Gregory poked at the stuff around himself as he and Sun talked until suddenly, Sun stopped responding.
Gregory opened his mouth and then closed it. He got up from his lounge into a crouch and shuffled around so he could climb as quietly as he could under the pillows beneath the S.T.A.F.F. bot.
After an eon of silence, the music in the Daycare warbled to an end. The lighting dimmed.
Gregory's eyes went wide, and he clutched Bonnie tighter. She knows we're here.
"Hey, hey, the lights in here are still on. So maybe we just need to wait for a little while?"
Gregory looked up. The string lights stayed on, but the spotlight had turned off. In the main room, the string lights still glowed, but the main light was off in there, too. Hopefully, it was still too bright for Moon.
Hopefully.
Why isn't Sun talking to me? Even if he turned into Moon, he should still be able to talk to me!
"I don't know. But I like it here. Just stay quiet."
If the lights don't scare him off, is this a good enough hiding place? I mean, this is his room.
"No. They don't need their eyes to look for children, Gregory. They're better than the Glamrocks at finding them."
Just then, little dress shoes appeared on the floor. Gregory bristled and looked up, refusing to move even an inch. The arcade spirit stood in front of him, her hands behind her back. "You should probably get moving."
"Why?" Gregory breathed.
"That rabbit lady is heading this way," she stated matter-of-factly. "This room is hidden, so maybe she doesn't know you're here. Maybe she thinks you went into the theater or the basement and hid there. It would be a dumb hiding spot, by the way. You'd just get lost. One of the other kids tried hiding there and got killed. Anyway, I would be prepared to run, just in case."
"Run where?" he whispered.
She shrugged. "I dunno. Uh… there's only one entrance or exit for people. If she uses it, then you won't be able to." She narrowed her eyes. "And if you're dead you can't play those arcade games. You'd become trapped here. And you'd become all sad and boring."
Bonnie? Would I survive falling from Sun's balcony?
"Would you surv–ugh. I guess you don't have a choice. Yes. But only if you don't have any other options and only if you land in the ball pit."
Gregory crawled out from under the pillows. "Bonnie knows what to do."
"Oh good! Bonnie was always a pretty cool character. That's probably why that stupid rabbit lady made her suit look like a rabbit. She was copying Bonnie. Pretty badly, too." The girl nodded matter-of-factly.
Gregory nodded and walked around her to the tunnel. He looked out into the semi-bright room. He could imagine his living room being this bright during the day, the window blinds open and the lights off and the sun not directly within view of the glass. He walked around the junk in the room to a ladder up to the stage and climbed up onto the stage. He crouched between a crate and the wall, near enough to the curtains to leap out at half a second's notice, far enough that if Moon did land on the balcony and tried to grab him without going in, Gregory would be out of his reach. The girl hopped up behind him, unaffected by gravity but at least pretending to follow it by jumping from the table. She phased right through the rail and stuck her head out the curtains before pulling back and looking at him.
Then, a familiar headache gnawed at his senses.
She looked at the wall with the tube. Gregory followed her gaze, finding that further along the wall was a door. She phased through the railing as she jumped down on the table, floor, and ran through the door. She came back and called, "Yeah, that's her!"
Gregory's eyes went wide. He threw himself through the curtains and onto the balcony and then stopped dead. From here, he could see the entire play place, but so, so far up. He put on his jacket and zipped Bonnie up inside, shut his eyes, grabbed the floor of the balcony, and threw his feet off.
Gregory released the balcony.
He was in the air for years, or maybe seconds, before plunging into the ball pit. This part, as he struggled to bring himself up, was much deeper than the part by the slide and he couldn't touch the bottom. Unlike water, there was air he could breathe. However, like a pool, it gave him the distinct feeling of swimming.
He managed to scrape his fingers against something solid. He reached up and tangled his fingers into the bars of the structure wrapping around the ball pit and small green area with castle walls. Gregory gasped and wheezed as he let his heart settle and pulled his body toward the wall.
Bells.
Two pinpricks of red lights glowed above him, perched on the structure. Gregory sucked in his breath and froze.
Two small lights glowed above him–one red and one blue. Perched at the top of the tower, fingers gripping the lip of the balcony, moon-painted head facing him, was the jester from the creepy statue. A blue and-yellow-starred floppy nightcap sat on its head. A bell dangled from it. A yellow, crooked spoke jutted out from under its chin. After his run-in with the previous child-killing animatronic and crazy security guard, any curious trust he might have had was replaced by wariness and fear.
"Naughty boy, naughty boy," Moon cooed. "You are up past your bedtime."
Gregory picked up a ball and chucked it at the animatronic. It bounced harmlessly off the Daycare Attendant's faceplate and landed back in the ball pit. "And you've been a big jerk ever since I met you!" He kicked off the wall and spun around to face one of the rainbow bridges out.
Moon hissed, "Do not throw things at other people!"
Gregory stuck his tongue out at him, trying his hardest to look like he knew what he was doing.
Then a thought occurred to him. Sun could jump into the ball pit.
"Uh… maybe… Moon… can't…?"
Moon's glow-in-the-blacklight stars shot over them and into the play area.
Gregory, panting, finally touched the ground near the rainbow bridge and struggled up through the rest of the ball pit to it. "He really can't? Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"Because I didn't know that! When would that have come up in conversation?"
"Okay, that's fair."
A faint glow caught Gregory's attention, and he turned his attention on the jester animatronic, creeping up from around the smaller play structure. Moon cackled, a slight warble in his voice as if he couldn't decide between a tone or pitch.
His voice became a little higher pitched. Whiny. Scared? But only a little. Still, what could scare some creepy flying jester animatronic who was taller and stronger than any adult Gregory had met?
Well, what could scare him? Also, where had he seen him like that? Sure, Gregory and Monty tricked Moon and forced him into the repair cylinder, which did terrify him. However, he hadn't spoken. He sang, in a quiet and pitiful voice, but he didn't talk like he had in that memory. And again, what memory? Moon never appeared with Sun's spokes. Ever. Gregory had never seen him on the balcony, at that.
"Gregory, move!"
Gregory yelped and stumbled into a sprint as Moon lunged at him. Moon cooed at him and cocked his head. "Runny run, run away~!"
Gregory gasped, "Bonnie! What just happened?"
"I-I don't know! Maybe there's something Moon is scared of behind the desk? I don't know what it would be, though!"
"Behind the–? What?" Gregory ran toward the end of the play structure and kicked over one of the stacks of cans. The cans toppled over.
"Urg! Clean up, clean up!" Moon spat.
Gregory, huffing, stumbled behind the security desk and snatched the flashlight. His shoes picked up a sticky note, but most of them were so old, they'd lost their tackiness. A few computers, minimal electronics including walkie talkies, fans, a pizza box, and a random picture of Roxy sat on the desk. Under it were a couple of computer towers in front of closed cabinets. He immediately rifled through them. Maybe something would pop out at him as important if he came across it? Because at the moment, he didn't have a clue what he was looking for.
"Young children are not allowed behind the security desk!" Moon asserted, staring at him from around the side of the counter.
Gregory ignored him. His fingers fell over something wide and thin. His eyes lit up and he dragged out the tablet. Gregory popped out the pen and turned it on. Though the light glared with harsh intensity upon being prodded awake, his sunglasses defended him from the worst of it. The Freddy Fazbear logo glowed at him. Then, a password screen.
"Uh… Bonnie?"
"I don't even have the slightest clue."
Gregory looked back. A filing cabinet stood against the wall beside a few other cabinets. A few walkie talkies, binders, and a ton of bottles of disinfectant sat on top of them. Jeez, it could take hours to search through all that!
He looked on the ground and then his shoe. Gregory pealed a sticky note off his shoe.
User: MSeaver04
Pass: SMC4ndy!
He narrowed his eyes and held it up to the light of the tablet. Seaver. This means "candy". That security lady. Maria. Oh! She must be one of the security people who works here! Yeah, she said she just finished a shift here.
"So, you think that'll work on the tablet?"
Gregory nodded, popped out the pen, and tapped the "Username" line, causing the virtual keyboard to pop up.
[Welcome back Maria]
The words faded off screen, replaced by the Freddy Fazbear Mega Pizzaplex logo and a few icons and folders.
File Explorer, Recycling Bin, an internet icon, folder labeled "Report", folder labeled "Names", and an icon of a weirdly shaped yellow wrench labeled "DON'T TOUCH TECH ONLY" lined up on the left side of the screen.
Gregory double-tapped the wrench.
It took a moment, but a black and gray window appeared with a lighter button lined with buttons and words and options. A window popped up with a picture of a silhouette of a Freddy head with a question mark in the middle. "ANIMATRONIC NOT CONNECTED" lined the bottom of the pop-up window.
Gregory's eyes widened. Bonnie. I know what to do.
"Gregory, you better not be thinking what I think you're thinking."
Gregory stuck the pen back in, shut the tablet, and stuck it under his arm. He stood up and peered over the counter. Moon stalked back and forth. He perked up upon seeing Gregory. Moon dipped under the counter's sight. Curious, Gregory stood up on his toes and planted his hands on the desk and craned his neck to look over the desk.
Moon sprung up like a Jack-in-a-box, sending Gregory reeling back with a squeal. "Peek-a-boo!" Moon cackled.
"Screw you!" Gregory spat, hitting the cabinets behind him with a thump and rattling the bottles of disinfectant.
Moon clutched the counter and sank down so his eyes were almost level with it. "Oh? You don't want to hide anymore?" He cocked his head. "Hidey hide, hide away?"
Gregory glared at him and pointed his flashlight at the back of the chair near him. "No. How about we play 'Hide and Seek?' You go hide."
Moon hummed and released the counter with one hand to tap his chin. "Hide and Seek is so much more fun with more people…"
"Bonnie's gonna play." Gregory held out Bonnie.
"Then I will need to seek," Moon pointed out. "Since you're the best at finding Bonnie."
"Maybe he'll look for me first. Give you a head start to do whatever you're going to do."
Gregory frowned at Bonnie. "Not helping. But…" He rolled his eyes. "Fine. I'm always first seeker, but Bonnie agrees with you."
Moon released the counter and danced back a few long strides. Then, he bent his head forward and held both hands over his eyes. "One… two…"
He's serious.
"Of course he is, he's a childcare bot! Get going!"
Gregory started to run out of the security area. However, as he became acutely aware of the patter of his shoes on the floor echoing in the temperate silence, he stopped, kicked his shoes off, and continued running. His socks made much less noise against the soft ground than his tennis shoes. Gregory stopped by the child house. He set Bonnie down by the play structure, back to one of the supports to the bridge, near the play house. The door squeaked as he opened and shut the play house's door. He darted into the play place and crawled up to the bridge, hiding just out of sight.
Moon called, "Ready or not here I come~!" He turned in a lazy circle and plucked at the objects around him, gently turning over obstacles and looking into shallow hiding places. "Where oh where could my starlings be?" he cooed.
Starlings? Wasn't that what Sun called the other kids?
"Sometimes."
"Could he be here…?" Moon asked, looking around the opposite corner. "Could he be… oh! Hello, Bonnie Bunny!" Moon gently plucked the rabbit from the floor. "Now, where could Gregory be…?"
Gregory slunk onto the bridge and then slipped under the rope and landed on Moon's shoulders. The Daycare Attendant spat and yanked himself back, attention now directed on the boy clinging to his back. His grip on Bonnie tightened, but not enough to damage the toy. Though the Daycare Attendant was flexible and quick like a demented snake with arms, his fight with Monty taught Gregory everything he needed to know about what part of him couldn't twist itself into a knot. Gregory hooked his feet into the loop on his back and grabbed the back of Moon's neck.
"Sorry Moon, but it's time for you to take your nap!" Gregory pressed the reset button on the back of the Daycare Attendant's head, where his circuitry and wiring was exposed.
Moon collapsed.
Gregory yelped as the bot went down like a sack of bricks and he nearly slammed his own head into the ground. He braced his feet against the back of Moon's head just in case the Daycare Attendant woke up, pulled out his tablet and searched the back of his head. Panic started to swell in his chest before he finally found a terminal and plugged it in. The blank Freddy head switched to a cartoon outline of what looked like their face with half of Sun's spokes and Moon's hat. "DAYCARE ATTENDANT" stamped below it. Gregory watched Moon. At this point, Moon had woken up in Monty's arms. Monty claimed he woke up very quickly. Gregory let out a short breath. "So, I was right. This will keep him asleep."
Gregory pulled out the tablet's pen and tapped through a few folders, pop-up warnings and commands, and programs. He hesitated upon coming across the program he sought–the same one he used to make Springy want to follow Bonnie.
Bonnie? This, uh… this looks kind of complicated…
"Yeah, I'm not surprised. Some pretty genius people made them. Are you sure you want to do this?"
Yeah, I'm sure! I'll just look for something familiar. Gregory scrolled through the insane amount of code, the jumble of numbers and letters he hadn't the faintest idea how to translate. He stopped, shut his eyes, and took a deep breath. "No, Gregory. You can do this. Don't panic. Maybe it's just an advanced type of code you use."
He opened his eyes and studied the first line he saw. At first, it was just a jumble of letters and numbers. But the longer he looked at it, and the ones above and below, the more he recognized it. There was no godforsaken way he was about to replicate or modify it, but he did faintly recognize it as a conditional statement regarding the amount of… presumably that meant children. Okay, so this was a language he knew!
He kept scrolling. The creeping thought of how he would find some type of murder-children code nipped at the back of his mind. No matter how much he tried to push it down, he couldn't ignore the inevitable. He barely recognized this language. Even if he managed to recognize something wrong when he had no baseline to compare it to, how would he fix it without breaking them? Professionals who were trained specifically to fix and build bots like him never saw the Vanny virus thing! How would he?
"Maybe there's a manual somewhere?"
In here? Why? It would be in Parts and Service or wherever they were built, which might not even be here.
"I'm trying to be helpful, but fine, be that way."
Gregory sighed. "Sorry. I know you're only trying to help."
Finally, he growled and tipped his head back. "Uuuugh! Why can't this be easy? Can't there just be some, like, evil program chip or something? This is gonna take forever."
"Why don't you just leave him asleep until the lights are on?"
Gregory hesitated in his scrolling. "That… doesn't sound like a bad idea. But I wouldn't be able to do that every time. So, if I can't figure it out, we'll do it this one time."
"Great! Now pick me up, please."
"Oh! Right. Um, by the way…" Gregory shut out of the folders and clicked the pen back into place. He pried open Moon's fingers and untangled Bonnie from his grasp. "How are we getting into the power room?"
"Oh. Right. Moon's the only one with that permission."
Gregory looked down at him. "Is it like… a handprint sorta thing? If I just find some way to drag him over there, I can get him to open it?"
"Gregory, how are you bringing this giant metal jester all the way across the playground to the Naptime room?"
He scoffed, "I don't hear you coming up with suggestions!"
"Sorry. Well, you should probably get the security badge, at least."
Gregory nodded and walked back to the security desk. He grabbed his shoes as he went. "Maybe this will turn the lights back on?" He poked the Freddy head and looked around. His eyes trailed the safety net. He gasped, "Oh! Our original plan! Sun can't stop us! We can just climb over the wall!"
"Yeah! Great idea! That play structure is close to the wall. Maybe you could climb up onto that and jump closer?"
Gregory snatched the security badge.
…
Nothing.
He ran to the smaller play structure, climbed up the slide and onto the top. Clutching Bonnie to his chest, he climbed up with one hand onto the top of the play structure. He crawled across the top on his hand and knees, careful not to slip through one of the holes. He stopped at the edge closest to the wall and perched at the very edge.
Gregory paused at the brink. While he'd never tried to jump gaps–especially this far up, he noted as he stared down the hefty drop–he wasn't about to ruin his only chance at freedom.
He crouched and threw himself across the gap.
Gregory didn't make the jump.
His fingers and tips of his shoes hooked into the netting and his body slammed into the glass-like wall. He scrambled up, not using all of his left fingers as he gripped Bonnie tight, and over the top. He swung around to the other side.
Gregory sent a look at the table far below. His heart skipped. What do I do?!
"Uh! Just, uh! Well, no one's gonna come catch you so, um… oh this was a dumb idea!"
"Not helping!" Gregory squeaked out. He took a deep breath. "Yeah, you're right! This was dumb!"
"This was my idea. Let go of me, alright? Hang onto the wall with both hands."
Gregory wanted to refuse, but his arm was getting sore.
Gregory let go of Bonnie and reached his hand out to steady himself.
"Okay, now, try maneuvering around so you land on the table. That's the closest thing to you."
Gregory swallowed, took a deep breath, and kicked off from the wall. He landed on the table, slipped, and stumbled onto the chair and rolled onto the floor, crashing into another chair as he went. He groaned and held his shoulder. "That sucked," he growled.
"But you're alive and not too hurt!"
Gregory stood up and stretched. He winced at the soreness in his shoulder and the backache returned. "If this keeps up, I'm just gonna be a pile of broken bones in the morning." He picked Bonnie up from where he'd rolled away and trudged off, shoeless, friendless, and sore.
He scaled the stairs.
The time was twelve-fifty-five am.
Gregory turned his flashlight down the walkway, stretched his legs, and continued to move. He was able to push through the gate from this side. He walked around the golden Sun and Moon statues and ducked under the shutters. His eyes fell on the charging station. Moon was currently inactive. However, the time change could mean he was somehow magically active again or maybe Vanny knew he was inactive and came to help him or maybe someone else would help him. Or maybe time would only jump forward if he entered the charging station?
Gregory climbed inside. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and ducked lower.
A headache crept up on him and tried to disconnect his senses from his brain. The rabbit lady skipped right past the charging station.
The shutters opened for her.
The time was twelve-fifty-six am.
He had activated the next time jump–a night cycle at that. Moon wouldn't be happy with him, oh no. The slippery little boy managed to escape again, though. But how…?
She struggled to put down the delight that bubbled up inside of her. She turned the energy into a bouncy hum. Oh, how she was going to cherish manipulating this boy's spirit. She underestimated him and for good reason. What a dumb little thing walking away from the crowd without a glance back to follow a strange bunny into the empty darkness. But ever since, he'd made the most interesting quarry, worming out of her traps and manipulating her bots. He was learning, and at a dangerous pace. So, her fawn might not be the little fragile thing she once assumed, but he was still a child.
A little boy.
Mortal and full of spirit.
And struggling oh so much.
The time was twelve-forty-seven am.
She tromped down the stairs. Her elongated, foam toes and crinkled board soles had been difficult at first. However, a lady could get used to anything. Could hide anything. Could be anything. And could do it even with skepticism and scoffs from the outside.
She stopped before the doors to the Daycare. The danger markers she'd put up, invisible to anything that couldn't see in UV light, glowed plain as day. She pushed one open with a hard click.
She stuck her head in and stopped.
Her bot lay sprawled on the ground in the middle of the playground just under the bridge.
She slipped inside and ran up to it, unable to help the sharp sting in her throat. My best one! Shit, he'll be mad if I just let it get broken!
She knelt beside the inactive bot. A tablet attached to the back of the bot's head through a short cable. She snorted and burst into laughter. Her shoulders slumped and the noise threw her head back. She jerked her head down again and inspected the tablet. The only program running was a maintenance program, but nothing was open on it. No code was running, nothing was being modified. There wasn't even a "SAVE" or "SAVE AS" option available.
"Clever boy," she choked out through her laughter. Tears ringed her eyes. Her chest hurt. This little boy was a genius, too smart for his own good. But he was too soft. He could have destroyed Moon, erased its code or done something so malicious it would have reduced the Daycare Attendant to a glowing pillow. She knew that children were being taught coding in school now a days, but it wasn't advanced–definitely not advanced enough to know shit about something like this. He would have screwed up anything he tried to do.
So, he did nothing.
"Stupid, clever boy," she rasped and swallowed back the last of her laughter. She turned her head and threw a look back at the double doors. Her original thought on the boy's modification of her bots wasn't true. It wasn't just random chance he'd stumbled upon a possible daytime-nighttime glitch and was then exploited into freeing the other bots. He was doing it on his own. He was learning. He was taking over her bots and turning them against her. Maybe that Bonnie toy wasn't an imaginary friend, but some sort of communication device she just hadn't detected? She was no longer hunting prey.
She was hunting an opponent.
A giggle forced itself through her tight lips, curled in a stiff smile. Challenge. Accepted.