulled back ever so slightly to reveal glinting sharp teeth before she closed them again.

"Oh crap… even she's not 100% harmless either…guess that's her warning me."

Soon he felt the death grip on him relaxing and he was let down onto the fake grass. She remained silent and unspeaking as she looked down at him and then to Poppy who carefully made her way around Alex to climb into one of Kissy's large mitten hands. She raised a small dainty arm and rubbed her opposite arm, the blue fabric was ripped and blackened.

"It seems that train wreck left both of us in worse condition," she said slowly.

"Yeah, and it wouldn't have done so if-" Alex said, starting to get angry, but a cold stare from Kissy made him pause, and continue at a quieter, forced-calm tone. "If a certain doll hadn't decided that keeping me here to die in yet another death trap was a great idea."

Poppy looked a bit ashamed at this accusation.

"I'm sorry, but I couldn't let you leave. What's happening down here is bigger than just you or I or our lives. There are more lives at stake. And it seems you've met some of them," she said.

"You mean the Critters?"

"Yes, and not only them. There are others. They need you, they need us. You've spoken to them, and you see they have been suffering in this nightmare for years. Trapped in his prison, unable to leave."

Alex couldn't fault Poppy's logic here as it was true. The critters had once started as a group and become split up and divided. 3 were hiding in a place they called a bunker, Picky was hiding by herself, and 3 others were missing, all because one of them was hunting them.

"They deserve justice from the monsters who've tortured them… who've tortured us," Poppy stated rubbing Kissy's cheek.

The big pink monster said nothing and even with a forced smile it was clear she was sad. Alex felt a bit of sympathy towards her, he'd desired nothing but freedom as a child who was passed from house to house. And it seemed the toys never left this factory either. It couldn't be that hard, could it? There was little to really stop them, even with the crumbling infrastructure. That was down to age more than anything; the factory had been intact when whatever happened did so leaving couldn't be impossible.

"If they want freedom, why don't they try to leave? I mean, I was able to get down here with little problem. I mean, if Huggy Wuggy wanted to leave, there was a skylight above him," Alex asked.

"Many wished to leave like you do, Alex. But the original, the prototype, he won't let you. He will kill you before you get to that door. He's done it to many others who tried to leave. Those who remain are either devoted to him and believe he'll reward them. The rest fear him, and content themselves to stay out of his way," Poppy explained solemnly. "I see you have that phone, I guess Bubba was right that some of the phone lines could still work down here."

"So you spoke with him?"

"Yes, he's very smart. One of the smartest I've known. He'll know what to do and where to go to clear the way forward," she said.

Kissy then rose to her full height and began to walk off. Alex, curious and not willing to let the giant monster or little red haired doll out of his sight, followed behind. They walked over towards a section of the wall that seemed to jut out. The big pink monster stopped at a section of the wall that seemed discolored and pressed on it. The wall moved in slightly then it popped back out, offering a lip that the Kissy's mitten fingers could grip and pull on, revealing a small doorway. Inside was a small lift elevator only big enough for monster and doll.

"We can't stay here, we need to hide. I may not take up much space in the bunker, but Kissy will. And I can't leave her," Poppy explained.

"Why?" Alex asked.

Poppy sighed and gently stroked the pink monster's fur. "This place holds bad memories for her. It makes her tense. I need to be there for her."

Alex sighed, he wasn't going to argue with it. After all, a place like this usually seemed to create monsters of those who didn't keep their sanity in check.

"Okay."

"Just close the door when you go. Catnap doesn't seem to know about this spot," Poppy asked.

The little doll then pushed a button on the elevator's control panel and the elevator rose up into darkness that was only broken up by the light of her flashlight. Alex did as he was asked and closed the door in the wall. He wasn't sure how he felt after having this talk with Poppy; after all it was all because of her that he was stuck down here deeper in the factory. But then again she implied something else was down here doing that too. This thing called the Prototype, or the original, or as Catnap seemed to call it, his god. But what about this thing was so special that it could keep all the toys trapped?

Brrrrrrring brrrrrrrrrring

Pushing his debating aside, Alex answered the phone.

"Hey, I guess Poppy brought you up to speed huh?" Bubba asked.

"Well enough. So your friend Catnap has some strange choices in leaders," Alex said.

"Clearly. The prototype came before… well all of us. But I don't know why Catnap worships him. All that monster has done is twist our friend into a monster."

"Well I don't get why you call Catnap a friend if you hide from him."

"Dogday saw him as a friend, one of us. And he was, but something started to change about him before… this happened. Anyways, we'll talk about this later. Right now, I need you to go to the front of Home Sweet Home. Just turning the generator on was only part of the step. Stay on the line, I'll explain once you get there."

Retracing his steps, Alex walked back to the porch of Home Sweet Home. Looking around he started to notice how dark the Playcare was.

"Hey Bubba, what happened to the lights?"

"Oh, the system runs on a timer to simulate night and day. It got out of sync so now it's saying it's night time instead of daytime."

"Can you adjust it from where you are?"

"Not here, sadly. I think controls like that are in the counselor's office. Anyways I see you're near the porch now. There should be a panel door at the base. Inside there should be an extension cord."

Looking at the base in the dim light, Alex barely made out the red metal door with a power symbol on it. Flopping it open there was indeed an extension cord on a reel that would suck the cord back in.

"Got it."

"Okay, Home Sweet Home's generator would normally supply power to itself in case of a power cut. But since it's providing more power than it's using, the generator will be useful to help charge the mega battery I'll build in no time at all. Just plug that cord into a socket at the base of the statue, then come back in. See you soon," Bubba explained before hanging up.

Grabbing the cord, Alex trekked down the hill back to the base of the statue. Walking along, he noticed the white noise sound had changed. The birds had gone and now the sound of crickets singing was the only thing to be heard. And yet his mind kept reminding him that this wasn't real. The air might have been fresh, but he knew that was only thanks to the fan at the top of the dome. There was the sound of insects but it was from a recording. Even the night was fake, only created because of a timer turning off the lights that had stood in for the sun.

Finally arriving at the base of the statue, Alex found the large power socket hidden between two fake flowers planted around the base. Ramming the plug in, the sound of the crickets warped and stuttered, and the light cast by the Bron-street lights flickered off before coming back.

"Well, that did something," he thought dimly. "I just hope it hasn't made my life more difficult."

He rose and walked back around to the doorway at the back, taking note to step over the large toppled statue. Curious, Alex turned back to the statue and looked up. 7 cartoon animals stood in a circle atop, the eighth laying at his feet. He recited the names he knew to himself.

"Bubba… Kickin'... Picky… Craftycorn… Bobby… a rabbit… a dog… and…," he said, pausing to look to the fallen statue, "...Catnap."

It was strange, yet fitting that the statue that fell from the top was that of the monstrous feline. He'd fallen from the graces of his former friends. Or, at least the friends he'd been assigned to. Leaving the fallen statue behind, Alex made it to the door and buzzed the doorbell. It took a moment longer than he liked for it to open, and when it did some bad smelling smoke hit him in the face. Instantly he feared the worst, and rushed down the stairs. At the bottom, he saw a mix of chaos as Bubba was under the desk, and Craftycorn fanning the smoke away with a stack of papers, and the security screens had all gone dark.

"What happened?" Alex asked. "Where's the fire?"

"That charge made the powerstrip short out!" Bubba shouted from under the desk, coughing. "And it tripped some circuit breakers!"

This was followed by a blackened and melted power strip that came skittering out from under the desk and bounced against Alex's shoe. The blue elephant emerged a moment later.

"At least that took the hit and nothing else. But I need a new powerstrip," he explained.

"Oh no, you don't need me to go back to that room to get one do you?" Alex wondered with growing concern.

"Nah, I made sure to stock a backup just in case," Bubba said. "I just need to install it, then reboot everything again. Shouldn't take too long."

Bubba turned to one of the drawers and opened it, before digging around inside. Crafty soon gave her fanning a rest and sighed in relief.

"Whew, there," she said contently before she noticed Alex and became excited. "Oh! Angel! You were amazing! I saw you on the cameras! And, was that Picky I saw on the camera? Is she still alive?"

"I don't know. I lost track of her after running from Catnap. She seemed okay last I saw her, and I don't think Catnap got her. After all, he was chasing me."

"I can't believe Picky is okay! It's been…. I don't know… so long since she disappeared! Has she been hiding there all this time?"

"Maybe. I came across her makeshift home in the kitchen. And there was still plenty of food there. It was like the people stocked the Playcare with enough food to outlast a war."

"Picky is still alive! I can't believe it! Oh! I gotta make a 'Welcome Home Picky' card! Ohh I bet she'll love it!" the white unicorn excitedly said before quickly retreating to her corner.

Alex wanted to say he wasn't sure if Picky would come as she'd insisted on leaving the Playcare before, but the artistic critter had already set off. And, thinking back to the answer to her question of leaving with him, he felt it wouldn't be right to shoot down her hopes again like that. Placing his hand in his pocket, he felt the unfamiliar lump in it. For a moment he forgot before the memory of Bobby crying out brought the memory back.

With the two other critters busy, that left one other critter to talk with. Walking back to the pile of pillows he saw the broken hearted critter where he'd left her; snuggling the pillow sadly. Slowly he crouched down closer to her. She seemed to notice him, but still a world away, deep in self pity.

"Bobby?" Alex asked, gently.

The red bear said nothing.

"I found this," he said, holding up her small red heart pendant. It was a bit scratched but clean. Bobby looked at it then looked away.

"Then…. you know what happened," she said with a whimper that turned into a sob as she covered her eyes. "I didn't want to! I tried to resist! But he… he made me do it! I didn't want to! They weren't all bad! But I couldn't! He took control and when I came out of it…"

She broke down sobbing again. Alex reached out and gently patted her back, his hand running through the red fur of this toy. Her cries were so pained it broke his heart to hear. This was more information than he'd ever heard before. So when the toys did go rogue, this might not have been by choice. Though that choice may have been warranted from what he was seeing and learning about his old place of work, Bobby knew some might have been innocent. But how? How could she turn feral that way?

"Who did? Who made you do it?" he asked.

The red bear shuddered, her eyes wide with fear.

"1006," she said, her voice shuddering. "I felt his hand in my head, and instantly I felt nothing…. nothing but rage… I'm not supposed to be like that! I'm Bobby Bearhug, the most loving critter! But… at that moment… all I could feel was anger and hate… SO…MUCH…HATE… I couldn't see anything, or do anything… it was all emotion… then it ended… "

She said no more, but Alex felt he could understand how that had affected her. And it haunted him to think what she was saying. It was this 1006 thing that was behind this attack. Turning toys that might have been as kind and loving like Bobby into killers. And in the end, it'd left them with deep regrets and self hatred. He remembered the VHS tapes that mentioned it, talking about it being smart, but psychic? That was something Alex couldn't begin to think about.

"But you seem calm now. You've not attacked me or anything," Alex said.

"He's not spoken. Not for years. But Catnap says he does… to him…" Bobby whimpered. "Says he's weak but he's regaining strength… I don't wanna hurt anyone again! I can't! I can't! I can't! I… I… I… I'd rather die!"

She broke down again, and Alex was driven to do something he'd not done before. He reached down, picked up the child-sized toy bear, and hugged her tightly. Bobby gasped and immediately started squirming, trying to get away.

"N-no! Don't touch me! I'm dangerous! A monster!" she cried.

"No you're not!"

"You saw what I did! I'm a monster! I'm a killer!"

"A monster doesn't regret what they do!" Alex stated firmly.

This got Bobby to quiet down, as if that thought hadn't struck her. Alex continued.

"You had no control. This thing pushed its way in and made you do horrible things. I don't know how that's possible but then everything I've seen shouldn't be real. However, that's not the point. The point is that was not your doing. If you were a monster you'd be just like Huggy Wuggy or Mommy or Bunzo, or whoever else is still in this cursed factory! You see a human, you kill it. But you didn't. That proves you're no monster. You're still sane, you feel guilt, you feel remorse, disgust in yourself that you did that. But it wasn't you. It will never be you. He… they… it… whatever did that, not you. You are still Bobby Bearhug, nothing will change that."

Toy and human sat together like this for a moment. His hand gently rubbed the back of the red bear who remained silent until she found her voice.

"I… I am?"

"Yes," Alex said. "You are. You can still be that. What happened was awful, no question. But you can't let it define you."

He brought up the pendant again. Bobby looked at it, her expression softening as she did. She gently took it in her small hands as Alex handed it back to her.

"Monsters don't care for my safety, they all see me as food. First thing I heard you say was that I should get out. You cared about my safety despite knowing I'm a human. Despite barely knowing me outside of knowing I existed. And you tried to keep that distance between us for the safety you felt I was owed. That care and love that I hadn't earned yet. That doesn't sound like a monster. That sounds exactly like what Bobby Bearhug should be," he said.

Bobby said nothing, she just looked at the pendant in her hands. The clip was still intact, if a bit rusty, and its surface was scratched. It was like her; slightly tarnished, affected by time, but still as beautiful as ever. The bear looked up at Alex and gave him a big tight hug, as tight as she could manage. Wafting from her fur was another flowery scent. It was like Craftycorn's but different.

"Thank you, Angel," she said in a soft gentle voice that was free of fear and self-loathing.

Eventually the hug ended, and Bobby crawled off his lap, back to her pillows. Only instead of going back to hugging them, Bobby seemed content to snuggle in them. Alex rose up and left her to it. As he walked away he thought he heard a soft metallic click as she clipped her heart pendent back into place. He then noticed that someone had been watching.

"Wow. Absolutely prodigious," Bubba said in awe. "Poppy said you'd be our angel. I didn't honestly think she was serious though."

Alex felt heat rising in his cheeks. He'd only done what felt right. Bobby had been suffering and he wanted to help her. Even a little bit. It just didn't feel right to do nothing.

"Told you so!" Crafty said, popping up from behind the chair startling the blue elephant!

"AHH! Crafty!" Bubba said, glaring at her. "What the heck?!"

"I just had to be sure I heard you admit that I was right. I never doubted you for a moment, Angel. If anyone could make things better, it'd be you," Crafty said irreverently.

Alex just blushed harder; he wasn't so sure about that. He'd done what anyone could, really. He even thought someone more qualified could have done a better job. He was just some engineer, not a psychologist.

"I wasn't being serious, and you know it," Bubba hissed. "Angels perform miracles and are supernatural in origin. Alex is… well, a mortal human. He's survived a lot but he's far from angelic."

"But Bubba," Craftycorn said innocently, "for how many years have we been trying to break Bobby out of that shell she built around herself?"

The blue elephant just gave a huff and turned back to the camera monitors, defeated but unwilling to admit it. Pleased with her little win, Crafty came up and gave Alex's leg a little hug.

"You're doing great, Angel. Keep it up," she said before she trotted back to her corner of papers.

A clearing of the throat brought Alex back down to earth as Bubba ushered him back to the cameras.

"Okay so after replacing the fried powerstrip and resetting a couple fried circuit breakers, we can now see everything," he said, hastily.

He quickly turned to flick some switches, bringing the security camera feeds back. A couple of the television screens were a bit darker than the others but the image was still clear enough. All images showed the outer Playcare area.

"Okay. So I've got one generator working. Is it enough?" Alex asked.

Bubba said nothing but pulled out some papers scribbled with calculations. He shuffled through them before putting them away.

"Well, my calculations were a bit off. The one generator is only supplying half the charge. That'll take twice as long to charge the battery. Too much time wasted," he said, half to himself, and half to Alex.

"Okay… so where do you think I should go?"

"Hmmm let me see… Well, one place I'm not going to ask you to go is the Playhouse," Bubba said firmly.

"Why not?"

"Besides the Toy Store, that's the most dangerous place in the Playcare. Catnap lives down there when he's not stalking around on patrol. I don't know why; none of the cameras are up in that zone except the entrance, but... anything that goes there doesn't come back. I've seen him more than once carrying a member of his flock there. They go in… but they don't come out." He paused before whimpering in a quiet voice he thought Alex wouldn't hear. "He took him there… and that was the last time we saw him."

Before Alex could ask what Bubba was talking about, the blue elephant loudly changed the topic.

"And the councilor's office is just filled with red smoke. If you lose your mask there, or something, there is no saving you. So that leaves the school. It should be clear. Just get in, turn that generator on, and we should be done."

Alex made a move to go but he paused and returned to Bubba. He had to know what he meant about Catnap's change in personality. The elephant's hand was about to push the button to open the door.

"Bubba, you said a while ago Catnap used to be your friend. And this Dogday, you said, would still see him as a friend. But why?"

Bubba didn't speak for a moment, slowly he removed his hand from the button to open the door.

"Long ago, they… the scientists… they made us. Dogday… Me…. Picky, Hoppy, Kickin'... everyone. Catnap was the last. When he first came to the Playcare he was shy, like a lot of us were at first. Dogday, the leader of the Smiling Critters, tried to make him feel welcome. We all did, so did the children. And over time he became one of us. One of the critters," Bubba explained.

He paused then continued.

"Then, a year before it happened… he started to change. No longer were we friends, he seemed to stare at us as if we were freaks. The moment he found he could shift into his larger forms, he started staying that way for longer periods. Dogday figured it out and joined him. He kept trying to include him in every activity. But soon, more often than not, Catnap wouldn't join in. He'd keep really close to the children and regarded us like we were against him. I remember Kickin' once suggested that he saw us as idiotic children, despite the fact we're supposed to be the same."

"It was a couple months before… it happened when we really lost him. He started whispering to us stuff like "the Original will lead us to freedom" and "believe in the original, for he will save us." I don't know how he came up with that, how he knew it was going to happen, but he did. After that, he was never the same, he became really mean, really nasty… saying we should do as he says or…"

Bubba then froze and said no more to the discussion. He just looked back at Alex with a haunted look on his frozen smiling face. The smile almost looked mocking in nature.

"Look, I don't know how long that generator can run. You'd better hurry," he said, reaching over and pressing the door button, and passing over the key to the door.

"Okay," Alex said slowly, certain there was something Bubba wasn't mentioning, but he didn't push as it seemed highly traumatizing. He reached out and took the key left for him before turning to head up the stairs.

"Wait!"

Alex paused as he felt something grab around his leg. Looking down, he saw Bobby up and embracing his leg as tightly as she could. She looked up at him with sad eyes.

"Please be careful, Angel," she said. "We can't lose you, not now."

"I'll be careful, Bobby," Alex said gently, reaching down and giving her head a gently loving pat. "I promise."

Bobby just hugged his leg once more before gently letting go. She watched until Alex had ascended the stairs and was cut off by the closing door.